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Charlie

Planning for opening titles

April 19, 2012 Charlie, Film Industry, Projects

PBS Off Book has a nice video about the design of opening credits. Karin Fong compares a great title sequence to raising the curtain before the show.

Not every movie needs elaborate opening titles — the trend recently has been towards simply giving the name of the film and moving on with the story. But I’m a fan in general. Opening credits can be a terrific way to establish the world, so I try to anticipate them when writing the screenplay.

Here’s the opening sequence for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was shot largely as I wrote it:

FADE IN

As OPENING TITLES begin, we find ourselves in a swirl of liquid chocolate, spinning clockwise down a funnel. The accompanying MUSIC is jaunty but mysterious -- we’re clearly in for a ride.

We emerge as the chocolate pours into a mold, one of hundreds inching along a conveyor belt. This isn’t any ordinary factory. Bathed in amber light, the machinery is ornate and polished, with shiny brass joints and spindly levers. Complicated gears tug on oiled canvas ropes, slipping through swinging pulleys.

As the chocolate bars continue along the belt, great bellows swell and gently PUFF on them. A moment later, a press SLAMS down, lifting to reveal the word it has imprinted:

W O N K A

Still moving, we look back along the belt as hundreds of bars line up to be stamped. The molds suddenly flip over, dumping each bar onto its own set of wire fingers. These “hands” zip straight up along an elevator track.

We RISE with them, a good hundred feet up, getting a bird’s eye view of the factory floor. It’s quite dark except for the golden lights right along the machinery itself. Strangely, we don’t see a single person working.

As the chocolate reaches the tip-top of the track, a mechanical arm THWACKS a small package to the underside of each bar. Just as suddenly, the track flings each bar over the top.

The candy bars plummet in free-fall, until the tiny packages pop open, revealing parachutes. Their descent slows until a pair of giant scissors deftly SNIPS the strings on each chute, leaving the candy to drop onto another conveyor belt.

Each piece of chocolate lands perfectly square on its own sheet of foil paper. Looking ahead, we can see the machine that bends the foil around the chocolate. But before we get there,

A HUMAN HAND

reaches in and lifts five bars off the belt.

We only see this man’s hands and the cuffs of his velvet jacket as he sets a thin

GOLDEN TICKET

on the back of each of the bars. One by one, he places these five special bars back in the queue, where the foil-folding machine does its job, perfectly encasing each piece.

Another device attaches the paper wrapper, printed to read: WONKA BAR.

Further down the belt, we find stacking and sorting machines loading up boxes and cases of bars. A mechanical stamp THUMPS down on each cardboard box, marking its final destination: TOKYO, SPRINGFIELD, BRIGHTON, ADDIS ABABA.

CUT TO:

EXT. LOADING DOCK – DAY

Huge snowflakes drift down out of an icy sky that is the color of steel. WORKMEN load pallets of Wonka candy onto waiting trucks.

It’s hard to say what time it is, exactly: there’s no sun to be found, and the streetlights are always on. For that matter, it’s hard to say what year it is. From the trucks, to the clothes, to the typeface on the clipboard, the world seems to exist outside of ordinary calendars. All we can be certain of is that it’s winter.

The last container loaded, the FOREMAN bangs on the side of the lead truck. The convoy moves out.

Keep in mind that the first frame of the film might not be the right time for opening titles.

For example, James Bond movies traditionally stage an entire sequence before the main titles, which serve as a bridge between his last adventure and the new story. It’s like an extra act break.

If you have sequence that sets up the world, the opening titles can help you set up the hero. That’s the approach I took in my will-never-get-made Barbarella:

NARRATOR

At the time, no one knew this child would one day become their destroyer, and in the process, their savior. No one knew her name would become legend. At the time, they knew her only as...

FINNEA

(deciding)

Barbarella.

CUT TO:

A BURST OF COLOR

At first, it’s not clear what we’re looking at. Abstract shapes form a kaleidoscopic swirl while COCKTAIL MUSIC sets the mood.

