DGA top 80 vs WGA top 101

The Directors Guild recently released a list of the top 80 films (by DGA members, as voted by fellow DGA members). Likewise, the Writers Guild has a list of top 101 screenplays. This post tries to compare them. The rank in the first column refers to the DGA ranking in their poll. The "WGA top 101?" refers to the WGA ranking in their poll, if it is on their list. The total of these numbers reflects their common respect for the writing and directing. Francis Ford Coppola comes out on top.

rank	title	director	year	(co)writer+director?	WGA top 101?	total
4	2001: A Space Odyssey	Stanley Kubrick	1968	Y	N	n/a
16	Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb	Stanley Kubrick	1964	Y	12	28
27	A Clockwork Orange	Stanley Kubrick	1971	Y	N	n/a
46	The Shining	Stanley Kubrick	1980	Y	N	n/a
73	Barry Lyndon	Stanley Kubrick	1975	Y	N	n/a
8	Schindler's List	Steven Spielberg	1993	N	49	57
14	Jaws	Steven Spielberg	1975	N	63	77
23	ET: The Extra-Terrestrial	Steven Spielberg	1982	N	67	90
25	Saving Private Ryan	Steven Spielberg	1998	N	N	n/a
28	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg	1981	N	42	70
29	Vertigo	Alfred Hitchcock	1958	N	N	n/a
32	Psycho	Alfred Hitchcock	1960	N	92	124
39	Rear Window	Alfred Hitchcock	1954	N	83	122
41	North by Northwest	Alfred Hitchcock	1959	N	21	62
1	The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola	1972	Y	2	3
6	The Godfather: Part II	Francis Ford Coppola	1974	Y	10	16
7	Apocalypse Now	Francis Ford Coppola	1979	Y	55	62
3	Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean	1962	N	14	17
40	The Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean	1957	N	48	88
48	Doctor Zhivago	David Lean	1965	N	N	n/a
10	Goodfellas	Martin Scorsese	1990	Y	41	51
13	Raging Bull	Martin Scorsese	1980	N	76	89
44	Taxi Driver	Martin Scorsese	1976	N	43	87
30	Sunset Boulevard	Billy Wilder	1950	Y	7	37
50	Some Like it Hot	Billy Wilder	1959	Y	9	59
54	The Apartment	Billy Wilder	1960	Y	15	69
2	Citizen Kane	Orson Welles	1941	Y	4	6
74	Touch of Evil	Orson Welles	1958	Y	N	n/a
9	Gone With the Wind	Victor Fleming	1939	N	23	97
12	The Wizard of Oz	Victor Fleming	1939	N	25	37
20	Blade Runner	Ridley Scott	1982	N	N	n/a
64	Alien	Ridley Scott	1979	N	N	n/a
26	Seven Samurai	Akira Kurosawa	1954	Y	N	n/a
79	Rashomon	Akira Kurosawa	1950	Y	N	n/a
33	The Searchers	John Ford	1956	N	97	130
71	The Grapes of Wrath	John Ford	1940	N	98	169
38	The Best Years of Our Lives	William Wyler	1946	N	44	82
51	Ben-Hur	William Wyler	1959	N	N	n/a
42	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	Milos Forman	1975	N	45	87
47	Amadeus	Milos Forman	1984	N	73	120
45	Titanic	James Cameron	1997	Y	N	n/a
55	Avatar	James Cameron	2009	Y	N	n/a
75	Once Upon a Time in America	Sergio Leone	1984	Y	N	n/a
80	Once Upon a Time in the West	Sergio Leone	1968	Y	N	n/a
72	All the President's Men	Alan Pakula	1976	N	53	125
58	Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)	Alejandro Inarritu	2014	Y	N	n/a
66	The Conformist	Bernardo Bertolucci	1970	Y	N	n/a
77	The Usual Suspects	Bryan Singer	1995	N	35	112
37	The Third Man	Carol Reed	1949	N	N	n/a
76	Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood	1992	N	N	n/a
21	On the Waterfront	Elia Kazan	1954	N	18	39
52	Fargo	Ethan Coen, Joel Coen	1996	Y	32	84
36	8 1/2	Federico Fellini	1963	Y	87	123
15	It's a Wonderful Life	Frank Capra	1946	N	20	35
17	The Shawshank Redemption	Frank Darabont	1994	Y	22	39
19	Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope	George Lucas	1977	Y	68	87
69	Cinema Paradiso	Giuseppe Tornatore	1988	Y	N	n/a
49	West Side Story	Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise	1961	N	N	n/a
65	Rocky	John Avildsen	1976	N	78	143
57	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	John Huston	1948	Y	46	103
53	The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme	1991	N	61	114
59	All About Eve	Joseph L Mankiewicz	1950	Y	5	64
56	The Hurt Locker	Kathryn Bigelow	2008	N	N	n/a
60	The Deer Hunter	Michael Cimino	1978	N	N	n/a
5	Casablanca	Michael Curtiz	1942	N	1	6
18	The Graduate	Mike Nichols	1967	N	13	31
61	There Will Be Blood	Paul Thomas Anderson	2007	Y	N	n/a
22	Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino	1994	Y	16	38
67	Gandhi	Richard Attenborough	1982	N	N	n/a
31	To Kill A Mockingbird	Robert Mulligan	1962	N	19	50
43	The Sound of Music	Robert Wise	1965	N	N	n/a
34	Forrest Gump	Robert Zemeckis	1994	N	89	123
11	Chinatown	Roman Polanski	1974	N	3	14
62	The Sting George	Roy Hill	1973	N	39	101
63	The Wild Bunch	Sam Peckinpah	1969	Y	99	162
78	Network	Sidney Lumet	1976	N	8	86
35	Singin' in the Rain	Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly	1952	N	65	98
70	Brazil	Terry Gilliam	1985	Y	N	n/a
68	The Bicycle Thief	Vittorio De Sica	1948	Y	N	n/a
24	Annie Hall	Woody Allen	1977	Y	6	30

