 All about publishing a book, and getting help to convert a PDF to ePub, Mobi and other e-book formats |
Member Login (My Account) |
| Book Pitches | Writers' Registry | Agency Directory | E-Book News & Reviews | Join | About Us | Contact Us | | Search Site | |
|
FAST LINKS Follow us! 
Discover the best thriller writers on the planet!  SSL WARNING! PLEASE READ ABOUT THIRD PARTY ADS: Authorlink encourages writers to thoroughly investigate third-party ads on this or any other site offering free and easy publishing help. We subscribe to the highest standards of the traditional publishing industry, and do not necessarily endorse any advertiser on our site. Also, Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site enabling display of ads based on user visits to our site and to others on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy. Authorlink guidelines, #7 includes more on our own policies |
[ Search for Articles ] [ Visit Our Interviews Page ]
Jump_Cut:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Editor's Note: Authorlink welcomes Los Angeles screenwriter
and teacher Neil Flowers and his monthly column on the subject of
writing for film and television. Neil's columns appears on the first of
every month. |
Carey Abney is from Philadelphia, an active duty ITSN (Navy) residing in Newport News, VA, and a new reader of this column. He has sent in a question pertinent to all of us who write feature films and hope that they will be sold and produced. It will take two or three columns to reply fully to Mr. Abney. Here's his question. Dear Mr. Flowers,
|
|
|
"let's look at this equation in terms |
Dear Mr. Abney,
Wonderful, insightful question. Thanks for sending. Let's clarify a point crucial to the discussion of how feature film script are constructed, which is the relation between time (or, as you say in your question, "chronology") and events, and let's look at this equation in terms of "reel" time and "real" time. Those producers, writers, and contest judges whom you mention as suggesting that a writer "move completely away for chronological structure," mean, I think, something slightly different than what you may be thinking that they are saying. So we're going to look at this question from several angles over the next few columns.
|
| ". . .a film is a work of art, and structure, being part of a work of art, can be manipulated. . ." —Flowers |
Those producers, writers, and contest judges whom you mention as suggesting that a writer "move completely away for chronological structure," mean, I think, something slightly different than what you may be thinking that they are saying. So we're going to look at this question from several angles over the next few columns.
What these contest judges mean, I believe, is that a writer, instead of always constructing the events of a film narrative to unfold in a strictly linear way in "reel" time (i.e. absolute chronologically, the way events unfold in "real" time), ought to be experimenting with different ways of constructing a narrative that are not so linear. After all, a film is a work of art, and structure, being part of a work of art, can be manipulated in the same way that dialogue, color, sound, and music can be. This question of structure has been a major concern of modern and postmodern artists in this and the last century, beginning round 1905.
|
| ". . . form (i.e., structure) should not be pre-supposed before an artist approaches his or her work. The form should emerge from the content. . ." —Flowers |
"Form is an extension of content," the American poet Robert Creeley said, summing up these concerns. In other words, form (i.e., structure) should not be pre-supposed before an artist approaches his or her work. The form should emerge from the content, and vice-versa, simultaneously. This enlightening rubric from Mr. Creeley continued to spark a revolution in poetry that had roots in writers like Rimbaud and Stephane Mallarmé in France and Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams in America. Writing, painting and photography, too, have explored the structural possibilities of their arts. Commercial feature films have been much more conservative structurally.
|
| "The cost of American films is so high that studios are very uptight about taking risks." —Flowers |
That this should be true of such films cannot be surprising because most features are made for a mass audience, whereas poetry, photography, and painting with high art ambitions have a much more circumscribed readership and viewership. Also, such films must deal with enormous costs. Twenty-five years ago, Ulzana's Raid, a major Western film, shot on location with a huge star (Burt Lancaster), was made for $2,000,000. You can barely make an indie feature for that now, If you do, the major actors will be working for scale or deferment because they are doing a favor for someone or else they really, really love the project. Budgets for even small character-driven, rather than effects-driven, Hollywood films are in the 70 and 80 millions range, including the P&A costs. Effects-driven films regularly exceed 100 million dollars to make. That is the primary reason that so many studio films are sequels whose prequels were successful, or else the film is made from a work with an existing audience (Sin City, 300, the Harry Potter films). The cost of American films is so high that studios are very uptight about taking risks. Why are current Hollywood films are so repetitive, so devoid of new ideas and fresh stories? The money it takes to make them. This conservative artistic perspective includes a chronological trajectory that is essentially linear. These films start one from one place and move inexorably through the conflicts and complications to the third act resolution of climax and denouement. This is what the audience is accustomed to, and what the box office demonstrates that it will pay big bucks to see. Don't rock the boat!
|
| "Right now let’s look at two common exceptions to rigid chronological progression." —Flowers |
Of course there are some successful exceptions, such as Pulp Fiction, Memento, 21 Grams, and the French film Irreversible, whose title makes an irony of the violent destruction of the heroine (Monica Bellucci) by playing the narrative backwards. We will examine these films next month. Readers might also want to look at Andrei Tarkovsky's spiritual masterpiece, The Sacrifice, which replays the narrative with a different ending.
