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Indiewood
A Podcast for Indie Filmmakers
In the world of social media, and fast-paced journalism, knowledge is abound. But with all the noise, finding the right information is near impossible. Especially if you’re a creative working in independent film.
Produced by Cinematography For Actors, the Indiewood podcast aims to fix that. This is a podcast about indie filmmakers and the many hats we wear in order to solve problems before, during, and after production.
Every month, award-winning Writer/Director Yaroslav Altunin is joined by a different guest co-host to swap hats, learn about the different aspects of the film industry, and how to implement all you learn into your work.
"We learn from indie filmmakers so we can become better filmmakers. Because we all want to be Hollywood, but first we have to be Indiewood."
Indiewood
Craft of Screenwriting: Creating Depth in Dialogue and Layers in Story
For our first screenwriting craft episode, we sit down with novelist and screenwriter Julia Batavia to talk about the often overlooked hurdles to telling a good story.
We unlock the secrets of compelling character development and thematic evolution in screenplays, discovering how themes can emerge naturally during the writing process rather than being forced from the onset.
While Yaroslav shares his unique approach to screenplay structure by tweaking the "Save the Cat" method, opting for four acts over the traditional three, Julia champions flexibility and adaptability in script formatting, inspired by insights from various screenwriting professors, with an emphasis on readability and narrative flow rather than rigid adherence to conventional structures.
Gain valuable techniques for enriching your screenplays with subtext and tension as we illustrate how to trim dialogue without losing the essence and transform direct lines into rich subtext. Drawing inspiration from techniques such as Phoebe Waller-Bridge's layered tension, this episode reveals how to weave multiple story layers for dynamic and engaging narratives.
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A Podcast for Indie Filmmakers
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IG: @indiewoodpod
YT: Cinematography for Actors
In the world of social media, and fast-paced journalism, knowledge is abound. But with all the noise, finding the right information is near impossible. Especially if you’re a creative working in independent film.
Produced by Cinematography For Actors, the Indiewood podcast aims to fix that. This is a podcast about indie filmmakers and the many hats we wear in order to solve problems before, during, and after production.
Every month, award-winning Writer/Director Yaroslav Altunin is joined by a different guest co-host to swap hats, learn about the different aspects of the film industry, and how to implement all you learn into your work.
"We learn from indie filmmakers so we can become better filmmakers. Because we all want to be Hollywood, but first we have to be Indiewood."
welcome back once again to the indie wood podcast, a podcast about independent film and the many hats that filmmakers wear in order to get those films made. This month we are doing a writing only podcast. Although we've talked about other stuff that's not writing oriented.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've, you know, circled it back to writing With me. My wonderful special guest is Julia Batavio Hi, who is a writer, a novelist, a one-time director and a podcast writer a narrative podcast writer and she is a screenwriter that has done, uh, biopics, that's. That's kind of been your bread and butter. We both went to ucla. We're both educated in the act of, in the craft of, of screenwriting, yeah, and we both have, you know, uh, good experience, I think, in the craft of writing, had a lot of experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good subjective, but all experience is good experience.
Speaker 1:I would say good objective as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you agree with me? I do yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think objectively, like even the stuff that we both experienced has been kind of a bummer.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:Looking back on it, there's a learning experience to learn from there look, it's a privilege to be a ucla alumni.
Speaker 3:Having said that, you don't need to go to ucla? Well, you need you. What I'm saying is you need to educate yourself. Yeah, and there are lots of ways to do that if grad school is not an option. That's true. That's what I'm saying. We had it like handed to us on a silver platter, which we're very, very lucky I would use different words, but yeah, I, I'd agree.
Speaker 1:It's a very similar kind of. You know, I'm just saying that because, okay, this is this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna out myself. Okay, I almost didn't get in because when I went to regular school college regular I was not a great student, okay. So my GPA was did not meet the threshold to get into UCLA, okay and so what'd you do about that? Well, I submitted.
Speaker 1:I wrote a screenplay, I submitted and I wrote a reallyplay, I submitted and I wrote a really good entrance letter and, uh, I got an interview and my mentor I would call him a mentor. I don't think we actually officially use that terminology. Do you ever use the, the terminology this is my mentor or no?
