Turn off your mental film projector
By Jayson Abalos
Back in my early days, when my friends and I were certain we were going to become the next Movie Brats of Hollywood, I was the designated writer. I hated writing. I had no clue how to do it. To make it worse, I lived on a remote island in Alaska. After a week of diving around ye olde dark Internet, I had a passable grasp of a screenplay's format. But what I found, unfortunately, were screenplays written in the format of production shooting scripts. (As opposed to spec scripts devised as selling tools).
Those shootings scripts served us rather well, because we were the ones shooting and producing our little projects. It made sense that I should spell every detail out. I wrote down all the little nuances of mood and lighting. I put multiple camera directions in the script, along with my masterful acting direction. Because, well, we were the actors too. No harm, no foul, right?
Wrong. Writing like that was an act of self-harm. I was training my mind to write in a certain way, and to think in a certain way.
Your intention is only worth anything in so much as it helped you to write.
Similarly, many screenwriters think their job is to transcribe what they see in “the projector of their minds” onto the page. But that’s exactly where you need to start slamming on the brakes.
As screenwriters, we shouldn't be writing every non-verbal reaction and motivational insight. For some of us, this is a hard directive to swallow, because we immediately feel our vision for the movie will be ruined, our meaning lost. That is what we have to change.
Here’s the real hard truth: you are not the director. You don’t get to dictate the meaning and articulation of your screenplay. You’re the screenwriter. The writer is the person who throws an idea out there. The director determines what that idea should become, and how that idea should be expressed. Your intention is only worth anything in so much as it helped you to write. If you write all of that stuff down – nuances of mood and lighting, camera and acting directions – you’re only guaranteeing that you’re going to be very pissed off when the director or production changes things.
We just need to see how beautiful it is to create a piece of art that is flexible and versatile in story terms.
The reason that everyone loves Shakespeare so much is because he wrote almost exclusively in dialogue, with minimal stage directions of entrances and exits. Artists love working on his plays because they’re an open palette to play with. Meaning and expression are left wide open for re-interpretation.
As screenwriters, we need to change our mindset from transcribing the projector of our minds to creating a similar springboard for creativity in our scripts. We just need to see how beautiful it is to create a piece of art that is flexible and versatile in story terms. Quite simply, our job is to write the most minimal screenplay possible, something that provides the widest array of options to everyone who works with it after us, without it becoming unintelligible dribble.
To illustrate the point, watch this video. It has nothing to do with writing, but it has everything to do with writing. This indie production blocks out and shoots the exact same scene several different ways. Each has an entirely different feel – that the screenplay had nothing to do with. This video shows you why it’s so important to leave a lot of headroom for interpretation in your screenplay. Because this is what will happen whether you want it or not. And if you fight against it, and try to direct too much of the movie on the page, you’ll feel that much more aggrieved when the real director comes in and does the job they’ve been hired for.
Jayson Abalos
Professional data analyst by trade, Jayson Abalos works at Crafty Apes as a Technology Specialist focusing on enhancing production efficiency through bringing the writer's world and the film editor's world closer together.
Connect with Jayson on Facebook or Linkedin, and discover more about his work on his website. Linkdin address: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayson-abalos-07362689/
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