Criticism Concepts Part 5: Actors and the Stage of Humanity

 

[Part 3 of my Screened Narrative series.  For parts 1 and 2 dealing with the screenplay and director, respectively, click here and here]

Previously, we looked at the pivotal role played by the director in creating a movie or television series. As maestro of the production set, directors weave their clamorous charges through peaks and valleys to lift the still images and stock archetypes of the screenplay into the dynamic, organic flow of narrative time which defines both the silver and small screens. But every choir contains its star soloist, and while directors hold the ultimate reins no matter who else joins them, the only other set piece in the grand film chessboard to match or surpass them in audience recognition is the acting crew. Moviegoers are enamored with “stars,” those lucky few whose performances on screen elevates them to a form of immortality envied by even the great Taoist sages.

But what makes a good actor or actress? Or, more specifically, what qualities should actors possess to best bring the characters of the screenplay and in the director’s vision to life? Acting is the most mercurial and elusive element of the film team, and so cannot be spied through a single one-size-fits-all filter. Only when we step back and see the full panoramic spectrum of the craft can we truly appreciate those who stand on the other side of the curtain rise.

Contributor 3: The Actors

Many are under the misconception that because they have seen so many movies they understand acting. Developing an eye for performance is difficult and requires hard work, diligent study, and possibly acting classes, and even some acting to fully understand the craft. - Jeremiah Comey

The quote above highlights the inherent difficulty of pegging down the meat and potatoes of this most slippery of performance crafts. As the most visible element of the cinema creation process, actors draw our eye and move the narrative along. Characters are the vehicles within a story; whether as avatars, inserts, or objects of voyeuristic glee, few stories stand in the absence of characters. Naturally, you’d expect this to place actors at the very nexus of on-set importance, right? 

 Well, yes and no.

A lot depends on what approach you take on the matter. Actors, especially strong leads, evoke intensely personal and psychological responses from an audience that even the most artistically manipulative directors and cinematographers can barely elicit. This means that opinions on acting vary based on audience connection, star charisma, and the various methods and schools which buttress the profession. Due to this inherent complexity, the usual straightforward and linear-logical approach I tend to take with this series will fall short. 

Instead, I’ll take a look at the ways through which both the audience and filmmakers view acting and connect to actors based on the role and expectations placed on them. To form a complete picture of what acting means to the business of screened entertainment, I’ve split its function in the production into three parts, each corresponding to a different aspect of acting's je ne sais quoi: the actor as extension of the director’s will, represented by the film or television extra; the actor as character conjurer, best typified by the professional thespian; and lastly, the actor as mirror of the audience’s social and psychological expectations, reflected in the charisma and persona of the movie star. 

Living Props

What can be said about extras and amateur non-professionals in a production? They seem inconsequential, usually have little to no speaking roles, and are as nameless and forgettable as a stone in an English poppy field. They’re hardly what comes to mind when you think “actor,” and yet no film or tv studio set would be complete without them. Extras, in fact, form the foundation stone of the acting pyramid through one simple fact: they remind us that actors persist at the behest of the director.

Recall that while directors and screenwriters share a shaky equality in the production process, everyone else on the set dances to the tune of the one literally calling the shots. To embrace acting at its bare bones means to look at what the director demands from it. For one, actors create a sense of place; they are, in this strictly utilitarian sense, extensions of the director’s command of location and space. As a corollary, these additional faces in the crowd also add a sense realism to a scene. These are two vital pieces of the creative process that rarely get mentioned in a script beyond a minor footnote, and yet can change the tone and color of a film sequence. A restaurant with only two people at any time but the witching hour looks and feels unnatural, and unless that’s what the filmmaker’s going for, the audience will tell that something’s “off,” even if they can’t put it into words. As extras, as actors, these anonymous groups add a much needed depth and volume.  

Besides film extras and their underappreciated value, the non-professional performer exists as another category of the “actor-as-director’s-prop” enterprise. They differ from extras in their ability to command the camera’s attention for a while, or even have speaking lines. They add another value to the screen: authenticity. Authenticity is no mere synonym for realism; there’s a subtle difference, particularly when an audience’s reaction enters the equation. Authenticity speaks of what appears to be genuine, based on expectation or experience, while realism handles the brunt facts of a scene (or the world at large).  

