All successful video productions begin, of course, with a well-written script and a lot of planning. Planning can involve everything from budgeting and scheduling to previsualizing your shots using storyboards or animation software. Because preproduction is where you’ll determine much of the look and quality of your project, good planning weighs

heavily on your production and postproduction success.

If you’re eager to start shooting, then it can be tempting to skimp on planning, but foregoing any part of the planning stage can lead directly to increased expenses and headaches. Bear in mind that planning is probably the last time in your production cycle where your project is still truly under your control, so you might as well enjoy it! Once production starts, you’ll have to start facing the reality of things going differently than you expected, so revel in the joy of imagining and planning for how you’d like things to go.

In this chapter, we’re going to thoroughly discuss the writing and scheduling of your project. Due to space limitations, we won’t be covering budgeting or financing in this book. However, there are voluminous budgeting and scheduling articles that you can download for free from www.thedigitalfilmmakinghandbook.com/chapter2.

Preproduction is a very dynamic process. For example, your schedule is often affected by the size of your budget, and troubles with scheduling can often impact your finances, which might shrink your budget, which could result in the need for rescheduling. Both schedule and budget are guided by the nature of your script. Because these processes all affect each other, it’s important to realize that preproduction is not necessarily a linear, step-by-step process. Keep that in mind while reading this chapter. But first, you need a script.

Screenwriting

No doubt, at some point in your life you’ve read a book that’s been made into a movie. And, no doubt, you’ve probably walked out of the movie adaptation thinking “why did they change that part?” or “why did they leave that other part out?” It’s easy to simply think that the screenwriter did a bad job, and certainly moviemakers don’t always share your own take on the emotional tone of a particular book.

More often than not, though, movie adaptations are very different from their source books because cinema and prose are simply very different art forms. To think that a book can be directly translated into a movie shows an ignorance of the particular narrative, pacing, and content differences that exist between these two forms. Someone once said, “Trying to talk about music is like trying to dance about architecture.” Trying to make a straight translation from written text to moving images is almost as difficult.

The point is that screenwriting is a very particular type of writing, and as such, it demands a good amount of study and practice. No amount of production can save a poorly written script, so it’s important to spend the time building a sturdy screenplay.

No matter what type of project you’re shooting—feature film, TV show, documentary, or corporate video—you still need to understand the basic concepts of good storytelling and strong screenwriting.

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Finding a Story

We’re going to spend a lot of time talking about “story,” so let’s get some basic concepts out of the way. Consider the following:

Mary had decided to go for a walk, so she called her dog, Spot, got his leash, and went outside. She walked down the sidewalk and crossed the street in front of the small, neighborhood grocery store. She liked the store and was always happy to see the “regulars” buying their food. She kept walking until she got to the park. As always, the park was filled with dogs that were running, and jumping, and catching Frisbees. Both she and Spot really liked it in the park.

Not much of a story, huh? In fact, Mary’s story isn’t really a “story” at all; it’s just a series of events. That series of events could continue for pages and pages, covering all of the events that happened during Mary’s day. In the end, we would simply have a much longer, boring description of a bunch of events.

“Maybe Mary is just a boring person,” you might be thinking. Certainly, subject matter has a lot to do with making a story interesting. If Mary was an international super-spy instead of a woman walking her dog, the story might automatically be more interesting. However, even with the seemingly boring events of Mary’s life, it is possible to tell a more compelling story:

Mary was going stir crazy. She’d been stuck in the house all day long. and it was starting to get to her. She called her dog, Spot, put on his leash, and went outside. She crossed the street in front of her neighborhood grocery store. She liked the store and always felt comfortable there. But now, when she looked in and saw the lines of people loaded down with heaps of cans and boxes, she just felt more stir crazy. She walked on until she finally reached the park, and there, at last, she was able to relax.

This story might not be Shakespeare, but it does feel more like a story than a simple chain of events. However, both stories contain exactly the same series of events. Nothing new happens in the second story—it’s still just a tale of a woman going for a walk with her dog—but in the second story Mary has a goal: she’s stir crazy, and she needs to relax. This goal is stated in the very first sentence.

