CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 1 PART I Fundamentals: Breaking Ground 7 Chapter 1 STORYTELLING IN GENERAL 9 Chapter 2 TELLING A STORY IN IMAGES 17 Chapter 3 USING SOUND TO TELL THE STORY 29 Chapter 4 DISCOVERING AND EXPLORING A MAIN 37 CHARACTER Chapter 5 TELLING THE DRAMATIC STORY 47 Chapter 6 WRITING AN ORIGINAL SHORT SCREENPLAY 65 Chapter 7 ON REVISION: SUBSTANCE AND STYLE 79 PART II Moving Forward: Writing Strategies 87 Chapter 8 THE NEED FOR STORYTELLING 89 Chapter 9 VISUALIZATION STRATEGIES 101 Chapter 10 DRAMATIC STRATEGIES 113 Chapter 11 CHARACTERIZATION STRATEGIES 127 Chapter 12 MORE ON DIALOGUE STRATEGIES 141 vii FM.qxd 9/27/04 6:12 PM Page vii PART III Genres: Forming the Story 151 Chapter 13 THE MELODRAMA 153 Chapter 14 THE DOCUDRAMA 171 Chapter 15 THE HYPERDRAMA 187 Chapter 16 THE EXPERIMENTAL NARRATIVE 205 PART IV New Directions 221 Chapter 17 THE OPPORTUNITY FOR RENEWAL 223 APPENDIX A Short Short Screenplays 233 Vincent, by Gert Embrechts 235 Sob Story, by Matthew E. Goldenberg and Michael Slavens 241 Pigeon, by Anthony Green 249 APPENDIX B Short Screenplays 257 Another Story, by Lisa Wood Shapiro 259 The Lady in Waiting, by Christian Taylor 270 Sleeping Beauties, by Karyn Kusama 297 The Wounding, by Susan Emerling 308 Dead Letters Don’t Die, by Anais Granofsky and Michael Swanhaus 323 INDEX 345 viii Writing the Short Film FM.qxd 9/27/04 6:12 PM Page viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PAT COOPER I would like to thank Ken Dancyger for his provocative ideas, easy wit, and exemplary patience throughout our partnership on this project. He is a most gracious collabora- tor and a valued friend. I would also like to thank Mary Carlson for her perceptive comments on the first draft. KEN DANCYGER The notion of writing a book about scripting short films began with Pat Cooper. I have to thank her for her enthu- siasm, her insights, and her commitment to students. And I thank her for bringing me into this project. She is a great friend and collaborator. At New York University, I’d like to thank Christina Rote and Delliah Bond, who assisted me in the preparation of the manuscript. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife, Ida, for her intelligent critiques of the manuscript at all phases. On this latest edition we would like to thank our new scriptwriters—Gert Embrechts, Matthew Goldenberg, Michael Slavens, and Anthony Green—for allowing us to include their screenplays. We would also like to thank Elinor Actipis at Focal Press and Trevor MacDougall at Kolam, Inc. for their excellent and thorough edit. ix FM.qxd 9/27/04 6:12 PM Page ix FM.qxd 9/27/04 6:12 PM Page x INTRODUCTION This book is primarily intended for film and video students or independent video- and filmmakers who are faced with the necessity of writing a short narrative script. For our purposes, we consider a short film to be one of 30 minutes or less, as films longer than that usually need a secondary, or minor, plot-line to sustain audience interest and, in addition, are much less likely to be eligible for festivals or suitable to be shown as “portfolio” work. Although our main focus is on the short narrative film, we intend to demonstrate the ways in which each short form has borrowed freely from the others. It is important that less-experienced screenwriters realize that, even when the scripting of a narrative, documentary, or experimental film proceeds in an informal way—using improvisation, for example—the film itself still needs a purpose and shape to make a coherent whole. This is true even of stories that may concern themselves primarily with form, or form as context, as is frequently the case with postmodern films or videos. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SHORT FILM At the outset of film being created as an art, all films were short. Indeed, until 1913, all films were 15 minutes long or less. Only after the Italian film epics had influenced D. W. Griffith to produce Judith of Bethulia did the longer form come to be the norm. Although feature film eventually became the predominant form, comedy shorts, from Mack Sennett to the Bowery Boys, were produced until the suc- cess of television in the 1950s. Serialized films were also essentially shorts, characterized by an incident or catalytic event, which led to a character responding and other characters resisting that response. The films presented melodramatic protagonists and antagonists: the Battle at Elderbrush Gulch, by D. W. Griffith, and The Tramp, by Charlie Chaplin, illustrate the common 1 Intro.qxd 9/27/04 6:13 PM Page 1 2 Writing the Short Film characteristics of these short films. An ordinary character, caught up in extraordinary events, succeeds in overcoming those events and his or her antagonists, in an exciting, astonishing fashion. One of the most famous short films ever made was both a response to the conventions of narrative film in the ‘20s and an experiment influenced by ideas being explored in the visual arts (surrealism) and in the particulars of Spanish Catholic theology. That film, Un Chien d’Andalou, was the product of a collaboration between Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. No other short film still succeeds in shock- ing and confusing audiences as does the Buñuel-Dalí collaboration, and no other film has shown such shocking individual images paired with so little concern for overall meaning. But for our purpose in this book, Un Chien d’Andalou—because it is so challenging to the narrative conventions often associated with film— remains an experiment in form rather than a case study for scripting the suc- cessful short