petikan dari IASCW oleh Hafidz perihal writing
those writing comics can also learn from those
writing movie scripts, let me share some stuff from
“Script” magazine on writing, that “hidden process” no
one sees and hardly talks about.
Let’s start with Guillermo del Toro, who wrote and
directed “Pan’s Labyrinth“. Still wondering whether
the world that 11-year-old Ofelia entered was real or
fantasy? Maybe you can figure it out by reading what
Del Toro wrote about his writing process (SPOILERS
AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE). And you’ll also
see how much work and thought goes into creating the
script:
“THE STORY OF PAN’S LABYRINTH: Ofelia, age 11, is in
love with books and fairy tales. She and her pregnant
mother survived the Spanish Civil War, and they are
now moving to a distant military outpost in the
northern mountains. There they are to live with
Ofelia’s stepfather, Captain Vidal, a fascist officer
in General Franco’s military police. Vidal is in
charge of suffocating the rebels that have taken
refuge in the woods.
Ofelia explores the ruins of a pre-Roman labyrinth
behind Vidal’s outpost. There she meets a group of
raggedy, feral fairies and an ancient Faun who tells
her about her true origin and destiny. Ofelia is the
long-lost daughter of the king of a magical
underground kingdom and, provided that she can
accomplish three tasks before the full moon, she will
return to take her rightful place as princess next to
her father’s side.
Parallel to her story, the rebel’s insurgence in the
woods flares up. Soon the destinies of both the rebels
and Ofelia will intersect in the real world….
ENETRING THE LABYRINTH: I first “told” the story of
Pan’s Labyrinth to a few people, including my wife and
my friend Alfonso Cuaron. I wanted to “calibrate” what
worked and what didn’t within the story. Some writers
advise against this kind of verbal communication, but
I find it an irreplaceable part of my process. The
moment you externalise your tale, it is very similar
to watching it with an audience. You get “flop sweat”
and instantly recognise what works and what doesn’t.
After I told my story out loud, I started taking notes
and reading and researching what I was writing. For
Pan’s Labyrinth, I read civil war oral testimonies,
history books, Angela Carter, Bettelheim, Jung,
Borges, etc. and reread as many of my favourite fairy
tales as I could. But the key text in finding the
movie was a book called ‘Science of Fairy Tales’ by
Edwin Sidney Hartland.
After I have enough notes, I usually do an outline and
3×5 cards. Then, usually, I do a character bio for all
the key players. Strangely enough, with Pan’s
Labyrinth, I didn’t need to do the bios. The
characters were so close to me that I felt as if I
knew them all my life.
I actually wrote and rewrote the opening 10 to 20
pages obsessively — perhaps as many as 20 times. I
wanted to feel that the tone for these was right, that
they represented the spirit of the film. Once I nailed
those, it was a matter of 12 to 16 weeks to finish the
first draft. Writing is a disciplined process. I write
two hours a day come rain or come shine. Inspiration
comes only if you seek it.
You conquer the difficulties in a script the same way
everytime: discipline. Sit there and think. Do not
surf the Net; do not write e-mails. Sit there and
think. I always have an appropriate music score for
each project playing in the background. For “Hellboy”,
(another del Toro film) it was Coppola’s ‘Dracula‘,
and for ‘Pan’s Lanyrinth’, it was Arvo Part’s “Spiegel
im Spiegel.” Very appropriate, don’t you think?
Fascism (or any totalitarian movement) nullifies the
individual, and one of the first things to go is
imagination (humour follows shortly after). In Pan’s
Labyrinth, we have a clash of two universes: Fascism,
male, obedience versus magic, female, disobedience.
One is represented by a violent, sociopathic Captain
Vidal, and mainly an 11-year-old girl represents the
other. I found it very attractive to use this
disparate clash to articulate a fable, a parable about
choice and disobedience. These themes are woven
throughout the film both in the real world and in
Ofelia’s tasks and fantasy.
The challenge is to swerve violently from one tone to
the next. Excruciating, graphic violence shifts
immediately to dark, poetic fantasy. Some in the
audience will never get past these shifts. That’s fine
by me, but the shifts are needed to make the audience
emotionally vulnerable and receptive to each punch.
The difference in trying this kind of storytelling and
failing or succeeding is all in the intent. If you
watch Pan’s Labyrinth carefully, you will find how
controlled each shift is. Visually, aurally,
dramatically, there is intent behind every one.
Each act of violence is presented in a different way
and to a different degree. Not for variety’s sake, but
to join together with the segment before or after. The
fantasy is not a “Disney-esque” extravaganza of
chirping bluebirds singing to our heroine, but a dark,
menacing world. Tonally, that’s what allows them to be
together, that ultimately, both worlds are challenging
to the girl!
