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Hollywood School (Richard Krevolin’s scriptwriting course) |
Aksinia Kurina, National film portal KINOKOLO.UA, April, 26, 2006 |
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From 20 to 27 April 2006 screenwriter and teacher Richard Krevolin is giving his 7-day course in scriptwriting at Holliwood School in Kiev. Here is our story of the first day.
Day One
Theatre Hall at Kiev Mohila Academy. There are two scores of students in it. It is a mixed assembly, but unlike Mark Travis’s last year’s directing class they are older and more professional. There are also people from Moscow.
The Day One morning session is a necessary introduction to the course. How we receive, process and remember stories. The physiological basis of storytelling. How knowledge and information are transferred through narrative, how to improve your storytelling. The basics of storytelling; conflict; establishing a sympathetic character who wants something badly; three act structure (beginning, middle, end); inciting incident; active pursuit; legitimate manipulation of audience response; overcoming obstacles, etc.
Richard Krevolin discusses the subjects that are included in American textbooks on screenwriting. His manner of lecturing is democratic, he asks his audince questions all the time. Richard Krevolin himself looks like a Hollywood movie character: athletic, with a nice tan, white smile, and a sense of humour. He makes jokes all the time, keeping the right balance between political correctness and wit. For instance he illustrates his analysis of what makes a good character with three condom videos. In the first one the main character is walking along the street in the crowd of people dressed as white fluffy rabbits (costumes of spermatosoa remind you of Woody
Allen’s What You Wanted To Know About SexBut Were Afraid To Ask), who upon noticing a pretty woman rush to meet her but find themselves caught in a giant condom in the end . Next video is about a Jewish mother who bursts into her adult son’s room to take a condom out of her pocket. The third video is about a noisy naughty child in a supermarket and silent suffering dad. The video ends with a slogan – Use condoms! To make his point, Krevolin tells his audience about a medical seminar where doctors were shown photographs of AIDS victims. The pictures were frightening and effective. But you can reach your objective without frightening people. You sure can. Krevolin suggests you fascinate your audience.
The first task is to tell a story in two scenes. Krevolin gives his students two rules which Californian teachers introduce when they start working with their students: no flashbacks and no voice-overs. So the first task is to write a short non-dialogue scenario.
We also learn that one does not have to be a good writer to write a screenplay. Brief phrases. Most of the words are active verbs and nouns. Sentences should be short. The shorter the better. A paragraph in a screenplay should not be more than 4-5 sentences long. Dialogues should be concise. So we will have to learn to be concise.
Krevolin asks to think about the starting point when you set about writing a screenplay. Should you start with its plot? Theme? Character? “I’m not a Nazi of storytelling, I’m not trying to impose anything on anyone”. Krevolin also says that there is no screenwriting police. But there is the rule of a distant bathroom.
A producer is reading a screenplay and he wants to go to the bathroom. Will he take it up again when he comes back? A screenwriter must grab the producer by his throat and never let him go.
A rule to write a scene: get into it late and get out early. Cut off preliminary introductions. It is based on human nature.
Krevolin talks about professionalism, but not only about it. The screenwriter needs to study sociology and psychology. They need to understand what response a moment in the script will cause. A screenwriter is like soundtrack composer in this respect. Music relates to the screenplay. A film can change a person’s hormone make-up. Tears, for example, boost serotonin level. “During two hours in the movie theatre you change a person”, that is to say a screenwriter manipulates people. But manipulations can be legal or illegal. Then follows an example of legal manipulation – the final scene of The Sixth Sense, when we find out that the protagonist is a ghost. This is legal manipulation. Deus ex machina is a bad story.
Story writing is a conscientious process. We often move from end to beginning. Then Krevolin says that Coca-Cola has spent a lot of money to study what kind of stories have a more powerful influence on the audience. The most powerful are the ones with a sympathetic character. It is important that the audience could find the hero attractive. And here is the Hospitable Hostess Rule. We open the doors to our readers on the first page of the script. It is a mistake when the writer introduces five characters on the first page. The first impression is very important. The audience should sympathize with the hero. But some beginners make a typical mistake: they love their hero very much and do not create them enough obstacles.
Krevolin mentions Joyce’s aesthetics theory. The first type of art is moralistic. The other is pornographic, the one that arouses emotion. The screenwriter is in between. With something like didactic pornography that arouses and teaches the audience.
Then Krevolin talks about Cambell’s theory of myths, old myths in contemporary culture. Dramatic rules. Types of films: mainstream and art house (the Sundance festival format). Exercise # 1: non-dialogue scene The Big Date. Two scenes in the same environment. They are separated by five hours. We write during the lunch break with some of the students reading it out later. The class suggests improvements.
Our homework is to rewrite the exercise. And to read the handouts in the file that each student has got.
My personal opinion: it is all rather a revision of the familiar – with variations. A beginner will hardly be able to cope with so much information (there are many more things than I have described here). My advice to those who will decide to take up the next screenwriting course: read a good textbook on screenwriting first.
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