filmsample

All our reports are tailored to the individual needs of each script and each client. But if you want a rough idea of the kinf of thing to expect from our film editors, then please see the sample report below -a report on 3 episodes of a TV detective drama.

Please note that our reports are too long for a single webpage, so the info below has been condensed from the original report.

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	Introduction In a way, you’ve made a wise choice, writing for TV rather than for the cinema screen. Studios (or whatever passes for a “studio” in the Twenty First Century) make only a handful of features a year (this isn’t surprising given that the average cost of a US feature is $40M. TV executives, on the other hand, have to fill our TV screens with content twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year. Given this pressure, there is a huge demand for the product that you’re trying to produce. Unfortunately, the world of TV script writing is also desperately competitive. Those writers who get it right can find themselves with a lifelong career in the field they love and can experience the pleasure of knowing that several million viewers each week enjoy their the fruits of their imagination. I once had the illustrative experience of watching the first aired episode of Spooks in the company of that episode’s writer and so have witnessed first-hand the pride and satisfaction (and income!) that such success generates. Turning to your scripts, I feel that they are all some way from being able to compete for this kind commitment from TV executives. In the main body of this report, I’m first going to discuss some general issues that overarch all three pieces; I’m then going to write a few notes specific to each episode in turn. Format I’ve attached a formatting guide (as a pdf) that can be found on the BBC website’s “Writers’ Room”. [attachment not included on this webpage] [further info on formatting follows ...] If you look at your pieces, you’ll also see that the first piece is much longer than the second and third pieces. It looks as if it would last 40-45 minutes. The other two look as if they’ll last 25 minutes (or perhaps 30 minutes). Did you plan to write the first episode as a pilot of a kind? I guess what I’m saying is that it feels as if you’re (i) not in control of your craft and (ii) not committed to a particular “slot” i.e. the half hour drama . Feature films can last anywhere between ninety and a-hundred-and-twenty minutes (though most are around the hour-and-three-quarters mark) . A TV programme has to fit more or less exactly into an extremely tight schedule. What slot in this is schedule are you attempting to claim? I think you need to be clearer and more consistent about this. Dialogue and Scene Action Connected with this issue of formatting is the issue of how present your scene action. Sometimes you devote a whole “scene” to an establishing shot - see Scene Two of the Blue Trees episode - when really this should be presented as scene action. Also, your scene action should only tell us what we can see. Abstract comments like “Action moves forward” [p2] won’t instil confidence in your writing. Show us what we can see and break it down into scenes. Every time there is a break in time OR in location OR both, start a new scene heading in the manner suggested by the BBC formatting guideline. Vague descriptions like “Time passes and McMaster closes his file” [p54] will, again, kill a producer’s confidence in your work. How does a director tell a cameraman to film “time passing”? What we needed here was a series of shots or scenes showing McMaster at work on the file. Similarly, more detailed and visual scene action was required at other crucial moments of the script, on page 65 for instance, where you tell us that Sanjay starts “going through various photographs”. Why aren’t you more specific at this moment? These photos constitute crucial evidence. Turning to your dialogue, when you got this right, the piece seemed to take off. “A fella with a bit of push and shove” [p18] was a zappy piece of ventriloquism on your part. And I loved the moments such as the one on page 67 where you seem to find a pacy, incisive rhythm to the ways your characters express themselves: “You worry about the discretion and I’ll worry about the plan of action” says McMaster to the oily O’Shaughnessy. But I felt more generally that the dialogue in the three drafts was too flabby. Your scenes are usually too long and dogged with procedural dialogue. Look for dead lines – e.g. “McMaster: For what?” [p4] – and look for other ways of condensing your scenes. Consider the age old screenwriter’s maxim about scene structure: “Get in late; get out early.” How does the scene move the storyline forward (if it doesn’t, what’s its purpose? In a screenplay you don’t have the room to include scenes that simply describe the world of the story or describe a character)? What turning point in the scene conveys this forward narrative movement? Conventional screenwriting wisdom suggests that you start the scene as close as you can to this “turning point” and end the scene once the moment has been achieved. Watch any piece of accomplished TV or film screenwriting and you’ll see how professional writers take this approach and yet manage never to let the dialogue feel expositional. Storyline and Structure It was in the area of storyline and structure that I felt this script needed the most work. We’re in the detective genre and yet the mysteries presented didn’t feel involving enough. To try and break this comment down into a more helpful set of constituent points, I think you should review your material in the light of the following: Not enough happens. Watch an episode of any top-rated US television show – say Weeds or Californication or Entourage – or any top sitcom - say Frasier or Seinfeld – and make a sketch of the plot (plots in fact, as all TV series episodes juggle a plot with a number of subplots, something your three scripts don’t really do). You’ll see that the writers of all these top shows manage to pack a tremendous amount of narrative material into twenty-five minutes of screentime. In your pieces, there isn’t this same density of interconnected storylines meshing together with clockwork precision. (I’ve attached an analysis of a twenty-five minute episode of Seinfeld that illustrates how the writers have juggled four storylines that are interconnected both thematically and in ways that connect with plot. [Attachment not included on this webpage] Few obstacles. Few Reversals. This issue of “not enough happening” is