Synchronicity… Do you or don’t you?

Posted on June 24, 2006 
Filed Under Uncategorized

Believe in it that is…

A friend of mine… Very huge in the business and must also remain anonymous (maybe later) has recently talked to me about SYNCHRONICITY.

Apparently, it happens A LOT to me and I never even knew what it was… LOL. Anyway, he’s showing me how I can attempt to use it in my writing and everyday life so why not a blog?

So yesterday, I was doing my usual cruising of the trades while working on my rewrite… Doesn’t everyone rewrite this way?

I happened to come across the article on Billy Wilder and I read it, loved it, and shared it with you below.

So here we are today and again, working on my SPEC rewrite and cruising the news and find yet another Billy Wilder article. The difference being that this time around, I wasn’t cruising the trades.

Another note… My headline below for the Billy Wilder article was taken right from the article itself…

“Playing by his rules” – So now today, I find another article QUITE BY ACCIDENT called, “Billy Wilder’s Rules of Good Filmmaking…”

Accident? Coincidence? Synchronicity?

Well hell… I don’t want to be BORING (*NOTE: Billy mentions this in his article too! WOW!) so why not treat this as SYNCHRONICITY? It’s better than being boring and hey… YOU NEVER KNOW.

Here’s the article…

Billy Wilder’s Rules of Good Filmmaking

And, since this IS a screenwriting blog, why not steal a little from the article as well… LOL.

Billy Wilder’s Screenwriting Tips

As told to Cameron Crowe:

1. The audience is fickle.

2. Grab’em by the throat and never let’em go.

3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.

4. Know where you’re going.

5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.

8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.

9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.

10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then – that’s it. Don’t hang around.

Maybe now we should PICK THESE TIPS APART… Not because Billy didn’t know what he was talking about but because let’s face it… These rules are in his own words.

Remember SUBTEXT? That’s exactly what we’re after here. Let’s go find it!

Rule 1: The audience is fickle.

Right on Billy! You sure as HELL nailed that one. Look at what we’re going through today with the audience VOTING WITH THEIR WALLETS. Not nearly as much audience identification these days and characters we don’t care about… Predictable garbage. Formulaic. Let’s move on…

Rule 2: Grab’em by the throat and never let’em go.

Again, Billy NAILED it. Your screenplay must contain scenes and plot points that consistently turn clichés UPSIDE DOWN! Just as soon as the audience EXPECTS or PREDICTS a specific event to happen, CHANGE IT UP! Make us LEAN FORWARD in our theater seat! Get our attention! Pull the audience into your story by creating sympathetic, empathetic, emotional, flawed, unpredictable characters! Constantly rising conflict and stakes. Almost makes you breathless doesn’t it? Almost makes you want to sit down, flip open the old laptop and get to work…

After you read on of course. LOL.

Rule 3: Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.

This means two things to me. Structure and believability. You must have your characters overcoming the obstacles you throw in their path in a believable way… Ways that would be consistent with the character you created. You can’t all of a sudden show us a mechanic that is now an expert computer hacker unless you foreshadowed that up front. We, the audience, must believe in the action that your characters decide to choose and the only way to do that is to make sure the action is consistent with the character you’ve developed for us. *NOTE: This is where research really comes in handy… And not just internet research. Books and LIVE, PHYSICAL research is often better.

Rule 4: Know where you’re going.

I purposely didn’t talk structure above (even though I think “Rule 3” has something to do with it) because I think STRUCTURE really fits here alongside “Rule 4. Know where you’re going. ” Wow. An understatement. In other words, we’re talking about structure. Not 3 Act, 4 Act (what I use), 6 Act, 9 Act, Hero’s Journey, (12 Act?) Sequences, or the 22 Steps… Of course each one of these theories has their own structure but what I’m talking about here is THE PLOT according to THE OUTLINE. Take one of your structure theories above or your own if you have one and apply it to your outline and PLAN YOUR STORY out. Get it all down. I still use 3 X 5 cards. Use what works for YOU. Get the plan or STORY all plotted out in your outline and then FOLLOW IT i.e., KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING.