Speaker 3:it just happens right, this is my great good friend. Yeah, this is my, this is my guru.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my guru, my sage, yeah, well, this is funny because we'll talk about the craft of screenwriting and that comes into play. So, yeah, my mentor, Neil Landau, who's a fantastic educator. He's now the head of screenwriting at Georgia University, University of Georgia. Good for Neil, he's killing it.
Speaker 3:He's got many, many books about writing for TV specifically, I actually use Neil's six questions when I'm crafting character.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's. I have to look through my notes again because I remember that being good. But see, neil's classes for me were always TV, and he only taught TV at UCLA, yeah.
Speaker 3:I took a TV class. We were in the same TV class, yarrow, I remember that, yeah, okay you were just on your computer all the time we're digressing looking at lenses. No, I wasn't.
Speaker 1:Yes, you were, sometimes I was so, yeah, I met with Neil, yeah, and uh, he was like what's up, why your grades bad? And I was honest, I was really open and I was, you know, so passionate and I was honest and I was really open and I was, you know, so passionate and I was like I need to be here. And he agreed.
Speaker 3:And I think, actually I'm glad you got vulnerable and shared your grade point average was below par, because a lot of people may think I don't have the grades, I don't have the resume and your passion and I think that's why we are friends as well and your passion and I think that's why we are friends as well your passion for the art, the craft, the wanting to get better, that's what Neil saw and ultimately, that's what's most important, regardless of whatever resume you have.
Speaker 1:And look, they believed in me. So my other mentor was Linda Voorhees, who's also a fantastic writer and a whirlwind.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so both I didn't meet with Linda during that interview process, but she also kind of read my work and spoke with Neil about me and yeah, they put me on probation for the first semester, first quarter, and they're like do a good job or you're out. And I did a good job and I made it. Well, let's talk about craft. Yeah, let's talk about craft yeah, let's talk about screenwriting.
Speaker 1:Uh, because let's talk about how to talk about your craft well, I have some questions for you sure we get into that, because I I remember when I, when I got into grad school, I was like I know how to write. And then I got into grad school I was like wow, I don't know what a first act is or how to transition from act one to act two, like that's a thing that I just didn't know existed. And so I learned all these things and I and I think UCLA was a great training program, and I call it a training program because you write a screenplay every 10 weeks. You leave that program with multiple drafts, true, and they encourage you to write new material. They're like don't crafts, true, and they encourage you to write new material. They're like don't, don't bring your stuff in, just leave it for later. Every new workshop bring in a new idea, and I think that really pushed a lot of creatives to develop more. And so my question to you is craft, how do you you outline?
Speaker 3:craft. What is it?
Speaker 1:how do we?
Speaker 3:do it. What does it mean? I don't know.
Speaker 1:The mac and cheese Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So do you outline? Yeah, yeah, how do you outline?
Speaker 3:I outline I used to use when I was first starting before grad school, before I even was like like this is post NYU, where we never wrote a feature-length screenplay at NYU.
Speaker 1:Really. Weird right, that is weird.
Speaker 3:Or at least I wasn't in that class, maybe I missed it. I got Sid Field's the Screenwriter's Workbook and that is like a 56-note card method like 14, act 1, 14, act 2, a, two, b, act three, and I would plot out by by card seven you have the inciting incident. By card 14, 15 is plot point one, thirties. You know like I literally hit marks. What I would also do is I read screenplays that I felt were close to what I wanted to write.
Speaker 3:So I studied Capote by Dan Futterman and I studied, actually, sylvia that Gwyneth Paltrow was in and it escapes me who wrote it. But I looked for when those turning points hit, I counted the number of scenes it took to get to that point and I would literally use that as a blueprint. I haven't thought about this in years and I would just see how it all laid out, because I didn't want to get into that trap of overwriting or having scenes that didn't move. This was a UCLA thing or a Neil thing. Scenes either reveal character or move the story forward, and if in those note cards a scene is not doing that, it doesn't belong in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that kind of brings us to that concept of kill your darlings because you write something that's so wonderful and you look at it You're like, oh, this is the best thing I've ever written, but it doesn't do those two things. It doesn't serve the story or the screenplay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's gotta go. It's gotta go and look, you can hold on to it, you can bring it back, keep it in its own draft of you know the pasture it's gone to pasture, but truly that's the basis of craft, is structure. For me, starting with things like theme is more it's, it's foggier it's. Then you start writing about topics, you start writing, you start writing PSAs. It's not about the foundational character development that you need to have.
