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.The lovestory in the film is a storyline and plot that is superimposed on the meta-writing.Jurassic Park! Thegenetic reconstruction of dinosaurs in an island theme park is a visual idea.The characters and thestoryline are superimposed on it.Meta-writing has great importance in corporate communications, which often depend on finding avisual correlative for an abstract idea-change, for instance.Although change itself is an abstract idea, itcan be understood through visual metaphors such as weather, a river, a speeded-up growth sequenceof a plant, or speeded-up sequence of decay.The Website has a clip for an EMC Corporation videoon management of information flows.It is made comprehensible emotionally and intellectually byimages of water in motion, such as waves, rivers, and waterfalls.So, meta-writing is that writing orthinking that enables the writing of the key concept.9Ben Hecht wrote a screenplay for the movie version of A Farewell to Arms (1957).There was also an earlier production in 1932 starring Gary Cooper andHelen Hayes. 12 CHAPTER 1: Describing One Medium Through AnotherWHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?We are ready to look at some of the specific problems of setting down the writer s vision namely,describing images and sound for production.We will learn how to do so in incremental steps.Oneway is to reverse-engineer a scene from a movie or a television program.From your experience of see-ing a scene, turn your role around and try to describe what a production crew would need to know toremake that scene.Even though you don t yet know how to write scripts, trying to do so introducesyou to the essential problem.This will start you thinking about how you describe things and howyou lay out this information on a page.A good way to approach this task is to find a movie with a published script and study the way thevisuals on screen relate to the script.A word to the wise, however: published scripts are usually post-production scripts.They are made from the finished movie for distribution, dubbing foreign languageversions, and publicity purposes.A postproduction script seldom corresponds word for word with theproduction script, and it is usually written by a person other than the scriptwriter.DIFFERENCES COMPARED TO STAGE PLAYSAnother way to isolate the special nature of scriptwriting is to compare it to playwriting.Stage playsdo not usually describe action in detail.Stage directors and designers have greater latitude to decideon the staging and the blocking.Stage plays assume a constant point of view based on the prosce-nium stage with a consistent sight line.In contrast, the scriptwriter has to be concerned with physicalaction and a specific point of view anywhere within a 360-degree compass.Action must be describedas it is framed by a camera lens and by a camera movement.The words spoken by characters, the dra-matic dialogue, although part of the script, do not present a visual writing problem except perhapswhen dialogue stops the action (see a discussion of this issue in Chapter 9).Plays are not always visual and depend heavily on dialogue.Novels describe emotions.Visual mediahave to show emotions.So a script is not a novel, though it may be adapted from a novel.It is nota play, though it is sometimes adapted from a play and becomes a screenplay.It is a unique form.Ascreenplay and many shorter scripts can be original, not based on a source work.A writer can alsowrite or compose directly for the visual medium.10 Although visual writing means thinking in termsof images rather than describing visual things, visual writing also means leaving out obvious andunnecessary scenes, no matter how visual.The scriptwriter has to construct visual meaning out ofsequences of images, whether he is communicating a corporate message or adapting Hemingway.Original visual writing for a script means doing this in your head.WRITING WITH DIALOGUEColin Welland wrote an original script, Chariots of Fire, produced by David Puttnam, about two Britishrunners, Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, who competed in the Olympic Games of 1924.Chariotsof Fire won the Academy Award for best picture in 1982.Here is the scene of a college race in which10See Paul Schrader s screenplay for Taxi Driver (London: Faber and Faber, 1990) and his other writings. Writing without Dialogue 13we meet Abrahams, a main character.Welland introduces the theme of running and competition andestablishes the social setting and the social class of the characters in this Cambridge University setting 11:EXT.TRINITY COURT MID-DAYROBINMr.Abrahams your position please!HAROLD MOVE FORWARD.A HUSH DESCENDS ON THE COURT.THE CROWD CRANE THEIRNECKS AS HAROLD TOES THE LINE TO FIND THE BEST GRIP.ROBIN(addressing the throng)Owing to the absence of any otherchallenger, Mr.Abrahams will runalone.A VOICE CUTS INVOICENot so Mr.Starter!ALL HEADS TURN TO SEE, HURRYING THROUGH THE CROWD, HIS COAT THROWN OVERHIS SHOULDER ANDY LINDSEY.CROOKED IN HIS ARM IS AN UNOPENED BOTTLE OFCHAMPAGNE.HAROLD IS AS AMAZED AS THE REST.ANDY TOSSES HIS COAT TO THEOPEN MOUTHED AUBREY AND THE BOTTLE TO HARRY.HE S RESPLENDENT IN ETONRUNNING STRIPE.ROBINYour name and college if you pleasesir.ANDYLindsey.I race beside my friend here.We challenge in the name of Repton,Eton and Caius.CHEERS AGAIN.The dialogue, although natural to the characters, advances the plot.The description is necessary tothe action.It also sets up an action scene, which creates interest and anticipation for the audience.WRITING WITHOUT DIALOGUEConsider the opening of Bartleby, 12 a contemporary adaptation of the story Bartleby, The Scrivener, byHerman Melville.The images establish an urban setting, the anonymity, alienation, and isolation ofthe main character.11Unpublished script of Chariots of Fire (1982), written by Colin Welland.12Bartleby, unpublished screenplay, Pantheon Film Productions Ltd., distributed by Corinth Films, New York.See Website for complete version 14 CHAPTER 1: Describing One Medium Through AnotherINT.TUBE TRAIN -- DAYBARTLEBY is sitting next to the window in silhouette.Light rain streakspast the window as the train fl ashes past London suburbs.The trainplunges underground.Fade in Music.CUT TO:INT.TUBE STATION -- DAYA train arrives in the station and stops.People pour out across theplatform.In the middle, we catch a glimpse of BARTLEBY.CUT TO:INT.TUBE ESCALATOR -- DAYSide shot from parallel escalator descending of BARTLEBY riding up theescalator.He is motionless.The background moves by.CUT TO:INT.TUBE ESCALATOR -- DAYLS of BARTLEBY, one of a line of people riding up escalator.MS BARTLEBY.He is motionless.Most of them are looking straight ahead.BARTLEBY lookstowards camera as it descends past him.CUT TO:INT [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]