Hudson, your avatar makes a compelling argument for Squint Like A Pirate Day.
Your post-mortem notes clarified some things for me -- thank you. I'll do my best to answer the couple of questions you tossed back at me.
And of course, welcome to
10PTT my nightmare.
NATURAL DIALOGUE: READ VERSUS SAID The chief reason I've hitherto avoided touching dialogue in 10PTTs is because it's way more nuanced than description. That becomes wonderfully obvious at a table read. Good actors who've studied the characters enough to comfortably inhabit them know instinctively where the dialogue oversteps and where it stumbles. They'll correct as they go, reflowing it into "natural" dialogue -- unless the character requires some other deliberate mode of expression.
But that round-table process waits far beyond FADE OUT. Until then we must make do with our meager resources: keyboard, screen, imagination, and whatever performance skill we coax from ourselves. When your script is ready to "see other people," I would expect all dialogue to have survived one or many personal recitations.
I suppose in effect that means there's no such thing as "read" dialogue. It's all "said." If a screenwriter already verbally tested every line of dialogue by reading it aloud, can we not say that all dialogue has been real-world hardened? That it's no longer only theoretically good based on how it sounds in your head, but actually good? If it also reads great on the page, terrific. If it reads poorly on the page I would have to ask: Are you sure it sounds okay when read aloud? I can't think of any cases where dialogue sparkled when spoken but read awful on the page. (Predictably I'm too lazy to go look for such cases.) The reverse case, of course, is common: lousy actors mangle decent scripts all the time. We don't need to talk about the extreme case of lousy dialogue mouthed by lousy actors, except where that double whammy concusses us to the point where the awfulness morphs into guilty pleasure.
Wrapping up this line of thought, I guess I'm saying the only way you can have dialogue on the page that pleases the eye but assaults the ear is if you never read it aloud to yourself (or an audience).
This is all predicated on the assumption the writer speaking the lines knows how "natural" dialogue sounds. That's a big if.
Hey, this is a good time to mention screenwriter teams. Orci and Kurtzman, the Farrelly Brothers -- those two leap to mind. In interviews you'll hear them talk about their process and how they bounce dialogue off each other, constantly. Not pass pages back and forth to review in silence; they act it out in front of each other. They know immediately what dialogue works and what falls flat. That saves a lot of time in rewrites.
So. That's my position: that no line of written dialogue remains that hasn't been tested in the real world and reworked accordingly. In the rare event a line recites great but still reads wrong, sure, the writer should tailor it for the page. Readability must come first.
>> I don't mind the "genuinely touched" line, but I also agree with your point. I think I like it because of what comes next. To make it clear that she cares about what her mom has done before she flips out on her. Climbing the Peak of Joy to heighten the coming tumble into the Valley of Despair is good drama. Your instincts are rock solid. An emotional span of "OMFG, this is wonderful" to "OMFG, this is terrible" (or vice versa) packs twice the punch of any change in fortune that begins with "Meh, things are are okay, I guess."
I wonder if simply bringing forward the line "Dora engulfs her mom in a hug" to replace "Dora is genuinely touched" does the job of setting up that emotionally heightened state between them. "Engulfs" does a great job conveying Dora's feelings in the moment.
>> And I couldn't decide which best got across her intention: That she didn't want her daughter to grow up. Specifically because of what turning 18 means for her in the context of this story. Ah yes. I overlooked the significance. But if you had trouble deciding the correct phrasing surely the audience faces the same struggle -- at that point in the story. Granted it makes sense later when the information loop gets closed.
>> A mother/daughter argument that gets across the exposition that Dad deserted them Is there a way to lessen the verbal exposition and augment with some visual exposition? You could describe earlier how all the photos in the house are Dora, her mother, or the two of them together. We should probably be mostly up to speed re AWOL Dad by the time this argument flares, which would reduce the need for overt exposition.
One of the best bits of visual exposition in my recent memory is from BREAKING BAD, soon after Gus's (ahem) fateful BBQ. The episode opens at Madrigal HQ where workmen surgically remove the LOS POLOS HERMANOS logo from among the other corporate signage proudly ringing the foyer. Madrigal is hiding the cancer from view and through this simple action announcing it will be business as usual once the contagion is (seen to be) purged from its corporate body.
>> but I still like the idea of teen-centric movies referring to parents as only "mom" and "dad." Me too. I think tagging her "Mom," not "Dora's Mom" makes sense. The latter removes the familiarity, the almost first-person viewpoint that comes with "MOM." The only consideration is the other "MOM" who joins the story in the last act: "AIESSA'S MOM." But no, that's fine too, so long as we've established "MOM" on its own to be Dora's mom.
DORA: Is this really necessary?
MOM: I don't know. Is fun necessary?
DORA: Can I take it off now?
MOM: In ten, nine, eight...
That reads wonderfully. I unreservedly endorse this name switcheroo.
>> What are your thoughts on these "ings" - more active to use "drags" and "approach"? I find no offense for once! You want to stay vigilant about the "ings" but -- as with passive sentences -- act only on the brazen offenders. Here, the "ings" seem like an appropriate match for the sentence construction.
>> THIS "Time slows" is a filmmaking move, not a supernatural one. It's a nod to 80's teen movies and rom coms - the slow-mo introduction of the love interest. I'm very fond of the slow-mo. That explains my excitement over
Trevor Mayes's 23 MINUTES. I'd hate to see these SLOW-MOs removed. There are only a couple, each used for good effect here and there. Without them we won't get that clear visual cue to mentally streeeeeeeeeetch the image in our head until POP, back to real time.
>> I was iffy on these kinds of notes at first, but I've come around. Takes some serious effort to (1) identify opportunities to practice your Jedi mind trick, and (2) effectively perform your Jedi mind trick. The trick is best described as "telling without telling." I'll step aside and let Andrew Stanton explain his "unifying theory of two plus two":
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"Now you remember earlier in the keynote I said I'd elaborate more on audience participation and their unconscious desire to work for their entertainment. Well in Nemo, one of my co-writers, Bob Peterson and I, would analyse this issue at great lengths. We ended up with what we like to call 'The unifying theory of two plus two.' And what I mean is that good storytelling never gives you four, it gives you two plus two.
If you construct your story correctly it compels the audience to conclude the answer is four. This works for every aspect of filmmaking down to a molecular level. Most obviously it works with editing -- of course you know the Eisenstein where they show the face, then they show the food, then they show the same face, and they show the woman, and you interpret that either as lust or as hunger.
But it also works in doling out plot lines, just like we saw in the Ryan's Daughter clip. It works with dialogue, where you don't say what you actually mean. It works with relationships: how to get something, because your adding what somebody says with somebody else."
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http://rageagainstthepage.blogspot.com.au/2008/12/andrew-stanton-pixar-transcript-keynote.html >> There's something really great here - viewing the action through the emotion of the character. We definitely will be here all week if we go down this road. I'm a rabid fan of filtering description through viewpoint. Stephen King does it like a fucking BOSS. For me its the secret sauce that keeps me slogging all the way through his mediocre stories.
Basically you're switching from third-person omniscient to first-person limited -- and for a time everything's getting filtered through one character's experience. How that character colors the narrative influences your reading experience. It's irresistible and, if you do it well, enthralling.
Cheers,
Pitchpatch
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A pirate walks into a bar with a tiny ship's helm protruding from his fly.
He limps up to the bar and says, "Barkeep, bring me a pint o' ale!"
The bartender frowns and says, "Did ya know you've a helm hanging out yer fly?"
The pirate barks back, "Aye! It's drivin' me nuts!"
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