Take After Life, a 1998 Japanese film by Hirokazu Kore-eda. As a humanistic supernatural drama whose central theme involves how the memories we make in this life affect what we experience in the hereafter, Kore-eda peppers his film with live interviews of people’s fondest memories. Are the testimonies from these performers “realistic” in the way discussed above? Who can say how realistic a past-life review is “supposed” to be. The key thing is that these interviews lend an authentic feel to the subject matter; the amateur performers move, laugh, break down, and emote in ways which ring true to the audience. Put another way, the difference between realism and authenticity can be chalked up to our level of scrutiny. We take reality for granted, and only notice it when something tilts our view sideways — like watching actors stroll into a downtown London subway during the evening rush hour and seeing only 3 people waiting for the next train. Meanwhile, authenticity demands that what we’re seeing on the screen lines up with how we’d expect it to go in real life - which, ironically, sometimes forces a director to break realism in order to preserve what the audience holds as “authentic.” So while being an extra demands no greater investment from the actor than what you’d expect from a fake tree on a school play set, the amateur actor has the altogether harder task of being natural — not ACTING, but being. Even if they’re fulfilling a role outlined in the screenplay, the director didn’t bring them on board to play a part. Above all else, they need to be authentic, as moviegoers are unusually adept at detecting artifice in a performance.

The Consummate Professional 

Extras and non-pro performers lay the bare foundation for what directors expect from their actors — the ability to extend their vision of space, realism, and authenticity. So far, we haven’t touched on what should be an actor’s most important job: bringing characters to life. And herein lies the domain of the professional thespian. They are the bread and butter of the entertainment industry, the working Joes and Janes who’ll likely never win an Oscar or an Emmy, but without whom neither parades of ostentatious pomp would exist. And yet even here, they still live or die by the words of the director. Though actors do have direct access to the characters as embedded in the screenplay, much of that has been subject to modification by the director, and so their role remains bound to whatever the big man or woman with the megaphone demands of them.

This relationship differs from the dynamics of the theater world. There, actors almost have the rule of the roost in how they interpret characters in the script, and exercise a level of artistic control out of reach for all but the most renowned film actors. This all falls back to the tight grip film and screen directors have on time and space within their medium. Plays and other live-action performers operate on real-time, which presents the perfect frame for actors to shine. But for the screen, everything operates on film time -- which remains under lock and key with the director. Directors cut, edit, and snip time into sequences as the narrative demands, and can thereby stretch or shrink an actor’s presence beyond his or her control. Directors mold every external aspect of how audiences see the actors; through close ups, editing, and angles, the control of a character’s presentation that stage actors utilize so effectively through presence and projection gets neutered by a wide angle shot or an unflattering close-up. While extras and non-professional players stand out explicitly as instruments of the director’s will, even experienced thespians earning a steady paycheck aren’t far from that label themselves.

That said, directors demand a bit more from their front liners than just to stand and “be real.”  The most critical trait of the role actor is expressiveness. Since the camera can zoom in and hold the actor’s entire face or frame in view, a talented director has within his or her power the means to construct emotional and engaging scenes just from disjointed stills of the actors alone. But little can compensate for an unphotogenic face or a stiff carriage. It isn’t all looks, of course; convincing gestures, appropriate body language, and the outward manifestation of inner turmoil all combine to elevate one actor’s depth of expression above another. But above all else, directors demand the ability to offer up crucial impressions or moods from their actors at the right time. Even in live studio shows or sketch comedy series, the closest most screen actors get to the creative control seen in theaters, the film crew - through camera long shots and close ups, as well as the timed use of cut-aways - controls more of what we see of the on-screen players than we realize.

