Melanie McDonald at 2013-06-02 14:40:56:
Hi Scott, One thing that struck me - & hope I'm not bird-dogging too far afield, but since Aristotle mentions Sophocles - is that in the Spielberg clip you posted May 20, http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2013/05/steven-spielbergs-techniques-and-themes.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter beginning at 4:51, it mentions that he uses Right-to-Left, Left-to-Right movements of the camera to convey information, which works pretty much the same way as Sophocles and other playwrights used the Greek Chorus, moving Left-to-Right (strophe) and Right-to-Left (antistrophe), to convey information to their audiences...pretty cool. Also, sounds like the Greek villages and city-states argued over who started which forms the same way they squabbled over - well, pretty much everything else. Thanks so much for leading this discussion and sharing it with us.
14Shari at 2013-06-02 16:13:26:
Hello Scott, I agree, I also interpret the manner of imitation as the narrative voice. Is the use of a diary such as in Sex and the City and the Carrie diaries a form of using the stream of consciousness narrative technique? Do you know movies which has used this narrative technique successful?
Scott at 2013-06-02 21:04:08:
Wow, Melanie, I will bet your connection between Spielberg technique and Greek Chorus is a sound one. My wife and oldest son both are deep into brain studies, and I know there is something going on with left-right hemispheres [although not nearly as clear cut as what they used to believe with left = linear / sequential / logical and right = feeling / intuitive / interpretive]. This is what impresses me thus far in our study of Aristotle's poetics: how applicable / translatable the concepts are to screenwriting [specifically] and storytelling [generally]. It seems like he drilled down into some universal dynamics and principles that are still in play today. Anyhow thanks for that. Strophe. Antistrophe. Never heard that before and now added to my list of things to research.
Scott at 2013-06-02 21:08:28:
Shari, the first one that comes to mind is Life of Pi in which the Protagonist wrote a diary of his survival on the high seas, and that was used to help stitch together the time ellipses. What I really like about this idea of "manner of imitation" is that it requires a writer to THINK about this critical subject: How am I going to express my narrative 'self' in the recounting of the story? All too often, I read scripts which either have no unique narrative voice or a haphazard one that has no coherence to it. Lost opportunity because Narrative Voice can be your script's invisible character, present in terms of tone, attitude and contribute to atmosphere. Also make for a much more entertaining read.
Melanie McDonald at 2013-06-02 21:53:55:
Think you are absolutely right re: Aristotle's universal/timeless applicability. And hope your wife & son also may join some future cinema discussions with brain studies insights - because, oh, how awesome would that be?!! Cheers, Melanie
Sven Eric Maier at 2013-06-03 07:06:41:
You have much more possibilities in a novel than in a screenplay. With drama, you always get the omniscent narrator, you just choose how limited you want him to be. You can't lie in drama. People have tried. If you are lying in drama, the audience will get pissed. Drama means that we see men and women in action and that the events we are experiencing are true. We can't look into the character's heads - an advantage and at the same time a disadvantage. Voiceover narration though has a totally different point than telling a story in the first person. It's there to contrast the action that is going on. Any information coming from dialogue or monologue is there to add to the experience of character through action. For me, limiting the point of view makes a story more dramatic and therefore stronger, but you almost always have to cheat. That means, you can choose your omniscent narrator to stay very close to one character's P.O.V., but at some point you have to leave him and show us some important information that he didn't pick up, to create suspense. This way, the audience knows more than the character, they will be rooting for him and wondering how he will react when he finds out.
14Shari at 2013-06-03 13:02:37:
Hi Scott, do you offer a workshop in narrative voice?
Scott at 2013-06-03 14:23:24:
Shari, we get into that in the Prep workshops I offer, so during the 6 weeks you take a story from concept to outline, setting you up to pound through a first draft, one of the things you can do is explore the voice of your story's 'narrator'. I like to think of that as your story's invisible character, the attitude you have toward the characters and story universe physicalized in this persona reflected in stylistic choices you make. I also delve into the subject in the Core IV: Style class. I'll be offering all of the Core classes again beginning in July. Here is a post I wrote on NV a few years back. I also wrote an article on the subject for ScreenTalk magazine. If you'd like to see that, email me and I can send you a PDF.
Gil_S at 2013-06-03 14:50:10:
I wonder if this has any correlation to the "left gaze bias" demonstrated by advanced species. Dogs, monkeys and even human infants all seem to prefer looking at the right side of faces first. Following Scott's suggestion, when we first encounter another person we instinctively set our gaze towards the right side of their face, presumably to gauge their emotional state...and then drift over to the left, perhaps to get a sense of their physical state. I'm not sure how that would relate to screenwriting specifically, but interesting nonetheless.
14Shari at 2013-06-03 17:30:47:
thanks Scott, I've found your article. Maybe not the right place to ask this question, but I can't email you using the envelope button on this site (cause to a problem in my software) and I didn't see an email address which I could use. I'm a newbie writer, finishing my first TV pilot script due 30 June. After that I'm working on my first feature script. What would be the right time to follow one your basic courses. Will I benefit more from the course if I've already finished one spec or will it be handy to follow the course and write along?
Scott at 2013-06-03 18:31:15:
Shari, why don't you email and we can discuss offline: GITSblog at gmail dot com.
CydM at 2013-06-06 11:32:53:
Oh, boy. This is great stuff. I've stayed away from Aristotle's Poetics because of the impossibility of an absolute translation of Ancient Greek. The best scholars will admit their translation is their best guess, which is why we have multiple translations of Poetics floating around the house. But working from one agreed upon source gives it coherence and adds a new tool which which to approach writing a screenplay. I've always thought the story was the story, end of story. Not so much now. The first film that came to mind while reading this was the fluffy Parental Guidance. It's Artie's story, but the narrative story is told through his wife (I think). We just watched Looper and that does use V.O. Now I'll go back over other films and watch them again with an eye for the narrator. This is really cool stuff. What's not so cool is that my husband has taught Greek Theater for over 20 years. I showed him this discussion and endured one heck of a lecture. The strophe was the chorus bringing information to the stage, the antistrophe punches up the action that's just taken place. They come together center stage for the denouement and exodus...and a whole bunch of other stuff I zoned out on. Now he's going back over his notes and integrating them with what you're going into here, and I expect to be toast by the time this is over. He's looking at forms and structure of the entire experience of a day of theater and how that may have evolved into the three act form. The tragedies all had five acts, but the day of theater was three plays, ending with a satyre (parody of the tragedies) to lift the audience experience before going home. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end of the day-long storytelling experience. With the majority of plays missing, we have no way of knowing exactly what the structure of the day was or pinning down the five acts as absolutes. Jumping back to the present, it seems so much of the screenwriters narrative voice can disappear once it starts walking and talking. The Sixth Sense used light in many ways to define genre and tell story, but was absent in the film. I can also see in my work the difference between protagonist and narrator and how using these elements can help me do what has always attracted me to film -- telling the story with shadows on the cave wall. P.S. The Spielberg video was riveting, but I was surprised they didn't use the round glass of water rippling to build anticipation of something huge about the appear. It spoke, and that carried over to Adele's video of "Rolling In The Deep," a four-on-the-floor musical composition. It's amazing how these things roll from one form of artistic expression to another and another and another. Love it.
14Shari at 2013-06-06 18:39:27:
Hi Scott, I've sent you - like requested- an email about my question. Hope you received it. Sharita