A springboard observation ...

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  • #31
    Re: A springboard observation ...

    On anachronistic screenwriting:

    Yesterday I watched for the third time the movie Lincoln, but this time I followed the dialogue by reading the screenplay on IMSDb.

    When blocks of Action occurred in the script, I looked up at the screen. The interesting thing to note was that several paragraphs of Action and Description were distilled to a fast-paced few seconds of cinematography. To read the Action/Description as if reading the screenplay for the first time, the written Action/Description set the scene, the mood, the tone, and captured the essence of the shot(s) to tell the story. But to read along with the screenplay in hand as the movie played, the on-screen Action/Description passed by rapidly, thereby lending credence to the old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It became necessary to skim the Action/Description to get to the next occurring dialogue.

    As for the dialogue, not only was it very well written by Tony Kushner, it was very historically accurate. I'm a fan of the American Literature classics of the 19th and 20th centuries and like to believe I have a fairly good knowledge base of out-of-date words and phrases, their meanings, and their origins. Yet there were many words and phrases I'd never heard before, although they were no less interesting to me as to their meanings and origins once I looked them up.

    That means I had heretofore been glossing over them in previous viewings of this movie, doubtless too caught up in the interest of “what happens next?” to dwell on them for more than a nanosecond. When I paused to reflect on that, what surprised me most was that even though the ear may have balked at these words and phrases unfamiliar to me, and doubtless to many others, the thrust of the general context of the remarks was conveyed by the Action occurring onscreen in the film in combination with the dialogue leading up to and often after the unfamiliar word or phrase. This was facilitated in part because of Action and Dialogue of other characters in those scenes.

    For the first few instances of the jargon of the day, the anachronistic words and phrases, and having seen the film twice before, I had the luxury of removing myself from the story to consider why the screenwriter would want to include them for the sake of authenticity knowing full well a relative few would have the education or wherewithal to comprehend their meaning.

    After a smattering of these quaint and effective words and phrases of the period, it did not take long for me to decide that the screenwriter had employed them perfectly well to lend the necessary flavor and character of the day to the film, to say nothing of the accuracy of the anachronistic words and phrases in delivering the meat of the context of the dialogue, as well as, now and again, adding humor. Without the anachronistic words and phrases, the dialogue would have been much the poorer, and to “modernize” the dialogue would not have been at all well to do.

    Anachronistic screenwriting, when properly executed (as in the example given above), is the way to go. As ComicBent mentions in a previous post, it all comes down to knowing one's own language well enough — grammar, spelling, and punctuation — to execute any writing, but particularly anachronistic writing.

    In a case where anachronistic writing seems not to fit well for a period piece, then rewriting it until it does fit would seem to be the order of the day.
    Last edited by Clint Hill; 03-12-2018, 06:27 PM.
    “Nothing is what rocks dream about” ― Aristotle

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    • #32
      Re: A springboard observation ...

      Originally posted by ComicBent View Post
      I am just throwing this out because I feel frustrated. Other people might want to add their own comments (or just ignore this entirely).

      I spent about an hour just now trying to read a screenplay from Zoetrope that looked as if it might have some promise. But, of course, it collapsed — and not because the story was bad, but because of really stupid mistakes.

      So here it is, my advice.

      When you write a screenplay about Puritan times in America, do not have your characters saying "Okay" to one another. The word is an Americanism that sprang up in the first half of the nineteenth century (a long time after the era of this story). Do not have them talking to one another with all kinds of contractions and using a diction that simply does not ring true for the time of the story. Do not have them taking out a small box of matches and striking one on the box. Do not have one character say to another that the library is about to close for the day (and then show a multi-storied library) with a grumpy librarian on duty. If you have based your script on a Hawthorne story in which he used the term "Goodman" with a surname, do not use Goodman as the first name of your character. (Goodman was a title like Mister — it was not a first name.)

      I did not want to spend my time reading the script and then reviewing it. I thought I might just send the writer a note to tell him in a nice way that I liked his use of the story but that he had a lot of anachronisms in language and in physical objects, and that these problems made it impossible to take his script seriously. I will add that he also added a lot of worthless exposition that told us things about characters that the audience would never know — it was all just stuff for the reader, as if the script were a novel.

      But then I looked at the Zoetrope bio of the writer, and I realized that I would be wasting my time. He presented himself as a graduate of the Blah-Harrumph School of Film and the writer and director of a couple of films. I knew that he would never listen if he had gotten that far and had learned so little about writing and about the need to achieve some kind of historical verisimilitude.