"His Girl Friday" (1940) with script - first 4 pages

I've written before on one of my favorite films, "His Girl Friday," arguably the best film in the public domain.

For fun, I decided to see how badly the "one minute per page rule" fails for this film. The first four pages take approximately 2 minutes of film. It's fun to see the small changes here and there and the how Howard Hawkes followed the directions. Starting on page 5 there is a long divergence away from the script. Makes things interesting!

"The Sin of Harold Diddlebock" review

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (also released as "Mad Wednesday") is a 1947 film written and directed by the great Preston Sturges. It starred Harold Lloyd, Jimmy Conlin and (in a small but important role) Frances Ramsden.

Plot Summary:

A madcap comedy following the ups and downs of Harold Diddlebock.

After scoring the winning touchdown for his college football team mild-mannered Harold Diddlebock (Harold Lloyd), gets a job offer from a football fanatic and business-owner, "Chief". For 22 years, Harold works a dull, dead-end book-keeping job for the man. The story begins with Harold being called into the Chief's office and being fired, with nothing but a tiny pension. Diddlebock bids farewell to the beautiful girl at the desk down the aisle, Miss Otis, whom he had hoped to marry - just as he had hoped to marry six of her older sisters before that. The depressed Diddlebock wanders aimlessly through the streets, his life's savings in hand, and falls in with a con-man Wormy (Jimmy Conlin). They go to a bar for a drink. When he tells the bartender that he's never had a drink in his life, Wormy has the barkeep create a potent cocktail he calls "The Diddlebock". One sip of this concoction is enough to release Diddlebock from all his inhibitions, setting him off on a day-and-a-half binge of spending and carousing. He awakes to find that he has a garish new wardrobe, a ten-gallon hat, a Hansom cab complete with driver, and ownership of a bankrupt circus. Trying to sell the circus to bank owners, Diddlebock and Wormy bring along Jackie the Lion (yes, a real lion, on a leash) to get past the bank guards and presumably to make the point that they do indeed own a circus. The lion incites panic and Diddlebock, Wormy and the lion end up on the ledge of a skyscraper. They are arrested and thrown in jail, but Miss Otis bails them out. Diddlebock learns that the publicity has attracted the Ringling Brothers, who bought their circus for $175,000. Miss Otis also tells him that they got married during his first drinking binge.

