Cinematic Storytelling Read online

  For the first twenty years of film history, cinematic storytelling was the only way to convey story. As sync sound was not yet invented, movies like The Great Train Robbery, Metropolis, and The Battleship Potemkin had to use non-dialog techniques to carry character and plot. Titles cards were used when explanations were necessary, but always as a last resort.

  Camera placement, lighting, composition, motion, and editing were relied on as the primary storytellers. Cinematic tools, like the camera, were not just used to record the scene. Instead, they were responsible for advancing plot and character. There was no dialog to default to.

  After sound came in 1926, dialog and voice-narration soon appeared in movies. These devices, borrowed from novels and plays, were literary in origin, and were floated on top of the moving picture. Many purists bemoaned the coming of sound, while others saw enhancement. In either case, both storytelling systems were now available to screenwriters and directors.

  Literary and Cinematic Storytelling

  Despite the arrival of literary storytelling tools, cinematic innovations continued. Films like Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Crossfire, Psycho, The Piano, and Raising Arizona became textbook cases of their use.

  Although cinematic tools favor certain genres such as action, horror, noir, psychological drama, and suspense, even the most literary of directors, Woody Allen, often includes a cinematic race against the clock, somewhere in Act Two and somewhere in Manhattan.

  Few how-to-books discuss cinematic writing, which is surprising as most genres depend on it to carry story. Although cinematic storytelling can be obvious, most often it’s not. It manipulates our emotions, revealing character and plot without our immediate knowledge. That’s also why it can be so effective and engaging. Think of the first ten minutes of ET. The set-up is completely cinematic. Not a word of dialog. Yet any eight year-old can tell you who the bad guys are and why. As cinematic storytelling often operates on our subconscious, it is difficult to catch and rarely obvious. But this doesn’t diminish the need for screenwriters and directors to become more fluent in its use. Instead, it underscores its importance.

  Cinematic storytelling is the difference between documenting and dramatizing, between employing the potent storytelling tools in the medium or leaving them silent. Hopefully, this book will expand the storytelling continuum for developing writers and directors, helping them more fully exploit the inherent tools of the medium.

  INTRODUCTION

  Cinematic Storytelling: The Screenwriter

  The Problem

  A script is a blueprint of a cinematic story: one told with sound and picture.

  There are two requirements of a great script: One is to have a great story, the other is to render the story cinematically. There is a wealth of excellent books that deal with the first part. These books generally cover plot, structure, and character. These are fundamental issues for any work of fiction. In fact, most of these books could be equally applied to the novel or the play and consequently might more accurately be described as works on dramaturgy, not screenwriting. In either case, they make up the first and very important requirement. The second requirement is to render the story cinematically. Without this the writer might have a great story but it’s anyone’s guess if it will make a great movie.

  Film isn’t the same as the novel or the short story. It introduces technical elements that the screenwriter is expected to exploit. Screenwriters’ ability to do this is what differentiates them from other writers. Many first-time screenwriters forgo the creative opportunities of the medium, defaulting to dialog and narration instead. When screenwriters abandon cinematic techniques, they leave a lot of their movie behind on the roadside. A successful script needs to be a blueprint of a movie, which includes conveying to the reader what they will see and hear on the screen.

  In the early days of film, theorists like Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Vsevolod Pudovkin set out to understand the storytelling potential of the new medium. They recognized that film offered two things that no other medium had up to this point: a photographed image and motion. This opened up literally thousands of new options for the screenwriter.

  Editing introduced crosscutting which quickly developed a number of dramatic staples, including the chase scene. The camera could go outside. It could juxtapose exterior and interior shots. Images could be brought to the audience from around the globe and from new vantage points like the close-up. Each lens could lend specific visual qualities to an image, and each could be exploited to enhance the story. Camera movement, facilitated by a host of methods such as the crane, and later, the Steadicam, suggested a whole new world of possibilities.

  What Does This Mean for the Screenwriter?

  Early on, Pudovkin recognized that the job of scenarist would be to write stories that exploited the new medium. In 1926 he advised screenwriters to master the technical aspects of film, such as editing, so that they could better create stories specifically for the screen.

  This book is intended to follow the path of the early theorists in championing cinematic storytelling. It includes 100 non-dialog techniques used by some of the industry’s top writers and directors. From Metropolis to Kill Bill, the book illustrates, through more than 500 frame grabs and 76 script excerpts, how the film medium can be exploited to advance story. Hopefully they will demonstrate the value that cinematic writing can lend to a screenplay.

  Script Excerpts

  The script excerpts are included specifically for the screenwriter. They demonstrate how master screenwriters have incorporated cinematic storytelling into their scripts without disrupting the read or directing-the-director. For this reason scripts from both screenwriters and writer-directors have been included. These include excerpts from writers like Alan Ball, Michael Blake, and Robert Towne, as well as from writer-directors like Quentin Tarantino, Jane Campion, and the Coen Brothers.

