NZ’s biggest film industry event of the year, the Big Screen Symposium, takes place on 24/25 September. Join us as an impressive group of international and local speakers address this year’s theme – Playing with Risk.
For the full list of exciting speakers and events, check out the program on our website here.
You don’t want to miss out on this amazing networking and learning opportunity. Be there to be informed, inspired, and be part of the community.
Follow us on facebook and twitter and be part of the Big Screen Symposium community.
You can now relive (or experience for the first time) some of this year’s Big Screen Symposium with this selection of summer viewing.
We’d like to thank filmmaker and 2014 FilmUp participant Michelle Savill, who has curated a series of short excerpts around this year’s theme, “Strengthening our Collaborative Spirit”, including Rachel Griffiths, Alison Maclean, Anthony McCarten – not to mention the brilliant Jane Campion.
Also a big thank you to the students of SAE Institute and Images and Sound for making these videos possible.
Watch the highlights here or on VIMEO.
From everyone at Script to Screen, all the best for the festive season and we’ll see you in 2016 for another exciting year!
Dianne Taylor stands down as chair of the Script to Screen Board of Trustees, after a term of five and a half years, four of which were at the helm.
Executive Director Esther Cahill-Chiaroni notes, “Dianne’s devotion to the organisation has been invaluable to staff, the board, and the wider community alike. She has provided endless support to me over a time of great development for the organisation, whilst guarding our founding creative vision to foster and develop storytelling craft and culture. She will be so very missed, but we are pleased that moving on will enable her to focus even more on her own screenwriting career.”
Dianne’s tenure has seen the creation of the Big Screen Symposium, the FilmUp Mentorship programme, and the Writers’ Lab Aotearoa. Dianne reflects positively on her time with the organisation. “Chairing Script to Screen over the past four years has been an enormous privilege. We’ve been able to develop and drive exciting new initiatives for our community. It’s been particularly gratifying to see the seeding of relationships between so many local and international filmmakers.”
We are delighted to announce that Brita McVeigh, who joined the board late last year, will step into the chair position.
Brita works to empower writers, directors, and actors in her own cross-disciplinary practice, and brings a wealth of relevant expertise to the role. “Brita already has such a strong understanding of the organisation, its aims and our kaupapa. We are very much looking forward to working with her in this new capacity and to the skills she will bring.” – Esther Cahill-Chiaroni, Executive Director
Brita expresses her enthusiasm to take up this new role. “It is an exciting time to be working with Esther and the team. Script to Screen has an excellent group of people on the board – I am honoured to be stepping into the chair.”
To find out more about the Big Screen Symposium, please go to our website: bigscreensymposium.com.
The Big Screen Symposium 2015 is nearing and it’s all go! This year’s symposium takes place on 10/11 October 2015, at the University of Auckland Business School.
The Big Screen Symposium is New Zealand’s premiere film event of the year, where over 400 delegates come together for two days of conversations, workshops, panel discussions and case studies with a stellar line-up of local and international speakers. This year’s programme will be shaped around the theme ‘Strengthening Our Collaborative Spirit.’
Early bird tickets are on sale now until midnight, Thurs 10 September. So get in quick for the best rates, and secure your spot at the biggest industry weekend of the year.
The Big Screen Symposium captures the hearts of the film community.
“It was a wonderful experience for me in every possible way. I was touched by the warmth in which I was received across the board and it was an honour to be there.” – US producer Alix Madigan (WINTER’S BONE)
“I was struck by the positive energy of both the speakers and the participants. It reminded me of one of the core reasons why we make films – to share (and experience) a unique point of view.” – 2014 Speaker, AUS director Jennifer Kent (THE BABADOOK)
Come and join your filmmaking peers, and feel a sense of camaraderie as you learn more about your craft and get that injection of inspiration needed to carry your projects through.
BUY YOUR EARLY BIRD TICKET HERE
A record-breaking audience gathered at Auckland’s Q Theatre to enjoy a very special June Writer’s Room with two of New Zealand’s brightest and funniest film makers. Chaired by actor Cliff Curtis, Script to Screen invited multiple Emmy-nominee Jemaine Clement and writer/director Taika Waititi to discuss the co-writing, co-directing and co-starring of their latest collaborative project, What We Do in the Shadows.
What We Do in the Shadows welcomes the audience into the ‘nightly’ lives of three vampires (plus a fourth who hangs out in the basement) sharing a Wellington flat. Like any other flatmates, they argue over the housework and domestic issues, enjoy going out for a spot of nightclubbing (if they are invited in, of course) and some banter with a pack of local werewolves, and must find those who will provide them with the sustenance they need … There is no doubt that this latest outing from one of New Zealand’s best known comedic teams is a real winner.
Jemaine and Taika share a long history of good friendship and creative collaboration dating back to their university days in Wellington when they were ‘… 19 year olds talking about men problems and burgeoning manhood.’
The two saw each other one day in the Victoria University library where it was dislike at first sight. Jemaine said he disliked Taika because he was wearing a reggae hat and hovering around a girl and Taika said, “I hate people with glasses. Jemaine was wearing this tapa cloth shirt. I thought he was one of those intellectuals trying to be ‘down with the brown’.”
Later that day, the two ran into each other again at a Capping Review audition. They watched each other’s performance, liked what they saw, put aside their initial differences and became friends and creative colleagues, developing and performing in a number of shows around Wellington with other like-minded actors.
“No one would hire us to be in their fancy plays so we were stuck in Bats making up our own stuff,” said Taika. “We learned to love rejection.”
The two made lists of all the things they’d like to do … make movies, be vampires … which developed into a list of questions like ‘what happens when you turn into a vampire?’ which then morphed into a short film project completed in 2005 where some of those questions were answered.
