I attended screenings of three very different films last week, not realising that they had one thing in common: they were all British and made for less than £500k ($800k), but the most interesting similarity was that all three decided to restrict the scope of their story to following the fates of just two central characters.

The two-hander is a good way to face the challenge of making a movie on a sustainable budget. Low-budget movies always start with a disadvantage: they just can’t afford the scope or scale of a well-financed film. The good ones find a way to turn that problem into a virtue. The trick is to pick a cost restriction – maybe setting everything in one location (Cube, The Hide), or presenting the whole film as a home movie (The Blair Witch Project, Festen). Once you’ve chosen your limitation, you embrace it. You build it into the DNA of the story, so that it’s the thing that makes the tale to work, rather than an embarrassing shortcoming.
Accepting the restriction of the two-hander brings all manner of budgetary benefits, not just in actors’ salaries. Two characters can be covered in far fewer shots than three. Such stories tend to require fewer locations than stories with a larger cast, and as a result none of these films took more than 4 weeks to shoot.

But, to state the obvious, restrictions also make your life more difficult. The dramatic possibilities presented by three characters are exponentially greater than those presented by two. A love triangle will always have more scope than a straight love story. Also, seeing as the story will usually be most interesting when your two characters are together, you’re giving yourself nowhere to cut to, no subplots save for those described by the characters themselves. None the less the three films all made this strategy work for them, albeit in very different ways.

"Deviation" a film without hesistation or repetition

The first film was Deviation – a psychopath (Danny Dyer) escaped from a high-security mental hospital hijacks a woman (Anna Walton) as she’s getting into her car. The script mixes mystery with suspense – is she simply a hostage or are his motives more twisted? Will she try to escape? What strategies will she use? While hostage dramas like Three Days of the Condor or From Dusk Till Dawn use an abduction as part of a broader plot, writer / director J.K. Amalou makes the relationship between abducted and abductee the main event of the story. The strategy pays off. The film, originally conceived as a road movie to be shot in the States, probably works better for being an odyssey set in and around the streets of London. Help is often just the other side of the car window, but calling out would risk the ever-present threat of violent consequences. So near and yet so far. The film never feels in danger of running out of dramatic material.

Kris Marshall and Annelise Hesme go head to head

The second screening was an early cut of the film I’m editing at present, Sparks & Embers. Gavin Boyter‘s script plays a variation on a Before Sunrise-type relationship movie by cutting up time. In one timeline Tom (Kris Marshall) and Eloise (Annelise Hesme) meet when they are stuck in a lift together. In a parallel timeline we encounter Tom and Eloise five years later, after they have had a relationship that has subsequently fallen apart. They meet for one last time before she returns to France with her new man. Does Tom secretly want to win her back? The two timelines intercut to build a portrait of a relationship, where ‘the relationship’ itself is played off-screen; we just have the build up and the aftermath. The Reservoir Dogs structure, applied to a love story. In this way Gavin has also got round the lack of somewhere to cut to, by cutting to the same characters but in a different time. Cleverly, the structure also plays with rom-com inevitability: the audience always know that the two biggest names on the poster are going to get together in the end, even if the film tries to pretend otherwise. So in one half of the film we know they’re going to get together (we’ve seen their future) and can sit back and enjoy seeing how that happens. But will they get back together in the other storyline? I’m not telling.

Andrew Haigh's discovered "Weekend"

The third film I saw was also a love-story: Weekend by my fellow veteran of the Calendar Girls cutting room, Andrew Haigh. Russell (Tom Cullen) picks up Glen (Chris New) at a gay bar, just before closing time. What starts as a one-night stand builds over the weekend that follows into a deeper bond, which external circumstances threaten to render impossible. While the plot is neither complex nor unfamiliar(save that the general audience is perhaps less accustomed to seeing gay love stories), Andrew’s script is distinguished by the detailed focus of its attention. Keeping the camera just on the two characters turns the love story into a character study. It also captures beautifully the process of sexual attraction growing into an emotional bond. Andrew’s directorial choices also help the film to stand-out – the sustained, documentary-style, handheld two-shots (every scene is a master shot) make it feel like watching two real people falling in love in real time.

Sensibly, none of the three films opted to be strictly two-handed – all have other minor characters; but at least 80% of the dialogue is shared by the leads. There have been films that have gone the whole hog and not allowed for any other speaking part: two examples that spring to mind are Sleuth and My Dinner with Andre. Both work, but the complete absence of other on-screen characters makes them both feel stylised, like filmed stageplays (as Sleuth was). The real world tends to be better populated.
In all two-handers you end up getting to know the central characters very well, so script and performance are key. Okay, script and performance are always key, but with pared-down plots and a lack of stunts, special effects or other distractions, you’ve got nowhere to hide. The exposure of the characters means that they have to be absolutely real: they’re what the film’s about. Creaky writing or a weak performance will sink you.

Two-handers can tell many different kinds of stories – I could also have written about Once, Monsters, L’Homme du Train, Distant and Moon (sort of). But they all have one thing in common: they’re all about relationships, or to be more precise, one relationship. Get that right and, as Andrew has found with the phenomenal international success of Weekend, the world will put two hands together and applaud.
Deviation is released in cinemas across the UK on 24 February

Weekend comes out on DVD 19 March

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2012

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One of the things I love about editing is the sense of being a craftsman. You may not physically handle the material, but the set of rushes for each film feels like it has its own texture. It might be pliant, allowing you to cut it in any way you like; it might be coarse, only fitting together well if you work with the grain; if you’re really unlucky it might be tangled and almost impossible to get your scissors into. I used to think that this texture was down to the director. It’s certainly true that where the camera is placed, how it’s moved and how much coverage is shot will have a significant effect on how easily the shots go together. However, if you’re cutting drama, there is an even more significant factor – the technical skill of the actors.

Kris Marshall hits his mark in "Sparks & Embers"

So what is it that actors do that make a set or rushes easy or difficult to cut? A lot of it’s down to continuity: both continuity of physical movement and continuity of emotional pitch. Essentially, they make sure that the editor can cut seamlessly from any shot to any other shot. It’s easier to illustrate this with a mistake. When I was an assistant, I cut a scene featuring a much-loved British comedy actor (he will remain nameless). It was a simple situation: his character started off sitting on a sofa, then stood and walked across the room. The scene was covered with a close shot of him on the sofa and a wider shot of him standing up and walking. He had an important line around the time he was to stand and my heart sank when I saw that in the close shot he said this just before he stood up, but in the wide shot he spoke just after he was standing. By this simple, but pretty basic, error he’d not only stitched me up, he’d stitched himself up. I couldn’t use the close shot or, in the edit, he’d appear to say the line, stand up and say the line again.  His mistake forced me to play a strong line that I wanted to use in the close up, in a wide shot that was there only to establish the geography of the room. Not good editing, but the only option he’d left me.

But there are more ways in which an actor can help the edit than just by avoiding continuity errors. In fact, one reason why multiple takes are shot is so that the director can change something in an actor’s performance. Change, by its very nature, can create discontinuity. With the movie I’m currently editing, Sparks & Embers, I’ve been very impressed by the actor Kris Marshall, who’s proved exceptionally skilled at dealing with this particular issue. Kris seems to have an instinctive understanding of where I will want to cut and has made sure, where possible, that he’s kept any changes to his performance away from those cut points. This means that director Gavin Boyter and I can swap one take for another without difficulty.

So how does Kris know when we might want to cut? Actually it’s not that difficult. The great director Alexander Mackendrick explained the reasons for making an edit very well. He asked us to imagine that the film was in fact a play in a theatre. The editor can instantly transport the audience to any seat in the house, always taking them to the one that will provide the best view of any particular moment in the drama. The question is: where will we want to look? Whose reaction will we want to see? It’s not always obvious, but if character A says to character B “I think you’re lying”, we know that we’ll instantly want a clear view of B’s face. What do they think about that accusation? That’s the cut point – “I think you’re lying.” Cut to B: “How dare you!”

