My Honors Thesis

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The I in “Indie�

Rowen Smith, BA (Hons), MP

Thesis submitted to the South African school of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance for the degree of Honors in Motion Picture Medium.

October 2013

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Abstract.

No more I. (anonymous)

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Preface to the Preface.

Hi and welcome. I never had a pre-decided thesis topic from the beginning of the year. I was pretty lazy about the whole thing and it didn’t inspire me that much, but that all changed tonight, right now actually. In short; this thesis was about film dialogue and the free stream of consciousness. It changed almost impulsively to; writing dialogue for the indie-film genre. I rewrote my thesis again with a new and clear objective which is to write effective dialogue for the Indie film genre. I thought it would be as simple as it sounds, but over eight months of trial and error, I’ve discovered a whole lot more about film dialogue than ever expected.

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Table of Contents Preface………………………………………………………………..............................................................................................6 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………..........................................................................7 Thesis Summary…….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….8

PART 1 The Indie Film………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………………9 Indie Comedy ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………….……...….. 12

PART 2 The Free Stream of Consciousness……………………………………………………………………………………………………………18 My Voice……………………….…………………………………………………………………...........................................................20 Other Voices…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......................................22 The Techniques of the Free Stream………………………………………………………………………………………………………….25 Film Dialogue……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………28

PART 3 The Dialogue Experiment…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..30 The Plotting Experiment………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…39 The Film Experiment…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……42

PART 4 Let’s end it…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………44 Further Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..45 The I in Indie………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………46

PART 5 Bibliography Addendum A: Free Stream of Consciousness writing.

Addendum B: Film Experiment DVD

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Preface In January 2013, I started conceptualizing for my honors degree screenplay and I knew it was a story that would mean so much to me that I had to commit an entire year on it with my best efforts. The story had to be real; not lack the cinematic conventions we use in film and it shouldn’t follow them either. I wanted to discover something new about the emotional element of screenwriting and over continuous brainstorming various thesis topics, I finally decided to embark on a writer’s journey into the world of the free stream of consciousness.

The more research I gathered, the more the concept of “consciousness” intrigued me. I had to find out exactly what it was and how I can use it as a writing tool to express my inner writer’s voice through the dialogue my character’s spoke. Then it would be real. Then the audience would get the story and the characters would get the story too, and as I writer I could explore the art of writing. In the months ahead I became aware of dialogue in film. I started reading screenplays and watching films with the sole intent to visualize written dialogue being spoken by film characters and this somehow lead me to the free stream of consciousness and how dialogue can emerge from inner monologue that roots from complex character motivation. I found the perfect place to express my writer’s voice, “through dialogue” and even better, “there are simple step by step rules I can follow to get it perfect”, but that was not the case at all.

I discovered that film dialogue is not only about what characters say, but how they say it; when they say it; where the camera is when they say it and from what inner motivation or agenda their dialogue originates from. My research took me into a whole new field of writing in the free stream to fully understand what type of dialogue I am writing, what type of character I want and what would motivate a character to even utter a single word. I conducted dialogue experiments, plotting experiments and I rewrote of every possible line of dialogue and topic of discussion I can think of. I wrote stacks of scenes, placing a fictional character in an everyday scenario to expose and exploit them and reveal their character through dialogue. It worked, but this was only the start to a long transformational journey into the world of screenwriting, characterization, film dialogue, inner-monologue and the free stream.

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Acknowledgements I’ve been working on this thesis for the last eight months or so and I had a lot of external help along the way. I would like to thank Garth Holmes, my thesis mentor, for sitting with me weekly, discussing dialogue and characters and film conventions and taking hours out of his day to sit and talk about South African youth subcultures. We would sit once a week and brainstorm different dialogue options and narrative routes I could take with my honors short film. Secondly, I would like to thank the AFDA Film School panel for listening to my thesis presentations throughout the year.

To Juri Badenhorst, a fellow writer, thank you for your open opinion on the concept of “consciousness”. After I made the final decision on my thesis topic, Juri and I started talking about consciousness and how it is not something you do, how the free stream is not a switch you turn on and how these so called “rules” writers should follow shouldn’t be rules at all. We had endless arguments on the idea of the “free stream of consciousness” and his input lead me to a greater understanding of what consciousness really is and isn’t.

Next I’d like to thank the actors that made my journey worthwhile. I interviewed and personally worked with Roland Reed and Sean Marco Vorster and their opinion as filmmakers on my thesis topic was greatly appreciated. Having worked with them in my honors student film, they understood the stand points I was trying to make and their understanding of what dialogue should do as an actor was truly helpful. I’d like to thank Hennie Le Roux and Paul Boshoff. These two guys are passionate filmmakers and skilled young cinematographers. In the last two years I’ve worked with Paul and Hennie countless times and they’ve come to know the style of dialogue I have in my scripts. Their input and viewpoint on dialogue and the way a script should be written regarding technicalities with the camera was incredibly insightful. A special thanks goes out to Jack Feldstein, a Hollywood screenwriter & filmmaker for his gathered knowledge on the free stream of consciousness especially in writing screenplays.

Lastly, I would like to thank the actors I worked with during my honors film shoot for their valuable interpretations of the characters and their extra-ordinary improvisation skills.

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Thesis Summary.

In order for me to actually know what I wanted to discover with Indie film dialogue, a few experiments that ultimately lead me nowhere and everywhere.

I will be looking into The Free Stream of Consciousness with a brief summary of its history and it’s techniques in modern Literature with the attempt to discover if it can be used to write effective film dialogue. I will also be looking at film dialogue and the opinions from writers, books, actors, directors and filmmakers about the guidelines and rules a writer should keep in mind while writing a screenplay. I have done a few writing experiments, including a dialogue experiment where I tested writing dialogue in The Free Stream. Other experiments was also done to discover something about how plot works with dialogue to tell a dialogue-driven character narrative with the focus on Free Stream of Consciousness writing. Although the objective of these experiments changed, I did learn valuable information from them. This got me questioning dialogue down to the ways of the Ego and the concept of Consciousness itself.

Over the course of eight or so months, I made a short film called “’n Stukkie Winter” (a piece of winter) in which I tested my experiments. The film can be seen as an Indie-film. It was made on a low budget, written with an Indie-Film approach and shot with an Indie shooting style. In this thesis I also write about the rules and guidelines to effective cinematic voice over.

This academic these is really about creating dialogue for a South African Indie Film audience.

This topic might be broad and unexplored, but I’ve gathered enough information and spent enough time to actually give it a forceful attempt. The hypothesis question I am stating with this document is this; “Writing screenplays in the free stream of consciousness with the attempt to write better dialogue that not only advances plot but reveals character is both successful and unsuccessful. Writing dialogue for the Indie-Film genre requires writing in the Free Stream of Consciousness, but it also does not. Lastly, Dialogue for an Indie-Comedy screenplay can be written in The Free Stream of Consciousness but the end result may or may not be funny or comedic and at the end of the day, a funny actor is needed, a funny writer is needed, a funny story is needed, a clear narrative and character arc is needed and the core principles of story, character, comedy and Free Stream writing is needed for it to be successful.”

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The Indie Film.

What is an Indie-film and by what means can a film be labelled as an Indie film? How is an indie film written and how does one go about shooting an indie film? These are all questions I had when I first heard the concept of Independent films. Although this thesis does not go into all the various elements of Independent films, it does however, go into the writing of it, focusing on effective dialogue for the indie-film genre. But for those new to the topic, I have included a brief summary of Independent cinema below.

In the last few years of motion picture the global industry in general, started going into independent filmmaking.

Wikipedia states this about Independent films; An independent film is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. The 1990s saw the rise and success of independent films not only through the film festival circuit but at the box office as well while established actors.

“Independent films are sometimes distinguishable by their content and style and the way in which the filmmakers' personal artistic vision is realized.” (WikiPedia, 2013)

The Indie-Film genre became quite popular over the years. Independent filmmakers started doing their own projects that was not governed by a film studios. Now, I don’t really know if anyone can label a film according to one specific genre, but I think there’s definitely something genre specific to Indie Films.

Let’s take a closer look into what the word Indie, in terms of motion picture consists of.

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Producing an Indie Film.

In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced and/or distributed by subsidiaries of major film studios.

Usually, but not always, independent films are made with considerably lower film budgets than major studio films. These films cost little or no money, are character driven stories and have a very unique and uncostly aesthetic feel. (IndieWire, 2013)

Writing an Indie Film.

When writing an Indie Film, I believe the writer should actively think about the cost of the production. The cheaper the scenes will cost, the better for the production and in turn, the better and more meaningful a scene is written, the stronger a story will be. Thus, the writers of indie cinema are more likely to write very interesting, cheap character driven stories with a realist and do-able approach.