Speaker 1:I find that I start a script with a certain theme in mind and I'm like, oh, this is about whatever you know, growing up in a rough household. Let's just say Sure. And then I write the screenplay. I'm like, no, this is it just. The theme then is birthed from the experience of having written on the page and it just it emerges yeah, it's about for me.
Speaker 3:You like keep your head down, you write the thing, you take a step back, the theme becomes apparent when you weren't trying or writing for it, because when you write for it it sounds that becomes forced, becomes a little. What's the word?
Speaker 1:preachy.
Speaker 1:Preachy is good, okay, preachy okay, yeah yeah, I, I like that you mentioned sid field because I read, I I looked at a lot of those books. Yeah, you know, like the hero's journey, um, there's a book called dramatica. Like there's all these different versions of the same thing which is like, yeah it, the story begins, the story ends, there's a rising action, there's a fall, like it's, there's this is. There's so many simple ways of talking about it.
Speaker 1:But for me, the one thing that like allowed my brain to click, because sometimes my brain just has a hard time, like I'm a little dyslexic, and then my brain just doesn't understand certain things sometimes, and then like, like, what I read was Save the Cat, oh sure, and my brain was like, I get this, like it clicked so well, yeah. And then, coming back to Outline, just because it's a little bit different for me, I use a version of Save the Cat that I've modified to my own, you know, liking over the over the course of a couple years, right, and instead of three acts I do four acts. Huh, because we have act one, right, and then we have our transition in act two, so act two, there's a lot of that like cool, fun stuff that happens fun and games fun and games for people who know Save the Cat.
Speaker 1:And then when we get to the midpoint, to me that's a shift to a different act, because so much changes in the midpoint right.
Speaker 3:So you don't have 2A and 2B. You just have 1, 2, 3, 4.
Speaker 1:Well, I used to label it as 2A, 2b, but to me, just, it feels like a different act. It doesn't feel like Act 2 because the motivations of characters change, because there's a shift in the midpoint, like the whole essence of the film for me changes at the midpoint. It just feels like Act 3, you know. But then that ends and we get into act four, which is our finale.
Speaker 1:some people write five acts you know lots more television really yeah, but for me just four acts makes sense for my weird brain I think it's whatever works.
Speaker 3:To be honest, two a, two b, three, four. Who cares?
Speaker 1:yeah, you wrote it because when you break it down you know, let's say's say we remove all, the act changes right, it's still a beginning and an end.
Speaker 1:That's really what a story is. It begins and it ends and I feel like that's me channeling Richard Walter, who's another professor that we had. I don't know if I've told this story on the pod, but I remember the first class we had with him and he writes out a slug line and an action block and some dialogue and then he goes like this is how a screenplay is normally formatted, because you don't really need day and night, because that's a production thing. So he just crosses that out, right, right. And then he goes you don't really need interior, exterior, because that's evident in the, in the, in the slug line and or the action block. So he crosses that out and I think sometimes you don't mean the slug line, just crosses that out too. And so he was being a little like facetious, I think. Sure, but I feel like that moment to me said I don't have to be precious with form, with format.
Speaker 1:I can kind of be a little free and loose with it sure I still have to follow certain rules like sometimes I'll still write interior, exterior, sometimes I'll just be like kitchen okay you know, because you don't need interior exterior. There's no exterior kitchen. You know, and usually if I just write a singular word for a slug line, it's a continuation of the previous C.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it flows. We're like I'll do a full slug line, interior, exterior location, day night. And then the next thing I'm like bathroom Interesting, you know, and then I'll just write that, that that sequence out, that sequence ends, I'll then start a new log, log line, sorry, slug line.
