Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge (1872 – 1933)

Random thoughts after completing an enjoyable first draft:

A few years back, Pål and I wrote a couple of stageplays more or less on assignment, meaning that we pretty much wrote them for someone else to produce. Most writers will find themselves in this situation sooner or later. After all, we don’t usually get to write scripts for ourselves to produce. So whether it is writing a script for a producer, in collaboration with a director, for a theater troupe to produce, or in a workshop situation of any kind – be prepared for the job to quickly turn into a negative assignment.

Few people are good readers and responders. Most people naturally focus on what they don’t like or what they would have done different themselves, and forget that they are not the ones writing it. If production is imminent, fear can easily seep into the process too, with directors and actors more or less unwillingly focused on what they don’t want to do. I certainly know that I am capable of this behavior myself, and I’ve had to train myself not to act that way. And you can’t force anyone to understand this, you can only lead by example:

The bottom line is that you’re not going to get what you want by telling people what you don’t want.

But your readers are sometimes going to insist on exactly that. Pål once likened the experience of discussing a first draft to discussing kitchen utensils. It becomes really hard to deliver when your partner, boss or whoever tells you: “I don’t know what I want you to find, but it’s not a fork.”

You’re clearly on a negative assignment, and it’s draining your creative juices really quickly.

This sounds obvious and perhaps a little childish when I read it back to myself, but I think this negative approach is all too common, from amateur theater and all the way to professional filmmaking.

What to do?

With our current projects we decided that we needed to nurture ourselves a little, and thus agreed that we were going to be hardcore about what we would love to write. We were going to give ourselves a positive assignment. Our early meetings and discussions on the period scripts we’re now writing centered on what sort of visuals we would love to see, and what sort of themes we felt were resonating with us, without any thought of structure or practicality or indeed whatever anyone else might think about what we are attempting to do.

We then spent a few months writing a first draft that’s now done, where we joyfully threw anything we wanted to see into the mix. We ended up around 150 pages. Some good, some not so good, but at least there’s a surplus of pages and somewhere to go. And I believe the script communicates a positive approach to the storytelling.

We’re not going to lose that when we start revisions.

This fall will see the opening of the first major Norwegian production filmed entirely with Canon DSLRs. The show is titled Dag, and the first teaser trailer is worth checking out:

When scriptwriting will allow it I also write for a website called Planet Origo, where I review movies and try to contribute articles in the pop-science genre. So far I’ve focused on the concept of film style in a number of different ways, and all the articles can be found here.

Planet Origo is dedicated to science fiction and fantasy, and later in the year we’ll get started on a feature series about the “other” sci-fi milestones, meaning those you don’t always find on the Top 10 list.

How many times have we seen scenes like this? Disaster movies are sure to have at least one “you need to see this” – some have close to a dozen. Is it just a harmless cliche? Or is it a sign of something worse: screenwriting advice mutated into dogma?

One of the first commandments of screenwriting goes “Show, Don’t Tell!” To be sure, that’s good, sound advice. Film is audiovisual storytelling, so your writing should be all about what can be seen and heard. But all advice must be combined with conscious thought. Otherwise you end up with insanely annoying characters that are incapable of telling each other anything. And all they can say is “I think you need to see this.”

Disaster movies are all about the spectacle. We don’t want to hear about the explosions. We need to see them. That doesn’t mean that every disaser movie has to be strictly formulaic in every scene. Sometimes a young officer can actually just tell the Colonel what’s up. It’s not always: Volcanoes = good, dialogue = bad.

An unthinking attitude to show, don’t tell, may lead to some problems:

1. Fragmentation. All scenes get steeped in spectacle, so the story ends up getting “loud”. May lead to your movie ending up as a string of explosive pearls.
2. Fear of dialogue.
3. Fear of monologue.
4. Characters behaving like cogwheels in a screenwriting machine.
5. Avoiding getting close to characters, and giving them depth.
6. Fear of ambiguity (what really happened?)

Keeping all this in mind, I still consider show, don’t tell, one of the best pieces of screenwriting advice you can get. You just have to remember that it’s not dogma to be followed blindly.

And that sometimes it’s really okay to tell, and don’t show.

This week I attended a masterclass with DSLR-video guru Philip Bloom in Oslo. Bloom has quickly become the go-to-guy when it comes to Canon’s excellent HD-DSLRs with 1080p video. The buzz is mainly over the 5DmkII and the 7D models – with the 5D already being used in big professional productions.

Bloom took a very concrete and practical approach to the subject. He took us through the DSLR workflow, and presented solutions to the various problems you could bump into – like rolling shutter and moire. The masterclass was held in an excellent movie theatre complete with a 4k projector, so Bloom spiced his lecture with several videoclips. We saw a couple of minutes of the much dicussed season finale of House, that was shot on three 5DmkII cameras, as well as a handful of Philips own short films, also available on his website.

How did these cameras perform on the big screen?

Amazingly well!

Undoubtedly the next generation of Canon HDSLRs will see further progress in video capabilities. In many ways we’re witnessing a video revolution here – and not surprisingly some grumpy naysayers are unhappy with the changes. How somebody can manage to be unhappy with small and relatively affordable cameras with excellent video capabilities, I really can’t explain. Of course the DSLRs aren’t perfect and still have issues with audio, codecs, bad HDMI-out, and so on. But it’s just plain stupid to focus on the small problems when the opportunities are so amazing.

Here’s an interview that NRKbeta did with Philip Bloom in Oslo this week:

NRKbeta interview and article on Philip Bloom (in Norwegian).

The Wire was a real gamechanger for the TV show genre. The show´s creator David Simon chose narrative structures and strategies that owe more to classic novelists like Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac than any TV show or film ever seen. After five excellent seasons from the gritty streets of Baltimore, Simon wrote and produced the mini series Generation Kill, using the same unique approach to storytelling. His latest effort is set in New Orleans, three months after Hurricane Katrina, and is titled Treme.

The two most important attributes for a film critic are knowledge and passion. Pål Bang-Hansen is possibly the greatest film critic Norway ever fostered, and a perfect example of both. Now he has passed away.