Story-telling | Screenplay Writing Workshop with Steve Coombes (26th September 2016)

Today we had our first lecture with screenwriter, Steve Coombes, which was a great opportunity to learn from a man with more than 27 years in the industry.  The purpose of this lecture was to begin understanding what goes into a making a screenplay, with overtones of what we would expect to see through Steve's own experiences in writing for shows such as Lovejoy, New Tricks, and Hustle.

We began by looking at the basic timeline of events that leads up to a show or film being produced, starting with the pitch or logline, followed by the treatment, then bible, all before a first draft of the script is achieved.  After the redrafts of the initial script, then comes the shooting script, which must then be greenlit before making it to production.  The amount of hassle that goes into getting a show to the shooting script surprised me somewhat, as this would require so much time and willpower before a script has even been approved for production, which gave me an idea of how much work a writer in the TV or film industry bust have to go through.

Steve also touched upon the writers strike of the late 1980s, in which producers in the US looked toward British writers for producing content - this highlighted to me that writing can be a cutthroat environment, sometimes with little certainty as to how secure your job might be depending on the political environment of the companies you may be working for.

We were also made aware of how quickly the television industry is changing due to developments in technology and the accessibility of viewing platforms now available to us, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, as opposed to cable television.  Piracy is also shaping the future of television, as some people would much rather illegally download TV programmes and films that pay a subscription or license fee.

Moving on from the industry in general, we focused on a script for the opening scenes of American Beauty:

From this, we were able to see the developments in a draft of a script to the shooting script and we did this using the 5 'golden rules' of writing a screenplay.

1. Clarity in a screenplay is vital, as it is the foundation that holds the production together.  This led onto the idea that a pitch is on a 'need-to-know' basis, meaning that we should only divulge important information that will keep the audience interested - jump straight into the action and keep on jumping.
2. A moving picture story should be shown, and not told, which draws from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said "what can be shown, cannot be said".  This is the rule that stuck out the most for me, and made me consider how I could transfer this into my screenplay through the use of dialogue and cinematography, as opposed to a narrator or the characters saying what is happening in a literal sense.  This is why flashbacks and voiceovers, if executed poorly, this can come across as a 'cheat' to get across a story.
3. A screenplay should be structured like a joke: the setup, the distraction, then the payoff.  This rule confused me initially but it does make a lot of sense now, as a good story subverts what the audience expects, just as a good joke does.
4. Know your ending.  This is a fairly straightforward rule, but that does not mean it is an important rule, as knowing the ending can give the story a sense of solidity - everything you write will be relevant to the ending of the story.
5. A good screenplay needs memorable moments.  Steve made a good point that, after watching a film or TV show, it's particular moments that people remember, not necessarily discussing the character development or the political nature of the political world within the show (although I do enjoy doing this with Game of Thrones).  Therefore, I will need to think about picking particular moments within my screenplay to make it memorable to my audience.

We could see a contrast between the earlier drafts of the American Beauty script and the final shooting script, which correlated with Steve's 'golden rules', the one that stood out the most was to show the story rather than tell it.  In the earlier draft, there is a news report which essentially just explained that the central character, Lester Burnham, has been killed and that his daughter and an accomplice are suspected of carrying out the murder.  The later version eliminates this, and we are left with hints as to what is happening, but also we saw a hint at the other conflicts within the story through the introduction of Lester's wife, daughter and neighbours.  Despite that this opening had a voiceover, I feel this is an example of where this device has been used effectively, and does not seem like cheating, as we are not just told the story, we still have a sufficient level of intrigue with the line

"I have lost something. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I know I didn't always feel this... sedated. But you know what? It's never too late to get it back."

This then tells us that this story is not simply about 'who killed Lester Burnham', but will show us an interesting journey, and not just filling in before getting to the destination.

I found Steve's first lecture particularly interesting, as he is clearly a man who knows the industry very well, and his experience in screenwriting will be very useful when it gets to drafting my own screenplay.