To help with the shifts and transitions, we created a
careful colour/shape/ texture code for each of the
segments in the movie. When I started boarding the
film, I planned that through camera style and
transitions we could actively integrate two worlds
that start as parallel realities and end up
intertwining tightly into a single outcome. Once the
codes for each world were established, we allowed the
colour coding from one world (cold for the fascist
reality; amniotic gold and scarlet for the girl’s
world) to start infecting the other world’s reality.
To further intersect the two worlds, each element in
the magical world is built around elements in the real
world: the dining room of the Pale Man (Hafidz: the
monster with eyes on his palms) is a reflection of the
Fascist Captain’s dining room; the retrieval of a key
becomes an important task in both worlds; a knife is
an important element in Ofelia’s task and in Mercedes’
(Captain Vidal’s servant who secretly aids the rebels)
story; and the centre of the labyrinth shifts from
magical to non-magical elements.
Pan’s Labyrinth has its share of violence, but the
violence is orchestrated and with a purpose. I tried
to refrain from showing some of the more graphic
violence in the real world (the leg amputation, the
girl being shot, etc) and made some episodes in the
fantasy world (the Pale Man eating the fairies, the
toad vomiting itself inside out) unexpectedly graphic.
My hope was that the violence in the two worlds would
balance out. The final graphic act in the film
(Captain Vidal doing some self-surgery) is a
larger-than- life gesture that shows him becoming an
ogre, the Big Bad Wolf. This character has repaired
his own watch, polished his own boots, and damn if he
isn’t going to sew himself up!
My favourite scene, the Pale Man scene, is the scene
in which the brutality of the real world first invades
the magical world…
The settings and visual cues are key to the success of
the story. ‘The Devil’s Backbone‘ (del Toro’s 2001
film) was built around what I called “visual rhyme,”
and my hope was to build Pan’s Labyrinth in the same
way but also to have both movies rhyme with each
other. If you ever watch the two films back to back,
you’ll be surprised.”
In another article in the same issue of “Script”
magazine, MICHAEL ARNDT (writer of “Little Miss
Sunshine“) gives an advice on writing:
When I (the journalist writing the article) asked him
(Arndt) for advice that he might offer a young writer,
he had more than just a motivational line or prophetic
thought. Arndt offers science.
“Studies have been done of people who are experts in
their field to determine what separates the great
people from the mediocre. They’vevfound that the key
variable is the amount of time spent alone in
deliberate practice — intense focused concentration,
in this case toward trying to write a story.”
Of course, we’ve all heard “practice makes perfect”,
but with this formula, there is more to it. Arndt
continues, “What was interesting (about the study) was
that it applied across any field — no matter what the
profession. The amount of time spent in deliberate
practice was the number one indicator of how
successful you would eventually be.” If this formula
is true, then it could feasibly become the writer’s
choice as to how long it takes to break in
professionally — it’s a simple calculation of time
commitment.
“The study put a number on it and said if you spend
10,000 hours alone in deliberate practice, you will
get up to professional level. You may not be the best
of the best, but you will be at professional level.
Ten thousand hours, which is roughly four hours a day,
five days a week for 10 years.”
And how would those test results apply to Arndt? “It’s
pretty much exactly what it took me from the time I
got out of film school and decided what I wanted to do
to when I sold a script. It’s not a question of talent
or do I have a special quality in me, it’s about
making a very focused effort.”
Talking with Arndt about his writing process, one
would think he is constantly pressing the pedal to the
floor. On the contrary, Arndt is a firm believer in
procrastination and its place in the writing process.
“When you enter the world of writing, there is a sense
of self-hypnosis wherein you need to block out the
rest of the world. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to
transition from the everyday world into your
imagination. It requires allowing your mind to wander,
losing your attention or focus, and drfiting off into
the imaginative realm.”
Arndt chooses to create that state of mind by surfing
the Web and reading the trades in the morning until
his mind begins to wander, then he flips the switch.
“It involves boredom and letting go, and it’s almost
impossible to do thatwhen you’re working a full-time
job and trying to keep your life organised on the
weekends — you don’t have time to drift.”
However, Arndt refers back to the rule of 10,000
hours. He points out, “A job in development or script
reading or any job that has you focused on
storytelling would mean that at least you’re getting
paid while accruing those 10,000 hours — even if it
means making less than you could make working in
another field.”
Hafidz says: Hmmm, not sure whether I believe the
study, but I understand the drift aspect. It really
isn’t very easy for me to write fiction while I’m
working full-time. Normally it is the comic writer who
finishes fast while his artist partner takes more time
on his work, but in my case with “Destination
Unknown”, I am actually very much lagging behind
Nurie! Yup, if you don’t see the 2nd issue of
“Destination Unknown” till next year, the blame would
be on me. Nurie is quite fast.
Hafidz