From the book; The way Hollywood tells it by David Bordwell, we can identify something remarkable from Post Hollywood Dialogue Films of the 60’s.

“A lack of “scenic density” is typical of what Bordwell calls the “intensified continuity style” that dominates post-60s Hollywood movies. Also characteristic of this style is less attention paid to blocking actors. Wide shots that allow actors to use their entire bodies as instruments of expression are less common, and filmmakers frequently default to one of two options for staging conversations: the “walk and talk” (think the west wing) or the “sit and deliver” (see the previous link).previously i’d thought of this as a directorial trend — Bordwell cites the proliferation of multi-camera shooting as one of its primary causes. Could it be that separate developments in screenwriting, with their own unique causes, also have an important role to play?” (Bordwell, 2006)

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Directing an Indie Film.

Over my eight month course of directing my 25 minute short film project, I made a few discoveries around Directing an Indie Film. A certain approach is needed to translate a script in the easiest and most effective way with the mindset of minimal money spending. It is quite hard to tell a story with minimal budget, thus there are certain techniques a young director needs to learn in order to be a better Indie Filmmaker. The approach I took was to simply be able to take a camera, take my actors and shoot. No aesthetic needed. The film aesthetic is to be created with the environment and shot selection together with great dialogue scenes and it’s for this reason that film dialogue is so important in terms the performance required from the actors.

Shooting and Indie Film.

Indie Films often have signed off locations with none built in Studio. This makes it hard when it comes to camera lighting and exterior shots especially. Every location is new and different, with different textures and shaped and light exposure. Thus, the skill of indie Filmmaking when it comes to the shooting of the production is all in the hands of the performers. If you can take a white wall and place to amazing actors in front of it with great dialogue which build the story, then you have a winning story. To shoot certain scenes with actors beforehand on any given location is a great way of discovering if the dialogue works and if the written word works well with the spoken word.

Indie Film as Genre.

Can anyone state a certain Film genre to be true? Maybe so, but in modern 21st Century cinema, genre is starting to get more complex and starting to separate into multitudes of different genre labels. In the same way indie Films are seen as Independent Cinema, it is also considered as a certain type of film and story genre. You get the indie Love Stories, Indie Horrors, Indie Westerns, Indie Crime Plot, Indie Fantast and so on, but I wonder if the Indie Comedy is a recognized film genre? What are the comedic principles and even more so, who are the indie Comedy film audiences out there and how do you write dialogue for them.

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THE INDIE COMEDY. The comedy genre is hard enough in itself. It’s comedy. It’s funny but you still tell a story and the problem with this is stories are just stories and sometimes they’re not that funny hey?

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Humor vs. Comedy I’m not going to focus too much on this topic, but I do want to mention what the differences and similarities are between humor and comedy. The words humour and comedy are often used interchangeably. Both terms have certain elements in common. Both also have certain differences. Writing humour is not the same as writing comedy. Usually, the humourist writes an essay or article or filler that is amusing or funny. The humourist’s material is intended to be read.

On the other hand, the comedy writer writes material to get laughs, usually in front of a viewing audience. Comedy writers are best known for writing material for situation comedies, comedy films, stand-up comics, and sketch comedy.

In South Africa, we tend to relate more with Humour in Films than comedy. South African Cinema goers want to laugh at someone who is being ridiculed and made fun of. That’s a key ingredient to writing good comedy, but what South African Cinema doesn’t do is reduce systems or ideals or character because of their narrative character flaws and this is what makes a great comedy work, what makes a narrative progress in a way that’s not only funny, but also develops a relationship between the viewer and the character.

South African Comedies rely on making the viewer laugh at situations where a character is reduced, but they never stick to the reason behind ridiculing a character? Why do we make fun of a character? What does it say about his character flaws, skills and the overall “want and need” narrative paradigm?

For these answers we need to look at the Fundamentals of story and comedy.

Fundamentals of Story Again, I do not intend to take you on the incredibly boring insights of core narrative, but I do want to point out something that is invaluable to a writer, in terms of storytelling. Taken from the book, Narrative Fiction by Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. (Rimmon-Kenan, 2005)

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Prince’s definition of Minimal Story;

A story is conjoined by three events.

In motion picture, this can be seen as the three acts of a story.

The first event and the third event is stative.

This can be seen as the Establishment in Act 1 and the Fulfillment in Act 3.

The second event is active This is what the story is actually about, ACT 2.

The third event is the opposite of the first event.

This shows progression in a narrative way and character way. It’s quite simply put; when the character want becomes the character need, in which we see a character change.

The three events are conjoined in such a way that; the first event comes before the second, the second event comes before the third event and the second event causes the third event.

This puts it all together, stating that a story should progress from the first act to the third with the second act as vital character and narrative tool for the climactic events in act three.

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Fundamentals of Comedy.

Now that we know more about the fundamentals of story, we need to look at the fundamentals of Comedy and all the different and complex forms thereof in order to hopingly establish what an Indie Comedy might be.

I listened to a very important comedy class which I want so share with you. It’s John Truby on Comedy for comedy screenwriters. These are the conclusions I’ve drawn from them; Comedy needs to be quick. You need to know the right techniques and structures.

Understanding the elements of the classic structure is vital. I want to touch lightly on this topic.

The elements of the classic structure are; Problem/Need, Ghost, Inciting Incident, desire, opponent, plan, battle, self-revelation and new equilibrium. The Ghost is the event from the past that is still haunting your hero. It’s the crucial backstory you need to rely on to reduce your character in a comedic way. The problem need is the hero’s outer conflict and real problem in the narrative world. The need is that inner conflict that the hero needs to overcome at the end. It’s what the hero needs to learn in order to have a better life. The inciting incident is the event from the outside which sparks the hero to come up with the desire which is ultimately the trap the hero falls into, often this is the love interest if you are making a romantic comedy. The Opponent is the antagonizing force which shares the same goal as the hero. The plan is that set of guidelines that help the hero win most of act two. The battle is probably the most important part of a comedy and this is where the hero faces the opponent and undergoes change. Intense battles force the hero to be revealed to himself. The new equilibrium is when the hero is at a higher level of the self or a lower level of the self.

So what is Comedy?

“Comedy is a series of events where the protagonist is reduced.”

An animal comedy contains dirty bathroom humor. A Child comedy is when the protagonist is reduced to a child. Where he or she reacts to a situation with more emotion than the situations requires. A machine comedy is the hardest of them all. It’s when a character reacts with less or no emotion, dead panning the scene.

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So what’s the core of comedy?

Comedy needs to present in the three fundamental levels of the story. It needs to come out on a scene level, on a gag (joke) level and on a line (dialogue) level. If you do not know who is being reduced and how, then you do not know what type of comedy you are writing. Comedy needs to be written from the structure level and not from the gag (joke) level, only then will the jokes come naturally.

So how do you build a comedy?

“A good comedy has a good comedy premise. When (X) happens, a character tries to get (Y) and ends up with (Z)” The hero needs a desire, often a selfish one, which gets him into progressive trouble in order to achieve the goal he wants.

So how do you make people laugh?

“The laughs come from what the character does to get what he/she wants.”

The essential thing to remember is to give your character a weakness, a comic nightmare, a fear. Give him or her a high and a low.

“This creates a Comic Gap.” Not only are Comic Gaps great tools for writing funny dialogue, but it also grounds the type of comedy you are writing. It gives you something to fall back on when the jokes run dry.

The Indie Comedy Genre I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve heard someone mention “Indie” they also mention “Quirky”. I’ve heard the word “quirky” describe almost every character. When most of us don’t know how to define our story or our character, we use the word “quirky”. I think it’s safe to say that most of us label our film genre with the term “quirky”.

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When asked about our genre or character or story, we all say something like this; “It’s an Indie quirky romantic story” “It’s kind like a Quirky indie short film” “I don’t know…she’s super Quirky and like….”

This is what the dictionary says about the word “Quirky; (Anon., 2013) “Something that is strange/not normal but cool Wearing long stripy socks that are odd” “Different...in a good way “ “Abnormally cool cause of their wonderful persona” Characters in indie Films are unique. They are special and they rely on the character want and need paradigm and three act character arc. They don’t have to, but they do, that’s what makes them something other than the writer, something other than the normal everyday everyman.

This is why audiences love indie films, it’s because they are intensive character driven stories, and most of the time the characters are in fact quirky. These characters asks for interesting character backstory and interesting character dialogue and it’s for this reason that I went on a self-reflexive journey into the free stream of consciousness in order to discover how quirky I can get.

This got me thinking…..

Is there a certain type of comedy that differentiates from commercial South African humour films which an English and Afrikaans South African film audience can engage with? …and could this comedic style emerge from writing dialogue in the free stream of consciousness?

