Some Thoughts About Tone

Tone is a tricky concept. It’s something we all sense, but when we try to define it, it can get slippery. Most screenwriters approach it on an instinctive level. But sometimes that can cause problems.

Imagine a movie that followed a gritty, violent scene with a sentimental comedic scene. It would be jarring and distancing to the audience. It might even strain suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, you don’t want to be two one-note. A relentlessly depressing or relentlessly cheerful film will become tedious and wear on the audience.

I think it’s best to stake out a tonal landscape where your story will live. This will put your audience in a specific mood, which will help you land certain elements of your story.

I divide tone into three axes: Comedic to Dramatic, Light to Dark, and Fantastic to Realistic. Each is a range. Your story will probably fall toward one end or the other of each. You can visualize them as a three dimensional graph.

(Note that it is hard to represent three dimensions with a two dimensional image. Imagine the dark/light axis extending out toward you and back away from you.)

Comedic to Dramatic

People often talk about comedy and drama as genres, but they are really more of a tonal continuum. At one end is broad, slapstick comedy. As we move toward the middle we have wittier, character based comedy. When we get onto the dramatic side of the range, we first have realistic drama and move out to melodrama on the end.

Light to Dark

This axis relates closely to the rating of your film. Is it more toward the gritty and disturbing end, or more light and fluffy? On the dark end we have graphic violence and sex, and disturbing themes. Adult popcorn movies are mostly somewhere in the middle. On the light end we have children’s films.

Fantastic to Realistic

Some films live in the real world, the world we’re familiar with. Others are in completely fantastic realms. Between these poles are films that mix some fantasy into the real world.

Let’s place some specific examples at each corner of our three dimensional graph (the size of the dot/text indicates whether it is closer (larger) or farther away (smaller) on the dark/light axis):





Not every film is going to be at these extremes. For example, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is not exactly realistic, but not as fantastic as Star Wars. So it might be in the middle on the realism range. And Imitation Game lands somewhere between Theory of Everything and Requiem for a Dream in the darkness scale, though like those films it is dramatic and realistic.

(In fact, even these movies probably aren’t at the very corners of the graph – Theory of Everything has some darkness in it and Sweet Home Alabama is probably not all the way to the left on the comedy scale.)

As you start considering where films fall on this graph, you might notice the most popular films are not evenly distributed. Movies that fall in the dark/comedic range (whether realistic or fantastic) tend to be niche cult films. I find hits tend to be light/comedic films (whether realistic or fantastic) or dramatic/fantasy films (whether light or dark).

MPAA ratings are not assigned based on tone, of course, but the things that get a movie a more restrictive rating tend to put a movie further on the darker end of the light/dark scale. This may explain why hits tend toward the lighter – a more open rating makes it easier to market a film and allows for a broader audience.

So how do you use this information as a screenwriter? First it might help you get a sense of how commercial an idea is. Place it on the graph and then try to identify movies that would fit in a similar area. Were they hits?

Second, it can help you identify scenes that might fall wildly outside your tonal range. If you are doing a light, realistic comedy, is a huge slapstick set piece appropriate? Is a rape scene appropriate? Note that tone can be pretty flexible (check out The Apartment for a light, realistic comedy with some very dark sections). But you must handle the transitions deftly.

Also be careful to set up the proper tone at the beginning of your screenplay. Once a certain tone is established for a story, it’s difficult to get the audience (or a reader in the case of a screenplay) to accept a significant shift in the tone.

Sometimes writers will put something into the early part of the screenplay specifically to establish where the tone might go. For example, the prologue with Trinity at the beginning of the Matrix establishes there are fantastical elements to a story that might otherwise seem realistic. The creepy scene where all the kitchen cabinets open in The Sixth Sense establish both a fantastical and a darker element in a movie that will otherwise take a while to get either fantastic or dark.

Where does your story fit on these axes? How far does it drift?

Framing Stories

(Spoilers: Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, The Notebook, The Usual Suspects, Edward Scissorhands)

One of the narrative devices available to screenwriters is the framing story. Today I want to discuss what they are and why you might choose to use one.

First of all, let’s define our terms. A framing story describes scenes that surround the primary story, often in the present for a story told in the past. For example, Saving Private Ryan (written by Robert Rodat) has a framing story – we see Ryan in the present day going to visit the grave site of Captain Miller in France. The Princess Bride (screenplay by William Goldman) also has a framing story – the grandfather reading the book to his sick grandson. In Saving Private Ryan the framing story literally frames the movie – appearing only at the beginning and end. In The Princess Bride, we move back and forth between the framing story to the main story of the book the grandfather is reading.

What differentiates a framing story from a flashback is where the main dramatic action of the movie takes place. If the main story is in the past, then everything in the present is a framing story. If the main story is in the present, then what takes place in the past is flashback.

It's important to understand where your main story is taking place. This is the story the audience really cares about. Everything in a framing story serves only to illuminate the main story in some way. Thus you must be careful not to let the framing story overshadow or distract from the main story.

If you spend too much time in your framing story at the beginning of the movie, the audience will become invested in it (or tune out – even worse!) and will be annoyed when you jump to your main story. Then it will be harder to get them invested in the main storyline. If you cut back and forth to the framing story, like in The Princess Bride, you should not linger in the framing story or the audience will grow bored waiting for you to return to the stuff they're most interested in.

We must also distinguish between a framing story and a prologue. Sometimes there might be an opening scene that’s set in the distant past – some bit of history that sets up important information for the present day storyline, as in The Mummy (story by Stephen Sommers and Lloyd Fonvielle & Kevin Jarre, screenplay by Stephen Sommers) or the Lord of the Rings movies.

Framing stories are a potentially powerful device, but one fraught with risk. When done badly, the framing story can seem weak or uninteresting in comparison to the main storyline. Or it can become an annoyance, taking us away from the good stuff. If you’re going to use one, you should have a clear reason why.

So why would you use a framing story?

Sometimes the framing story is a way to introduce a narrator for the main story. We learn that what we're going to hear is one person's perspective on the events. You might use this to get the audience to identify more strongly with the main character or to create a limited point of view. A framing story could also create an unreliable narrator, such as Verbal in The Usual Suspects (written by Christopher McQuarrie).

Other framing stories have their own conflict and structure. Citizen Kane (screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles) works in this way. The main story is of course Kane's life, but it's framed by a reporter's search for the meaning of Kane's last words. This cleverly allows the main story to be told by a series of narrators in interviews with the reporter. (These may appear to be flashbacks, but remember our definition: the main story of Citizen Kane is in the past.) Here the framing story is a device to limit point of view of each section and control how information is revealed to the reporter, and thus the audience.

Another reason to use a framing story is to create a fairy tale quality. The Princess Bride is an obvious example of that. The framing story makes clear this is literally a fairy tale being read from a book. This helps the audience accept elements of magical realism that can be hard to pull off on film.

