I will be unable to attend any of the Screen Australia consultation sessions occurring this month as I am overseas but offer some thoughts of my own for anyone interested. This is a re-publication of a piece I posted on my blog a few weeks ago. Other related post links can be found at the end of this piece:
We live in a world in which ‘content providers’ are increasingly
expected to work for free – musicians, writers, illustrators and others who
toil in the creative realm.
Those ‘content providers’ amongst us who write screenplays know all
about writing for free. It’s what we do most of the time. Our choice, of
course. No one is twisting our arms, holding a gun to our heads, but would any
of us dream of asking our plumber, electrician, accountant or doctor to work
for nothing?
As a new era begins at Screen Australia it is to be hoped that
incoming Chief Executive Graeme Mason and his team in Script Development will
be open to constructive feedback from screenwriters. If this months consultations are any indication, it seems so. Here is my long distance feedback:
Treat screenwriters with respect.
It will not be possible to provide the majority of us with funds to
develop our screenplays most of the time. This is just a fact of life. Without
first rate screenplays we cannot make first rate films or television. A
statement of the obvious, of course, but given the number of undercooked and
often downright shoddy Australian screenplays that go into production, a
statement of the obvious that is worth making. Saving money in script
development (too few drafts, the quality bar set way too low) and then
investing millions of dollars in the production of second rate screenplays is
false economy.
Get the script right before investing
If Australian film and TV is an important and integral part of
Australian culture, then we screenwriters provide an invaluable service and
should, at the very least, be treated with professional respect. We are
prepared to work for nothing because we love and believe in what we do but
would be much happier and be prepared to write those extra half dozen drafts if
you stroke us a little. Be nice to us. Talk with us. We will not bite. In fact
we will probably be pathetically grateful to have the importance of what we do
acknowledged. It would be a pleasant change. If you like one of our
screenplays, if you can see its potential to become a film or TV program with
the potential to connect with Australian and international audiences, pay us to
write those 7th, 8th 9th and 10 th drafts and
don’t invext production monies until the screenplay is as good as it possibly can
be.
More experienced, talented and wiser filmmakers than myself have
addressed the question of how first rate screenplays come into being. Consider
the following from Paddy Chayevsky - the only screenwriter to have won three
solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay – with Marty, The Hospital
and Network:
“The best thing that can happen is for the theme
to be nice and clear from the beginning. Doesn’t always happen. You think you
have a theme and you then start telling the story. Pretty soon the characters
take over and the story takes over and you realize your theme isn’t being
executed by the story so you start changing the theme.”
Screenwriters are often working from a gut feeling that there is a
story waiting to be found in the idea, theme, characters, images, opening scene
or whatever it is that has inspired them in the first place. There are more
questions than answers at the outset when we state at a blank screen or blank
sheet of paper. We are flying blind and may be for weeks or months. Sometimes
an idea can gestate for years before we can give it a shape that we can assess
ourselves, let alone one that can be read and assessed by others. This is
unpaid work. It will always be unpaid work. We do not expect to be paid for it
but, please, Screen Australia can do better than write us a form letter that
includes segments of an assessment written by an anonymous Reader. The
telephone is a wonderful communication device if face to face dialogue is
impractical. (I will return to this question later.)
Ernest Lehman, whose credits include Sound of Music, Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Wolf, West Side Story, The King and I, Hello
Dolly, and Portnoys Complaint, makes the following observation about
the screenwriting process:
“The more the struggle, the better it probably
is. The struggle indicates that you are not accepting the first or the second
or the third thing that comes to mind at any given moment when you are writing.
You are constantly rejecting and trying harder. Once you put the words on
paper…even though they are going to be rewritten, the die is cast. It is better
that you can hold out, saying to yourself, ‘This isn’t good enough. No, that
isn’t good enough’ – keep rejecting, even before you hit the typewriter key or
you write on a yellow pad. Once you start putting words down, that means you
think the words are almost good enough. The greater the struggle the higher the
level of critical faculties at work.”
It is this struggle that is time consuming. For the most part we
screenwriters don’t receive any remuneration for this time spent ‘struggling’.
Even if you think our screenplays are dreadful bear in mind that Screen
Australia Project Managers and assessor/Readers have been wrong about what
audiences want to see more often than they have been right. The acquisition of
a desk in an air-conditioned office, a job description and a regular wage does
not make any Screen Australia script assessor (by whatever title) an ‘expert’.
S/he is fallible – just as is the screenwriter whose months of unpaid work s/he
is assessing.
Here is Jean Claude Carriere writing about ‘process’.(Carrier’s
screenwriting credits include: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise, The
Tin Drum, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and, in collaboration
with Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon.