Why I Think This Is A Classic 40s Movie:

While not Sturges' greatest film, I think it is a classic due to its zany comedic plot ideas. It was nominated for Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that same year. Harold Lloyd, in comic top form, was nominated for a best actor Golden Globe.

This film brought silent film star Harold Lloyd out of retirement, however, the two apparently had creative differences on set. This was a "collaboration" between Howard Hughes and Preston Sturges. They also had their differences. Hughes did not like the film and the copyright wasn't renewed. It is now in the public domain.

My Favorite Moment In The Movie:

I'm a sucker for sentimental but funny. Check out the film-ending scene with Harold Diddlebock and Miss Otis (now Mrs Diddlebock).



My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie: Harold Diddlebock bids farewell to Miss Otis.

Harold Diddlebock:
Miss Otis, I --

Miss Otis:
Yes, Mister Diddlebock.

Harold Diddlebock:
Miss Otis, when your eldest sister Hortence came to work here
seventeen or eighteen years ago, I fell in love with her. She ws a
lovely girl.

Miss Otis:
Yes, I know, I mean that you fell in love with her. She told me.

Harold Diddlebock:
Well, she swept me off my feet. My circumstances at that time did not permit even the contemplation of marriage.

Miss Otis:
Yes, I know, she told me.

Harold Diddlebock:
She very wisely stopped waiting for me and married the gentleman whose life she has illuminated. I felt that my own life had ended, that I would never love again. That the sunshine would withdraw permanently behind the clouds.

Miss Otis:
Yes, I know.

Harold Diddlebock:
But I was mistaken.

Miss Otis:
Of course.

Harold Diddlebock:
Because when your next eldest sister Ermine came to work here, I fell even more deeply in lve with her that I had with Hortence.

Miss Otis:
Yes, I know, she told me. Hortence even got a little burned about it.

Harold Diddlebock:
Well, she needed have because when Ermine, in her turn, got married she was replaced by your next eldest sister Harriet, I felt that everything that had gone before was merely an appetizer.

Miss Otis:
Yes, I know, she told me too.

Harold Diddlebock:
They were getting better and better. Your mother seemed to be making them nicer every year.

Miss Otis:
Thank you.

Harold Diddlebock:
I haven't come to you yet. ... When Harriet ran away with the head-stone salesman, I was inconsolable.

Miss Otis:
None of us felt very good about it.

Harold Diddlebock:
I was going to propose the very next day.

Miss Otis:
I didn't know that.

Harold Diddlebock:
I had the ring in my pocket. I just made the last payment on it. The one I started for Hortence.

Miss Otis:
You came so close.

Harold Diddlebock:
I never felt so defeated in my life. I never thought I'd smile again.

Miss Otis:
Then you met Margie.

Harold Diddlebock:
That's right. She was better than the others.

Miss Otis:
Mother had more practice.

Harold Diddlebock:
Practice makes perfect. By then, of course, I'd been wiped out in the market.

Miss Otis:
Oh, was that it? She never knew.

Harold Diddlebock:
That's right. I started to get on my feet again when your sister Claire came to work here.

Miss Otis:
Why didn't you ask her? Didn't you like her?

Harold Diddlebock:
Like her? I worshipped her. Only then, that irresponsible lout that married my sister choose that time to kick the bucket, er, pass on, without leaving even a dime's worth of insurance. So, I found myself with a ready-made family.

Miss Otis:
Poor Mister Diddlebock. I suppose you were in love with Rosemary too,
while she was here.

Harold Diddlebock:
Naturally. Of course, I was so in the habit of being in love with your mother's daughters that it would be impossible for me to even see one of them without ... without --

Miss Otis:
Without what, Mister Diddlebock?

Harold Diddlebock:
I presume you know I've adored you since the first morning you punched the time card. ... You knew it, didn't you?

Miss Otis:
Well, I suspected it. My sisters had warned me.

Harold Diddlebock:
Of course. Imagine being exposed to seven Miss Americas and muffing all seven of them.

Miss Otis:
Poor Mister Diddlebock.

Harold Diddlebock:
I'm leaving here today.

Miss Otis:
Oh no, Mister Diddlebock.

Harold Diddlebock:
That's what I really want to tell you. I don't know where I'm going and I very probably won't see you again. Why don't you just take this?