If an actor’s expressiveness holds the pass leading to their place in a director’s vision, then what of those much-vaunted acting methodologies? They have their role, even outside of the star vehicles to be discussed below. But once we establish that the director’s control of film time and space places performers almost totally in his or her hands, we recognize that an actor’s abilities do not exist in a vacuum. It doesn’t help that there are as many ways of analyzing acting methods as there are both actors and scholars of acting combined. In general, actors sparkle and shine when they embody the emotions demanded of a scene. This runs deeper than just expressiveness. No matter how the director uses them, good actors can’t just “act” their emotions; they need to feel them, embody them, and use them to carry the scene. The deliberate decision ahead of time to evoke an emotion leads only to mechanical mimicry, and even if the actor can’t tell the difference, the camera and especially the audience will.

Much of acting, therefore, is built on expressing naturalistic reactions within a scene, and recognizing its subtext. That oft-stated cliche of good acting being reacting has a germ of truth, since reacting to a scene shows engagement and competent actors project their emotions through timely (and sometimes unexpected) reactions. This really hammers in the wedge between filmed and theater acting. Though reactions also matter to stage thespians, the camera holds the power to capture an actor’s face and body posture in a way that can’t be replicated in a live action production. Likewise, the primacy of the camera and actors’ reactions thrusts a scene’s subtext to the forefront. On stage, bereft of the benefits of a closeup, everything must be conveyed through dialogue and posture. But the camera’s all-seeing eye misses not one inch of a facial tic, not a single roll of the eyes. Whatever your lines, as an actor, both the director and the audience scrutinize your performance for the unspoken gestures which lift the full meaning of the lines above the page.

So with all of that said, what, exactly, makes a “good actor?”

 Good acting is being and feeling completely in the “now” of the film reality in which you participate, and then effectively and convincingly communicating this to the audience.

You need to be expressive, but you can’t ape feelings; you need to show emotion, but without the nasty stain of premeditation. To be a good actor, one must take the film’s gestalt as your reality, and act as if your feelings in a scene carry as much meaning as they do in your real life — because, in that moment and time, they do. Films do not “capture reality”; they forge one, and actors must fit as comfortably into that “reality” as if it were the real world. This truth, at the very least, provides a way forward to successful acting in any medium.

A Star is Born

If acting involves the authentic inhabitation and communication of a film’s reality, what extra push propels the everyday worker to the heights of stardom? The movie stars peppered in the bank rolls of Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood and other cinema constellations are without a doubt the first thing that pops into our minds when we think “actors.” In reality, they are a distinct minority, and we should avoid judging the fortunes and talents of a lucky few against the everyday realities of the working actor and actress. But that only begs the question: what, exactly, does it take to become a “star,” and how do they differ from the rank and file actors?

 First, a caveat: for simplicity’s sake, I focus specifically on Hollywood’s star system. The American film industry is the oldest, most well-known, and generally most lucrative in the world, and so dominates most discussions of the entertainment industry even as international competitors continue to rise the world over. Therefore some details of the star system as discussed here may not reflect worldwide; Bollywood, Nollywood, and China’s burgeoning film industry, I imagine, each have their own approaches to the luminaries of their respective businesses. 

One key element about movie stars is that they are as much a product of the public as they are of their particular talents and skills. Stars take the mantle described in the last section — convincingly inhabiting a film reality and getting it across to the audience — and somehow use it to burrow into the filmgoers’ imaginations. Exactly how that happens, particularly why one star hopeful makes the climb while another following the same formula stumbles in the dirt, only Rota Fortuna and the Movie Gods know for sure. Fame can’t be forced, and while studios spend considerable time trying to “stoke” their audience’s appetites, the manufactured fame vehicle offers no greater guarantee of success than a Joe Nobody just starting his acting career with little or no support.  

However, we still have grounds for taking a stab at the commonalities of fame, if not its genesis. About the one thing that unites members of this flickering, fragile club is their reliance on personifying archetypes to capture the audience. Most actors align with a particular “groove” as they develop a corpus, and audiences as well as producers take notice. Though any actor may fall into type after making a film or two, stars usually combine this with exceptional talent (or even just a “look”) and/or fortuitous cultural timing to elevate themselves in the public consciousness. John Wayne’s tough-guy Western avatar, or the breezy, libertine charm of Mae West, may seem to lie within the nebulous domain of talent, but their fame drew just as much from their respective cultural statics — either the longing for an idealized Western masculinity among Cold War fears, or the taboo thrill of satisfying the erotic pulse in a young, liberalizing medium.

