Screenwriters; Imagine Meeting Your Characters In Person by Mark W. Travis & Michael Hauge Video Lecture | Screenwriting: From Beginner to a Pro - Career Development

getting back to the writer in this
technique the whole technique is called
the Travis technique but this part of
the Travis technique is the
interrogation process and it's it's a
process of interrogating the characters
it's a very highly defined process and
technique but it's something that I've
shown a lot of writers how to do and I
have this like this one workshop I did
in Munich I think I've done in a couple
places where it's just called meet your
characters before you write your script
and I've had writers come in and say
okay I've got this story I said okay you
know give me a paragraph a paragraph
short paragraph on each character tell
me what the story is okay
give me a paragraph on each character in
just a short paragraph so I go and we'll
take you know typical family drama I got
the husband the wife a couple of kids a
couple of neighbors and this is the
story that's the thing I say okay
now I've read this and I know this there
was a group of actors in the room and
they haven't read any of it right or I
can give it to them and then I start
interrogating these actors and turn them
into those characters and within minutes
the writer is sitting there in the room
with all his characters talking to each
other engaging with each other and we
did this once a Munich on a full project
and then the writer would say to me well
at least I want to see what happens if
these two characters have this situation
happens I said okay then that would just
work with the two act two actors and put
them into that scene this is an
unwritten scene and the writers going
there's my scene well there's the idea
of a scene and but the idea now this
gets back to the collaboration if
writers could think about I'm developing
this story what would happen if in the
process I've met with a few writers I
mean a few actors worked with them allow
them to be these characters for a moment
so I could sort of get a sense of them
outside of my head but viscerally in
front of me and then let the actors go
home and I'll keep working in other
words meet the characters one of the
greatest untapped resources we have in
this business seriously which we very
rarely use is the creative imagine
of actors we do a terrible thing we
write a script for a year two years
months director comes along gets an idea
producer comes along you know
everybody's got an idea and then they
start casting and what we're doing in
the casting is we're trying to find
those actors and there are thousands of
them the right actors to fit into the
little boxes that we've created which
they're called characters and we find
the best actor to fit in that box and
then basically ask them to play that
character and that's the way it works
what would happen if you brought in some
actors long before that and this is what
we'll be doing in this weekend bring in
actors long before that and say okay
we're still in the development process
we don't know where we don't even know
quite where this story's gonna go maybe
or how it's gonna but bring actors in
and allow them to use their creative
imagination the creative abilities to
totally inhabit these characters for a
while so you can see what's going to
happen why not you know it's like
building a car BMW does not build just a
beautiful car a fast car entertainment
and then put it on the market and sell
it it tests it over and oh every part of
that car is tested and tested and tested
you know to see that it's going to work
right but we we don't test anything with
there suddenly many times the first time
a writer and I've heard this of the
writers here their words come out of an
actor is when we're shooting the film
and I go that's ridiculous the writers
jettison before if the writers lucky
enough to be there yeah I make it many
times I did when I was working with a
with Mark Riedel and he would ask me I
did this process with a full script and
we'd we'd worked for just one day on the
script with the characters and then I'd
do a reading at the end of the day and
he'd come and see the reading and then
one writer it was a very well known
writer came and sat and watched this it
was in a theatre he's just heard a
reading of his screenplay anyone oh my
god he says I've never heard my script
read before like this it's always the
first reading after it's all cast he
says but now that I've heard it he says
like I know I know what it needs and now
I know where the problems are
so this this way of working with actors
earlier in the process as part of the
development exploratory process is
really crucial and one of the things
we're doing in this weekend is we're
getting scenes from two different
participants in the workshop that will
be there and we're using those to go
through this whole process so we're not
just saying oh look at this great
performance in 12 years of slave or in
Nebraska or whatever we're taking this
raw script or these scenes with the
writer there and we're going to be
talking first about what goes in and
discussing it but then they're going to
see in the entire all the participants
are going to see these principles
applied to something that isn't finished
and isn't production ready and so on to
see how this can be done and see the
transformation of those scenes going
through this entire collaborative
process beginning to end
I think that's going to be exciting to
me because I haven't had that experience
before of getting to do that with one of
my clients and taking it all the way to
let's mold this with a director and by
pulling the characters out of an actor
you