Harold Diddlebock hands Miss Otis a ring box.

Harold Diddlebock:
It's all paid for. Someday when you meet some young man who's really worthy of you, who has everything but the engagement ring, you can take that excuse away from him.

Harold Diddlebock shuffles out.


Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie

The scene between Harold Diddlebock and Wormy when they first meet is brilliant. The final scene with Harold Diddlebock and Miss Otis (now Mrs Diddlebock) is funny and very touching. Look for Sturges' stock company of actors playing the minor roles.

This post also appeared as a guest post on September 2015 in Scott Myers' great Go Into the Story Blog. His blog is the best out there for screenwriting advice. Check it out!

Script formatting basics

This is not a post on story structure or movie analysis. This is simply an introduction to the basics of movie script formatting, intended strictly for the beginner. To be more precise, we focus on feature length narrative spec scripts. In other words, a movie script for a fictional or fictionalized story not written on commission.

A number of examples of scripts are given at the bottom of this post. (They are included based on their quality, film-wise and script-wise, not by whether they were commissioned or not.) There are also some references which the reader can use to pursue the topic further.

The brief examples from produced movie scripts given below are for educational use only.

Basic elements:

1. Font: Courier 12 point is standard, but I think Times Roman 12 point is allowed. Bold and italics can use used, if needed, but if it can't be typed using an old-fashioned manual typewriter, don't use it.
   
2. Slug lines -
   The slug line is in all caps. These are abbreviated location and lighting instructions for the crew to shoot the scene. They generally begin with either INT. or EXT. (short for interior, resp., exterior). Occasionally, in a car ride or a shot in a doorway, you might see INT./EXT., which means the camera can be inside or outside (or both).
   

   Example 1: From John August's Frankenweenie:
   

   INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
   

   This tells us that it is an interior shot, set in a classroom, during the day.
   
   Example 2: From that same script:
   

   EXT. BACK YARD - DAY
   

   This tells us that it is an exterior shot, set in a back yard (Victor and Sparky's back yard, as we learn later in the scene), during the day. It is also correct to say
   

   EXT. VICTOR'S HOUSE - BACK YARD - DAY
   

   There are lots of variations on slug line formats, as well. For instance, maybe you want the camera outside the classroom looking in, or inside the house looking out into the back yard. There are also "secondary slug lines", used, for example, when a number of scenes take place inside the same house. However, to keep things basic, we only list the simplest cases.
   
3. Action lines -
   

   They give a concisely worded scene description of (a) what the audience sees in the location provided by the slug line, (b) who is present (or at least, seen by the camera) in the location, and (c) any motion we see. Action lines can occur anywhere but the action lines immediately after the slug line gives the audience the kinds of details you would want a set designer to know.
   

   Example 3: From John August's Frankenweenie:
   
   INT. CLASSROOM - DAY
   
   MR. RZYKRUSKI stands at the blackboard, where he's written his name. He has a thick, impossible-to-place accent, somewhere between a Russian spy and Dracula.
   
   The character cue for Mr. Rzykruski is in all caps because this is the first time we have seen this character. For the remainder of the action lines of the script he will be simply Mr. Rzykruski.
   

   

   Example 4: From Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig's Bridesmaids:
   
   INT. CLEAN, UPSCALE MODERN BATHROOM - MORNING
   
   Annie stands in front of a mirror in nice lingerie. She puts on lotion, make-up, brushes her hair, mascara, etc. She's getting ready to ...
   
   Creep back into the bed, where Ted is still sleeping. She gets in and begins to position herself to show her good parts. Coughs and nudges Ted to wake him up. Annie quickly pretends she’s still asleep. He taps her.
   
   Descriptive, concise writing. While the authors don't grammatically need 2 paragraphs, the paragraph break helps communicate pacing.
   
   

   1. camera direction
      
      The action lines can convey camera placement/motion directly, or indirectly.
      

      Example 5: Excellent example of indirect camera placement from David Koepp's Panic Room:
      
      EXT. WEST 83RD STREET - DAY
      
      Race across a field of PEDESTRIANS to pick up three women hurrying down the sidewalk. LYDIA LYNCH, a real estate broker, vaults down the sidewalk, she's got a hell of a stride. MEG ALTMAN, thirtyish, struggles to keep up with her, she's tall, wafer-thin, pale as a ghost. SARAH, a nine year old girl, flat out runs to keep up, dribbling a basketball as she goes. The kid's athletic, much tougher than Meg, who she resembles.
      
