An influential textI’ve encountered within Picture This, which I have referenced previously in my blogging, is Claudia Sternberg’s “Written For The Screen: The American Motion Picture Screenplay as Text”. This reading is influential in the way that it highlighted the advantages of informal stylistic writing; how the tone of the genre you write in can influence the big print of a script.
Sternberg cites the screenplay Unforgiven. As a Western, It’s context within the oral mythology of the wild west sets us up with character descriptions that read in the same tone as the dialogue.

Alice is 25 but she’s been around some, whored some tough cow-towns, and she has too much bone and character in her face to be outright pretty but she attracts men like flies.

The screenwriter takes on not quite a narrator, but more-so a third character who belongs in this world witnessing the action, and from this unbiased third character we find ourselves, the reader. In my own developing practice, I found the loosening of formality in the big print beneficial. Not only my blogging style but my writing mannerism of the last three years has been strictly academic. I’ve struggled to loosen my writing to match my speech, which is littered with colloquialisms.

I think that writing a piece in tone with the genre is an exciting concept and immediately my mind ran two two of my favourite films: Priscilla, and Muriel’s Wedding. I am stinging to get my hands on a copy of P.J Hogan’s original screenplay. I love to write my characters in a strine, working class Australian voice, one I was raised with and one that defined my youth and childhood. I think the option of writing in this voice inspired my ideas for my final project. I also attended Melbourne Queer Film Festival’s short film exhibition. A combination of both of these had me thinking about writing some sort of backyard Australian lesbian romance, something with humour rather than melancholy mumble-core shorts I’ve reserved myself to writing. Not that there’s anything wrong with mumblecore, but this is my first shot at ‘proper’ screenwriting so I want to throw some dialogue in there, or at least some action that isn’t wholly conceptual. I’ve loved learning about screenplay formalities but I’m really keen to dig into some more theory on creating the actual story itself.

“screenplays should be experienced […] as a form of cinema itself” whereby “both, although via opposite polarities, are audio-visual (the screenplay cueing the images and sounds in our mind)” (2009, p. 109). Reference: Dzialo, C 2009, ‘“Frustrated Time” narration: the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman’, in W Buckland (ed.), Puzzle films: complex storytelling in contemporary cinema, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, pp. 107-28.

As I unpack this quote by Chris Dzialo, I believe he is discussing the equity between screenplays and films for their audio-visual storytelling purposes. Though we often credit films for the combination of sound and image to create meaning, screenplays are capable of pushing the reader to create the sound and image within our minds. Rather than to shoot directly from the storytellers prose, we use screenwriting to explore and develop these initial ideas an open them up to interpretation from others. This can lead to changes in the story, enhancements or destruction. Ultimately as screenwriters, we place our ideas in the path of change, with the hope they grow and develop from criticism, revisions or adaptation. This is what differentiates screenwriting from cinema – interpretation is as far as a cinema can change in our minds.

Cueing sounds in our minds is one of the facets of screenplays I’m becoming interested in. In Claudia Sternberg’s  ‘Written For The Screen’, she discusses the description of sounds across various texts, comparing them to the sound functions in comic strips. Total Recall utilises the style of a comic strip balloon text, as a character falls down an elevator shaft:
“Richter falls to his death, SCREEEAAAmiiiiinnnnnngggg”
This line not only cues the sound of a falling scream fading away into a hollow abyss, but also visually cues the elevator shaft depth, cues an actors expression and length of delivery.

There’s a specific script I want to reference, where aurally, we can find insight into the protagonist’s motivations and feelings, which we aim to illustrate in visual storytelling. The except is from Transamerica by Duncan Tucker, however I am unable to find access to the screenplay. The story follows the life of a trans woman a week before her gender-reassignment surgery.  The expert I wanted to reference shows our protagonist listening to a record on an old gramophone. She places her finger on the LP to slow the vocals down to a low baritone, before letting the song resume at normal speed, returning a high pitched female alto. This aural cue illustrates the character’s internal actions and motivations concerning her upcoming operation, and symbolises the weight of change they are about to experience. The combination of visuals and sound in this specific piece of writing allows us to explore this character’s emotions on screen and on page.

Doing not being:
As discussed in this weeks reading by Walderback and Batty, scripts must find a way to externally express what a character thinks and feels internally. Walderback and Batty suggest that we can achieve this with four essential writing techniques which I’ll try to illustrate below:

• Using active verbs ie.
  Adam is in the kitchen feeling miserable. < Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing.
• Working with environments to achieve metaphorical backdrops:
  Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. A pile of unwashed dishes fill the sink.
• Body movements and physical actions,
  Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. A pile of unwashed dishes fill the sink.  Adam sharply inhales and begins to frantically wipe his tears away with the back of his hand.
• Employing objects to express inner motivations.
  Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. A pile of unwashed dishes fill the sink.  Adam sharply exhales and begins to frantically wipe his tears away with the back of his hand. Pulling himself together, he turns to the cupboard and begins to pack his children’s lunch.

The reading has taught me to use verbs rather than adjectives in scene descriptions to effectively express a situation.  “Adam is in the kitchen feeling miserable” isn’t straightforward enough to translate to screen. ” Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. ” is visual and active, more direct and dramatic. In a class exercise we were asked to rewrite an emotional situation and translate it into visual storytelling. The prompt I chose was:
Rinaldo’s so tired of his children’s bickering. He can’t bear to be a single dad and is at the end of his tether. He feels guilty and angry with himself. 

I wrote:
Crumbs crunch under Rinaldo’s shoes as he walks down the hallway. His fists clench at the sound of thumping feet racing upstairs. He draws his leg back and punts a discarded teddy bear across the room, the force of which triggers the bear to play a monotonous electronic jingle – “You Are My Sunshine”. 

At this point the class suggested to construct a moment between the bear, the song and Rinaldo that shows guilt. These are my suggestions:

• Rinaldo looks up to see a shadow in the doorway. Connor (9), quizzically stares back at his father.
• From across the room, the pathetic bear’s button eyes bore into Rinaldo’s, A look of pity washes over Rinaldo’s face. He sighs deeply before collecting the strewn toys into a wicker basket. He gently places the bear on top.

I think what works in this technique is that it keeps my writing dynamic and full of movement. It’s much more entertaining to read and carries the narrative rather than placing it there. The still sentences look a bit chunky. Sometimes I feel like I’m directing or ordering a character around rather than letting them find their motivation naturally. Is this something that comes with a fully realised character? Right now Rinaldo is a stranger to me, and I am not invested in him or his past/future, and thus I suppose I feel like I’m directing him around. I suppose a character organically moving through a story would come with understanding their motivations, personalities, and what they would/wouldn’t do. Hopefully the deeper I write on a character in this studio the more this becomes realised.