Masterclass With Syd Field Part 3
Q&A round with Syd Field…
Q:f I have an ensemble film which has 3 main characters, how can I have a plot point involving all 3 of them?
SF: You still have to have one main protagonist in your story. One main character to anchor the film.
Q: Then how do you explain films like ‘Crash’ and ‘Love Actually’ ?
SF: ‘Crash’ didn’t work for me. It was so melodramatic. It was more about connecting, about one character meeting another. In ‘Love Actually’, if love is the main protagonist, choose characters to move the story and express.
Q: Is there place for relief scenes in a film which have nothing to do with the story? Because you often find comic tracks in Hindi films.
SF: There are many such scenes in Macbeth and Major Dundee. But they do have some contribution to the main story. In fact when the audience is drained due to the drama, comic scenes are a great way to ease the tension. But if the scenes have nothing, get rid of them.
Q: How to deal with a writer’s block?
SF: Once I had got a writer’s block at plot point 1 in Act 1 for 6 weeks. I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t know my storyline. I got into all kinds of vices and went into depression. Then once when I was having dinner with a friend, he asked “What is your story about?” It is then I realized that I was more interested in the writer’s block then figuring the dynamics of the story. The dam broke! I went home and wrote a 6 page free association essay about I want from the story. Writer’s block comes from not knowing what you want to write. Stop taking it personally and get rid of the negativity.
Q: You say that the story actually starts from plot point 1, then what does the first 30 minutes convey? Because as a viewer if nothing happens, I am disinterested.
SF: What is the story about? What is the dramatic action? What are the circumstances surrounding the dramatic action? That is how I judge a script in 10 pages. The first 10 minutes have to interest the audience. Oliver stone once told me that it took him 12 years to write ‘Platoon’. Since in the beginning it had 26 characters in the first 10 minutes.
Q: What is the purpose of multiple plot points?
SF: It anchors the story.
Q: How right or wrong is it to associate a character with an actor?
SF: It is just a tool to write a better character. I wrote a part for Jack Nicholson which he never played. But it doesn’t matter to me. It’s the rhythm and energy I was concerned with.
Lunch Break
The First Ten Pages
Three things are needed:
1. Who is the main character?
If there are more than one character, their motivation and action line is the same.
Exception: Pulp Fiction. In Pulp Fiction, you have Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s wife, The gold watch and the Bonnie situation. They are tied by a monologue and an epilogue. They all come down in the end to be tied up and that’s the genius of the film. But if you break it down, it is still structured.
Otherwise, you can’t have 3 stories in one story. Take a film like ‘Thelma and Louise’, the dramatic need of both the characters is the same. So even if they are 2 characters, it is 1 main character. So I am being very loose with the word. There can be 3/4 main characters.
2.What is the story about?
You have to determine the story in the first 10 minutes. You have to grab the audience, give them a jolt.
3.What is the dramatic action?
The circumstances surrounding the action.
What is character?
“What is character but the determination of incident? And what is incident but illumination of character?” - Henry James (The art of fiction)
For example: In ‘Thelma and Louise’, Louise kill a man who threatens to rape Thelma. This incident is the illumination of Louise’s character since it’s later revealed that Louise was raped in the past.
To create a character you have to give it an identity, a life.
What makes good character?
1.Dramatic need :
What drives him through the entire screenplay? What is his motivation?
2. Point of view:
It is the way your character views or sees the world. Point of view is a belief system like faith or belief in a higher power. There is no judgement involved. It is not right or wrong, good or bad.
3. Attitude:
Attitude reveals a character’s personal opinion. It is an intellectual decision determined by some form of judgement. Right or wrong, good or bad, angry or happy, cynical or naïve. There are times when attitude can become Point of view.
4.Change or transformation:
Does you character go through a phsical or emotional change in the screenplay? What is the change? You have the choice of determining the arc of your character.
In a Woody Allen film, he never changes, the other characters do. In ‘Titanic’, Rose realizes her own humanity and individuality because of Jack in the end.
You may not state the character’s dramatic need in the script but you as a writer should be aware of it.
For understanding character, you must understand conflict. All drama is conflict.
Without conflict there is no action.
Without action there is no character.
Without character there is no story.
Without story there is no screenplay.
You have to define what kind of a conflict are you writing about, internal or external?
That’s it folks. Enough Gyaan for today. The next part will be the concluding part of the series which will be much more complex and in-depth in nature. Till then, Cya!
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= Chaitanya, Priceless! A few observations… and these with a backdrop that I haven’t read Syd Field’s works yet…
“Writer
Oz: Wow! I have never read such a long comment by you on any of my posts…
SF has been mostly criticized for the first ten minutes funda. If you follow the five minutes funda, then maybe they will pan you as well..Lol!
