Style in the Short Film There is simplicity in a moral tale. All elements—character, plot, and tone— put the unfolding of a narrative in the service of the moral. Metaphor, exag- geration, unnatural events and characters can all be brought to bear on the moral purpose of the story. Even a filmmaker as grounded in realism as Bergman found in The Seventh Seal (1956), for example, that he had to move away from realism. The moral tale—no man can escape mortality—is his subject, and so death and a plot specifically about the spread of Bubonic Plague, the “Black Death,” are his instruments. The purpose of the narrative, a moral tale, dictates an imaginative, non- naturalistic treatment of the subject. This is the first observation we can make about hyperdrama and the short film. The Main Character and His or Her Goal As in the long film, the main character and his or her goal serve the moral rather than inviting identification. The character tends to be a vehicle, even in stories where he becomes a superhero (Star Wars). The voice of the writer-director, his or her affiliation to the moral rather than to the character, distances us from character. Nevertheless, the main character does have a well-defined goal, and it carries him or her forward into the narrative. The Role of Plot Plot is very important in hyperdrama. It provides the scale of the story. Unlike in other genres, it is critical to the success of the narrative. In the short film, the plot will have far more effect than character. The resulting sketchiness of the characters helps the metaphorical presentation of the narrative. The Structure The first important element to the structure is the presence of a narrator, someone who will tell the story. In Lisa Shapiro’s Another Story, it is the grandmother. In Juan Carlos Martinez-Zaldivar’s The Story of a Red Rose, it is a narrator-storyteller who is not visible but acts as the aural guide to the story. 200 Writing the Short Film Ch15.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 200 A second observation about structure is that there is very rapid character- ization, and the plot is introduced quickly. The plot is presented in the form of a journey—a journey whose purpose is to illustrate the moral. Tone As in the long film, the tone is far from realistic and in fact is quite free—it can be fantastic, or it can be very dark. In both cases, the tone has to make credible events and characters that do not exist in our everyday lives. The presentation of the material should sharpen the passion the author feels regarding the moral tale that underlies the narrative. A Case Study in Character Lisa Shapiro’s Another Story, reprinted in Appendix B, is a cautionary tale about individual differences and how those in power treat those who are dif- ferent. A grandmother tells a story to her two granddaughters. In an unde- fined place in the past, there are two young girls (the age of the two hearers of their grandmother’s story). The period seems medieval. The small girls do not like wearing mittens over their black fingernails. One day they are arrested by the knights of the king—because they have black fingernails. They are imprisoned. In prison, one sister saves the other. The story ends with the epilogue: the evil king is overthrown and those with black finger- nails no longer have to be afraid. Back in the present, the question is asked whether the story is real and where the grandmother heard it. The film ends with an image of the concentration camp numbers tattooed onto the grand- mother’s arm; we realize that the story was a fable based on her Holocaust experience. The characterizations here are simple: the grandmother and the two girls are the principals. There are knights and parents, but all of their characteri- zations remain on the level of symbol. The grandmother exudes warmth, and the children exude energy and curiosity. Beyond that, everyone is a sym- bol serving the plot. Case Study in the Role of the Antagonist Dead Letters Don’t Die, by Anais Granofsky and Michael Swanhaus, is a mod- ern fable about hope and hopelessness. The main character, a postal worker, is always hopeful. His boss, the woman he loves from her letters, and the The Hyperdrama 201 Ch15.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 201 Santa Claus character all represent urban cynicism. They fulfill the role of antagonist, not in the sense that the main character hates them, but rather in terms of the social and psychological attitude they represent. They have given up hope. The plot, the effort to save the world by throwing money from the top of the Empire State Building, is not a success. So Fupper’s con- version of Amanda, the effort to rescue her, to offer her his love, becomes his offer of hope. To save one person without hope is to save the world. This is the moral of the Granofsky/Swanhaus screenplay. It is unusual in that we care about the fate of those who represent hopelessness, the antagonists in the narrative. Case Study in Plot and Tone Juan Carlos Martinez-Zaldivar’s The Story of the Red Rose is based on a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde. Every effort is made to be faithful to the fairy tale. This is the story of how red roses came to be, and it depends on the interplay of humans with creatures who are partially human, partially nymphlike, called “nighting birds.” The time is the distant past. A scientific human pursues the Infanta (princess). She asks of him a red rose to match her dress at the ball where they will dance together (if her request is met). But red roses do not exist. She has set him an impossible task. He captures a female nighting bird, Sirah, and kills another, a male. He studies them anatomically. Rather than sacrifice the female nighting bird, he frees her. She loves him for it and tries to be more human, but he is con- sumed by the Infanta. Sirah approaches first the yellow rose bush and then the white rose bush in her quest to create a red rose. The white rose bush tells her that there is only one way. It gives her a white rose that she must plunge deep into her heart, and her blood will dye the white rose red. The white rose bush asks if it is for a human. She acknowledges it and sacrifices her life to create the necessary rose. The human finds the rose and her body. He buries her. He rushes with the rose to the Infanta, but he is rebuffed. Someone else has offered her rubies. The scientist is crushed, but red roses grow from Sirah’s grave, and this is how red roses began to grow. The plot of The Story of the Red Rose is Sirah’s search for a way to create a red rose. It involves a journey that leads her from love to self-sacrifice and death. The moral is implied that only through self-sacrifice and love can true beauty (the red rose) be created. As we expect in hyperdrama, the plot far outweighs the characterizations of Sirah, the scientist-human, and the Infanta. 