Writers Room: Visual Storytelling
Great scripts can make great films… but how do these films fare if the sound is turned down? Can visual images alone capture and engage an audience? Writer / director Robert Sarkies (Scarfies, Out of the Blue) spoke with producer Philippa Campbell (Rain, Black Sheep, No. 2) at the April Writer’s Room about visual story telling from both the writing and directing perspectives.
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Philippa described the “visual imagination” of directors and how they apply a visual “grammar and language” to camera movement, lighting, production design and performance. “We are all inherently visually literate,” said Robert, “because we’re born with eyes. As we grow through childhood we learn what story is and how to tell it. Children use strong images, trying to be evocative when they tell their story.”
Robert took to film making early. As a child, he used his father’s Standard 8 movie camera to make silent movies and which helped him develop a “visual vocabulary”. “I was forced to hone the visual because there was no dialogue. Without even realising it, I was telling my story purely through image and action.”
As a youngster, Robert did not analyse how he was making films, he just made them. His first ‘silent’ film was about a burning building. By inter-cutting from the cleaning lady trapped inside to the efforts of the fire brigade outside he learned how to create a sequence of mounting tension. Dialogue came later. “Dialogue felt very adult,” said Robert. “I thought you had to be really good at it to pull it off. There is a limited amount of dialogue in my short films because I felt more confident in the visual realm.” Philippa asked Robert if he felt more comfortable reading a script with less dialogue and more action. “Depends on the story being told. ‘My Dinner with Andre’ was wonderful because the dialogue was so well written. Usually you’re looking for a balance of both”
The first document a director sees is the screenplay, the blueprint for a film. When reading a script for the first time, Robert hopes the writing will capture his imagination and play like a film in his head. “The best scripts absorb you into their world within the first few pages. You’re experiencing instead of reading – and that’s the challenge for writers. How can we create something that is a blueprint for a film but also offers the reader an immersive imaginative experience? If I’ve been involved in the writing myself, I’ll put it away for several weeks. When I look at it again, I think, ‘am I just reading the words on the page or am I experiencing the world of this film’? ”
Robert felt New Zealand screenwriters tend to sway between ‘too sparse’ and ‘too rich’ with their screenplays. “Sometimes a writer has read all the books and thinks they have to be spare and tight but they’re not giving the reader enough to grasp onto. The other side is perhaps more common where our writers have been told ‘you must know your world, do your research’ but they give too much detail and information, it’s too rich. The reader wades through this murky water, not quite sure what to grasp. It’s too dense and the reader loses interest.
“The happy balance is where I’m given two or three triggers within a scene that imaginatively engage me. For example, we might be reading a script that is set in a South Auckland housing development. We don’t need to say much more than that. We get the picture from just a few words and understand that world. But what if there’s one house where the lawn has been given a number two haircut? That engages me and I want to know more. Who lives there? What makes this house different to the others? I’ve dropped into this film as a reader and am getting excited about it.”
The first clip of the evening was from Robert’s short film Signing Off which he described as “my kid’s brain trying to tell a simple comedic story through pictures and action.” The clip gave a good example of what Robert calls ‘action sequences.’ “This whole talk tonight is rather misnamed. It’s not about visual storytelling. It’s about telling a story through action. Scenes are all about action. Even if a scene is dialogue heavy, there must be some action that progresses the characters from one point of the story to another. Try this: If there is no sound, how would you tell the story? This can help you determine the action of the scene.”
While writing Signing Off, Robert realised he knew little about ‘structure’. “I felt I needed to know something because people were asking embarrassing questions. I’d created a three act structure without even thinking about it. I’d done it because this structure is quite organic for a storyteller. We have a beginning, middle and end within a time frame that works. Writers have so many people telling them what to do! We can sometimes forget that all we’re doing is telling an interesting story, one that needs to keep moving, giving people a reason to keep watching until the end. We need to shake off all that terminology. Just tell the story.”
Writers use words to engage the reader. Directors work with a ‘visual toolbox’, offering the audience room to engage emotionally with the film and have their own ideas. “It’s about giving an audience imaginative parameters,” said Robert. “If they know the context of the story then they can relate that to their own experience. It’s important to give the audience room to engage – otherwise they lose interest in your film.” The next clip from the popular film Scarfies offered an example.
The clip began with a bubbly, busy, engaging sequence. Characters are introduced, they are in a hurry to go to a rugby game, there is a lot of good natured banter and chat but action is driving the sequence until there is a problem, things change … a strange man is in the basement. “At that moment the audience really drops into the film because there’s a problem and the challenge as a storyteller is to keep them there.”
Good screenplays will evoke the imagination of the director and his or her collaborators. “I want my DOP to read a screenplay and come back with ideas about how the words should be visually interpreted,” said Robert. “Good screenplays usually make good films because they evoke the imagination of all involved.”
The script for Out of the Blue was one of those. Robert described it as a “gift”. “The main character didn’t speak to anyone! He was isolated. We had to evoke the idea of this person through image and action.”
The clip chosen from Out of the Blue showed how intriguing visual clues can define character. A grown man carries a large rock on his ten-speed bicycle, takes it to his crib and adds it to a pile on his lawn. “He’s (main character David Gray) creating a fortress, separating himself off from the world. We can feel his isolation and want to know what’s going on in this guy’s head.”
Robert said Graeme Tetley’s script was instantly evocative. The opening lines are spare but engage attention right away, evoking a feel for the time and place in which the story will unfold. “I didn’t shoot the opening sequence as it appeared in the script. It was about reading it, having a strong feeling from it and then thinking how to evoke that same feeling for the audience.”
At discussion time, Robert was asked a question appropriate for such a visual director: how important is the process of storyboarding? “I can’t draw, so I work with a storyboard artist. We sit down together, I describe what I visualise and he’ll draw. We work quickly – 90 pictures a day sometimes – but we might throw a lot out. It’s a creative process and gives me a chance to visually imagine the film as if it is cut. You can learn a lot from storyboarding because you’re experiencing the story moment by moment in the same way an audience would, as it unfolds. I like the process. Film making is horribly pressured whereas the storyboard stage is a more imaginative head space.”
As a final piece of advice, Robert acknowledged the value of collaboration and cooperation between everyone working on a film project. “I place enormous value on relationships that work. When you find one that clicks, it’s great. For example, Out of the Blue would have been a totally different film with another writer and DOP – so when you find relationships that work, nurture them.”
Written by Jane Bissell for Script to Screen