The film was based upon about 150 pages of jokes with a storyline running through. “Some scenes were 6/7 pages long so if you go by the ‘one page equals one minute of film’ then we had something that was 150 minutes long. We wanted it to be a natural process so didn’t show the actors any of the pages. We just asked them to turn up and we’d say things like ‘lie down here and we’re going to cover you in blood’.”
Sometimes that approach worked, but often it didn’t. There was always the script to fall back on but handing over a 150-page script wasn’t a happening thing. “We gave the crew a 100-page version,” said Taika. “Eventually we were able to shoot everything in a short amount of time but ended up with about 150 hours of footage. We spent over a year editing it.”
The freedom to improvise has always been integral to their work although Jemaine admitted in the early theatre days it didn’t always go so well. “It could throw you onstage sometimes. There’s been a progression for us. In Eagle vs Shark I wasn’t allowed to memorise anything. With Flight of the Conchords we’d improvise about 15% of the time, writing the scripts in such a way that it was easy to improvise. With Shadows, we progressed from having a little room to improvise to having a lot, so next time we might go back a bit.”
“People say that improvisation is a tool to get around script problems,” said Taika, “or to be used when a scene isn’t working. Good actors will tell you they only do it when they’re trying to figure out a problem. There’s been a change in comedy though. Improvisation has become more important. Some actors can come up with jokes right on the spot.”
What started out in 2005 as a list of questions and an idea of scenes, gradually developed over the next few years. The two kept in touch between projects, exchanging ideas and potential storylines until 2012 when they both decided to sit down and write the script properly. They headed out to a house in the country where they could work without distractions. Boy had taken Taika three years to write, Eagle vs Shark three weeks. Shadows was written in three days and both agree that it was a far better film than it would have been if they written it in 2005.
The audience had been asked to write down questions for the panel to answer so Cliff delved into the question box to ask a few.
‘What makes wellington such a popular vampire spot?’
“It is dark and rainy and cold.”
‘Would you make a sequel?’
“We have been thinking of sequels and spin offs . It’s a natural thing to do. Perhaps ‘What We Do in the Moonlight.’
‘Best prank pulled on set?’
“We were way too serious for pranks.”
‘Did you use authentic archive images or were they recreated by a graphic artist?’
“Most of the archival stuff we did ourselves, putting our own characters into old drawings and photos. Freeman White did the portraits of the film characters.”
‘Who did your marketing campaign?
“Anna Dean and Chris Henry. Anna did all of the online stuff . We also developed a beer called Delicious Neck to help market the film.”
Jemaine and Taika not only write, compose music and make graphic art, but also produce and distribute. When asked about funding the film, Taika said they bypassed the NZ Film Commission. “We weren’t against the NZFC but to get their money you have to go through several rounds with many people who can change every couple of years. One person may like your film and then another comes in and doesn’t. I’m not sure they would have funded us anyway. We had the opportunity to get money easily within a few days from the US so we took that. It was way easier.”
The film’s budget was just under 2 million with ” …. a couple million in favours,” said Jemaine.
Taika said they pitched the idea around Hollywood for three days. “It was depressing. We didn’t really have a story but did get offers from some studios. Making it that way might have been an easier process but we wouldn’t have been able to film here and by deciding not to go that way, we knew that we would get to make it.”
“There’s also that advantage with big budget vs small,” said Jemaine. “With a small project, we can do everything and have creative freedom … but then you can be up all night doing things yourselves whereas with big budgets you have teams of artists doing all the work.”
Cliff invited audience questions and the first asked Jemaine and Taika to describe their process on set for co-writing, co-directing and acting.
“I am difficult and unpredictable,” said Jemaine. ” I don’t know what I’m going to do so just keep the cameras rolling. When I first started acting, I was doing a TV show. The director wanted to make every character ‘likeable’ so I challenged myself to think of what was ‘unlikeable’ in every character because you do need to figure that out.
“Often Taika and I would direct each other with something like, ‘turn it down a little’ because we’d be overacting in certain scenes. We’re used to working with each other, especially when we did theatre together and we didn’t even know you had a to have a director. There were times though when I thought we would have a fist fight.”
Taika said the actors did become confused at times. “I’d say one thing and then Jemaine would say another. We both had versions we wanted so had to find ways to mix and balance those. We would both try to edit together but the reality was that one of us would go away for a month, leaving the other to edit alone, and then come back to work together again. We constantly ran out of money for the pickups and had to put some of our own into it.”
Jemaine said the month spent filming was a lot of fun. “We did find our directing roles eventually. I was more in charge of script ideas and Taika was involved with the technical side of things so it all worked out.”
When asked why they chose to premier at Sundance rather than in New Zealand, Taika said, “The NZ Film Festival is in July, not the best time to premier. We completed the film in December 2013. Sundance is a good festival. If you do well there and get positive reviews than that’s a great start.”
“It’s always good to hear about someone from NZ making good overseas,” said Jemaine, “as opposed to New Zealanders doing well in New Zealand because people aren’t interested in that. We got good reviews at Sundance. Coming back with those made people more confident.”
And the good reviews were helpful for use on the trailer and posters too.
Another question asked the two how they managed to keep things on track, seemingly in the midst of chaos. Jemaine replied that they were very solid on storyline and script from the outset. “We’d identified the dramatic moments … the sad bits … all of the parts that people would follow.”
The two are exceptionally busy with multiple projects on the go. “My kitchen is a mess, the whiteboard is covered in writing,” said Taika. He has commercials to shoot in the next few months and is looking at three scripts with large studios but is putting things to one side at the moment to promote Shadows.
The future is bright for both Jemaine and Taika and who knows what they will get up to next. Until then, Taika left the audience with a simple message:
“Ask your friends to see the film. If each of you can tell ten people to stop watching My Kitchen Rules for one night, that would be very cool.”
Written for Script to Screen by Jane Bissell
Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga returns to New Zealand shores to participate in Script to Screen’s programme.
