QUICK TIPS FROM PAST NEWSLETTERS

QUICK TIP: SCENE HEADINGS
Scene headings should state the location of the entire scene as simply as possible, preceded by EXT. or INT. and followed ONLY by - DAY or - NIGHT. No details, no descriptions, no dates, and absolutely no action. If you want the reader - and audience - to know the specific place and/or date, put them in a title card after you begin the first action/description paragraph.

QUICK TIP: REAL TIME
Screenplay scenes play out in real time. Whatever action you describe, it must play out completely, exactly as you write it. So if you say, "Henry gets in his car and drives home," that means the audience will have to watch his entire drive home. In other words, you created twenty minutes of boring action with one sentence. Instead, write, "Henry jumps in his car and pulls out of the parking lot," then cut to the NEXT scene, where we see him at home. The reader will figure out how he got there.

QUICK TIP: ALL CAPS
In Screenplays, words should be written with ALL CAPITAL LETTERS on only four occasions: SCENE HEADINGS; TITLE CARDS (inserts and "supers"); CHARACTER NAMES above dialogue; and when introducing NEW CHARACTERS. DO NOT use all caps to indicate sound effects, tell actors to emphasize a word, or anywhere else, just because you think it looks cool. When you introduce characters or groups who aren't named, indicate them with capital letters anyway: POLICEMAN; PASSERSBY; CROWD. But only use the device the first time you introduce a character; not every time the character appears.

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MORE FUN STUFF

OPENING SCENES QUIZ
Below you'll find the openings from ten feature films. See if you can identify the movies, along with the screenwriters for each one. Simple, huh? The catch is that many of these scenes weren't even in the completed films, but were from earlier drafts of the scripts. I've also taken the liberty of removing any words that make the answers too obvious.

Most of the screenplays are recent, but two are more than fifty years old, and one of those is VERY tough, unless you know a lot about my personal background.

Besides guessing the movies, ask yourself the question you always want to ask about an opening scene: "Have the writers drawn me into the world they've created?" Then click here to read my analysis of what makes these scenes work so well.

Let the games begin!

EXT. SKY

A strong ray pierces the light clouds. Through this, a voice begins to speak.

NARRATOR'S VOICE
And God said. Let there be light!

SCENE #2

INT. SOMEWHERE DARK - DAY
CLOSE ON A BEAUTIFUL STORYBOOK

A stream of light cuts through the darkness illuminating a beautiful but worn book. The book opens, revealing a picture of lovely PRINCESS running over a field with a fairy-tale castle in the background.

We hear the book being read aloud.

VOICE (O.S)
Once upon a time there was
a lovely princess.

SCENE #3

BLACK SCREEN …

A WOMAN'S VOICE is whispering, tinged with SADNESS and REGRET:

WOMAN'S VOICE (V.O.)
The world is changed: I feel it
in the water, I feel it in the earth,
I smell it in the air.... Much that once
was is lost, for none now
live who remember it.

SCENE #4

FADE IN:

HIGH SHOT - EXT. WESTERN GHOST TOWN - DAY
It lies dead, empty and desolate, bleached and rotting under the merciless sun. OVER this, THE MAIN TITLE APPEARS.

BEHIND THE TITLES, we see CLOSER VIEWS of the long-dead town: skeleton houses and store-fronts, doorless doorways, empty and hollow-eyed windows, sagging timbers. There is no sign of human life, no movement. Once, however, the wind rolls and tosses a tumbleweed crazily along the remnants of the main street. Another time, a jackrabbit or a desert rat scampers out of what may once have been a saloon. And in what was once perhaps the pulpit of a church, we see, hanging askew, a large time -and weather- stained board bearing the Ten Commandments, now almost indecipherable. BACKGROUND for the FINAL CREDIT CARD is the first shot, the HIGH SHOT looking down into the town.

DISSOLVE TO:

HIGH SHOT - EXT. HADLEYVILLE - DAY. From the same angle as before, we now look down into Hadleyville as it was. It is Sunday, a little before eleven o'clock. The street below is peaceful, quiet, hot, not too many people about but those who are in view are in their Sunday best. They move slowly, torpidly, feeling the heat of the high sun. OVER the SCENE, a distant church bell tolls unhurriedly.

SCENE #5

EXT. THE COUNTESS OF TRENTHAM'S HOUSE - DAY

It is a grey day. MARY MACEACHRAN, a young Scottish lady's maid, watches a liveried chauffeur trying to start a green 1920's Daimler in front of a London house. The chauffeur, Merriman, climbs out with a crank handle, which he fits and turns.

MERRIMAN
Just start, you filthy
heap of scrap.

MARY
She'll hear you one of these days.

MERRIMAN
I don't care if she does.

MARY
Don't you just?

The motor catches and he stands. While the passenger seats are enclosed, the front driving seat is open to the weather. Mary places a basket with a thermos glass and a sealed, tin sandwich container on the rear seat. As she does so, it begins to rain.

SCENE #6

FADE IN ON:

A STAINED GLASS WINDOW - CLOSE. Sunlight illuminates a complex pattern of symbols and lines. PULL BACK TO REVEAL…

EXT. -PRINCETON UNIVERSITY-PRESIDENT'S RECEPTION-1947

Students in formal dress mill. An uncommonly handsome man stands at the bar, gazing up at the window geometry.