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The Free Stream of Consciousness.

I will look into the Free Stream of Consciousness and how it plays a role in writing dialogue, with a closer look into its development, principles, paradigms and forms over the decades in order to understand new ways of creating authentic inner-monologue that not only drives a story forward, but reveals character. With dozens of personal interviews, emails conversations and discussions with actors will give me clear perspective on what others have to say about dialogue.

I will look at how writers write and see dialogue, how readers read screenplays and engage with dialogue and how actors interpret and deliver dialogue from a screenplay. During my last semester, I conducted three experiments namely; The Dialogue Experiment, The Plotting Experiment and The Film Experiment, to test certain elements of dialogue in my 24 minute honors short film. I unpacked the dialogue, the character want & need of the story characters and analyzed the film footage in terms of dialogue and “the free stream of consciousness”.

The Free Stream Question: Can the Free Stream of Consciousness be a tool for the writer to create authentic film dialogue that drives the narrative and reveals character-viewpoint which directly relates to the dramatized want and need in a screenplay?

The Free Stream Statement: Stories grow out of what characters do and what characters do comes from what they want. Thus if we know what characters want, then we will know what to dramatize into narrative events which will ultimately enhance the story and reveal character at the same time. If we understand how the Free Stream of Consciousness works with character driven stories, we will know how to write authentic and compelling character-driven dialogue that will directly relate to the character’s dramatic need and thus the actor’s inner-monologue performance will be believable truthful and accepted by the audience.

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Free Stream Abstract “How do I know what I think until I see what I say” This is a motto I lived by in terms of creative writing. It’s a cool motto to have. I’m not going into philosophy here, but this abstract can be considered as words of truth, but also words of lies and deceit. It serves a purpose here to say the least.

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My Voice What do I think about writing dialogue? What do I actually write? How do I do it? And why do I choose to write scenes that are dialogue driven? These are all questions I face when writing dialogue. By now I know that there’s a big difference between reality and motion picture and there’s a range of things we can manipulate on screen that we cannot in reality.

For me, dialogue should be real, or at least, as real as it can be. It should be simple and precise, but not lack jabbering, jargon, dramatic pauses, frustration and voice tone. I engage with dialogue on screen when it speaks to me on a narrative level, in terms of the hero’s journey and his character want & need. Most of the time when I read a screenplay I can identify this right up front. I understand where a writer is coming from when he writes what he writes, but I also know that film dialogue, especially on the screenplay itself, is only a guideline. A guideline that helps the actor understand what he or she should be trying to say, rather than just saying it like it is written. This statement is also a big Hollywood contradiction where the American film industry moved into a direction where screenplays are so well written, so well planned out and the dialogue it contains are almost exactly as it is portrayed on screen by the actors. So I’m left with a dilemma.

How do you write dialogue that’s one hundred percent accurate to the story, dialogue that is performed word by word by the actor without any improvisation or characterization from their part, and dialogue that is good enough to be manipulated on the shooting day when scenes need to be constructed differently due to reasons only filmmakers would know about.

My conclusion is that a writer should know when his voice should be expressed through dialogue within moments of the screenplay that are vital to the character, and not the writer.

During my last eight months of dialogue research and film practice, I’ve come to a certainty that dialogue should be rehearsed with the actors at a very early stage in the development of the script. Writers should be free to suggestion, open to the opinions of actors, but not lack their role as a writer, which is to be grounded when making vital narrative, character and structural changes in the script.

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I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way, where I’ve written scenes several times over aiming to perfect the script to a point where any film crew member can take the script, read it and know exactly how it will look and sound on screen. Actors interpret a screenplay and especially, dialogue, in their own way and one of the most important responsibilities for a screenwriter is to spend a lot of time with the director in order for these two forces to collide and fully understand what the dialogue should be doing not only in the scene, but on an audience engagement level. When writing dialogue, a writer should be familiar with what the topic of writing is about to a point where dialect, speech patterns and even breathing plays a role. To me, that’s how you get it real, that’s how you match the written word with the spoken word, but to end it, I would say that screenplay dialogue is only a guideline and a writer should focus on the core story.

What are you really trying to say with the film? What are you really trying to say with the dialogue you use? What are the characters really saying? Say it. If it works, use it and if it doesn’t, write it again and say it again. The more I did this, the better I realized what my characters would be like, sound like and act like, which results in a real performance at the end of the day.

An improve scene we shot with our two main male lead characters. They sat on a bench and talked about the entire narrative as it unfolded. Not once did they fall out of character or did their dialogue lead them away from the plot. Their conflict was real and their dialogue escalated to protagonist’s want and need, which held the scene to the core story.

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Other Voices Struggling with the endless possibilities that film dialogue can go into, I had to find help. I asked a few people to give me their opinion and narrative critique on my honors screenplay. This could go into all departments of filmmaking, but I chose to limit it to writers and actors, as these types of people are extremely close when it comes to writing dialogue, engaging with dialogue and the delivery of it. Lastly, I asked a complete stranger, who I have yet to encounter, about the idea of indie film dialogue.

I sat down with Juri Badenhorst and heard what he had to say about the topic. He read all four screenplay drafts and liked it. He did comment on the dialogue quite lot through the script development. I didn’t like it at first and took it mildly offensive, but later on I realized that he’s stand points were valid.

This is what he had to say; “Draft one was quite crude and slapstick South African…That’s not Indie. That’s just easy. Take out the swearing. It makes your work of art dirty. Some character speak to fast. Take it easy, let them speak the way the way to speak, but keep it short, because it’s a short film. Abigail’s last words are the words of the century! Keep it. Only gay hipsters talk weird. Real ones are real, so keep them real.”

The next guy I spoke to was young filmmaker/writer Paul Boshoff, who also read all four screenplay drafts and this is what he had to say about the story and Afrikaans comedic dialogue.

“The characters seem legit enough to relate to Stellenbosch subculture. This is already a good starting point when you want to go Indie. Racist jokes are racist. Many dislikes, but many likes too. If it’s a comedy and it’s funny, then it should be comedic and funny in the dialogue. “ I emailed a guy from Hollywood who calls himself Jack Fieldstein, a screenwriter and filmmaker who focusses on characterization in feature length scripts. I told him about the problems I’m facing regarding film dialogue and the free stream of consciousness and he gave me insight in how screenwriters go to work with regards to consciousness writing. I internet-interviewed him and this is what Jack mailed be back.

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“Hey Rowen...Your questions are excellent...And you're right...I doubt you'll find even one book on writing with a stream of consciousness aesthetic...That's because it has barely been explored. And it is exciting that you're into it. This email is to start the ball rolling”

Have I written a feature film? Yes. A stream of consciousness aesthetic one...? Yes. Has it been made yet? No. However, a non stream of consciousness script I wrote has been optioned and is being produced. Go figure.

Probably more commercial in the eyes of a producer...whereas a stream of consciousness script is far more creative. But excellent examples of stream of consciousness features that were commercial are WAKING LIFE and Goddard's "BREATHLESS".

Writing visually.

The spectrum of filmmaking is immense. From very talky films to films with no words. (The Artist, for example) Perhaps your style is a very verbal one. Fellini was certainly very verbal...non-stop dialogue....but his visual imagery was amazing. The most important thing is to find your style. And if that is through words and characters, then so be it. That being said…

Less is more, and Show and don't tell, are two very useful points to keep in mind. If you can show something...without words...film is excellent for that. For instance...a character doesn't have to say..."I feel sad"... You can show that in close up. Remember you are writing for actors to play out your script. And a good actor can bring a great interpretation to the character. So trust your actors. My advice is to workshop your script with actors...before shooting...and determine what the actor can bring to the script... without words...and adjust your script accordingly. The actor will show you. Filmmaking is a collaborative process. As for emotional scenes...a writer has to find the emotion in themselves before he/she can write the emotion in the scene. That's simply the way it is.

Stream of consciousness scriptwriting...

Very concisely...it is a way to write... that includes the mistakes and contradictions and ironies and paradoxes...that characters in the script...do and say. And that makes them very human.

It is writing without fear of "getting it wrong". Because there is no right and wrong way for characters to talk or act. They just are.

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How have I used stream of consciousness?

By not being fearful to let characters be completely free and not force those to do what I, the writer, want them to do. I still didn’t know enough, but I was getting close, so I gave it one last try; reading an eBook. I read a book called Writing Dialogue by Tom Chairella. It’s really helpful and not like an eBook at all. It’s Tom speaking to me about dialogue writing, which was cool.

These are some extracts that helped me along the way.

“There is no secret, except to learn how to trust the language you hear, to learn to hear the people around you and to expose yourself to as many voices (and techniques) as possible.”

