Reading Screenplays Page 9

  As a romantic comedy, this script makes some astute observations about the nature of love, and specifically how a broken heart doesn’t destroy you. This is likely to resonate with contemporary audiences. The setting of the boot camp also contributes to the contemporary feel; creating a world where ambitions are revealed and feelings are shared as a normal and natural part of the day is a phenomenally useful device.

  Structure

  Broken Heart Boot Camp sets up the tone of a romantic comedy with skill and economy in the opening scenes; Elle is introduced in a very recognisable exchange between ‘the broken hearted and her best friend’, who is imploring her not to make an idiot of herself, which, of course, she does. The world of the story is clear and an effectively benign world for the genre. However, the key structural beats need considering. In order to make this about the new relationship rather than the old, bad one, all the turning points should relate to Elle and Will.

  Because of the problem in the set–up of the story and characters, the inciting incident seems to be the rejection of Elle by Jonathan, and the end of the first act is the arrival at boot camp. But she has arrived to mend her heart in order to get Jonathan back, so it is literally a long time before she notices Will. If the story is reconsidered to make meeting Will the inciting incident of the story and the reason, perhaps, that she must get over Jonathan, these structural issues will by default be reordered. It would also help generate a dramatic question that would enable the audience to invest in the outcome. At the moment, it is somewhere in the territory of: will Elle mend her broken heart and get Jonathan back? And it needs to be more like: will Elle realise that true love is within her grasp if she can mend her broken heart?

  The second act follows Elle’s commitment to the boot camp regime, and, whilst there are imaginative exercises for the campers, there are a number of ‘emotionally’ repetitive scenes in which Elle restates her determination to get back with Jonathan. This is affecting the pace and slowing it down, as the audience is ahead of the character, knowing this is not the right course of action. The mid–point seems to be Elle’s realisation that Will could be the one, just as he decides to give up on love. Whilst this is a ‘classic’ rom–com moment, there has not been enough contact and drama between these characters to make it meaningful and give it the impact that will drive the story to its climax. With a clearer set–up of the real interest in this story, the dramatic question and the second act will be easier to develop.

  Despite the problems in the set–up and the developing action of the second act, this script has a very classic climax and resolution, with the lovers being brought back together by their new best friends, misunderstandings banished, and an ending on a kiss. The third act has confidence and lots of pace.

  Characters

  Elle and Will are the main characters.

  Elle starts out as a broken–hearted woman, investing all her hope into mending a bad relationship. By the end of the story she is happily kissing Will, with new friends, a good job and a mended heart. The actions and decisions that she has taken – to submit to boot camp – have been justly rewarded.

  Elle is both driving and resisting the change in her situation; she wants things to go back to what they were, which makes her a strangely passive character. It is difficult for the audience to invest in what she wants and the current set–up of the story doesn’t yet enable investment in what she needs, because that – or Will – isn’t in the story enough, or appropriately.

  It is fine to have a protagonist who wants and needs different things in romantic comedies. At the moment, Elle’s explicit desire to get Jonathan back, though not unbelievable in terms of human behaviour, makes her a bit of a fool and her characterisation is teetering dangerously close to ‘pathetic’ because it is not clear why Jonathan is so desired. The decision to go to boot camp is born of desperation and it may be worth considering the other possible and plausible motivators that would counter her passivity, and invest it with more comedy. This aspect of her character is reflected at boot camp where Elle takes a very obedient position in the boot camp world, impacting on both the potential for comedy and for drama.

  Will is a car–wreck kind of guy. He has a failed marriage, he’s on the edge of his career and about to fall off, and unwilling to invest in love again. He, too, is appropriate for the genre, and his mission to expose the camp contributes nicely to the plot. His change of heart is revealed in his article, which is a good device for full character revelation. However, it is a little clichéd that Will is sent to do an expose on the boot camp as his last–chance–as–a–journalist scenario. It could be nicely complicated, and perhaps feel more truthful, if he were to seek out the camp and propose the article, going undercover for journalistic purposes but having a personal motivation for being there, too.

  The two secondary characters at the boot camp are nicely balanced to add to the themes and the humour, each with a successful mini–journey. Alpha’s trust in her childhood sweetheart is vindicated and they get married; Alice replaces the cardboard cut–out with a real Goth and learns that a boyfriend that talks to you isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Hope and Tom are the characters that could benefit from some more thought. The main beat in their relationship is panic over business and money, which feels slightly at odds with their philosophy.

  Dialogue

  There is a lot of dialogue in the script, which can be appropriate for the genre, and much of it is funny and well observed. However, the story is too reliant on dialogue as its main driver and, as a result, it is often repetitive. (Elle’s cry that she wants everything to be as it was before is stated several times.) A more considered developing action–line at the boot camp would help to address this. At the moment, many exchanges lack any subtext and the ones required to deliver information could be much more precise.