      See how the description suggests a camera starting from an establishing wide shot then zooming or pushing into a medium shot?
      

   2. text on screen
      

      Example 6: From Tony Kushner's Lincoln:
      
      TITLE:
      

      JANUARY, 1865
      TWO MONTHS HAVE PASSED SINCE ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S RE-ELECTION THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR IS NOW IN ITS FOURTH YEAR

      
      EXT. A SHIP AT SEA - NIGHT
      
      A huge, dark, strange-looking steamship, part wood and part iron, turreted like a giant ironclad monitor, is plowing through the choppy black waters of an open sea. Lincoln is alone, in darkness, on the deck, which has no railing, open to the sea. The ship’s tearing through rough water, but there’s little pitching, wind or spray. The deck is dominated by the immense black gunnery turret.
      
      In place of TITLE, you can also say SUPER for example.
      
   3. close ups
      

      Example 7: From Robert Towne's Chinatown (page 11):
      
      INT. GLOVE COMPARTMENT
      
      consists of a small mountain of Ingersoll pocket watches. The cheap price tags are still on them. Gittes pulls out one. He absently winds it, checks the time with his own watch. It's 9:37 as he walks to Mulwray's car and places it behind the front wheel of Mulwray's car. He yawns again and heads back to his own car.
      
      GITTES
      
      arrives whistling, opens the door with "J.J. GITTES AND ASSOCIATES - DISCREET INVESTIGATION" on it.
      
      This passage does a lot. First, the action lines following the first slug line indirectly indicates a number of close-ups, e.g., the time of 9:37. The secondary slug line is a character cue, so that indicates that the camera is to track that character (Gittes, the protagonist of the story).
      

4. Dialogue
   

   In a play, almost all the information comprising the story is conveyed via dialogue. In film, that is generally not true, as visuals play such a vital role. None-the-less, dialogue is how we learn the personality of each character, what kind of person they are.
   
   Example 8: From Theodore Melfi's St. Vincent (pages 3-4):
   
   
   Vin’s sitting across from a mortgage counselor, TERRY. He’s reviewing paperwork.
   
   

   VINCENT
   (pointing)
   That one there. Says the line’s been frozen.

   
   Terry shuffles.
   
   

   TERRY
   Uh-huh. Got it. Yes. Let’s see...so...with these reverse mortgages you can only borrow a percentage of the equity you have in the house. That’s called the loan-to-value.
   
   VINCENT
   Don’t need a financial seminar. I own the damn thing outright. 40 years.

   
   We get a clear sense of what a crotchity old dude Vincent (the protagonist) is, as well as what his "external" need is (money). In the remainder, we see what his "internal" need is (love and a sense of family).
   
   
   1. email/SMS
      
      There is a lot of email in Spike Jonze's Her, however the script has it all vocalized using a "text voice".
      
      Example 9: From Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl:
      
      
      

      TANNERGo talk to Tommy. I’ll draw up the contracts.
      

      
      NICK’s phone text buzzes. He looks at it: holds up the screen: TOMMY O’HARA with a phone number. Tanner grins.
      
      

      TANNER (CONT’D)Told you you came to the right guy.
      

      
      
   2. singing
      
      Example 10: An example of singing a song is given in John August's Frankenweenie:
      
      
      Burgemeister walks away from Elsa leaving her alone at the microphone.
      
      Nervous, she looks out over the crowd.
      
      Elsa starts to sing.
      
      

      ELSA
      (singing)Praise be New Holland,
      Streets so wide and sidewalks clean,
      Modest homes at modest prices,
      Everyone’s urban dream,
      Praise be New Holland,
      Happy children free from tears,
      Free from all the worlds dangers,
      Free from crime and free from strangers,

      
      The crowd is so rapt that no one notices the big THUNDERSTORM brewing overhead.
      
      Note the italics in the lyrics. I didn't add them. They are in the original script.
      
