Film Your Scripts Instead of Writing Them !

Faced with a blank page, ideas are hard to come by. I propose a method that involves filming guided improvisations with friends, to generate authentic, inspiring material rooted in reality.

The Unreality of the Blank Page

When facing a blank page, it’s very difficult to find in your head all the ideas to bring a story to life. This is why, very often, during a discussion, ideas come out more easily, as they feed off the exchange. Similarly, by researching a subject or living experiences, script ideas can emerge. For example, if I want to write a script about a scooter manufacturing factory in the south of France, I could get hired at this factory. Even for a fictional script, I would discover a whole bunch of information that I could never have invented. I would also encounter situations that I would experience, that I would be confronted with, and that could inspire me.

Observation and Truth

Jacques Tati, for example, one of the great masters of gags – but refined, accurate, humanistic gags – found his gags around him, in life. He would note what he saw in a notebook. If his films are so accurate about humanity, it’s precisely because he staged situations imbued with truth, because he had really seen them. It’s not about invention, but observation, which gives much more substance and interest to the film. Interest for the viewer, but also in the broader sense, the philosophical sense. It creates a work that concerns us.

The great dialogue writer Michel Audiard also said that he listened to and noted phrases he heard around him. There have even been testimonies from his acquaintances saying: “But that phrase in this film, it was actually me who said it, he stole my phrase!” Thus, the strength and colorfulness of Michel Audiard’s dialogues are based on an observation of reality, which is then transformed into fiction, charged with this truth, with the real. The real is the truth.

This is also why many screenwriters base their stories on their own lives. And if it’s done without navel-gazing, it can be absolutely fascinating, because, again, even if it becomes fiction, it’s based on something true in human, emotional, and philosophical terms.

However, we also need to invent situations, because there is a particular story, and we can’t find all the situations or all the dialogues of our film through observation. How can we make these inventions have the same truth, the same strength, the same accuracy, and come from something natural, that flows naturally?

In a film, you can immediately tell when a dialogue is false, when it’s not really human, or if there’s something that’s poorly contrived. Whereas what flows naturally can sometimes be very surprising, and yet real. We can have big surprises, but these surprises carry a form of truth.

This is very difficult to achieve, because when you’re alone behind your paper or your computer, it’s not easy to imagine true things, because you’re not actually living the real situation, you’re imagining it, alone at your desk.

Jean-Luc Godard

This is why Jean-Luc Godard, when talking about screenwriters who would go to “get some fresh air” in the countryside, or do writing residencies in magnificent castles, invited by public or private patrons, was very critical. He would say: “But how, while they are isolated from the world, in a way... They are in a certain world, but they will write a story that doesn’t take place there. So, if they write a story that takes place in a magnificent castle, that’s fine, but they go there to write things that will be abstract compared to life.” And he added: “It would be better if they stayed in the city and in reality, which is the reality they want to talk about in their films.”

Jean-Luc Godard criticized cinema that was a bit too prudent and disconnected from reality. This was, in fact, the whole approach of the New Wave in France in the 1960s, which Jean-Luc Godard was part of, which was to fight against “daddy’s cinema” and to make films that are more concerned with the real, that are less imaginary and that talk about the world.

In fact, Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature film, À bout de souffle (Breathless), shot in 1959, with a portable camera in the streets, hidden, so that the actors, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, could be in the real world and that this imaginary story, this fiction, would take place in the real world. Godard went all the way with his principle. The quality of the film itself, its very original way of being made for the time is important: nothing is shot in a studio, which was not at all the habit of the time for fiction films. But what is also very important is that this film was a great success, 260,000 admissions in Paris-Periphery, which is enormous for a somewhat “experimental” film, in black and white no less.

This stronger truth, this intensity, brings a certain strength, which is in some way the source of contemporary cinema. There has to be an intensity. Romantic movies, completely disconnected from reality, love stories between American teachers who live in sumptuous houses that a teacher could never afford, these still exist and will always exist. And why not? These films have their place for entertainment. But cinema cannot be just that.

The Technique of Filming the Script

So, what does it mean to film a script instead of writing it? It’s a technique that I have used and taught in professional training.

It involves taking a simple mobile phone, for example. It’s much better if there are several of you. Alone, it’s a bit complicated, but you can, as part of your script writing, ask friends, even for an hour, to come help you write your script. You can tell them that it will be fun, that we’ll have a good time for an hour, and that it will be very useful for you.

I’ll give you the principle, which you can adapt to your own way. You tell each person - let’s imagine you’ve invited three people - that they are a character with a dramatic stake in relation to the others.

So, for example, very classic: a woman, the husband, and the lover. You give them information: the husband doesn’t know that this man is the lover, and the wife doesn’t want her husband to know. However, the lover would prefer the husband to know. This example is a cliché. But it can be difficult to live with in real life, though. And that’s precisely what’s interesting about clichés. How can we invent something other than what we’ve already seen a thousand times, but invent something else, which is imbued with truth? If it’s too far-fetched and nobody believes it, it can’t be interesting.