A PAINTBRUSH reaches into frame. The brush holds steady while the canvas moves across it, creating a graceful line. It’s only now that we...

BEGIN MAIN TITLES.

In VARIOUS SHOTS, we start to see more of the paintings and the artist:

A THUMB flicks droplets of paint, which hang in mid-air. LIPS blow the paint at the canvas.

TWO COLORS are swirled together on a palette. Going WIDER, we see the palette has a navel -- it’s the artist’s stomach.

Looking past a canvas, we see the artist’s DARK HAZEL EYES as she works.

From behind, we see the bare back of the artist as she paints in the nude. She’s slowly turning counter-clockwise, while the canvas stays relatively still.

Unused brushes float past a window, showing outer space beyond. We MATCH CUT through the window to go...

EXT. SPACE SHIP / SPACE – CONTINUOUS

Where we get a look at Barbarella’s ship. It’s a tiny skiff, perfectly round, driven by gravitonic induction. If it were a car, it would be a VW Bug.

INT. SHIP – CONTINUOUS

Just because it’s a spaceship, doesn’t mean it can’t be comfortable. The walls are lined with carpeting, while the seats are agreeably plush. If it weren’t for the navigation controls and the windshield, it would make a groovy studio apartment.

As she moves the canvas down, we finally get a good look at our artist, BARBARELLA. Now 25, there’s an exuberant innocence to her, like the first day of spring made flesh.

Her greatest strength is her complete lack of worry. She’s never had a bad moment in her life.

As the TITLES END, she tucks her brush behind her ear, finished with her work. Her painting shows an abstract daisy, bursting with life.

BARBARELLA

I think I’ll call it, “Anthem to the Glory of Eldoria’s Magnificent Spirit.”

(to the air)

What do you think?

Her question is met with an EXPLOSION, followed by a blaring SIREN.

The ultimate decision about a title sequence will come down to the director, but if you’ve scripted it in a way that helps tell the story, you’re likely to see it used in some form.

One caveat: If your script starts with a montage of smaller moments that you intend to play under the opening titles, write the words OPENING TITLES. Otherwise, you may end up with both a title sequence and an empty-feeling minute of movie at the start.

New interview up

October 5, 2009 Big Fish, Charlie, Corpse Bride, Go, Projects, The Nines

I did a 30-minute internet radio interview this afternoon with Sam Heer, in which we talked about Go, The Nines, the Burton movies and screenwriting in general.

If you’ve heard other interviews with me, there will probably be nothing revelatory. But it’s amusing to hear how fast we both manage to speak. It really sounds like we’ve been artificially sped-up, but it’s just a lot of caffeine.

Writing on demand

May 5, 2009 Big Fish, Charlie, Projects, Travel

Screenwriting is generally a career in which you set your own hours and work environment. Like a novelist, the screenwriter can choose to work in fuzzy slippers from 11 p.m. until dawn, fueled by Twizzlers and Mexican Coke (the kind with real sugar). Your employers don’t particularly care about the process as long as the script arrives on time and debatably brilliant.

As screenplays tip perilously close to production, the rules suddenly change. Producers start asking for pages the same day. Directors tell you to stay close, because they’ll have some new ideas they want to add after they talk with the stunt coordinator. You find yourself sitting in an office surrounded by people frantically performing the work of making the movie you scripted.

For Big Fish, my office was a giant classroom in an abandoned high school. For Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it was a little room at Pinewood Studios with a phone no one could operate. For Titan A.E., it was a half a cubicle at Fox. Regardless of the square footage, I was expected to write on demand. In each case, it wasn’t just small changes, but major new scenes that had to blend into the rest of what I’d written.

Novelists are never asked to do this.

This past week I’ve been in New York, working on an unannounced project that is still a long ways off from production, but facing a Very Big Meeting on Thursday. We’ve been renting studio space at a venue that couldn’t exist in Los Angeles: thirteen little rooms that alternate, hour-by-hour, between karate classes, choir rehearsals, commercial auditions and classrooms for the kids in Billy Elliot.