A framing story can also increase the emotional impact of the main story. The Notebook (adaptation by Jan Sardi, screenplay by Jeremy Leven) is a good example. In the framing story, an old man tells an old woman the tale of the rocky romance between Noah and Allie (the main storyline). We learn, of course, that the older couple are Noah and Allie and that Allie has Alzheimer's disease. It adds great poignancy to the main story and serves as a profound punctuation mark on the romance of the main story line.

We also see this in Saving Private Ryan when we see how Captain Miller’s sacrifice defined Ryan’s future. Similarly, the framing story in Titanic (written by James Cameron) shows us how Rose has held on to her romance with Jack her whole life. Many epic love stories use a framing story to make the point that what we heard was the greatest love of the character’s life.

Edward Scissorhands (story by Tim Burton & Caroline Thompson, screenplay by Caroline Thompson) has a framing story that illustrates many of these purposes. It opens with Kim, as an old lady, telling her granddaughter why it snows. The granddaughter is in bed – this is literally a bedtime story, though Kim tells it as though it were true. We then go back in time to when Kim was a teenager for the main story, only returning to old Kim and the granddaughter at the very end.

This framing story serves to tell us that we’re getting Kim’s perspective on events. This is particularly useful since young Kim doesn’t appear for quite a while in the main storyline. The framing story also creates a fairy tale quality that allows us to accept that an inventor in an old house could build an intelligent, emotional robot that looks like Johnny Depp with scissors for hands. We don't question the scientific plausibility when we see how Edward was constructed - which is good, because it's completely implausible.

Finally, the Edward Scissorhands framing story provides an emotional payoff at the end by showing how the events of the main storyline affected Kim later in her life. We learn that Edward was no passing fancy but the greatest love she ever had.

So you should consider using a framing story when: 1) you want to create extra identification with a main character, 2) need to establish an unreliable narrator, 3) need to limit point of view, 4) want to create a fairy tale tone, or 4) it can add poignancy or an epic quality to the main story. But be cautious… make sure your framing story is actually adding something of significant value to the movie and not just distracting from the main story line.

It Was All a Dream

(Spoilers: Inception, Sucker Punch, The Matrix, Pan’s Labyrinth)

Back in the 80’s, the TV show Dallas decided to undo a weak season by revealing it was all one character’s dream. The audience was furious. Why? Because they had invested hours and hours over the course of eight months in storylines that didn’t matter.

Dream worlds and alternate realities contain a significant trap for writers, one I see my students fall into from time to time. The problem is one of stakes. If the events in the “other world” have no effect on the real world of the character, then why should we care about them? There’s nothing to gain or lose by success or failure in the dream.

Comparing Inception (written by Christopher Nolan) and Sucker Punch (story by Zack Snyder, screenplay by Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya) illustrates this well. Sucker Punch contains several layers of dream/fantasy. When the team of young women go on the various missions that make up their escape plan, Babydoll dances to distract their overseers and the film shifts into fantasies that metaphorically mirror the real-world* missions.

Except it’s unclear what impact these fantasies have on the outcome of the actual mission. Will the results of the fantasy impact the success or failure of the real-world caper? If not, it’s just eye candy. Nothing wrong with eye candy, but if that’s all you have, then there’s no tension or audience involvement and things get tedious real quick.

Inception is similar to Sucker Punch in that most of the action takes place in dreams. Except in Inception the adventures in these dreams have a clear purpose in the real world. Success or failure in the dreams matters. And, it’s made clear that if someone dies in these dreams, they’ll die in the real world. In Sucker Punch, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Thus the dream action in Inception has stakes for the characters, whereas in Sucker Punch it’s just a bunch of pretty images.

A key here is establishing the rules of the world. Inception does a good job of laying out the rules – how you get into and out of the dreams, how time works in the dream world, what happens if you die there, etc. Sucker Punch never clearly defines these sorts of things.

Any time you introduce a world or an element into your story that isn’t a normal part of our real world, you must establish the rules. This goes for supernatural, science fiction, fantasy and superhero movies as well. The audience is fine with fantasies as long as they understand how they work. If anything can happen at any time, it feels like the filmmakers are cheating.

Computer generated virtual realities are similar to dream worlds, and pose the same challenges. In The Matrix (written by Andy & Lana Wachowski) the characters enter into a computer generated world. But the rules are made clear: here again, if you die in the Matrix you die in real life. And actions in the Matrix affect the real world – the biggest danger in the movie turns out to be that the Agents might be able to find the location of the real-world Zion once they capture Morpheus in the Matrix. This gives us stakes.

In other kinds of alternate reality worlds, such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (screenplay by Ann Peacock and Andrew Adamson and Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely) the characters physically travel from our world to another universe. This creates natural stakes in that the characters can be killed in the alternate reality, since they are physically present there. But the whole endeavor can still feel rather pointless if there isn’t some impact when the characters return to their regular lives.

The best way to do that is through the characters’ internal journey. Their experiences in the alternate reality teach them something that allows them to conquer a problem in the real world.

In Pan’s Labyrinth (written by Guillermo del Toro) the fantasy elements that Ofelia sees do appear to have some impact in the real world, such as the mandrake root healing her mother, but they mostly serve to give her the strength to stand up to Vidal and save her brother in Act Three. The various fairy tale tasks, while having no apparent real-world purpose, prepare her to take critical action in reality. That gives them significance.

If you are writing a story with a dream world, virtual reality or parallel universe, be sure to clearly establish why we care. This means making the rules and the stakes for the main character clear.


*Of course in Sucker Punch even what appears to be the real world is undermined, making the whole thing feel like a waste of time.

--

In other news, we got a lovely review for The Hollywood Pitching Bible.

Point-of-View

(SPOILERS: The Others, Rear Window, The Usual Suspects)

For novelists, one of the earliest critical decisions they have to make is what point-of-view the novel will be told from. (I’m using “point-of-view” in the literary sense here, rather than as the technical term for a camera angle shot from a character’s eyes. Hopefully you remember this from English class - first person: "I did it," second person: "You did it," third person: "He did it.")

For most screenwriters, point-of-view is not something we consider much. With a few experimental exceptions, all movies are technically third person point-of-view. The camera acts as an omniscient narrator observing the action. However in practice you can create limited points of view that can have a powerful effect on the film.

The most common form of limited point-of-view attempts to create a first person effect. To achieve this you have one character that is in every scene. The audience doesn’t get to see anything the character doesn’t see. This is usually the main character, but wouldn’t have to be – you could have a viewpoint character observing the story in the same way that Watson narrates the original Sherlock Holmes stories.

There are a few reasons you might do this. First, it creates a strong identification with the character in question. The audience experiences the story as the character does. That’s why thrillers and the more psychological type of horror movies often use this first person approach. It is almost always used in mysteries so that the audience knows exactly what the investigator knows. This allows them to try to solve the mystery before the character.