   3. parentheticals
      
      These go underneath the character cue (which is always in all caps). They are also called "wrylies" because (at least for older scripts) their most common use was to tell the actor that the tone of the line is wry humor (wryly). In general, parentheticals are used in case a line of dialogue has an ambiguous meaning, but can also be used for action, if it is only a word or two.
      
      Example 11: From Peter Berg's The Losers:
      
      
      EXT. HUMVEE (MOVING) -- DAY
      
      RIPPING ACROSS THE DESERT. Pooch drives, Clay shotgun, others in the back. Passing a COMPUTER TABLET to Jensen:
      
      

      CLAYAuthenticate and backtrace.
      
      POOCH
      (grumbling)
      Send us out to the middle of nowhere to "wait for instructions"...
      
      JENSEN
      (finishes checking)
      We're good, this baby came out of the Kandahar Spook Station, controller's codename is Max.
      

      
      The first parenthetical indicates that the line is to be spoken in an annoyed voice. The second parenthetical actually indicates action, that Jensen finishes checking something on the laptop.
      

If this post interests you, here are some books that might help you go further:

• Charles Deemer's Screenwright is available free online, as well available as a (cheap, used) paperback. While a fine introduction to screenplay narrative structure, there is little on formatting there.
• David Trottier’s The Screenwriter’s Bible, now in its 6th edition, is summarized on johnaugust.com. I've seen older editions (which are also good) sell on amazon.com for as low as one penny. This introduces both script structure and also script formatting.
  
• Christopher Riley's The Hollywood Standard has a lot of detail on script format questions as does David Trottier’s Dr Format Tells All.
  
• Ellen Sandler's The TV Writer's Workbook, if you are interested in sit-com writing. While a fine introduction to sit-com screenplay structure, there is little on TV script formatting there. However, her website does have an example script from an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond she wrote.
  

When you find a script online, it is often a "production script", which is not quite the same as a "spec script". Except for Flynn's script, below are some feature-length scripts formatted as a spec script that you can study to try to learn how the expert's write:

• Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig's "Bridesmaids" (2011),
  
• David Koepp, "Panic Room" (2000),
  
• Theodore Melfi "St. Vincent" (2014)
• John August's "Go" (1997) or "Frankenweenie" (2012),
  
• Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl" (2013) - this script is a final production draft, which is a modified version of the original script which includes scene numbers in the margins used by the production crew. Just ignore them.
  
• Tony Kushner, "Lincoln" (2011) available at amazon.com (and online)
• Peter Berg's "The Losers" (2010)
• Robert Towne's "Chinatown" (1973)

Spike Jonze's "Her" is also excellent and available online.

Making of "The Incompatibles"

This post is a discussion of the making of the video The Incompatibles, an AFG project from wdj on Vimeo.

The video "The Incompatibles" is the first project from the Annapolis Filmmaking Group, a meetup.com group founded by James Angiola. We meet once or twice a month in the Factor's Row restaurant, who have been very generous in giving us meeting space.

James decided to run the group in a workshop fashion, to learn filmmaking by doing. We collected some scripts and decided the first project would be a modification of a public domain script written by Horace Holley in 1916 titled "The Incompatibles".

Next, we did a table read and the group decided that the script needed to be updated in language. I volunteered to take first crack at it but also incorporated suggestions from others. After this, we did another table read where more suggestions were made, and we selected actors (2 male, one female) and crew from the AFG members, and set a date for the shoot. Ultimately, the script ended up as 8 pages. Two other (completely different) revisions were submitted by other members and the plan is they will be made in future meetings.

Before the shoot, the female lead dropped out. Instead of canceling the shoot, I took about an hour out of one morning and rewrote the script without the need of that actor, resulting in a 2 page script. It's just a silly comedy, whcih hopefully some of you find a little amusing. We shot that script using AFG and the edited video is slightly over 3 minutes.

