Home > Events > Event Reports > THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCREENWRITING A SEMINAR WITH SYD FIELD 12-13 MAY 2007 LONDON

BURSARY REPORT FOR PLYMOUTH MEDIA PARTNERSHIP

By MATT RICHARDS

 

There are countless screenwriting courses and seminars that claim to offer definitive knowledge and skills to the wannabe scriptwriter which could potentially lead to a lucrative writing career, either here in the United Kingdom, or across the pond in the USA.

 

But for any aspiring screenwriter, or for any professional screenwriter come to that, there are only two screenwriting gurus who are worthy of our attention.

 

One is the legendary Robert McKee. Known for his work on the structure of story, he has achieved cult status and even had an ‘acting role’ playing himself as a script doctor in the film “Adaptation”.

 

The other is Syd Field, who came to prominence in the 1970s with his seminal book on the art of writing for the screen called “Screenplay – The Foundations of Screenwriting.”

 

Both of these men have carved out far more lucrative careers from lecturing and writing books on the craft of screenwriting than they ever did as professional screenwriters, but when they visit these shores from their native Los Angeles, places in their classes are snapped up extremely quickly.

 

Having attended McKee’s seminar in 2002 and having just completed a MA in Screenwriting at Bournemouth University’s Screen Academy, I was determined to attend the next lecture Syd Field gave in England.

 

Fortunately, thanks to PMP, I was able to get a place on his weekend seminar in London in May alongside 150 or so other screenwriters. Held in Russell Square, the two-day event was an intensive look at the craft of screenwriting, focusing particularly on what Syd Field identifies as ‘The Story Paradigm’.

 

To explore this in detail, the first day of the course explored the definition of screenplay and posed the question whether as writers we begin with character or action. Once that question is answered in our heads we can analyse dramatic structure and look closely at ‘The Story Paradigm’.

 

 

 

 

All stories have in common four elements;

 

·                     A storyline

·                     A beginning

·                     A middle

·                     An end

 

By using examples from films such as “The Bourne Supremacy”, “Little Miss Sunshine”, “Witness”, “American Beauty”, “Royal Tenenbaums” and “Thelma & Louise” we learnt how to structure these four elements into ‘The Story Paradigm’ which is essentially a formula for breaking a typical screenplay of 120 minutes into three acts together with specifically placed mechanisms within that time-span such as;

 

·                     The set-up

·                     Plot point 1

·                     Plot point 2

·                     Confrontation

·                     Mid-point

·                     Resolution

 

Through knowing how these elements work individually, then knit together to form an arc that encompasses the whole screenplay, it should be possible to compose the perfect Hollywood screenplay form.

 

With these basic elements in place, we could then begin looking at the other parts of the screenplay. This included looking at how we open our screenplay; how the first ten pages had to grab the reader. We examined character, asking what character is; and concluding that if structure is the skeleton then character is the heart and soul for a good character embodies a universal need or situation that all human beings can relate to.

 

We then moved on to character and the nature of conflict by analysing dramatic need, point of view, attitude and change or transformation of great screen characters such as John Book in “Witness” or Lester Burnham in “American Beauty”. An intensive end to the first day saw us learn how to create great characters and how to connect them to the story. Once again, films were used to illustrate examples of how other screenwriters had achieved this, films such as “The Departed”, “Mr & Mrs Smith” and “Rushmore” being great examples of how good characters are created within the first ten minutes of a screenplay.

 

Day two began with an exploration of how to construct a scene by dividing each individual scene into three acts comprising of a beginning, middle and an end.

 

 

From this, having now learnt about structure, openings, character and scenes we moved on to dialogue and how to write it well bearing in mind that throughout Syd Field had been constantly reminding us that a great screenplay deals in silence and not in words! An in-depth exploration of dialogue tricks of the trade lead us to analyse exposition, subtext, playing against the grain and conflict/confrontation within the art of writing dialogue. For me, in particular, this was the most valuable part of the weekend as most of the other topics I had been exposed to at some point during my MA course, but strangely, writing dialogue was skipped over.

 

The remainder of day two was taken up with looking at how structures differ for linear and non-linear films, cue the obligatory Kill Bill screening, before we were introduced to the ‘Circle of Being’. This, according to Syd, is a crucial part of any screenplay and it is essentially a traumatic incident, episode or event that occurs within the life of our main character between the ages of 9-18. This could be the death of a parent, a physical injury, a rape, or a move to a new city or country. Whatever, it is critical that this is written in to the biographies of our main characters as it will shape the film during the writing stage.

 

Following a section on re-writing there was an enthusiastic Q&A session before we all left the room in a mixture of exhaustion and inspiration.

 

Many of the techniques encompassed within the lecture I had been aware of before owing to undertaking an MA in Screenwriting, reading Syd Field’s books, attending the Robert McKee seminar, or by simply reading and writing screenplays, but the sheer enthusiasm and charisma of the man on stage for two whole days was infectious and allowed me to absorb so much more inspiration of the craft of screenwriting.

 

I currently have two feature films in development in London and a six-part television drama series with a major London drama production company, but now want to get them back and rewrite them with the new enthusiasm and inspiration I took away from this fantastic weekend with Syd Field.

 

Matt Richards