The classic Rear Window (screenplay by John Michael Hayes) uses this approach. We only see what Jeff sees through his window. We have to piece together the mystery along with him. When Lisa has broken into Thorwald’s apartment and Jeff sees Thorwald return, tremendous tension and suspense are created by locking us in Jeff’s place. We also begin to feel the claustrophobia he is feeling, as we are stuck in the apartment just like him.

For Rear Window the limited point-of-view is part of the thematic and conceptual nature of the story. Occasionally even the logic of the story depends on limiting the point-of-view in this way. For example, The Others (written by Alejandro Amenabar) limits the point-of-view to the character of Grace. Since this is a spooky movie, limiting the point-of-view creates a strong emotional identification with Grace and increases the unease we feel. But it is also critical for the big twist ending. If we saw another character’s point-of-view, we would know what was really going on.

(If you see Oblivion (screenplay by Joseph Kosinki and Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt), out in theaters now, you might consider what point-of-view they use and what affect it has on the story.)

You can also choose to limit point-of-view to a small number of characters. Maybe you’re doing a story about a team of criminals performing a heist and want to limit point-of-view to only the team members. Or maybe you’re writing a romance and want to limit point-of-view to the two lovers to heighten audience identification and focus.

Point-of-View can also be related to other narrative devices such as voiceover and framing stories. Take Goodfellas (screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese). The story is told from the point-of-view of both Henry and Karen Hill, who each have voiceover. This causes us to interpret the action from their perspective. Everything about the movie, from the editing to the cinematography, reinforces this dual point-of-view.

The Usual Suspects (written by Christopher McQuarrie) is a very interesting example. On the surface it does not have a very limited point-of-view, but if you look carefully you’ll realize the movie is mostly from Agent Kujan’s perspective – despite the fact he isn’t in many scenes! But the main storyline is told while Kujan questions Verbal Kint. We’re seeing the story Verbal tells Kujan play out on screen (almost all of the scenes outside of this storyline are Kujan gathering additional information to use in questioning Verbal).

But of course since Verbal is telling the main story, it’s really more from his point-of-view. Look carefully at Verbal’s story, though. He’s not in every scene. He couldn’t really know some of what happens – he would be repeating what other people have told him. Or he’s lying. By telling the main story from Verbal’s point-of-view, the film creates an unreliable narrator (another reason you might choose the first person approach). We, the audience, are hearing the tale along with Kujan and have to decide if we believe it.

To make things more head-spinning, neither Kujan or Verbal are the main character from a structural standpoint. That would be Dean Keaton.

Of course you can always just have a wide, omniscient point-of-view. It’s a lot easier, and some stories won’t benefit by limiting point-of-view. In fact, the majority of movies probably use a third person approach. But it’s good to make this a conscious decision.

In Other News…

Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@dougeboch) will probably already be aware that I’ve been working on a book about pitching. Well, here’s the official announcement.

The Hollywood Pitching Bible: A Practical Guide to Pitching Movies and Television by Douglas J. Eboch and Ken Aguado will be available in late August.

Ken is a long-time studio executive and producer. In addition to being the former president of both Miller/Boyett Entertainment and Kings Road Entertainment, he has produced several films including The Salton Sea (Warner Bros.) and Sexual Life (Showtime). And of course you all know me! Between us, Ken and I have done hundreds of pitches and Ken has heard thousands, so we think we have something to offer on the matter!

I’ll keep you updated as the release date approaches.

Mailbag #2

Welcome to another edition of the Let’s Schmooze mailbag where I answer reader questions on screenwriting.

From Marc Wobschall: Are dates on computer files sufficient for copyright purposes? I read that mailing yourself a hard copy may not be enough.

First, the disclaimer. I am not a lawyer. Do not rely on me for legal advice!

I don’t recommend mailing yourself a hard copy of a script or relying on computer files for copyright protection. In theory, both can serve to establish a date that something was created and so might be useful if you were sued or wanted to sue someone else, but how much value that would be in a trial is debatable. (It would be some.) I do recommend keeping dated records of everybody you send material to. I also keep a writing journal where I note what I worked on each day, which has been incredibly valuable to me in some legal and pseudo-legal situations.

Note that technically your work is copyrighted the moment you put it down in “fixed form” such as in writing or in a Final Draft file, however proving when that happened can be an issue. Also note that not everything is copyrightable. Titles, for example (although other laws such as trademark can apply). Basic ideas. Anything delivered verbally. Facts – you can’t copyright a recipe, for example, only the way in which you write it. Also, you cannot copyright something based on intellectual property you don’t own.

The best protection is to register your work with the U.S. copyright office. The current cost is $35. In addition to an iron clad dating of when the work was created, this step offers additional benefits such as being able to recover legal fees and extra damages in a lawsuit.

The WGA offers a registry service that also basically serves as a date stamp. It’s cheaper ($20, $10 if you’re a member), but only lasts five years and doesn’t convey the same legal protection as registering the copyright with the government. However it can be useful because you can register things you couldn’t copyright. For example, if you pitch your take on adapting a novel, you can write up your pitch and register that, even though you couldn’t copyright it since you don’t own the novel. This would establish what your unique ideas were (it is illegal for producers to steal your original, unique ideas as long as you’ve written them down.)

In general it is a bad idea to sue someone for copyright infringement in Hollywood unless it is egregious and you have absolutely iron clad evidence – and even then it’s not a great idea. Copyright infringement suits are incredibly, incredibly hard to win. And if people suspect you’re litigious they will be very reluctant to read your work. Hollywood is a small town - people talk. An ill-conceived lawsuit can end your career.

From H.E. Ellis: I decided to try my hand at screenwriting by attempting to adapt my own novel. This is much harder than I had initially anticipated because I wrote my protagonist to express a great deal of interior monologue. 

So I guess my question is, how does a writer express a character's inner thoughts without bogging down the story in excess exposition or resorting to some hokey "narrator" device?

Why don’t you give me a hard one! (That's sarcasm.)

This is one of the fundamental challenges of screenwriting, and one of the reasons adaptations aren’t necessarily easier than writing original stories. Mostly in screenwriting we don’t express the characters' inner thoughts directly. Instead, we find ways to dramatize what’s going on in their head. We set up situations that require them to act in ways that show what they’re thinking. Forcing them to make choices is often a good way to reveal their thought process. This is why we often say movie characters need to be active. We reveal character primarily through behavior.

There are a couple of techniques to reveal inner thoughts more directly. One, as you mention, is voiceover. It can be effective (see Goodfellas – screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese) but it is also often used badly. (See this post and this post for more on voiceover.) Another is to give the character a confidante, one person they trust and with whom they can share their feelings (see the cop John McClane talks to via walkie-talkie in Die Hard - screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza - or any best friend in any romantic comedy). Again, this can be risky – you don’t want to fill up your script with scenes of a character talking about how they feel.