Rule 5: The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

In other words, I think Billy is telling us once again, NOT TO BE PREDICTABLE! Okay, so maybe you didn’t listen when “I” wrote it… That’s cool. But now you have no excuse! This rule pretty much speaks for itself but even so, what I think is key here is that Billy is telling us to misdirect the audience. Don’t give them the story they expect or are predicting to unfold. Turn clichés upside down. Reverse the obvious. Use set-ups but don’t be obvious with them. Don’t draw a lot of attention to them… Let us, the audience slap ourselves on the forehead when we see you pay off the set-up. Don’t let any foreshadowing take over the story. Foreshadowing and exposition has to be performed in such a way that we BELIEVE it’s just “par for the course” in the world that you’re showing us.

Geez, this is fun, isn’t it?

Rule 6: If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

Billy, YOU’RE MY FUCKIN’ HERO! How many times have you read in the books or listened to the GURUS (you know who you are – yes, they read this blog) that the 2nd Act is the toughest? Well I guess I just wasn’t listening or reading that day. Actually, I was but I have since come to my own conclusion… That being, to set up the 1st Act so that it’s PERFECT. A perfect, or NEAR PERFECT 1st Act makes Acts 2, 3, and 4 (I use the 4 Act Structure) one hell of a lot easier to pull off. I don’t mean to say that you have to nail that 1st Act in your first draft… The first draft is simply that… The first draft. All that shit you have rambling around up there in your brain about your story that needs to be PURGED i.e., THE FIRST DRAFT. I’ll expand on this in future blogging but for now, look to your 1st Act when it comes time for the first rewrite. Make that puppy shine like a brand new silver dollar. The better your 1st Act, the easier it is to keep your audience. Even if your successive acts break down a bit here and there, you set up that 1st Act so fucking well that you’ll keep the audience GLUED to their seat. Yeah, it works.

Rule 7: A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.

What’s Billy saying? Give the audience something to work with! Let them be a detective. Let them figure out a few things… Just NOT everything. Don’t confuse the audience… Today, (even though a lot of kids in college can’t even tell you who the Vice President is) the audience demographic is very sophisticated. They pretty much have to be… They’re bombarded in ALL DIRECTIONS with the media, sex, lies, news, etc. So, throw your audience a bone. You owe them that much since they plopped down their hard earned money to see your flick… Okay, they plopped down their parents’ hard earned money… LOL.

Rule 8: In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.

This is such a great tip… How many times do I have to read in a screenplay where the main character is “feeling the loss of his mommy, his puppy, whatever.” We can’t see a feeling my friends unless the character PHYSICALLY MANIFESTS THAT FEELING! There, I said it and I feel much better now but how can you tell?

Moving on…

Rule 9: The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.

Okay, I’m willing to take comments on this but my own story structure preference is that by the end of the 2nd Act (for you 3 Act screenwriters), at a minimum, the following plot points should happen:

For screenwriters like me who use the 4 Act Structure, all the above culminates at the end of the 3rd Act instead of the 2nd.

It is events like these that TRIGGER the end of the movie. It is events like these that SUCK the audience right back into their seat and make them hold on for the finish.

Rule 10: The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then – that’s it. Don’t hang around.

Go Billy, GO! Keep the action REVVING. Conflict RISING. Tension BUILDING. Don’t let us up for air. Make us fucking GRIP the hell out of that theater seat! Use REVERSALS during the last Act… “Wow, he’s gonna make it!” “Shit, he’s not gonna make it!” Back and forth, back and forth until your Protagonist achieves his or her goal and ANSWERS the central question of the story. After that, a nice little scene or two of what I call the Visual Epilogue and GET THE HELL OUTTA DODGE!

Why?

Because the movie’s over!

Thanks Billy! I hope someday we can eventually sit around and talk STORY.

Unk

Comments

2 Responses to “Synchronicity… Do you or don’t you?”

  1. TT on July 30th, 2007 6:52 am

    How many pages could be second act break in drama? They key thing- lowest point in the story and bliss of understanding the reasons of trouble- could it be 4-5 pages? (speaking about III act structure).
    It seems to me, that understanding of wrong thinking,acting may go to the act 3…

  2. Unk on July 30th, 2007 6:42 pm

    TT,

    Not quite sure what you’re asking… If you’re asking if the 2nd Act break that leads to the 3rd Act can be 4 or 5 pages…

    Then YES! Absolutely,

    Unk

Leave a Reply




Search