The most common cut point, however, is on movement. Every time a character turns, stands up, shakes hands or performs any definite action, the editor has a good opportunity or even a need to cut. This is often because the movement means that the audience no longer has the best view of the action and we need to take them somewhere else, to a better view. It’s also true that the movement ‘justifies’ the cut, so that the audience feels that there’s a good reason for the sudden jump in perspective.

Where the cut point isn’t obvious, a skilled actor can more or less tell the editor where to cut. This  can be done with a look. When a character spots something, we want to see what they’re looking at – that gives us a cut point. When a character throws an admiring glance, we want to see how that look’s received – that gives us a cut. Even when a character breaks eye-contact, perhaps out of shame or shyness, we want to see how the person they’re talking to takes that – again that gives us a cut. I’ve heard tales of heavy-weight Hollywood actors deliberately not breaking eye-contact or even blinking, in order to deprive the editor of a cut point so that the shots stays on them. Apart from being absurdly vain, this just isn’t playing the game. Tennis doesn’t work if you don’t return service.

This being said, there’s nothing wrong with an actor summoning the camera to them. I have cut rushes where, in contrast to such Hollywood big-shots,  the actors have been too self-effacing. This sometimes happens when close ups are being shot. An inexperienced actor, or one from a stage background, will sometimes switch off at the end of their line. They idle in neutral while the other actor speaks, listening (okay, sometimes they’re not even listening) but not responding until it’s their turn to speak again. “Acting is reacting” is a well-worn cliché, but it’s very true when there’s a camera in front of you; giving engaging visual responses to the other actor’s lines shouldn’t be seen as upstaging. An actor can even help the other actor get a laugh, by the way they react to a comic line.

Anamaria Marinka in "Sensorium Tests"

Whenever the camera is pointed at an actor, that actor has the right to keep it entertained. Last year I cut a film for artist-filmmaker Daria Martin, which starred the very talented Anamaria Marinka. Like Kris, she had a stunning command of her craft. In one scene her character sits on a chair waiting for an experiment to be set up. The moment could have been dull – nothing dramatic was happening  – but seeing as film was rolling through the gate, Anamaria decided that she might as well do something interesting. Her eyes wandered round the room, taking everything in and responding to it. She then lapsed into thought. Then she became a little impatient with the wait. With each of these beats she gave me an out, a good cutting point, so that I could jump to the start of the experiment  if I wished, or I could hold the shot and watch her further thoughts if I preferred. Neither Daria nor myself had ever found watching someone just waiting to be quite so engaging; we held the shot more or less in its entirety.

Not only can the actor suggest where the editor might cut, they can even suggest which shot we should use. Anger expressed by a fist suddenly banged on a table calls for a wider shot, so that we can appreciate the drama of the gesture, and possibly even see all the other characters jump. The actor has pushed the camera away. If, however, the actor chooses to express a more repressed anger – the subtlest clenching of the jaw – we want to see that in the closest shot available. The actor has drawn the shot towards them. Both might be valid choices, but each one calls for the editor to cut to a different camera set-up.

A brief word of warning however – this level of technical acting is not for the fainthearted. I live in constant awe of actors who can bare their souls while they remember not to move their head half an inch to the left or they’ll spoil the lighting. While there are basic technical skills, like hitting a mark so that you’re in focus, that every screen actor has to learn, these more detailed skills aren’t for everyone. Some find that such techniques get in the way of creating their character, and that’s the most important business of an actor. Even the guy I mentioned who couldn’t remember whether he said the line before or after he stood up has gone on to win a Best Actor BAFTA and, even if his command of continuity hasn’t got any better, he gave a great performance and deserved the award. But it’s a tough business and anything that an actor can do to give themselves the edge can only help. If nothing else, an editor sitting in a darkened room somewhere will smile and offer silent thanks to the actor who has smoothed the grain of the day’s rushes and helped their scissors to glide.

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

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This week saw the publication of the Smith review, commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron with the stated aim of consulting with the industry and shedding light on how the government might help British films. After Cameron so helpfully called last week for “more commercial films”, many people had feared that the report would herald a dramatic new government policy threatening independent cinema. We needn’t have worried. There is no dramatic new policy and the level of consultation with the industry will be revealed below. The review makes little comment on either the style or quantity of movies Britain should be making. The only big-picture comment comes in the introduction; we’re told that “British cinema is going through a golden period”.  As evidence it points to an increase in box office share for British movies.

David Cameron making his announcement

But are we Brits really living through a golden age for the silver screen? If so, why have I, and most British film technicians I know, seen my pay packet shrinking year-on-year? Why are the film students in London being taught by Oscar-winning cameramen, editors and the like who just aren’t getting work in the industry? For many crews 2009 and 2010 were all-time career low points. 2011 was only marginally better. It’s not just technicians who are feeling the pinch; many facility companies have hit the wall in the last three years. Not long ago the manager of an internationally renowned dubbing facility in London told me that they’d not been able to put up their prices for almost ten years, despite having had to invest in some pretty expensive new kit. If there’s gold about, we ain’t seeing it.

A British film technician getting stuck in.

I know what you’re thinking: global recession. These things happen in tough economic times. But, if more ten pound notes than ever before are hitting the counters at Odeons across the land, and if more of the images flickering on those screens are British, the recession shouldn’t be problem. The movie industry is supposed to weather economic storms pretty well and that seems to be holding true, if the report’s figures are to be believed.

So what’s the problem? A lot of it is down to the middle having dropped out of the British movie business. Up until about ten years ago most British movies were made on a budget of about £2-8m ($3-12m), low-budget features costing around £500k-1.5m ($750k-$2.5m). Now that middle ground is all but empty; most British films are made for less than £2m($3) or over £10m ($15), by far the majority being in the lower category. Our most senior technicians have been clinging on to a shrinking top-end, while middle-ranking crew have been forced to take one hell of a pay cut. This is partly because of digital technology making it easier to produce films cheaply, but mainly down to forces within the marketplace supposedly making it more difficult for mid-range films to turn a profit. The pressing issue of falling pay for trained technicians is one the government review wholly fails to recognise.

The Smith review does make recommendations designed to allow writers, directors and producers to share in the financial success of their films – a welcome suggestion – but there is no reward for the rest of the crew. It also suggests measures to encourage more feature production outside of London.This might have the side-effect of helping crews. With production concentrated in South East England where the cost of living is crippling, the drop in pay has forced a lot of people out of the business altogether. Many film technicians would happily live outside London, if there were films being made in the regions. But, given that the concentration of facilities and talent around London is so firmly established, this measure wouldn’t provide a complete solution to the problem, even were it to succeed.

The review also has much to say on encouraging film to be taught in British schools. Not a bad idea: the more cinema is understood, the more we’ll enjoy films and the better movies we’ll go on to make. But part of me does worry that this is priming kids for disappointment. The British film industry is small, there aren’t even enough underpaid jobs to support one tenth of the media students who currently want to work in the business. Teach it at school and the tidal wave of young hopefuls might become a tsunami.

Colin Welland shoots the British film industry's albatross

In short, the review offers few bold or far-reaching proposals. It feels like the belief that everything’s rosy has encouraged government complacency. I can’t help thinking of Colin Welland standing up at the 1982 Oscars and shouting “The Brits are coming!” just before our industry entered the deepest drought in its history. (Uttering Welland’s name on a British sound stage is asking for bad luck: a bit like saying “Macbeth” in a theatre.)