It’s hard to advise you on your specific situation without knowing the novel, but often when doing adaptations the screenwriter has to make significant changes to force the character into more active situations. Sometimes, unfortunately, this necessitates major plot reconstruction.

Got a question on screenwriting? Let me know and I'll try to address it in the next Mailbag.

Non-Chronological Time in the Usual Suspects

(SPOILERS: The Usual Suspects)

The primary reason I wanted to examine The Usual Suspects (written by Christopher McQuarrie) was because of the non-chronological timeline of the movie. One of the powerful tools we have as storytellers is control over when information is given to the audience. This includes the ability to manipulate the chronology of events through things like flashbacks and framing stories. Now that I’ve broken down the structure of The Usual Suspects, let me take some time to explore the unusual chronology.

The Usual Suspects contains two primary timelines. The first is the “present” timeline of the investigation of the crime. This includes two narrative threads: Agent Kujan questioning Verbal Kint and an FBI agent questioning a victim. The second main timeline is the story Verbal’s telling about how the main crime came about. We also get a few other divergences from these two timelines, such as the opening scene where Keaton is killed.

The present day timeline could be considered a framing story but it seems to me in the context of this movie it actually serves as the conclusion of the same story Verbal’s telling. The dramatic question is “who killed Dean Keaton” which becomes “who is Keyser Soze.” Since we get the answer to this in the present day story I’d say both timelines are part of the same narrative, just one that is reordered chronologically.

That’s all well and good and probably fairly evident even to a casual viewer. As screenwriters we want to move beyond simple analysis and ask ourselves other questions. Let’s start with:

How does telling the story this way help the movie?

In other words, why might we make the choice to tell a story non-chronologically? I see several benefits to the approach in The Usual Suspects. First, imagine the story if it were told linearly. What would we lose? One thing is that the stakes and scope of the overarching story would not be clear for quite a while. None of the criminals knew they were going to get involved in the big suicide mission until halfway through the movie. The first half of the story would feel episodic and directionless if done chronologically.

By showing the present day investigation throughout the movie the audience knows these seemingly unrelated crimes are going to lead somewhere big and explosive. They know Keaton won’t survive and that dozens of other men will be killed. This engages the audience’s interest – we want to find out how things spun out of control. So if we find we have a story where the big issues aren’t apparent early in the chronology, we might try a non-chronological approach like The Usual Suspects.

The other big benefit is to give us an unreliable narrator in Verbal Kint. Many movies do this without such complicated chronology, of course. But since The Usual Suspects is a mystery it’s important to have a reliable investigator in Kujan. He represents the audience trying to get at the truth of what Verbal is saying. In mystery stories there are rules and one of the biggest is that the audience must have the same information as the investigator. So using two timelines allows the movie to have both a reliable investigator and an unreliable narrator.

Next question: What challenges must be overcome with this kind of story structure?

The biggest challenge in non-chronological storytelling is helping the audience track the shifting time. The Usual Suspects solves this largely by having Verbal as narrator of the "past" timeline. As I mentioned last time, the voiceover helps the audience distinguish between the two timelines until they understand how the movie’s working.

The Usual Suspects also has an advantage in that the two time periods do not share characters with the exception of Verbal. And in the present Verbal is confined to the police station. Once we understand this it becomes easy to determine when we are by who is on screen. If your story jumps around in time you might look for visual clues that can help the audience follow along.

Another challenge to non-chronological storytelling is balancing the various timelines. If you spend too long in any one time it can be jarring when you jump away. I think that’s why The Usual Suspects has the FBI agent interviewing the victim. It creates a small, active investigation story that we can cut back to regularly. This investigation leads to information that helps Kujan question Verbal.

I’ve seen many less successful movies that would simply cut back to the framing story for some kind of bland reminder that it exists. The equivalent in The Usual Suspects would have been cutting back to Kujan saying, “then what happened.” Boring.

On the rare occasions I’ve done a script with non-chronological storytelling what I usually do is lay out the story with index cards. This is a common approach – use roughly one index card for every scene of the story. My trick is I use different colored cards for each storyline. That way I can step back from my bulletin board and see how the different threads interweave. If I see a big stretch without a blue card, for example, I may rearrange the cards or add a scene from the "blue" timeline.

So there’s your secret inside screenwriting tip of the day!

The Narrator in The Usual Suspects

(SPOILERS: The Usual Suspects)

To continue my examination of The Usual Suspects (written by Christopher McQuarrie), I’m going to look at how the film uses Verbal Kint as a viewpoint character and narrator for much of the story.

Using a viewpoint character is a narrative device. It’s putting the audience in a particular character’s shoes (not the main character) to observe the events of the story. Sometimes this means an honest view but with that character’s specific perspective; sometimes it means a limited view so information can be hidden from the audience (because it’s also hidden from the viewpoint character); and sometimes the viewpoint character is not trustworthy, as in this movie, which allows the film to “lie” to the audience without pissing them off.

One of the most interesting things about the movie, of course, is that by the end we realize Verbal has been lying. Obviously some basics of the story must be true since we’ve seen the aftermath, but he’s also manipulating Agent Kujan to hide his actual role in the events. In other words, he’s an unreliable narrator. This is part of the fun of the movie – at the end we re-examine the story we’ve been told based on what we learn about Verbal in the final moments.

You could also say that Agent Kujan is a viewpoint character. After all, we’re hearing Verbal’s story along with him. Kujan is a character we trust which gives us some reliable access into the movie. Ultimately we never learn anything that Kujan doesn’t learn.

Some of the things Verbal tells us are also second hand. For example, he wasn’t there when Keaton got arrested, so when he describes that scene it must be something Keaton told him off screen. The Usual Suspects actually has several layers of viewpoints – Kujan is our viewpoint on Verbal who is our viewpoint into the past events and other people’s stories. Which plays into the slippery nature of the mystery at the story’s heart.

Another narrative device that’s related to the use of Verbal as a viewpoint character is voiceover. Not every viewpoint character uses voiceover, of course, but it is a way to emphasize that that character is telling us the story. In The Usual Suspects this helps us separate reliable and unreliable scenes – scenes with Kujan are presumably accurate while scenes told by Verbal, the only ones with voiceover, may or may not be true.

There’s more voiceover early in the movie than later. This helps speed us through the initial character introductions and the mechanics of all the guys getting thrown into jail together. It also clearly establishes Verbal as the storyteller. As the movie progresses we more often just cut to scenes of Verbal’s story without any voiceover since the audience now understands those time shifts.

