Highlights from Spielberg DGA event, Part 2
A few weeks back, I posted this excellent analysis by Nate Winslow of a recent event at the DGA featuring J.J. Abrams and James Cameron feting Steven Spielberg. Nate has been culling through the lengthy video extrapolating highlights with an eye toward insight for screenwriters. Today Part 2 of Nate’s analysis:
Welcome back for part 2 of my ongoing analysis of Steven Spielberg’s DGA tribute. Last week, I talked about visual storytelling, and the importance of every line in your screenplay as an indicator for what the audience is going to be looking at. That even though, as writers, we’re usually far removed from the physical production side of filmmaking, we’re the ones who get that first cut: the script is going to guide the director the entire way, and the more a writer thinks about each line of his screenplay as a visual guide, the more potential there is for a great cinematic blueprint. Each choice you make in your scene descriptions, your dialogue and your action is guiding and informing the choices the finished film will eventually take. Much like the first column, this week’s topic revolves around another important choice you make as a writer: tone.
Wikipedia defines tone as “a literary technique which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work.” More simply, I’d say that tone is the mood of a script — it’s the way your particular story is communicated. In Scott’s words, genre + style = narrative voice. The relationship between tone and genre is vital, and when the marriage is a happy, successful one, your script can turn into something that Steven Spielberg wants to direct.
When asked what was the one thing he looked for most in a screenplay, Spielberg replied with:
“The script tells me what it needs from me because if the script tonally — if the script has no tone, I don’t direct the movie. I may not even produce it. If the script has no tone, it doesn’t engage me, it doesn’t grab me and strangle me with whatever it is that’s so compelling. So it needs to have a tone…[T]he script pretty much has to speak to me and has to say this is what I need from you to make me better than I am. But not much better. Cause I don’t think any of us can be that much better than the screenplays or teleplays that we work on, we just can’t. We can be a little bit better but we can’t be much better. We need great writing to make us look real good.”
Well. That’s pretty clear, don’t you think? If the script has no tone, I don’t direct the movie. There are plenty of take-aways from what he says in that quote, but there are just as many from what he didn’t say too. Why the huge emphasis on tone, Nate? you ask. What about character or plot? Call this an educated guess, but I’m almost positive that even if you sent Steven Spielberg a script that had the world’s most unbelievably awesome/original/compelling/fantastic tone, but an awful plot, no characters, and was riddled with 6 page monologues, he’d turn it down. He’s not saying tone is the ONLY thing that matters. He’s saying that out of the professional (read: accomplished, polished, and well-crafted on all fronts) screenplays he’s reading, the best way to make yourself stand out from the crowd is to have an incredibly compelling tone.
But let’s back up. Why the huge emphasis on tone? I’ll boil it down to a few key elements. On the blog, Scott has extolled the virtues of gender-bending and genre-bending before. If you have a concept that could easily be genre-bended from a gritty thriller to a whacky buddy comedy, how are you going to be sure the reader knows exactly what kind of story they’re reading by the time they’ve hit the bottom of page one? Tone. One of the biggest reasons why tone is so important in screenplays is that it’s the strongest indicator of type of journey the reader/viewer is about to embark on.
Take Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an example. That premise could easily have been flipped on its head in the hands of Roland Emmerich and turned into an epic, violent alien invasion saga. The first indicator that that’s not the case (other than a profound lack of continents exploding) is the movie’s tone. The marriage of genre (science fiction) and tone (wonder-inducing examination of mankind’s peaceful first contact with aliens) produce Close Encounters unique filmic identity.
That serves two purposes. The first is that it clearly informs someone what kind of story they’re about to dive in to — they know going into the first 5 pages of that movie that they’re not reading something filled with poop jokes and broad sight gags. And that’s important: the sooner a reader understands the type of story you’re trying to tell, the sooner they’ll want to invest in the journey. If they’re unsure what kind of story it is by the time they hit page 6, 7, or 8? You’ve already lost them.
The second purpose served by a clear command of your script’s tone is that it’s a great way to separate your story from the other hundred thousand screenplays already populating that genre. There are always going to be a glut of alien invasion screenplays, but your particular magnum opus can do wonders for its chances of making it to the greenlit land if it has a — in the paraphrased words of Steven Spielberg — tone that strangles the reader with what makes it so compelling. Jaded script readers may or may not scoff at your attempts at plotting the alien invasion story differently than everyone else, and you might even succeed. But one of the quickest ways to set yourself apart is by utilizing something that no other writer has: your specific voice. And a huge component of your voice is represented in the tone of your screenplays.