He glances down. The light refracting through his glass draws shifting angles of rainbow on the bar before him.

SCENE #7

Distressed black-and-white film stock. Controlled by men in baggy, 1950s overalls and caps, a stream of molten ore is being poured into pig-iron moulds. Sparks fly in the huge rolling mill. A clipped English accent accompanies the pictures.

MAN VOICEOVER
Sheffield: the beating heart of the
industrial North. Never have men
been so busy, working day and night
to make the steel that is
fuelling the recovery of our nation…

SCENE #8

INT. HANK'S BEDROOM - NIGHT
HANK GROTOWSKI wakes from his dream. Stares at the room.

Sweating. Breathing hard. Jumps out of bed and bolts for the bathroom.

SOUND of Hank throwing up.

ON BEDROOM WALL:

MILITARY CARBINE, M-16, mounted above an ITHACA .22.

PHOTOS ON DRESSER:

-- HANK (age 10) with his father BUCK (age 30) --

Dressed in hunting garb. Standing over a fallen deer, rifles in hand.

-- HANK (20's) and BUCK (40's) --

Hank wears a Marine uniform. Buck stands next to him, a proud father.

-- HANK (30's) and BUCK (50's) --

Both wear correction officer uniforms. Severe expressions. --

HANK (30's), BUCK (50's) and Hank's son, SONNY (10) -

All three dressed in hunting garb. They stand over a fallen deer, rifles in hand. Proud hunters.

-- HANK (40's), BUCK (60's), SONNY (20's) --

Three generations in correction officer uniforms. Hank and Buck are grim. Sonny flashes a sardonic smile.

SCENE #9

FULL SCREEN PHOTOGRAPH

Grainy but unmistakably a man and woman making love. Photograph shakes. SOUND of a man MOANING in anguish. The photograph is dropped, REVEALING another, more compromising one. Then another, and another. More moans.

CURLY'S VOICE
(crying out)
Oh, no.

SCENE #10

FADE IN

The title and credits appear against the snowy panorama of Sun Valley; and the musical accompaniment is a band number….

The last credit DISSOLVES OFF the background of snow (which remains on the screen) and the CAMERA SLOWLY TRUCKS BACK - revealing an ultra smart band in full swing….

The CAMERA, still TRUCKING BACK, now reveals that the snowy panorama is a mural (or backdrop), in the upper left side of which is an artistic map of Sun Valley, with, above it in large type, the words: "SUN VALLEY ENTERPRISE, INC." The CAMERA also discovers a wide window overlooking the skyscrapers of Manhattan. The place, now seen in a LONG SHOT, is an audition room.

It is DAY.

The CAMERA finally STOPS and PANS at MED. CLOSE SHOT range on two important-looking men (MURRAY AND PHELPS), seated in their chairs and listening to the band.

This marks the end of the quiz. How did you do? Let's find out. And the answer is...

PREVIOUS TIPS AND FUN STUFF

ART ARTHUR'S 3 SECRETS
Even though they're in my book, and even though I’ve used these in every seminar I’ve ever taught, I couldn’t begin any list of sage recommendations without quoting my friend, mentor and father-in-law, Art Arthur. Art was a screenwriter for almost fifty years, wrote an Oscar® winning documentary, was Cecil B. DeMille’s assistant on The Ten Commandments, was head writer on the series Sea Hunt, Flipper and Gentle Ben, and created the series Daktari.

Art always said there were three secrets to success at screenwriting:

1. Don’t get it right, get it written. If you wait for your work to be perfect, it’ll never even be good. Get something down on paper, and then keep improving it with each rewrite.

2. Reject rejection. Never take it personally. There are a hundred reasons why scripts get rejected other than the quality of the writing. And there are always a hundred more places to go with it.

and

3. The seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. If you want to be a writer, you’ve got to write. So plunk your ass in front of that computer and get going.

PLAYING DIRECTOR
I learned this trick from my friend Björn Carlström, a producer, writer and director in Stockholm, Sweden. It's a great trick for pacing your scenes, and for avoiding the temptation to fill your script with a lot of cuts, camera angles and directorial techniques that have no place in your screenplay.

When you're writing an action sequence that has no dialogue - a silent meal, a lovemaking scene, a search, a fight, a car chase - write the first draft in one long paragraph.

When you rewrite it, imagine where, if you were directing or editing the film, you'd put the cuts. In other words, where would you change camera shots within the overall scene?

Every place you'd cut the film, begin a new paragraph. By doing this, the pace of your scene will match that of the movie. So a car chase made up of lots of cuts will consist of very short paragraphs - sometimes only one or two words -- and the reader will get through the page very quickly. A romantic scene will have fewer cuts, the paragraphs will be longer, and the pace will be slower.

Using this technique also allows you to focus the reader's attention on specific objects or actions without ever using camera directions like CLOSEUP, SMASH CUT, or TRACKING SHOT - a mortal sin in a submission script. And using this device over the entire script will magically insure that it conforms to the one page = one minute formula.

If you don't believe me, check it out. Read a script for an exciting, fast paced action film, another for a romantic comedy, and another for a drama or love story. Notice the lengths of the paragraphs, and how the differences in style affect the pace and tone of the film.

©2005 Michael Hauge