Right now let’s look at two common exceptions to rigid chronological progression, i.e., the flashback and flash forward, which do "juggle around" linear narrative. Flashbacks by their very nature entail deviating from the forward-moving chronological pattern of events in order to introduce important information from the backstory of the narrative (usually the hero or heroine's past). Often a flashback will come early so that the audience can be fully aware of the backstory. But sometimes, as in The Prince of Tides, the flashback does not come until very late in the narrative. In this picture starring Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, it is in order to withhold a crucial rape scene that the protagonist (Nolte) has been repressing. Here, the withholding of the material in the flashback serves an absolutely functional purpose in the narrative. It's not just a pointless trick.
|
| "Flashbacks are used judiciously in films, perhaps once or twice during the complete narrative. . ." —Flowers |
Flashbacks are used judiciously in films, perhaps once or twice during the complete narrative, and flashbacks are almost always clearly telegraphed so that the audience will not be lost temporally. Such a loss of context could affect the meaning of the flashback and the events surrounding it. An audience might be left scratching its head as to where the flashback fits in and therefore its significance. Some films do rely more heavily on flashback, but again, the general pattern of the "reel" world will be a moving forward from event to event in a causal (cause-and-effect) manner. i.e., this event results in this event which results in this event, etc. just as it does in the "real" world.
|
| "Dream sequences also deviate from strict linear narrative. Some dream sequences can serve as a sort of flash forward." —Flowers |
Dream sequences also deviate from strict linear narrative. Some dream sequences can serve as a sort of flash forward. For example, in a romantic comedy, Joe, the hero, might be wild about Jody, the heroine, but figures he doesn't have diddley-squat of a chance with her. One night, Joe dreams about Jody: They meet on top of the Eiffel Tower and fall in love. The dream is so real that -- leaping out of the sack -- Joe is certain it must come true. He discovers that Jody is going to Paris. So he flies to France -- despite all the admonitions of his family and friends against this rash course of action -- and goes to the top of the tower every day. Sure enough, on the day that Jody is supposed to leave Paris, she shows up at the tower and the rest is romantic history. You can see in this example that the dream sequence is being used as a kind of flash forward to motivate the hero.
Flash forwards can often be literal, so to speak, and are used often in films with a supernatural edge. Horror and slasher films often use this trope. A character, usually the hero or heroine, will have visionary flashes in which he or she sees somebody being chopped into pieces or attacked by some monster. These visions will be triggered by something the visionary encounters -- a person or place maybe -- or maybe he or she has been exposed to some light ray or weird power. You get the idea. Later in the narrative, these visions come true and so there is a race by the hero or heroine to prevent the murder of someone important: a wife or a famous scientist, etc., that the protagonist has seen killed in a vision. |
| "Flashbacks and flash forwards, then, are already in wide use to disrupt the strict linear flow of narrative. . ." —Flowers |
Flashbacks and flash forwards, then, are already in wide use to disrupt the strict linear flow of narrative in films that employ three-act structure. And every writer should be aware of their possible uses to do exactly that.
But I think, Carey, that you are really wondering how a cinema narrative could be created -- as these cinegurus apparently said -- without a chronological or three-act structure at all. Yes? So for next month let's watch the four films mentioned above and continue to explore three-act structure and chronology. |
 About Neil Flowers |
Neil Flowers is an award-winning playwright who has worked as a writer, actor, and director in theatre, radio, and film/video. He co-authored a produced TV pilot, and a teleplay produced as a feature by Jim Henson Films. He has written three feature screenplays, teaches screenwriting, and reads screenplays for Los Angeles production companies. Neil also works as a first and second assistant director for feature and short films; his specialty is choreographing extras for crowd scenes. He has an MFA in Playwriting and MA in Theatre and Dance. E-mail Neil at flowersneil4494@yahoo.com. |
Book Pitches | Writers' Registry | E-Book News & Reviews | Join | About Us | Contact Us | Feeds | Site Map | Search Site
Literary Agency Directory | Hook an Editor/Agent | Book Reviews | News | Online Writing Classes
Authorlink Literary Group | Articles on Writing and Publishing | Advertise | Interviews | Editorial Services