|
Writing for the Screen: David Kelleher |
“It’s my belief that there should be a chain of command on a film set, but not a chain of respect. I have worked as the lowest member of a film crew and been treated as a no-class citizen by the ‘above the line people. The experience was unpleasant but illuminating.”
Taken from “Fast, Cheap & Under Control: Lessons Learned From The Greatest Low-Budget Movies Of All Time” by John Gaspard.
Taken from “Fast, Cheap & Under Control: Lessons Learnt from the Greatest Low-Budget Movies of All Time” by John Gaspard.
I particularly concur with 1 and 2 especially when working on a First Draft. If you keep stopping to ‘fix’ things you never get to the end. A First Draft should practically spew out.
Alfred Hitchcock has a reputation as an ‘auteur’ i.e. he liked the theory that he was the sole ‘creator’ of his films so it came as a surprise to see the following quote by him in a book about writing with him:
The most enjoyable part of making a picture is in that little office, with the writer, when we are discussing the story-lines and what we’re going to put on the screen. The big difference is that I do not let the writer go off on his own and just write a script that I will interpret. I stay involved with him and get him involved with the direction of the picture; he becomes part maker of the picture.
Writing With Hitchcock, The Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes by Steven DeRosa, (New York, 2001)
Ben Hecht (writer: Underworld, Scarface, The Front Page, Gunga Din, Spellbound, Notorious) promoted a literary debate one night with the poet Maxwell Bodenheim, the advertised subject: People Who Attend Literary Debates Are Imbeciles. Hecht waited for the audience to settle, counted to ten, then announced, “The Affirmative Rests.”
Bodenheim crossed to the podium, regarded the house, and replied, “You win.”
The two left the stage together, pocketing their fee.
From What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting by Marc Norman (London, 2007)
Some encouraging comments from the judges at Gimme Credit International Screenplay Competition on QUICKSAND:
Judge 1:
“Great concept. Horrifying scenario… Not having dialogue adds to the appeal for foreign audiences – no subtitles needed! Could be done much less expensively as animation and could be just as horrifyingly effective.”
Judge 2:
“This script recreates the old Perils of Pauline silent serials and makes a biting point about today’s society. A busy New Yorker finds himself stuck in quicksand and can’t get anyone to help him because they’re all in too much of a rush. There’s no dialogue but the point is always clear. This is a fun a script that one can easily picture winning awards at a film festival.”
Just found out my screenplay Quicksand made Finalist in this relatively well known competition in screenwriting circles in the Super Short Category, just outside the top three. Pleased that it was recognised as I thought it was a tidy little script. Close but no cigar!
Link below:
http://www.gimmecreditcompetition.com/finalist.php?id=13&status=list&semi=f&submenuheader=0
“That fraction of a second between nightmare and waking. Except it isn’t a fraction of a second anymore, it’s been days, weeks and I’m still in a free-fall, trying to snatch bits and pieces of a script that are falling with me, desperately trying to assemble them in some coherent manner before I crash.
How could I have been so wrong? Where had my instinct failed me? How do I fix it? Is it even fixable? In three months, this movie will be going into pre-production and I don’t have a clue what to do.
There’s no point in trying to sleep. Once I wake up to pee in the middle of the night (the curse of middle-age), my mind goes back to work. I tell it not to. Whatever you do, don’t think about the script. But as I lay in the dark staring at the ceiling, my eyeballs move back and forth looking for the metaphorical daylight. There’s got to be a way to make this script work.”
Michael Piller, Screenwriter, (1948-2005)
In the last six weeks I have worked as a background actor on a number of American TV shows that film in New York such as Blue Bloods, Elementary and the new Kevin Bacon project The Following. As a writer for the screen who has little experience on set it has been a fascinating and unexpected learning opportunity and one I highly recommend to others who are writing screenplays.
TV drama production is an even more industrial process than I had previously imagined. Hours are spent to film what you will see as a couple of minutes. Most of these shows film six days a week and the days can be very very long. On Nurse Jackie I was on set for over 14 hours and my call time was 6am! On my first job for Blue Bloods, which I wrote about below, we spent a couple of hours filming a scene on an escalator which was never used in the final aired episode. I am pleased to note however that at the time I thought the scene was too long, that it should have been cut earlier, so my writerly instincts proved themselves good in the end.