His confirmation completes the line-up for our second Writers’ Lab Aotearoa, where the chosen writers will benefit directly from his unique insights into screenwriting. Guillermo Arriaga’s credits include the critically acclaimed AMORES PERROS, Oscar nominated 21 GRAMS, BAFTA nominated BABEL and Cannes-winning THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA.
He will also join us all for a special Writers’ Room discussion event on Sunday 12th of July in lieu of our usual June event. Full details of this event will follow.
Guillermo’s keynote address and writing masterclass at our Big Screen Symposium 2013 left a lasting impression on all who heard him speak. We are thrilled to welcome him back.
Read his bio, and those of the four other mentors here.
The Writers’ Lab Aotearoa is made possible with the support of the NZ Writers Guild and financial support from the New Zealand Film Commission.
There’s no doubt about it. Escalator funded horror-comedy Housebound is a remarkable accomplishment. At its SXSW festival debut earlier this year, the film was praised for its freshness of voice, strong performances, carefully handled script, and the perfect dose of NZ’s dry humour.
The July Writer’s Room celebrated the screening of the film at the NZ International Film Festival with a special session. Housebound’s writer, director and editor Gerard Johnstone (The Jaquie Brown Diaries) and producer Luke Sharpe (The Jaquie Brown Diaries) sat down with filmmaker Jackie Van Beek (Go the Dogs) to talk about the challenges of writing and making this debut feature.
The film played to a packed house at the Auckland International Film Festival and Housebound is ‘bound’ to be an audience favourite when it makes nationwide release in September. “This film is funny, scary, emotional … and reveals some truth about the New Zealand character,” said Jackie.
Housebound is indeed an extraordinary achievement. Made with the help of the New Zealand Film Commission’s Escalator funding scheme and capped at $250,000, the process from one-page idea to the screen was not the easiest of journeys for Gerard and Luke.
“We started in mid-2010 when we were shortlisted for Escalator,” said Gerard, “and turned around a first draft of the script in two months. We began filming in late 2011 and finished filming this year. The whole thing took about four years but it wasn’t a continual process. We worked in patches.”
Escalator is essentially a quick turnaround scheme. The associated pressures of working within the parameters are high but it’s hard for a film maker to turn down the opportunity to make a film when there is money on the table.
“There was a lot of pressure,” said Gerard. “The Jaquie Brown Diaries was successful. I thought people were expecting great things and that led me into this inertia where I couldn’t be as productive as I wanted to. Housebound was short listed for Escalator off a one page idea and there’s a big difference between having an idea and turning that idea into a 100 page script in two months. It was really hard. The challenges got on top of me. We started shooting because we had to, or risk losing the money. I naively hoped that we’d start shooting and I’d see how it went.”
Filming in ‘patches’ created multiple difficulties, not the least of which was some of the cast decided to move to Australia before the film was completed and Gerard didn’t like much of what he’d shot and wanted to re-write the script. “I was crestfallen because things just hadn’t gone at all like I’d hoped they would.”
For the first three years of the project Gerard was ‘filled with regret’ and thought it was the ‘stupidest decision’ he’d ever made. “Luke would come over to my place and it’d be 2 o’clock in the afternoon and I’d be in my underwear and socks, just having gotten up. It was a sad state of affairs. I had post-it notes all over the walls and I’d walk him through them, get his reaction, bounce ideas around.”
The two were good friends before venturing into the project – and the fact that they’re still speaking now is a testament to the strength of their relationship. Producers are there to crack the whip and Luke said this put their friendship under stress for about 3.5 years. “We were best mates going into it and we still are. My decision process is always guided by, ‘will it make the film better, yes or no?’ If yes, then we’ll try to make it happen. We want to do the best we can – otherwise, what’s the point?”
However Luke admitted that they were outside their comfort zone from the very start. “A limitation of Escalator is the fast turnaround. We knew we’d need as much time as we could get because we knew there wasn’t an easy template out there for the film we wanted to make.”
His work on Jaquie Brown did not prepare Gerard well for turning his hand to a feature film script and there wasn’t enough time for him to really get his head around it. “With thrillers you have to be one step ahead of the audience, full of surprises. I found that very hard coming off a 22 minute sit com. The pressure when writing a feature – and a mystery on top of that – is so different. I wanted it to be the best thing ever and it was so completely beyond me.”
If the luxury of time had been on his side, Gerard said he would have valued the chance to work with someone who had written thrillers and could guide him along. “I needed a solid thriller narrative and I could add comedy to that. If you haven’t worked with a writer in this genre you’re taking a big gamble. I didn’t know anyone because we don’t have a long history of thrillers in New Zealand. Writing the script was almost an unpaid gig too so the option of engaging a co-writer wasn’t available to me.”
Luke said there was money allocated within the Escalator funding for a script editor, if needed. They did receive some outside help from other script writers but it wasn’t too helpful. “When you collaborate you’re always looking for people who have the same sensibilities as you,” said Luke, “and it was hard for us to take that risk.”
With their timeline blowing out, Gerard and Luke were forced to front up to the NZFC and explain themselves. “We were in the dog box,” said Luke.
“They were angry but not unreasonable,” said Gerard. ” We took just inside 12 months before we started shooting and there was pressure to have it done in two months. If I’d known at the start that I could’ve had that year, I would’ve tracked down some other writers, watched more movies but as it was, I didn’t have the time to do that. There was this panic.” Jackie noted that the NZFC have since shut down Escalator and are bringing in two new programmes, one for features under 1 million and another for lower budget films up to $500,000.
Escalator required each film maker to submit three different one-page ideas. Most applicants had their favourite idea and knocked up two more, hoping selectors would pick the one they most wanted to make.