Most notably the Smith Review fails to address the British film industry’s most deep-seated problem: that most of the money the public spend on cinema tickets goes to the US companies, who dominate distribution and exhibition in the English-speaking world. Very little of the increased box-office share Chris Smith boasts for UK film comes back to Britain, either to pay crew or to make more movies.

It’s not as if Lord Smith and the members of his panel were ignorant of this problem. If they hadn’t known already, the summary document they produced, based on their online survey, records the dominance of the US studios in controlling UK distribution to be one of the top three challenges facing the industry (piracy and new media are the others). Those surveyed even suggested ways of tackling this problem, ranging from a quota system to a cinema tax. These ideas, or any others to take on the corporate giants, are ignored in the report’s recommendations.

Indeed the online survey of film industry opinion in the report is largely ignored in the review’s conclusions. The survey actually makes more interesting reading than the report itself. I looked at it first, and it raised a lot of expectations that the report failed to fulfill. In fact it directly challenges the Prime Minister’s call for greater commerciality, most of the people filling in the survey feeling that British producers should be incentivized to make bolder, more risk-taking movies. That doesn’t sound like the sort of response you get in the middle of a golden age.

As I read on, I grew to like the people who’d responded to this survey. Rather than accept the prepared multiple-choice answers on offer, a number of times their most popular answer had been ‘Other’. Quite what ideas had been voiced under ‘other’ was rarely recorded.  The suggestion that the government should encourage private investment in film through ‘exhortation’ – exactly what the Prime Minister did last week – was welcomed by 6.5% of people polled. Why didn’t I fill out this questionnaire? Why didn’t you fill out this questionnaire? Turns out we could have done: the survey had been online for three months, available for anyone to answer. You didn’t even have to be in the industry, as even the views of audience members were taken into account. During this time it had been filled in by a grand total of… 252 people.

252!

Some Brits... coming

Given that it would have an effect on the future of British film (supposedly), surely they could have drummed up a greater response than that. I’m pretty sure I could drum up a greater response than that, and I’m not a government. The fact that I’d not been aware of the survey might be a clue to this poor response. I may not read Screen International or Variety from cover to cover, but I do keep my ear to the ground. It had not been advertised anywhere I knew about – no sign of it on any of the industry websites. Post it once on Mandy.com and I’m sure you’d get more than 252 replies. Clearly Smith’s team thought the website of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to be the epicentre of debate on film industry matters. News to me.

Some other Brits, also coming.

As it happens I needn’t feel left out, or any more left out than I would have been had I been able to fill in the survey, as little of what it discovered made its way into the final report. How many of the report’s recommendations the government will actually put into action, is questionable anyway. After all, the Prime Minister hasn’t seemed too interested in the findings of the study he’d commissioned, making very public comments on the state of the industry less than a week before it was published. Cynics and naysayers will complain that little will change and that the government is more interested in appearing to help the British film industry, than in actually engaging with it and meeting its needs. The rest of us can sit back and bask while the government showers us with golden words. There may be less brass, but hey at least it’s the golden age… The Brits are coming!

My thanks to Dr. Sara Lodge for her assistance with this article.

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

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The last 15 years have seen an explosion in the technology available for filmmaking: first HD, then 4k, then the new generation of 3D. Once upon a time editing was done by an editor physically cutting up bits of film and taping them together; then this gave way to an editor cutting digital images on high-end, purpose-built computer equipment. Now this editor is cutting a feature film (called Sparks & Embers) at home using the same iMac on which he’s writing this article. As filmmakers we (usually) welcome these innovations: they make an incredibly expensive process quicker and easier, but it rarely occurs to us that it means that major trends in the stories we tell and the way we tell them are actually being shaped by the likes of Sony, Apple and Canon.

You need some examples.

"Julien Donkey-Boy" goes with the grain

The introduction of mini-DV camcorders in the mid-90s, a major leap forward in home moviemaking, inspired a generation of filmmakers to embrace the low-fi look offered by these cheap, light-weight cameras. Traditionally,  35mm movie cameras had most commonly sat on camera stands or dollies: this practice dated from the days when they were too heavy to hand-hold. As a result most movies featured the smooth pans and elegant moves that could be achieved on a length of track with a team of grips. This was no longer hip. Admittedly if you wanted to shoot an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, mini-DV was the wrong tool for the job. But if you wanted to shoot down and dirty in the style of a documentary or a home movie – forget Panavision, Tottenham Court Road was the place to find your camera. Hand-held was in; lighting and careful compositions were out. Technology was leading genre. The results included Festen, Julien Donkey-Boy and 28 Days Later.

About ten years later the Canon 5D mk.2 came along and the style of shooting changed again. Anyone still shooting on DV tape threw their camera out of the window. The new Canon shot with a narrow depth of field, allowing you to use focus to help you tell your story, much as you would with a 35mm movie camera. Despite being small and light, the 5D mk.2 wasn’t good for hand-holding, any sudden movement causing the image to skew and wobble. So the Canon returned to its place on the camera stand. Meanwhile frenetic hand-held camerawork didn’t go out of fashion, but ironically it was now shot with new lightweight 35mm cameras.

The DV revolution also affected the precision of the material people were shooting. 35mm, or even 16mm film, was dear both to buy and to process. DV tape was dirt cheap and could run for up to 90 mins. without you having to change the tape. (You wouldn’t get much more than 10 mins out of a roll of film.) When you were paying nearly a dollar for each second of celluloid that ran through the camera, you made sure you got it right. Because DV tapes felt like they were free, people often left the camera rolling. Cameramen, actors, directors – we all got sloppy. I remember as an editor that I’d receive DV rushes that ran ten times longer than film rushes, with less than one tenth of the quality of material. (Luckily the new generation of cameras use data cards, many of which can only store about 10 minutes of material before they have to be emptied, meaning that you can’t shoot quite so freely.)

A typical day's rushes on a DV shoot

The style of editing has also been affected by technology. Back in the days of cutting on film, an editor would struggle to make more than two or three joins in a minute. Digital editing on Avid or Final Cut Pro can be done pretty much at the speed of thought, if you know the machine well. We can instantly see what special effects would look like and do temporary sound edits a lot more freely than our forebears working on film. However cutting more quickly has also led us to cut more often. The hyper-active style of editing, so often blamed on the influence of MTV, owes more to the arrival of the digital technology that allowed filmmakers to edit that way. More recently the return of 3D has causing editing to slow back down because the eye needs a bit longer to appreciate the three-dimensionality of the shot. Again we go full-circle.

That filmmakers respond to new technology is not exactly news – artists have always reacted to technological advancements, whether it be the invention or movable type or the introduction of mineral-based oil-paints. Earlier generations of filmmakers, after all, responded to the introduction of sound and colour. But with the digital revolution filmmakers have got into bed with corporations who mainly produce technology for the mass-market, and that’s not always been a good thing.

So, what’s the problem? Let me give you an example. Earlier this year Apple introduced its new editing system Final Cut Pro X. I wrote about this at the time, but in essence what happened was that growth of demand in the amateur and semi-professional market caused Apple to decide to de-professionalize an editing program on which many professionals had learned to depend. To add insult to injury they decided to discontinue the old professional version at the same time. There was an almighty furore from the feature film editing community, which went pretty much unheeded. The problem was that Apple had been merely dabbling in the world of feature films. For each of their professional users there were at least ten amateurs, and guess which market they were keener to attract? Professional filmmakers were left high and dry.

