TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Lights Film School video on ISO

Before we begin, let’s talk about what ISO is.

An ISO setting is the digital equivalent to Film’s A.S.A setting. Simply put, your ISO is your camera’s sensor sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO speed, meaning the larger the number, the more sensitive your sensor will be to light. The lower the number, the less sensitive your camera’s sensor will be to light. Your ISO setting combined with your aperture and shutter speed work together to give you your correct exposure.

However, when shooting in low light environments, better light sensitivity doesn’t come without a cost. Let’s take a look at this image at night in the park for example. As you increase your chip’s sensitivity to light you also increase the amount of “noise” in your image. “noise” is a sort of digital degradation within your image. It manifests itself in different ways in different cameras but it has a general characteristic as a sort of digital grain.

Besides your ISO setting, heat and sensor size also impact the amount of noise in an image. There are also different types of noise. For example, “fixed pattern noise” may be caused by long exposure times. Next, “Random noise”, which is seen in this image, is the type of noise most filmmakers struggle with, and is caused by high ISO speeds. Lastly, “banding noise” which plagues some cameras more than others, may be caused when the shadowed parts of the image are lightened.

All of these different types of noise look slightly different but they all share 1 common characteristic: They degrade the picture quality of your video. Noise is usually identifiable by a bunch of flickering or moving pixels on a surface that should otherwise appear smooth.

Again, look at our park image and notice how “noise” manifests itself throughout the different parts of the image.

Now let’s look at two shots with roughly the same exposure but shot at two different ISO speeds. Notice how there is virtually no difference between the image on the right and the image on the left.

But let’s look again, and closer this time, at what happens when we zoom into the image on a larger screen. The image on the bottom-left shows a noise free image. However, the image on the bottom-right is suffering from some pretty sever noise. However, if you look above at the images those close-ups were taken from, both images seem almost identical and noise free.

This is because image noise is often subtle when viewed on small LCD screens on the back of your camera. In fact, it’s often not until you’re watching the footage on a larger monitor that you uncover the problematic issue of noise and image deterioration.

Of course noise has an impact on the small videos as well, but for any filmmaker out there with television or theatrical ambitions ISO and noise will become increasingly important for you to be aware of. As soon as you enlarge your image noise will become substantially more noticeable. So be aware of your ISO settings when you’re capturing your raw footage to avoid problems later on in editing.

ISO ‘sweet spots” are another thing you may need to be aware of for your specific camera brand and model. For instance tests, show that different ISO speeds handle noise differently. For example, on some Canon DSLR’s there is actually less noise in the ISO setting of 160 than there is in the ISO setting of 100. These are technical details you need to look into for your own particular brand of camera..

Every image has noise, but for the most part in lower ISO images, noise will appear less noticeable. The Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR or S/N) is the universal way of measuring the relative amounts of signal and noise in your shots.  High ratios will have very little visible noise while low ratios will have lots of noise.

Noise reduction software also exists to help you get rid of unwanted noise. For example, Neat-Video offers a great solution for both MAC and PC users. Again, it’s advisable to get as strong of a raw image as possible, but noise reduction software such as Neat-Video can help you salvage otherwise useless footage. Again, here is our footage shot at a high ISO setting of 6400 and here it is again after being run through Neat-Video noise reduction software.

One of your goals before you hit the record button should always be to ensure you obtain the best image quality possible using the lowest ISO possible.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Lights Film School video tutorial on lighting on the “upstage” side of the camera. As filmmakers you’ll often be looking for ways to add depth and dimension to your images. One way to do this is to “light on the upstage side of the camera” – meaning the side away from the camera. This will mean that your shadows will fall towards the camera rather than away from the camera.

Before we begin let’s take a look at how this concept is used in cinema. Here we have a subject that is looking camera left with the majority of the shadow falling “towards the camera”.

Generally actors won’t break the “4th wall” and look directly at the camera. This means that one side of their face will be closer to the camera than the other side. The angles will often be very subtle, but you’ll soon find that one side of their face will be closer than the other, with only a few exceptions. For the purpose of demonstration we’re exaggerating the contrast ratio on our subject’s face but If we wanted to avoid such dramatic lighting we could always bounce some of the light back on our subject by using a bounce board or even just throw a rim light on him like “this” to give a better exposure to the downstage side of his face.

There are multiple ways you can keep your shadows towards the camera. You can achieve this look by working with flags, subject placement or light placement. But let’s start with the easiest setup. Let’s imagine we have one primary light source: A window. Because your can’t move the sun or the position of the window, this means you need to think of ways to position your subject and your camera in a way that will keep your shadows “towards the camera”. In our case, because we’re shooting in a black box studio and don’t have access to the sun, we’re using a couple of 650 watt lights from our “Arri baby blue kit” to throw some light through our curtains.