By capitalizing on the reigning zeitgeist, competent and/or charismatic actors achieve a status in the public eye beyond their personal gifts. This cements the actor’s persona to their audience. Persona is not personality; an actor’s real personality may differ sharply from their on-screen persona. This persona may be meticulously cultivated, as with the myriad of great genre specialists, especially comedians; or it may develop spontaneously, or even be thrust upon an unsuspecting actor by a studio desperate to extend the life of a series of serendipitous successes. If taken too far, an actor’s persona could easily lead to that dreaded prison of typecasting, fame’s blinder where today’s meteoric success leads to tomorrow's obsolescence. 

But what, exactly, does stardom change compared to the actor types discussed above? In one word, everything. Stardom shifts the dynamic of power on the set ever-so-slightly away from the director’s hands. Stars bring with them a whirlwind of informal power to a movie, fueled by an alliance between movie producers and the adoration of an enamored audience. Stars may snatch a share of the director’s coveted control over film time, demanding adjustments to camera shots, close-ups, and other snippets of movie reality that can make or break a film. Particularly prominent stars can even shape the evolution of a script's characters, while screenwriters often feel compelled to mold characters in the likeness of a particular star’s luminous persona. These acts have the interesting side effect of creating as close to an actual power split between the director and the film’s main lead or leads as possible. Though a film star’s “power” remains informal and fuzzy around the edges, even the most dictatorial directors stay alert to the many ways their movies can unravel if they flub on cooperating with a star who was “born” for the role.

Conclusion

The variable nature of acting forbids any simple list of how to recognize acting. So instead, look out for the key cores of each type of actor, and what they bring to a film:

1. For our extras and non-professionals: A sense of realism and authenticity reign here. Extras add to a film by how little they actually stand out, drafting a believable scenery through their inconspicuous presence, while amateur actors should get the audience to see a particular scene or scenes as authentic to their understanding of the world - even if it doesn’t line up with “actual” reality.

2. The professional actor has arguably the hardest job on the set after the director — being the primary and deeply personal vehicle through which the film or series expresses its own unique reality. They accomplish this primarily through the range of their reactions and emotions, and while virtuosity with dialogue can push a talented thespian to the precipice to greatness, it counts less with the silver or small screens than in the theater world. Instead, good acting must embody a scene’s emotional truths — a vague and fickle objective dependent upon the right looks, the right lines, and the right sentiments and reactions in order to cement the work's constructed reality and sweep the audience along through momentum. Those who master this difficult and highly intuitive skill may, with a good bit of luck and the right environment, ascend to stardom, where the goal now includes getting moviegoers to respond to and approve of an actor’s signature persona. 

Acting is undoubtedly the most recognizable cog in the production line machine. It is also the most protean and difficult to peg down; so much of the craft is intuitive, and I lay no claim to any authority on how acting “should” be in any given work. But by recognizing the different actor categories and where they fit into the director’s grand vision, we may better judge how these essential players bring the script to life.

Criticism Concepts 4: Filmmaking calculus with the Director

 
(Here’s part two of the criticism concepts production. Click here for part 1.)

A few months back, I decided to launch a series examining the many hands which join together to create the film and television works that bring so much joy into our lives. We started with the screenplay, since it provides the blueprint with which to construct the film, even if the idea originated elsewhere. But for most movie goers and critics alike, the answer to “Who made this movie?” rests undoubtedly with one figure: the director. The screenwriter may produce the outline, but the film or series finds its form through the skillful eyes and nimble hands of the one parked in the director’s chair. Yet for all the attention thrown its way, few roles in the creative team are as murky or misunderstood, due largely to its all-encompassing nature. While we all “know” that Steven Spielberg was “responsible” for the success of Jurassic Park, few can draw a clear picture of what he actually did on the set, minus the caricature of a little man in a black beret with a megaphone yelling “Cut!” at appropriate moments.

Though I stand firmly against the errency of fingering one role as “the one” behind a movie or show’s impact, the director has an undeniably central part in transforming the screenplay's rough scaffolding into a grand creative monument. So with that in mind, let’s dive in and uncork the magic behind the megaphone.

