Screenplays: Crash Course Film Production #1 Video Lecture | Know more about Hollywood Film Industry: History, Production, and Criticism - Art & Craft

Hi!
I’m not Craig.
But you’re in the right place; this is still
Crash Course Film.
My name is Lily Gladstone, and I’m excited
to spend the next fifteen episodes with
you exploring film production – how movies
actually get made.
We’ll talk about all those jobs that are
listed in the credits, and how movies take
a huge amount of collaboration, whether
you have a crew of tens or thousands.
We’ll go behind the scenes to see how movies
are planned, shot, and edited, and take a
peek at all the equipment involved.
And we’ll learn how films are marketed and
distributed, whether they go to movie theaters
or straight into your home.
But, before we get anywhere near lights, camera, action...
We need to start with a road map that gives everyone in the cast and crew the directions they need to make a film.
It’s time to talk about the screenplay.
[Music Plays]
In most of these videos, we’ll be learning about how the vast majority of narrative fiction films get made.
And to do that, we need to start with the
screenplay.
A screenplay is a written version of a movie.
Think of it as a blueprint.
It’s not the final product; it’s a set
of plans to guide a team of artists, craftspeople,
and engineers as they produce a film.
Every screenplay is formatted with three basic
elements: sluglines, action, and dialogue.
Each new scene begins with a slugline.
It’s written in all-capital letters and
acts as a code to convey information to the crew.
A slugline might look something like this:
INT.
Here the INT. stands for interior, meaning
this scene takes place inside.
If the scene takes place outside, the slugline
would start with EXT. for exterior.
The second word tells us where the scene
takes place, which is important information
for a lot of the crew.
The location scout needs to find somewhere
to film the scene, the production designer
alters the location to make it fit the world
of the film, and the cinematographer decides
how to light it.
But before any of that happens, the line producer
uses the location to help figure out how much
the film is going to cost.
The same goes for the last word in the slugline,
which describes when the scene takes place,
usually either day or night.
Besides giving information to the crew, this
can affect the cost of the movie, partially
because shooting at night is more expensive.
After the slugline comes the action.
These are short, assertive sentences that
describe who’s in the scene and what they’re doing.
Since you watch a movie unfold over time,
the action is written in present tense.
So instead of writing: “Iron Man flew
across the sky,” you’d write:
“Iron Man flies across the sky.”
The action is also limited to what the audience
can see and hear.
In a novel, you can describe what a character
is thinking and feeling.
Something like: “Luke Skywalker feels miserable.”
In the screenplay, you’d have to write an
action to show us how he feels, like:
“Luke Skywalker hangs his head and wipes away a tear.”
There are a lot of guidelines and tricks to
writing action lines, but the most important
rule is: show, don’t tell.
Remember that this is where the thoughts,
feelings, and themes of the screenplay are
turned into actions you can see.
And the final piece of a screenplay is the
dialogue.
These are the words spoken by characters.
Feature-length screenplays are usually between
90 and 120 pages.
And each page typically becomes about a minute
of the final film.
This is more of an average than a hard rule,
by the way.
Some dialogue-heavy pages will likely be shorter
than a minute, while some pages with lots
of action may end up longer once the film
is shot and edited.
Now, some stories are better suited to the
screen than others.
Different media have different strengths,
so what makes a good poem or graphic novel
won’t necessarily make a good movie.
A film creates an immersive visual world – that
“illusion of reality” we keep talking about.
And within that world, it can tell a story
packed with complex ideas and emotions.
Movies tend to focus on three main things:
a protagonist, which is the film’s main
character; a goal or objective, which is something
the protagonist wants; and obstacles, which
is whatever’s standing between the protagonist
and their goal.
Think about a heist movie.
Maybe a master criminal wants to steal the
world’s biggest diamond, but finds herself
facing off against a rival thief.
Or a romantic comedy, where an awkward-but-loveable
introvert wants to date their outgoing neighbor,
but is afraid to leave the comfort of his
routine.
Protagonist.
Goal.
Obstacle.
These are the building blocks of a screen
story, and it’s from these that everything
else emerges, like setting, character, theme,
and tone.
Now, the protagonist doesn’t necessarily
have to be the story’s hero.
Films are full of anti-heroes like Travis
Bickle in Taxi Driver, or accidental villains
like William H. Macy’s
character in Fargo.
Usually, a movie’s protagonist will grow
or change in some way in pursuit of their goal.
The master criminal might learn humility as
she attempts to steal the diamond.
Or maybe the introvert overcomes his social
anxiety to befriend his love interest.
But the most important thing for the screenwriter
is finding ways to make all of this come across visually.
One way to do that is by following what’s
known as the “Hero’s Journey.”
This is a template for character development
that was popularized by the American mythologist
Joseph Campbell.
By looking at myths from cultures all over
the world, Campbell identified twelve common
steps taken by main characters as they transform
over the course of a story.
