MA Screenwriting: Unit Seven

I'll try and rattle through the remaining four units, as the majority of the most interesting stuff happened in the earlier units.

Unit Seven was Study of Industry Practice, which was a useful way of accumulating a fair bit of knowledge about how films are financed and produced, but which hasn't really had much of an impact on my writing since.

For the unit, we were given a feature-length script by one of the previous year's MA graduates and asked to write a 2,000-word report describing its potential for production and sales in the world marketplace.

In support of the unit, we were given a lengthy and thorough lecture by Tom Strudwick - a highly experienced film sales and marketing consultant.

(Tom also hosted a thoroughly bruising pitch session before we handed in our major project proposals - the only time over the two years of the MA that I didn't want to play any more.)

Anyway, Tom guided us through assessing a project at script stage from both creative and marketing perspectives - particularly the art of 'positioning' a film: ie, defining its key audience and working out how the film could be effectively marketed to it.

Perhaps most usefully, he stressed throughout the importance of knowing what you're selling (at whatever stage of development or production it's at) and being able to describe it as succinctly as possible to the next link in the chain.

What he said seemed to equate to the importance that Blake 'Save the Cat' Snyder puts on the idea of 'what is it?': A movie must have a clear sense of what it's about and who it's for. Its tone, potential, the dilemma of its characters and the type of characters they are should be easy to understand and compelling.

We also had a look at the importance of genre and generic conventions in film marketing. For instance, Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters would normally have been a tough sell to the mass audience (drama/older audience/female-skewed). However, it broke through after being marketed in the same generic terms as a prison movie.

After looking at publicity and promotion, we also had a brief introduction to the various models of film finance (including 'soft money', co-production, distribution, etc), as well as other factors that would influence production, such as regional incentives and assessing the scale of the enterprise.

I think the script we assessed is in development somewhere, so I won't post my essay. Because of the rapidly changing finance and production environment, most of the resources I used were online - especially articles from journals. However, here's the brief resource list we were given for the unit:

Trade Press

• Screen International
• Variety
• The Hollywood Reporter
• Screen Finance

Books

• Dealmaking in the Film and Television Industry – Mark Litwak (Silman-James Press)
• The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook - Chris Jones and Genevieve Joliffe (Continuum International Publishing)
• The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint – Chris Jones
• The Movie Business Book - Jason E. Squire (Virgin Books)
• Film Budgeting – Ralph S. Singleton (Lone Eagle)
• The Big Deal - Thom Taylor (Quill)
• David Puttnam: My Story So Far - Andrew Yule (Time Warner)
• Final Cut - Stephen Bach (Faber)
• My First Movie - Stephen Lowenstein (Faber)
• Rebel Without A Crew - Robert Rodriguez (Faber)
• Money into Light – John Boorman (Faber)
• Projections – John Boorman and Walter Donahue (Faber)

MA Screenwriting: Unit Six

There might be a slight sense of diminishing returns from here on, as most of the remaining units didn't involve much screenwriting and fitted in around Unit Eight - the Major MA Project.

While we were still having interesting screenings, lectures and seminars with industry bods at the residentials, most of the rapid learning about screenwriting was linked to the earlier script assignments.

I'd actually been vaguely looking forward to Unit Six - Analysing the TV Drama Episode. Having 'studied' television informally for years, I thought it would be useful to reinforce my half-baked notions with a more established critical vocabulary. However, the 5,000-word essay was a real chore and has done little or nothing to inform my writing since.

It soon became apparent that most of the academic works we were directed towards came from a media studies/sociology perspective rather than offering anything on storytelling or narrative in the medium: the usual wank about semiotics, post-structuralism, Barthes, Baudrillard etc.

Most of the authors also couldn't be bothered to hide their utter contempt for television, largely dismissing viewers as a lumpen passive mass and applying the same criteria to news and adverts as award-winning drama series.

Anyway, my faith in TV gave me a way in. Inspired by the analysis of The Sopranos in Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, I argued that the most successful series are those that force their audience to lean forward, engage and become 'active viewers'.

Looking at Life on Mars more specifically, I focused on the various debates the series inspired about the interpretation of the narrative, and how fans use the show as a basis for their own creative activity, through fan fiction, video mash-ups etc.