 

Contributor 2: The Director

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about - Satyajit Ray

You might forgive the great Indian director Satyajit Ray for his seemingly self-serving observation; truthfully, he’s not far off the mark. Screenwriters, actors, and many others make essential contributions in any production, but the director hovers over the entire process from start to finish. They mind the producers' budget and modify the script as needed; through casting directors, they have a say in finding the right actors and actresses; and they steer what stays and what goes in the post-production chopping block. The director provides the crucial link among the creative, technical, and production arms of a project, and therefore makes the best claim for most crucial member in the whole shebang. 

Though the director's shadow looms large over the entirety of the film and television pipeline, we’re concerned only with its creative function right now. If the screenwriter provides the film’s fundamental structure, then the director’s main job involves injecting that structure with dynamism. Directors control the plot’s scope, set or modify the pacing, and create a sense of continuous narrative flow. If I could condense this to a simple analogy (a preemptive pardon to those who suffer from high school math PTSD) the screenplay is a lot like algebra: structured, relatively static, and concerned with how its pieces fit together. Film direction, meanwhile, is calculus, bringing the structure of the screenplay into an environment which requires dynamic, real-time application of the production’s narrative elements.

As such, tagging the specific nuts-and-bolts of screen direction can never be a point-for-point checklist as with the screenplay; the role fits the turbulent flow of the production process too closely. A basic starting point concerns film time. A director must lift the neatly structured segments of the screenplay and adjust them to the flow of time.This is not synonymous with pacing, that much-used but little-understood word. Pacing involves the rate of movement within a film narrative, while film time incorporates that, plus the general sense of temporal perception the work imposes upon the audience. The centrality of time as a narrative constraint, and how it’s preserved, presented, chopped, or concentrated, represents scripted media’s signature departure from the strictly printed word. Though “pacing,” loosely defined, counts in a novel or short story to some degree, those media can afford to unfurl their narratives in a leisurely manner; few readers, after all, attempt something like Infinite Jest in one sitting. But when you only have thirty minutes to two hours to capture and hold your audience’s attention, you can’t take their compliance for granted, especially if you take your sweet time getting to the point.

In addition, the director molds the narrative’s collective vision. As a film’s supposed primary author, the director must gather the contributions of disparate and often cantankerous creative types into a cohesive (if somewhat motley) crew, ready to set sail towards their ever-widening horizon. And as captain, directors forge vision as much by what they constrain as by what they allow. With a finger on financial and production as well as creative concerns, skilled directors must bring the static screenplay images to life within budgetary boundaries established by his or her producers (assuming, of course, that he/she isn’t also rolling the checkbook). Lastly, the director has primary control over the film’s tonal style. Genre, if applicable, can be outlined within the screenplay, but the director sorts through the various styles that genre may embody and converts it into a visual experience that rings true to the audience. Romantic comedies, for example, may flake from the great mountain of Hollywood like so many interchangeable pieces of flint, but subtle intonations of character direction, of lighting and music, peculiar to that genre add a degree of luster and variance. Though style carries a rather sour taste in the mouths of most directors thanks to over-eager critics applying the term to broad swaths of a creator's work in a fruitless exercise of pattern-seeking, I use "style" solely as it applies to an individual film or series. Spatial acuity also plays into tone, since building the sense of wide open space, or taking many small shots of actor closeups, creates or destroys a sense of intimacy, which has a major impact on how we experience what we watch. This relates to what's called the mise-en-scène, the arrangement of lighting, music, costume, and cinematography which together constructs the camera’s visual logic.

Film Direction: The Good and The Bad

Distinguishing good from bad directing presents the same challenges as writing: you may know it when you see it, but might struggle to put the "how" and "why" into any kind of analysis. The director’s ubiquity on the set compounds this, since the designated auteur will inevitably get blamed for any failing in the film’s narrative.

Good directing first and foremost gives the film a sense of being a cohesive whole, bringing together the myriad collective visions of a feature's contributors — writers, actors, composers — and creating a seamless entity as a result. This demands above all a sense of balance as well as a comprehension of both the genre and expected audience. Good directors make works which immerse the audience into the world as created, and fosters any willingness to suspend disbelief. Likewise, good directors have mastered the art of film time, including pacing and other conditioned temporal experiences imparted to the audience. Controlling the flow of time is perhaps the director’s prime creative raison d'etre, and films live and die by its mastery. Equally important is the competent utilization of space — like the much mangled term “cinematography,” which, stripped of all pretense, denotes the science of capturing light and motion for aesthetic appeal. By that same token, a competent director must pour his or her full attention into the art of casting. Good actors make or break one’s film, so choice casting goes a long way towards a successful production.

Bad directing is, quite bluntly, bad film making. While any number of factors may combine to lift bad acting, a bad screenplay, unfitting music, and a host of other snags from sinking a piece too far down the toilet drain, the director in the end has the final responsibility for how well or poorly the finished work turns out. The worst directors are too hands off with the medium’s numerous contributors, failing to properly synthesize the creative collective and leaving the end product a disjointed, ungainly mess. Poor directors fumble the fine-tuned calculus needed to maintain the film’s pacing and through extension, the audience's engagement. I may harp on the critical importance of film time like a broken record, but it really does demand attention as the most under appreciated yet essential element of good screen storytelling, and its execution lies solely in the hands of the director.

Analytical outline

The inherently dynamic nature of directing eschews any simple outline as built in the previous post about screenplays. Indeed, any movie failing can, legitimately, be placed on a director’s shoulders in some fashion, whether it be in the script, in the acting, or even the post-production. But where the director stands alone in his or her might or folly concerns those specific elements of time and unity; a film or television show could not exist without them, and here, the director truly lives up (or down) to the contentious “film author” label.

• Film time: More than anything, the director controls the flow of time in a work, determines how the story unfolds, and shapes how the audience perceives the events as displayed. 
• Pacing: Does the film seem to drag out or race ahead in certain spots, leaving you confused? Pacing is essential to any production, and if you can’t make heads or tales of where something is headed and why, then your director isn’t doing their job. 
• Internal chronology: Do the events unfold in a time frame that doesn’t stretch the imagination too thin? Did your lead characters, say, plan a robbery, knock over an armored truck, and high-tail it across the country to Phoenix in the span of, oh, 5 hours? This punts suspension of disbelief way left of the goalpost by a good bit, and is a faux pas of a cardinal order. 

• Integrating Visions: The director must bring together various narrative elements into one seamless whole — arguably the most difficult creative component of the job. Although screenwriters, actors, and cinematographers share an especially large slice of the creative pie when it comes to the quality of the final product, the director functions not only to bridge the writer’s vision with the cinematographer’s technical know-how to build a polished product, but to ensure the right actors match the roles they have been given. The rules for integrating this vision, as with so much in the director’s calculus, contain much flexibility and subtlety, so recognizing where and when something goes wrong is more art than science; but the director must always keep in mind the collaborative nature of the set, even with something as fundamentally solitary as writing. 

• Style: As I touched on above, I propose style here to mean something more modest than the usual application: a set of elements which combine to reflect a film or television set's own internal logic.
• Applicability: Does the tone and direction match what one would expect of a work in this particular genre? This skates a fine line, since you don't want to punish a director for attempting something different, and yet, you still want an end product recognizable as what you expected when you walked into the theater. If you came in looking for high fantasy and leave with something completely different, a disconnect between marketing and the director's vision likely bears the blame.
• Spatial manipulation: Are there too many long, overhead shots for a seemingly light-hearted film? Does a film set in a wide-open or constructed world narrow in too closely to the characters' faces at the exclusion of the setting? These aren't cinematography errors; they reflect a wrong-headed commitment to injecting a particular stylistic mood into an environment which does not warrant it.

• Cinematography: Though the director of photography arguably deserves his or her own moment in the spotlight, this vital link ultimately takes most cues from the big chair itself. As both a fine art and a technical science, nailing down what does and doesn't work unfortunately falls into the "know 'em when you see 'em" category, but poor application of cinematography usually involves using a particular angle or style of framing when it would not enhance the film, or using too little or too much lighting to the same effect.

Despite the critical importance of the screenwriter and screenplay, the director's chair constitutes the creative nexus on any set. Turning a static script into a dynamic screened medium remains to this day an art arcane in its methods, daunting in its challenges, and, flawlessly performed, almost divine in execution. But though a film's entire production staff remains beholden to the directors and their jazzy calculus, there remains one crew member who rivals the chair in the ability to make or brake audience engagement. These are the actors, and next time, I'll dive into their own contribution to the film making process.

Criticism Concepts 3: Screenplays and the bones of a story

Film and television provide unique vehicles for creative expression. Unlike the singular vision of a novelist, concerned with forging an individual connection with a particular readership, screened media represents a massive collaborative effort unlike any other form of entertainment. Even theater relies heavily on the chops of its playwrights, with actors playing close to character as crafted on the page. Though stories created for the screen start with the written word, they quickly float into a wider creative world to which directors, actors, cinematographers, and others all stake a claim.

This creates a special challenge for the critic.  Giving a fair assessment of a movie or television program—pointing out what works and how to make it better, as opposed to merely picking at its rotten bones like a vulture—requires a recognition of the many voices bubbling underneath.  The predefined grooves of genre and demographic help guide our expectations, but standing out from the herd demands bringing together these different visions into a cohesive whole, and the strength of the final product rests in how well the creators accomplish this.  A decent movie can get away with a deficiency in any one area with a strong showing in another; a great movie brings out the best of every element, achieving a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.

So with that in mind, we'll begin a short series here on how to walk through and critically examine a film not as a whole, but though each creative collaborator. I don’t intend to provide an exhaustive list of a movie or television series’ who’s-who, nor do I think such an atomized analysis of a holistic medium to be the “proper” method of critique. But acknowledging the many talents who coalesce to make a movie or show work may deepen an appreciation of what each of them individually contributes.  

So without further ado, let’s start with arguably the heart of the matter: the screenplay.

Contributor 1: The Screenwriter

 Writers are the most important people in Hollywood. And we must never let them know it.” - Irving Thalberg  

The quote above hints at a basic though often unacknowledged truth in Hollywood. Even if an idea originates elsewhere, the script and storyboard provide the scaffolding upon which the narrative of a film is built.  A building is only as strong as its foundation, and the foundation begins with a cornerstone; a solid screenplay forms that first slab of bedrock, igniting the interests of a production team who then scramble to complete the grand design. When evaluating the merits of a screened entity from the standpoint of its writing, the would-be critic's principle concern is its structure.  A screenplay should include the divisions of the story—the beginning, middle, and ending of classical storytelling—and provide answers to the Five Ws at the core of any plot: Who is it about, What are they doing, Where and When are they doing it, and Why any of it matters to anyone, in or out of the story.  And of course, a good screenplay should at least hint at the essential ingredient of any good narrative: conflict.  The story's conflict must be clear and compelling, and must resonate with both the production staff, and the screenwriter's target audience.

Besides the narrative structure, the screenplay also determines at least the initial form of the narrative’s characters. Characters sit at the center of most stories, yet no other element relies so much on the creative input of other participants.  Although I argue that effective onscreen characterization owes more to the talents the medium's actors or even director, the screenwriter initiates the creation of well-rounded, credible humans via a character profile.  Though many writers turn their noses up at character profiling under the belief that it stifles creativity or limits the imagination, a detailed yet flexible profile fleshes out characters while keeping them grounded in some semblance of reality. A good profile will cover basic personality construction and a survey of motivations, as well as permit consistency and complexity to continue within the writer’s direction.  This proves critical when creating plot-driven works, where characters serve as much to facilitate the setting as to be dynamic entities in their own rights. As many of today’s most popular genres fall under that broad tent, character profiles land a heightened importance within the screenwriter's creative toolkit.  

Screenplays: The Good and The Bad Screenplay writing is an art with many faucets, but the above should be a good place to dive into critical analysis.  So how do we cut the blockbuster wheat from the B-studio chafe?