(Chiarella, 2008) “If there's anything you're an expert on, it's your own voice. I'm not referring to the sound of it, though presumably no one sounds as much like you as you do (unless you're Johnny Carson, and then everyone thinks he sounds more like you than you). I'm referring to your voice as a reflection of who you are, of your consciousness.” (Chiarella, 2008) “The words you choose, the idioms you select, the metaphors you rely on, consciously or unconsciously, this is your voice as I define it. It is you. They can put you in jail. They can throw you in the hole. They can soundproof the room. They can even take away your cigarettes! But you still have your voice.” (Chiarella, 2008) “Writing dialogue is a craft that demands that you shape what a character says so that it's representative, artful, revealing and honest.” (Chiarella, 2008) To conclude what the writers have to say about dialogue, I asked Roland Reed, a random guy from the streets of Cape Town what he thought about Indie Films and Indie Dialogue.

Mr. Reed.

The characters role and type defines what type of dialogue he or she would have. A protagonist sounds like a protagonist and acts like a protagonist, because he is a protagonist. In the same way an Antagonist sounds like and Antagonist, who steals from a protagonist. Thus his/her dialogue should be antagonizing. Also, a deuterogamist supports a protagonist and should pop up at the most random plot point with the most random dialogue and for the most random reason to force the hero into action for the final ordeal of the hero’s journey.

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The Techniques of the Free Stream.

I’m not going to bother you or myself with endless theory on a topic that should not be a topic.

I did include a brief summary of what modern literature call the free stream of consciousness, but to me, the stream of consciousness. The stream of consciousness. The stream of consciousness.

This is when you have an idea that is not fully developed. It may be a logline, a premise, or a few scenes and you plunge into the script, writing one scene after the other in a stream of consciousness. It's almost like automatic typing, channelling, whatever comes into your head you write it. Full force like a steamroller. You get to write the actual screenplay without having to form the full story. No need to work out plot points or cultivate the characters' personalities.

You just write the script. This approach doesn't take much pondering time. Spontaneous writing is fun and easy. You activate your right brain when using this approach. Some of the things you write will pleasantly surprise you. Some dialogue the characters say will also surprise you. Once you finish your script you will have a better idea about what you really want to write about. A story and a theme emerge. This approach will trigger a lot of other great ideas. Jot them down and continue.

Problems with this approach Since your screenplay will be a stream of words, the description and the dialogue would need to be heavily edited. No words should extraneous. Anything in the description that doesn't move the story forward needs to be cut. Any dialogue that doesn't reveal character or move the story forward needs to be cut. And it will be a lot. Most of the dialogue will probably sound like ranting or babbling. After finishing you will know your characters better and the dialogue can be sharpened. There will be no suspense. The author's foreshadowing creates suspense and that takes forethought. Your story structure may be weak or non-existent. The plot may only be regurgitated movies you've already seen. It may be hard to rewrite. Your story may be all over the place--knowing where to how to approach your next rewrite becomes vague. It becomes harder to cut out scenes you love. Writers try to jam in past written scenes that have no relevance in the new draft. You have to be ruthless otherwise your script will not flow.

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This approach could take longer to get the script where you want. The story will be missing a lot of elements and you might want to trash the entire draft. If anything is salvageable maybe you can create your next draft around the most fascinating sequence.

Using this approach This approach is good for writers without much patience and who have been brewing a story in their head for a long time. As you pour out the words onto the page keep your character's objectives in mind. Ask your characters how they would react and what would they do in this situation. It's a good idea-even though you're streaming-to know roughly what the ending will be. This gives you a direction to write towards. Read the script, find the story and work out the plot points before rewriting. Otherwise, you will only be rearranging a weak plot. (Calev, 2008) This is what James Joyce, the creator the free stream of consciousness movement, concluded on the matter; James was formulating psychological theory and had discovered that "memories, thoughts and feelings exist outside the primary consciousness" and further, that they appear to one, not as a chain, but as a stream, a flow.

Calev concludes that the stream of consciousness is something else entirely when it comes to modern cinema; 'Stream of consciousness in film is the cinematic representation of mental processes occurring in the minds of fictional characters simultaneously with the external action, granting a penetration into their inner life.' (Calev, 2008) Personally, I do not believe that there are any techniques to it.

As with any good piece of writing‌ It comes inexplicably and without method (Stranger than Fiction, 2008)

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Below are what some might say are the techniques to writing in the free stream.

Get into your characters’ heads.

Stream-of-consciousness narrative can be a good way to really, really get into your characters’ heads, to see what makes them tick, to see how they got from a conversation about oranges to a recollection of a childhood trip to the zoo.

Flesh out a child-like whimsy.

Ever seen the movie Up? Doug is a typical dog, except for having the ability to talk. He commonly gets distracted by squirrels or weird scents. Your characters can get distracted and trail off, interjecting “Squirrel!” or something better suited to the situation. This is a technique James Joyce used to great effect.

Use it to show when something is wrong.

Perhaps the passage above from Faulkner looks like something from the mind of someone with a brain injury. It works that way, doesn’t it? Stream-of-consciousness narrative can reflect disorientation in many forms, from just waking from a nap to a car accident victim.

Inner Monologue Inner monologue, or internal monologue is directly linked to the theories of the free stream of consciousness and this needs to be explored In brief.

"Internal monologue" and stream-of-consciousness techniques purport to represent, or even to transcribe, fictional characters' internal speech. But how is it possible for written words to stand for unspoken language? The conventions of internal monologue appear most justified by the notion of thought as "speech minus sound. If talking to oneself is no different from talking aloud, then the inwardness of a subject might as well be represented in the familiar language of dialogue. While some authors do employ internal monologue as if to transcribe internal speech, the more radical twentieth century novels break literary conventions by representing internal speech in ways that deviate from ordinary language.

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Film Dialogue So I’ve read countless books on dialogue and they all have this set of rules that kind of guided you through the best techniques for motion picture. These are some of the best ones out there.

Dialogue reveals, it does not explain. Film Dialogue is always an imitation of the natural speaking communication. Dialogue should be kept to a minimum. It should match the social class. It should never be expositional and never repetitious. (Kozloff, 2000)

Tools to help construct Dialogue Scenes.

In 2012 I wanted to write a feature length screenplay and I made a list of possible tools I could use to write better scenes and more effective dialogue. Over the past year I identified most of them in all the films I watched and it is quite a revelation how subtle the writers use these tools in their films.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Characters Think, sometimes in Voice Over.

Characters confess and it’s crucial to do so at the right point of the narrative.

Characters walk and talk. This relates to Post Hollywood Films of the 60’s.

Characters confront early. In real life we don’t, we keep our anger to ourselves, but in movies we want to see two characters confront each other, even if it’s light hearted.

5. Characters lie or pretend.

6. They use metaphors when they talk, especially visual metaphors and they tell them in a visual descriptive way. This is indirectly a visual tool, as motion picture is a visual medium.

7. Characters tell other characters what they think the “truth” is.

8. There are always subtle plot liners in most scenes, even in the second and third act.

9. Everything is a subplot. Everything.

10. Characters stare at other characters and talk about them.

Elements of the Voice.

When writing dialogue for a scene it’s important to know what the elements are to writing an effective dialogue scene for motion picture. They are; Know what the text is and what the words mean, know what the sub textual meaning behind the words are, use a range of vocabulary that is specific to the cultural relevance of the narrative world, know what slang and jargon the genre relates to.

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Writing Arguments.

Opposing arguments are the result of irreconcilability. When writing a conflicting argument, it’s always best to not be bias and to preach. Whether it’s the protagonist or the antagonist.

Both of them should have convincing reasons for their outbursts. This will help strengthen the scene. Both Arguments should be valid and logical. The more they seek a solution, the less chance they have finding it. Both arguments should be compelling. Do not teach the viewer the right thing to do. Put the viewer in the shoes of the protagonist.

Self-Reflexive Quotes.

From all the studies I’ve read I made a few self-reflexive conclusions to writing film dialogue and here they are; “Dialogue can come in all forms as long as it relates to the character point of view you want to express.”

“Sometimes showing tells us more, but other times telling is stronger.”

“When characters are frustrated they reveal or expose themselves willingly through dialogue with the trusted characters of the plot.”

“When one talks, one is doing something. Thus, all conversations are actions or verbal events.”

Lastly, I conclude my dialogue research with this astounding and also depressing statement taken from the Screenwriter’s Bible.

“Every piece of dialogue between one person and another is in some way a struggle of power of some sort. “

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The Dialogue Experiment In this chapter I am going to show the process I use as a writer and how the Free Stream of Consciousness is tested and experimented on with regards to my AFDA Hon’s 24 minute short film.

