Screenplay class - homework

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It's Time to Write Your Screenplay assignment:

Listening to a movie

This exercise is the second half of the one you did last week (watching a TV with the sound down). It has three parts.

Turn on your TV set and put on a movie, then turn your back to the set so you can't see the image on the screen.

Part 1) First, just listen for a few minutes, and see how much of the story you can understand from dialogue (and music and sound effects) alone. You'll find that a lot of information is conveyed in the audio (though some will be missing). You'll hear crashes and explosions, for example, but may not know what crashed or exploded.

Part 2) Then turn off the TV for a moment, and jot down what you remember about the scene you just heard. If you're not sure, just write down your impressions. Ask yourself:

___where did the story take place?
___who were the main characters?
___what audience is the movie or television show aimed at?

(Is it a show aimed at guys? women? teenagers? children? older adults? the 18-35 male demographic? or another group?)

You'll find that in most cases, you're able to tell almost instantly from the audio alone what the story is about and get an idea of its target audience. But again, you'll be missing some key things that were communicated only in the visuals.

Try listening to several different types of shows. For example, if you have cable TV, you might listen to any of these:

___ an action movie
___ a romance
___ a show for women on the Lifetime channel
___ a science fiction movie
___ a documentary

The goal of this assignment is to get a gut-level sense of what's communicated in the audio track, versus the video track of a movie, something that's essential for a screenwriter to be aware of.

Part 3: CONVERSATIONS AND WORD COUNTING

Remember that screenplays are light on dialogue compared to stage and radio plays. Even when a script seems to be largely made up of dialogue, the dialogue is usually broken down into small chunks.

For example, I watched part of a movie called Mystery, Alaska today, while typing this. Each time a character spoke, I counted their words before the other person replied. Here's what I heard in the first couple of minutes of the movie:

FIRST ACTOR: 6 words
SECOND ACTOR: 1 word
FIRST ACTOR: 11 words
SECOND ACTOR: 10 words
FIRST ACTOR: 1 word
SECOND ACTOR: 9 words
FIRST ACTOR: 0 words (nonverbal response)
SECOND ACTOR: 3 words
FIRST ACTOR: 3 words
SECOND ACTOR: 6 words

Then I did the exercise again. This time I jotted down some of the dialogue as I listened. I didn't catch it all, but it ran along these lines. Then I went back and counted the words.

MAN: Hey, hi, how you doing? (5 words)

WOMAN: Oh good, you ran out before I could say hi last night (12 words)

MAN: God you look good, how can you look this good? What, do you have like nine children now? (17 words)

WOMAN: Three kids (2 words)

MAN: Three. (1 word)

WOMAN: Ha ha. (2 words)

MAN: Well you look good (4 words)

WOMAN: So you're producing now? (4 words)

MAN: Yeah, I wanted to impress you.

The point is that even when there's a lot of dialogue, it's usually broken own into small chunks. Both words and images are important, but film is primarily a visual medium.