Gerard felt having to submit three ideas was too much. “I think one is better. The idea for Housebound was their least favourite. The year we applied to Escalator, everyone was making genre films. They sat us down and showed us Desert, an example of a low budget film and I thought, ‘Why didn’t you show us that before we all had our ideas? We could’ve made nice films about relationships but we’re all making zombie films and time traveller movies. How is this going to help us when we’re all trying to make The Terminator?’ And the first time we went down, the 12 teams were put up at the Museum Hotel. It was all glamour and buffet lunches. After we were chosen, we stayed at this rat infested place with drains running overhead …”
Welcome to the real world of low budget film making …
“Accelerated development and low cost was the idea behind Escalator,” said Luke. “I think its heart was in the right place because a number of great films have been made as a result, but sometimes things will work and sometimes they won’t.”
Gerard felt much of the stress could have been avoided if Escalator had asked for scripts, not ideas. “We ended up making Housebound for $350,000 so we had to find another grand on top of the $250,000 from Escalator. If I’d had the script to start with, I could’ve made the film for $250,000.”
The constraints of Escalator meant that Luke and Gerard went into production with a shooting script they were not happy with, thus initiating the convoluted and difficult process that followed. Keeping the cast and crew engaged and enthusiastic over the years it took to make the film was no easy feat.
” At the start they felt it was ridiculous and chaotic,” said Gerard, “and it got worse as we went on. I eventually realised I needed to take control, have more confidence and be more assertive and they started to spark to that. I showed them clips and they began to love it. Once that started happening, they saw the magic of the movie coming together and there was a real sense of camaraderie.”
However the road was still not easy one and it wasn’t until 2013 that Gerard and Luke felt they had a solid script and a good film coming out of it.
“I remember watching the latest Jane Eyre film,” said Gerard. “It was all about images, so refreshing to watch. I had come from a TV background – radio with pictures, dialogue heavy – but watching this I gained an understanding for how and why the camera moves and things got better when I started injecting that. I’d been trying too hard for comedy and it was awful. The script was telling the actors to go larger. The crew was laughing and when that happens you know it’s awful because they’re laughing when they feel they should. It just doesn’t work. I thought to myself, ‘This movie has no soul.'”
“We threw away a lot,” said Luke. “It was boring. We needed an active protagonist. We were bringing all these things to her but she wasn’t doing anything.”
The feisty protagonist Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) initially faced up to the ‘haunting’ of the house with a ‘f*** off’ attitude but when Gerard had her move with slightly more trepidation, he infused her character and the film with the edge-of-the-seat nervousness it desperately needed to ultimately engage the audience. Imbuing chatterbox Miriam (Kylie’s mother played by the wonderful Rima Te Wiata) with a touch of racism brought an otherwise classically awkward and predictable dinner table scene to life with its subtle reflection of NZ society today.
Gerard said that while a director has to fight for his or her vision the ability to compromise has to be there too. However he was often hampered with decision-making due to the stressfulness of the situation. “In the early days I knew so little about anything. I was so stressed, unable to make a decision, it was all beyond me. But throughout it all, Luke and I were on the same page about most things. His words to me were often ‘hurry up!'”
The two had some hard-won advice for producers and writer/directors working on low budget features.
“Our low budget film was quite contained in terms of location,” said Luke, “and we knew the script needed a lot of work so we could put much of our resources there. Time is always a big one. We were under such pressure to start filming, otherwise we would lose the money. My advice is to always fight to make the best decisions you can on paper and negotiate ways to buy yourself more time. If there is no one waiting at the other end for the product – like a distributor – fight for as much time as you can.”
In spite of it all, both Luke and Gerard are immensely proud of the performances delivered by their actors.
“It just shows what these actors are capable of,” said Gerard. “We had a lot of rehearsals and usually between 7 and 12 takes and managed to get the best performances. I think film makers don’t always allow for multiple takes so that the actors can relax and really get into it.”
During question time, the panel was asked if distribution had been organised beforehand.
“No, not until we finished,” said Luke. “That was mainly because we didn’t know when the film would be completed. We wanted to make the best film we could so decided to take the time to do it right. We submitted a rough cut to SXSW … and when they asked for an updated cut we cancelled Christmas to get it done. We’ll have a distribution plan for our next film and having a track record now will make that process easier.”
When asked how they managed to come up with the extra money needed to complete the film, Luke said they couldn’t go back to the NZFC as that would have set an undesirable precedent for the funder.
“Our ‘in kind’ budget was crazy,” said Gerard. “The only way you can make the film is if everyone takes a massive pay cut. I’d say it’s $350,000 cash but $1.5 million in kind.”
Luke explained that films just can’t happen at such a low budget level unless people work for much less. “We shot in chunks and I told people that if they got a better offer, then take it and we’d cope.”
Gerard says one advantage of low budget is less interference and lowered risk. “The NZFC did keep the pressure on but they were not unreasonable.”
Both Gerard and Luke praised their production team, cast and crew for working within the constraints of low budget. “For example, our production designer never complained about the budget,” said Luke. “She’d go out and raid peoples’ rubbish bins.”
Gerard remembered a moment when he walked around one of the sets that had been constructed for a scene, in awe over what had been created by very talented people with such reduced resources. “I was walking around in it, thinking how great it was and it was a big moment because I thought, ‘this set needs a better story to go around it’ so I went home and rewrote the scene. Our production designers worked tirelessly and were freakishly talented. Much of the filming was done inside and I think the cinematography is amazing. We took alot of time to get it right and I’m so glad we did.”
And for the future? More movies, of course …
Gerard encouraged those who are thinking of making a genre movie to get onto it. “Do it. They track well, there’s a big audience for them. Lots of offers have been coming in since … and I have Peter Jackson’s email now …”
“We have our next film in development with the NZFC now,” said Luke, “and we’re hopeful it will be a far less laboured process.”
Written for Script to Screen by Jane Bissell
Script to Screen and the NZ Writers’ Guild joined together to present an afternoon with Academy-award winning screenwriter David Seidler (The King’s Speech). In conversation with Fiona Samuel, he spoke candidly about his writing life, the intriguing story around making The Kings Speech, and his approach to the craft of screenwriting.
