Student Film Festival London

Alex Barrett, SFF festival programmer, reporting from the BAFTA and BFI lecture series

This summer saw the return of The BAFTA and BFI Screenwriter’s Lecture Series to both the BFI Southbank and BAFTA’s Piccadilly headquarters. With such a range of talent on display, we decided to head along to four of the seven talks to see what the similarities – and differences – between the writers involved could teach us about the art of screenwriting.

Getting Started

As can perhaps be expected, the talks highlighted that there is no one route into the industry, and the paths taken by the speakers seem to be as diverse as their output. However, interestingly enough, John Logan, Guillermo Arriaga and Paul Laverty all fell into scriptwriting in a roundabout way: Logan came from the theatre, Arriaga from literature, and Laverty – believe it or not – from humanitarian work. Spending time in Latin America in the mid-1980s, Laverty worked on the ground in Nicaragua, helping to combat human rights abuses. After seeing the socially conscious nature of Ken Loach’s filmmaking, Laverty simply wrote to him, and the two have been working together ever since. 

Moving from the political to the personal, Arriaga stated that his scriptwriting grew out of an innate and constant need to tell stories. His writing began, he said, at the age of 9 or 10: he was too shy to talk to girls, but he already had an eye for the ladies, so he started writing them letters. And they replied. Thus his love of writing was born, leading him first to novels, and then to cinema.

Logan, meanwhile, always loved cinema. But when he was only eight years old his Dad showed him Olivier’s film of Hamlet, and it changed his life. He was instantly in love with Shakespeare, a love which led him to the stage. After a brief stint as an aspiring student actor, he realised it wasn’t for him (he didn’t like the emotional honesty of it) and so he switched to learning writing. He then spent ten years stacking shelves in a bookstore, all the while putting on plays in tiny theatres (or, as he puts it, learning how to do his job). He was then approached by HBO to develop one of his plays. When an exec who loved his work left HBO to become an agent, he encouraged Logan to take a year out and do nothing but write, promising to represent him if he liked the resultant screenplay. And so it was that Any Given Sunday was born.

What Would Shakespeare Do?

Perhaps one common thread that can be drawn from the information above is that none of these three writers broke into the industry by studying screenwriting. If anything, it seemed at times like there was a level of outright disdain for the countless courses and books that are now saturating the market. Indeed, Logan claimed that screenwriting books are a waste of time, before saying ‘Show me the three act structure in Citizen Kane!’

Supporting this point of view, Arriaga said that he reads manuals on screenwriting out of curiosity, and that they all say things he will never follow. For him, the first rule is that there are no rules, and his idea of technique is that you can’t use technique to write, only ideas. He refuted the accusations that he’s a one-trick pony with the idea that the three-act structure itself is what we should consider a one-trick pony. Having read a lot of scripts which try and conform to it, it’s hard not to agree with him. And, as Arriaga stated, why should we put rules on structure?

Interestingly, in place of screenwriting gurus, Arriaga and Logan both suggested the same authority to turn to when in doubt: Shakespeare! Logan’s theatre background means he recommends studying the great dramatists (rather than the great films) if you want to learn how to write, while Arriaga said that he often finds himself asking ‘How would Shakespeare solve this?’

Personal Expression

Another cross-speaker similarity was the idea of using screenwriting as a means of personal expression, with both Arriaga and Charlie Kaufman advising writers to look within themselves for inspiration. Indeed, Kaufman commented that you should ‘be yourself at all times’ and ‘not sacrifice who you are for the sake of others’. His message, it seemed, was that writers should hold true to the real nature of things and not ‘sell out’: he wasn’t only talking about how to be a good writer, but also how to be a good human being.  

Arriaga, meanwhile, also called for writers to be true to themselves, especially as it’s impossible to predict how your work will do commercially anyway. He explained how even his world-spanning stories have all grown out of his own experiences, and how this means he doesn’t have to do any research, even when writing about characters who live half a world away (it would seem that he believes in the universality of the human spirit). He also claimed that this is why middleclass filmmakers are making so many boring films about boredom: because nothing happens in their lives. Reading between the lines, it would seem that his biggest advice to writers is simply to live life to the full.

Improvisation: Friend or Foe?

A more controversial point, which led to divergence among some of the speakers, was the use of improvisation by actors on set. Ken Loach is known for withholding the script from actors at specific points in a shoot, relying solely on improvisation to elicit the most ‘genuine’ responses, so it’s perhaps not surprising that Laverty showed himself to be open to it, stating that he is simply dedicated to arriving at the ‘best’ version of the final film, and is therefore open to whatever techniques are required to get there. Arriaga, meanwhile, takes the opposite approach, stating that ‘now that I have directed I know the importance of the screenplay’. For him, every word is important, and writers often spend months honing their screenplays – so why should you let an actor improvise around it on the spot? Logan, meanwhile, takes a rather pragmatic approach, and likes to work closely with the actors in advance of the shoot to make sure the lines feel right coming out of their mouths.

Outlining: A Necessity or a Necropolis?

Another discrepancy between the writers’ various approaches regarded the use of an outline. Arriaga claimed that if he knows everything about his characters in advance of writing he will never be surprised by them, and if he knows how his story will end before he begins then there’s no need for him to write it: it’s boring. He likes to discover things as he goes and never does outlines, though he did admit to having a vague idea of where things are heading and the structure the story needs before he begins. In other words, he knows more or less where he’s going, but he wants to be as free as possible when he writes, with no back-stories or outlines to restrict him. He simply feels it as he goes.

In direct contrast to this is Logan’s approach. Typically, Logan does a three or four page bullet-pointed outline before writing, and he has to know how the story ends before he begins. Unlike Arriaga, Logan also undertakes extensive research on his projects, and seems to have a very good grasp of his characters before he embarks on the writing process. However, much like Arriaga, he does recommend giving yourself freedom when you write: you need to allow yourself space to go with the flow and not be afraid to see where the writing takes you.

The Fear Never Leaves You

At the risk of ending this article on a rather bleak note, it’s worth pointing out that, as encouraging as the talks were, the writers also spoke about the harsh realities of the industry. When asked if there was every any relief to the writer’s struggle from an industry point of view, Kaufman simply umm-ed and err-ed for thirty seconds, before quite frankly answering ‘no’. Arriaga, meanwhile, expressed his anxiety that one day he’ll wake up and have nothing else to say. Great writers like Faulkner and Hemmingway, he stated bluntly, wrote their best novels early on. For him, it’s a worrying precedent.

Conclusions

Perhaps the most obvious conclusion that can be drawn from the talks is that writing remains personal and that, even amongst the highest tier of professionals writers, there is little consensus about how best to approach screenwriting. Rather than being a cause for frustration, however, this should be seen as something liberating: with no strict rules to follow, creativity is free to flow. This doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t work hard or shouldn’t study – and indeed both the contradictions and convergences outlined above offer much that writers can learn from – it just means that one shouldn’t be afraid to tell personal stories in one’s own, unique way.