THE PROBLEM Over the last 5 months I have been struggling to find a unique writer’s voice. I have been struggling to think creatively and visually and to stay true to a character’s want and need. A story revolves around a character’s want and need plotline and emotional arc and the Free Stream of Consciousness can be a tool to discover and express it more creatively.

METHODS The methods I used are experimental, structured, freely expressive and limitless, but confined to the central story I want to tell in my AFDA Hon’s 24 minute short. In order to test the construct of The Free Stream of Consciousness to its full capacity, this experiment was done without even reading the definition of the term The Free Stream of Consciousness and without doing any further readings on the topic. The reason for this is not to know what The Free Stream of Consciousness requires, how it works and what steps to follow. By doing this I am not limited by any set of guidelines and rules, except the ones I’ve created in this experiment.

PART 1 Write scenes for my 25 minute honors film with dialogue or voice over driven as main focus, focusing on character flaws, mannerisms and actively thinking about the character want & need arc.

PART 2 Part two consists of a list of things I had to tick in a couple of weeks during preproduction.     

Identify the dramatized want and need of the character and write it down.

Take all screenplay drafts and extract Francois’s dialogue from it.

Take all writing, all scenes & sequences and extract Francois’s Dialogue from them.

Post all Francois’s dialogue on a whiteboard and read through what was extracted.

Write it all down. Highlight the best, most character revealing, most repetitive, most story driven, most frustrating and negatively or positively and egotistically charged words.

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PART 3 With all the information taken from Part 1 & Part 2, rewrite the logline, synopsis and central story theme.

RESULTS The beginning of the experiment started on the 21st of March 2013 to the 1st of May 2013. I woke up every morning and wrote a scene focused on Francois, the protagonist of my Honors film. Each of these scenes put Francois into a situation where dialogue was needed and I focused around a specific plot beat in the narrative of the film. These scenes are attached in the appendices.

The character’s name is Francois Du Randt and he is a skinny over-opinionated but introverted 23 year old University student, majoring in graphic design. Francois wants a lot of things. He’s quite a conflicting character. He’s very flawed and negative and a lot of his character traits are weird and not quite understood by the people around him. He’s very opinionated and intelligent but like every young Afrikaans guy in Stellenbosch, he’s indecisive and not steadfast in his decision making. He doesn’t know who he really is in Stellenbosch and he doesn’t know what he really wants and in this story he’s just going to learn a simple thing, that he doesn’t need a date for the dance. He doesn’t need a girl to impress everyone there and he doesn’t need one girl to get over the previous past hurt. All he needs is time to figure out what he wants in Stellenbosch.

Dramatized want: Francois wants to go to the “House Dance” with an impressive Hipsterdate in order to show Marriete that he is over their terrible break-up.

Dramatized need: Francois realizes that he does not need an impressive date to get over Marriete, he just needs to be himself and go alone, not trying to impress anyone in Stellenbosch.

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The next step was to extract all Francois’s dialogue from each of the 3 Screenplay drafts and all the scenes written about him. I then posted it all onto a massive whiteboard categorizing the dialogue into six different sections. Each section contains different types of dialogue in the screenplay that is categorized according to his personality and character motivation.

Top Left: Ego driven dialogue

Top Right: Desires (Abigail and Marriete)

Bottom Middle: Decisions and statements

Top Middle: Voice over and opinion (POV)

Bottom Left: Negative Emotion

Bottom Right: Question driven dialogue

The final step in part two of the experiment is to take all the dialogue from the whiteboard and write them down and try to identify behavior patterns and character revealing & plot building dialogue.

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Hello, my name is Francois Du Randt.

Hello I’m Francois. I don’t even know your name. Dis nie snaaks nie dude. Ek’s ernstig oor die meisie. Ek sal haar terug kry sy kort net tyd. En almal in haar koshuis is teen my so ek’s geskroef.

Ek weet nie man, dis so skielik na Marriete, wat as ons dinge uitpraat. Hey ek’s Francois. Sy sou dit nooit doen nie, Marriete was nog altyd ‘n oordentlike meisie. Ek verstaan nie, Bra ek weet nie man. I think I’m still in love with my ex-girlfriend, nee ek is nie. Dude ek moet haar terug kry, sy’s my lewe. Ek dog al wat ek nodig het was ‘n winterstukkie china. Oh yeah I’ll like print out your pictures and post them on my bathroom door and I’ll just like go crazy on them. I just realized something. Me, no I don’t. Okay fine ek sal ophou, maar iemand roep haar net asseblief. I’m sorry I thought you needed a hand. Things sounded pretty intense so…

I don’t think this is my phone. Excuse me. Bra hoe lyk my hare? Ek gaan laat wees vir klas. No, but I used to back in High school though, I’m actually in a band. I almost couldn’t find this place, but luckily the movies are closed and I was…I just realized something. I’m sitting here in your apartment and I don’t even know your name. So I wanted to ask you. I don’t know maybe.

Maar ek ken niemand hier nie. Don’t go through my inbox please, it’s pretty sad in there. Okay jy’s reg, ek is ‘n klein bietjie dronk. I knew it. Bra lyk ek fine. I thought you liked me. I think he did. Ek’t gehoor hulle gaan saam huisfondsdans toe. No but I used to. I could ask myself the same question and I’m really glad I got you that Long Island Ice tea. Ah common, you gotta gimme more than that. Coz it makes me look old and mature and I don’t have a razor. My previous girlfriend hated it. Ek’s jammer ek weet nie regtig waarvan jy praat nie. Me, no no. I was in the area and I… Thanx anyways. See you guys soon. Don’t go through my inbox please it’s pretty sad in there.

I don’t think this is my phone. You know what, I haven’t had a slice of pizza in so long. En wat van jou, jy naai elke ding wat al klas gedraft het in Stellenbosch. I’m still inlove with my exgirlfriend. I almost couldn’t find this place, but luckily the movies hasn’t. Ek kan nie dik meisies bekostig nie. Whatever man, jy’s die een wat gese het ek moet ‘n winterstukkie kry in die eerste plek. Fucksakes bra, sy het ‘n naam. Jy’s die een wat gese het ek moet ‘n winterstukkie kry in die eerste plek. Hey, Wie’s jy? Wie vloek so lelik he? Dis fokkin sonde en die kerk se jy mag nie.

Hey! Maak oop! Maak oop! Dit was nie my skuld nie en jy weet dit. You know what, what’s happening right here. This shit. It’s dysfunctional. You and Matt deserve each other. Ek kon

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julle nie hoor nie sorry. Fucksakes bra, sy het ‘n naam. Yo Hannes. Hannes. Sies man wie praat so lelik. Het jou ma hoy nie maniere geleer nie. Ek moet ‘n date kry vir vannand. Ek moet, anders is ek fucked. Ek dink ek wil Kaapstad toe gaan. Kan ek jou kar leen? What ever happened to no BBM, no Facebook, no phones? Sy kort net tyd. Wag wag wag wag wag. Uhm. Uhm. Ag fok, okay fine. Bra wie anders moet ek vra, die huisfondsdans is more aand. Ag my fok man.

Whatever man. Ek moet klas toe gaan. Ek was nie lus vir Bohemia vannand nie. Ag shit, ek het nie meer nie. Whatever dude. Ek het klas. So jy wil he ek moet alles spyker wat op my pad kom sodat ek kan beter voel oor my fucked up gevoelose studente lewe. Nie vir my nie. You know what you’re right, you all are. All you Cape Town girls want is sex and one night stands and empty relationships. No wonder Matt dumped you. Take it! And boom. Just my best friend Nemo, who’s probably worried sick every three seconds or so. Ek wil nie drugs doen nie. Nooit bra, gaan jy my net so los? Hannes! Nee ek weet dit nie, hoe is dit anders? Common, just take it. Nee man, wats julle blerrie problem he. My ouma het daai hoody vir my gekoop. Come with me. Nee. Whao. Dude kom gou uit ek’s buite. Ek’s fokkin stupid. A hundred and twenty bucks.

Common seriously now. Uh-huh. Toemaar, toemaar actually dis fine dis net klere, vat dit. Gaan se net jammer. C’mon ou ons party lekker. You mean like electrical faults. Dude sy’s soos 14 jaar oud. Nee bra nooit nie. ‘n Meisie het my ge-add op facebook. As dit net so eenvoudig was.

I’m such and idiot. Ons het nie eers buns or wors of enigiets gebring nie. Ek’s ‘n waiter. If you wanna take things slow I’d totalle understand that. Daai meisie van gisteraand sal perfek wees, en dan sal Marriete tot haar sinne kom. No Homo. No. Wow interesting place. The Cape Town international Airport. Him I’m sorry I’m late, finding traffic is such a mission. Wat fok nee, ek het waardes bra. I’m not a…Soos ‘n waiter. Thanx. It’s nice of you. Hi. I’m Francois Retief. Just some guy hey. Really wow, that’s uhm. Yea that sounds pretty intense. Hello. This one is for my friend. As dinge net so eenvoudig was.

