Hi Glenn. I would like you to know that your 06 most important questions video is helping me in writing my thesis. I understand that the thesis is a "story" that I have to tell and it should take the reader through the problems, anxieties and struggles of the people I'm studying about. Your videos go beyond your expectations! Thank you.😊

@writingforscreens

3 ай бұрын

I'n really glad to hear this - it's interesting that the idea can apply to non-fiction. Thank you so much for the comment, it really means a lot to me! Best of luck on your thesis!!

That was a great answer (so you CAN answer after all!) regarding getting one's art to fit the time. I could not agree more. I'd like to think the pace of my novels, for instance, fits this time and not so much the time of novels written long ago, and hopefully matches the pace of film and television today, even if what I am writing is sometimes a period piece, such as a noir detective thriller from 1949. Your novel seems to fit the time it happened in, as well, does it not? But they still have to fit the way readers and viewers interpret story, today. Another difficult goal is to make it timeless. The Big Sleep was published 85 years ago, it WAS a period piece, and it still feels timeless. But that is still my goal.

@writingforscreens

3 ай бұрын

Thanks! Yes, I guess the point was my answer was "it's complicated..." more than not-answering :)

I recently watched an outstanding movie and its "Making of" documentary, which is illustrative of the importance of being aware of the current climate in art in the time *and* place you are in. It is called, "El Dia de la Bestia," in English, "The Day of the Beast." It is best in its original language with English subtitles. It was made in Spain in 1995. It's a rare, really good comedy-horror. According to one of the documentaries I saw about it (in Spanish, can't find it again right now), Spain had not had a lot of films of the fantasy genre for a while. So, this film rode a wave of success in part because of this. Satanism, heavy metal, and dark humor are not going to be for everybody--and that's okay. The people who love this kind of thing (I'm one of them) love it all the more for the fact that it is makes us feel like we are insiders, on the inside of a lot of jokes and social or cultural themes. It appeals to people who most of the time feel like outsiders. That's the appeal that makes films into cult classics, which this one has become. To the writer who fears people not getting it, I know lots of people who would not get this film, at all. But the people who do get it love it so much, it makes up for all the people who don't get it. It's not a bad thing to write for smaller audience, rather than a broad one these days. With the Internet the way it is, you can reach the people who crave material in a smaller niche. "El Dia de la Bestia" probably couldn't be made in the U.S. right now due to all the censorship. But that's a whole other issue.

@writingforscreens

3 ай бұрын

Thanks - yes, I do think more and more the idea of writing for a niche audience is becoming good business as well as good art. But I suspect that writer's concern was less about the commercial pressures and more the frustration of being misunderstood.

Hi Glenn, missed the live session (it was great in replay too) but I have a question: Christopher Nolan said he wrote the screenplay for Oppenheimer all in first person, even the non-dialogue - I walk in the park with Einstein not O. walks - to emphasize the interiority of the POV throughout. I can understand doing this in a novel as that's the final product. But a screenplay is not the end result and getting the desired effect depends on the whole process. Would a first person approach in the screenplay make such a difference? Not to say Nolan was wrong, it obviously worked, I just found it interesting. Do you know of any other screenplays written this way? Would it be acceptable to the industry if you weren't Nolan?

@writingforscreens

3 ай бұрын

This is one I can answer: I have never heard of anyone else doing this. And no, it would not be acceptable at all - the only reason he could get away with it was he's Nolan. I think it only worked because he was also directing and producing.

@tomlewis4748

3 ай бұрын

​@@writingforscreens Putting it directly on the page in a screenplay is a little bold. I do think there is a way to 'think' of a script in 1st-p without actually writing 1st-p pronouns into the screenplay, and this can be a helpful tool to get a story to 'feel' first person. You don't have to be Nolan to do this, either. It's all about psychologically inhabiting your protagonist. Become them, then write them. The thing is, no movie is in first person (if we exclude first person narrative voice-over, which is quite uncommon, but works beautifully in stories like Dexter and Mr. Robot). All film is actually a version of 3rd-person objective view, or 'camera' view. That's the medium. We are outside the protagonist and see what they do. We are objective observers. We can't see into what they are thinking, which defines first person, that can only be implied and then inferred. But you can get a film to feel like first person. In 1974 Roman Polanski scuttled all narrative VO from Robert Towne's script for Chinatown, then he structured the story as completely linear, and he put Jack Nicholson in every scene (no scenes happened outside Jake Gittes' experience or in flashback). The end result, the film feels like it is a first-person story (Polanski was influenced by Raymond Chandler's novels, which are written in first person). For instance, rather than a wide shot from the curb of Gittes' car following Hollis Mulwray down the street, which would put distance between the protagonist and the viewer, he put the camera in the back seat and shot over Nicholson's shoulder, which created intimacy and bonding with the protagonist.

@writingforscreens

3 ай бұрын

@@tomlewis4748 Yes - but in terms of what's on the page, choices like how you shoot things are not in the script. When a director is involved, they take the script into the land of shots and cuts...but the script just has to work with words. I do believe your choice of words can "steer the mind's eye" without referring to shots or angles - and that the "closeness" of our view to the protagonist is adjustable within the language without changing to first person.