I'm afraid I've mislaid the reading list for this one as well, but it was fairly standard in terms of standard texts on 'television studies'. Anyway, here are some of the titles I found useful in my analysis of Life on Mars.

• Abercrombie, N. Television and Society (Polity Press)
• Burton, G. Talking Television (Arnold)
• Fiske, J. Television Culture (Routledge)
• Jenkins, H. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (Routledge)
• Seiter, E (Ed). Remote Control: Television, Audiences and Cultural Power (Routledge)

(There were also a lot of fairly obscure journal articles. In fact, one of the best aspects of doing the MA - especially to someone like me, who'd been out of education for many years - was access to a wide range of online databases and resources.)

Anyway, with the help of tutorial support from Jan Johnson-Smith, I managed to land another distinction-level mark (though the weighting of the course meant this didn't count for much). If, God help us, anyone would like to read my essay, drop me a line.

(Previous units)

MA Screenwriting: Unit Five - Life on Mars

This – 'Writing the TV drama episode' – was one of the biggies, and one of the challenges I was most looking forward to on the course. As not much value is placed over here on writing spec scripts for existing series, it was another chance to experiment in a format that I probably wouldn't have bothered with otherwise.

We were given the choice of Life on Mars, Without a Trace or Heartbeat, and were given a screening and introductory lecture on each of the series.

As you'd probably expect, there were a few chuckles and quite a bit of eye-rolling when Heartbeat came up. 'Cos if you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space, right?

Actually, our lecturer – Jan Weddup – made a very convincing case for the series, highlighting the skill of its storytelling and pointing out that for all the derision it attracts for its 'cosiness', it remained (at that stage) an enduring cornerstone of TV drama. (I think it has now been replaced on the course by Doc Martin).

I considered doing Without a Trace, as I totally 'got' the key elements of the format and enjoyed the focus on plot. However, I eventually plumped for Life on Mars – partly because of the high concept, and partly because I was in tune with the arena; I grew up in Granadaland in the '70s, and was also a big fan of the 'muscular' TV of the time – not just The Sweeney, but also stuff like Trevor Preston's Fox and Out.

Before starting the unit, I was lucky enough to head off to Hong Kong and Australia for three weeks, for a family wedding. Along the way, I watched LoM exhaustively and broke down every story beat and character note. I also watched all the DVD extras, to get a feel for where everyone from the writers to the costume department were coming from.

To generate a story idea, I started looking for an everyday part of life that Sam Tyler would find very different between 1973 and 2006. Thinking about the male-dominated nature of Gene Hunt's CID, it came to me: a stag night. Back in the day, it would be an insane and potentially debilitating piss-up literally the night before the wedding.

I kicked around a few Very Bad Things-style scenarios before coming up with something that might have been influenced by watching Without a Trace: what if the groom – a peripheral DC in the department – failed to show up for his wedding after the drunken chaos of the previous night, and foul play was suspected.

From there, I built up the plot by finding new ways to work in the show's familiar returning elements (Test Card Girl as the death wish, information bleeding through from 2006, the budding relationship between Sam and Annie), while incorporating various story elements I had floating around my head.

• By making the bloke's fiancée from MCR's large Chinese community, I could contrast Gene's confrontational coppering with Sam's more empathic approach to immigrants – especially with Sam also seeing himself as a 'foreigner' in 1973. Some of the 1973 views on mixed-race relationships would also raise the issue of Sam and Maya.
  
  
• Because Gene is so totally identified with the grimy cityscape of 70s MCR, I wanted to take him outside that environment and see how he got on. So, I made the missing DC's dad an influential senior officer in the force, dragging Gene into the alien world of leafy Cheshire suburbs and private golf clubs: classic 'fish out of water' stuff.

I know it's a bit of a cliché, but my favourite thing about writing is when something suddenly surprises you and you realise the work is developing a life of its own. As I was working on the script, another theme suddenly developed – relationships between fathers and sons, and the fact that for all his bluster, Gene acts as a father figure for his 'boys'.

Anyway, with expert help from my tutor Line Langbek, I developed the script to the point where I was quite pleased with it. It did well with the markers as well, nabbing a distinction-level mark. Here's the final draft.