  Visual Grammar

  This is a story with limited use of cinematic techniques but it still has a strong visual sense. This is helped by the climactic set piece, which is wonderfully visual, and the whole pink–tracksuit–plus–muddy–assault–course world of the boot camp. To effectively balance the stories of the protagonists at the start, some consideration of the use of parallel time is required. Elle and Will need equal screen time; understanding who Will is, and what his situation is at the start of the story, intercut with Elle’s opening scenes, would help ensure the audience is invested in the right outcome – that they should be together.

  Pace

  This is a story that mostly takes place over 48 hours with a break before the climax and resolution. It should be a pacy good read once the key issues of the premise and structure have been addressed. At the moment, the pace slackens in the middle because of the lack of events and the internal nature of the main conflict, and many of the scenes are too long – especially those with exchanges of dialogue. There are 81 scenes in a 91–page script, clearly indicating that many are too long – the optimum number of scenes to aim for is somewhere around 130. Once the overall structure is solid there should be room to vary the pace so we can career through most of the story but spend real time with both Elle and Will as a way of emotionally investing in their ‘togetherness’.

  Feasibility

  Romantic comedy is an eternally popular genre and Broken Heart Boot Camp offers a contemporary setting to an age–old story that will have the power to resonate with wide audiences with some development.

  The priority for the next draft is to think about how to enable the audience to fully invest in the idea of Will and Elle being together, rather than with their past loves. This will help to keep the main conflict and the structural beats about the relationship, where they should be, and this in turn will help clarify the dramatic question and address the issues of the pacing.

  5.WRITING AND ASSESSING TREATMENTS

  There is no agreed film–industry definition or standard for treatments. They are often referred to, and regularly required, as if it can be assumed that we all have a complete and clear un
derstanding of what to do. This chapter will analyse the subject and will offer some commonsense guidance to readers who may often be asked to assess treatments, as well as to script developers and producers who may find themselves writing one, not to mention screenwriters.

  THE PURPOSE OF TREATMENTS: WHAT ARE THEY FOR?

  The most common purpose of the treatment is to set out the writer’s or producer’s proposal for adapting for the screen a story from another source. In this case the idea for the story already exists as a book, a play or other form, and the purpose of the treatment is to express the story for the screen.

  Treatments are also useful for original film ideas: to provide the writer with a brief, working document; to help ensure the premise and structure are sound in advance of writing the first draft; and also to obtain feedback from a reader at this stage.

  During the script development process (see the next chapter), when significant changes to the premise or structure are being tested, it is often advisable to write a treatment rather than another draft.

  A treatment may also be a proposition document for an original idea, intended for producers or funding bodies.

  Treatments are also regularly required for applications to project–focused training courses and for development funding. When the treatment is a requirement, it is likely that guidelines will define what should be incorporated into the treatment, including how long the document should be.

  However, with at least five different functions and different users to address, the treatment is defined for our purposes here as the prose version of the story of the film, and it should be between three and ten pages in length.

  Treatments have acquired a reputation for being hard to write and not usually well written. Consequently, there are many producers and developers who don’t like to read treatments and who prefer to read a full script. Within 20 minutes of reading 30 pages of a script, an experienced producer can decide with confidence whether or not there is a good story, and whether or not the writer has skill and talent. A treatment can make its reader hesitate, asking: is it possible that there is a really good idea lurking in this largely nonsensical text? Or the reader perceives that the idea in the treatment is great, but can the writer craft a great screenplay?

  Nevertheless, treatments are frequently requested and, whatever the intention, we can say that their main function is to get to the heart of the story. Often, however, writers do not know that this is what is expected of a treatment. One problem in particular is the notion that it is a sales document for the script, leading the writer to employ selling techniques in the treatment, e.g. stressing the ‘unique selling points’, the potential cast, the target demographic. Never forget that the strength of a script is measured by the story it tells. That, of course, means the whole story: the beginning, the middle and the end. A treatment should not simply state the source of inspiration or a single idea. These have to be followed through to demonstrate a convincing and meaningful proposal.

  It is very important that the treatment encapsulates the story rather than talking about it like a film review (e.g. ‘This film is a fast–paced contemporary reworking of a classic Hollywood story…’). This approach will not engage the reader in the situation and the characters but instead distance the reader from the story.

  Presenting the treatment as a teaser sets up the story and then either doesn’t state the ending, or else lists the various possible outcomes. Without knowing the resolution to a story the reader may not be able to divine its meaning and is denied the information to assess the idea adequately.