When you first arrive on set there are scores of people running around: dressing it, setting up lighting, placing marks for the talent etc. The first few times you might feel intimidated, like you are in the way, but you will soon realise everyone is far too busy to even notice you are there. There are few clear rules – don’t talk unless you need to especially during takes, don’t start chatting away to the ‘Stars’ at any time unless they engage you first, if someone asks you to move do it quickly, make sure you turn off your phone and don’t take any recordings or pictures of anyone or anything.
The best place to be, between takes, in my opinion is behind the monitors where the director checks what he is going to get on screen. It is hard to miss this position as there is usually a row or two of chairs for the principal actors, writers, executive producers and makeup and hair directly behind them. If you are here you are definitely not in the way and if you are lucky you will also have a view of the actors and the scene to compare the picture with.
More later.
I am Check-In number 50 playing an ‘Upscale European Businessman’ and I am wandering around Brooklyn at 6.45am on a Saturday morning searching for the Marriott Hotel. I am running slightly late for my first job as a ‘background artist’, perhaps more familiarly known as an ‘extra’, on the US television show Blue Bloods starring Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg and Jennifer Esposito. I am starting to worry my fledging (side) career will be over before it begins if I don’t find the place pronto.
Luckily with one minute to spare I find the hotel and enter ‘Holding’, a room at the back of the hotel, where I am suddenly faced with scores of other identikit ‘me’s’, sitting at round tables all gripping the piece of luggage we were asked to bring along with us as props.
We are split between union and non-union, there are all sorts of quotas apparently and the pay is better in union, and asked to check in with wardrobe and make-up. Make-up takes a quick glance at me and tells me ‘I am good’ in a way that makes me feel I am not good. Wardrobe asks me if I brought another shirt, I haven’t, and then decides it wants to change my blue and yellow tie for a brown one. I neglect to find out why which bugs the hell out of me later on.
After an hour and a half waiting we are all brought over to set – the hotel lobby. Surprisingly the hotel continues to operate as normal; guests step out of elevators and double take when they see all the people gathered and the equipment piled about. The big film lights shine like a small sun into the foyer, so bright it is impossible to look at them.
I am placed in a corridor near a bar area, told to walk to the entrance and greet another background artist who is standing there waiting. Our cues are given as ‘Rolling’ (the camera starts), ‘Background’ (we start) and ‘Action’ (the principal actors start). For the first few takes I am fully focused but eventually I do start to wonder where the cameras are, as I can’t see any nearby. After I hear cut I sneak a quick peek through the bar window and I can see all the action is taking place about 100 yards away through a window on the far side of the lobby. Background doesn’t really begin to describe our distant position in the scheme of this scene.
Eventually, after about eight or nine takes, we are instructed to leave the set and return to ‘holding’. We sit down again for about an hour before they are ready for the next take. The experienced had books and laptops to hand and quite a few seemed to know each other well, luckily I had brought a book, the freshmen just stared into space for what must have felt an eternity.
My big moment finally arrives and I am chosen to travel up an escalator as the stars Donnie Wahlberg and Jennifer Esposito bring a handcuffed suspect down the other side. I hear the Director say don’t look at the cop so on the rehearsal I steadfastly ignore them but when I get back down the 2nd AD tells me, somewhat sarcastically, what I did was good but he would change one thing, he thinks I would look at the cop. I totally agree; I decide not to get into it with him.
So I change it up as instructed and Donnie and I exchange glances. And we exchange glances going up and down the escalator over and over again until the Director is happy.
After the final scene, six hours later we are allowed to go home. My guess as to the amount of screen time that will make the final episode would be somewhere under 2 minutes. That’s six hours work for two minutes screen time. There were hundreds of people working on this show so it is easy to see how the costs mount up. The whole thing is extremely industrial in nature.
The standard day for a background artist is ten hours before you go into overtime, a long day sitting or standing around for very little money and the dubious promise of a shot of your back in the distance. This is not very glamorous unless you are one of those people who are utterly star struck.
I discover my colleagues are waiters, off duty doormen and one woman who said she does this in between working in musical theatre. New York is all about the ‘hustle’ she says as she explains to me how she manages to pay her mortgage adding she can only manage this kind of work twice a week though or she goes slightly mad. And although I found it interesting this time I can already see how she might be right.