As usual, before we begin we’d like to show you our lighting setup for this shot. So let’s take you behind the scenes to show you how we setup and lit this scene.

It’s a really simple setup. We’re just using 3 lights. 2 behind the curtain acting as our subject’s main key light and 1 practical lamp hanging from the ceiling to give light to our background and seating area. So before we bring out our subject let’s light this scene.

Here is a wide shot of the studio before it’s been lit. Now let’s go to black and start to build our lighting from the ground up.

At this point you can see we’ve turned the lights on behind the curtains. We’re going to be sitting our subject on the bed so this light acts as our “key light”. The fabric the light is passing through acts as a sort of diffusion which softens the light.

Now let’s turn on our practical lamp. Notice it’s not positioned properly. We’d like the light to catch some of the flower and vase in an upcoming scene so let’s quickly reposition it so it highlights a more specific part of the frame… There. That’s great.

So that’s our scene lit. As you can see it didn’t take much!

Now let’s sit our subject in the scene. Remember that his key light is coming from behind the curtain. Just so you can see how we’ve done that we’ll zoom out so you can see behind the back wall.

Okay, let’s get back on topic. Now that we have the subject in the scene we need to find a way to position him. Since we want him to have nice side lighting on his face let’s position him so one half of his face is positioned towards the key light and one half of his face is positioned away.

Now let’s give him some action. Okay, now he’s reading a book. So we have our light positioned, our subject positioned and now we need to position our camera. Let’s give this shot a try.

This is really not a bad shot. We have a nice contrast ratio on his face, we have a strong sense of depth and a simplified colour palette. It’s not bad and it’s a perfectly usable shot. But let’s change our position so that the shadows on the left side of his face are directed towards the camera rather than away from the camera.

I like this shot much more. We still have our simplified colour palette, a strong sense of depth and nice contrast ratio, but now we have shadows that are positioned towards the camera rather than away from the camera.

Here is a similar shot with a slight variation in framing.

And here you can see all of our shots compared side by side.

Again, there are many exceptions to this rule, but you’ll often find that keeping your shadows towards the camera will give your shot more depth and a more interesting sense of dimension.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Lights Film School video tutorial on using flags. A cinematographer once said that “Great cinematography is not about knowing how to turn a light on, it’s about knowing how to shape and mould that light”. The intention of his video tutorial is to help you understand that shadow is light’s creative equivalent.

Let’s begin by talking about what flags are:

Flags are pieces of black duvetyne held together by metal frames. Flags are generally held up by c-stands in an effort to cut or shape light and provide “negative fill”.

It’s important to mention that when using c-stands you should first position your flag exactly as you want it with the c-stand joints loose. Then when your flag is ready, tighten the c-stand joints in order to secure the precise position of the flag. This will not only help you precisely establish where your shadows will fall, but it will also save you a lot of time during your setup.

Many independent filmmakers rather than using black fabric flags and c-stands, will instead use tripods, clamps and black foam core. A large piece of black foam core can be purchased from an art supply store for around $10-$15 and it will have essentially the same impact. In fact, virtually any opaque object can be used to flag light.

Where to position your flag?

Knowing how and where to position your flag is important. A flag that is positioned close to the surface the light is being project onto will appear dark with clearly defined shadows and edges. However, as the flag starts to move towards the light source the shadow will become slightly more diffused with softer edges.

Moving your flag.

Once you have your flag in position you can start controlling where your light falls by re-positioning your flag. Here we wanted our flag close to our light to give a soft shadow with gentle edges that “feather out”.

There are many applications for using flags but let’s discuss how we can use flags to control the spill of light while filmming a subject.

Notice how we have a subject in frame and we are moving the flag back and forth. You can see the impact this has on the image. However, it should be noted that it’s easier to control flagging different layers if there is a noticeable separation of depth. So let’s pull our subject off the wall a little bit… Much better. Here you can see how the flag impacts the image as we move it back and forth. The flag’s purpose is to help filmmakers highlight the parts of the frame that are most important to them while muting the areas that are less important or distracting. Picasso even said it himself when he stated that “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”

But now let’s start from scratch building a shot from the ground up.

We’ll begin by turning our overhead lights on so you can see the room before we start to design our light. Now let’s walk around the set so you can see how the flags are blocking the light. This flag, directly in front of us, is stopping the 1K zip light from hitting the back wall. And this other flag is going to be stopping the light from hitting our subject. Notice there is only the smallest sliver of light shining through as we move in front of the flags. Most of the light is being completely blocked. We can now manoeuvre these flags to shape the light to our liking.

let’s go to black.

