I was quite curious as to how one would write a scene with characters singing a song, musical style. Do we just include "singing" as an action within the handy parentheses? Or is there some other formatting we must use? And how much mention are we supposed to give to the music itself?

-- Adam

For movies and television, the convention is to put the lyrics in italics. It's probably helpful to include a "(singing)" parenthetical the first time you do it, because some readers may not catch it otherwise. And yes, dialogue in italics can also be used for foreign languages, so you'll need to make sure it's clear in context.

Here's where the former graphic designer in me resurfaces. Screenplays are written in 12-pt. Courier, which is not the most attractive typeface in the world, but certainly sturdy and readable. There's an italic form of Courier that's rounded and a little more like handwriting, which would be quite suitable for lyrics.

However, the "italic" form of Courier you find on most computers is really just normal Courier with a slant effect applied (called "oblique"), and it seriously blows. It's ugly on screen. It's ugly printed.

It's impossible to write beautiful lyrics in such an ugly typeface.

So, having written lyrics in many of my scripts, I've come to use a different typeface altogether for the songs. For Big Fish, I used 11 pt. Stone Sans Italic. For Charlie and Corpse Bride, I switched to 11 pt. Verdana Italic, because I needed to send those scripts in as .pdf files, and you can safely count on just about any computer having Verdana installed.

Why 11 pt., when the main text is set at 12 pt.? That's because Verdana looks much bigger than Courier when set at the same point size. You're also more likely to get in a full lyric line in without a break at that size. (Although I feel no guilt cheating a margin slightly to avoid a break in any event.)

Some scripts I've read will include a slash "/" at the end of each sung line. I don't find that helpful, so I never use it.

Note that the convention for songs in stage musicals is completely different. For those, lyrics are placed in uppercase along the left margin. You can see examples of the format in the templates for Final Draft or Screenwriter.

I'm in a catch 22 dilemma. After reading your posts I agree 100% with you that people need to get into filmmaking and directing to say something important and should go to Wall Street to make money.

I have recently made a low budget short film that has an incredibly strong message but is being rejected from every film screening that I enter it into with the justification that it isn't 'crowd pleasing'. I know that the simple answer is to make it more crowd pleasing, but that would then remove from the impact of the film. How do you break through this catch 22 scenario of getting exposure only if it can generate revenue, or please crowds, even though I'm using the medium of film to say something really important but no one wants to show it?

After doing some digging I did manage to find that people really didn't think the film just plain sucked and were simply being polite, but, it gets a bit disheartening when I'm doing something to try and stick to the authenticity of making a strong statement through film and not giving people the right buzz just to entertain them or the temporary filter system of 'controversy'.

What are your thoughts on the balance of 'crowd pleasing' compared to 'what should be said', and how do you get the latter kind of films shown?

--Nordic Snoopy

First of all, I don’t think any of us have the psychic ability to know what pleases the crowd. It’s sort of like predicting the stock market: even the experts can’t do it. The movie going audience is fickle, unpredictable, and on a good day, smarter than we think. A while back when a guy I know who had worked in marketing at Miramax for years (theoretically an expert in the area) said: “Who in the world would want to go see a movie about a 40 year old virgin?” The answer, obviously, turned out to be EVERYBODY. When you set out to make a movie and your motivation is to please the crowd, it would seem to me that you would be compromising those things which most consistently make good movies: a director’s unique perspective and unwavering passion. That is not to say that formulaic movies don’t sometimes do well, but recently more often than not, the audience seems to sense their insincerity and they stay away in droves. (To be fair, I will say that “crowd pleasing” works better with the tent-poles, remakes, and sequels, but I am assuming that you are not involved with that kind of filmmaking.)

When you chose the subject of your movie, be it narrative, documentary or experimental, it better be a subject that you know inside and out, a subject that will be illuminated by your unique perspective. You must throw your whole self, body, mind and soul, into it and live, breathe and sleep it. The last thing you should be thinking about is how to please “the crowd”, a target group of people or even an individual. Too many young people care too much about “what other people say or think”. As the filmmaker, it is part of your challenge to make a film says what should be said no matter how difficult or offensive the subject matter may be and is a crowd pleaser in spite of it all. This brings to mind a brilliant 1982 documentary, The Atomic Café. Who would ever think that the nuclear bomb would be a subject around which one could make a film that was both a “crowd pleaser” and “said what needed to be said.”? It is a politically and socially significant film about a profoundly disturbing subject that was simultaneously informative and yet righteously entertaining. Besides which, the style of the film was remarkably innovative. I doubt the filmmakers set out to please the crowd, but they were able to achieve that because of their unique perspective, creativity and passion. I will also point you in the direction of the socially and politically pertinent documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, whose originality seemed to please political thinkers from both the left and the right. F**k the crowd, make the film for yourself and because you know that the piece of work needs to be in the artistic and/or intellectual landscape.

And on the off chance that the crowd is pleased, thank them profusely.

This is a 2 part question.

I will be filming a short film on MiniDV this October and half of the film takes place in a car. Many folks have told me that shooting in a car is extremely difficult. Now without using the traditional bracket setup that the "pros" use, is there another way to get the non-documentary look I want? My initial idea is to use a trailer and have a truck tow the car around.

Part 2 - the first half of the film is warm and light and the second half is cold and dark, is there anything you could recommend to help convey those feelings, using filters etc, especially in a car setting? Thanks in advance.

-Derek

Please see my answer of a few weeks ago for advice on Part 1. So...Part 2.

The obvious answer is to shoot the first part with a warm or Sepia or 85 type filter with the camera balanced to “daylight” and then the second part with the camera balanced to tungsten which will make the daylight very cool. Of course you could achieve this afterwards with the timing process, but there are subtle differences between doing it in the camera and doing it later. Not being a MiniDV expert you’d have to check that by experimenting.

If you are in the car a great deal, think about the relationship both in colour and contrast between the outside and inside of the car. You can make a big difference to how the windows look by putting ND Gel (0.3,0.6,0.9 etc) on the windows and even using colours on the gel to alter the colour of the outside that you see. Soft gel may give you reflection problems, but not always – especially if it is applied carefully. In the “cold and dark” half you could use a lower exposure to get the driver more into semi-silhouette or full silhouette.

For daylight the direction that the car is traveling in relation to the light makes a big difference so choose your roads carefully and think about using overhead trees to create a shadowy effect from sunlight at the carefully chosen time of day.

John August's screenwriting credits include Go, Big Fish, Titan A.E. and both Charlie's Angels movies. His current projects include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tarzan, and Corpse Bride. He also maintains a screenwriting-oriented website at johnaugust.com.

Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, John earned a degree in journalism from Drake University in Iowa, and an MFA in film production from the Peter Stark program at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

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