John August

QandA

Character depth in a short film

QandA, Words on the page

I’m in the midst of rewriting a short drama that is to be shot in about two months. I’m having trouble injecting character depth into it and I don’t know how to fix it. Everytime I try to make it more about the character it gets longer and longer, and it must be around 10 minutes (for university assessment).

— Eva Fitzroy

Character depth may be a false goal. With only ten minutes, you’re not going to be able to make [CHINATOWN](http://imdb.com/title/tt0071315/). Nor should you try.

Rather than cramming in extraneous character information, strive for economy. Is your protagonist a one-armed professional accordion player nervous about meeting his birth father? Fine. Show us that information in the very first scene. If you can’t work in all those details, ask yourself what’s really important: that he plays accordion, that he has one arm, or that he’s nervous about meeting his biological dad.

You may find you have to omit or alter some aspects of the character for sake of getting the plot started. So be it. Think of it like writing poetry: you may have really wanted line two to end with “orange,” but if you’re setting up for a rhyme, that’s just not going to work.

Good short films tend to be about a Character facing a Situation who takes an Action and has an Outcome. Yes, that’s sort of a generic template, but my point is that most successful shorts don’t spend much of their time filling in the details about their characters. What you see is what you get. So make sure those first details we see about the characters are enough to sustain our interest for ten minutes.

Writing about what you don’t know

QandA, Writing Process

I have this idea of a screenplay that has to do with Navy SEALs. However I am not familiar with them. I have also
heard that as a writer one should be more inclined to write what they know about.

Should I follow this advice or can I find ways of developing this idea through research? Is it necessarily that all screenwriters have an absolute clue about what their stories venture into?

— Andrew

If screenwriters only wrote about subjects they knew intimately, most screenplays would be about Tetris, television or getting picked last for team sports.

Write about what interests you. If you don’t know enough about Navy SEALs, research everything you can on them until you’re a pseudo-expert. Here’s the test for whether you’ve done enough research: have you annoyed all your friends and loved ones talking about all the interesting facts you’ve learned about Navy SEALs? Great. Now you’re ready to start writing.

Other interests and hobbies

First Person, QandA

Do you play guitar, or do some other type of hobby in order to get inspiration for your writing?

— Jesse Leal

I don’t play guitar, though I’ve always wanted to learn. I tried to teach myself on my father’s guitar, but never even mastered tuning it, which made the rest of the process painful to the ears.

I can read music, and play piano and clarinet on a grade-school level. But I wouldn’t say either of them inspire my writing. So, for the truly curious, here’s a quick run-down of John’s Other Interests:

* Gadgets [Treo 650](http://palmone.com)? Check. [TiVo](http://tivo.com)? Check. (Early Adopter points: I got my first digital video recorder in 1998.) [Toyota Prius](http://www.toyota.com/prius/)? Check. (We have two in the family.) [Wireless Weather Forecaster](http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?cookie%5Ftest=1&catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F010%5F001%5F001%5F000&product%5Fid=63%2D1085&hmsub=ad2)? Check.
* Languages
I like to travel, but my interest in languages is borderline obsessive; I spent six weeks learning Japanese in preparation for a 72-hour visit to Tokyo. I’ve spoken Spanish since grade school, and French since high school. I’m fascinated by the evolution of languages, particularly how English lost its Germanic declensions and re-imported so much of its vocabulary from French (which resulted in having both ‘regal’ and ‘royal’).
* Warcraft My name is John, and I have Warcraft problem. Kudos to the good folks at [Blizzard](http://blizzard.com) for their digital crack.
* Reality Television If I only watched The Amazing Race, no one would question my taste. But my TiVo also holds Big Brother, The Real World, and The Real World/Road Rules Challenge.
* Home improvement I’ve renovated two houses in four years, by which I mean telling a contractor what I wanted and blissfully ignoring the actual labor involved.
* Information architecture
Beyond the work I do designing and running this website, I also love to keep up on XML, RSS and other emerging standards.
* D.C. heroes I know there’s a lot of love out there for the Marvel pantheon, but I’ve always been a D.C. guy. Ever since I watched Superfriends as a kid, Superman and his brethren were my gods on Mount Olympus. I was never much of a comics reader, but somehow I learned all of the heroes’ mythology.

Blind man’s point of view

Genres, QandA

What do you think of a film made from a blind man’s
perspective? By that I mean a completely black screen all
the way through the film — which means a dialogue heavy film.

Do you believe this would be a good short film or would it
be to dull for the viewer?

— Lewis Dickson

Lewis, welcome to the world of experimental film, where you invite mocking simply based on hubris.

Yes, you can make this film — though many would argue it’s simply a radio play. Derek Jarman’s [Blue](http://imdb.com/title/tt0106438/) had a similar conceit: “Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman’s experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.” (IMDb)

The real question is how far you want to carry your capital-a Art. I’d argue that the strongest artistic statement would be to have an acclaimed D.P. like [Russell Carpenter](http://imdb.com/name/nm0005665/) shoot 70 millimeter film with the lens cap on.

I know Russell. I’d be happy to ask him for you.