John August

QandA

Writing for VFX

QandA, Words on the page

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The visual effects in CHARLIE’S ANGELS are dazzling. Did you write this into the script, or was it the work of the director? Could you please advise on how to write those slow motion shots?

–Lawrence

answer icon
The writer’s job is to communicate whatever is seen or heard on screen, and that includes effects. The best way to do this is usually to visualize the scene in your head, and do the best job you can describing it efficiently and compellingly.

Obviously, the director, along with the cinematographer and visual effects supervisor, are going to have the final say about what the effects look like. But until these people come along, the writer is all those jobs, so you need to do what you can.

Regarding slow motion, we’ll start with a lesson in cinematography. To achieve slow-motion, the camera runs at a speed faster than the usual 24 frames per second, often at an even increment like 48 or 96 frames per second. Then, when the film is played back at normal speed (24 fps), the action appears to be slowed down. More than that: it often has a somewhat dreamy, sexy quality that makes car crashes and pretty-girls-getting-out-of-pools extra appealing.

In order to achieve this effect in a screenplay, I add extra vowels and consonants to words. So instead of writing:

The Thug fires four rounds at Maxwell.

I write:

Thheee Thhhuugg ffiirrees fooouurr rrrounds attt Maxxxxwweelllll.

I’m kidding. Please don’t do this.

Instead, at the start of a scene that really, really needs to be slow-motion to make sense, I’ll add the phrase, “in SLOW-MOTION,” to one of the action sentences. So the sentence might read, “In SLOW-MOTION, the Thug fires off four rounds at Maxwell, whose fingers just reach the button in time.”

In the CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE, I wrote:

Handing off an UNCONSCIOUS MAN to PARAMEDICS, firefighter Alex pulls off her helmet to set loose a slow-motion cascade of black hair.

That time I didn’t capitalize “slow-motion,” because there were already a lot of words in all-caps. And I’ve been known to write, “in super bad-ass slow-motion” if that’s really the feeling I’m going for.

Third-party storytelling

Adaptation, QandA

I recently graduated from college with a film and video degree. The one thing
I can’t get anyone to answer is on adaptation. I have asked people ranging
from well known screenwriters, feature film producers and so on. They always
dance around my question!

I am writing a screenplay based on a true-life story,
but my information is coming from a non-fiction book that tells the story.
Much like THE PERFECT STORM in the way that it is told by a third party writer
of the facual events. What is the process that I need to go through to get
the
rights,
without
putting me in debt for life?

–Scott Adams

The reason people are dancing around the question is because there are so
many variables in each situation. A blanket answer probably would be false
as often as it is true. I can talk you through a very general scenario that
will give you an idea of the issues involved, but an experienced attorney will
ultimately need to get involved.

The first two questions this person would ask are:

To what degree are you basing the project on the book, versus public domain
material? In the case of THE PERFECT STORM, the movie is very clearly
based on Sebastian Junger’s book, relying on his research, characterization
and storytelling structure. The producers paid Junger money – in this case,
quite a lot of money – for the right to adapt his book into a motion picture.
Even though the people and events depicted are non-fiction, it’s Junger’s unique
telling of the story that makes it literary material. Junger controls the copyright and
all subsidiary rights (such as making a movie).

Other producers might make a movie
about the same maritime tragedy without buying the book rights. But the job
would be a lot more difficult. First, they
would have to document all their research – every interview, every article
– to defend themselves against a possible lawsuit by Junger and THE PERFECT
STORM’S producers. These interviews would be more difficult than you think,
because Junger probably
made contracts with the key people involved
in the story, so that they couldn’t cooperate with other writers. Finally,
the rival producers would need to come up with an original storytelling structure
that doesn’t mirror Junger’s.

It sounds difficult, but it’s not an impossible task. An example is OUTBREAK,
which was produced by Arnold Kopelson for Warner Brothers. He and producer
Lynda Obst were both trying to buy the rights to "Crisis in the Hot Zone" an
article about an ebola scare that would eventually become a best-selling novel.
Obst ended up winning the rights, but undaunted, Kopelson developed a fictionalized
version and got it into production first. The "real" version never
ended up being filmed.