We didn't really get a resource list for the unit, but here's a watch list we were given for lectures on portmanteau, doppelganger and alternative reality narratives that had a bearing on the Life on Mars scripts.

(Previous units)

MA Screenwriting: Unit 4

Meanwhile, back in the Deep South...

Round about the time we were doing our observational research, we also had to crack on with one of the more academic units - 'Writing the Professional Script Report'.

We were given one of the previous year's feature-length MA scripts for the unit, which came in two parts.

Part one was a script reader's report: a 500-word synopsis of the script and a 500-word overview of its strengths and weaknesses, including a recommendation for further development or not.

I think a few people found the synopsis difficult, or at least a chore, but my editorial background meant I was used to getting to the heart of material and summing up complex stuff in simple terms.

Writing a synopsis (of either your own or another writer's work) can be valuable in identifying whether the central idea and dramatic spine of the story are strong enough to support the script. The ability to write a punchy and engaging synopsis also comes in handy for marketing your work.

The ability to read scripts critically is one of the most useful tools a screenwriter can have. In fact, I find it much easier to 'get under the bonnet' of a film from its script than from the finished work. By developing a critical approach and vocabulary you can focus sharply on what works and what doesn't work (and why).

The major aspects we were asked to look at were structure, arena, character, conflict, relationships, dialogue and emotional response. This last one is the most important - and can easily be overlooked while trying to get the cogs of your plot working together; while other more technical aspects can be tweaked, the script will fall flat on its face if it doesn't engage and move the audience.

Part two was a more complete 1,500-word set of script editor's notes on the same script. While the script report was purely descriptive, these notes are designed to guide the writer (and producer) through possible improvements for the next draft of the script.

While the reader's report can be more blunt in its assessment, as it's more likely to be for the consumption of a producer or agent, the script editor's notes need to strike a more delicate balance, finding ways of improving the script while respecting the writer's sensibilities.

The format that was suggested for us was a general preamble - with some diplomatic praise for what works well in the script - followed by bullet-pointed suggestions for concrete changes, with close reference to the text. Most points will fit under one of the following headings:

• characterisation and relationships
• arena and visual description
• structure and pace
• dialogue
• story and theme
• execution

I think the script we worked on is in development somewhere, so I won't post my reports. And I've lost the resource list, although I don't think it was very substantial. However, for all you'll ever need to know about script reading etc, take a plunge into the bubbling think-tanks of Danny Stack, Lucy Vee and Scott the Reader.

(Click here for previous MA posts.)

MA Screenwriting - Unit Three

I’m sure you’re getting a bit bored of these things by now, so I’ll take a bit of a break after this.

However, it’s so long since I tried a critical review of a film or show that I feel like I’ve fallen off the horse. I’ll try to get back on soon with a look at In The Loop; I saw a preview at the Curzon Soho last week, followed by a Q&A with Armando Ianucci.

Anyway, back to Bournemouth… After the warm-up exercises of units one and two, this was a considerably more substantial bit of work – a 30-minute script based on observational research.

The first part of the task was to spend a week at a location of your choice and compile a 1,500-word portrait of the place that would later form the basis of your drama. Having blown most of my leave on the course residentials, I needed to find somewhere that would throw up dramatic possibilities but also fit into my regular routines.

After a lot of head-scratching and sailing close to the rocks of panic a couple of times, the cold hand of the absolutely bleedin’ obvious slapped me around the chops and pointed out that I’d been gawping at the solution all along.

For my sins, I’ve been a season-ticket holder at Crystal Palace for several years now, and I suddenly realised it was the perfect location for my research. So, for several matches, I got there a few hours before kick-off and watched the life of the ground rise and fall, from the first staff arriving in the morning to the stewards slamming shut the gates after the last fan had left.

It didn’t take long for two main themes to emerge from the things I observed (a lot of which, typically, I couldn’t have made up in a hundred years).

The first was the fact that the ground is like a world within a world; passing through the turnstiles seems to represent leaving behind the complexities and problems of the outside world and entering an environment with a much simpler set of norms and priorities. This also explains the personality transplant some people undergo, from their (usually) reasonable everyday persona to ranting mania (which would be ugly in the 'real world' but is stylised - and probably cathartic - within the rules of the 'game').

