The script
The screenplay (original title English Screenplay - the foundations of screenwriting ) is a written guide published by Syd Fields in 1979 for the writing of film scripts . In German it was published in an updated edition with 463 pages as The screenplay: the basics of screenwriting; Step by step from the concept to the finished script in a translation by Kerstin Winter in 2007.
The book is considered to be the standard work of film dramaturgy , since the later published script literature ( e.g. McKee's story and Krützen's dramaturgy of the film ) largely refers directly or indirectly to Syd Field's approach, mostly in the form of content criticism of the great simplification of the dramaturgical structure of feature films or his expressly for-profit intentions to teach writing scripts that are easy to sell. His follow-up book, The Script Manual. Exercises and instructions for a good screenplay from 1984 ( The Screenwriter's Workbook ) expresses this advisory attitude even more clearly.
Field himself calls the model of film dramaturgy developed by Field “paradigm”. The paradigm explains how a good fictional film is made and guides each chapter with concluding exercises on how to write scripts of this kind yourself. Field's model is normative in nature: It is a guide that explains how to write good (here “commercially successful”) scripts.
content
Basic pattern of the dramatic structure
“The script is a story told in pictures.” Where pictures also mean “ metaphors ”. The standard script for mainstream films is 120 pages long and the feature film lasts 1 minute per screenplay page, i.e. 120 minutes. It is divided into three acts that are in a ratio of 1: 2: 1 (30min: 60min: 30min) in terms of duration.
The first act is the exposure (the introduction of the main characters and the main conflict), the first 10 minutes (also called hook = hook) should grab the viewer. Towards the end of the 1st act (between the 25th and 27th minute) comes the first major turning point (1st plot point) of the film. The second act consists of confrontations and an “erotic moment”, at the end of which the second major turning point (2nd plot point) occurs between the 85th and 90th minute. The third act offers the resolution of the conflicts in the form of a happy ending .
The fabric
Formally, the story, the story told by the script, has to be summarized in one sentence, this test ensures that the film is understandable . In terms of content, the story draws on all sources available to the scriptwriter. The first best source is self-experience (which Field also includes media experience such as film and television ) the second best source is self-conducted interviews to tap into the wealth of experience. The last best source is research (reading books on the subject of the film, i.e. the main conflict of the film plot).
The figures
The main character is the " nexus of the story ". Who a character is shows himself in his actions alone. What a character does when she is alone (private life), how she treats her loved ones (relationship life) and what she does and doesn't do at work (professional life). For the film to be good, the character has to act as one would act in such a situation. The test question is: What would I do if I were in this or that situation? First, the scriptwriter has to be clear about what his character wants. He has to motivate this basic need of the character through an experience in the character's past (backstory). Then he should write a fictional life story ( biography ) of the character (between 3 and 10 pages in length).
How a character becomes a story
There are two ways to start working on a script: The first way is to use an idea as a starting point. This idea doesn't have to be highly philosophical: Field's example of an idea is “Three guys raid the Chase Manhattan Bank” . Then figures are invented that give life to this idea. In this step, three to ten-page fictitious résumés ( biographies ) are written, of which the best is chosen as the main character. To make the finished script easier to sell, the characters should be written to suit movie stars . Based on the main character, all important secondary characters are then determined (according to the principle of conflict maximization), because only conflicts between the characters keep the story going. It is then only a small step from the elaborated network of relationships between the characters (character constellation ) to writing the film plot.
The second way to start working on a script is to skip the phase of the search for ideas and start directly with writing character biographies. The central film plot conflict can then either be taken from the character's written biography (more precisely from the character's past, i.e. their backstory) or, as a scriptwriter, one resorts to contemporary conflicts as they are present in the mass media (e.g. the environmental crisis , a war or a demonstration against nuclear power plants ). The author must be aware of the central conflict in the film plot because he or she is aligning the entire script with it.
Conclusions and beginnings
The story that the film or the script tells progresses in a straight line in time as in the material: At the beginning of the film (the so-called exposure), it must be clarified who the main character ( protagonist ) is, what he wants and who or what he is about it prevents it from reaching it. In addition, the beginning has to captivate the audience. The script is written from the back, that is, from the target state that the film plot amounts to. The use of a film frame provides a “nice cinematic effect”: the opening and closing scenes have a lot in common (e.g. the location or similar repetitive events). Field then shows a successful film beginning by analyzing the film beginning of China Town .
sequence
A sequence is a series of scenes that are held together by an idea and either space or time constancy (continuity principle). The idea-persistence of the sequence is owed to the basic principle of the story to deal with a main conflict (finalism). The spatial or temporal stability of the sequence is owed to the technical requirements of the film : the film camera can either stay in one place and let time continue or it can change location and continue filming elsewhere.
Plot point
The “paradigm”, as Field calls his model, should be checked by everyone when they watch feature films on a daily basis, because “the form of scripts is constantly changing”. Not only the first two acts (good feature films) each have a plot point, each (good) scene has many plot points. The big two plot points of the nudes are "functions of the main character".
How scene plot points can be determined more precisely, i.e. what exactly happens here in the film plot (what the character does or suffers), is not explained in more detail. The aforementioned periods of time (between 25th and 27th as well as 85th and 90th minutes with 120 minutes of film running time) are available for determining the act plot points, supplemented by the formal note that a plot point is a Scene or a whole sequence can be long (in more recent editions Field adds this: even a single line of dialogue or an act of a character can form a turning point) and the content-wise very general comment that the plot point is a conflict in the film plot of a film character Sets gear. For the scriptwriter, the act plot points are the target points towards which he writes the scenes or arranges the written scenes.
scene
As a film viewer, after watching a good feature film, you never remember the entire film, but only one or two good scenes . No matter how good an individual scene is in itself, only a scene that fits into the paradigm can become a lasting memory scene - that is, one that is woven into the film plot and does not stand out in blocks.