Are the characters in your movie based on real people, even if the names or
some details are different? If so, you face problems of defamation, libel and
invasion of privacy, among other complications. This topic is an entire semester
in college, so I won’t try to summarize the details and defenses. But know
that you’ll have to tread carefully. For instance, Kimberly Pierce’s BOYS DON’T
CRY faced legal action from one of the women portrayed in the movie, because
the film placed her at an event she denies witnessing. And 60 Minutes reporter
Mike Wallace was none too thrilled about his depiction in THE INSIDER.

Don’t take this as saying you can never use real-life people in your story.
Just remember that it’s complicated.

After asking yourself these two questions, answer honestly: Are you adapting
events, or are you adapting a book? If the answer is the latter, you need to
option the rights.

Are you including real-life people in your story? If so, you need a plan for
addressing the potential challenges they may bring.

I hope this helps.

Collaborating with multiple writers

QandA, Writing Process

Just recently
my friends and I have decided to make a short film. We have elected to individually
write several scenes for this short film, then combine them when complete.
Is this advisable, or is there foreseeable problems, such as writing styles,
continuity etc? How hard is it to co-write scripts?

–Mark B

I’ve never written with a partner, so my only experience in co-writing comes
from the two television shows I’ve created, in which I needed to work with
other writers to come up with episodes. In those cases, I was clearly the guy
in charge, so the experience was only collaborative up to the point where we
disagreed. Then, I always won.

Unless you and your friends are remarkably (dare I say pathologically) sensitive
to each other’s talents and feelings, I think you are in for trouble. While
filmmaking is ultimately collaborative, with up to hundreds of people working
on a movie, the writing process is inherently pretty solitary. You’re not just
pushing around words on paper; you’re pushing ideas around in your brain. And
the more brains you try to distribute this conceptual process between, the
more muddled the ideas become.

I’m not saying your short film is doomed. But I really doubt it’s going to
turn out better for this novel approach. I’d recommend you and your friends
talk through all of your ideas at length, and then let one person actually
write the script. Everyone can offer feedback and suggestions, but the best
writer among you should be the keeper of the keyboard.

Foreign languages

Formatting, QandA

I’m curious about the use of foreign languages in predominately
English scripts. In CHARLIE’S ANGELS, where the Angels speak a
‘secret language’ in front of Eric Knox and his partner, how did you go about
writing it? Is
it standard to write the scene in English and later translate it? Could you
offer any tips or ‘guidelines’ to be used when placing foreign languages in
a script?

–Jaklene

The "secret language" spoken in CHARLIE’S ANGELS is actually Finnish,
although the pronunciation is probably spotty. The screenplay only printed
what they were saying in English. A translator came in quite a bit later, just
before filming. (Incidentally, the subtitled English is completely different
from what they’re actually saying in Finnish. Because some scenes got flopped
around in post-production, we used the subtitles to switch a major part of
the Dylan/Knox timeline.)

In terms of your own screenplays, obviously, most readers won’t be able to
read dialogue in a foreign language, beyond the occasional "hola" or "s’il
vous plait" which can go untranslated. So you need to make a decision
how you’re going to handle it in your script. There are no hard-and-fast rules,
but here’s how I usually do it.

  1. If it’s just a word here and there, and the meaning is obvious in context,
    don’t bother translating it. An example is when a ubiquitous foreign bad
    guy shouts at his men to do something. Since it doesn’t really matter what
    he’s
    saying, just use the foreign word if you know it. Sometimes, this type
    of dialogue doesn’t even make it on to the dialogue line, and gets summarized
    in the action
    like, "Moldona SHOUTS at his men to stop the angels."

  2. If you think the dialogue would probably be subtitled in the movie, italicize
    it in the script.

  3. If characters are speaking in a foreign language for the duration of a
    scene or scenes, put a parenthical like "(in Russian; subtitled)" for
    the first speaking character, then just use italicized English for the
    rest of the scene or scenes.

  4. This is more of a pet peeve, but a lot of words that are technically foreign
    are pretty common in Engish too, so don’t italicize things like gringo,
    taco, samurai or vis-a-vis. It sticks out and feels pretentious.