Rewriting the short film Family Law consumed my time a few years back, but it was worth the effort once the film festival season began. The film took home numerous awards including: Best Screenplay and Best Actress. I therefore decided it would make for good examples in my sharing of the rewriting process.

The premise of the film is:

Law firm partner Carol Peters fights to keep the legal sharks away from a teenage boy who wants emancipation from his oppressive home life. Cornered by the boy’s choice, Carol risks disbarment unless she can find the deal-changing answer in a gentle whisper.

During the rewriting process I had numerous conversations with a copy editor and the film’s star, Francine Locke. Both were experts in their field, but neither fully comprehended the rewriting process. In fact, while Francine loved the over all story, she felt the dialog was too “in her face and wordy,” which it was in the draft she read.

I explained the process and pointed out how in the first draft I tend to write the dialog “on the nose” to make sure I understand what information needs to be presented to the audience. It’s not until a later draft, when I deal with subtext, that I rewrite the dialog. This explanation made me realize that there are many beginners in the industry that may not have a handle on the rewriting process, so I decided to share a few thoughts.

Here are five steps that will help the rewriting process.

1. Rewrite for Excellence

I haven’t met a writer who didn’t love their first draft. This is a byproduct of a writer’s attempt at reducing their great story ideas to writing. However, as a script doctor, I’ve had to inform many writers that their job wasn’t done after the first few drafts. It takes several attempts to get the writer to realize that he only placed the foundation of the story on the page and not the fully envisioned movie.

Through self-examination of my emotions and a second objective look at my story, I found that my first draft scripts aren’t close to what they’re meant to be. The reality is that while my story concept starts to surface in the first draft, the rest of the story needs to be fleshed out through additional rewrites.

A few years back, I was invited to an awards ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which gave me an opportunity to chat with two of the Oscar winning writers of the movie Cars. They shared how it took them three years to rewrite the story with some scenes having as many as 22 rewrites, winning them an Oscar and sequel.

2. Throw Away the First Draft

After my final rewrite of Family Law, I realized there were no sentences from my first draft that survived and there were only a few sentences from my second draft that were unchanged. I could have easily thrown out the first draft and started over with a better chance of achieving my story goals.

Unfortunately, most writers fight to keep as much of their original writing in tact. This lowers the quality of their story and blinds them from an opportunity of telling the story from a better perspective or from another character’s point of view, which is sometimes better than where we start. My first draft of Family Law was about the teenage boy, but I found a stronger story by shifting the perspective to the female lawyer.

Jack B. Sowards, known for his television Emmy winning scripts, wrote Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Until the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, Jack’s story about Khan was considered by fans as the best Star Trek story out of the dozen features released. Jack is a man dedicated to quality and as a matter of practice, he literally gets up out of his chair, walks over to the wastebasket and drops his first draft in.

3. Rewrite the Good to make it Great

The main reason actress Francine Locke decided to produce Family Law was a desire to find a creative vehicle that could feature her talents at festivals. This type of pressure might typically cause a writer to make only slight adjustments to a script, missing an opportunity of making it great. I’ve personally learned that greatness can only happen when the writer is willing to scrap what is good to make room for what is great.

Just about everyone wanted me to change the climax in Family Law to make it bigger, but they missed the important fact that it needed to be realistic, plausible and lead into the resolve. While I accepted some rewrite recommendations, I chose to hold to my third draft version of the climax. The result during sneak previews, I watched every person tear up during the climax, proving that a writer should only rewrite what he or she agrees would improve the story, not just change it.

4. Be Clear, Not Obvious

Every rewrite should help clarify the story and main character. It’s important to keep the audience in the emotional flow of the story and not bog them down with huge backstory or “in your face” dialog. The writer’s focus should be on bringing out the characters and plot, rather than muddying the waters with attempts at iconic phrases like “I’ll be back.” French writer Gustave Flaubert suggested that the “artist should be felt everywhere and seen nowhere.”

In Family Law I found myself writing what I perceived as a perfect climax and resolution, but some people were concerned that the audience might not catch the visual nuances that turn the story into a grand slam. Francine even asked if I should write a more obvious ending. However, with me being a person who always understands a film well before the writer hits me over the head so I “get” his film, I decided to trust that my audience would be more visually intelligent, than not. I kept my ending.

5. Take Time for another Rewrite

Going into a film project with a goal of seven plus rewrites helps me to depersonalize the story and see it objectively. While I’m not suggesting that my passion drops, I am being realistic about the numerous drafts that lead to a successful story. Many screenwriting consultants have been quoted saying, “Screenwriting is not about writing, but rewriting.”

The Script Supervisor from Family Law asked her screenwriting professor about the number of rewrites it takes to make a good script great. The professor cited a student who did two rewrites, and then sold the script to a production company, who then did two more rewrites before production. While the professor suggested that four rewrites was all that was necessary, the Script Supervisor couldn’t help but wonder what the minimum number of rewrites would be to guarantee a strong and tight story.

For me, Family Law, a six-minute short film, took five rewrites in order to pull on the heartstrings of the audience and deliver the theme to their heart. Had it been a feature, I’m sure the rewrites would have been well over a dozen or two.

I learned a long time ago that rewrites are not something to avoid, especially since the WGA makes sure you get paid well for rewrites. Instead, it is a tool to double check the tightness of your characters, plots and subplots, emotional patterns, dialog, etc. If each rewrite focuses in on just one area of a script like format, continuity, visualization, etc. it would take a minimum of a dozen rewrites to make sure every aspect of a script is excellent.

The script writing process is all about rewriting. The fear of having too many rewrites is only held by beginners, as the professional counts on polishing each aspect of his story through the rewriting process. When you have a powerhouse actor on your film project like Tom Hanks, you plan on lots of extra rewrites to live up to his excellence in performance. Tom Hanks’ Cast Away saw 250 rewrites over five years before he was ready to film, leading to 22 nominations and 11 awards.