Speaker 3:Um, that's completely full whatever reads the most seamlessly, whatever doesn't make the reader pause. That is the most important they have. You want to keep their eyes on the page. It's got a flow. They've got to see it in their head. So, whether that means interior, exterior, taking it out, it's like that. The how is the brain gonna take in all this information in the most enjoyable way?
Speaker 1:that's something I picked up from Linda Voorhees, that specific way of writing slug lines, because I was writing the screenplay in her class and she goes oh, you introduced a slug line here and I had the same thing copied. Because I was going outside of her room and I said interior hallway and she goes you don't need that, just say outside, yeah. And I was like, oh okay, totally yeah, these are it's.
Speaker 3:It's bendable, it's malleable. Final draft is quite severe, but you can play with it, so it suits your needs and suits the story to its optimal uh expression.
Speaker 1:No one reading your screenplay is going to get to a slug line and say oh, they didn't put interior, exterior trash and stop reading it.
Speaker 3:They're going to be like cool outside or kitchen and they're just going to keep going and to tangent a little bit, I will say none of the structure, none of the plot matters if you don't have characters. You care about Stacking a script with plot because you feel some some sort of the need to get all these scenes out, uh, that you think are necessary, doesn't I?
Speaker 3:I don't give a shit if I don't know who the characters are, if there's no empathy if there's no hook, why I don't give a shit about cool shit happening if I don't care about the characters?
Speaker 1:I have. I have an interesting story that I think you'll appreciate. I owe my career to you. Stop, no, no, this is this is. I'm gonna like go back through the thread.
Speaker 1:So I graduated with grad from grad school with the script that did really well, uh, and got me rep and and it got optioned, uh, and, and you know it, I got all my generals from it. Yeah, and I still do on occasion, and I remember writing that script and I had this whole story planned out and it was about a superhero and who, just who didn't want to save people. And I I pitched it to you and I was like, julie, I need notes, I need help. And you were like the story isn't about the superhero, it's about this mom who was like a supporting character. Oh, and I was like god, you're so right.
Speaker 1:And and it was true, because I wrote all this plot and I I didn't write any of the characters except for this one mom who was like too, felt betrayed. Maybe I didn't write her, I forget how that character came to be, but that was the most interesting character of the script. Yeah, and you were like it's about her. And then I was like and the script just fell out of my head, you know, over the next couple of weeks, and then that became the thing that started my career.
Speaker 3:Oh well, it was already in you, Come on. You just had to tweak it a little bit.
Speaker 1:take a couple of it say thank you thank you, yeah, um, but that goes to kind of. You know you're what you said.
Speaker 3:Uh, it's important to have good characters that are interesting look, I'm gonna quote every millennial's favorite show or not favorite show, but every millennial's touch point for good screenwriting television Breaking Bad. A lot of cool shit happens in Breaking Bad. The reason we care is because the pilot spends so much time with Walter White, establishing who he is, what his needs are, where he's fallen short. It creates empathy and I do not think a successful script exists without it no matter what format.
Speaker 3:Show me truly, even under the skin, where Scarlett Johansson plays that scary alien who sucks men out of their bodies. She is objectified, she is a stranger in a strange land, she does terrible things in that script and yet you still feel a sense of you don't want her to harm, to come to her yeah, what is your favorite screenplay?
Speaker 1:god, that's a horrible question, sorry your favorite screenplay to like look at structure and be like, wow, that is so well written, capote, okay, interesting, you're gonna laugh at mine. What is it? Modern family?
Speaker 3:but we're talking about different formats doesn.
Speaker 1:Doesn't matter that first page Masterclass.
Speaker 2:Huh.
Speaker 1:Because it introduces like five characters. It's funny, yeah, maybe not five characters, because the mom, the dad and the two daughters, I think. So four characters and it's just one page and there's like two or three slapstick jokes and everybody's distinct Sure and it's all in one page. It's so tight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the acid test is you got to cover the names on the script and if you can tell the characters apart by how they speak, then you've succeeded. I say Capote because the script, the character arc, is a 180.
Speaker 1:He starts off by saying he doesn't lie.
