72. Writing for Films

Writing. It is one of the most beautiful things invented by human beings. The invention of writing has opened so many ways to store the human experiences life for infinite time. It is a process of recording your thinking and giving a life to it and putting your brains on paper. But most the writers I meet here in film industry have no idea how to write a film script or screenplay or what is the difference between the two. There are lots of words that you are going to hear from the mouth of producers who will ask you to present them with Loglines, Synopsis, Screenplay, Story, Script or may be some new fancy words and you  might get afraid as well as confused what they actually mean because the meaning of these words might take away your job from you. So let me just help you by describing a little bit what these words really mean. These are the definitions that I have made up due time and these are definitely not standards, but they will help you understand these things better.  As a part of disclaimer, I would like to add a very important note that whatever I will be writing in this blog is exclusively according to my experiences in  Mumbai Film Industry and I don't hold any claim for them to be standard work or proven anywhere. They are just my notes that have helped me. Here you go.

Logline : Logline is basically something that producers or corporate people would like to hear from you or read it on top of your script in order to save their time from long narrations. Based on your loglines they decide whether they want to go ahead with listening to your narration or not. So it's very important that you make a good selection of words to completely narrate your story in as less words as possible. To make it more easy for you, Imagine that a potential financier is online and is asking you for your story on Twitter. Now think what you can do in 140 characters to convince him to liek your story. If you can convince him there, there are chances he might call you for a complete narration. There are two rules for loglines that you must keep in mind before writing them, first and foremost it should not exceed two lines when writing in Microsoft word calibri 12 size font and second it should reveal whole story plus prime characters.

Eg.  Logline for Slumdog Millionaire.
“One man’s compelling struggle against poverty, poorly tended public toilets and India’s answer to Chris Tarrant.”

Script : Anything that you write on paper is Script. It does not matter what is written on it, it can be fictional or it can be factual, but anything presented in a  particular manner or format that can be used for reading purposes or knowing about any particular thing is called Script. So script is basically a generalized form of document asked from you by Producer of which even he would not be having any idea what it should be. So normally when they ask for script,what they are actually asking from you is a screenplay. People usually get confused between Script and Screenplay so here is the difference - Screenplay is also a kind of script but script is not necessarily a screenplay. There you go. Script is just a general form of document and so synopsis, summary, screenplay or story comes all under script.

Story : This is one word that we are hearing from time unknown and this word alone makes our lives more beautiful. It's vision of a writer, its creativity of an artist and its also fancy figments of imagination of a dreamer. Writing story is no easy task and writing a bollywood story is definitely no easy task. Freedom is one thing that you don't have while writing a story in Bollywood (I hate this word). Story is basically anything that contains all the acts, in case you are not a book writer, that includes Introduction, Establishment, Conflict, Climax and the Ending. You can write that in any language, in any pattern and in any method until and unless it comes with a closure in the end. You can use any amounts of words and paper sheets to write and you should describe everything, twists, turns, details, character description and other things in very understandable form. The only criteria here is a that it has to be complete.   

Synopsis : Synopsis is one word that people just like to say and it has been always given more importance than it actually deserves in MFI (Mumbai film Industry). Synopsis is basically extended logline that describes your entire screenplay without it becoming an entire screenplay. It should mention every detail that is needed for everyone hearing it to know exactly what it is going to be about and how much it is going to cost. It should mention the number of characters and their entry, number of locations involved, complete story in as less redundant words as possible, also it must save time of its reader so it has to be concise and precise. It is basically a short version of everything that your story tells and everything that is needed to be known about that story. It's a corporate thing and is usually read by people who have really no patience. So try never to exceed your synopsis from more than one page in 12 calibri font of Microsoft Word but if necessary you can go ahead with the second page but that should be the limit.

Screenplay : This is the toughest part of writing a film- Writing a Screenplay, and those who do not agree to these lines probably doesn't know how to write a screenplay. Now, to know how to write a screenplay, you must first of all know what is the use of writing a screenplay while making a film and if you keep these things in mind you will be able to write a great screenplay. The screenplay writing I assume has started from  U.S. Hollywood studios who have this irritating habit of making guidelines for everything they do just to keep everything in order. Guess they haven't heard about the old adage that there is method in madness. Anyways with the passing of time the art of screenwriting kept on getting more refined and structured . The first thing while writing a Film screenplay that you have to keep in mind is that it will be read by everyone involved with that film, whether it be Director (assuming writer is not the director), or  Cameraman or Actors or Art Director or Choreographer or Editor or Sound Designer or Production Manager or Executive Producer or Assistant Directors or so on. So your job as a screenplay writer is to tell your story and alongside makes the lives of these people easy. So for that doing that certain rules had been laid out, which you can find out from screenwriting books.  Henceforth, now you will understand the format of screenplay writing more easily as now you will know why they write INT./EXT. or Day/ Morning or LOCATION or why they describe their clothes or BAM BOOM sound or why they include the design of room and properties kept in it, why they put the name of character in block words when it enters first time in the script and many more such things. My purpose was to tell you the basic reasoning behind using that particular technical things behind writing a screenplay and not to teach you how to write a screenplay, go and learn that on your own. 

As i said I won't go in details of screenwriting process as there are many books by writers like Blake Snyder or Syd Field that you can read and gain knowledge about it. You can also download thousands of scripts for research and reading purpose from websites like IMSDB. Softwares like final draft and Celtx are best for screen writing purposes and are easy to download, install and learn. 

Anyways, this is an endless discussion and I can continue talking about this but lets puts an end to it here. Soon I will come up my notes of script drafting, treatment notes, background story and many other such things. I hope I helped you in some way.