Cast:
* Fred - Benjamin Walker
* George - Attral Platte
* Waitress - Erica Chambers

Crew:
* sound, camera assistant - JT Torres
* director/camera/editor/co-writer - David Joyner

Sources:
* Original script:
Horace Holley "The Incompatibles" (1916)
* Sound track:
Pavel Svimba - Teknikal Problems
license: CC by-nc-sa-3.0

There are problems with the finished edit. I'm not very good at color-correction and it shows, focus was in and out on the waitress (I don't know why), and some coverage was missing. Audio was hampered by my lack of skill at syncing h4n audio to on-camera audio, and the AC running full blast. (This was shot on a hot summer night.) None-the-less, the actors were terrific and, as far as I'm concerned, a fun learning experience! Thanks to everyone involved, including my grand-daughter Addie who lent me her favorite doll for the final shot!

Notes on Randy Baker's Playwriting II class

Randy Baker taught a playwriting class recently at the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD. He's a great teacher, the class was excellent, and here are some very rough notes (along with my own embellishments and possible mistakes) that I took during the class.

A playwright is a craftsman or builder of plays. The learning is in the doing. Many well-known playwrights actually dropped out of school. Playwrights learn by the doing.

We will structure the class by approaching it from the direction of Aristotle. He wrote in 300 BC the Poetics, and he discussed tragedies and what makes the story great.

What do we, our animal self, want from a story? We want it to move us emotionally.

Aristotle split what makes the play work into six categories:

1. plot or mythos (not quite the same as narrative plot),
   
2. character or ethos (not quite the same as a dramatic character),
   
3. thought or theme or dianoia (not quite the same as narrative theme),
   
4. music or melos,
   
5. diction or lexis (see also dialogue),
   
6. spectacle or opsis,
   

in order of importance.

In modern playwriting we often swap 1) and 2) in importance.

What does drama do? Drama is not an imitation of a thing but rather of an action.

For Aristotle, plot means something different than what we think of it. For him, plot means mythos. Mythos - myth or believe, or world-view perspective. For him, character means something else as well. For him, character was ethos, their a morality, their ethics, and how that affects their world view.

In modern playwriting, music could be referred to as tonality or poetry of the play.

Diction - the words we use, the type of dialogue.

Spectacle - the visuals, the set design, the location, the physical space used to convey the story. Where are the characters? What are they wearing?

Theater is defined by its limitations. It is analogous to the older history of poetry - when it was limited to meter. Aristotle's three unities:

• time - used to be required for the play to take place in 24 hours,
  
• place - used to required it to take place in one location,
  
• action - used to require it to have only one plot line (no B-story or C story).
  

For a recent example of this, consider the film Locke, written and directed by Steven Knight, starring Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke who, years earlier, had an affair with a co-worker Bethan. Quoting from the plot section of the wikipedia page for Locke:

Over the course of the two-hour drive from Birmingham to London, Locke holds a total of 36 phone calls with his boss and a colleague, Donal, to ensure the pour is successful, with his wife Katrina to confess his infidelity, his son, and with Bethan to reassure her during her labour. During these calls, he is fired from his job, kicked out of his house by his wife, and asked by his older son to return home. He coaches his assistant Donal through preparing the pour despite several major setbacks, and has imaginary conversations with his father, whom he envisions as a passenger in the back seat of his car. When he is close to the hospital, Locke learns of the successful birth of his new baby.

We see then that Aristotle's time, place and action requirements are satisfied with Locke.

Elizebeth Friedman biography, "Divine Fire"

In previous posts on this blog (for example, Elizebeth Friedman and the Lew Kim Yuen case, Elizebeth Friedman and the Gordon Lim case, Elizebeth Friedman and the Holmwood case, and so on), I'm mentioned some of the events in Elizebeth Friedman's life. A timeline of ESF's life, based on her own partial memoir, is here (pdf),

While I did a lot of work on it, the mountain of effort is due to Katie Letcher Lyle, who created the almost finished manuscript years ago, through personal interviews she had with with Elizebeth Friedman herself. I'm grateful to Katie for inviting me to help polish up some technical details and hope you, the reader, enjoy the result, Divine Fire.

Sadly, Katie died suddenly in August 2016. There is a short obit included in the books' preface.

Recently, PBS has broadcast an hour long documentary based on Fagone's 2017 biography of ESF, The Woman Who Smashed Codes. You can find that documentary streaming on you computer here: The Codebreaker (aired 2020-01-11). The website says the streaming "Expires: 02/08/21". Jason Fagone gave a talk in 2018 on his book and it's been posted to youtube.
The pdf of Divine Fire is here.