Jim Jannard, inventor of the goatee and the Red One

Another example would be the development of the, by now legendary, Red One camera by a man who had previously only made sunglasses. To his credit, his company did offer director Peter Jackson early beta versions of the camera to work with, so that he could report back and help with the development. However, although the resulting camera’s picture quality was very fine indeed, the camera was heavier than cameramen would have liked and it had a tendency to overheat. What’s more, too little attention was paid to the effects on post-production of shooting such large amounts of data. It took a film technology company exclusively devoted to the professional market – Arri – to solve this last problem with their own competitor: the Alexa. This was designed with the interests of both cameraman and editor in mind and has taken over as the coolest camera on the block. Of course there is a higher price-tag attached.

It may be possible for a mass-market company to serve filmmakers well. Canon, after their almost accidental foray into the world of filmmaking with the 5D mk.2, have had the good sense to consult with filmmakers, getting Vincent Laforet and the like to take an early example of their new camera, the C300, for a test drive. This may be the lesson for mass-market technology companies: if they want to cross over into the professional industry, they need to talk to the professional industry and create the products that filmmakers want. The results the C300 has shown so far are pretty impressive (see below), and it will be interesting to see how the wider industry takes to it – time will tell.

Of all the arts, cinema is the only one that can’t exist without technology. It’s inevitable that the development of the art is inextricably tied to the companies who make it possible. The film industry is always fighting the high costs of its own existence (in the current economic conditions now more than ever), and it is the independent, more artistically motivated end of the industry where this pressure is most keenly felt. Of course we’ll jump at bargains from cross-over companies when they come along: but this does leave us vulnerable to the whim of those companies who lure us in. All too often we are like street entertainers who choose to juggle with whatever objects are thrown our way. Filmmakers need to drive the technology, rather than being driven by it. The more we can fight our way into the process of developing the new technology, the more we’ll find ourselves using cameras, editing machines and other equipment that works for us.

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

Meanwhile, I’d like to wish a very Happy New Year to all my readers; I hope that 2012 proves a breakthrough year for you and your projects.

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Highly recommended - 'Lost Christmas'

Some thoughts on the matter of sound design ☛

I was in a dubbing theatre again the other day. I’d done a minor recut on an excellent Christmas drama called Lost Christmas (5:30pm Sunday 18 December, BBC1) and being in front of that endless row of faders reminded me of my feelings about the process of sound mixing. Sidney Lumet, who made every classic American film that you thought was great but couldn’t remember who directed it, described it as “The only dull part of moviemaking”. I respect the man who gave us Twelve Angry Men, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon beyond measure, but on this issue he was just incredibly wrong. If you view sound mixing as the process of making sure that dialogue isn’t drowned by the music, I can see why you might get bored. If, however, you embrace all the other things it can achieve, you’ll greet sound mixing with nothing short of glee.

In my last posting I described pitches as being like magic spells; well, sound mixing is the art of the stage conjurer, the art of drawing and distracting the attention. Sleight-of-hand. Sound mixing can plant subtle suggestions in the mind of the audience. It is quite literally the art of the unseen.

The great secret is this – people watch movies, they don’t listen to them. Sure, they listen to what the characters are saying and the music, especially if Hans Zimmer has his hobnail boots on, but they just don’t listen to the other stuff, they focus instead on what their eyes are telling them. So what’s the point, if no one’s listening? Let me be more precise: they don’t know that they’re listening. Sound effects, atmosphere and the way the sound is put together affect our experience of the film in ways of which we’re unaware. As a result the filmmaker can engage in all sorts of shenanigans and the audience just won’t notice; their conscious attention is elsewhere.

I expect you want some examples. It just so happens that I saw a little one in Hugo the other day. Our hero watches two characters chatting and flirting; we see their lips moving, but we don’t hear what they’re saying as they’re being viewed from a great distance in a railway station. When the man bends to pet the woman’s dog it snaps at him and we hear it growl. That’s patently unrealistic – if we can hear a small dog growl, we can hear people talking. But it’s already been established that the animosity of this dog is the major thing standing between these two characters, so actually that growl is all we need to hear. I doubt one in a hundred people will notice, and those who do won’t care, because it’s apt and funny. But don’t imagine that this example is an extra special touch of class from a master of cinema: most films play similar tricks on a regular basis, it’s what dubbing editors do.

In this respect, the dubbing editor’s job overlaps with that of the focus puller; they’re drawing the viewer’s attention to what’s important in the frame, giving it emphasis. If a man and a woman walk down a corridor and we hear the click of her high heels stronger than the bass of his brogues then we sense the woman to be higher status or more important to the story. If we don’t hear his feet at all, we know she’s the star. I once had to use the mix to make up for a problem in focus pulling in a short I’d directed. In the scene a character turned to see a security camera watching him. Focus was supposed to be thrown onto the security camera but sadly that didn’t happen and we didn’t notice on set. To make up for this oversight, we found a sound effect for the camera’s zoom motor and laid it in the sound track at that point. It’s not as good as the focus pull would have been, but at least you now know what the character is looking at and that it’s important.

Sound can also affect how we read the overall image, rather than just specifics. I once heard of a demonstration where four shots of a country meadow from the same camera position were shown to an audience. They were asked to identify the season in which each had been filmed. They did so quite easily. It was then revealed that they’d just seen the same piece of footage four times, with different sound on each occasion. We interpret what we see according to what we hear.

"What's that noise?" Nicole Kidman in 'The Others'

Sometimes even lack of sound can have a telling effect. In The Others Alejandro Amenabar made a bold experiment by using no atmos at all. This not only lends the house in which the ghost story is set a dead airless quality, but it heightens our attention to sound. Unconsciously we realize that even the tiniest creak is there for a reason, nothing is incidental, every sound is significant. It certainly works to keep the audience hyper-aware and it won the sound team a Goya award.

Sergio Leone - lord of the flies

But silence needs to be bracketed by sound in order for the point to be made. There’s a story that Sergio Leone once directed his sound editor that a scene should be played in complete silence.  When he got to the dubbing theatre he found that the buzz of a fly had been laid in. He challenged the sound editor, complaining that he’d asked for complete quiet. The sound editor replied, “When all you can hear is a fly: that’s when you know it’s quiet.” Leone took the point and it was a trick he used again and again throughout his career.

Sound design can even cheat the sound something makes, for dramatic effect. This can be done subtly, as in the opening scene of Antonioni’s L’Eclisse where the flat is full of domestic appliances that make sounds that are subtly more grating than they would make in reality, suggesting a disquiet with the modern mechanized world. At the other end of the spectrum it’s impossible to count the number of times Hollywood sound editors have boosted the impact of a motorbike engine being revved, by throwing a lion’s roar into the mix. In Rising Sun you can even hear a woman’s sexual moaning under the sound of the car’s windscreen wipers. Classy? Not really, but I guess it lets you know you’re watching an erotic thriller.

Coen Bros. sound designer Skip Lievsay at work

Which brings me to the other thing that sound design can do – it can establish or reinforce a narrative tone or genre. This can be down to the level of detail to which sound is designed or the type of stylization. If you’re watching British Social Realism the sound will probably be like that in a fly-on-the-wall documentary; it will feel a bit messy, but very real. This can be genuine – industrial areas being bad places to get good sound and low budgets leading to rudimentary sound design, but more often it’s a pose. The scratchy untidiness of the sound track has been artfully constructed from clean tracks to add a sense of naturalism. By contrast, in a Hollywood action movie the camera makes a whooshing noise when it moves fast, and the tinkle of falling cartridge cases is almost as loud as the gunshots they follow. Everything is heightened to make it feel big and cinematic. The world is larger than life. But stylized sound design can also be used by directors like the Coen brothers to place the story-world of their films, detailed and sometimes humorous use of foley (footsteps and other such sounds) suggesting a slightly unreal quirkiness. We can hear the directors’ ironic smile.