film. Nevertheless, the audacity of the film cemented a relationship between film and the visual arts and ideas closely tied to art (for example, surrealism and the growing importance of psychotherapy in the visual arts); this has become a continuing source of short films, from the work of Man Ray and Maya Deren to the more contemporary work of Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow, and Joyce Wieland. Other developments in the short film coalesced around the documentary work of John Grierson and his colleagues Basil Wright and Edgar Ansty at the Empire Marketing Board in England, and around the work of Pare Lorentz and Willard Van Dyke in the United States. The films these film- makers produced were issue-driven, encouraging government intervention in the economy in the United States or promoting the benefits of government policy in the United Kingdom. None of these films revolved around a par- ticular event or used a protagonist or an antagonist; their structures are, for the most part, essay-like rather than narrative. The drama of real-life issues close to a particular political consciousness motivated these filmmakers, and their films were often labeled propaganda. Yet another offshoot of the short film, this time from the commercial stu- dio of Walt Disney, was the animated short, intended to be shown with fea- ture films in theaters. These 5- to 8-minute films had a protagonist (often a mouse, a rabbit, or a wolf) with a strongly defined character and a particu- lar goal. The story would unfold when the character’s efforts to achieve a goal were thwarted by a situation or antagonist. The character’s struggle to achieve his or her goal made up the story of the film. These films abounded in action and conflict, the dramatic values yielding laughter at rather than sympathy for the main character and his or her struggle. They were very successful, and their pattern of narrative plotting and development of char- acter set the tone and pace for an even shorter film form—the commercial. Whether they last 3 minutes or 30 seconds, commercials often tell a story Intro.qxd 9/27/04 6:13 PM Page 2 Introduction 3 based on the pattern established in the animated shorts, which used estab- lished narrative forms—the tale, the fable, the journey—to convey, and at times to frame, the narrative. By 1960, filmmakers in Europe had begun to use the short film as a means of entry into the production of longer films. In Poland, Roman Polanski directed Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958). In England, Lindsay Anderson directed O Dreamland! (1954), and Richard Lester, The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film (1959). In France, Jean-Luc Godard directed All Boys Are Called Patrick (1957), and François Truffaut directed Les Mistons (1958). In this period, Alain Resnais directed his remarkable Night and Fog (1955), about Auschwitz; Federico Fellini directed Toby Dammit (1963), and Norman McLaren directed his classic antiwar short Neighbors (1952). Only McLaren stayed with the short films; all the others moved on to distinguished careers as international filmmakers and continued their work in the long form. This transition from short film to feature also seems to be the pattern for students in American film departments. Since the 1960s, these schools have produced distinguished alumni who began their work in the short form and then moved to the long: Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Chris Columbus, M. Night Shyamalan, and Martin Brest on the East Coast, and Francis Coppola and George Lucas on the West Coast are among the most successful graduates of the film schools. Lucas’s THX 1138 (1966) and Scorsese’s It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964) are among the best student films ever made, though their work at the time was no more than apprenticeship for the long film. While it is true that there are filmmakers in the experimental and docu- mentary area who continue to work in the short form, more and more film- makers in these areas are moving to the long form as well (Bruce Elder or Su Friedrich in the experimental film genre, and the work of Ross McKelwee and Barbara Kopple in the documentary, for example). The short, at least in North America, is more and more an economic necessity for the student filmmaker and the novice professional, and while there are still short films produced in the educational corporate sectors, they are far fewer than in the past. In Europe, however, the short film remains a viable form of expression, one supported in large part by cultural ministries. Magazines devoted to short films as well as festivals devoted exclusively to the form assure, at least for the medium term, that it will continue to thrive. Internationally, film schools have provided continuing support for the short film. The interna- tional organization of film schools, CILECT, has held a biannual student film festival focused on the European schools, and an annual student festival has been sponsored by the Hochschule in Munich. Another important biannual festival is the Tel Aviv Film Festival. All of these festivals are related to the CILECT organization and focus on the work of students in member schools. The Oberhausen Festival in Germany and the Clement-Ferrand Festival in Intro.qxd 9/27/04 6:13 PM Page 3 . and The Tramp, by Charlie Chaplin, illustrate the common 1 Intro.qxd 9 /27 /04 6:13 PM Page 1 2 Writing the Short Film characteristics of these short films motivated these filmmakers, and their films were often labeled propaganda. Yet another offshoot of the short film, this time from the commercial stu- dio of