Speaker 3:He's a journalist. He doesn't lie. And by the end of the movie he has not done everything he could have to save Perry from being hung because he needs to finish his book. So he looks at him in the face and lies to him and said I did everything I could through tears. And we know he's lying and he knows he's lying. Perry knows he's lying. He's gone on a total journey and I just thought that's such a beautiful craft master class how Dan Fetterman was able to show us the journey of this character. I think Capote is a brilliant fucking film. People should watch it.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's Philip Seymour Hoffman for crying out loud there's a lot of capote shows now in films, yeah, but that one yeah that one if you want to see complex character relationships you want to see unsympathetic narrator, uh, or protagonist or a protagonist, but he is.
Speaker 3:You know, he's essentially using these people in jail Perry and, oh my God, richard Dick Hickok to further his career. So there's a part of him that is pretty reprehensible. But then there's the part of him that's very broken and damaged and it's in that tension. That's the other thing. Every scene's got to have tension, conflict. Well, that's in that tension, that's the other thing. Every scene's got to have tension conflicts.
Speaker 1:Well, that's interesting. You mentioned that because I feel like every scene is just a a microcosm of the macro which is the screenplay. The screenplay has a beginning, middle and end in this rising action, in this conflict, and every scene should be the same and every scene should be the same.
Speaker 3:What that it?
Speaker 1:has. It has a beginning and it has sure right, yeah, has a rising action. It has conflict?
Speaker 3:yeah, on a very small level. Someone's pouring milk into a glass. The glass spills with milk and then they gotta find a place to clean it up, like that's small it's tension overcome.
Speaker 1:Overly complicated?
Speaker 3:yeah, also another Richard Walter, uh saying was no one wants to go watch a movie about the village of the happy people. Yeah, yeah, no one cares no, I it two things.
Speaker 1:You said it was um, kind of conflict in the scene and no one cares. I remember people were like, oh, not people, but the professors we we had talking about. Uh like oh, a moment from your life that's so cool, and like you have to write about it, and they're like nobody cares. Oh yeah, that moment that you think is so special, everybody's had that moment okay, okay.
Speaker 3:But I will say your goal is to make people care.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It's not that that story isn't good because you know it could be universal.
Speaker 3:Good is subjective. Yeah, it's about taking what means something to you and making it relatable, making it universal. Yeah, this is where theme comes in. What I'm saying is your job is to make people care what happened to you, and it's not because you are so cool, it's because other people will be able to relate to what happened to you, because we are all not so different. And this is where theme and universality comes in.
Speaker 3:So that's the fun. The fun is going back to biopics. How do I make people care about John Singer, sargent, peter O'Toole, gustav Eiffel? How do they go into this experience with the preconceived notion of? I have nothing in common with this person and my goal is for them to leave feeling like I understand how they felt I could see myself. What would I do?
Speaker 2:in that position.
Speaker 3:That's the joy to me.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that, yeah, you were talking about cutting things out of your screenplay and it kind of made me think about this other moment that I had with with Linda in class and I had a scene, and then the scene had a couple of really cool lines yeah at the very end and she's reading, and she's reading it and we, because in class we would bring in 10 pages, we would each read. Have those pages read out loud yeah and then we would get notes.
Speaker 1:But first she would be like what did you hear? Which I think was really cool. Anyways, that that's not the whole thing. Uh, what that I'm talking about? She read that one like the last page of that scene and the last couple lines. She just goes. You don't need that.
Speaker 2:Oh no, the scene ends here.
Speaker 1:And she was right. Yeah, and then now my approach to like I'll write a scene out, but then later on when I'm, I guess, when I'm editing but you know it's all part of the process of writing I'll go back to it and I, out of the blue, I'll just start removing lines of dialogue like stuff that contains information when your ego starts getting in the way of what best serves the story, that's when you've got to start getting the red pen out because you can't, because you can't supersede what is actually necessary and it's like when you
Speaker 3:think you're too good for the editing process or whatever. Everything you've written is sacrosanct, and how could you possibly think of cutting?
Speaker 2:this line.
Speaker 3:That's your probably biggest red flag, to be like wow, all right, the story comes first, my ego comes second.