David Seidler has a vast oeuvre writing for stage, television, and feature film. In 2011, he was rewarded for his talent when he received both an Oscar and BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay for The King’s Speech. In New Zealand mentoring at the Writers’ Lab Aotearoa/Waiheke, David is no stranger here and clearly has a deep affection for our country.
It was 1956 and David first arrived in New Zealand to make The Adventures of Seaspray, the first TV show to be filmed entirely in the South Pacific. Coming from the warmth and friendliness of Fiji, David found NZ a little chilly, in more ways than one.
“I was sent to Queenstown to prepare things for the unit,” said David. ” I’d written half of the scripts for the show and found myself as the assistant director too.”
At his Queenstown hotel he was lured out on a date with a ‘flirtatious young lady’ only to find himself face to face with the woman’s boyfriend. “He beckoned to me and said, ‘Outside mate – that’s my sheila!’ He was also the amateur heavyweight champion of New Zealand so I was quite glad to leave the country at that time.”
During the 70s, John McCrae was appointed as TVNZ’s Head of Drama and David was commissioned to write New Zealand’s first locally produced one-hour play. “There were only two newspapers here at the time. One review said that ‘at last local TV had come of age’ and the other said it was the ‘worst nonsense ever perpetrated upon the innocent viewing public’.”
But in spite of it all, New Zealand is still one of David’s favourite places. He lived here for over eight years, married two kiwi women, and now returns annually to see family, enjoy an ‘off the grid’ escape and to ‘torment the trout’ from his little cabin in the Ureweras. “New Zealand has been good to me and I am very pleased to give back something to the kiwi community in whatever way I can.”
Fiona acknowledged David’s generosity of spirit. “Bridges have been built between us. David is a master craftsman. We don’t often get access to these people and when we do, we feel a bit humble, small and far away but David has let us know that he doesn’t see it that way.”
David won a Best Screenplay Oscar for The King’s Speech, a work which had a long gestation period. Fiona asked David to talk about why the idea initially appealed to him, and how that idea eventually became an award-winning screenplay.
“I was a stutterer as a child and my childhood hero was Kind George VI. I was a little boy during the war and my mother would say, ‘Listen to the King speak. He had a far worse stutter than you and one day, you can sound like that.”
David learned to overcome his stutter which began at the age of three. “When you’re born with two conflicting characters something has to give. I was a stutterer but also a natural born ham. I loved to tell stories but I couldn’t, so I started to write them and that’s how I became a writer. I always intended to write about Bertie (King George).”
He began researching the story in his early twenties but was completing his education so didn’t progress too far. Flash forward to his Hollywood days some years later.
“My first job was working with Frances Ford Coppola on Tucker and my second was Days of Our Lives. After finishing Tucker I wanted to get serious about Bertie and as I researched, I found my story.”
Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue helped the King overcome his stutter. Little was written about Logue and David discovered that he might not have been a qualified therapist at all. David had found his story.
“A friend of mine in London found Logue’s son, Valentine, and I contacted him. He was very elderly then but said if I wanted to come to London, he would speak with me and give me access to the notebooks his father had kept. It was the holy grail but there was a caveat to the use of the material. He said, ‘You must first get written permission from the Queen Mother’ (the Kings’ widow).”
David wrote to her and two months later a beautiful envelope arrived bearing the royal seal.
“I ripped it open and the letter said, ‘Dear Mr. Seidler, please not during my lifetime. The memories of these events are still too painful.’ So I thought how long must I wait? She’s an old lady … maybe a year, two at the most. She passed away 25 years later.”
After her death David didn’t start writing immediately. He was facing his own mortality after receiving a serious diagnosis of cancer. Given only a 20% chance of survival it was a huge shock. “After three days of producing a great deal of mucus I knew enough about the human body to know that sustained grief isn’t good for the immune system. I had to take my mind off my impending death. I had to get to work, thinking, ‘If you’re not telling Bertie’s story now, when do you intend to tell it?’”
Fiona said it was reassuring for screenwriters in the audience to know that some stories can be a long time in the making. But can that length of time affect the way the story is eventually told?
“Yes,” said David. ” If I had written The King’s Speech as a younger man, I could have done a reasonable job in terms of craft but I doubt I could have gone deep enough. It was a combination of age, maturity and staring down the long barrel of infinity that allowed me to do it. Nothing to lose, nothing to hide, let’s make the trip.”
And making that trip involved pain.
“Stuttering is like having a toothache. It’s all you think about while it hurts. You go to the dentist, have treatment, the pain stops. Afterwards, you don’t want to remember the toothache. It’s the same with stuttering. It’s such a miserable way to spend a childhood and when you get over it, you don’t want to think about it. To write the script well, to get into Bertie’s head, I had to go into some very painful places and as an older writer, I was able to do that.”
When asked who he shows his work to, David replied, “Nobody. Be very careful who you show your work to. Don’t show it to your mother, your family because they all have agendas. Show it to the people who are paying you. That’s all that counts.”
Most writers can ‘get stuck’ whilst working on a screenplay and David is no exception.
“There are two things that get me stuck. One: I haven’t done the crucial thing before I start writing which is to say succinctly to myself what the intrinsic meaning of the story is. This should be two or three sentences. If I haven’t done that, I’ll have trouble. My advice here would be to stop, re-think, re-set your mind, and when you know absolutely what you’re doing, start again.
“Two: I can get stuck on a scene. That usually means something is wrong. Either the scene doesn’t belong in the movie or it has started or ended too soon or too late. I’ll think about where my character has been before the scene: where am I coming from, where am I going, what do I need? Sometimes I will write the story, or just that segment, from the first person point of view of the characters in the scene, writing from what they know so I can understand exactly what is in their heads.
“Long walks are good too. There’s something about the rhythm of walking that frees my mind. Or I’ll take a nap.”
Fiona asked David to outline his process once he has signed on for a project.
“I have a template and I’m very methodical. Alot of my projects are biographical or research-based so I start by putting my research on 3 x 5 cards. I always note the source I’ve taken my research from, the page numbers, because if the movie is made, the studio will want an annotated script for legal reasons so I am very careful right from the start. When I have a stack of about 350-400, I use a big cork board or the living room floor to lay them out and look for connections to join them together. A structure starts to take shape. It’s very rough but I can see faint outlines. Some of the cards are scenes, others just a fact, a piece of dialogue or even a joke. When it starts to take shape, I’ll write a treatment and I don’t want that in my contract if I can help it because if it is, the studio has the right to read it and if that happens, you’re in development hell very quickly and you may never get out of treatment stage. If there is a director attached I’ll show it to them because they’ll probably have a vision for the movie and it’s good to know if you both want to make the same one. ”
This part of the process can take two or three months and David asks for patience. “To give you an example, I’m working on a script about Jesse Owens now. It’s about 104 pages. The treatment is over 50 pages but it makes the writing go quickly. Once I start writing I can usually complete the script in 6-8 weeks.”
David emphasised the need to ‘cover your butt’ when working on anything potentially contentious. “Have at least two, preferably three, printed references. Don’t put anything in the script unless you can justify it. I do the notations right from the start because I don’t want to have to go back later. With the Jesse Owens story, no one is left alive from that era but the studio has insisted that I turn in an annotated script.”
For projects that are ‘fabricated’ and not based on extensive research, David still uses his cards but the process is not as organised. “I’ll get a big role of paper, put that on the wall, draw lines for beginning, middle, and end and start putting ideas and scenes where I think they might go.”
Fiona invited questions from the audience and the first asked David to explain his pathway towards building relationships with producers willing to hire him. This discussion then led David to discuss his first days in Hollywood and working with Frances Ford Coppola on Tucker.
“It’s simple in the USA. If you get something made that is marginally successful they want you to write the same film again. The good thing about that is you get some work but bad because it’s the wrong work to take. I won the Oscar for The King’s Speech and everyone wants that again but they won’t get it. I put lightning in the bottle and I can do it again but it won’t be the same lightning or the same bottle. They don’t like that because they want something familiar. Your work is based on your reputation and what you have done. The more you make, the more you get offered. The system is inherently tough on someone breaking in because if you haven’t had anything made, you have no track record and they won’t offer you anything.
“I came to Hollywood at the age of 40. That showed my immense ignorance and stupidity because that’s the age when most writers are getting out. Now I’m so old that people say, ‘He’s been around so long he must know something’. But sometimes I can’t imagine that the public would be remotely interested in me or anything I am interested in. However, if someone is willing to pay me, it is a stamp of authenticity. People bring the project to me and I’ll decide whether I can do it or not. I choose my projects based upon whether I feel a resonance with the story and can do it justice.
“Before coming to New Zealand all those years ago, all I’d done in the USA was Seaspray. When I decided to return to the US for one last attempt to be a writer at the age of 40, I had to figure out what I wanted to write. The story I’d always wanted to tell was that of Preston Tucker and the ’48 Tucker. I’d seen it on the boardwalk at Atlantic City. It was this spaceship on wheels, a beautiful car. Then Tucker was arrested and the factory closed down. I asked my Dad if Tucker was a crook and he said, ‘Don’t always believe what you read in the paper’.
“So I knew what I wanted to do when I went back but I had no money. I couldn’t go back naked so I had to find a job. Fortune was kind to me. There was a Creative Director’s Conference in Sydney and all the US bosses were there. I presented well, they took me to lunch and asked what I wanted. ‘ I want to come home to America’ was a line I hoped would melt their hearts and it worked. I eventually ended up with a job in Detroit and that was fortuitous because Tucker had worked close by. I started researching him but couldn’t get through to the family at all. I was discouraged. It was then that a friend asked me to caretake his property in Malibu so out I went to California.”
The reason David hit a wall with Tucker was because his high-school buddy Coppola had bought the life rights to the man’s story. David called his old schoolmate.
“It took about six months to meet him but when I did, he asked me to tell him all I knew about Tucker and he said, ‘You can do the research and treatment. Have your agent call me.’ I didn’t have one but a friend did so I called his agent, Stu Robinson. Stu said, ‘I don’t take kids off the street’ but when I said, ‘All you have to do is make a deal for me in the morning with Coppola’ there was a long pause and he said, ‘Kid, you’ve got yourself an agent.’”
David was asked to what degree he took liberties with the truth to make a script work. “I feel we have certain responsibilities. In The King’s Speech I knew I would be crucified by the British press so the only liberty I took was the compression of time. Bertie and Lionel worked together for 20 years so I compressed that and the critics accepted it as something I had to do. UK historians checked my script and found only two small things.
“If a person is not important historically you can take more liberties. We’re writing drama and entertainment so my rule of thumb is: the facts are not that important but the truth is. You can fudge facts a bit but you cannot fudge the truth of who the character is or what the story is about.”
David concluded his talk by sharing some views on film making in New Zealand. ” A piece of advice I’d like to give to screenwriters here is to open up. Be brave. If there is a weakness in New Zealand writing, it is ‘niceness.’ But that’s part of the New Zealand character. The last vestige of Victorianism lives on in this country. There are some wonderful strengths in kiwi writing and storytelling but often the scenes end too quickly. Stick with it, try to go as deeply as you can. I know it is possible because over the last five days at the workshop I’ve seen writers willing to take the risk of personal pain and going deeply.
“And another thing I would encourage you to do is to make your films here in New Zealand. Don’t go to Hollywood because you’ll be eaten alive. If you can express yourself here on your home turf, that’s a wonderful thing to do.”