The other thing that struck me is the variety of people that attend each match, with nothing in common other than supporting Palace. Croydon bills itself as London's most diverse borough, and the club's catchment area spreads from the urban neighbourhoods of SE London to the leafy Kent/Surrey commuter belt. This variety becomes apparent at the ground, where people who would normally cross the road to avoid each other join together as part of a bigger whole.

This created the image in my mind of a complex arrangement of lines that meet at a single point (Selhurst Park) and then continue in their various directions. This suggested a minature sort of Magnolia/Short Cuts structure for my screenplay.

Eventually I plumped for three stories involving girls or women (from a seven-year-old to an elderly widow) who were going to a game for the first time. I hoped this approach would force me to look with a fresh eye at stuff I see every week or fortnight but don’t really think about.

While three resolved storylines was probably a bit ambitious for a 30-minute script, the form seemed to match the arena perfectly, and it was certainly a useful exercise in interweaving separate storylines. I think the script was more chatty and televisual than the bolder 'filmic' scripts I’d done for the first two units, but it went down fairly well with my tutor and got me a good merit.

I know it should go without saying, but keen observation is one of the core skills a writer should develop. If you get your arena right, you’ll build a rock-solid foundation for your drama and find a rich source of inspiration for stories, themes and characters.

The world is out there – not just in other films or series – and it’s nearly always richer and more fertile with ideas and imagery than you could ever imagine. Again, I think this was an exercise and style of writing that I would probably never have taken on if I hadn’t been doing the MA.

As before, here’s the final draft of my script.

EDIT: By popular demand, here's the resource list as well.

• Intro
• Unit one
• Unit two

MA Screenwriting - Unit Two

We did this simultaneously with Unit One – a 15-minute film using an interior monologue (IM) but no other dialogue. Actually, the "IM" moved beyond its classic definition (uncensored and unstructured thought, as depicted in Ulysses) and included voiceovers and narrations more generally.

We had a couple of lectures to introduce the unit, which were again illustrated with a load of clips. The focus was on using the IM not to provide commentary on what's going on, but to reveal and reflect the inner life of the character. As with effective dialogue, this can - and probably should - lead to a discrepancy between what we see and what we hear.

The clips demonstrating different approaches to IM/voiceover included: Taxi Driver (narration from diary); Fight Club (wry, cynical observations, reflected visually – eg, furnishing his life with Ikea); Badlands (written in 'True Confessions' style); Million Dollar Baby (narration from letter, though true nature of the IM only revealed at end); Wings of Desire (very lyrical, reflecting angelic perspective).

We also had a good look at various devices to set up the IM. Eg Sunset Boulevard and American Beauty – voices from the dead; Double Indemnity – wounded insurance man confesses to conspiracy on tape; Name of the Father – Emma Thompson listenening to tape-recording on way to meeting; The Man Who Wasn't There – classic laconic style, but true nature again only revealed at end.

The idea for my script came from a bit of video nonsense I'd done a few years earlier with Me Mate Dave. The vague notion for the video thing involved me walking round Croydon and Crystal Palace Park in a crap home-made space suit (trackie covered with foil and gaffer tape, a cardboard box helmet and a pair of old boots sprayed silver) and seeing what happened.

However, along the way we inadvertently came up with a backstory for my 'character' – he was convinced he was an alien who had become trapped on Earth and was waiting for his mothership to return and rescue him. I took that aspect and applied it to the central character in my script – a young man who becomes so alienated by his life that he thinks the same thing.

Unfortunately, I think I lacked the psychological insight to tap the idea's full potential; I guess that's another very useful thing about doing an MA - when you're forced to work in different formats, you learn more about your strengths and weaknesses. It was probably also a bit ambitious to try and fit the character arc I had planned for him into a 15-minute script.

Oh well. Even though I still got a Merit for it, it was nowhere near as successful as my Unit 1 script.

I've uploaded a copy of the script here, along with the reading/viewing list for the unit.

MA - Intro

MA - Unit One

MA Screenwriting - Unit One

This was 'Writing in Sound and Vision' - a resolved 10-minute script with no dialogue or voice-over. I think that more than any other, this assignment changed the way I wrote and opened my mind to the full range of 'screen language'.

The task was introduced at our first residential with a lecture that spelled out clearly the mantra we always hear but maybe don't always think about – "show, don't tell".