We continue to get a little voiceover periodically to ease some transitions and compress exposition. By the last third of the movie there’s barely any voiceover at all. This serves to draw us more emotionally into the tale Verbal is telling. In the latter part of the movie it may be best not to remind the audience so explicitly that they’re watching someone’s story.

One place we get extended voiceover is when Verbal relates the story he believes about Keyser Soze’s origins. In that case these are not Verbal’s memories but rather a myth so using the voiceover instead of the sound from the scene distances us even further from the events we see. The Usual Suspects is using multiple levels of narrative and it employs the voiceover to help us keep straight what level we’re on.

Which is important in this kind of complex storytelling. If you’re going to depart from a straightforward, chronological, objective telling of the story you need to give the audience clues to follow the jumps. Otherwise we’ll feel lost and tune out of the movie.

There’s a saying in screenwriting: “Ambiguity is good. Confusion is bad.”

Non-Chronological Narrative

(SPOILERS: Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, Memento, Inception – though I’ll give you plenty of warning in case you haven’t seen them.)

The stories of most movies unfold in a chronological fashion. Oh sure, sometimes there are flashbacks or framing stories, and sometimes the framing stories can get pretty complex. But usually the scenes in the primary story arc are done in chronological order.

A handful of movies, however, play with the chronology of their story. Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan seem to particularly enjoy rearranging narrative time.

Though movies like Pulp Fiction, Usual Suspects and Memento break with sequential narrative, all still fit into the three-act structural paradigm. In fact, it may be more important than ever to have a strong structural spine when you’re messing with your story’s time line.

The most important thing to identify is the Main Tension (which I’m now calling the Dramatic Question) of the movie. This will give you your catalyst and resolution and tell you – and the audience – what the scope and boundaries of the story are.

If you fail to spell out a clear dramatic question early in the movie and then answer that in a resolution near the end, then you will probably either lose audience interest when your narrative thrust becomes confused or have an ending that is anti-climactic and unsatisfying. Or both.

The other elements of structure should still fall at about the same place in the running time of the movie. This may even be a reason to fracture narrative time – to maintain the emotional arc of the story where one doesn’t fit naturally. That can be particularly useful in a historical piece where the true events don’t line up into a neat structure.

Non-chronological movies require complex plotting, often at the expense of emotion. As such they tend to engage the intellect a lot more than the heart. This is similar to the mystery genre, which may be why so many of these kinds of movies are crime stories with a strong mystery at the core.

Let’s take a quick look at a few films with non-chronological narrative:

Memento (screenplay by Christopher Nolan)

Memento’s main storyline occurs in reverse. There’s also a forward moving storyline (the scenes in black and white) intercut with the main plot. But Memento ends up having a fairly traditional three-act structure. The main character is Leonard. The dramatic question is “can he find the man who killed his wife.” The catalyst is when we learn that this is his mission and the resolution is when we find out the answer. Though the scenes fall in reverse order, the act breaks, midpoint, etc. all appear in order to the audience.

The Usual Suspects (written by Christopher McQuarrie)

The Usual Suspects has a much more complex storyline as well as a large ensemble of major characters. The main character of the ensemble is Dean Keaton – he’s the guy with the problem at the catalyst. He wants to go straight but he’s been forced to commit this crime. So the dramatic question becomes, “can Keaton escape his life of crime?”

Interestingly, we learn the answer right up front. We see that Keaton will end up being shot by Keyser Sose. So the dramatic question for the audience then becomes “who killed Keaton” or more specifically, “who is Keyser Sose?”

The movie has a framing story – Agent Kujan questioning Verbal – but ultimately this framing story will also be where we get the answer to that crucial question. So in a way we’re cutting back and forth from the climax of the movie to the events leading up to it. The other structural beats fit into the chronological progression of the past storyline where we see Keaton get drawn into then try to extract himself from the mission.

Pulp Fiction (written by Quentin Tarantino)

Pulp Fiction is a real tough one. It has three major interlinked storylines, each with their own main characters and three act beats, intercut in non-chronological ways. With these kind of multi-storyline movies you, the writer, need to pick the storyline that will structure your movie. The beats of that storyline become the spine on which the other storylines are attached.

What holds Pulp Fiction together is the Vincent and Jules storyline. We begin (after the brief Pumpkin/Honey Bunny prologue) and end with their experiences recovering the briefcase. This storyline binds the movie into a cohesive whole for the audience.

What makes Pulp Fiction particularly challenging is that the other storylines are not intercut in chronological order. We even see Vincent die in one of them! Pulp Fiction uses multiple unusual narrative devices to tell its story.

Inception (written by Christopher Nolan)

Since Inception just came out, I thought I would close by mentioning the section where the team of dream infiltrators split into different dream “levels” creating three parallel timelines moving at different speeds. This is not actually non-chronological narrative. Time is moving forward in a direct linear fashion. We just have the equivalent of three locations where things happen at different speeds. But time itself only moves forward.

Flashbacks vs. Framing Stories

(SPOILERS: Saving Private Ryan, Casablanca, The Notebook)

I've been talking a lot about narrative devices lately – techniques we use to tell stories on film. Today I want to discuss two related narrative devices: flashbacks and framing stories.

You probably already know what a flashback is. In case you haven't heard the term "framing story," it describes scenes that surround the primary story, often in the present for a story told in the past. For example, Saving Private Ryan (written by Robert Rodat) has a framing story – we see Ryan in the present day going to visit the gravesite of Captain Miller in France. The Princess Bride (screenplay by William Goldman) also has a framing story – the grandfather reading the book to his sick grandson. In Saving Private Ryan the framing story literally frames the movie – appearing only at the beginning and end. In The Princess Bride, we move back and forth from the framing story to the main story in the book the grandfather is reading.

What differentiates a framing story from a flashback is where the main dramatic story of the movie takes place. If the main story is in the past, then everything in the present is a framing story. If the main story is in the present, then what takes place in the past is flashback.

It's important to understand where your main story is taking place. This is the story the audience really cares about. Everything in a framing story or flashback serves only to illuminate the main story in some way. Thus you must be careful not to spend too much time in the flashback or framing story. If you do, the audience will eventually grow bored waiting for you to return to the stuff they're really interested in.

Note that not every jump back in time constitutes a flashback as I’m defining it. Sometimes, for example, we might have an opening scene that’s set in the distant past – some bit of history that sets up important information for the present day storyline, as in The Mummy (story by Stephen Sommers and Lloyd Fonvielle & Kevin Jarre, screenplay by Stephen Sommers) or Almost Famous (written by Cameron Crowe). Those are really prologues, not flashbacks.

Similarly, sometimes a movie will start with an exciting bit of action and then flash back to show how we got there, such as in Mission: Impossible III (written by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci & J.J. Abrams). Again, this is not really a flashback by my definition, but rather a flash forward used to tease the audience. It’s a perfectly acceptable device, but bears more relationship to the purpose of a prologue than the usual uses for flashbacks.