Een of ander kloosterkoek wat verslaaf is aan bokswyn. Kom ons gaan swem by die laan baby, net soos laaskeer. I’m the guy from Stellenbosch. You can’t love two people at the same time.

Ek volg nie regtig die reels nie. Touchies is overrate. Ooh Sensitive. Jaja, ek sal sien. Ag maar stil en rustig. Okay, yes whatever. No uh wait hold on. What no ways, yeah it is kinda lame. She was. Dis ‘n maandag aand. Dit was vining. Wag net gou bra, ek kom. Ons het nie eers braaivleis of enigets gebring nie. Ek weti, een of ander kloosterkoek wat verslaaf is aan boskwyn. Dis fine,

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gaan in drink ‘n bier, dis rustig. Marriete gaan nie daar wees nie. Ja jy’s super chilled. Jissie dis pretty intenst. Cool place. Haar borste kan ‘n langtermyn problem raak. Jeans is overrated. Ek ken niemand hier nie, wat doen ke met myself? St is pretty decent ek moet admit. And then.

Last night was your lucky, that’s the first hoody I ever purchased. En wat van Monica? Wat, hoekom?. Take my top. Nee maar ernstig nou? Why, Askies? Uhm soek jy ‘n tissue? Daar klein pixie meisie by die trappe? Wat prober jy se? chil, ek vra maar niet, Hey what time is it? Right here is fine.

What don’t be silly. No ways really? Bra hoe lyk ek Bra lyk ek fine>? Hoe weet jy dit? Waantoe gaan ons vannand? Hi, I’m actually. Is Abigail here? Who’s this Matt guy you keep speaking of?

What if I don’t care what your name is tonight? Is he your ex-boyfriend? So what are you gonna do today? Jammer om dit te hoor, waantoe gaan ons vannand? Twenty? Wat soek ek hier?

Wat soek jy hier? Ek bly hier. Who are you? Wie gaan almal daar wees? Are you sure your okay with this kind of behavior? Lian wat soek jy hier? Asseblief bra, ek sal vir jou petrol ingooi. Do you wanna touch my? What’s wrong? Wat? I know you, We met in the slipway, do you remember? Hey who’s phone is this? Who what guy, oh that guy. Can we go and like talk somewhere? Sorry? This is for you. Hoe bedoel jy? Hey is jy okay? Soos? Sorry? Are we waiting for someone? Maar hoekom bring van alle ouens? This is for you.

So what the deal with that guy? Is he your boyfriend or something? Uhm thanx is Abigail hier?

Is everything all right? What really Did he break your heart? Do you want a tissue or something?

Bra hoe lyk my hare? Wat’s jou naam. Wie gaan jy vat? No ways? Drank ‘n nuwe dealer. Sterker indoor. Porn, beter tips. Jesus. Dalk ‘n bietjie meer sak geld van my ma af, ‘n her in sosiologie.

Askuustog, is jy orraai? Can I ask you something? Excuse me? Who’s Matt? So what do you do when you wake up in the morning? Okay okay okay okay. Woah nou. Ek sal ophou maar iemand roep haar net asseblief. Ek vra jou mooi ek vra jou mooi. Marriete Marriete, Baby maak oop.

Dis net ek baby. C’mon. Hey how are you? Anyways, listen I like you and I know I fucked up, but are you still free tomorrow night? Ah shit. Well. Can I at least have your phone number so I can call you sometime? Can you please call her for me? Abigail the other night was…Ek weet nie hoekom jy my gelos het nie maar ek’s hier en ek’s reg om te verander vir jou. Baby kyk dis ons baby. Skat ek’s jammer skat. Kom gou af. Hey how are you. I bought you this bottle.

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Anyhow I just wanted you to know…What do you mean you’re kind of seeing each other? Ek sien haar vannand. Die plek se naam is van Hunks. Van Hunks. Marriet ek’t opgefok. Ek’s nie oor jou nie en ek sal nooit wees nie. What don’t joke. You had a boyfriend and you never told me? Kom af dan gaan drink ons ‘n coffetjie In my kamer en dan praat ons dinge uit life. Net ek en jy. I thought you liked me. You had a boyfriend? Abigail. I just…Abigail I’m sorry. Ek weet jy’s daar as jy my net nog ‘n kans sal gee. Marriete. Maar Marriete? Geagte Marriete Moolman.

Ons ken mekaar al drie jaar. Nog net een keer Nog net een. Marriete Hi. Ek sou verstaan het as dit ‘n normale ou was, maar Brink van alle mense. En die ergste van alles is, hys kaptein van die Maties, en ek bedoel hoe pretentious is dit? Op die oomblik is Marriete die laaste van my worries.

Dis dae soos vandag wat ‘n men sweet die winter is hier. Ek kan nie glo sy en Brink het opgehook nie. Dos so fucked up. Ek hetnie aan jou vroulike tekortkominge gedink ni. Jy’s ‘n heilige wese van die vader en ek sal jou eer met respek en geduld want jy’s ‘n vrou en jy’s skoon en rein van binne. Ek dink nog baie aan haar Sy’t ‘n baie belangrike rol in my lewe gespeel. Dit was sekerlik die domste ding wat ek ooit gedoen her. Ek bedoel, waste ou kom Kaap toe agter 'n meise aan wie jy nog net twee keer gesien het. Wat's die kanse dat sy nog by die lughawe staan en wag.

Dis heeltemal onwaarskynik, maar op die oomblik. gee ek nie 'n fok om wat enige iemand dink nie. Ek moet haar weer sien.Die paasnaweek was ver te kort gewees, ek het meer tyd nodig gehad vir myself en nous dit weer ‘n dorp vol mallegeid. Geen stilte. Geen Vrede. Dis seker all in good fun maar as jy my vrae is dit ‘n bietjie te lekker vir sommiges. Ek’s Francois Retief en ek swat in Stellenbosch en nee ek’s nie ‘n flank of ‘n stut of ‘n binnesenter nie. Hier in Huis Coetzenberg word ek vernoem na die verkleining van die woord stok.

Dis 'n baie opervlakkige uitkyk op die lewe maar ten munste is dit nie myne nie. Stellenbos doen my goed, ek draf klas met die hoop om graad te vang. Moenie skrik as hierdie droom jou brein blaas nie want dis ons almal sn. Die problem is, Aanklas se brandy is te sterk en Bohemia se bokswyn is te goedkoop. Meeste studente in die bos is in een of ander verkeerde disfunksionele verhouding. Dank vader ek is nie meer een van daai nie, maar ek was. Ek was een van die ergste meisie bekeente kerels in Plein Straat, maar as jy my vandag daar raakloop, moenie verbaas wees as jy my met 'n skuwie onder die sy sien nie. Die liefde is 'n wille ding en ek dink dis tyd vir 'n Willie dingetjie of twee. Toe ek nog in die hoerskool was het my onderwysers altyd gesem Universiteit gaan die beste tyd lewe wees. Stellenbos ja daar gaan jy

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graad vang. Daar gaan jy liefde vind. Wel my hoerskool onderwysers was almal verkeerd. Die Boland is altyd nat en hartseet en Universeit is kak en dis dae soos vandag wat 'n mens weet.

Die winter is hier. So ek dink my hoerskool onderwysers was reg. Hierdie is maar net 'n stukkie winter en binnekort word die lente aangekondig vir sommiges. Ek groei al die hele vakaisie aan die baard. Die laaste keer wat ek geskeer het was ek dink toe Marriete my gelos het. Marriete het gladnie van my baard gehou nie. Sy’t altyd gese dis skurf en seerower-agtig. Marriete my ding, vir jou het ek net een ding te se. Seerowers is fokkin legit. Ek verlang partykeer na haar, maar nie na haar nie, na die idee van haar. Die edee van vrede en stilte met die hoop dat daar rol eendag vertolk sal word deur ‘n ander. Toe dit nog somer was.

Hello. I’m Francois. I don’t even know your name The entire film is built up to the point where the protagonist kisses the female lead with the words “I don’t even know your name”. These words were carried through from draft one of the script all the way to the end film. It is also a vital character and narrative turning point where Francois should have never even met Abigail. He should never have known her name, but only through knowing her name, only through having sex with her, could he have stepped into she shoes of a hero to conquer his character want and ultimately realizing what he really needed; Closure.

