Rage Against The Page

UPDATE, March 2012: New TED 2012 Talk by Andrew Stanton, covering much of the same material recorded here. READABILITY TIP:  For easier reading and to prevent eye strain, narrow the width of your browser tab to reflow the text into shorter lines. I recommend a words-per-line count of 12 to 15. As soon as I found it on Google Video, I knew I would have to transcribe it. Here is all of Andrew Stanton's keynote from Screenwriting Expo 5 (2006). He named it: "Understanding Story: or My Journey of Pain." I have not transcribed the Q&A that followed the keynote. Perhaps I will tackle it one day. Not for a while -- this transcription consumed quite a few of my nights, and I'm happy to be done with it. And now that I can look at it from head to toe, I can see it was worth every coffee-fueled keystroke. With Stanton's experiences and lessons to guide us, we cannot fail to become better storytellers. Note: Andrew talks FAST, so this transcript ...

I can't take it any more. I just can't. Quantum of Solace was the last straw. It's the latest 'blender-cam' action film to confuse rapid cutting with excitement. Fast editing does not equal excitement. Oh, it does... sometimes, when used sparingly the way a surgeon uses special-purpose forceps or when a flutist uses a particular breathing technique. Over the last decade, when it comes to the art of film editing, the word 'sparingly' has been gradually pushed further and further back into a dark corner of the dictionary, somewhere behind 'acrocephalic' (having a pointy head) and in front of 'zenzizenzizenzic' (a number raised to the eighth power) . Before anyone knew, the word had disappeared entirely. No one realised it has been taken out back and quietly shot in the head by a secret society of Hollywood editors. There is no correlation between excitement on screen and cuts-per-second. I don't care if you're an editor and your...

Cinema hasn't been around all that long. What are we talking? A hundred years and change? Close enough. At the turn of the century in 1900, not long before Captain Nemo piloted his steampunk submarine through the perilously narrow underwater corridors beneath Venice ( work with me, people ), motion pictures first bumped into the concept of 'continuity' -- that individual shots could be strung together to create cinematographic narrative. No longer limited to showing a single shot of a puppy crossing the road, now filmmakers could show a series of shots in an edited sequence, eliciting a much stronger emotional reaction from the audience: Shot of man driving a 'motor wagon' Shot of puppy playing on road Shot of man driving a 'motor wagon' Shot of puppy playing on road Man driving a 'motor wagon' Puppy playing on road Man driving Puppy playing Man... Puppy... Puppy explodes Man explodes ( Think I'm making this up? Go visit the Wikipedia article , ...

You are using the sequencing method as I understand it to plot out your scripts first? Can you let people know what the sequence method is for those who have never worked with it? And can you talk about how it helps you plan what to write? Sequencing is gold. I hesitate to even talk about it, lest all of your readers go out and become overnight successes and put me out of work. I jest, but this approach really is that good. And there’s no magic to it, it’s just good, common sense. That’s what’s so brilliant about it. Essentially, you want to look at your script as eight 12–15 page sequences. Act 1 and Act 3 each get 2 sequences and Act 2 gets 4. Each sequence should have a mini-goal for the protagonist (some more defined than others) and a beginning, middle and end just like your script does. That way, you end up with a sequenced script that builds on itself and creates those wonderful "peaks and valleys" that create tension/release, tension/release all throughout your stor...

Whenceforth Comes This Shabby Creature Of The Night? Fake. Had to be. The grammatical horrors waiting between the covers were solid proof of a novice writer at the keyboard. Surely. I read the first 10 pages: the linguistic horrors multiplied and then multiplied some more. Ask anyone: screenplays this unpolished don't escape unscathed when crossing a Studio Reader's desk. Screenplays this unpolished earn extra wrath from Readers. A well-presented screenplay (good spelling, punctuation, formatting) with poor structure or story is inoffensive; a Reader will dutifully appraise it with the minimum amount of effort and then set it aside, perhaps concluding the writer knows their screenwriting craft but not their art of storytelling . If this screenplay did not have QT's name on it, and it fell into a Studio Reader's hands, you'd better believe the Reader's red pen would be boiling over with invective. That Reader would likely cancel lunch to devote themselves wh...