  The hope is that screenwriters will become more fluent in cinematic storytelling.

  Cinematic Storytelling: The Director

  The Problem

  In teaching filmmaking, story and film are often taught separately. Screenwriters are housed in one building, production people in another. Unintentionally, a divide is created where there should be a bond. Technical tools become separated from their end, which is story.

  Movies start and end with story. That’s why film is purchased and crews are hired, no other reason. Many high-budget films employ dazzling effects, promising great moviemaking, but are anything but. This is because they have forgotten about story. Story has taken a back seat to technical wizardry and style.

  What Does This Mean for the Director?

  A master craftsman knows how to create a specific shot, but a director knows why. Part of a director’s required knowledge is to understand the technical properties of film and then employ them creatively to advance the story. Without the connection between content and technique, you are watching two disjointed parts; the result, more often than not, is a technical exercise.

  Cinematic Storytelling examines the work of Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Jane Campion, Tim Burton, the Coen Brothers, Luc Besson, James Cameron, and the Wachowski Brothers, among others. In each example, a specific technique is analyzed for its story contribution. For these directors, and many other great cinematic filmmakers, a shot isn’t considered unless it advances plot or character. There are no throwaways.

  The first part of the director’s job is knowing what the audience should be feeling, and when. The second part is harnessing the tools to get them there.

  Cinematic Storytelling attempts to bridge the two disciplines: film production and screenwriting. The hope is to marry form and function by illustrating how some of the top directors have achieved this and, in so doing, created some of the most memorable moments in movie history.

  SPACE: 2-D & 3-D SCREEN DIRECTION

  Film space refers to the spatial dynamics inherent in the film frame. A film frame i
s both a static snapshot and part of a moving picture. When coupled with motion, screen direction becomes a powerful story element.

  Static Image and Motion

  Like a painting, the static image of the frame presents inherent storytelling opportunities. Because a movie is a motion picture, the composition of the frame continuously changes. This added characteristic affords two important story elements — that of screen direction and comparison. Screen direction can suggest antagonism, individualism, and conflict, for example. A moving frame might be used to represent change, similarity or dissimilarity, or its opposite, stasis.

  Screen Direction

  Screen Direction refers to the direction a character or object is travelling.

  X-axis refers to the line that cuts the frame horizontally. Objects can run left-to-right or right-to-left along the X-axis.

  Y-axis refers to the line that cuts the frame vertically. Objects can move up or down the Y-axis, that is, from the top of the frame to the bottom and vice-versa.

  Z-axis refers to the axis that runs from the foreground-to-the-background or background- to-the-foreground in the frame. The Z-axis is what gives the audience its sense of 3-D space or depth-of-field.

  Here’s how screen direction expressed six different ideas.

  Film Element: Screen Direction

  1. X-axis (Horizontal) (Strangers on a Train) Pending Conflict

  2. Y-axis (Vertical) (Strangers on a Train) Detouring

  3. XY-axes (Diagonals) (Metropolis, The Piano) Descent

  4. Z-axis (Depth-of-field) (Citizen Kane) Separate Time Zones

  5. Z-axis (Planes of Action) (Dolores Claiborne) Change of Size

  6. Z-axis (Rack Focus) (The Graduate) Shifting Perspective

  Fig. 1

  2-Dimensional Screen Direction

  Fig. 2

  3-Dimensional Screen Direction

  X-axis: The eye moves comfortably from left to right as this mimics reading. The eye is less experienced to move the opposite direction and is therefore less comfortable.

  Y-axis: Moving an object down the screen appears easy as it is aided by our sense of gravity. Moving an object up the screen will appear difficult because it is assumed it will be resisted by gravity.

  Z-axis: When an object moves along the Z-axis the object appears to move in 3-D space moving from front-to-back or back-to-front. Image size will change depending on where the object appears on the trajectory and which lens has been used.

  1. Film Element: X-Axis (Horizontal)

  Left-to-Right

  As Westerners we read left-to-right. If you rented fifty studio-made movies, there’s a good chance that the “good guy” will enter screen left every time. When the “good guy” moves left-to-right our eyes move comfortably. Subconsciously, we begin to make positive inferences.

  Right-to-Left

  Conversely, the antagonist usually enters from the right. Since our eyes aren’t used to moving from right-to-left, the antagonist’s entrance makes us uncomfortable. The screenwriter exploits this by transferring our learned discomfort to the character. The subtle irritant directs audiences to see the character negatively. In the same way we code a black hat as a negative symbol, we can also code screen direction negatively.

  Conflict

  When these two forces are aimed at each other, we naturally anticipate some kind of collision. Here’s how this was exploited in Strangers on a Train.