Actors Performing on Shooting Day

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During part three I discovered a lot of thematic relevance to the story I want to tell. I also realized that most of the dialogue is Ego driven self-centered and negatively charged. Francois asks a lot of questions and it’s evident that he’s very insecure. He’s never sure about anything he does. He’s got a rude confronting side that gets rid of all the frustration he’s internally dealing with. Francois curses a lot, is over opinionated on the outer aspects of a woman, like their shape and beauty, but internally he lacks emotional intelligence. He’s not charming and doesn’t try to impress rather he chases after love interests, calling them, and shouting at them with a great inferiority complex. On the positive side, Francois is a knowledgeable man, with an interesting point of view of his current reality. He’s a nice guy when he wants to be. He’s funny and considerate, but sometimes his sincerity is overdone and underappreciated, which causes him even more negativity and frustration to get what he wants. I rewrote the logline, and film synopsis with all the information gathered from the Francois’s Free Stream dialogue piece, his dramatized wants and needs, and the thematic relevance to the story.

THEMATIC CORE: “'n Stukkie Winter. A piece of winter. A short scope of Francois Retief’s life in his final winter season at Stellenbosch University. Not the first week or the second, but a combination of confusion known as “The Breakup-beard” but will he ever shave it off and find authenticity. This is the story of Francois Retief, the over-opinionated Man-orexic from Stellenbosch.”

LOGLINE: When an Afrikaans guy from Stellenbosch who just got out of a relationship, tries to find a better & more impressive date for a University dance and ends up falling in love with the wrong girl and the wrong time.

SYNOPSIS: Francois Retief, a manorexic-muso from Stellenbosch University who recently got dumped by his girlfriend of three years, struggles finds date for the annual Huis Dagbreek Huisfondsdans coming up. His best friend & roommate suggest that they go to the Mother City in search of a so called “Winterstukkie” to be his date in order to impress everyone in Stellenbosch, especially his ex-girlfriend. Their plan succeeds when Francois meets Abigail, The Hipster-on-Kloof. Francois spends the winter in Cape Town with Abigail, but their relationship escalates too fast, too soon and he ends up exactly where he started.

TAGLINE: Lost, in love and still without a date.

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The Plotting Experiment As part of my thesis experiment on dialogue, I still need a plotting experiment. Although my thesis does not focus on plot directly, I feel that it is a vital part of creating effective dialogue.

The plot must go on and dialogue can be a tool to do that subtly, planting minor event-narrative plot points in their speech in order to communicate the narrative in an expositional way.

Again, I didn't do any readings on the free stream of consciousness. I'm only working from my previous method, which was to randomize dialogue. Now I'm randomizing plot in terms of what event can reveal character. What even can drive plot to the emotional climax. I've mapped the plot out hundreds of times and still nothing worked. But again, I use all four drafts, take the best plot moments from that and take the best plot moments from the Free Stream scenes, to ultimately create the entire film sequence in terms of the story structure.

THE PLOT BOARD

Draft 1 – 4 of ‘n Stukkie Winter Short Film, broken up into narrative beats with dialogue & character & story notes attached.

The image above is my whiteboard with sticky notes with scene by scene plot beats taken from each draft, randomized and re-arranged into a horizontal narrative structure. Vertically, I arranged the plot beats into columns of similar narrative moments; establishing scenes, inciting incidents, major turning points and the like. The empty gaps on the board represent moments of uncertainty in the script. In the last year of working on the project I had incredible difficultly with ACT II and how it progresses onto an ACT III climax and this board shows that clearly. It also shows a strong backboned ACT I where most plotlines aligned perfectly. No climactic beat was the same than another, which was a good thing in terms of creatively opening up the possibilities of new climactic apexes. Lastly, the endings was strong and decisive. I knew what I wanted in the end. Most plotlines collided here to a fulfilling resolution.

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This experiment was done late June 2013 before the shooting of the production started. Now in late August, while in the post production phase of the film. I have come to realize that this experiment is an ever changing one. New plotlines will always need to be thought of when an edit doesn’t work, when new character driven mannerisms were created in the shooting process and in terms of dialogue; when scenes have changed on the shooting day if dialogue did not work.

The Chosen END SHOT: Francois is ready to shave his beard‌but does he shave?

In conclusion, the plot experiment is certainly worth a try. I learnt that I should open up the story on a narrative level more, freeing up the possibilities of the script and in terms of dialogue; not to limit yourself with locked off dialogue. If the story needs to do something else, then the dialogue needs to go with it, but if the dialogue needs to be locked off, then new ways of plotting need to be explored.

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The Film Experiment The third experiment I conducted came only after we shot the production. During our shoot, we changed a lot of the written dialogue due to a lack of emotional engagement. We also improvised a few scenes that lead the narrative into a totally new direction. One of the biggest discoveries was that we planted dialogue in the middle of the script which came to pay off much later on, which was totally unplanned, but worked effectively to build the scene. Below is a brief analysis of the written dialogue versus the spoken dialogue in some key scenes.

SCENE 1: Francois walking through a long endless alley.

The opening scene was supposed to convey this inner monologue of the Francois, the lead character, and how he feels about the new girl being at the airport, leaving the audience and Francois, with this dramatic question of; Will Francois go to the Airport to get the girl he actually wants? This scene did not translate. The voice over did not work and the scene felt like nothing at all. So we scrapped it, using it at a later stage in a linear narrative form.

SCENE 2 This scene started with an opening montage and lead to the bathroom dialogue scene. The dialogue in the scene stayed the same as per script and it worked well. The supporting character’s dialogue was spoken differently, which created this unique character trait in him.

His improvised dialogue enhanced the specific relevance to or Stellenbosch subcultures.

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Hannes tells Francois to shave his beard.

Hannes gives Francois the core dialogue of the entire story. He speaks the resolution to the character, giving him an overarching character objective, which of course the protagonist is blind to at the start, but discovers in the end.

SCENE 3 This scene is performance driven and dialogue intensive with four characters speaking, all with completely different tones. Francois was drunk. The twins are girly and cute and Marriete was tired, overworked and aggravated. This all helped to translate the written word into a funny and real spoken word. This scene was so powerful, we decided to open the film with it. The performances were great and it worked, but only because the script was locked off. The dialogue was locked off, the camera angles and shot selection was decided on months before we shot this scene. This scene proves that when a scene is constructed well enough, the dialogue will work, even in the simplest of ways with simple shots and easy lighthearted performances.

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SCENE 12 I think I wrote this scene in the free stream of consciousness, but on the shooting day, the actors completely improvised the whole scene, staying true to the specific relevance of the story which relates to Cape Town’s Generation-Y and their fears and expectations. This scene is the only scene in the entire movie that I wrote during my Free Stream experiment. I imagined it different when I wrote it. I directed it with the “Indie” approach to just let the characters be who they really are and in this case, they were two twenty year old students talking about sex and getting drunk.

The Meet Cute.

The meet cute of a romantic comedy is the most important scene. It forces the two lovers together for the first time. In our film the meet cute happened on a balcony of a House Party on the 5th floor in a residential complex in Kloof Street. After endless writing to find the best possible way this meet cute could happen, I finally settled on a scene which the actors improvised and it’s important here to mention that for the first time in the entire film, the character of Abigail uses Francois’s comic gap to reduce him in a metaphor, using his beard as a narrative tool which pays of at the end of act three when Francois finally shaves the beard.

Abigail: Did you break up with someone?

Francois: No. Abigail: It’s written all over your face.

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Let’s end it.

From the film experiment, I came to a shocking realization. The free stream of consciousness actually works. I did not understand it at first. I tried to understand it and this was probably the biggest flaw in the research I’ve done all year round. While editing the final cut of the film we shot, I realized that scenes can be restructured, from a linear to a non-linear plot and that dialogue can be restructured as long is at is in context with the scene and this is exactly what the free stream of consciousness is all about. This is exactly what James Joyce and all those free stream writers did when writing in the free stream. The biggest reason I believe that this technique can work is that is isn’t a technique. It is plainly stated, just writing. It’s writing whatever comes to mind. There’s always another scene to write.

The plot can always go forwards and the dialogue will always change. The conclusion I’ve come to with all this free stream nonsense is this. A screenplay should always stay true to the narrative structure of the story, because story equals structure and structure equals story.

Dialogue should always have intention and motivation; Actors need this more than anything else. There’s no rule against using Egotistical dialogue filled with me, myself and I. It’s not always Ego driven, but it does say something about the character speaking it. Everything spoken says something about the character. To keep dialogue rolling requires less of the “I”, less of the self. This can be a great tool to use when building dialogue scenes. The more dialogue is bounced between characters, the more a screenwriter can expose or exploit a character, and this is a good thing for the audience.

