I saw this video at the Design and Development workshop I attended today in Scottsbluff NE. It is an outstanding overview of the design process and shows the process of PBCL (Problem-based Case Learning) at work. This video is one part of 3. The other parts are available on YouTube.com and for sale on the ABC web site. Contact me for more information on using PBCL in the classroom.

Workshop: Screen writing with Gordy Hoffman
April 19, 2009 as part of the Nashville Film Festival

The following notes and exercises were taken from the workshop in the order experienced (more or less)

Exercises

1. For five minutes, describe your movie idea
2. For two minutes, write the toughest scene
3. Write three scenes that will be in the movie (graphic novel) for five minutes
4. Write a Monolog from my script for two minutes

Notes

How do you create a first draft?

There are lots of approaches…

• Blake Synder beat sheet. Formula for creating your screen play. It doesn’t work for ALL movies. It is based on a number of classic movies. (Beat sheet). Structured.
• The lowest common denominator is that the movie has to move you.
• Non linear thought process. Write whatever I want. Just let the ideas flow. Workshopping. Just write the scene. The ideas will flesh out as you write. Unstructured.
• Character breakdowns (monologue or bios) Can write a character history. Thumbnail sketches of characters.
• Outline (30, 60, 90 format) Break it up into sections. A first, second, and third sections of the movies.
• Cards. Have ideas on different cards and then be able to move the cards around. (Power point). Good for complicated plots
• Objectives
• mind map
• Treatment (know that the while writing the treatment you will be taken off the path. That’s OK. Your writing and uncovering the story) You can stream line the treatment later. Writing the treatment can get you started.
• research. Find a balance. Don’t let the research take away from the story or from your personal experience.
• Get actors involved to help you create the characters.
• Approach it like a song writer?
• Start with a plan. As you write you will deviate from the plan. You will go back over the draft and re-write it with a new plan.
• 50% of your movie is the ending (the reveal)
• Plausibility. No one is going to believe the story if it is not plausible. Other people will have to be able to relate to it. People want to know that they can get to the other side of their situation. They can see someone going through what they did and they made it to the other side of there experience. Make it authentic.
• Make the goal tangible. A reunion with a spouse. A resolution will work better if the resolution is tangible. Abstract will help make the concrete deeper, but the goal should be clear and tangible.
• Don’t be afraid to write about something that makes you uncomfortable. Make people think you went through the experience.
• Make it new. Everyone listens to a song over and over until the emotion has been processed. Then you are no longer interested in the song. Deal with the characters doing something we all can relate to, but make it new. New situation, new character.
• Make it personal. write about personal experience. It will have power and believable as a result. Write about something I have gone through. It is “a feelings business.”

The goal of rewriting

Take your script to production and connect with an audience.
Why does our script change? Because we keep changing.

Dialog

Scripts are compressions of life. Dialog is not a transcription of actual dialog. It is a compression of a conversation. Practice. Sit down and write pages of dialog. Let the characters write what is on the page. “Damn this is a boring scene.” “What is this scene about?” “How am I supposed to act this scene if I don’t understand what it is about.” Write about my own emotional life.

When dialog doesn’t work (when it takes you out of the movie)

• Forced exposition. Information about the story to set it up.
• “On the nose.” No subtext. (what’s really happening underneath the dialog). People say things with implied understanding. All the feelings that are not being said that are under what IS being said.
• You can reveal exposition through dialog
• You can reveal characters through dialog
• Less is more
• Screen writing is about moving pictures on a screen. Don’t tell someone something that should be shown instead. See if you can write a “silent picture”. Tell the story through pictures – not dialog.

How does description hurt your ending?

Compress the description. Don’t wear out your reader on insignificant details. Keep them engaged in the story. Make it clear (clarity). See just enough to visualize and get the reader through the script. Let the set designers, costume people, etc fill in the details. The script does not need that much detail. No one is going to follow the script exactly. Let the people do what they know. You sell the story, the scene. Let everyone else do their jobs.

Read scripts (download them from the internet) how does the author describe the scene.

Characters

• Characters should have depth. Don’t define the entire character by one act. Keep them grey; not black in white. Why? Because that is how real life is. (Frost/Nixon, Crash)
• Give the reader the opportunity to “forgive” the antagonist. Give the audience the opportunity to exercise compassion.