The simple addition of a goal provides a structure and direction to the tale, transforming it from a chain of events into a story. Why does this difference matter? Because the goal we created is not just for Mary. By stating it, we’ve also given the reader a goal—something to find out, and a reason to continue listening.

Story First

No matter what type of production you’re planning, your first writing task is to decide what your story is about. Industrial and corporate presentations, music videos, documentaries, marketing or advertising pieces—they all need to have clear, well-defined stories even if the story is as simple as the one about Mary and her dog.

Structure

In the preceding example, we took a pretty boring chain of events and turned them into a story by giving our main character a goal. However, we did something else as well: we gave the story a structure. If you look at the second story, you’ll see that it has a very definite beginning, middle, and end.

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In the beginning, we learn that Mary has a problem: she’s stir crazy. In the middle, we see her go to a store, which is normally comforting, but this doesn’t solve her problem. Perhaps her problem is worse than she realized. In the end, she finally finds a comfortable place to be and is no longer stir crazy.

Learning this simple structure will do more than anything else to help you tell better stories and make better movies. Not only will you be able to create movies that are more interesting to your audience, but by following this structure, you’ll also have an easier time finding your way through the writing, shooting, and editing of your movie.

This beginning/middle/end structure is commonly referred to as the three-act structure, and it is the basis for all Hollywood movies. If “beginning, middle, and end” is too abstract, think of the three sections as setup, complication, and payoff. In our story about Mary, the setup was that she was stir crazy, the complication was that her usual way of calming down didn’t work, and the payoff was that she finally found peace.

Failure to deliver on any of these parts results in very predictable audience reactions. Projects that have a weak first act (the setup) are usually perceived as boring; projects with a weak second act (the complication) are usually seen to be lacking in substance; and projects with a weak third act (the payoff ) are typically regarded as pointless.

This beginning/middle/end structure can be applied to any type of production. Even if you’re doing a simple corporate training video that is nothing more than a talking head, what that head says should have a discernible structure. Remember, a three-act structure is designed to keep your audience engaged and compelled.

Treatments

If you’ve worked out the details and structure of your story, you might want to consider writing a “treatment” before you begin writing the script. A treatment is the telling of your story in prose. Sometimes, your treatment will have some dialogue; at other times it will simply be a description of what’s happening in the story. Treatments help you organize your thoughts, get any initial images and dialogue down on paper, and serve as a way to present your story to other people. If you have a producer or investor who’s interested in your story idea, showing him a treatment might help you secure some funding.

Three-Act Structure

Hollywood movies use a very well defined, three-act structure. In fact, it’s so well defined, you can usually set your watch to it.

nAct I: The beginning. Wherein the main character is introduced, along with his or her nemesis, and the supporting cast. The main character’s “problem” is also introduced. This section usually takes 20 to 30 minutes.

nAct II: The middle. The main thing that happens in Act II is that the character’s problem is complicated. This is the bulk of the movie, and any subplots are usually introduced and solved here. Very rarely are new characters introduced in this act. Halfway through the act—that is, in the exact middle of the movie—the main character’s luck will change, and things will start working out in his or her favor. By the end of the second act, the solution to the problem will be clear. This act is usually 40 to 50 minutes long.

nAct III: The end. In this act, the main character’s problem is solved. This usually takes about 20 minutes.

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Yet another way to define this structure is: Act I: Introduce the hero; Act II: Torture the hero; Act III: Save the hero.

Unlike a stage play, there is never a clear separation of acts presented in a movie. The actual change might be a simple cut from one scene to another, or the scene might just barrel on ahead into the new act. It’s not important that the audience knows where the act breaks are, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.

You don’t have to follow this structure, and many movies don’t. However, it is a fairly simple, effective way of ensuring a compelling story that “moves.”

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark follows the typical Hollywood structure very closely, so it provides a good example of how the three-act structure works. (If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll need to see it in order for this explanation to work.)