These range from resisting the call to adventure
and meeting their mentor, to facing their
biggest fear and surviving a final ordeal,
armed with everything they’ve learned along the way.
The Hero’s Journey was famously used by
George Lucas when writing Luke Skywalker’s
journey from Tatooine farm kid to Jedi knight.
Some screenwriters love it, while others think
it’s a stale, overused formula.
But if you’re looking to write your first
screenplay, it’s not a bad place to start.
Once you have some characters and plot points,
you need to throw some conflict in the mix.
Conflict moves a story forward, and helps
us identify with the protagonist as they’re
struggling against their obstacles.
And screenplays can have different kinds of
conflict.
External conflict occurs whenever the protagonist
encounters physical obstacles.
Take the first Lord of the Rings film, The
Fellowship of the Ring.
Our protagonist, Frodo, has a goal: to destroy
the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.
No problem, right?
Except, in order to get to Mount Doom, he
has to travel across the known world, avoid
an endless army of orcs and monsters, and
outwit this powerful fiery eye that’s searching for him.
Not to mention, he’s the shortest guy in
the movie and they make him walk barefoot
the whole way.
They don’t even give the poor guy shoes!
On the other hand, internal conflict is when
the protagonist wrestles with some emotional
or psychological obstacle.
For Frodo, that could be his ignorance of
the wider world, a lack of faith in himself,
or even his jealousy and selfishness.
Usually, the more conflict the protagonist
faces, the more they transform to overcome it.
But that doesn’t mean that the fate of the
world has to be at stake in every single screenplay.
The writer should scale the conflict to fit
the kind of story they’re telling.
Like, in Bridesmaids, Kristin Wiig’s character just wants to be a good maid of honor to her best friend.
She faces a lot of external conflict, from
a rival bridesmaid to some severely undercooked Brazilian food.
And internally, she feels conflicted
about her best friend getting married, the
loss of her bakery, and her self-worth.
The universe isn’t going to implode if she
doesn’t succeed, but we still empathize
with her as she struggles to achieve her goal.
Now, once you have some ideas for the story
you want to tell, how are you supposed to
organize them all?
Screenwriters often use something called Three
Act Structure, which is based on theories
by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle
from more than 2,000 years ago.
The idea is simple: that every story has a
beginning, middle, and end; and that certain
kinds of events happen in each section.
Act One sets up the world of the screenplay,
introducing us to the characters, and identifying
the protagonist and their goal.
In the Wizard of Oz, most of Act One takes
place in Kansas.
It’s the black-and-white part.
We get external conflicts between Dorothy
and that mean lady down the street, as well
as Aunt Em.We also learn that Dorothy is unsatisfied
with her life and dreams of something more
exciting, somewhere over the rainbow.
Once she’s transported to Oz, she meets
her antagonist, the Wicked Witch of the West,
and we learn that her goal is to find the
wizard so she can go home.
In Act Two, the protagonist faces increasingly
difficult conflicts as they pursue their goal.
They meet allies, encounter successes and
setbacks, and are often brought to a point
of hopelessness.
For Dorothy, this is when the wizard refuses
to take her home unless she can defeat the
Wicked Witch.
To get what she wants, she’ll have to face
her fears and do the seemingly-impossible.
Finally, Act Three contains the climax of
the film.
There’s usually some epic face-off between
the protagonist and antagonist, the person
who most directly opposes them.
That confrontation usually decides whether
or not the protagonist achieves their goal.
And in most Hollywood screenplays, they do.
Dorothy gets back to Kansas.
Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star.
Simba defeats Scar and restores the circle
of life to the Pride Lands.But the guidelines
of the Three Act Structure are just that.
Guidelines.
Foreign and independent movies can have more
ambiguous endings, from the open-ended final
shots of The Wrestler or Birdman, to the heartbreak
of Brokeback Mountain or The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.
Films like M*A*S*H, Traffic, or Magnolia split
their stories up among different protagonists,
while movies like Pulp Fiction and Memento
scramble time, telling their stories out of order.
And films like Mulholland Drive, Rashomon,
or Man with a Movie Camera seem to reject
the Three Act Structure altogether.
Remember: screenplays are one part of a longer
process; they’re a blueprint.
Whether they follow more traditional rules
or invent their own, the clear, concise, visual
language of a screenplay provides the foundation
for all the work that is to come.
Today we learned about the format of screenplays
and why they look the way they do.
We talked about the essential building blocks
of a film story, and we broke down the traditional
Three Act Structure: what happens when and
why.
Next time, we’ll talk about pitching and
pre-production, as the cameras get ready to roll.
Crash Course Film Production is produced in
association with PBS Digital Studios.
You can head over to their channel to check
out a playlist of their latest shows, like
Coma Niddy, It’s Okay to be Smart, and Physics
Girl.
This episode of Crash Course was filmed in
the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio
with the help of these nice people and our
amazing graphics team, is Thought Cafe.