Getting feedback

• Don’t rely on “professionals”. Get your feedback from ordinary people. Get the reaction from ordinary people. Whatever helps to get you to take another look at your script.

Possible readers

• Family (possibly not honest reaction because they’ll try to protect your feelings)
• Friends
• Fellow screen writers (personal relationships. Nashville Screenwriters Association)
• Online screen writing communities (script pimp?)

How do you re-write the screen play

• Spot revision process (print out the script and make notes on the script)
• Page one rewrite/ copy it over
• Descriptions/elements only
• Work on one act, or section, at a time
• Do a group table “read”. Get actors or friends to sit around a table and read through the script aloud. The strengths and weaknesses will come out in the script
• An outline after your first draft

Ending thoughts

• LA is ALWAYS looking for scripts. If the script gets rejected, it’s because it’s not ready. Period. Good place to send it BlueCat screenwriting competition.
• A typical pitch is 10-15 minutes. Tell general story arcs. If you care about the story, you’ll be compelling.

I thought you would enjoy this video from http://www.aiga.org.

The video is Understanding Web Design with Jeffery Zeldman. As you may know Zeldman is the founder of A List Apart, one of the oldest and most successful Webzines on Web design. Enjoy the video. You will be taken to the aiga web site for viewing.
http://www.aiga.org//content.cfm/video-gain-2008-zeldman

I saw the screening of the documentary Helvetica in Nashville, TN as part of the community screenings. It was sponsored by the Davidson County Downtown Library, Nashville Public Television (NPT), the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and American Advertising Federation Nashville. A panel discussion followed. It was interesting to see the polarized emotions on either side of the love/hate relationship with the Helvetica typeface both on film and in the audience. My personal thanks to the director, Gary Hustwit, for creating such an interesting film. I will use it in my classroom.

I particularly found it interesting that the majority of the designers interviewed were from the print industry and were mostly illustrators in the sense that they used type to emote. The other interviewees were primarily type designers. While I found it very entertaining and informative to understand the “why” of the type, the fact that it was focused on print delivery gave the film a particular skew and caused the discussion to toggle between the issues of utility and expression – which after all is the main crux of the debate. So is it really a debate about the purpose of design?

Design is far more than visual. There is sound design, architectural design, mechanical design, curriculum or instructional design. All of these disciplines use the word design. So design is far more than visual. My undergraduate is in Mechanical Drafting and Design. My graduate degree is in eLearning Design. Both my undergraduate and graduate work gave me strong fundamentals in design – which I summarize to be creating a system with a particular objective while understanding the various forces that will impact that system. With that broad definition of the word design comes inherent the principle of utility. They touched upon it in the film, but the director chose to focus more attention on the emotive principle – i.e. Visual Design’s mission to elicit emotions.

I would have liked to see the director address the importance of the advantages of using Helvetica in the design and delivery of information. True, all messages conveyed visually are information – whether through print or screen. However, maybe it has to do with the quantity of information. As a designer of online training, I frequently need to design a product which conveys a large amount of information. A principle that influences my design decisions is the principle of Cognitive Load Theory¹. My objective is to maximize the learning taking place – not the emotional impact of the font. I’m not saying that keeping it interesting is not important, just that it is not the primary objective. The principle of “information chunking” is used to maximize the effectiveness of the lesson. Basically this means the information is delivered in digestible amounts. It all has to do with how much information the brain can absorb at one time.

The demand on energy can be regulated easier if the consumer does not have to struggle to make out the characters on the screen. More energy expended in the acquisition of the content, is energy not utilized in the deciphering of the message. That’s a good thing. You don’t want to waste your energy trying the read the display, you want to walk away from the screen having understood the concept. From a display, or illustration, point of view, Helvetica may be boring. From an ease of use point, i.e. utility point of view, it works beautifully and therefore is good design and has a place in every designer’s toolbox.

References

1. Cognitive Load Theory. Wikipedia. Pay attention to the definition as it applies to short term memory and information chunking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load

The following YouTube video illustrates a wonderful use of animated text to illustrate a message. I’m posting it as an example for my multimedia students. Uh… the message is pretty important too.

Pay particular attention to the use of the symbols being used to illustrate the text. Also, note the flow. The text appears on screen at the comfortable rate of reading the passages. Nice. The creator was not mentioned. I’d love to know who it was. If anyone knows, please post a comment.