  Film Example: Strangers on a Train

  The opening scene shows a man exiting a cab at a train station. Then it cuts to a second cab and another traveler exiting. Both travelers are shot from the knees down. One wears the two-tone shoes of a dandy, the other, conservative lace-ups.

  The dandy walks from right-to-left, the direction associated with the antagonist, while the conservative walks from left-to-right, suggesting he’s the protagonist. Then their walk is inter-cut. This makes them appear on a collision course. But at the last minute they go single file through a turnstile. We are disappointed. Then seconds later our wish is granted. They do meet. Under a train table, one knocks the shoe of the other. Now we are nervous. Visually, their meeting has already implied collision. This makes us lean in all the more as we suspect, it is all going to be bad — very bad.

  Dramatic Value

  By using screen direction to graphically suggest a pending collision, the film has set up conflict and character, and peaked our fears — all in under sixty seconds.

  Script Note

  Director Alfred Hitchcock lengthened the scene written by Czensi Ormonde and Raymond Chandler by extending the intercutting.

  Other Films

  Kill Bill (direction of footsteps)

  Dances with Wolves (protagonist rides in the opposite direction of the soldiers)

  Strangers on a Train (1951)

  Screenplay: Czenzi Ormonde, Raymond Chandler.

  FADE IN:

  EXT. UNION STATION, WASHINGTON, D.C. DAY

  LONG SHOT THE CAPITOL DOME IN THE B.G. AND THE AUTOMOBILE ENTRANCE TO THE STATION IN THE F.G. LOW CAMERA.

  Activity of cars and taxis arriving and discharging passengers with luggage, busy redcaps, etcetera.

  We FOCUS on a taxi pulling up and stopping, The driver hands out modest looking luggage, including a bunch of tennis rackets in cases to a redcap. CAMERA PANS DOWN as the passenger gets out of the taxi so that we see only his shoes and the lower part of his trousers. He is wearing dark colored brogues and a conservative suit apparently. The feet move toward, the entrance to the station and out of scene. Immediately a chauffeur-driven limousine drives up and an expensive piece of airplane luggage is handed out of this, and the passenger alighting from the back is seen to be wearing a black and white sports shoes which, as seen before, are all we see of him. The sport shoes start off in the wake of the brogues.

  INT. STATION LOBBY

  CAMERA FOLLOWS the sport shoes and the brogues across the lobby into a passenger tunnel. There is the usual activity of passengers walking to and from, a loud-speaker announcing trains, etc.

  EXT. PASSENGER TUNNEL

  As the brogues and the sport shoes pass separately down the aisle, the sport shoes turning in at a compartment door and the brogues continuing toward the parlor car.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  INT. PARLOR CAR (PROCESS)

  The brogues come to rest before a chair as the owner sits down. A moment later the sport shoes come to rest before an adjoining chair.

  The legs belonging to the sport shoes stretch out, and one of the shoes touches one of the brogues.

  MAN’S VOICE (over scene)

  Oh, excuse me!

  2. Film Element: Y-Axis (Vertical)

  As we said in the previous section, the Y-axis is the line that travels from top – bottom in the frame along the north-south axis.

  When an object runs along an axis in a straight line, and moves at a fixed speed, we automatically assume that the “good” destination is somewhere along the trajectory. Staying on track is a deep-felt virtue. Detouring or being sidetracked has negative connotations. Children’s fables are filled with mishaps that occur when characters venture away from established routes. Hitchcock translated these assumptions pictorially in Strangers on a Train. Once the protagonist and antagonist meet in their train compartment, Hitchcock immediately cuts outside to the trainyard. Here he uses graphics to foreshadow the bumpy road ahead.

  Film Example: Strangers on a Train

  After already graphically suggesting that the meeting of the men will result in collision, Hitchcock cuts to an exterior insert shot. Hitchcock takes us to the train tracks upon which the men are traveling. At first we see only the clean linear lines of the track. The train is “on course” like the conservative protagonist. It moves with a fixed speed and an unobstructed route ahead (Image 1). Then we come upon a second track (Image 2). The train, like the protagonist, is being offered the option to take a detour, one that moves away from the main route. The detour heads toward the side of the frame previou
sly occupied by the antagonist, screen right. See Film Element 1. The last shot (Image 3) is chaotic, a web of confusing tracks. This is the state in which our protagonist will soon find himself after he opts for the detour and enters the world of the antagonist.

  Dramatic Value

  By using the Y-axis to set up a linear established route, one that represents safety and normalcy, Hitchcock could also establish its opposite — the dangerous detour. The metaphor is also a succinct synopsis of the plot: What happens to a good man when his path is suddenly diverted?

  Script Note

  The insert to the train tracks was not included in this version of the script. Instead the scene between the men in the train car continues with the two men chatting about their backgrounds for several more pages. In the final film, the insert gives visual rest from the talking heads and acts to foreshadow the road ahead.