202 Writing the Short Film Ch15.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 202 In terms of tone, this fairy tale is marked by beauty, violence, grace, and sacrifice. Its characters are paradoxical—the humans are not graceful, but the half-humans (the nighting birds) and the white bush are honest and filled with grace. Naturalness is nowhere to be seen. A formal, ritualistic quality shapes the nonnaturalistic tone and fills the story with beauty and horror, as suits the moral. Hyperdrama requires such excess to assure the foregrounding of the moral (the voice of the author) over any identification with the character in the narrative. NOTES 1. J. Campbell, Hero With 1000 Faces (New York: World, 1965). 2. Mad Max, Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome. The Hyperdrama 203 Ch15.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 203 Ch15.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 204 16 THE EXPERIMENTAL NARRATIVE Experimental narrative should not be confused with the more specifically non- narrative experimental film or video. The experimental film or video is often entirely taken up with an issue of style. In the extreme (in more than one Norman McLaren film, for example), the film can concern itself with the variations of movements of abstract lines or shapes. In McLaren’s films, line or shape give a visual dimension to an abstract musical piece. The narrative intention is at best remote; more often in such work, it is not even a factor. In the experimental narrative, in contrast, narrative intention does have a role. However, the form or the style of the piece is as important as—in some cases more important than—the narrative. Today, the most common expression of the experimental narrative is the music video, but its roots are deep, often affiliated with the most important names in film history. Dziga Vertov’s The Man With a Movie Camera (1928) playfully pres- ents a day in the life of a cameraman, but its style, which explores every con- ceivable camera angle. Vertov’s playfulness is exemplified by the scene of the cameraman filming a train. The images of the train rushing over us are revealed in the next shot—the cameraman stepping out of a pit he dug to film the train from below. The energy and playfulness of the filmmaking process are at the heart of Vertov’s mischievous sequence of shots of the train. The style is far more memorable than the content. The same is true in Alexander Dovschenko’s Earth (1930) and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien d’Andalou (1928). The latter film, which Buñuel made with the painter Salvador Dalí, illustrates the experimental narrative’s link to the other arts as well as to the intellectual cur- rents of the day. The anarchistic style of the Buñuel-Dalí film attempts to appeal to the unconscious with a series of visual shocks—an eye being slit, two bleeding donkeys being dragged atop a piano and in turn dragging two ensnared priests, insects crawling out from a hole in a human hand, and so on. 205 Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 205 There is a narrative of sorts, but it is continually subverted by these shock images. The result is a powerful if unclear experience. Here too there is a clue to the nature of experimental narrative. It follows a nonlinear pattern as opposed to a linear time or character-arc frame. The usual elements that shape a story—a goal-directed main character, a plot— and a traditional genre all tend to be subverted in the experimental narra- tive. We are left with the powerful stylistic elements of the experience. Other notable figures who have worked with experimental narrative are Maya Deren (Meshes in the Afternoon, 1943), Chris Marker (La Jetée, 1962), Andrei Tarkovsky (The Mirror, 1974), Miklos Jansco (The Round-up, 1965), Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961), and Krystof Kieslowski (The Double Life of Veronique, 1992). More recently, such filmmakers as Sally Potter (Orlando) in England, Patricia Rozema (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing) in Canada, and Jane Campion (Sweetie) in Australia have joined others like Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust) and Su Friedrich (Sink or Swim) in the United States to produce what are essentially experimental narratives. Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives) in England and Atom Egoyan (Calendar) in Canada are equally interested in the experimental narrative. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS Nonlinearity The key to experimental narrative is the desire to avoid conventional narra- tive. Conventional narrative is essentially a character-driven or plot-driven story with a beginning, middle, and end. In conventional narrative, the main character may or may not achieve his or her goal, but the drive to achieve the goal carries us through the story to a resolution. A nonlinear story may eschew a single main character, or a plot, or a resolution, or all of the above. In the experimental narrative, the energy of the story comes from the style the writer- director chooses to use to compensate the audience for the loss of linear direc- tion through the story. Many experimental narratives have no plot; some have no defined character. Consequently, the conventional dramatic tools—conflict, polarities—are less at play. In experimental narrative, form or style is as important as, and often more important than, content. Thus, a nonlinear form is more able to capture the essence of experimental narrative than is the usual set of dramatic tools deployed in more conventional or linear narrative. A Distinct Style A style is effective when it helps the narrative it is trying to tell. A style is notable when there is an innovative, as opposed to derivative, feel to the 206 Writing the Short Film Ch16.qxd 9/27/04 6:11 PM Page 206 . finger- nails no longer have to be afraid. Back in the present, the question is asked whether the story is real and where the grandmother heard it. The film. expect in hyperdrama, the plot far outweighs the characterizations of Sirah, the scientist-human, and the Infanta. 202 Writing the Short Film Ch15.qxd 9/27/04