Assignment Q1
The first prompt we have been given for our assignment in Picture This! (a screenwriting studio) has directed us towards a quote, asking us to discuss it relation to the concept of audiovisual storytelling.
I have provided an extended version of the provided quote by Chris Dzialo (2009) to further my own understanding of the meaning it expresses.
‘Crucial to my arguments about both Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine is the supposition that screenplays should be experienced not as a literary text (cf. Sternberg 1997; Mota 2005; Kohn 2000), as a form in between film and literature (cf. Pasolini 1999), or as a mere blueprint for a final cellu- loid (or digital) film, but as a form of cinema itself. I make this claim because of the ontological properties screenplays share with film: both, although via opposite polarities, are audio-visual (the screenplay cueing the images and sounds in our mind) and both have an approximately standardized running time (24 frames per second for film in the US, 25 frames per second elsewhere, and 1 page per minute for screenplays when “adapted” to celluloid)’ (2009 p. 109).
Dzialo argues that screenplays cannot be placed in the category of literary text, nor can they be placed in the no-mans land or limbo between text and screen. He contends that the screenplay is a form of cinema, a cinema that plays out in the mind. The quote promotes the concept or overarching theme of our studio: that the screenplay must focus on prose that evoke images and sounds in the mind, as a film does when it plays in the cinema. This concept will be furthered in my next two blogs.
For now let’s look at an excerpts from a screenplay that exemplify Dzialo’s argument.
Here is a segment from the screenplay Bladerunner (Fancher & Peoples 1981)
EXT. CITY STREET - NIGHT Lights from the blimp flash along the street and wipe across the crowds of pedestrians as the VOICE TRACK CONTINUES TO BLARE from above. A portable noodle bar is crowded with customers, sit- ting on stools slurping their food out of bowls. DECKARD is standing near the noodle bar waiting for a seat. He's in his thirties, wiry, athletic, rumpled, used, unshaven. He's holding a newspaper, made of tissue paper, open while he glances at the blimp passing NOISILY overhead. Then he notices the COUNTERMAN. The Counterman is beckoning to him to a newly vacated seat. Deckard sits down at the noodle bar and the Counterman, an elderly Japanese, slaps a menu in front of him. No words on the menu, just pictures of sliced fish parts. Deckard points to a particular item and holds up four fingers. The Counterman looks at the item on the menu, confirms the order by holding up two fingers. Deckard shakes his head "no" and repeats his four fingers. The Counterman nods, corrected and hurries off.
I have highlighted in green examples of audiovisual storytelling. The first highlights give us an idea of light and sound. The use of the words ‘slurping’ and ‘slaps’ provides good audio imagery. The description of Deckard is excellent, as it brings to mind an a character who perhaps once was on to it, but has now let himself go. The words ‘rumpled’ and ‘unshaven’ bring to mind a half drunk, half retired detective from a from pulp novel who is about to get lured back into the game by a mystery case and a fem fatale. The final highlighted section exemplifies visual communication without dialogue. This is a technique we have been discussing in class.
Let’s agree with Dzailo, the screenplay should be seen as a cinematic text. A good screenplay should come alive in your mind.
Dzailo C 2009, ‘”Frustrated time” narration: the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman’ in W Buckman (ed.), Puzzle Films: Complex Story Telling in Contemporary Cinema, Blackwell Publishing, pp.107-139