'Write vertically', they say, so that every new line directs the mind's eye. Use 'invisible camera directions', they say, by describing everything in shot order.
But how much is too much?
I have an opening scene which is being criticised for too much direction. They're probably right - we're talking nearly a page and a half of description with very little happening. BUT most of the details described are vital to the story, and I do feel that the atmosphere and the stillness needs to be really well established at the beginning too. I honestly don't know how to cut it down without it losing all its impact.
I realise my current entry in the 'Share Your Work' section may be guilty of the same overdescription, but atmosphere etc. is not an issue there.
I suppose my question is, is what I've done all right under any circumstances? Just once in a while. (The rest of the script is not like this - it's just the first scene.) Or do I HAVE to cut out the direction. I have to get the detail in so this would still mean a fair amount of description, just in a less interesting couple of paragraphs, instead of revealed shot-by-shot.
The real question isn't whether you're "directing on the page" -- because in the end, our job is to tell the story on the page -- and the story that we're telling isn't a novel or a play or a short story or a blue print -- it's a movie.
Just the way that, if I asked you to tell me the story of some movie that you saw, you wouldn't feel limited obliged to *not* describe what you'd seen on screen but to only use those verbal tools appropriate to radio drama.
No. You'd want to describe what the movie you'd seen was like. You'd want to give me as complete a sense of that experience of seeing that movie as you could, within the time that was available to you.
Well, when you write a screenplay, you want to do the same thing -- you want to try to use the tools of prose to convey that experience as vividly as you can.
The point is, it's bad to give a list of shots not because you're intruding on the director's domain, but because that's a bad way to convey that experience.
If you were telling the story of, say Goodfellas, chances are you wouldn't describe the long continuous takes or the freeze frames or all that sort of thing. So if you're "telling" the story in your script, don't bother putting that sort of thing in the script.
The question of how much detail or how little detail always comes down to the same thing.
There's too little detail to draw a reader in on the one hand -- and then there's too much detail -- which you can generally tell because a reader is going to get bored and start skipping over it (which means you might as well not put it in).
So don't bore the reader with too little description and don't bore the reader with too much.
You just have to remember that this is going to be read by people who read a lot of scripts and who reach that "I get it" threshold rather quickly.
Audiences these days also reach that "I get it" point quite quickly.
So when you're writing something you just have to keep that in mind. When you're describing something, when characters are speaking, when a scene is aiming to achieve a particular point -- when is it that an audience is going to "get it."
When they get it -- move on.
Along these lines it's interesting to watch Paul Thomas Anderson's movies because he's very cued into this idea of being attentive to what audiences get. You'll find yourself watching a scene in one of his movies, and the scene is unfolding and you'll find yourself thinking, "Oh, now we're going to have a scene where this happens --" and instead of that scene happening, the movie will promptly jump ahead. The scene that you were just thinking about won't be there. Instead, you'll have the *next* scene. The scene that comes after the scene that you were expecting, that you already, in effect, played out in your head.
Because Anderson figured -- hey, you already know what's going to happen in that scene, because I set it up, so why bother showing it? Let's jump ahead. Let's move on.
If you use the moments you write to manage those expectations, you don't have to write those scenes.
So read that first scene. What is it intended to convey? When is that information conveyed? When does the audience get it? Is it really the last line at the end of the scene? Not the line before? Not a couple lines before?
NMS