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Further Conclusions I rewrote the first cut of the film we shot and had to decide how dialogue would build from one scene to another. A lot of the script was shot differently and we improvised a lot and this caused some interesting things to appear. This caused our original paper-edit to suffer and it mixed it up completely and from a plot perspective another story can be told. The story can get much more complex, plotlines and stakes can rise, even still. It got me thinking about the idea that our entire climax could be different. Therefore, I had to fall back onto my genre and give the audience what they want. Some audiences want the unexpected to happen, some like open-endings and others want the full circle. We didn’t shoot our ending and for this very reason, we could do exactly what we wanted. Any Scene could be fulfilling, and character trait can be a visual tool and any piece of dialogue can be a sub textual way to show character fulfillment.

We can fulfill Francois when he shaves his beard, where Hannes tells him “shave your beard, it’s time”.

We could fulfill his flaw of drinking when Marriete shouts at him “just go home, your drunk” We can fulfill character change when Francois confesses to Marriete “I’m here and I’m ready to change for you”.

From what I said above and what I really believe in is that a film should not really be about the writer or the author or the storyteller. It should be about the viewer. They pay the money. It’s only a movie so anything can happen in the plot, but it can be real and quirky too if your audience demands it.

Thus, we need to stay true to the genre, the comedy genre, the comedy principles, the type of comedy and most of all I think we have to give the characters what they need, give the plot what it needs and end the story the best and simplest way it can be ended. Our themes should be our themes and the message should be focused and at the end of the day we as filmmakers need to give the audience want they want to see in the character.

“Whatever you promise in act one, develop it in act two and deliver it and act there with an emotional climax”

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And on the Free Stream of Consciousness; Go out and play with your kids and eat ice-cream do awesome stuff. Save the planet if you have to…but don’t read that stuff. I still don’t know the definition if you know what I mean.

And as for writing better indie film dialogue, I start with my abstract;

No more I (anonymous) The I In Indie.

So to end this piece of writing I want to make the title very clear. The I in indie resembles the Ego and the I. It’s a metaphor for speaking about one’s self in a dialogue conversation. In terms of motion picture this was a breakthrough for me. Characters often have a much greater dialogue scope than when writing it on the script and the more their conversation stretches out the more they can talk about. In motion picture, when we have a conversation between two or more people the dialogue tends to lose dramatic tension. The reason for this is the frequent mentioning of the I, the Ego. However, if we continue with minimal and flowing dialogue, not starting a characters lines with the I (the Ego) then we create room for backstory, plot advancing lines and character revealing dialogue. The less we use I in the dialogue we write in scripts, the more quirky we can become with interesting ways to start, build and end dialogue scenes. It becomes real and emotionally relevant as well as narratively engaging and at the end if it all, we have strong scenes that actors can perform and work from which in turn creates winning performances.

To prove this test I have written a few scenes of a screenplay I am worked on called “Die Meisies van Paarl (The Girls of Paarl). When reading this it’s clear that the word I is mentioned little or no times and this resulted in good written dialogue which can be filmed cheaply on an Indie Film Budget. It’s funny and quirky. It reveals something about possible plotlines and it’s simple and to the point and that’s what an Indie Comedy is all about.

Thank you for reading.

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Bibliography Anon., 2013. Urban Dictionary. [Online] Available at: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=quirky [Accessed 20 10 2013].

Bordwell, D., 2006. The Way Hollywood Tells It:Story and Style in Modern Movies. California : Iniversity of California Press .

Calev, H., 2008. The Stream of Consciousness in the films of Alain Resnais. California: Columbia University Press..

Chiarella, T., 2008. Writing Dialogue: How to create memorable voices and fictional conversations that crackle with tension and nuance. NY: s.n.

IndieWire, 2013. IndieWire. [Online] Available at: http://www.indiewire.com/blogs [Accessed 10 10 2013].

Kemptom, G., 2004. Write Great Fiction. Cincinnati : Writer's books Digest.

Kozloff, S., 2000. Overhearing film Dialogue. London: University of California Press.

Read, T. B., 2012. The national endowment of the arts. NY: The Big Read Publishing.

Rimmon-Kenan, S., 2005. Narrative Fiction. UK: Taylor & Francis e-Library.

Shahini, A. R. & Isfahani, M. R. N., 2012. An Analysis of the Stream of Consciousness Narrative in Modern Iranian Stories. INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS, p. 1.

WikiPedia, 2013. Independant Film. [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_film [Accessed 10 10 2013].

WTF am I doing Written by

Copyright (c) 2013

First Draft 4/15/2013

1.

EXT. KLOOF STREET - NIGHT The whole party crowd are strolling through the street.

Hannes and Lian lead the pack and walk out of frame to reveal Abigail and Em who are locked in by the arm.

EM Talk to him.

ABIGAIL Shut up.

EM Common, he's right there.

Em looks over her shoulder at Francois who's not far off.

ABIGAIL Em. Don't.

EM (to Francois) Hi, are you the guy from Stellenbosch?

FRANCOIS Excuse me?

Francois looks over his shoulder, there's no one there.

EM Do you have a girlfriend?

FRANCOIS Me, no I don't.

EM and do you play rugby for the Maties?

FRANCOIS No, but I used to back in High school though, I'm actually in a band.

EM So what do you think of Abigail?

ABIGAIL (sigh) Em Em whispers something in Abigail's ear and joins Lian and Hannes in front. Abigail looks at Francois and slows down.

2.

CONTINUED: ABIGAIL (cont'd) Sorry, she's a bit of a loose cannon sometimes.

Francois and his beard RS

23.3.2013

1.

INT. ROOM 22 - BATHROOM - NIGHT TAP TAP TAP - A razor is cleaned out on the porcelain basin counter. Water bursts from the tap.

POV of Mirror: A mildly depressed Francois waits for the water to get warmer. His face is smeared with shaving cream.

A few moments of reminiscing.

FRANCOIS(V.O) Marriete hey glad nie van my baard gehou nie. Sy't altyd gese dit krap haar as ons vry en dis skurf en seerower-agtig.

He lifts the razor into frame, stares at it for a while then looks at himself, breathing deep.

FRANCOIS(V.O) (cont'd) Wel vir jou Marriete het ek net een ding tese. Seerowers is fokkin legit.

Die meisies van Paarl By Rowen Smith

Zion Street

EXT. HILLTOP ROAD - DUSK LINDA, BEA, CLARISE and MIA march down the smooth and broad tar road. We MOVE towards Linda and Bea arm in arm, leading the pack.

LINDA So se my die...Het jy hom gisteraand gesex.

BEA Ek wil nie daaroor praat nie.

A few beats pass.

BEA Ons het amper. Ek het gedog hy sou ’n kondoom by hom he, maar toe wou hy skin on skin, en dit het my heeltemal afgesit...

A long last beat.

BEA ...en gelukkig het Wynand aan die deurgeklop en toe stop ons. Maar soos ek se. Ons het amper.

LINDA Jy moet Passop vir hom, hy doen dit met al die meisies in die Paarl.

Her last words are interrupted by Mia who’s far behind in the middle of the road, staring at a silky-smooth Mercedes Benz parked in the driveway of a large unkept Victorian House.

This is MENEER OBERHOLZER’s house.

MIA Kyk Oberholzer se nuwe ride.

Fucking A man.

CLARISE My ma se hy’t dit kontant betaal.

MIA En waar kry hy al sy geld vandaan?

CLARISE My ma se hy’t gese dis een of ander polis wat uitbetaal het oor die vakansie.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

2.

Linda SHOUTS from the other end. She sounds somewhat annoyed.

LINDA Los die man uit. for fucks sakes.

Wat hy met sy geld doen het niks met ons uit te waai nie.

Mia and Clarise catch up with Bea and Linda who continue walking down the street.

CUT TO:

Die Meisies van Paarl By Rowen Smith

a mission met Linda

#2

EXT. MIA’S HOUSE - MORNING Linda opens the small front gate and walks up the steps to the front door.

She knocks twice and waits, but nothing happens, then she rings the doorbell located under a hanging pottery CRUCIFIX. Soon after the front door is opened by Botha.

BOTHA Linda. Wat wil jy he?

LINDA Gaan roep vir Mia. BOTHA en wat as ek nie lus is nie.

LINDA Dan se ek vir almal van ons geheimpie daai een middag na rugby practice.

Botha contemplates for a second, then runs out of frame calling MIA MIA. A quite downhearted and dull Mia enters frame, dressed in her church sundress.

MIA Haai Linda.

LINDA awe.

Linda struggles with her words.

LINDA hoor hier wil jy saam my erens mission vandag?

MIA ek kan nie...

Mia looks over her shoulder then back at Linda.

MIA ...ons eet Sunday lunch saam die Dominee.

(CONTINUED)

CONTINUED:

2.

LINDA Fok die Dominee ons gaan parkie toe. Martin hulle kry ons daar.

MIA en Wynand?

LINDA Obviously... So trek iets oordentliks aan.

CUT TO: