A while back, I wrote about beginning a project that involves voiceover – new, unexplored territory on my writing map. That idea, for which I wrote a 12 page character background, was the first new idea I’d had in a while. I was beginning to worry that I had somehow dried myself up, perhaps since I was spending so much time working on rewrites at that point. Now, I have three additional ideas, two of which I’m particularly excited about, and all I have to do is narrow it down.
In five days, I’ll be getting on a plane bound for South Africa for the second time in my life. (If any of you have any desire to travel to Africa, I strongly suggest getting your name on South African Air’s email list, as they have great deals pretty frequently.) While I don’t foresee doing a lot of writing while I’m abroad, mainly because I’ll be too busy traipsing around with lions and rhinos and giraffes to sit down and bang out a first act of anything, I’m definitely looking forward to the freedom of mobility and the sun on my to help me figure out what it is I want to work on next (outdoors + exercise can often = creative decision making time).
One of the projects I’m working on, the one I’m most strongly leaning toward, revolves around an ensemble cast. The idea is for a war movie – with a twist unique to Cake Man – and Onyx and I have spent much time recently trying to work out the optimal number of main and supporting characters. If you take a movie like BRAVEHEART, there are a few obvious leading roles, followed by a handful of secondary and tertiary characters, who, because of the number of them or the lack of lines for most of them, are more “that guy” than anything else (as in, “remember when ‘that guy’ died?” or “hey, it’s ‘that guy; I like him”). How many of “those guys” can you have before you dilute your script completely?
While the example I gave is a war movie (because that’s what I’m writing), sports movies are another great example of character juggling. If you watch any football movie, you’re going to recognize at least 8 characters pretty easily, maybe even 12. You’ll know the names to probably 4 of them (give or take). But you’ll really only follow one or two of them closely. It’s the same in a war movie. You might not like it when your favorite guy catches that fatal bullet, even though you only knew him as “the guy with the stutter.” The trick, as I’ll have to figure it out, is to know when to stop adding characters and how to allot the necessary time to those you do have, while not drowning the protagonist in a sea of gratuitous tertiary characters. The juggling, or management, of multiple characters can be difficult. I did it (somewhat successfully, I think) in my comic-book spec, but my new idea requires more acute concentration on unique characters with sufficient screen time.
Has anyone out there *coughONYXcough* worked with multiple characters in an ensemble situation (i.e. sport or war movie) before? Any experiences you’d like to share?
In five days, I’ll be getting on a plane bound for South Africa for the second time in my life. (If any of you have any desire to travel to Africa, I strongly suggest getting your name on South African Air’s email list, as they have great deals pretty frequently.) While I don’t foresee doing a lot of writing while I’m abroad, mainly because I’ll be too busy traipsing around with lions and rhinos and giraffes to sit down and bang out a first act of anything, I’m definitely looking forward to the freedom of mobility and the sun on my to help me figure out what it is I want to work on next (outdoors + exercise can often = creative decision making time).
One of the projects I’m working on, the one I’m most strongly leaning toward, revolves around an ensemble cast. The idea is for a war movie – with a twist unique to Cake Man – and Onyx and I have spent much time recently trying to work out the optimal number of main and supporting characters. If you take a movie like BRAVEHEART, there are a few obvious leading roles, followed by a handful of secondary and tertiary characters, who, because of the number of them or the lack of lines for most of them, are more “that guy” than anything else (as in, “remember when ‘that guy’ died?” or “hey, it’s ‘that guy; I like him”). How many of “those guys” can you have before you dilute your script completely?
While the example I gave is a war movie (because that’s what I’m writing), sports movies are another great example of character juggling. If you watch any football movie, you’re going to recognize at least 8 characters pretty easily, maybe even 12. You’ll know the names to probably 4 of them (give or take). But you’ll really only follow one or two of them closely. It’s the same in a war movie. You might not like it when your favorite guy catches that fatal bullet, even though you only knew him as “the guy with the stutter.” The trick, as I’ll have to figure it out, is to know when to stop adding characters and how to allot the necessary time to those you do have, while not drowning the protagonist in a sea of gratuitous tertiary characters. The juggling, or management, of multiple characters can be difficult. I did it (somewhat successfully, I think) in my comic-book spec, but my new idea requires more acute concentration on unique characters with sufficient screen time.
Has anyone out there *coughONYXcough* worked with multiple characters in an ensemble situation (i.e. sport or war movie) before? Any experiences you’d like to share?
1 comment:
Yes, I am guilty of having large groups of characters in many of my movies. I think it's a little different from what you're trying to pull off because I have dealt with different factions rather than one core group of characters. I guess with the sports movie it's all just one group on the same side, but that's going to be different from a war movie.
With your script it's going to be important for your main 2-4 guys to stand out on a few levels, but the the more details we're fed about their values, attitude, desires, etc, the more they will stand out for us as an interesting ensemble. This works best of course if they're all different on some level. Four clones of the same character on a journey probably won't be that interesting.
As for the 2-4 smaller characters, if they're not going to be shining off of personality, you need to do things to give them a better script presence. By that I mean find ways so that the reader doesn't lose track of them and start lumping all of them together as the supporting guys on the journey. A very personalized weapon always help. One of the guys could have some sort of pet. One of the guys could be a girl! Maybe one guy was wounded at the throat and can only grunt.
I think it will be hard to avoid those kind of things. If you can figure out a way to pull at the audience's heart strings when any member of your ensemble group dies, then please share.
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