  Treatments frequently give too much detail, including too many random characters and too many names. In a short document it is more helpful to identify the significant secondary characters with their names and definers – brother, teacher, neighbour, vicar, etc – when they are first introduced in the story (e.g. ‘John the vicar…’), and then, later, when they appear again for their significant action, by their definer only. (‘The vicar rings the doorbell’, rather than ‘John rings the doorbell’, avoids the need for the reader to turn back to check who John is.)

  Occasionally, it may not be clear from a treatment whose story is being told or which point of view the reader is being asked to adopt. This is usually the case when the writer has to lay out backstory at the beginning, or if the treatment starts with information about a character who is either secondary or not the main character. If it isn’t immediately clear whose story it is, better just to state it at the start.

  Because treatments are so often seen as a necessary evil, they are not given the attentive care that writers give to their scripts, and the storytelling technique is not sustained throughout the document. Like a newspaper article where the first paragraph is really gripping but the details that follow seem rather dull, treatments that simply list the literal beats of the story but lack a strong narrative flow are hard to engage with. Treatments should not be formal but, like all good writing, they should be written with spirit, imagination and expression.

  GOOD TREATMENTS

  A good treatment has to be well written with a sure narrative flow. The writing should be strongly visual, enabling the reader to ‘see’ the characters and the story–world and to hold them in their imagination as they read.

  Writing a treatment: where on earth to start?

  What the reader wants to know as quickly as possible is what sort of film this is. They want to be able to recognise the broad shape of the story and there are several ways a writer can help them do this. One of the key things in being able to recognise something quickly is that you can see it all. So it may be worth considering a thumbnail sketch of the whole film at the start of the treatment and then gradually build up to a bigger, more detailed picture, before zooming in for a close–up on some elements.

  Obviously, no one can write a good treatment until the premise of the film is completely clear and, by the same principle, it will help the reader if the treatment offers them one or two sentences at or near the start of the document that summarise the essence of the story: who is it about? What is their main problem? Do they solve it?

  Or it may be helpful to pose a question to the reader. A ‘what if…?’ scenario that indicates the main dramatic situation that the story will explore. It is not necessarily important to answer the ‘what if…?’ at the outset, but to present an intriguing enough situation that the reader has a reason to carry on.

  Most important is to ensure that you strike the right tone for the story to be told and the genre it is in.

  Striking the right tone

  The tone of the film is intimately connected to its genre: it is the way in which the depiction of the story–world supports the underlying meaning of the story, and the worldview of the writer. Hence, romantic comedies feel light and sunny (Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed…!). A dog flattened by a car in a broad comedy may be a tragedy for the owner but is a joke for the audience, whereas a dog hit by a car in a drama (in which the tone is very ‘real world’) is a shocking moment for both the characters and the audience.

  The audience for the treatment is the reader and one of the considerations should be about the ways to control how they feel as they read. The choice of vocabulary is an important way in which you reflect the story–world. So ‘The lads pile in the motor and burn rubber up the Old Kent Road’ paints a very different picture from ‘The men get into the car and set off at great speed down the Old Kent Road’.

  If style and tone feel problematic it is likely that the problem is in the story, probably because it is trying to do too much in this respect. In other words it is a mix of genres. It is hard, for example, for a story to be both a rite of passage and a thriller; the tone, the pace, the character journey, the world and the resolution of these kinds of stories are all different.

  Remember that if the treatment is for a comedy film it should be funny!

  In trying to capture the essence of a story in a sentence or two, it can be helpful to work through it logi
cally. Who is this story about, what is their problem or situation, and what happens at the end?

  For example:

  Romeo falls in love with Juliet, daughter of his father’s sworn enemy and, in the struggle to overcome the opposition to their marriage, both of them die. Their untimely deaths bring about the end of the feud between the two families.

  However to express it like this tells the reader the tone:

  When Romeo crashes a rival gang party and finds himself face to face with Juliet they both know in an instant that their lives have changed for ever. What they cannot know is how short their lives have just become. Tragic accidents and misunderstandings leave both of them dead, but at least the bloody gang war is finally over.

  The reader knows (even if they had never come across Will Shakespeare!) that this film is a tragic love story in an urban gang setting. In this instance there is no need to spell out that the genre of the film is a tragic love story or flag up its themes and/or controlling idea because all of this is obvious from these few sentences.

  However, there may be other sorts of stories in which the reader will need more of an obvious steer.

  The world of the story

  If the setting of the story is likely to be unfamiliar to the reader, for reasons such as it is in the past or the future, or is in a country or region that is not well known, or is set within a community that has its own particular customs, it is important to ensure that the rules of that world are made clear to the reader early on.