It focused on a close analysis of the opening 15 minutes of Witness and The Outlaw Josie Wales, demonstrating the density of the storytelling - how much information is given about the characters and their world through their actions and gestures, as well as the mise-en-scene and choice of imagery.

I can't remember exactly how the idea for my script developed. I think the original image was someone coming home to find an unseen figure or force had started a game of chess on the ornamental set in their house. To me, this represented the intrusion of chaos/the outside into a carefully ordered existence.

My first draft followed that idea, with the main character – a vile yuppie called Simon - becoming increasingly obsessed with the game and neglecting the rest of his life. As the game goes against him, his life spins out of control until he finds himself in checkmate - both in the game and in his wider life.

Somewhere along the line – we had two 30-minute tutorials – the chess game moved online, against the mysterious 'Nemesis2006'. Meanwhile, the game of chess reflected the battle he was having at work with his arch-rival in the sales department. I've published the final draft here.

Flushed with my enthusiasm for visual and aural flourishes, I loaded every scene and transition in the script with telling detail and motifs. I thought I'd probably overdone it a bit, but my tutor liked it: “This is genuine cinematic writing of an impressive standard - bold, confident and mixing imaginative elements with an eye for details.” Skill!

Thinking about the raging debate over the teaching of screenwriting, I guess this highlights for me the benefits of being given a guided education in film history and technique – especially in conjunction with the books I mentioned here. Before starting the course, I – like a lot of people, I guess – equated 'good writing' with zingy dialogue and complex plotting, rather than the use of visual and aural imagery to 'paint' a story.

Bonus feature! I've also posted the reading and viewing list we were given for this unit – I thought it might be of interest given that it moves beyond the obvious screenwriting stuff you might expect.

MA Screenwriting, Bournemouth University - Intro

A developing theme of this blog seems to have been promising things and not delivering them.

Report on David Hare talking about TV drama at the BFI? Nah - although you can get the highlights here.

Reviews of the theatre productions I've seen recently? Well... I've thought about them quite a bit...

Some thoughts on the MA course I did at Bournemouth? That was one of the reasons I started the blog, but I've just never got round to it. However, given the lively debate on the value of screenwriting courses that keeps bubbling up all over the place I thought I should extract the digit and get on with it.

The course was two years long, based around three residential periods in each year (a week in July and three days each in November and February) and phone tutorials in between. The fees when I did it were around £2,600 a year (though you could get a discount for paying it in a lump sum at the start).

The award is based on a total of 1,800 hours work over the two years, which tots up to about 18 hours a week. My main concern was fitting the work around a full-time job, but I managed to set up routines and it worked out fine - I guess as much as anything, it's a test of your level of commitment to writing. I found my workrate improved when I stopped trying to immerse myself in every bit of recommended background reading and focused on the assignments themselves.

So how useful was it? Well, I definitely think I've become a better writer through it. The teaching wasn't dogmatic in terms of prescribing structure etc, but used a lot of clips and screenings to illustrate aspects of genre, theme, tone, narrative techniques etc. It was also very inspiring to get away from 'real life' for a few days and spend 12 hours a day just being a screenwriter.

However, I think the most useful aspect was the rigorous feedback given during the writing assignments. All of the tutors are broadcast/produced screenwriters, and each unit had a number of tutorials - script meetings, in effect - where the work in progress is given a right good going over.

I actually found this a bit bruising at the start, but there's no doubt that objective and informed criticism improves the quality of your work. The need to deliver new drafts for deadlines also sharpens your motivation and fends off procrastination.

I'll leave it there for now, but will come back again to look at each of the ten units in a bit more detail. I think the course has been slightly amended since I graduated, but these were the units I did.

1. Writing in Vision and Sound (10-min script)
2. Writing the Interior Monologue (15-min script)
3. Writing from Observational Research (30-min script)
4. Writing the Professional Script Report
5. Writing the TV Drama Episode (Life on Mars, Without a Trace or Heartbeat)
6. Analysing TV Drama (5,000-wd essay)
7. Study of Industry Practice
8. MA Major Proposal
9. MA Major Project (feature-length script or 60-min TV pilot plus bible)
10. Analysing the MA Major Project (5,000-wd essay)