Speaker 1:If that means I gotta cut this scene, that I really love, then so be it but I've noticed that even if I cut chunks that are like information, I'll cut it and then, as I read it, it's still evident that the information's there, but it's all subtext.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the other big thing, subtext. The biggest gripe I have when I read screenplays is that a lot of writers just write exactly what their characters are thinking and then I try to imagine it on a screen and no character would ever say you know, well, I wish you would come home for Thanksgiving, because you know you're never home and that really upsets me and you know yeah, it's, it's because how that conversation would go is okay.
Speaker 1:Well, how that?
Speaker 3:conversation is you know, someone wants to say I wish you would come home for Thanksgiving, because you're never home and your job's too important. The subtext would be something like guess you won't.
Speaker 2:You know I'm fuck, I can't I can't think of it off the top of my head.
Speaker 3:Cut that editor please, because I want to sound good. We're keeping it. No, we're keeping it.
Speaker 1:But no, you're, you're onto something because you have this, this chunk of we're going to write a screenplay, uh, right now. So this chunk of information, that is. That that's the subtext. Like, I have these thoughts and feelings that are that create conflict, right, but then how would that be audible? That's the subtext. Like, I have these thoughts and feelings that are that create conflict, right, but then how would that be audible?
Speaker 3:all right, the sub. Here's the subtext oh, the the line is oh, I wish you would come home for thanksgiving. Uh, the subtext is aunt helen's coming. What does that mean? Oh, I wish you would see aunt helen yeah, you haven't seen her in a while. Because you're not coming for fucking Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:The conversation about seeing the aunt that you haven't seen in a while, and under that is I wish you would come home because yeah.
Speaker 3:There we go.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. See, You're welcome everybody. Go write that. Go write a Thanksgiving script about your aunt.
Speaker 3:Write a whole scene where everyone says exactly what they feel. Go back and then write it about passing mustard across a table wonderful. And then see the tension underneath, like it's not about the mustard, it's not about. It's not about the mustard, it's not about any, uh, anything that is actually happening. That is subtext speaking of conflict.
Speaker 1:Phoebe waller bridge has a really interesting way of writing tension into a scene, so she'll have the scene be about this thing yeah but then give the character like two other things, like oh, then she has to like comb her hair, or like she can't find her keys, yeah, so there's like layers upon layers of just this like annoyance that elevate the conflict, as she's having a conversation with her mom about, like you know, her not dating anybody or something I don't know. So those layers add up and I think that's really interesting and I try to add that into my Scripts well, that's like weaving an a story, b story, c story.
Speaker 3:The a story is the plot what's actually happening. The B story is what's going on between the characters and the C story is going on between the characters and the sea story is the extenuating circumstances or something going on in that?
Speaker 1:scene at that particular time. I hope, uh, everybody listening got something out of this last half hour of us digressing about craft and craft and screenwriting.
Speaker 3:And if you were to sum up what we just said, what's the most important thing? Outline, get some note cards. Don't write what characters are actually saying don't write for ego.
Speaker 1:Get rid of your ego. It's a lot of stuff. There's something there for somebody.
Speaker 3:I hope so. There's something there for somebody?
Speaker 1:I hope so. No, there is, there is. There is something there for me, and then there's something there for you, and I feel like between us, somebody's going to, you know, find something educational from this episode. And it's our first craft episode. I don't think I've ever had a craft episode.
Speaker 3:Hooray.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for being here for my first craft episode well, we have um, you know we've been talking a lot about the ups and I think there's a conversation to be had about the downs, the downs. But we'll talk about that on the next episode, the final episode, uh, next week thank you, julia.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming on the pod. Uh, thank you for everybody listening. We'll see you next week. Bye you. Thank you for joining us at the CFA Studio for another series of the Inwood Podcast. You can find the podcast wherever you find your podcasts or on YouTube at the Cinematography for Actors YouTube channel. See you next week.
Speaker 2:From the CFA Network. Cinematography for Actors is bridging the gap through education and community building. Find out about us and listen to our other podcast at cinematographyforactorscom. Cinematography for Actors Institute is a 501c3 non-profit. For more information on fiscal sponsorship donations because we're tax exempt now, so it's a tax write-off and upcoming education, you can email us at contact at cinematography for actorscom. Thanks.