Flashbacks

Like voiceover, flashbacks are considered by some to be a weak device. And like voiceover I think this is because flashbacks are often used badly, not because the device itself is somehow inferior. Flashbacks are almost by definition expository and thus have many of the same challenges as good exposition. They also have an inherent advantage in conveying exposition in that they can be dramatic scenes in and of themselves…as long as the writer makes them dramatic, of course.

Consider the flashback in Casablanca (screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch), when Rick remembers his time in Paris with Ilsa. It takes us away from the main story line for an awfully long time. But by the time we see it we're very curious about what happened back in Paris to make Rick so angry at Ilsa. Like with any expository scene, placing it when the audience is craving the information makes it more palatable. And the scenes themselves with the invading German army, Ilsa's mysterious past, and the final heartbreaking moment at the train station are dramatic in their own right.

Movies like Signs (written by M. Night Shyamalan) and I Am Legend (screenplay Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman) use flashbacks to reveal how their characters got to be the way they are. This more or less works, but these scenes never feel that interesting. I think that’s because they don’t reveal anything particularly surprising or relevant to the outcome of the primary story. It’s mostly character development and for that I think flashback is kind of a weak device.

Though admittedly Casablanca also tells us how Rick got to be the way he is, we learn something about him that we didn’t know – that he wasn’t always such a tough guy. The character information in the Signs and I Am Legend flashbacks is largely established in other ways in the main story line. And in Casablanca we also get information in the flashback that will be important for the outcome of the main story.

The TV show Lost used flashbacks to reveal character very effectively in the early seasons. But in those cases again we were learning things about the characters that were usually both unexpected and relevant to the main storyline happening on the island. By the later seasons (when we start to have flash forwards and flash “sideways”) we are no longer really looking at flashbacks. At this point they’ve become stories told out of chronological order.

Framing Stories

Framing stories are a potentially powerful device, but one fraught with risk. I think the framing story in Saving Private Ryan is the weakest part of the movie, and I'm certainly not alone. The Bridges of Madison County (screenplay by Richard LaGravenese) also has a cringe-worthy framing story that detracts rather than adds to the primary story. If we don't sense a relevant purpose for the framing story then it simply annoys us when it takes us away from the main action.

Sometimes the framing story is just a way to introduce a narrator for the main story. We learn that what we're going to hear is one person's perspective on the events. Edward Scissorhands (story by Tim Burton & Caroline Thompson, screenplay by Caroline Thompson) opens with Kim, as an old lady, telling her granddaughter why it snows. We then go back in time to when Kim was a teenager for the main story, only returning to the framing story at the very end for a nice tag. The framing story provides sweet bookends to the movie and gives it a fairy tale quality.

More interesting are framing stories that have their own conflict and structure. The Notebook (adaptation by Jan Sardi, screenplay by Jeremy Leven) is a good example. The main story line is in the past, the tale of the rocky romance between Noah and Allie. In the framing story an old man tells an old woman this story. We learn, of course, that these are Noah and Allie and that Allie has Alzheimer's disease. It adds incredible poignancy to the main story and serves as a profound punctuation mark on the romance of the main story line.

Citizen Kane (screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles) also works in this way. The main story is of course Kane's life, but it's framed by a reporter's search for the meaning of Kane's last words. This cleverly allows the main story to be told by a series of narrators in interviews with the reporter. (These may appear to be flashbacks, but remember our definition: the main story of Citizen Kane is in the past.) The framing story is a device to structure the way the narrative is told.

So how do you know when to use these devices? Usually if you find yourself writing a long monologue of someone telling a story from the past you should consider using a flashback. But if you find yourself writing a lot of flashbacks in a script, you might want to rethink your story. If what happened in the past is so important, maybe what happens in the present isn't interesting enough. Maybe you ought to be telling the back-story as your main story!

You should consider using a framing story for: 1) bookends to present the audience with a narrator, 2) thematic or emotional context for a story in the past, or 3) a device to structure past events. But be cautious…make sure your framing story is actually adding something worthwhile to the movie.

Both flashbacks and framing stories are forms of non-chronological storytelling. There are other kinds of non-chronological narrative devices besides these. Movies like The Usual Suspects or Memento are not using flashbacks and framing stories so much as breaking down the linear story chronology altogether. (Though within its non-chronological story structure Memento does have some traditional flashbacks to the murder of Leonard’s wife.)

There are plenty of other things to discuss with non-chronological storytelling. And those things will probably become topics of future posts!

Voice-Over Dos and Don’ts

Last post I discussed the desirability of having strong character voice in your voice-over. Today I’m going to discuss some other aspects of writing good voice-over, and some ways I’ve seen it used badly.

Sometimes I’ll be reading a scene from a student or a script from an amateur and suddenly, without warning, there will be a single line of voice-over all by its lonesome. It’s jarring and takes me out of the flow of the scene. You’ll notice you never see this in studio features. That’s because good filmmakers know they have to set up the technique for the audience.

There are a couple ways to do this. First, like introducing a fantasy element into your story world, if you’re going to use voice-over as a consistent narrative device you want to introduce it early. In the early part of the movie the audience is figuring out what the rules of your world are, and that includes narrative devices.

Movies like Goodfellas (screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese) or Forrest Gump (screenplay by Eric Roth) really rely on the voice-over as an integral part of their storytelling. And both use voice-over in the first few minutes and then with regularity throughout.

Even movies like Raising Arizona (written by Ethan & Joel Coen) or American Beauty (written by Alan Ball) that use voice-over more sparingly both open with it in the first sequence to acclimate the audience to it.

There are other occasions when you want voice-over but are not using it as a consistent narrative device. One would be when someone in the movie is telling a story. You might use a flashback to keep things visual. The flashback might have voice-over narration where the rest of the movie doesn’t. This works because we usually see the character start to tell the story and then dissolve into the flashback. We understand this new storytelling technique is just a temporary narrative device because it's set up by the context of the story.

A similar temporary device is one I mentioned last time: a narrated prologue to introduce the audience to the world of the movie. Examples include the first Lord of the Rings movie (screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson) or The Mummy (story by Stephen Sommers and Lloyd Fonvielle & Kevin Jarre; screenplay by Stephen Sommers). Again, the audience understands that this is separate from the main storyline. Plus, a prologue, by definition, comes at the beginning of the movie!

When a single line of voice-over comes out of the blue in a script or scene it’s usually because the writer wanted the audience to know some piece of information and voice-over was the easiest way to convey it. Well in this case easy isn’t better; it’s lazy and jarring.

Another important rule: don’t just tell us what we’re seeing on screen. Voice-over is an inherently distancing device. If you’re going to tell me what I can see for myself then I’d rather you just shut up already. Plus, if you’re doing this, you’re wasting the potential of the narrative device.

