In this week’s reading (Ganz 2013) the author spends a lot of time focusing on the idea of the lens. A screenwriter, following a tradition he posits started with natural scientists and early novelists, writes the world as if he/she is observing it through a lens of some sort; in the case of natural scientists a telescope or a microscope, but in the case of screenwriters a camera lens. Detail is noticed as a camera lens might, focusing on specifics, seeing things our characters might not and presenting things as they change, rather than as static objects. Things are included and omitted to best tell our story as ‘looking through a lens involves a simultaneous act of looking and framing – a mediatization occurs at the moment of looking’ (Ganz 2013, p. 10); by choosing to observe a particular “frame”, we are deciding what should and should not exist in our media work, what should and should not be noticed and focused on. I found it particularly interesting how Ganz related this practice to forms of creative writing; in many fictional works, our authors or narrators aren’t necessarily omnipresent but do observe the world from a particular perspective, noting particular things that give clues to other things but not necessarily being aware of everything.

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas was fairly poorly adapted in 2012 but the same concept of single-character perspective was employed in the film adaptation.

A couple of years ago, I went to a talk by English novelist David Mitchell, the author of several genre-spanning novels including Cloud Atlas, which was adapted into a Hollywood film in 2012. At this talk, Mitchell spent a lot of time talking about his writing craft and process. Most of Mitchell’s books are written in a series of parts/sections, with most or each one from the perspective of a different character; it’s important to note that these characters aren’t necessarily regular humans but can be beings with supernatural powers (and therefore expanded senses and perception). Asked how he writes so effectively and clearly from character to character, Mitchell replied that he imagines himself as a “perspective cap”; when he is writing for a character, he imagines that he sees and thinks and feels only what they see, think and feel. This produces a really effective representation of character that Mitchell is often lauded for.

When I first encountered this discussion of the lens as a screenwriting tool, I immediately thought of this anecdote. The similarities are certainly there, as both techniques equally include and exclude detail relevant to the perspective. I began thinking of the lens as a sort of third-person perspective cap; it doesn’t have the omnipresence a third-person narrator in a novel might have, but it sees more than a single character can. In many ways, the lens approach imagines the camera as a character and watches from its perspective.

This will obviously be an important thing to think about when it comes to actually writing a screenplay in my practice. I have understood the idea of writing what is seen before, but not to the detail which the reading advises. When you write, it seems Ganz is implying, you must not only include all the rich detail your world demands, but also make sure you state what you want your camera, and eventually your audience, to be focusing on, and how much focus should be dedicated to these particular details. Ganz also provides a relatively pragmatic way to achieve this when thinking about screenplay writing; write as if writing for the camera. This isn’t a fully prescriptive statement, and the nuances are many, but is a good starting point when writing a highly-detailed scene or sequence that you want to particularly focus on building your world. Hopefully I can combine this with my previous experience in writing for perspective, as I outlined in my discussion of David Mitchell above; although his techniques focus on character, I believe the level of detail he includes in these perspective-based writings can be useful for this lens-based writing for screen.