So how can your film make the most of all the opportunities that the sound mix presents? There are few short-cuts. It mainly depends on recording clean dialogue during the shoot, and re-recording any muffled lines, then recording foley for everything, so that all of the sounds in the mix can be manipulated separately. It all takes a lot of time and attention to detail to prepare those tracks; months of work go into a feature film sound track. But if you can afford to spend that time, and if you know what you’re doing, it will bring not just professional polish and a certain panache, but an increased resonance to your story, making it sing. Unless of course you think that’s dull?

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

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"Lethal Weapon" I know what you're thinking, did he say six words or was it only five...?

Do you believe in magic spells? Probably not. But if a filmmaker utters the right 25 words to the right person at the right time, their dreams will come true – they could be on the road to glory and a massive pay-cheque. If that’s not a magical incantation, I don’t know what is. I am of course talking about short pitches, or loglines, made famous by Tim Robbins’ character in The Player (two Player-based blogs in a row, must get out more). Attitudes towards the practice of boiling down your idea to a couple of sentences divide the screenwriting community. Those on the high-brow end of things, disdain it as being an overly simplistic practice that leads to dumb movies. More commercial filmmakers view the one-line pitch as a kind of popcorn haiku, which they’ll spend months honing to perfection. Industry folklore has it that Lethal Weapon was sold on only six words ‘Black cop, white cop, bang bang!’

Like it or not, in practice it’s impossible to do without that line of words. Any funding application or business-plan will require a one-line summary, in fact it’s a line of text that may remain relatively unchanged from an early draft of the script right through to the blurb in cinema listings. Quite often these listing blurbs are only interesting because of the names in brackets: the rogue FBI agent (Johnny Depp) or the troubled novelist (Cate Blanchett). But sometimes you’ll read a pitch, often for that indy movie that everyone’s talking about, where the story outline is more interesting that the cast. That’s something to aim for.

So what makes a good 25 word pitch? For a start, it needs to have energy and that energy comes from the most basic building-block of drama: conflict. As with the story itself, the conflict can be external (an adversary) or internal (flaws in the protagonist’s character, which they struggle to overcome). Whichever it is, it needs to be displayed prominently in your pitch; otherwise it will fall flat.

But conflict alone is not enough, we need to know about the focus of that struggle. If the conflict is external, we need to have a clear sense of the protagonist. Two armies clashing can be very impressive, but without a pair of eyes to see it through, someone with a definite stake in the fight, it is spectacle rather than story. If the conflict is internal, we probably know the identity of the protagonist; but we also need to know how that struggle relates to the outside world. One man battling his demons is all well and good, but without someone coming in and trying to change him, there’s no story.  Alternatively the internal conflict can spill into the outside world in the form of aberrant behaviour – like that of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

Then there’s the language. You’ve got to craft those words – a pitch is a Swiss watch. There can’t be one redundant phrase, and those words you do use need to lend as much meaning and flavour as they can. You can easily end up writing as many drafts of the pitch as you do of the script. Pitches are usually written in a heightened poetic style: characters don’t have an ‘objective’, they have a ‘quest’. This is an act of salesmanship: there are no prizes for reserve or understatement, even if that’s the style of your script. Think of the size of that big screen and make the language of your pitch match that space.

These things are basic requirements; without them you’ve just got a bad pitch, but they’re not enough in themselves to get that executive to open his cheque-book. To make the pitch truly exciting it needs a secret ingredient. A good place to learn what makes a pitch really sing is a pitching competition. Although a verbal pitch is a slightly different thing – for a start most are longer than 25 words – many of the same principles apply. In London we have Raindance’s long-established Live! Ammunition!, which I’d thoroughly recommend checking out. Sometimes as many as 30 movie ideas are pitched during the course of one evening. First time you visit you come away overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of stories that have been thrown at you in a short space of time. This is much like the experience of being a script reader – seeing the world through their eyes can be illuminating. When your head stops spinning, you might find yourself trying to pick a favourite. You’ll notice that many of the stories are pretty similar, they blend into each other. But there will be few that stand out. Some of these will be distinctive because the pitcher presented them clearly, confidently or in an entertaining fashion; but there will be a handful where the central idea hit you like a lightning bolt. It’s often a “why didn’t I think of that?” moment, a moment when we recognize “of course that would make a good movie!” It seems obvious, instantly you can play out the idea in your head.

"Interview with the Vampire" The blood-suckers you can really root for

Such ‘eureka!’ pitches are few and far between, but what makes them stand out? It often comes from a combination of the familiar with the unfamiliar. These are story ideas that subvert a well-worn genre, approach it from a new direction or show it in a different and original light. I don’t know which film first chose to make a vampire their protagonist rather than the antagonist – Interview with the Vampire maybe – but that would have been a surprisingly original idea in its day (feels like so long ago). I guess this where The Player’s ‘x meets y’ formula comes from – Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman – putting recognizable story elements together in an unfamiliar way. Incidentally, some UK producers are a little wary of  ‘x meets y’ in pitches, so use sparingly, if at all, and only ever as an afterthought to support your story.

Full of surprises 'The Crying Game'

Often it’s the idea that’s right under your nose that can provide that eureka moment. At the recent London Screenwriters’ Festival I saw two filmmakers deliver a passionate pitch for their movie about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in wondering why nobody has made a move of this before? Especially now, it’s so relevant! Everyone in Britain has known about this story since childhood, it’s part of our national DNA. Hat’s off for spotting that one, guys. It’s more than just originality, you also need an element of surprise to get that ‘hit you between the eyes’ effect. The idea that turns in an unexpected direction, that takes you off guard. I don’t know how The Crying Game was originally pitched, but it certainly was an idea that had that potential.

Of course there’s a hidden catch. A eureka pitch will get a producer excited, but you have to be able to sustain that excitement, probably with a treatment and eventually with a script. If you sell the idea but can’t deliver on the promise of your pitch, then you may find yourself being replaced by a more established writer, who the producer knows can deliver. Still a ‘story by’ credit is not to be sniffed at.

But you may well be thinking: does every story really need to be able to smack you in the face in 25 words? There are plenty of fine movies that would have been impossible to pitch in this way. Absolutely true. There are both good commercial films like LA Confidential, which is just a particularly well-made example of a familiar genre, and art-house movies like Last Year in Marienbad, which would have been impossible to pitch in this manner… or in any other manner. It maybe that you already have a brilliant movie script that will be very difficult to pitch, that in 25 words will deliver little more excitement in the mind of the listener than a cautious “it could work…”. So be it – you’ll just have to hope that you can provoke enough interest to get them to read your script, and trust that that’s strong enough to hook them. The popcorn haiku doesn’t work for all stories.

Still, if you do find a good eureka movie idea, or even if you can make your story sound like it is that thing, go for it. A simple idea doesn’t need to mean a simplistic script – a clear story can be a great vehicle for complex characters and profound themes. Besides a knockout idea will make your life so much easier – isn’t getting a movie funded difficult enough already?

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

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Around the time I was getting seriously interested in the idea of making movies, a film came out that had me entranced by its opening shot: the film was called The Player and the shot ran for just shy of 8 minutes without a cut. It knocked my socks off. Maybe I only noticed that the shot was held that long because they had a character wandering around the Hollywood studio lot in which it was filmed talking about films with long continuous takes, but I was at an age where self-reflexiveness still impressed.

The director, Robert Altman, was not the first to try this trick; just listen to actor Fred Ward rabbiting on in his shot and you’ll hear some other notable examples most notably the first three and a half minutes of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. European filmmakers have also used this technique – I’m thinking of Antonioni’s 7 minute take in The Passenger and Tarkovsky in Nostalgia and The Sacrifice. There have even been entire movies shot in a single take – Rope, Timecode, The Russian Ark – but I’ll put those aside for the moment.