Voice-over is particularly useful to give us a character’s point of view and/or to create irony. In the first case, if the character’s point of view is obvious from the events on screen then it’s probably not interesting. Showing Joe passed out among a pile of beer cans and having his wife say, “Joe was drunk,” in voice-over is not very enlightening. If the character illuminates the events on screen in some way then I might actually care what their perspective is.

You can also get either dramatic or comedic irony when what the voice-over says is contradictory to what the action is. If we see Joe lying in the pile of cans and his wife says, in voice-over, “Joe was the most sophisticated guy I ever met,” we have irony – and a reason for the voice-over.

Consider this scene in the script for the recent movie Zombieland (written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick):

EXT. CITY STREET - DAY

FLAGSTAFF (V.O.)
Rule #3 - Double Tap.

A WOMAN stands on a city street, steely-eyed, resolute, holding a pistol with two hands. We hear rapid FOOTFALLS approaching her.

Superimposed onscreen: A TITLE: 3. Double Tap

The footsteps belong to a big female ZOMBIE, who RUSHES straight AT the woman. The woman PLUGS the zombie in the chest with a bullet. The zombie FACE-PLANTS and lies motionless.

Gun still raised, the woman approaches the zombie to test with her foot whether it’s dead.

FLAGSTAFF (V.O.)
You’ve just shot a zombie. You think it’s dead, you’re trying to save bullets... unh-uh. Two more shots. One to the head makes ninety-nine percent sure. One more to the head makes a hundred. It’s known as a Double Tap.

The woman doesn’t follow Flagstaff’s advice. She NUDGES the zombie’s leg. It keeps its eyes CLOSED, like a little girl who's pretending to be asleep when her parents arrive home after a night out.

FLAGSTAFF (V.O.)
There’s no use saving for the next zombie when this one’s about to...

The woman turns away, and the zombie slyly PEEKS at her. It LUNGES and BITES VICIOUSLY into her ACHILLES TENDON.

FLAGSTAFF (V.O.)
...give you a season-ending injury.

See how the voice-over adds to the information on screen? We don’t need Flagstaff to say something like, “this woman thinks kicking the zombie will tell her if it’s really dead.” We can see that. What we do need is to understand Flagstaff’s pragmatic, organized, rule-based approach to living in a zombie infested world.

The scene is also planting this specific rule which will payoff later. The bad version would be to see Flagstaff giving the double tap as he describes it. Doing it this way allows for a greater density of information - both visual and voice-over.

And as a bonus we get character and humor.

The Zombieland scene wouldn’t be the same scene without the voice-over. And that’s actually a pretty good test…if you can cut the voice-over out of the scene or film and you don’t lose anything significant, then you probably shouldn’t have written it in the first place.

Voice-Over – A Weak Device?

(SPOILERS: Blade Runner, Goodfellas)

There are those who claim using voice-over in a movie is a weak device (Robert McKee, for example, as famously satirized in Adaptation, screenplay by Charlie and Donald Kaufman). Personally, I disagree. To defend my stance I would simply point to such great movies as Goodfellas (screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese) and Raising Arizona (written by Ethan & Joel Coen). I cannot imagine how either of them could have been improved by removing the voice-over.

There are, of course, plenty of examples of bad voice-over. The most notorious is probably Blade Runner (screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples). But why did it fail so badly? Blade Runner is a combination of noir and sci-fi, and thus feels like a natural for voice-over, noir movies being particularly known for the device. It seems to me the reason the voice-over doesn’t work is because the content of the voice-over is bad.

Let’s look at a couple examples from the film:

DECKARD (V.O.)
I didn't know whether Leon gave Holden a legit address. But it was the only lead I had, so I checked it out. Whatever was in the bathtub was not human. Replicants don't have scales. And family photos? Replicants didn't have families either.

DECKARD (V.O.)
The report would be routine retirement of a replicant which didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back. There it was again. Feeling, in myself. For her, for Rachael.

Now compare to the first chunk of voice-over in Goodfellas:

HENRY (V.O.)
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States. Even before I first wandered into the cabstand for an after-school job, I knew I wanted to be a part of them. It was there I belonged. To me it meant being somebody in a neighborhood full of nobodies. They weren't like anyone else. They did whatever they wanted. They'd double-park in front of the hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In the summer when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.

Notice how the Deckard’s voice-over is dry and expository, while Henry’s voice-over crackles with character? Of course, Henry’s is also somewhat expository but we barely notice because it’s revealing his character at the same time.

One of the artistically valid reasons to use voice-over is to tell a story from a particular character’s perspective. To do that the voice-over needs to have a strong sense of the character’s voice. Goodfellas flips between Henry and Karen’s voice-over and each is strong and distinctive.

Voice-over is lazy when it’s used to simply explain things to the audience. Which is how it feels in Blade Runner. Moreover, in Blade Runner it explains things that don’t really need explaining – a fact proved by how effective the movie played in later releases without the voice-over. Cut the voice-over out of Goodfellas and it wouldn’t make any sense at all.

Other movies like Dune (screenplay by David Lynch) or the 1948 Joan of Arc (screenplay by Maxwell Anderson and Andrew Solt) have bad voice-over because the movie was cut down for length and the voice-over was added to bridge the gaps. But again, it’s not the technique itself that’s bad; it’s the way it’s used. The real problem was the (alleged) need to hack apart the movie in the first place.

I think the lesson is that voice-over is a good device when it’s an integral part of the style and structure of the movie and a bad device when it’s a crutch to help with exposition or to fix other problems in the film.

There is one place expository voice-over seems to work: at the very beginning of the film to set up the world of the story. This is most common in sci-fi films and historical films. These are often actually just audio versions of title cards like the opening scroll in Star Wars (written by George Lucas). Another variation is a narrated prologue such as that done in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) or the first Lord of the Rings movie (screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson).

It may in fact be lazy to use these devices to open your movie. But it’s also an effective short cut to tell the audience what they need to know, especially if they’re entering an unfamiliar world. Every once in a while we’re better off taking the lazy short cut than spending a lot of screen time on a more elegant approach. This works best at the beginning of a movie before we’ve settled into the storyline, as long as you keep it brief and punchy (The Lord of the Rings prologue is a little long for my taste). Once the story gets going, constant interruption by an expository narrator is distracting.

So having a strong “voice” in your voice-over is important. Does that mean those movies with an omniscient narrator – one who’s not a character in the movie, like Vicky Christina Barcelona (written by Woody Allen) – have bad voice-over?

Not necessarily, but I do think it’s harder to pull this off. You lose one of the primary reasons for doing voice-over in the first place – to get inside a character’s head. You might be able to give your omniscient narrator some personality, of course, but generally the effect is literary, not filmic. The omniscient narrator most often works when it is used to create a kind of “fairy tale” feeling that fits the tone of the film.