Copyright © 2013 by CJ Powers

Master filmmakers have been touting the importance of shooting a master scene for decades, but in today’s visual society it’s no longer necessary. Now that we’re in the third generation of film viewers, the audience has learned how to read films and no longer need things explained to them. The 1977 release of Star Wars demonstrated that proof with its use of time compression and fast cuts.

Prior to Star Wars, a scene might unfold like this:

A car stops alongside of a curb in a residential area. The key turns off and is removed from the steering column. The car door opens and a reporter steps out. He reaches back into the car for a pen and notebook. The reporter closes the door and locks it. Walking around the car, he moves up the sidewalk toward the house. His winged tip shoes move quickly up the staircase. He pushes the doorbell. The reporter readies his notebook and pen.  The door slowly opens revealing a nervous woman who doesn’t want her story published.

After Star Wars, a scene might unfold like this:

A car stops alongside of a curb in a residential area. The doorbell ring echoes within the house, as a nervous woman opens the door to find a reporter standing with pen and paper in hand.

Both presentations get across the important story elements of a reporter after a story and a nervous woman who doesn’t want it published. The first one was typically shot as a master scene and then reshot with potential close-ups, over the shoulder shots, and other types of shots that might include a crane or dolly. This type of shooting would require a good four hours to rehearse and shoot on location.

Today, the scene would open with a moving crane shot of the car parking along the curb. The interior shot might use a dolly to follow the woman to the door and a jib arm might move it into an over the shoulder shot as the door opens to reveal the reporter. The exterior shot would be filmed within an hour by the second unit team, which would keep costs down. The interior would be shot on the sound stage in less than an hour.

The cost of creating the master scene is high for independent budgets and its benefits are no longer relevant for today’s filmmakers. The odds of more than 4 seconds of a master shot being used is slim; let alone using it in its entirety. If the scene is really long, there might be a reason to use a master shot to break the scene in two, but most of the time filmmakers will only use the first or last 3-4 seconds of the shot – Making the remainder a very costly unusable piece of film.

Today’s directors plan ahead for the visual and emotional impact they want their audience to receive. The director requires only the shots that truly move the story forward and the rest are no longer filmed, thanks to an audience who can now read a series of images as a story. This new ability of the mind filling in the visual gaps will soon make film the most prolific story telling device for years to come. Thanks to YouTube and other online services, that day is well on its way.

The only remaining reason for a master shot is to cover for an unprepared director or one who isn’t able to visualize the film in his head. The master scene would capture how the actors play out the scene in order for the director to figure out what camera angles and shots he might need to tell the story. Today, however, storyboards, animatics and previs (previsualization) can easily replace this technique, while saving a significant amount of money and time.

Copyright © 2013 by CJ Powers

Illustration/Photo © Illustrart, James Steidl – Fotolia.com

There are 4-5 different names for the 180˚ Rule depending on when it was taught. The rule was first acknowledged in the early 1920s. The film attributed with its origin is the 1925 film The Battleship Potemkin.

The below diagram illustrates the rule. The dotted line is an imaginary line that represents the action line or the camera line. The camera is aloud to be set up anywhere on one side of the line, giving it 180˚ of understandable angles that can be shot. The red camera broke the rule by crossing the line, which will create an image that may not be readily understood and can confuse the audience.

By viewing the shots each camera position captures will help bring visual clarity to the rule. The below picture is the establishing shot captured by the “2 Shot Both” camera. The image helps the audience to understand that the officer in the purple outfit is on screen left, looking right. The audience also understands that when the purple officer is looking screen right, he is looking at the red officer. And, if he is looking screen left, he is looking away from the red officer.

The next picture is the “CU Purple” camera that captures the close-up of the purple officer. Because he is looking screen right, the audience knows he’s still looking at the red officer even though he is not on screen. It is a simple illusion that our mind fills in to create continuity of story and understanding.

The next picture is the “CU Red” camera that captures the close-up of the red officer. Because he is looking screen left, the audience knows he’s still looking at the purple officer even though he is not on screen. By cutting back and forth between the two close-ups, the audience has the illusion that they are talking face to face.

The next picture is the “Red” camera that captures a close-up of the purple officer from across the action line. While the purple officer is still looking at the red officer, the audience thinks he turned around and is looking away from the red officer because of the direction he is facing, which is not the same as the establishing two shot.

This flipping of the image is unsettling to the audience and creates significant confusion. This pulls the audience out of the story until they can reorient themselves to the virtual surroundings they are witnessing.

Now that you understand the rule and why you can’t break the action line, there is a way to cheat the camera placement so you can move all away around the full 360˚ circle. This can be accomplished by rotating the action line.

Rotating the axis is a difficult skill that requires a few extra rules for understanding. First, whenever you change shots, the next camera has to be placed at a minimum angle of 30˚ difference to the previous angle. If this is not done, then the shot will appear to be a jump cut, which can be disorienting to the audience.

The second rule is that you can’t move from the “CU Red” camera to the “Red” camera because it would be visually jolting for the audience. You can, however, make the movements incremental between 30˚ and 90˚ at a time. This means that you can move from the “CU Purple” camera to the “Red” camera without jolting the audience. But, once you’ve arrived at the “Red” camera, you can’t go back to the “CU Red” without moving back incrementally as you rotate the axis back.

In other words, once you’ve moved from the “CU Purple” camera to the “Red” camera, the action line is now perpendicular to its starting point. This gives you a new 180˚ rule that allows you to use any of the camera setups from the right side of the diagram instead of the cameras across the bottom of the diagram.

Copyright © 2013 by CJ Powers