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

Character depth may be a false goal. With only ten minutes, you're not going to be able to make Chinatown. 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.

How do you approach a documentary? How do you go about telling an organic, linear story when [although you can surmise] you don't know where the story will take you? How do you achieve the beginning-middle-end(?) of a documentary?

--Eric

First and foremost, to make a great documentary I firmly believe the filmmaker must be totally obsessed with the subject matter. When I did the first Decline in 1979, I would hang out in the punk clubs and if I ever saw anyone else shooting I would approach them and say...”It’s best if you do not shoot here, I’m making this film.” Remarkably, they would stop shooting!! I don’t think I could pull that one off today.

Point is, you need to pick a subject not because you think people might want to see it, not because you think you could make even a minute percent of what Michael Moore made with Fahrenheit 911, but because from your inner soul you are drawn to it. You use the word “organic” and that is such an appropriate reference when speaking about docs. I always think about a documentary as an entity that takes me on a soul searching journey and teaches me profound lessons about life. Every one I have done has taught me so much not only about the subject matter, and the filmmaking process, but about life itself. This happens because I try to not guide the documentary, but instead let it guide me. If you are observant and astute, you can let this work send you on a most rewarding journey.

As far as achieving the “beginning-middle-end”, that is something you will have to call upon your filmmaking talent to achieve. When I shot We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n Roll, it was the first digital doc I had done and I found myself in an Avid room with 286 hours of footage. THAT was a rough assignment to find the beginning, middle and end. But I let the footage guide me in an organic” way and after months of agonizing rumination, the structure revealed itself to me. Hopefully the same organic process will happen with you and your documentaries.

I'm an American writer turned director (SAG Experimental 35mm) getting a shot at my first feature, a low budget character driven action piece. I've spent several years carefully developing a relationship with a DP who's work I love and whom I trust personally. Now for economic reasons, Vancouver may be the location.

Since I'm not established and on the low end of the spectrum I have little chance of bringing an American DP. Assuming I get past having someone imposed upon me I'll be under the gun to find a new collaborator. I suppose I'll just have to trust my eye and my gut, but any suggestions would be a blessing.

--Pat

I'd need a lot more information to make suggestions about a particular DP. It's worse than trying to run a dating agency!

The director/DP relationship is such a distant/intimate thing, that there is no way anyone can choose that person for you. I always think of my "interviews" with directors as "Meetings" since both of you have to decide if it going to work. The good news is that Vancouver is a major film making centre and also a nice place to live, so there are good people there.

I don't think you will have much trouble finding your DP: just make sure you choose who you want and not who someone else wants. I've lost a few jobs through being "over-recommended" by a keen producer, only to find the director wants to make up his own mind. I respect that and think that the DP works for the director and only the producer after that.

John August's screenwriting credits include Go, Big Fish, Titan A.E. and both Charlie's Angels movies. His current projects include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tarzan, and Corpse Bride. He also maintains a screenwriting-oriented website at johnaugust.com.

Born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, John earned a degree in journalism from Drake University in Iowa, and an MFA in film production from the Peter Stark program at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

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