Fences – The Shooting Script

I admit it. I am a middle-aged person. When I grow up, I want to be a director. Why? Since childhood, I have been obsessed with storytelling, movies in particular. I find the construction of flashing imagery, the spoken word, and music the highest form of collaborative art that has been invented.  This blog is my big step into show biz.

A Film Director Does What?

Honestly, what does a film director do? According to the internet:

A film director controls a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking.

Okay, but this is still a little too abstract. A director uses an audio-visual montage to elicit emotions from the audience in an effort to empathize, educate, or entertain. The director does this by selecting a cast and crew and orchestrates their activities to produce the elements needed to assemble the individual audio and visual captures into a cohesive whole that tells a story. This is even worse. An example would be helpful.

A Montage?

Let’s start with the basics. What is a montage? A montage is the process or technique of selecting, editing, and piecing together separate sections of film to form a continuous whole. In other words, its taking two smaller clips and assembling them into a larger one.

Let’s make a short film based on the definition above. We need two things, at minimum, two clips. For this exercise, I have created two, one second clips.

If we assemble them into a sequence, then we have the following:

I call this the most boring movie in the world. Its boring, and uninteresting, because the change between the clips is slight. The change is not dramatic. 

Drama is
anticipation mingled with uncertainty.

William Archer

Using the definition above, we can diagnose the problems with the movie and create a solution to increase the drama. If we use the following three clips:

If it is assembled in a less predictable pattern, we have the second most boring movie in the world.

Working With a Script

This is more interesting than the last example. How does this correlate to my Fences project? As a director, I must convert the written text into an audio-visual montage and convey this vision to my cast and crew.

A picture is worth ten thousand words.

Fred R. Barnard

Directing is reversing this process. The script is my “ten thousand words” and I am using that to generate an image – an audio-visual montage. I’ll create the shooting script to aid in this process.

I marked up the script to determine when I would use a wide shot versus a closeup. (Because I am one-man crew, my shots will not have any movement – bummer.) I am keeping in mind the rhythm of the shots, dialogue, foley, sound effects, and music . The goal is to deliver drama, with anticipation mingled with uncertainty. Building the shot list is difficult to manage and get right. Thank goodness, its on paper, where I can erase the mistakes or start from scratch.