“The screenplay…goes through a toddling,
stammering phase, gradually discovering its strengths and its weaknesses. As it
gains confidence it begins to move under its own power. Work on a screenplay
often operates in a series of waves. The first waves are exploratory. We open
all the doors and we begin to seek, neglecting no path, no blind alley. The
imagination launches unbridled into a hunt which can lead it into the vulgar,
the absurd, the grotesque, which can even make the imagination forget the theme
that is the object of the hunt. Whereupon another wave rears, surging in the
opposite direction. This is the backwash, the withdrawal to what is reasonable,
essential, to the old question: exactly why are we making this and not some
other film? Quite simply, what basically interests us here? This is the moment
when we survey the road the characters have travelled, but we also look at
verisimilitude, structure, interest, levels of audience understanding. By
backtracking, by returning to our original garden, we obviously abandon along
the way the majority of our illusory conquests – but not necessarily all of
them. We return to scholarly, sometimes commonplace and even pettifogging
concerns. They help us take stock. In the heat of the chase we might easily
have forgotten to bring along our supplies, our drinking water, our maps. Rare
are the authors who can afford, on their own, this balanced and impartial
movement between the two zones.”
Carriere is writing about process – one that begins with inspiration
of some kind and leads the screenwriter in directions he or she may never have
imagined possible. Screen Australia’s assessment process, demanding as it does
synopses, treatments, writers notes, forces the screenwriter to leap ahead of
herself – to answer questions (in a way that will be palatable to an anonymous
Project Manager/Assessor/Reader) that should really remain as questions until
the best and cleverest screenwriting solutions emerge. This can involve
travelling several roads that turn out to be dead ends before finding the road
that serves your story, theme or characters best. Weeks and months of work can
be relegated to ‘trash’ if no solutions emerge.
At the risk of belabouring the point, this stage in the screenplay
development process is one for which screenwriters are rarely paid. Again, I
have no problem with this but when a screenwriter has spent months, in all
likelihood, engaged in processes similar to those of the screenwriters
mentioned above, communicate with them either on the telephone or face to face.
This is not only the polite and professional way of engaging with screenwriters
(pitching in Hollywood is a time-honoured tradition) but also, I would suggest,
an acknowledgment of the fact that Screen Australia Reader/assessors have no
better track record developing screenplays that are made into films that
audiences actually want to see than the writers, producers and directors
(filmmakers all) who make the applications. Some humility on the part of Screen
Australia in the script development area would be greatly appreciated. And
Screen Australia’s track record this past five years suggests that humility is
in order!
There are at least two positive reasons why face to face meetings
should occur as often as possible:
(1) In the dialogue that takes place between screenwriters and Screen
Australia Readers/Assessors/Project Managers, ideas can be tossed around and
often, in my experience, can lead to new ideas emerging that had not
occurred to either the screenwriter or the Assessors. As Carrierre writes: “Rare
are the authors who can afford, on their own, this balanced and impartial
movement between the two zones.” Project Managers, who should, for the
most part, be experienced filmmakers themselves, can play a positive role of
the kind Carriere describes and make positive contributions towards the
development of higher quality screenplays.
(2) Ours is a collaborative medium – film and TV. There is no ‘is’
and ‘them’. There is only ‘we’. Screen Australia’s tendency to remain aloof
from filmmakers this past five years, to engage in no dialogue other than of a
kind controlled by Screen Australia, has fostered an ‘us’ and ‘them’
relationship between our peak film development body and we ‘content providers’.
This is counter-productive. None of us in this period of rapid change has a
monopoly on good ideas, new ways of approaching both the development and
production of stories that can be be broadcast now on multiple platforms.
Applicants and Assessor/Reader/Project Managers should be engaged in dialogue
in which each has respect for the professional skills of the other.
Barely a day goes by when someone does not start a spirited debate
online (Facebook, usually, thanks to Lynden Barber) about Australian film. This
invariably devolves into a discussion about distribution models and the quality
of our screenplays. The ideas floated are often quite inspired and inspiring
and the ensuing dialogue exciting. Which brings me to another random thought to
float into the ether:
An interactive Screen Australia website for
filmmakers
Screen Australia could (and I believe should) establish a website (or
an area within its current website) where online forums of the Facebook variety
can occur. Other than the requirement that contributors are respectful of ideas
that they disagree with there should be as few rules as possible regarding what
topics can be broached and debated. There is one rule that I would like to see
governing such a website (though I may be in a minority here) and that is that
there be no ‘anonymous’ comments. It should not be necessary for anyone to hide
their identity. I do understand why it is that some people choose to do so.
They fear retribution at the hands of those in bureaucratic high places whom
they fear may take exception to their criticisms – implied or overt. They
should not. Screen Australia should not either punish critics nor reward those
who form part of an inner circle cheer squad. The field should be level. A
prohibition against anonymous comments would also serve as a disincentive to
those (and there are plenty) who hide the fact that they have a personal axe to
grind by making anger-driven criticisms that do not serve the goal of
collaborative dialogue.
Amongst other things, such an online forum would serve the function
of making it possible for potential collaborators (screenwriters, producers,
directors) to make contact with each other, swap ideas, screenplays etc.
Regardless of how effective such a website might be in terms of
encouraging dialogue and debate, it is also important that there be regular
fora in which filmmakers, film bureaucrats and Reader/Assessor/Project Managers
meet face to face in the spirit of collaboration.
I have made two other blog entries relating to the kinds of changes
that I believe could be considered by Screen Australia. They are to be found
at:
and
http://jamesricketson.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/an-alternative-screen-australia-script.html
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