If we take Mr. Spielberg at his word on tone, let’s take a look at how often he has put this into practice with his own movies. Think for a second about some of his most beloved movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark. E.T. Jaws. Jurassic Park. Close Encounters. Saving Private Ryan. Schindler’s List. Catch Me If You Can. What do all of those movies have in common (besides representing some of the most successful films of all time, which is another good sign)? Yes! Tone!
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Think about the opening three minutes to that movie. Were you in any doubt as to what kind of movie it was? Were you confused about the type of story this was going to be? No, absolutely not.
Jaws: Talk about tone! In the first three minutes of Jaws, it becomes quite clear exactly what the movie’s going to be about, and exactly how that story is going to be told. That stems directly from the screenplay establishing a compelling, consistent tone from page 1. Translation: the biggest movie ever in its time.
Saving Private Ryan: The opening minutes of this movie are like a sledgehammer to your eyeballs. In terms of kinetic, onscreen mayhem, I’m not sure there’s even been anything more terrifying real than the Omaha Beach sequence. That opener establishes the uncompromising tone, and leaves very little to the imagination.
Jurassic Park: Again, a movie that starts off with an opening sequence that grounds the reader/viewer firmly in place with a tone that is unmistakable from minute 2 to minute 127.
Et cetera, et cetera. Besides all of these movies being unbelievably massive financial successes and, for some of us, defining moments in our cinematic upbringing, there’s another distinct trait that all these movies possess. Take any one of the movies I listed above, and think about them. What happens? For me, I can immediately conjure up images. I can picture scenes, picture moments that are lodged firmly in my brain more than a decade after seeing them all for the first time. And not just images, but the mood of the films is immediately recalled. The way the film felt is still with me. And that’s a key component of tone: it’s firmly grounded in the emotional side of screenwriting.
I know, I know. All of those movies are incredibly famous and mostly memorable because of the way Steven Spielberg guided all the disparate elements of physical production together: compelling images, memorable roles, stirring scores and unforgettable set pieces. True enough.
But like any film we have lasting memories of, it all originated from a screenplay. And for all of those movies listed above, it came from a screenplay that had a loud, unique tone that demanded something from Spielberg. His signature is all over every one of his movies, and it’s a signature that is indelibly his. But that signature is built on a foundation of screenplays, that with the exception of A.I. and Close Encounters, were written by other people. All those scripts strangled him with what was so compelling about them: they all had a tone that told Spielberg what they needed from him.
It’s interesting to note, though, that the most important thing to Steven Spielberg when it comes to scripts separating themselves from the hundreds that cross his desk, his answer was firmly rooted in emotion. In story as opposed to structure. He clearly cares about structure — don’t think I’m saying that he doesn’t — and possesses a terrifying and perhaps innate understanding of how structure works, but it’s a great reminder to hear this coming from one of our greatest directors. For the next entry, I’m going to be focusing on the emphasis that Spielberg, Cameron and Abrams all put on emotional storytelling, so start thinking about that for next week.
If I had to take one lesson away from this week, though, it would be that it’s not enough to have a perfectly structured and plotted and beat-ed screenplay: it has to have a strong, urgent tone. Without a clear tone, a director reading it isn’t going to have an easy time seeing your movie — he won’t have a clear visual blueprint. If you can structure your script well enough, if you plot out of your adventure deftly enough, you’re well on your way. What’s going to push that already pretty-good-to-great script over the top is a tone that screams “YOU HAVE TO MAKE ME INTO A MOVIE!” loudly and consistently.
A producer may be involved with a project for five years or more. A studio exec three years. A director one year. At the end of the day, each of these people when faced with going thumbs up or thumbs down on a script — knowing the amount of time they must commit to it — have to be able to answer this question:
Am I passionate about this story?
Tone translates into a script’s emotion. It is one of the key ways you can generate passion in a reader.
Thanks, Nate, for this. We look forward to your next installment!
Please join Nate in comments with your own thoughts on story and tone.