DZ-16: Masters of Time and Whitespace

Listen if you want your screenplay to feel cinematic before a director ever reads it.

Chas and Stu are joined by Khrob Edmonds - an award-winning filmmaker - to discuss manipulation of time...

... on the page!

Cinema is a time-based art, and one of the primary tools in film editing is manipulation of time. A closer look at sequences in the scripts of PULP FICTION, THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, WOMAN IN BLACK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, UP, WHIPLASH, and THE UNTOUCHABLES reveals how master screenwriters use the same time-controlling techniques on the page. The closer a writer can recreate cinema's use of time on the page, the more of an "I'm watching a movie" feeling you can generate for the reader. Or, as Chas puts it, writing like you'd edit. We discuss use of white space, super-present tense, decompression & compression, Soviet Montage Theory, the Kuleshov effect and just a tiny amount of grammar.

NB: Stu refers to '-ing' words as 'present participles', John August (cited below) refers to 'present progressive'. Turns out there's a subtle difference between the two! Grammar esoterica FTW. See: What Is the Difference between Present Participle and Present Progressive -> http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/f/progpartdiff.htm.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

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Thanks to our Patrons, especially Khrob, Theis, Sandra, Jesse, Randy, Paulo, Thomas, Jennifer, Malay, Alexandre and Lily.

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FILMS

• PULP FICTION (1994) — (w) Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino (d) Quentin Tarantino
• RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) — (w) Philip Kaufman, George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan (d) Steven Spielberg
• THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002) — (w) William Blake Herron, Tony Gilroy, Robert Ludlum (d) Doug Liman
• THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007) — (w) Tony Gilroy, George Nolfi, Scott Z Burns, Robert Ludlum (d) Paul Greengrass
• THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987) — (w) David Mamet (d) Brian De Palma
• THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012) — (w) Jane Goldman, Susan Hill (d) James Watkins
• UP (2009) — (w) Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom Mccarthy, Pete Docter (d) Pete Docter
• WHIPLASH (2014) — (w) Damien Chazelle

SCRIPTS

• Study the script: PULP FICTION (1994) — Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino
• Study the script: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) — Philip Kaufman, George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan
• Study the script: THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002) — William Blake Herron, Tony Gilroy, Robert Ludlum
• Study the script: THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007) — Tony Gilroy, George Nolfi, Scott Z Burns, Robert Ludlum
• Study the script: THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987) — David Mamet
• Study the script: THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012) — Jane Goldman, Susan Hill
• Study the script: UP (2009) — Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom Mccarthy, Pete Docter
• Study the script: WHIPLASH (2014) — Damien Chazelle

SHOT ZERO DEEP DIVES

• Staging the violence in TOTAL RECALL 1990 vs 2012

LINKS

• Read: John August: On the present tense
• Read: John August: Present tension
• Read: Scriptnotes: Ep 52: Grammar, Guns and Butter
• Read: Storyteller's Journal: Decompression: Writing Comics Like Movies
• Read: Wikipedia: Soviet Montage Theory
• Read: Wikipedia: The Kuleshov Effect
• YouTube: The Kuleshov Effect - Original experiment
• Read: No Film School: The History of Editing, Eisenstein, & the Soviet Montage
• YouTube: Miramax (YouTube): Mia Overdoses
• YouTube: MovieClips (YouTube): A Shot of Adrenaline
• YouTube: MovieClips (YouTube): Bank Evacuation Plan
• YouTube: MovieClips (YouTube): Ross and Waterloo
• YouTube: Woman in Black - scary scene
• YouTube: Lego Indiana Jones and the Fight on the Flying Wing
• YouTube: Married Life - Carl & Eddie
• YouTube: MovieClips (YouTube): Knife to a Gun Fight
• YouTube: The Odessa Steps And Its Descendants
• Read: ACMI Dreamworks Animation: Interrogating Gingy
• Read: Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Presentation Storyboards by Joe Ranft (short article of pitching storyboarded sequences in animation)
• Read: Goodreads: Cinematic Storytelling by Jennifer Van Sijll
• Read: Director's Guild of America: A Tribute to Director Steven Spielberg

RELATED EPISODES

• DZ-05: Shifting audience point of view and heightened emotions

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