The swimming pool scene from "Nostalgia" - as suspenseful as one man and candle can possibly get

I wasn’t the only one who watched that shot in The Player in awe, a whole generation of filmmakers emerged who aspired to make a movie that contained such a shot and many of them have succeeded in that goal. Joe Wright went epic with the idea in Atonement, Alfonso Cuarón far exceeded Altman’s example in technical virtuosity in The Children of Men, and Steve McQueen beat him on duration with his 17 minute take in Hunger.

So what’s the secret to a good sustained shot? This  I discovered when I was given the chance to direct one myself. The film was originally conceived to contain nine such shots, each being a separate story from a different director. The experience was educational. As the producer and I had anticipated, getting a good technical crew was vital – you can choreograph the camera as much as you like but if you don’t have a camera operator, grip, focus puller, boom swinger, &c. who are on their toes, things will soon fall apart. The same goes for the cast – actors not only have to be able to sustain a compelling performance, but have a hell of a lot of marks they need to remember to hit. I’m happy to say however that nobody let me down.

The real lesson came in the edit. Edit? A cut at the start, a cut at the end and you’re done, surely?! However there is that other element of editing – selection of the take, and this is where it got interesting. We ran the scene 12 times before we got a take that we felt was singing, so you’d imagine that take 12 would be the one. Just to make sure, I watched through the other takes. I wish I hadn’t. There was gold in them there rushes. Gold in seams that just could not be mined – if it has to run without a cut, you don’t get to pull the best material from each take. The performances of different actors warm up at different speeds – some are best on take one, others need a few goes in order to fire on all cylinders. And few actors are at their best by take 12. It’s not that they’d gone stale, more that the editor in me spotted sparkling moments of freshness and razor sharp timing in different takes along the way, moments that would only ever happen once and that were rendered unusable by the need for the scene to be a single shot.

The real lesson was when to try for a sustained shot, identifying the sort of scene that suits the long take treatment. It’s not by chance that film grammar has accustomed us to going to a close-up for moments of emotional intensity: we love to examine every seductive twitch of a lip or pained and almost imperceptible wince, and this is where the long take falls down. While it is theoretically possible to get in that close on a long take, in practice it’s very difficult to achieve, unless you plan to run the whole take on one person’s performance. The camera tends to be a lot nimbler if you don’t aim for anything tighter than a medium close-up (watch the clips and you’ll see). For this reason scenes of intense emotion, like the scene that I directed, present a challenge. I’m not saying that it didn’t work, I just realize in retrospect that I wouldn’t have shot the scene that way, given the choice.

So what scenes do suit a sustained take? Welles, Altman and P.T. Anderson in Boogie Nights all chose to shoot the opening of their films as long takes. This was a smart move: the opening of many films involves a lot of scene setting, much of which is dull but necessary; lending these scenes a touch of panache is no bad thing. The result is somewhat like Thomas Schlamme’s walk-and-talk technique in the The West Wing – it impresses us with the elegance of its choreography and convinces us that we’re in the hands of a master storyteller, whereas what we’re really being given is a lot of exposition. In short, it’s an act of showmanship.

The famous shot in Atonement is similarly theatrical but, to my mind, far less successful. It’s an amazing technical achievement, but it lacks purpose – I’m aware of its virtuosity but it stops the story in order for us to watch the director and cinematographer showing off. It also commits the cardinal sin: despite being less than 5 mins long, it outstays its welcome because there’s nothing driving it. And this is something of which directors should be all too aware when designing these shots – they have entered a zone where the editor can no longer help them. The pacing and rhythm of the scene will have to be designed on set; this can be a real challenge when you have a shot with a lot of moving parts.

Michael Fassbinder and Liam Cunningham make themselves comfortable in "Hunger"

McQueen’s 17 minute epic take in Hunger has none of this choreography, in fact the camera doesn’t move and the actors never rise from their chairs. The scene comes around the middle of the film, it’s a profile two-shot of two men discussing the hunger strike. The only thing to beguile the eye is the cigarette smoke that curls slowly through the air between the two men. Good writing and pitch-perfect performances based on days of rehearsal drive this shot and allow it to sustain. For me it succeeds precisely because it isn’t emotionally intense, even though one of the characters is talking about starving himself to death for his cause. It’s a scene about ideas and argument; it draws us into the sort of internal mental space we enter when listening to a radio play.

For me however the best use of a sustained shot comes in Children of Men. Cuarón identified that a very strong use of a long take is to keep us in a hyper-real present tense; we hold our breath as Clive Owen stumbles around the battlefield for a full six minutes, trying to find his lost ward. Here the lack of cuts tells us that all this is happening in real time, the editor’s scissors have not cheated us. The handheld camera-work also helps us to believe that this is a live event being caught as best the camera can. I’ve never been on a battlefield, and I pray that this shot is the closest I ever get to that experience.

In conclusion I mentioned that the editor hasn’t cheated time, well that’s not always entirely true. Cuarón’s shot does conceal at least one cut, as revealed by the sudden disappearance of the blood on the lens when the camera gets inside the building. The hidden cuts in Hitchcock’s Rope are all too apparent to modern viewers; I’m pretty sure that there’s a cut in that shot in The Player (a tiny jump in the shot as the camera settle on the bundle of mail in the parking lot, see what you think) and I even suspect a cheat in Russian Ark. Does it matter? Not really – every film is a compendium of a thousand illusions. If it appears to be real, what more do you need?

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

My thanks to Gavin Boyter for suggesting this article.

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"Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" - I demand an explanation!

There are many answers.

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first: one of the major reasons for the occurrence of sub-prime movies these days is the industry’s addiction to sequels and adaptations. The sad truth is that of the top ten grossing films currently at the box office, only 2 of them are original stories. [I write this in October 2011, but it will probably still be true next month, and this time next year.] The problem with sequels is clear: if the original was enough of a hit to make a second film a viable prospect, it usually means that the guys who made the first movie got all the best meat off the bones of the idea. No surprise, then, that most sequels feel like reheated leftovers. Of course, there have been many great adaptations in movie history, but the truth is that most stories best suit the medium for which they were originally devised. So why are there so many adaptations? Simple – if a story has been proved to work and raise a following in one format, then the producers will find it easier to raise the funding for that story as a film project: it’s a known quantity. The fact that the story might be much better suited to the page, the stage, or the Play Station is something that’s only discovered once the project has hit the screens.

Needless to say a bad film is not necessarily an unsuccessful film: there are many movies that are critically panned but commercially minted.  In many cases confidence in the franchise creates such confidence in the project that marketing money is thrown at it until its commercial success becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Such films may be an artistic car-crash – but if it is a crash on a sufficiently large scale, featuring name actors and props that are worth their weight in gold then the movie’s excess becomes an event in its own right (if you don’t believe me, ask Mark Kermode). So many people go to see it in the first weekend that the film makes its money back regardless of its unsuitability for the screen or any other shortcomings.

Terrence Mallick gives us CGI dinosaurs. Did no one say anything?

Another major problem that all filmmakers face when making movies is the smell of rotten ego. This affects established filmmakers more than newbies; while you’re a nobody, everyone feels at liberty to offer tough love opinions on your work. While occasionally depressing, this is actually good news – they’re helping you make your project better, or at least identify its audience. If, however, you have the cinematic weight and standing of someone like Terrence Mallick, Woody Allen or Mike Leigh, you’ve been through that period of your career and are probably very glad to have come out the other side. You’ve been at this game for 30 years or more. You’ve won an Oscar for Chrissakes! And then some jumped-up little development executive wants to tell you there’s a problem with your script?! You ignore them, and the movie fails to reach its potential. It’s also entirely possible, common even, that such development executives, script editors, and the like can see the key that would unlock the great movie trapped inside the flawed script, a key that would be gratefully received by the grand old man of cinema (and it is usually a man), but they hold back. Sometimes they fear upsetting a powerful personage who could later bad-mouth them, possibly even because they assume that, what with their Oscar and 30 years’ experience, the aged auteur must know what they’re doing… surely?