A good screenplay covers all of the bases above, besides crafting its subject with enough flare to rouse interest even in the first few pages of reading.  A good screenwriter knows he or she writes for a visual medium, and when setting the pace of their narratives, must frame them in a way that draws the attention of both their imagined audience, and the producers who wield the power of life or death for their nascent story.  Connected to that, good screenwriters recognize that they’re not novelists— they’re writing for the collective effort, not the one-on-one interaction between reader and author. Therefore the screenplay should be detailed enough to give the studio collaborators something to work with, but not so much as to demand extensive pruning. 

A bad screenplay muddles its storytelling, either forgetting the aforementioned core elements, or smashing them in with such incompetence as to turn away prospective viewers.  Note that a bad screenplay is not, necessarily, a bad idea, or even a bad story; the distance between inspiration and execution depends on the writer’s media awareness as much as skill.  I imagine but a fraction of the world’s best novels would turn a producer’s head if they landed in his or her lap.  Though grabbing the reader’s interest as soon as possible can spell life or death for a story in any format, novels have more time to develop and expand over numerous facets and subplots.  Neither producers nor moviegoers are that forgiving. A screenplay demands a more direct and linear narrative style, one which gets at the heart of the drama, clearly states the conflict, and incorporates the narrative elements mentioned above within a concise, reasonable time frame.  All writers worthy of the name understand that they are writing for others and not just themselves; screenwriters should be doubly aware of this, and neglect it at their peril. 

Analytical Outline 

Being the cornerstone of a movie or television series means having a heap of other structures built on top of you, obscuring your essential role. But keeping the above in mind, we can pierce through the mortar to hash out an outline of this essential keystone's direct contribution:

1. The Structure: Remember: a screenplay’s fundamental contribution to a movie is its general structure.  Does the structure make sense?
1. The Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Does a movie/show fail to adequately introduce its main characters or explain their motives and/or purpose for being there?  If so, that reveals a fundamental flaw in the shaping narrative.
2. Conflict: Meaningful conflict rests at the heart of any good story; even solid comedies possess protagonists who desire and antagonists who, however light-heartedly, thwart them.  Keep an eye out for the classic conflicts of literature: Man against Nature, Man against Man, Man against Society, Man against Self, and Man against Fate (sometimes colluded with the Supernatural).  Can you recognize any of those elements over the course of the production? If the conflict onscreen makes not one lick of sense to you, then there’s a rot somewhere down in the source.
3. Beginning, Middle, and End: The beginning establishes our characters and the basic setting, the middle deepens our empathy for said characters and spotlights the central conflict, and the ending rises to climax and offers a resolution.  While certain structural dynamics, like pacing and scene compression, lay with the director and others, a solid screenplay should limit the necessary work by clearly marking those divisions.
2. Characterization outline: Actors bring characters to life, but the screenplay provides the clay they work with.  This is especially important in indie productions, where the individual talents of a big name actor or director won’t swoop in to uplift a shoddy script.  A character profile should provide at least four things:
1. Consistency: Do the characters seem to wander all over the place?  Hold wild swings of thought and values from beginning to end without a sensible reason given?  Foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little scripts, so losing track of who the characters are supposed to be is a serious foundational problem. 
2. Complexity: This may not seem that important if you’re writing, say, a slasher film with disposable teen bodies, but a profile should allow enough complexity to avoid base stereotypes and provide sufficient character motivation, which even the best actors require to fully breath into their roles.
3. Individuality: This goes hand-in-hand with complexity.  Are the characters     mirror images of one another, with hardly any deviation of traits or motives?  If so, it makes for a bad screenplay and a boring film. 
4. Exaggeration: This might seem to clash with the warning about stereotypes above, but tasteful exaggeration, particularly in tense moments, can deepen characterization, arouse interest, and forge empathy onscreen.  Though actors hold the reigns on how effectively this comes across in action, if the scene calls for an “angry outburst,” but fails to determine how angry and at whom (or what), then it will fall a bit flat in all but the most capable performances.
   

   

Take the guidelines above with a grain of salt, but when you next walk into a theater or sit down for your monthly “Netflix and chill,” keeping an eye out for those points. Next time, we’ll visit the directors and how they solve the calculus of film making.

Until then, keep watching.