What is the story about? I didnt think he meant it in the literal sense. If you watch the first few minutes of Kill Bill, everything is clearly established. 3 minutes after ‘Annie hall’ starts, Woody Allen says, ‘I broke up with Annie.’ The thing which I guess SF wanted to say was that you should come to the point when your film starts. But obviously it has to be done cleverly. Like the most beautiful thematic start (Acco. to me) has to be the chicken running for survival through the lanes of Rio in ‘City of God’. Isn’t that’s what the film is all about? All con films or heist films start with an inciting incident and you know instantly that this is a con film or now the cops are going to follow the criminals…
Obviously your actual story starts after plot point 1. But somewhere I guess you are right, the statement IS dicey. Because all this is too typically ‘Hollywood’.
= Chaitanya,
long comment cause many of the things in your post on Syd are things that I’ve been unknowingly been following or knowingly been doing the opposite of.
Lets the take incident of the chicken run in City of God that happens right bang on at the start of the movie. If the objective was to show the entire “determination” of the movie in the first few minutes (as per Syd’s suggestion) then I as a viewer failed to grasp that… rather what gave me a glimpse of what the movie was about was the protagonist talking to the viewer, the slum setting and finally the important piece the photographer/protagonist caught between the cops on one end and the slum mafia on the other side.
The chicken run to me was a prelude - and a brilliant one at that - to reach a junction where all individual stories meet and take off one after another - the junction where the photographer starts talking with guns pointing at both ends…
Now in Annie Hall, Woody’s sense of telling a story follows the typical “rewind” mode… it’s a “style”, not a “functional” “element” in story telling.
Ditto for heist movies, and thanks for bringing this example up too… yes most will start with the heist or preparation for the heist and that’s why they are labeled as heist movies. Here it’s the “element” - the heist - the content. The way the heist is shown and when it is shown, for me, is the “style”… and of course showing the heist in the beginning, forms the safe and tried and test “formula” that has been found to work.
Almost tempted to segue from heist into “heist-like” situations who’s objectives are “suspense” where those situations crop up in the end… here the “element” - suspense triggers the heist-like situation towards the end… example - The Usual Suspects… and the boat incident around which the movie is built upon brick by brick, layer by layer.
…
This seems to be an interesting discussion. I dont think any rule can be applied strictly or in a routine manner to every script.
A genius once said : “Some rules are made to be broken!”
As for the 10 minute interest buildup rule, I dont think that is true for every script. Often in stories, which we generally say move slowly there is nothing much in the first 10 minutes but yet they build up to amazing climaxes.
Another way to look at it while anaylzing scripts is that for every story, what the plot point is or whether the story is built up in the first 10 mins, is highly subjective. Taking an example in RDB, one can argue that the first 10 mins setup Sue’s coming to India to make a documentary as the hook up point or one can argue that wasn’t a really interesting premise to absorb you in the whole movie.
If you really wanted to take a point by which the story should grab the audience’s attention, I would personally go for the first 30 mins, i.e. the plot point.
I dont think you can take any screenwriting rule/tradition too literally, which also brings us to the larger question that whether scriptwriting can be taught?
I personally believe, it cant be taught.
To judge stories and scripts by this rule, wouldn’t be really fair.
But thanks Chaitanya for this post and effort, it was really informational.
Anuj: This tutorial aims at structuring the material you have in to a script. Offcourse there r no rules in creative world..RDB is a good example u gave..literally the story does not take the main course for a long long time.
Oz: One thing admirable about the Americans is the ability to form a process of almost anything..They put the process, which is in our subconcious in black n white…While reading a book Directing Actors by Judith weston.. I experienced the same..Its another must for all the film makers.
Prodigy: Your 2nd article gave me a structure for a complex 3 character story by identifying the midpoint of the stories..waiting for the next one!
Thank you, Chaitanya MAHAPRABHU.
Read (and re-read) all three SF posts. Most interesting. Would you be keen to come and talk to my students at IDC in IIT??? Some of them are grasping the nuances of animation. They would truly benefit.
Please let me know?
ALSO. Literature and playwriting have different methods.
Three fascinating autobiographies (of sorts) are, which might excite you:
- Somerset Maugham’s Summing Up
- Arthur Miller’s Timebends
- Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs.
There’s also Wole Soyinka’s recently released You Must Set Forth At Dawn (I’ve NOT read it as yet).
Soyinka, Nigeria
Years ago my husband and I heard that there are only so many original storylines, something like 42 or 47? Does anyone know if there is such a thing and is there a book on it?