The railway time tables that lead to defeat

Bad movies from filmmakers further down the ladder tend to be flawed for other reasons. Train timetables have been blamed for pushing the European heads of state into war almost a 100 years ago, their fear being that they would sacrifice strategic advantage if they didn’t get their troops moving right then. They let the logistics take over and make decisions for them, or so the argument goes. Many feature film producers and directors have failed to learn from the mistakes of Kaiser Wilhelm and his chums. The number of times I’ve seen producers who are very committed to script development, but then discover that James McAvoy has an interest in the project and a short window of availability in January. At this point, all interest in getting the script to work disappears, and it’s ‘coming , ready or not!’. I can absolutely understand why, and can sympathise with any producer who has made this tough call. Sadly it’s true that many more cinema-goers have paid for tickets because of the presence in the film of Brad Pitt, than because the script was by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, even though Frank’s work is much more important in making the movie memorable. In this respect audiences get the movies they deserve.

Once the producer with the flawed script has signed James McAvoy, a pattern of behaviour tends to follow: you might call it perpetual deferment. The decision to sign a star rather than fix the script is the first step: the team persuade themselves that the talent or star quality of the actor will make up for the shortcomings of the story – “of course we’ll believe she’s in love with him – he’s James McAvoy!” When the star fails to sell the underwritten character or distract from the plot holes, everyone starts muttering “we’ll fix it in the edit”. The editor then sweats away trying to make sense out of a story that doesn’t quite make sense and, as I’ve suggested before, no matter how good the editor is, the chances are he or she won’t succeed. Sometimes the editor is even replaced: everyone starts muttering “the new editor will make all the difference”. Most of the time they don’t. That’s when the director tends to say, either “we’ll fix it in the sound mix” or, more often, “the composer will make it work”. Then they discover that the power of a dubbing mixer only extends so far and that, while a composer can layer on emotion with a trowel, they can’t actually force the story to make any more sense. They usually give up at this point. Unless the director is so blindly determined that they believe that the film will be saved by the grader… Specific lessons may be learned about what was wrong with the script, but the broad lesson is rarely recognised. Gather the right cast, the right crew in the right location with the right budget and, most of all, give them the right script to work on, and the chances of the film being a winner are pretty high. All of the decisions about those factors are made before a single camera is set turning. The truth is: all mistakes are made in pre-production.

Of course there’s a much simpler answer to the question of why so many films are bad, an answer that is apparent to any filmmaker with any talent, and the answer that Jon himself gave to his friend – making a good film is surprisingly difficult!

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

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Readers of my previous piece will have swallowed their pride and sought feedback on their screenplays from carefully selected readers, whom they have taken pains to approach with an attitude of open enquiry (you have done that, haven’t you?) But what happens next? Is it just a case of getting the feedback and making the changes? There’s a bit more to it than that…

How you get a reader’s response is important. Ideally this should happen face-to-face; you get twice as much value from getting script feedback in person. The key advantage to a personal meeting is interactivity: you can get the sense from a reader’s manner and tone of how big a problem they feel any point to be. More importantly, however you can quiz them on their thoughts more easily and much more fully.

A typical face-to-face meeting

A personal meeting also gives you a greater opportunity to express your gratitude to them for helping you with your screenplay. Arrange to meet at a place convenient to them and buy them a coffee or a drink – show them how much you appreciate their input. Apart from being common courtesy, you may want to call on them to read another draft or script for you in the future. It’s vital that you make giving you feedback a pleasant experience. Do it right: they’ll not only feel the warmth of your gratitude, they’ll feel that they’re an insightful person who understands stories; they might even feel that they’ve played an important part in making a film happen. If they’ve give you good comments, this may well be true!

If a face-to-face meeting just isn’t possible, the next best thing would be something like a Skype or other video call. This allows you many of the face-to-face advantages of a personal meeting but without the opportunity of cake-buying; if your reader is pushed for time this may be the best option for them. If even a video call isn’t possible, a phone call is a possible substitute. Again it allows for a proper conversation, but with a bit less opportunity to read the person who’s read your script.

Dr Heywood R. Floyd uses Skype 1.0 to give his daughter feedback on her school play

Unfortunately the most common form of script feedback is written notes. While this leaves you with a handy reference to the reader’s thoughts, you lose out on a lot of interactivity. Unless the reader is a writer or a script professional themselves, they may not be as eloquent as you need them to be at writing notes. You want to be able to draw out of them what they really thought about the script – they say they didn’t like the character Frank, but he’s not meant to be likable. Have they had the response you’re looking for or did they just not find Frank interesting or believable? You need to know which, if the note is to be useful.

With professional script readers it’s most likely that you’ll be stuck with email feedback but, if they’re any good, they’ll be able to express their thoughts in a way that doesn’t need too much explanation. Even so, it might be worth clarifying up front whether they’re able to meet in person and, if not, whether they’re prepared to answer any questions you might have about their comments.

Okay, let’s imagine you’ve secured a face-to-face meeting with your reader (whoever they are) and you have them sitting the other side of a frappuccino and a piece of carrot cake. As they talk it’s important to take notes, even if they’ve already prepared a sheet of comments for you. Things will inevitably come up during the meeting that will throw new light on the script, both for you and for them. Writing notes allows you to take down your understanding of their comments, which you can then compare with what they’ve written in notes they may have prepared before the meeting. Writing notes will also show your reader that you’re listening to what they have to say and taking it seriously. If you don’t feel the need to take notes – do it anyway.

The wrong response to criticism

It’s also good to have some questions of your own prepared. Try to phrase these in as neutral manner as possible, so as not to lead your reader’s response. Usually best to save up these comments until after they’ve said their piece. Be careful also to be open and encouraging in your body language and tone of voice throughout the feedback session. If you are expressing resistance, verbally or non-verbally, a reader will sense your unpreparedness to receive certain kinds of comment and will close up themselves accordingly (this is a fault of which I am still occasionally guilty).

Once you’ve got your reader’s comments and said thank you very much and goodbye, you’ve got to decide what to do with their notes. For me most comments fall into one of three categories:

• Gold dust – why didn’t I think of that? It’s so obvious!
• Interesting. I can understand why the reader felt that, although I’m not sure whether I feel that myself.
• Nonsense. Clearly they’ve misunderstood the story or the tone.

Gold dust comments speak for themselves, although sometimes they can be fool’s gold. Some suggestions sound great in discussion, but as soon as you try to put them into practice you notice that they cause other problems elsewhere in the story.

Interesting comments are worth saving up. If you’ve given two or three readers the same draft and you’re getting the same surprising comment from two or more, then you’re going to have to think carefully about that point. If that comment keeps on coming, draft after draft, it’s clearly something that you’ve got to fix. If it only comes up once, it might just be down to a personal bugbear, prejudice or hang-up of that particular person. All readers, no matter how professional, have little quirks in their feedback – things they’ll identify as problems that are fine for everybody else. Generally these comments are best ignored. If you come back to that reader with a subsequent script you’ll find yourself able to anticipate the idiosyncrasies of their comments and filter them out.

Surprisingly, comments in the third category, ‘nonsense’, can be the most useful. Usually they mean that you’ve not expressed your intentions to the reader clearly enough, and they’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. If you can explain (gently, you don’t want to make them feel stupid,) why their comment is surprising to you, there’s a good chance that the scales will fall from their eyes and they’ll tell you how they arrived at their misconception. The new context this provides may also cause them to nullify some of their other notes, which were based on the same misunderstanding. It may also unlock useful new comments or questions based on the reader’s clearer understanding of the story.

