A few times I’ve heard people say that all screenwriters should at least attempt to make a short movie. It always sounded like good advice, but until last night I never really understood the significance of why.
I was sat there trying to edit the sequence of Dr Crabtree speaking to Jess on the phone. A simple sequence, so I thought, which I wrote to hint at the backstory idea that Dr Crabtree is protecting Jess, and here he lies to save face at the embarrassment that he’s told her she’ll never find the book and suddenly it arrives on her doorstep.
Obviously this is no deus ex machina conceit I invented, but a thoroughly developed idea that is more or less completely hidden in the short (mainly because, in Dramatica terms, I’ve hidden the Impact Character storyline).
When we were shooting the sequence Ben did just three takes, two medium shots and one close up. He did more or less the same thing each time, with some minor variations. Each time it didn’t sound quite like I imagined, but trusting Judith Weston’s advice to forget my preconceived ideas and trust the actors more, I let it slide. What he was doing still felt right, just not quite what I expected.
So I’m sat there last night thinking, this guy has just found out that the thing that he is trying to protect his young protege from has just been given to her more or less on a silver plate. As I say, the backstory in my mind was that he didn’t know it had been sent to her, and knowing that Mr Widdershins is the owner of the book, it could only mean that he’d failed in his bid to protect Jess. Now Mr Widdershins has realised who she possibly is and would be angry with Dr C for hiding her away.
I tried several edits, not hard when I only had four takes and a couple of cutaways to play with, but even so, it just wasn’t making sense in my head. Midnight rolled past and I was getting more and more agitated and unhappy.
Then it struck me. The way I had Dr Crabtree in my mind was a little selfish and perhaps a little bit of a coward. The way Ben plays it he becomes much more selfless. He obviously already knows that Jess has been sent the book and perhaps already been torn off a strip by Mr Widdershins, both of which actually make more sense in the flow of the story.
Now his words and actions start to become more selfless. Despite knowing he’s in the sh*t, he still tries to protect her the best he can, making his character, in my mind anyway, richer and deeper.
A huge realisation (and I mean mind expanding, whole-world-pivoting-round-to-form-a-new-view-of-reality mental shift) started to dawn on me about just how much a story can warp and change during the production process, and how this can be quite often for the better (although I can see it for the worse as well).
After all, the actors (and director if someone else is directing) are going to come to the script with the same lack of preconception that the audience will have when they see the final film. They will often see the real truth in what you write, even if your confused and befuddled brain has twisted it into something else.
Further to that I began to understand how the warp and weft of the story as it’s created and put together and presented on film to an unsuspecting public meshes together with the words we write on the page.
The only way I can describe it is thus: When I think about the script I tend to think with my heart – I care about these characters, I care about the story, I care about the script. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy. But I’d failed to see the story mentally, only understand it logically. Yeah, I’d envisioned each scene as I wrote them and storyboarded them, but I’d failed to fully understand how each scene would play against each other, how each one will have an emotional impact on the viewer, based on what they had already seen. I suppose rather than seeing each scene as it’s own little island, I began to fully appreciate the whole story.
Suddenly the world suddenly became a much bigger, better place.