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Cinematic Storytelling
Editing and sound are just two of the elements that can make any script more “cinematic”
“I can pick up a screenplay and flip through the pages. If all I see is dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, I won’t even read it. I don’t care how good the dialogue is—it’s a moving picture. It has to move all the time. Screenwriters do not get the lesson… It’s not the stage.”
—Robert Evans, producer of Chinatown and Marathon Man
If you even quickly scan the screenwriting section on Amazon.com, you will discover hundreds of books—most of which counsel on premise, theme, character and structure. The focus is understandable, as the first requirement of every great script is a great story. The problem is that having a great story is only the first and very important requirement of a screenplay; the second is to render the story cinematically.
When producers, development execs or studio readers read your script they have to see a movie in their minds’ eye. They don’t want to read a radio play; they want to imagine a movie. To deliver that kind of script, writers need to understand the medium for which they are writing.
Movies have three distinct properties—motion, a film frame and a soundtrack—and each expects to be “fed.”
These properties are what generate the dramatic tools with which screenwriters have to work: Lighting, lenses, camera angles, editing, sound effects, props, time, scene transitions, wardrobe, locations, colors, shapes, frame composition and so on. These things are the basis of film language, the language in which all screenwriters must be fluent. Unfortunately, few novices are. Instead, they rely on dialogue to carry the story, which more often than not results in a radio play poured into Final Draft.
Think back to the power of films like Citizen Kane, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Godfather, The Piano, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Raising Arizona or American Beauty. These films are textbook cases of visual and aural storytelling. Cinematic storytelling for these films means going beyond dropping in a beautiful sunset from time to time. What it means is to rely on visuals to advance the plot and character.
When movies first came into existence, there was no sync sound and consequently no dialogue on which to rely. Screenwriters had to use the full complement of cinematic tools to tell their stories. Dialogue (in the form of title cards) was used sparingly and always as a last resort.
One of the most globally successful movies of the last 25 years is E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial—a film that exemplifies these principles. If you take a look at Melissa Mathison’s brilliant script, and then at the film, you will notice that the first 10 minutes are completely without dialogue. This requires the viewer to engage in the material and to decode sound and picture in order to interpret meaning.
This may sound challenging, but any eight-year-old viewer from Beijing to Cape Town could tell you exactly what went on in those first 10 minutes, who the bad guys are and why. This engagement and decoding is what first made movies magical and universal. It gave viewers “ownership” of the experience because it was their singular interpretation that gave the piece meaning. The ability to decode sound, picture and motion is also what the silent movie industry banked on; without it, D. W. Griffith couldn’t have founded an industry.
One of the quickest ways to understand how to write a cinematic script it to study examples. Take a look at the scripts for E.T., Witness, Chinatown, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Raging Bull, The People vs. Larry Flynt or American Beauty. None of these are written by writer-directors. For writer-directors you might read The Professional, Bound, Barton Fink, Pulp Fiction, Dead Man, The Piano, Boyz n the Hood, The Sixth Sense, Amelie or Brick.
What each of these scripts has in common is that the writers employ the full complement of cinematic tools to tell their story.
The job of the screenwriter is to set down a story draft employing everything that will make the movie in their head appear on the page. When the writer constructs a chase scene, he or she is editing the “movie” by suggesting when to cut. Similarly, when a cop shines a light on the thief’s face, lighting is suggested.
Sound is an equally potent—but grossly under-used—storytelling tool. Consider this brief example from Transamerica:
Sound: Transamerica
In Transamerica, transsexual protagonist “Bree” ponders his decision to have a sex change operation. He is seated, playing an old phonograph record. He places his index finger on the record to slow it down and we hear a low, baritone voice. Then he lets the record resume normal speed and we hear a female alto. He goes back and forth between the two speeds—one suggesting a male voice, the other female. Clearly we understand that the protagonist is thinking about the upcoming operation and what it will mean to go from male to female. By putting sound to use here, the writer has deepened our understanding of the character by externalizing his internal world.
Sound is not just used as ambiance, but is enlisted to carry part of the story load.
For the great Russian theorist Vsevolod Pudovkin, constructional editing was a tool he encouraged screenwriters to study as he believed it represented a new opportunity for expression. What is important is that Pudovkin, writing in 1926, fully assumed that part of the screenwriter’s job was to write an “edited” script. But let’s take a look at a modern example. Here’s how Quentin Tarantino uses editing as a storytelling device in Pulp Fiction:
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This story was published in the -- 2007 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Cinematic Storytelling/Editing and sound are just two of the elements that can make any script more "cinematic"
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