It is also possible that nonsense comments might come from an inexperienced reader unfamiliar with screenplays, or even the reader skimming through the script in an inattentive rush on the way to meeting you. Of course you can’t know unless they fess up, but it’s worth assuming that any comments you’ve been given have been mentioned for a good reason. Anything that prompts you to clarify your story is a good thing.

The real trick to getting the best out of feedback is to find a way to divorce comments that suggest problems from comments that suggest solutions. Creative readers, fellow writers, and those who fancy themselves writers, will offer suggestions as to how you could improve the script. While some such suggestions might be good, many of them will just feel wrong. What you really need to know is why the reader is offering that suggestion in the first place. It’s the reader’s role to throw you problems, not solutions. Look at their suggestion and try to imagine what they think is missing in your script that they feel their idea might help to fill. Suggestions are only sometimes useful; understanding a problem is always useful.

Finally, you need to be able to decide which notes to act on and which to ignore. This partly depends on how far down the line with the script you are: by draft 10 you’re probably not going to want to go back to the drawing board. With your first draft you can afford to be more open. You need to find a balance between stubborn refusal to believe that there is anything wrong with your script on the one hand, and being a feather to every wind that blows on the other. Judging that balance is something you can’t be taught – it only comes with experience. All I will say is that the more confident I become as a writer, the more open I become to feedback.

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

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I love screenwriting. It’s both the most important and the cheapest part of film-making, in some ways the most fun but definitely the hardest. To give you a sense of how hard, two of the worst scripts to have been filmed in the UK in recent times, in my opinion, are Glorious 39 and Cassandra’s Dream. Both were by award-winning writers with dozens of successful projects to their names. How could they screw up so badly? I don’t know for sure. But I have worked with a number of senior industry figures whose success and seniority have encouraged them to relax into the belief that they are innately right. They ask for no opinions and nobody feels they have the credentials to stand against them. If you’re to avoid making embarrassing mistakes, you’re going to need to park your pride and fill in those plot-holes before the Time Out critic slams into you. Remember, by definition you don’t have the clearest perspective on your script.

I’ve written about getting feedback before and, as with screen-testing, you need to have a strategy. When to ask for help with your screenplay; who to approach; and how to ask them. Get it right and you’ll fast track your script to success; get it wrong and you’ll waste opportunities, get dispirited and possibly find yourself taking the story in the wrong direction.

The first thing is knowing when to ask: when is your script ready to show? If you can think of  further improvements , you better do them before sending it out. By getting feedback that tells you to do something that you were planning to do anyway, you’re wasting your time and that of your reader. When you have no further ideas, that’s a sign it’s time to get feedback. Try to ensure that you’ve expressed your intentions as clearly as you can and have given as many pointers as possible as to what sort of film you intend it to be. This will help clear up a lot of confusions.

Next decide who to ask. And here’s the good news – pretty much anyone can give you some level of help, they don’t need to have read a single book on screenwriting; they don’t even need to be in the business. Everyone knows when a story’s not working. Plus the business itself is full of people who are only too happy to read your script. So you could approach friends and family, fellow filmmakers, mentors or producers and you might need to approach them all during the life of your script, but you need to approach each at the right time.

The last person in the queue is the producer: everything leads up to that approach because it can happen only once. Few producers will read more than one draft of your script unless they really like it in the first instance. Professional producers can get sent a dozen scripts a week and few can afford a development team to help them with that reading pile. Few producers can afford to say ‘yes’ to more than three of those scripts in a year. To those scripts they do pick up, they’ll probably have to dedicate the next two or three years of their lives. The bar is high. You need to have used up all the tools at your disposal getting your script as good as possible before it hits that producer’s desk.

It’s important only to approach readers who you think would or should enjoy your film. Your Farrelly Brothers-loving friend is unlikely to give you the best perspective on your adaptation of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Generally I find it best to approach several readers at a time – three works well. This way you can triangulate the feedback – work out the problems on which everyone agrees and isolate those that feel a bit left-field. It may be, of course, that you don’t know enough people who would read a script for you to do this. If so, save up your resources because it’s also important to keep back a fresh pair of eyes for the next draft.

Lucy V. Hay - an example of a script editor

Professional script readers can be well-worth approaching. While their services are not always cheap, using them is a good way to get a completely dispassionate response. Testing your idea against someone in the industry who doesn’t know you personally is a good dry run for approaching a producer – many of them have worked or do work as readers or development people for production companies, so they read scripts with a similar pair of eyes to those of a producer. Professional readers also know the quality and subject matters of scripts doing the rounds, so can provide you with valuable insight as to where your script sits in the marketplace. Two readers I’d recommend are Lucy V. Hay and Katie Boyles. Another option is the BBC Writer’s room – they will read any script they’re sent for free but they’ll only guarantee to read the first ten pages (they’ll read more and give you feedback if they like what they’ve read by page 10) and they can take a long time to get back to you.

BBC Writers' Room - lovely helpful people

Okay, you’re ready to send out the script, but how you make this approach will affect how quickly you hear back from your readers and possibly even the quality of response you get. Remember you’re asking for a favour and it might involve someone dedicating half a day and a lot of attention to your work. Even if you’re asking a good friend or a family member, exactly how you approach them is still important. When asking for feedback be sure to tell people what the script is, give them a sense of how long it is and where it’s at in its life – first draft or final tweaks. If you need feedback in a tight timeframe, be sure to mention this in your initial approach and ask if they might be able to get back to you by next Wednesday. Generally you need to make sure that your reader knows what’s expected of them, and what they’re letting themselves in for: a brief outline or a 150 page epic. Do not send them the file in the same email in which you ask them to read the script – this can come across as overly pushy or presumptuous. Be open in your language – you want feedback, so don’t tell them how pleased you are with your script. Tell them how much you value their opinion and how grateful you would be if they’d agree to help you. This should go without saying, but given the number of times I’ve been sent scripts with the implicit suggestion that I’m privileged to be given a glimpse into the writer’s genius, I feel it to be worthy of mention. Your aim is to persuade your reader to actively want to read your script and be helpful to you.

Final checks:

How a professionally formatted script looks

• Make sure the script is as readable as possible – you may have written some things in a shorthand way, either because you’re not sure of them or because you want to power through to the end. Try to flesh these out before you send it out.
• If it’s going out to industry folk, make damn sure it’s correctly formatted. Poor formatting dents your credibility and that of your script.
• Best sent it out as a PDF if you can – this will ensure that the pagination stays the same.
• Ensure the date or number of the draft is clearly marked, (both in the file name and on the title page – most people still print out scripts to read them).
• Same goes for page numbers – if someone’s going to give you a specific comment you need to be talking about the same page numbers.

Hit ‘send’.

Once you’ve sent off your script it’s a good idea to check that it’s arrived. Email programs do occasionally block large attachments. More than once I’ve waited for a month before chasing for feedback only to be told that my script was never received (not always true, I suspect, but getting confirmation deprives people of an excuse).

In my next article I’ll be suggesting way of dealing with feedback when you get it.

Before I go, however, there is one important issue that I’ve sidestepped: morale. Writing takes a great deal of emotional courage and while you can’t be too easy on yourself – God knows the business shows no mercy – you have to be careful not to elicit feedback that’s stronger than you can stomach. At least not at first. It can be tough for first-time writers, easier for you to have your confidence knocked, but it is an issue that affects us all. So remember to balance your industry bulldogs with an occasional kindly friend who will encourage you to push on. The best feedback in the world is useless to you if you’ve lost your will to write.

Copyright © Guy Ducker 2011

To be sent my articles as they come out, hit ‘sign me up’ under the photo of my happy smiling face at the top of this page.