connected with the fact that there’s not much resistance in your pieces to McM’s achievement of dramatic success. It feels as if there’s never enough at stake for him (i.e. there’s never very much at risk for McM). It feels as if none of his opponents put up much of a fight. At no point do they really ever cause him to undergo a dramatic reversal i.e. some setback in the achievement of his dramatic objective. This lack of “dramatic reversals” and lack of a sense of risk means the pieces never really generate any suspense. No escalating structure. The episodes don’t really develop a sense of intensifying dramatic tension. Structure solution: The Principle of 3 Act Structure The thinking I’m going to outline in the next section is an amalgam of ideas about screenwriting that has been drawn from my personal experience but also from my experiences as a script-reader and a script editor. Also, you can find parallel thinking in standard texts about screenwriting: E.g.: Robert McKee, Story Charlie Moritz, Scriptwriting for the Screen Alexander Mackendrick, Slogans for the Screenwriter’s Wall (see Appendix I) If you haven’t already, I think reading these titles thoroughly is a necessity. These ideas also correlate with thinking expounded in the respected Arista lecture series (run primarily in London for professionals in film, TV and publishing). To return to the thesis of this report, I think a handy phrase for understanding script plotlines might be that they describe the FOCUSED ESCALATION of a CENTRAL CONFLICT. Focused: a satisfying script tends to focus on a limited number of dramatic objectives that the central characters hold as important… Escalation: a script narrative is never “static”, nor is it “flat”…there is always a sense of “story events” moving towards a climax, towards some kind of closure at the end of piece… Central: again, the idea of focus (see above)… Conflict: the core component of dramatic action – the “problem” (or problems) to be solved by your hero… Having taken this on board, consider the following diagram: This diagram gives you a schematic representation of how the various constituent components of a screenplay work in concert with each other. You’ll notice that the screenplay breaks down into 3 Acts: Act 1 tends to occupy the first 20% of the screenplay’s running time. Act 2 tends to occupy the middle 60% of the screenplay’s running time. Act 3 tends to take up the last 20% of the running time Over these three acts, the journey of the hero moves gradually (represented by the black arrow) towards resolving the dramatic question of the episode (represented by the star in the diagram) at a final climactic moment. This thinking applies to both film writing and writing for TV – but, of course, the TV episode (and especially the half-hour episode structure that you seem to have adopted) is a supreme distillation of three act structure. So, in Act 1 you’ll need to identify the dramatic problem quickly and efficiently. You already have these scenes in the form of your “Serg.” scenes. These are little too long at the moment…you want to get us into the main action as quickly as possible. But you may also want to establish a series of subplot arcs in these early moments. You do this in a way in the “Jail” episode, establishing the existence of a relationship in McM’s life. But you never really develop this sufficiently. The first half of Act 2 of the episode will show your hero’s initial attempts to solve the case. These will be moderately successful (and your hero will accrue a small number of allies/sidekicks in the process) BUT your hero must also suffer a series of minor setbacks and frustrations. This takes you to the Midpoint Climax of the piece. Your hero should achieve some first breakthrough in his solving of the case at this point, only to suffer some kind of significant setback. This sets up the second half of Act 2. Your hero recovers from this major setback and closes in on his quarry and seems to be about to settle things only for someone or something to pull the rug from underneath his feet. This is the crisis moment of the episode that sets up… The climactic Act 3 showdown. Your hero makes one last attempt to resolve things; in the genre you’ve chosen to work within, the hero will almost always be successful (though perhaps the subplots in each episode allow you to counterpoint this dramatic success with dramatic failure of other kinds, personal problems etc.). Notes on “The Clink ” Scene 1: This was something of a dead scene. In some ways, it’s little more than an establishing shot so perhaps you should present it as such. Scene 2: I thought that this scene was way too long and the dialogue not nearly crisp enough. But it certainly had the beginnings of something. I like the conflict between the Sergeant and McM and the way the Sergeant puts McM down. I wonder if this would be a relationship that develops more slowly over a series? I also liked the way you established the beginnings of a sense of risk surrounding the “Seamie Job”. The other two undercover agents came away injured from the same case which establishes what McM is putting on the line: his own safety (your attempts to weave in a subplot here concerning his girlfriend were well intended but not integrated with the main thrust of the episode nearly neatly enough). Scene 3: I liked the way you had Seamie and McM confronting each other over food. It made the terms of their conflict wonderfully visual/tangible and not just confined to spoken exchanges. I also like the way that McM charms Seamie, though this is still executed in way that feels a little long-winded and more than a little too easy for McM. Perhaps this can take place over a few shorter scenes? Perhaps McM isn’t successful in winning Seamie’s confidence at the first time of trying? Perhaps we should suspect that Seamie has worked out that McM is a cop and is stringing him along in a way that gets increasingly more meancing? Scene 5: This was the moment the episode descended into farce for me. The ruse involving the exercise bike felt implausible… Scenes 7 and 8: …and if the exercise bike felt implausible, the sequence of the episode that involved the basketball match and the subsequent forced/drugged confession was close to ridiculous for me. Yes, there is some suspense as we wait to see if McM can exact a confession before the drug wears off. But, really, Seamie plays into McM’s trap too smoothly and in a way that feels unnecessarily fanciful. [there followed detailed notes on two other episodes; comments about setting up a time to discuss everything; plus the attachments referred to in the text above].