      End of rant.
      Technically what you describe applies to the dialogue of just about every screenplay that takes place in historical times, but I suspect this is more for clarity. There was a film called "Black Death" in 2010 which takes place in mid 14th century England, but all the character speak in modern English when they should be speaking in Middle English. But the latter is too obscure for modern English speakers to understand.

      I believe the saying is that don't let the truth get in the way of the story. It's certainly no excuse for lack of research and lazy writing. But what you may catch, others may not, or even mind for that matter.
      Last edited by nguyensquared; 03-13-2018, 07:21 AM.

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      • #33
        Re: A springboard observation ...

        Originally posted by ComicBent View Post
        FOLLOW-UP:

        I heard back from the writer. He was nice about it all, but the only thing that he really bought was that the strike-on-the-box matches were not available in 1710. (It would be over a hundred years yet before friction matches of any kind became available.) So he worked around the problem with the matches, and he changed a few typos that I had pointed out.

        But as for the big issue of language ('baby-sitter', 'okay', and the contemporary tone of the diction in general), he said that he wanted the language to be modern, and he did not make changes.

        Then he asked me to read the whole screenplay and tell him what I thought.

        So in the end his attitude came down to this: I am not going to take your advice, but would you read my script?
        If it's a deliberate choice, that's his choice. Sophia Coppola did the same with Marie Antoinette's 80s rock n' roll soundtrack. Unless you actually tape recorded conversations from those times, you wouldn't know how people actually spoke anyway, even when referring to written texts since regionalisms also come into play with inflections and dialects. People criticized Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Lincoln's voice, saying he didn't know what Lincoln sounded like. Truth is though, that neither did they.

        If he has an attitude in general about taking feedback, that's a whole separate thing, however.
        Last edited by nguyensquared; 03-13-2018, 07:22 AM.

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        • #34
          Re: A springboard observation ...

          Originally posted by TigerFang View Post
          With respect to anachronistic screenwriting, I once proofread a screenplay for someone whose script took place in the 18th century. The writer used the word "saloon" throughout the story as the room in the mansion in which the potential lovers and other characters often would meet. The term was historically accurate for the time of the story.

          To be an ordinary Joe reading the screenplay and imagining an 18th-century aristocracy as the story rolled along then suddenly be given a thought of an Old West drinking establishment was jarring to the imagination (and took me out of the story momentarily, too).

          As it threw me off on the first pass and subsequent ones, too, I suggested to the writer a change of the word "saloon" to the word "salon," which was less historically accurate but a change which would cause no burbles or turbulence for any reader in modern times. The use of the word "salon" even sounded more appropriate, given the time, place, and setting of the story. The writer made the change and went on to do well with that script (no thanks to me, however ... the story was already excellent).
          A "solar" could also be accurate.
          Last edited by nguyensquared; 03-13-2018, 07:22 AM.

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          • #35
            Re: A springboard observation ...

            Originally posted by ComicBent View Post
            By "naturalistic" I am assuming that you mean "modernized" - and I have no quarrel with modernizing the language.

            But it really is possible to have characters speak in a manner that is compatible with the time but is not stilted or artificial. Language becomes stilted when the writer does not know what he is doing. Of course, sometimes you have to make some compromises, because the English language may have changed too much for the "old-fashioned" language to be easily understandable. This is not so much a problem for English of 1710 as it is for the language of 1610. Shakespeare's Elizabethan- and Jacobean-era English is much tougher to understand than the almost modern English of Swift a century later.

            I saw Arthur Miller's The Crucible performed in a university production many years ago. It has been too long for me to be able to remember specifics about the language, and I do not have a copy of the play at hand, so I cannot check, but I doubt that his Puritans talked like California millennials. At least, I sure as hell hope not - especially after I have made such an issue of anachronistic language.
            I remember dealing with issues like this when I was writing a spec script that took place during the great fire of London.

            I did a lot of research about the style of English that spoken back then and one of the things that I found out was that people didn't use the contraction "it's" as in "it is." Instead, then used "'''tis."

            So it wouldn't be "It's a fine day." It would be. "'Tis a fine day."

            Well, I tried that for awhile and it got real old real fast. Ultimately, you have to find a style that feels right for a particular time -- that's devoid of modern colloquialisms but doesn't come across as feeling too mannered.

            You want the language to act as a pathway into another time and place not as a barrier to entering that time and place.

            And by the way, if you've seen The Witch -- that's just about the best depiction and also use of language I've seen for a movie of that time period. wasn't surprised to find that makers went back to actual documents and transcripts of the time for a lot of the dialogue.

            NMS

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