Number of kids in tears I’ve seen: three.

Number of adults: two.

It’s so different from my normal writing life, in which my only distractions are a snoring dog or the gardeners on Thursday. But the chaos is also kind of exhilarating, a chance to remember that writing isn’t something that only happens in hermit-mode.

Some of my favorite scenes have come out of this process. I think that’s because they tended to have very clear objectives. Meeting with Jessica Lange during her wardrobe fitting for Big Fish, I noticed that she was picking much sexier outfits than I expected. “Sandra wants to look good for her husband,” she explained. That was kind of genius, but I hadn’t given her any scenes that really supported this idea. I wrote the bathtub scene on hotel stationery and showed it to Tim Burton that same evening. That kind of insight only happens on location.

This afternoon, I walked 18 blocks to retrieve an inkjet printer, then cabbed it across town so I could print new revisions tomorrow. I’m not using any of my normal stuff — I don’t usually do “real” writing on my laptop, and hadn’t even activated Final Draft — but it’s reassuring to see that writing is the same regardless of the tools or location.

Tonight, I’m off to see West Side Story. Which is another great thing about being in New York.

How long should it take to write a script?

December 1, 2008 Big Fish, Charlie, Film Industry, Projects, QandA, Television

Answering a recent question, I made the following unqualified assertion:

Six weeks is a long time. I say this not to panic you, but to make sure you understand that employable screenwriters need to be able to produce on demand.

In the comment thread that followed — and subsequent emails — many readers wondered exactly how long was too long, and what was a reasonable timeframe in which a screenwriter should be expected to deliver a script. So let’s try to answer those questions.

When a screenwriter is hired to write a project (like Shazam!, or Big Fish), the contract generally allows for a 12-week writing period for the first draft. Subsequent rewrites and polishes are given shorter time period, anywhere from eight weeks to two weeks.

In practice, I’ve never seen these contractual writing periods enforced. 1 Rather, a few weeks into the process, a producer or studio executive calls the screenwriter and the following conversation takes place:

PRODUCER

So, how’s the writing going?

WRITER

Good. Good.

PRODUCER

I know it’s early, but do you gotta sense of when you’re going to be finished?

WRITER

Umm....

PRODUCER

Just ballpark, like, end of January? Start of February?

WRITER

Yeah. Absolutely.

PRODUCER

Great. Great. Because I know the studio’s really excited to see it, and it would be great to get it in around then.

WRITER

Shouldn’t be a problem.

PRODUCER

I’ll just check in with you in a coupla weeks, make sure everything’s going okay.

I’ve encountered some version of this conversation on every project I’ve written. Follow-up phone calls try to narrow the time frame down even more, with the goal of getting you to deliver the script on a Thursday or Friday so everyone can read it over the weekend.

I’m hesitant to give a firm number for how many weeks it should take to write a script. Every project is different. Big Fish took me the better part of four months, while Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was three weeks. But part of the reason Charlie was only three weeks was because that’s all the time there was. There was already a release date, and sets were being built.

And that points to the better question to ask: How quickly should a professional screenwriter be able to turn around a script, given some urgency? In my experience, the most successful screenwriters are the ones who are able to accurately estimate how much time they’ll need. That’s part of the craft, just like a cabinetmaker promising a delivery date. For my work on Iron Man, I told them exactly how many days it would take to address certain issues, and delivered pages every night.

For feature films, I’d be reluctant to hire a writer who couldn’t deliver a script in eight weeks. For television, writers sometimes have less than a week to get a one-hour episode written. You’d like to give every writer as much time as she needs, but in my experience, the deadline is often the main force getting the script finished.

  1. In a few cases where a movie was rushing to production, my contracts have had special language like “Time is of the essence” or similar, which I suspect is a giant flashing arrow to indicate that the studio really would consider withholding payment if delivery were late. ↩
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