Written for Script to Screen by Jane Bissell
Script to Screen, the Screen Directors’ Guild of NZ and Actors’ Equity joined forces to present a very special May Writer’s Room event to explore the relationship between the director and the actor, and how directors can enable performances that brings words to life and create magic onscreen.
Actors Tandi Wright (Nothing Trivial, Out of the Blue), Jarod Rawiri (Harry, Fantail) and Stephen Lovatt (Top of the Lake, Fantail) discussed with MC and director Peter Burger what they have learned about the director/actor relationship and how that relationship has helped engender their best performances.
The evening began with some very fine clips showcasing the considerable acting talents of the panel, followed by a confession from Peter. “When I first started directing, I found working with actors could be intimidating – even talking to them was a challenge. Is there a secret code? What is it you’d like to hear a director say – what do you want from us?”
“Good communication, trust, a love of the craft and the project, an enjoyment of actors and a passion for working with others who want to do a good job too,” said Tandi.
A tall order perhaps? Stephen followed on with the ‘down-home’ advice, “Some manners go a long way too!” For Jarod an important part of his relationship is the director’s willingness to acknowledge the vulnerability of an actor, to be open to this, and have empathy for it.
The rehearsal process provides a ‘getting to know you’ opportunity for both actors and director and can also help to dispel some pre-existing barriers and preconceptions. As a director, Peter said the rehearsal process was not about setting the performance but more about being creative. “It shouldn’t be about getting the perfect performance during rehearsal. I want that for filming. I never ask an actor to put everything into it during rehearsal because they might put too much.”
Jarod wasn’t sure how to manage the rehearsal process when he fronted up for his first dramatic project. “Now my rehearsal time is 80% sitting down and talking about the material and 20% ‘let’s do it!’ For me it’s all about getting to know the director and establishing a language. I like talking with the director about what is happening in each scene, not touching the scene but retaining the idea of what we are trying to do with it, where we are trying to go.”
Tandi felt people can, in general, be intimidated by actors and the rehearsal process provides an opportunity to break down some of those barriers. “That’s when the trust process starts.”
Stephen agreed but said he had experienced rehearsals that ‘devolved into blocking sessions’. “The rehearsal process should be about getting to know each other and defining what we can all bring to the material. If it devolves into blocking, it becomes useless from that perspective.” Some scenes require different approaches in rehearsal, especially those of high emotion or drama, and Stephen prefers to rehearse those differently. “I don’t want to over rehearse the lines because much of the magic is in the words and the emotions those words can trigger. Talking around the ideas behind the words works well for me. Also, you don’t have the same amount of time in film to reach that emotional peak as you have in theatre, so you have to be mindful of that and be able to hit the peak at the right time. ”
After all of the groundwork and hard effort of establishing working relationships, there is a magic moment when the director can say, “That’s gone well!” … or not …. and so much of that outcome depends not only on the actors and director, but the entire crew.
“Feeling the energy of the whole crew in a positive way, everyone going, ‘Yes we can do this’, is so important,” said Jarod. “Nothing is actually said, but I can sense that unity with the crew as opposed to being separate from them.”
Directors are under considerable pressure and stress from multiple sources, especially the constraints of time. Stephen said there is nothing wrong with putting pressure on an actor to ‘get this done now’. “The sun is setting … daylight is leaving … and it’s ‘let’s get this done’. There’s nothing manipulative about it. Everyone on set is concentrating, putting pressure on the actor to make it happen and there’s nothing wrong with that. The actor has signed on to do the job, has seen the call sheet, it’s down to eight minutes and the sun is about to set. As an actor, you’re about to lay it all on the line otherwise we don’t have a show, so when you come to that point, you know you have the best wishes of everyone on set. The weight of that responsibility is a good energy to come from. The actor will do everything in their creative power to deliver the best they can. They knew it was coming, they’ve read the script, they have an honest relationship with the director and the crew so it will happen, but it requires that level of sincerity from all parties.”
When the chips are down, it means alot to Tandi when a director says, ‘Take the time you need.’ “It’s not helpful when the crew is running about like headless chooks so when the director says ‘take what you need’ I really appreciate that. To me, that says, ‘I have confidence in you’. I’m also into a director’s ‘horse whispering’. If I’m in the zone, in character, and the director comes up to me and has a quiet word in my ear, I like that. But I’m such an old trout now that I find it easier to just ask for what I need. If I’m not at the point I need to be, then I’ll ask the director to help me get there.”
Peter said directors should always have a firm respect for the actor, understand that he or she is a professional and can do their job. “The best thing I can do is not hang out in the actor’s face but try to be in tune with them just that little bit more, keep my energy a bit closer to them, be watchful. If I feel like I can be helpful, I’ll try to reinforce in subtle ways, reassure, try to give them a bit of a boost.”
Stephen said developing that creative trust with the director is essential for having such constructive conversations but ‘crossing the line’ into an actor’s creative process is not helpful. “It’s not nice if anyone tries to get involved with your process. That’s nobody’s business. You can ‘over-help’ an actor and that’s not good.”
Avoiding the temptation to become too involved can be a challenge for a director. “Sometimes you’re working with an actor who is a bit inexperienced and is finding it hard to get to a certain place,” said Peter. “That can be tough on set. In rehearsal it’s easier. I tend to bring out stories from my own experience and find that helps to establish the trust by laying out things that are personal to me yet relevant to the story.”
There were many actors in the audience. One commented that having a director who listened to his options, choices and questions was ideal and Peter stressed that the relationship is always one of collaboration. Tandi agreed. “Having that confidence in the director is very important. Being open to your ideas, not feeling threatened by them, that sense of true collaboration and the feeling that you are all working together to make the best thing you can.”
While collaboration is vital to success, a director must be able to clearly define the parameters of their role and that of the actor. Stephen said, “The director has a critical factor operating where they will say to an actor, ‘Thanks for the offer but I understand this story in a larger sense. That is my job whereas yours is to be in character from one moment to the next.’ That not only clarifies but also helps to build confidence and trust because it gives you the sense that the director knows the story they want to tell.”
And a good director will do their homework. “I still find shooting a frightening experience,” said Peter, “and it is the fear that makes me do alot of homework. If an actor has done his or her work well, the only way I can come back with a respectable answer to their question is if I know my end of the job equally well, so I can then say ‘yes, great’ or ‘no and here’s the reason why.’”
When a director has put in the work, Jarod finds that a challenge he enjoys. “If a director knows the material really well, they will challenge us as actors, test us to see if we know the material as well as they do. I like that. Sometimes it makes me think I don’t know the material as well as I need to.”
Tandi expects the same level of commitment from a director that she puts into her own work. “I butt up against a director sometimes, bounce ideas around, it can be a robust process because I am working hard here and I want them to do the same. I want to be able to think, “Yes, I will follow you to the ends of the earth.’”
She could only remember having one ‘stand up row’ with a director where she had felt unsupported on set. “It was a stressful schedule and he only gave me one take on a close up that was part of an important scene. We’re moving so fast … I’m still trying to hit my mark and it’s technical. Afterwards, I said to him that giving me just the one take wasn’t enough to ‘get the gold’ . I said it would be useable but not interesting and I couldn’t tell whether he really had too little time or just didn’t care about my performance and I found that quite gutting. Acting is a very exposing thing and you need to feel that someone has your back out there.”
Jarod recalled a time when he lost confidence in a director and never made it to the set. “A number of the cast walked away. There was an overconfidence with the project. The way the director talked about it gave the impression it was going to be ‘this’ and it just wasn’t real so I thought no, I don’t want to be involved. It’s great to be optimistic and excited about what you’re making, but it has to be real.”
Creating that positive environment of ‘sharing and caring’ is integral to a project’s success and Stephen offered a tip. “I like to assume that everyone there is doing their best to deliver things that are useful to the project, so taking what is offered in the positive spirit intended, even if it’s wildly off the planet, is the way to go. Saying ‘thank you, I appreciate your input here’ is a great way to get the best out of everyone, even if the input is not something you can use. It’s good manners!”
Offering some advice to other directors, Peter said ‘people skills’ and an appreciation of the actor’s craft and the emotional intensity needed from an actor to produce the result asked for are important. “If I say, ‘be more scary’, the actor needs to do that internal work to figure out how to be more scary. So before I give that external direction, ‘be more scary’, I try to put myself into the actor’s shoes, into the shoes of their character. So while I am talking on one level externally, internally I am feeling the character. A classic telltale sign of a newbie director is to say, ‘This is what I want to see coming out of you’ and the actor has to do all the work. Offering an internal motivation can be helpful.”
During question time, the panel was asked if, as actors, they give each other advice?
“Depends on the actors you’re dealing with, “said Stephen. “Some don’t but Tandi and I are old mates so we talk, have that trust in each other and know we are coming from a generous place. I think it’s quite common for Kiwi actors to do this. That’s one thing that makes working in our industry so warm.”
Tandi said that if she feels an actor isn’t serving the scene, she will speak with the director. “That way it becomes a collaborative experience. I would never criticise another actor. Sometimes I think that aspiring directors should have a go at acting because then they would realise how hard it is. Good actors make it look easy but it can be hard to understand how exposing it is and how vulnerable acting can make you feel.”
Do actors ever feel manipulated by the director?
“I don’t mind being manipulated as long as it is done generously,” said Stephen.” I don’t mind being treated harshly as long as it is done honestly.”
“Sometimes I feel a bit manipulative in the blocking scenes,” said Peter. “I block simpler scenes before I go on set. Complex scenes will take more time. As a director you figure out the visual as well as the acting. I might want an actor to stand under an archway because I think it’s a cool shot. If I can present it in such a way that the actor instinctively feels that’s the right place to stand, then that’s good, or I might arrange the chairs in such a way that they go stand under the archway without me having to say anything.”
Stephen said he would stand under the archway as long as the director wasn’t ‘bullshitting’ him. “I will stand under your arch but don’t make me do it at a bullshit point. I’ll do the blocking you want as long as it make sense. There has to be a reason for me to go somewhere in blocking.”
Jarod said he once worked with a director who had a writing background and didn’t understand how to block. “He relied on his DOP to determine the movement which gave us freedom to move however we wanted. It was scary and exciting but I enjoyed it because it gave us the opportunity to feel organic with it.”
“The more I do this job the more I love that it is not like a normal job,” said Tandi. “Actors can be weird and emotional and we should embrace that weird emotional stuff and not be afraid of it. When actors get upset or want a robust discussion about stuff, embrace that emotion because that is why we do that job. It turns into magic onscreen. Embrace it.”
Written for Script to Screen by Jane Bissell
Congratulations to the six talented writers that have been chosen to take part in our first Writers’ Lab Aotearoa:
Gillian Ashurst with RATTLED
Kelly Kilgour with RETURN
Maile Daugherty with MISSU PEACE
Miriam Smith with THE MOUNTAIN UNSEEN
Nic Gorman with HUMAN TRACES
Tusi Tamasese with TILA AND TAEMA
These writers will undergo intensive workshopping of their feature projects over the course of a five-day residential lab on Waiheke Island at the beginning of July. Mentorship will come from prestigious international and local professionals: US screenwriters Michael Goldenberg and David Seidler as well as an exciting line-up of kiwis soon to be announced.
Script to Screen received 55 applications from writers and writing teams. A selection panel of industry practitioners read these blind in order to create a shortlist of twelve. A very warm thank you to all the writers who applied and congratulations to those who made it to the highly competitive shortlist.
The Writers’ Lab Aotearoa is brought to you with the support of the NZ Writers Guild with financial assistance from the NZ Film Commission.