I’m going to continue to look at using voice over effectively in upcoming posts, along with some other narrative devices like flashback and framing stories.

American Beauty – Fantasy Sequences and Narrative Point of View

(SPOILERS: American Beauty)

There is one narrative device in American Beauty (written by Alan Ball) that I completely forgot to address last time – the fantasy sequences! Several times in the movie we move in to see Lester’s fantasy sequences related to Angela (at the basketball game, the bathtub fantasy, and when she touches his arm while getting a drink from the refrigerator, for example).

There isn’t all that much to say about these sequences particularly. In the film they are often indicated by music and lighting changes (which are indicated in the script). We might also note the use of rose petals in many of these scenes as a visual metaphor for perfection.

It’s also interesting to note how in these fantasy sequences Angela is much more mature, self-possessed and sexually aggressive than in the “real” scenes. This gives us an idea of how Lester sees her and ties into the thematic element of the gap between perception and reality. However from a writing technique standpoint that’s the kind of thing that comes naturally from understanding your character’s mindset.

I think the most noteworthy thing about these scenes is that we only get Lester’s fantasies. In a way, this is a related device to the videos. The videos put us inside Ricky’s head, but in a tangible way, via a physical medium as opposed to the subjective fantasy scenes that put us literally inside Lester’s head. This works hand in hand with Lester’s voiceover. We are seeing this story from Lester’s point of view.

When I use point of view in this way I mean narrative point of view as opposed to a POV shot from a particular character’s visual point of view (as I used it in the last post.) You may recall the narrative kind of point of view from literature classes.

Other than a few experimental movies film is almost always in the third person point of view, meaning that we have an omniscient viewpoint on the proceedings. However the filmmakers do guide that point of view by choosing where the camera looks and what gets included and what doesn’t.

I don’t want to go too deep into a discussion of literary theory here. For the screenwriter, it’s mostly important to note that we can limit this third person point of view. In many films, for example, we only see what the main character sees. This causes us to identify more forcefully with that main character.

American Beauty would be a logical candidate for this kind of limitation, but Alan Ball chose to expand the point of view. We get scenes with Caroline by herself, with Jane and Angela, with Jane and Ricky, inside Ricky’s family – all without Lester anywhere near.

Yet by using Lester’s voiceover and by giving us Lester’s fantasy sequences it seems that Lester is telling the story. Does this work? I suppose that’s a matter of opinion. I think the fact that the voiceover is coming from “beyond the grave” helps. We believe that the ghost of Lester can know more than Lester knows in the story world. It’s really this ghost that’s doing the story telling.

In that way, American Beauty has its point of view cake and eats it, too. It allows Lester to be the storyteller, giving us insight into his character, while also being able to show us scenes that he is not in.

Perhaps the thing to take away from this is that one of the most powerful tools you have as a screenwriter is controlling what the audience sees and when they see it. Narrative devices are all just ways to exercise that control. You should be making these choices consciously in your screenplays.

(Terry Rossio wrote an excellent article on using narrative point of view on the wordplayer website. Favorite quote: “when a film is about everything, it's hard for it to be about anything.”)

American Beauty – Narrative Devices

(SPOILERS: American Beauty)

For the most part American Beauty (written by Alan Ball) is told in a straightforward manner. The story unfolds mostly chronologically. But it does employ two noteworthy narrative devices: the video P.O.V.* shots and Lester’s voiceover.

The video P.O.V. shots allow us to see the action from a particular perspective – usually Ricky’s. Often this means we don’t get all the information in the scene, such as when he’s filming the argument between Lester and Jane in the kitchen, or when he films Lester working out naked. The video illustrates the movie’s themes that things are not always what they appear.

The movie opens with a video P.O.V. shot that is unique because it lacks any context. We don’t even know who’s operating the camera. This shot seems to indicate that Ricky and Jane are going to murder Lester. But later when we do get the context we learn that is not the case at all. This again reinforcing the idea that things are not always what they seem. In the original script, it is this video that is used to wrongly convict Ricky for Lester’s murder – illustrating the danger of accepting things at face value. In the final cut we are left to make this connection ourselves.

Then there’s the time Jane and Angela catch Ricky filming them through Jane’s bedroom window. Jane is put off and wants to close the drapes, but Angela poses sexily for Ricky. However in the video P.O.V. we move off Angela and zoom into a reflection of Jane in the mirror. This lets us know whom Ricky is really interested in. The video shots, like any P.O.V. shot, give us one particular character's perspective. Video has the added benefit of being able to show that perspective removed from the original time of viewing.

I’ve already mentioned the use of voiceover in American Beauty in several of my previous posts. Let’s take a closer look at this device.

In this case the voiceover comes from an onscreen character – Lester – implying that he is the one telling the story. Sometimes when used this way the voiceover gives a film an unreliable narrator, but this doesn’t seem to be the case in American Beauty.

In fact Lester doesn’t really narrate the whole movie. The voiceover only appears in three places – the opening sequence, briefly at the beginning of Lester’s last day, and at the very end of the movie. Used this way I see it serving three primary purposes:

First, it helps us to identify with a character that starts the movie largely unlikeable. The wit of the voiceover mitigates Lester’s on-screen lameness. And we learn something about Lester’s attitude about the people in his life in the process, which colors our attitude toward them.

Second, the voiceover advertises Lester’s upcoming death. I actually think this is the primary importance of it in this movie. In the opening voiceover we learn that Lester will be dead in a year, and when the voiceover pops up briefly about two thirds of the way in, it simply notes that this is the last day of his life.

Letting us know that Lester will die adds another layer to everything that’s going on and, along with the opening video shot, sets up the mystery – how will this ordinary suburban story end in murder? This engages us more fully with the story and gives us something to anticipate.

And the mid-story reminder of his impending death comes immediately after we discover the opening video is not what we thought. Now a new twist on the mystery is introduced – who is going to kill Lester if not Ricky and Jane? This advertising pulls us through the story as we build to the climax.

The final voiceover serves a different purpose. It allows Lester to wrap up his philosophy on life from the moment of his murder. Instead of ending with Lester lying in a pool of his own blood we learn how great he thinks his life was. It completely changes the tone of the movie.

And having voiceover at the beginning and end serve to bookend the movie with contrasting impressions of Lester’s attitude. This illustrates his character arc. In the beginning he sees his life as pathetic and trivial and unhappy. But by the end he’s learned to appreciate the beauty of those trivialities and realize how happy he really was.

Some consider voiceover a weak device – and it can be when done badly. But American Beauty uses it sparingly for very specific purposes and I think the result is quite effective.

*P.O.V. = Point of View

(P.S. - I'm starting to study voiceover as a device more fully. If you'd like, please suggest any movies that you think have particularly good or particularly bad uses of voiceover in the comments section.)