So, you take your phone and you tell the people to improvise. You’re going to film this. You’ll follow them, film them. And they shouldn’t stop. You do a sequence shot. You give a starting point to the scene, the initial situation. And you indicate the end situation. The end situation, for example, in this story, would be that, finally, the lover also decides to keep the secret. At the beginning, he had decided to confess everything to the husband because he wanted there to be an argument and he wanted to be in a relationship with this woman. That’s his dearest wish. And in fact, at the end of the scene, he will want the opposite.

You give them a maximum time of 10 minutes (it can be 5 minutes). And then, they improvise. They do what they want, they try. They don’t consult with each other. There is no script writing. There are characters, an initial situation, and a final situation. And you let them improvise.

It’s better if these people are not actors. They can laugh while doing it, but they do it seriously. Also, this “film-writing” must be done in a set, in a particular place. The set is very important. Is it a living room? They have the right to use props. It’s not just dialogue. And they also have the right to do things, to chase each other, to take a car. It’s not just a discussion, it’s also situations with objects. For example, one takes a chair and threatens the other, whatever. In any case, they have the right, and it’s important, to use props.

The set is really important. You can ask them to do the same improvisation once in a living room, once in a park, even a park that’s next to your house, once in front of a car, etc. It’s important that you have this improvisation done several times. They know where they need to end up, but the path, that’s for them to invent. And that’s what you film. In just one hour, you can have several shoots of this improvised scene, in several locations.

Creating Inspiring Material

I can assure you that from these shoots you will have very inspiring material for writing: expressions, situations, looks, uses of props, sets, that will have come to them naturally. Because they were living it. They were acting, but still, they were embodying the situation. So, it’s completely different from us, alone in our head.

I gave you a starting point and an ending point, which is very practical, because it gives proven results. But you can absolutely use other instructions. You can even be much more vague, if it’s at the beginning of your writing, say: “Well, here, you meet each other in the street, and immediately, you feel like you recognize each other, but you don’t know why.” But they don’t have names, we don’t know their biography, etc. Or you can indicate: “Well, you tell your life to a passerby in the street, and you make up a life for yourself.” And you do this several times in several locations, which can give you ideas for character biographies. They will invent incredible lives, based on their singular lives.

For this technique to work, the dramaturgical situation you give doesn’t have to be very precise. You just need to give a clear instruction, a limited time, 10 minutes maximum. And this will help you at any stage of writing to go much faster, to collect lots of ideas. And you’ll just take what’s useful to you, of course.

In confronting these situations that happened in front of you, being in relation with this reality will help you clarify your idea, because there are certain things in this situation that will seem more important to you than others. And it’s by choosing these things that you will gradually reveal the idea you have deep inside you. What doesn’t speak to you, throw it in the trash, we don’t care. It’s a support for interaction that helps you discover your own subject.

It’s not at all about letting yourself be influenced by the universe of others, but rather letting the universe of others allow you to specify yours in the context of the world, because a story takes place in the world, and it’s a spotlight that we put on one place.

The Importance of Sound and the Prohibition of Zoom

Furthermore, sound is important, always be close to them when you film them to hear well. You need to be close enough, as close as possible to the person who is speaking, so that the sound is good, so that you hear the dialogue well. Because if the person is shouting from the other end of the apartment and we can’t understand what they’re saying, it won’t be usable for you. Give them this very important instruction: they only have the right to speak when they are close to the camera. So, this will really help you. We must not forget that, for them, it will be a lot of fun, yes, but they are not doing an improvisation for themselves, they are doing an improvisation so that it will be useful to you. So, you can absolutely give this type of constraint, it will absolutely not restrict them.

The good understanding of the words will allow you to work more easily, and will also allow you to use voice recognition tools, which can save you time.

I also invite you to forbid yourself from zooming, so you will always have to get closer, follow the characters. So, you will be like an actor with them. And you can even intervene during the scene, tell them: “Don’t you want to do that again? Do it differently.” Because ideas can come to you during the scene itself. It’s not a problem if you intervene during.

Touching Cinema

This technique allows you to touch cinema. You are no longer in the theory of a script on paper. Already, you are making cinema. These are images, characters moving in a set, with the exploitation of the set. So, this will give you a lot of very concrete ideas that are very connected to a truth of life, which will bring strength to your film and your script.

And finally, in your writing, don’t forget the sound. You should always talk about the voice, the grain of the voice, the music you hear, the way it resonates, the noise of the street. You should never forget to describe the sound in your script, because it gives the reader of the script a physical sensation. When they read it, they will feel like they are experiencing the film. The experience of the film passes a lot, a lot through sound. We are immersed in sound. We are not immersed in the image. So don’t forget, when you write, to note the sound. This technique also gives you ideas for sound.