Act I ends right after the fight in Marion’s bar. We have all of our main characters, and we have our problem—find the Ark before the Nazis do.

Act II ends when the Nazis show up to take the Ark off the ship. More specifically, it ends when Indy swims to the Nazi sub and climbs aboard. With Indy, the Nazis, the girl, and the Ark all on board, we’re ready for the final confrontation.

Act III ends with the end of the movie. He got the Ark. (Never mind that it was taken away from him by the good guys, he still did what he was supposed to do.)

More About Structure

For more about feature film structure, check out the article on structure at www. thedigitalfilmmakinghandbook.com/chapter2/structure.pdf. This essay provides a much more detailed analysis of the structure of Raiders.

WHAT TO WATCH

Baghead is a hilarious film with a solid three-act structure, but thanks to the unique twists and turns of the plot, and the original characters, it is far from formulaic.

Writing Visually

Most beginning screenwriters make a very simple mistake: they forget that movies are made up of pictures. Yes, there’s dialogue and talking and music and all that other stuff, but first and foremost: movies are a visual form of storytelling.

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Let’s go back to Raiders of the Lost Ark for a moment. Consider the beginning of the movie. In Raiders, you have to go two minutes into the movie before you encounter the first line of dialogue, the line “The Hovitos are near.” In other words, the first two minutes are told completely in pictures. Sure, there’s music and sound effects, but you can turn the sound down, and the scene still makes sense.

In screenwriting, “show, don’t tell” should be your constant mantra. To understand more about writing visually, check out the essay WritingVisually.pdf located at www.thedigitalfilmmakinghandbook.com/chapter2.

Write Silents

One of the best ways to practice writing visually is to deny yourself dialogue. Writing silent shorts and scenes is a great way to learn how to explain things without talking. An example of a silent short script entitled Consumer Electronics can be found at www.thedigitalfilmmakinghandbook.com/chapter2/ tutorials2.

Creative Writing Exercises

nIf you’re finding yourself a little short on ideas for scripts and stories, why not give yourself a predefined structure of some kind. That’s what we did for the Consumer Electronics script that’s included at www.thedigitalfillmmakinghandbook.com/chapter2/tutorials2. We wanted to write a short, and we wanted it to be something we could shoot easily, so we decided to try to think of a story that could be shot in a house, and that featured a single item that one might find in a typical home. To make the exercise a good lesson in visual storytelling, we also decided that it had to be a dialogue-free scene. We’ll be using this script throughout our production examples. If you’d like to follow along with your own project, try writing a simple story using the same guidelines.

nOne of the hardest tasks that a writer faces is cutting his script, but it’s very easy to write things that are too long. Usually, any “fat” in your script becomes obvious once you start shooting. Sometimes, though, you might have a good, tight script, but still be bound by time or money. That was our problem when we decided to shoot a scene from Richard III. Take a look at the Richard III.pdf file in www.thedigitalfilmmakinghandbook.com/chapter2/ tutorials2. This is the complete Shakespeare scene, and it runs over 10 minutes when read by the actors. We wanted it to come in around 5 minutes. See if you can cut it down to that length. (To see our cutting, with some explanations of why we chose the cuts we did, check out the Richard.pdf file we use in the Chapter 14 tutorials folder on www.thedigitalfilmmakinghandbook.com.)

nA simple writing warm-up. Although it might not always feel like it, your brain constantly makes things up and tells stories. Very often, though, this storytelling part of your brain is tripped up by the rational, sensical part of your brain. Try this simple yet difficult exercise: Get a piece of paper and a pen and start writing a story while counting backward, out loud, from 100. Count at a consistent, regular pace and don’t stop writing. The idea is that the counting will tie up that sense-obsessed part of your brain, freeing the contentcreating part to write. Lean too far in either direction, and you’ll stop counting or stop writing. When you do it right, you’ll usually find that you get stories that are very dreamlike. Just as you need to warm up before exercising or playing a musical instrument, performing writing warm-ups before you start can often greatly ease your real writing work.