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.