Like an overall film, scenes can also be divided into three parts: beginning, middle and end. Since the principle of scarcity rules in feature films, the beginning of the scene is often cut off and started in the middle of the action ( medias in res ). This is possible without any difficulties in understanding, since the film viewers ( audience ) have already been shown the necessary information (presentation of the characters and demonstration of conflicts) at the beginning of the film (exposure) and are therefore able to take advantage of many subsequent scenes (which do not feature new, i.e. unknown characters or Start conflicts).
Basically, action scenes in which there is action and no talk can be distinguished from dialogue scenes in which there is talk and no action. The focus should be on creating feelings in dialogue scenes. Scenes should also be written from behind (like nudes): First you have to consider the aim of the characters in the scene, then the location of the scene, then the time of the scene, and finally the characters' action and speech. Flashbacks should be avoided, because they break with the principle of the linear progression of the film plot ( principle of finality ). Dialogue scenes serve either to prepare the following action or to reveal the (true) character of a character (in that the statements of the character can be compared as a contrast film with the following acts of the character).
However, there are no general rules as to how exactly the content of scenes is designed. It should be noted, however, that actors like to play scenes against the grain, which as a screenwriter - as far as possible - should be taken into account.
Adaptation
An adaptation is the translation of a book (a novel or a drama ) into the medium of feature film. Film is action: it consists mainly of filmed perceptible actions by actors . The novel, on the other hand, is a mind game: it mainly shows the inner workings of the characters through written language. The drama is a play on words: it mainly consists of speeches by the actors due to the limited space available on the stage , which makes excessive acts (such as chases ) impossible. Because of this fundamental difference between film and other media, the principle of fidelity to the original is nonsense. It is important to grasp the idea of the work and then to represent it with cinematic means, i.e. translated into concrete actions of characters.
Form of the script
There should be no directing or editing instructions in the script text, this is the responsibility of the director or film editor and not of the scriptwriter. What the scriptwriter has to make clear, however, is from which point of view the scene is shown: From whose point of view is the scene experienced? In addition, Field provides specific information on the structure of the script text (font sizes, line spacing, etc.).
Structure of the script
Field recommends the "card method" when writing scripts. To do this, you write a scene incident (as a statement) on a card. The resulting cards can then be arranged playfully within the framework of the paradigm until the best scenes have been sorted out and arranged in the most effective way. An alternative method would be to write a four- to twenty-page short script ( treatment ) that does not contain any formulated dialogues, but rather the scenes summarized in sentence form.
Writing the script
Writing the script itself is a process that cannot be explained or taught in more detail. Nevertheless, it is a learnable process, learnable through practice. You practice by writing three hours a day without interruption and at least three pages of the script for a total of about 100 days per script. After about six weeks you have a rough script of about 200 pages. This raw script has to be shortened to 140 pages in about three weeks. In another five weeks, the script will be given the final touches, although the paradigm may be violated here.
criticism
Field recognizes that the plot points are figure-related and that a film needs significantly more than two turning points, but he does not go into this in more detail in this document. In later new editions and major extensions, he mentions a so-called “midpoint” once, another major turning point in the middle (60th film minute with 120 minutes of film running time) of the second act. But he does not go into detail here either. His “paradigm” does not fully do justice to the complexity of the dramaturgy of mainstream feature films, this is particularly evident in the second act. The strong focus on the main character either completely hides the secondary characters and subplots or devalues them as mere feeders for the main plot, which themselves are not worth any structural analysis; the paradigm shares this deficiency with the film-dramaturgical model of the hero's journey .
His suggestion that the form of the film dramaturgy, i.e. the paradigm, changes over time or that it may be broken by the scriptwriter in the final editing phase, contradicts the generality claim (universality principle) of his paradigm for every good film, which he has often stated in many places. The only time-related change in the paradigm that Field mentions in this text is the change in the end of the film from tragic open ends in the 1960s to closed happy endings from the 1970s to the publication of his text (1979).
In interviews, Field even goes so far as to claim that all good feature films fit into his paradigm, even the so-called art films (such as those playing with love ). The fact that this is obviously not the case arises from the fact that a main concern of many art films is to break with the mainstream , which Syd's paradigm tries to grasp.
Some of Field's writing aids are not very helpful: When writing a script, how should you take into account that the actors will play the scenes completely differently? Here, for example, McKee is more precise and therefore more helpful: Figures are never allowed to do or say directly what they really want or think: We are also familiar with this principle in everyday life, where only crazy people always do everything and say what they want.
literature
Primary literature
- Syd Field: The script. Basic pattern of the dramatic structure. 1979. In: ibid. a. (Ed.): Screenwriting for television and film. A Manual for Education and Practice. Munich, Econ Verlag 2001, pp. 11-120.
- Syd Field: The Script Handbook. Exercises and instructions for a good script. Frankfurt a. M., 1984: Zweiausendundeins Verlag 1993 (6th edition).
- Syd Field: The script. The basics of screenwriting Berlin, 2005: Autorhaus Verlag 2010.
Secondary literature
- Robert McKee: Story. Principles of Screenwriting Berlin, 1997: Alexanderverlag 2000.
- Dennis Eick: script theories. A comparative analysis. Constance, 2006: UVK publishing company.