3..CREATING WORLDS

“This description of C. C. Baxter’s apartment in The Apartment

(1960) written by Billy Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond shows quite how much

the lens is implicitly present. The writing selects and frames specific detail

exactly as a camera does. We are told where to look and what to see.”

(Adam Ganz, ‘To Make You See.’)

The subsequent class discussion that examined the style of scriptwriting for ‘The Apartment’ when compared with the movie was a revelation for me. It crystallised in my mind that a script will actually be finally read by producers and film executives to generate interest and secure funding. How much easier is that process when the script is a work of art.

The beautiful light touch of Wilder and Diamond has produced a script full of mood and tone, and dark ironic humour. A discussion of “Big Print” was inspirational. The idea of one of the students to read a script only by reading the big print was a novel and instructive concept. To include humour and irony in “Big Print” is a great method to engage the reader and establish tone in a way often not readily available through dialogue. 

This exercise has caused me to read my writing far more critically in an effort to enhance my style. I am re-visiting my favourite authors in an effort to identify what techniques they use in their writing, that engage the reader and could be adopted in my own work. (Perhaps shorter sentences.)

The reference to Conrads ‘Heart of Darkness’ as essentially based on observations from his travels I found quite startling. Reading exerts from Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost (1998) truly opened all manner of questions in relation to Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’  and the process of adaptation and dramatisation of experience. I return to Conrad and Somerset Maugham, (one a master of world, the other of character), to re-read their classics with a closer, more analytical eye on their techniques and styles of exposition.

The reading brought me to consider notions of observation and authenticity, the lens and dramatisation which all coalesced for me in regard to a possible project for my major presentation where establishing an authentic tone, world, and ‘voice’ for characters is critical to the ambition for the project as a requiem to those fallen in war.

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