Notice how these two flags stop all of the light being projected from the 1K zip light from hitting the background. Now let’s introduce our subject to the shot. As predicted, only a sliver of light is making it’s way though the flags.

Now let’s look at what happens when we open up the background flag. Notice it has no impact on the subject who is still only being lit by a small sliver of light.

If we open up the flag on the subject the following will result.

But now let’s block the light on our subject and our background again. At this point we’ll turn on a small practical background light. We’ll also open up the flag hitting the subject so a sliver of light comes through.

Because we’re getting closer to our final composition lets now also turn the rim light on.

Let’s walk around the studio again. Here is the flag flagging our actor. Watch what happens when we move it right to left. Notice it has no impact on the background.

Now let’s look at the other flag that’s stopping spill from hitting the background. Watch what happens when we open and close that flag. Again, notice this has no impact on our subject. Having this flag stop the spill of light from hitting the background allows us to keep our background darker giving us more contrast and a dramatic and moody look. When we open the flag up the composition becomes flatter.

So now let’s punch into our final framing. Let’s look one last time at the impact that the flags have now that our rim light, background light and our key light are all turned on. Here we move the flag controlling light on the subject back and forth. Again, notice this has no impact on our beautifully lit background. Now we can experiment by opening up the background flag a little bit… But it was nicer with a darker, richer background, so let’s put that back. And here you have it… your final shot!

The idea here is to think about lighting in terms of layers and depth. Light your background, middle-ground and foreground separately by using flags to help you control the spill of light.

The snyopsis for the Lab Chat can be found below:

Lighting- Where do I begin?

When the cinematographer arrives on the set, he or she orders the crew to place the lights on certain areas of the set. But which light does the cinematographer positions first? Where exactly in the set does he/she put the lights? What are the steps or procedure that the cinematographer observes when he or she begins lighting? The objective of this session is to discuss the relationship between the director, the production designer and the cinematographer. We will also discuss the difference between motivational lighting and glamour lighting, which basically sets the pace on where the cinematographer begins. A sample scene from a script would be sent to participants prior to the session. We will dissect the scene as cinematographers and the directors and discuss how to approach it cinematographically. There is also a video demonstration that Lights Film School students need to watch prior to the Lab Chat. Please join us for this exciting and very important chat.
DATE: Saturday, Septebmer 4th, 2010
TIME: 8:00 PM – 11:00 PM EST
Led by Mark Meily

Mark Meily is an award-winning filmmaker of 22 years, who’s films have screened in a variety of film festivals all over the world. Two of these feature films, written and directed by Mark, received some great reviews in The New York Times, the Village Voice, LA Times and The NJ Star- Ledger. Mr Meily’s recent film “Baler” was screened at the MoMA last June 11, 2009

Mark has taught filmmaking for over five years now where many of his students have since gone on to become successful filmmakers. He has has also taught screenwriting and directing in both 16mm and 35mm formats. He loves sharing his experience and knowledge to aspiring filmmakers.

In 1989, Mr Meily became a scholar of the French Government. He studied film at the Ecole Superieure d’Etudes Cinematographiques (ESEC) in Paris, France; and also at the Centre Audio-Visuel de Langues Modernes (CAVILAM) in Vichy, France.

Independent feature films such as Medicine for Melancholy and Ballast are just two examples of micro-budget features that have gone on to win numerous filmmaking awards. Ballast, for example, won awards for both Best Director and Best Cinematography at Sundance Film Festival in 2008.

With audiences, festivals, distributors and studios accepting the new indie film aesthetic, filmmakers are flooding the market with their films in the hopes that they too will be able to create a worthwhile film that will garner media attention and win awards.

Unfortunately, many of the independent feature films being produced today lack a certain technical and creative care that is required for a film to be successful in today’s increasingly competitive independent film market. When film was expensive to shoot, a great amount of planning and attention to detail was required. However, due to the fact that video technology is accessible and fast, the motto of “pay attention to detail” has deteriorated into “get it done… this weekend”.

Remember, if your audience thinks to themselves “I could have made this myself”, the chances of them watching your film are not great. Audiences may not be able to articulate exactly what it is about an indie film they don’t like, but they know it when they see it (or hear it).

In our online film program we ask our students to work their way through a series of technical modules that help them identify the technical and aesthetic problems of independent film. We then ask them to complete small video projects in the hopes that these projects will help them avoid these common mistakes in their future productions.

From the second our students enroll in our online film course they are writing scripts and creating short films with an acute awareness of the common mistakes that new filmmakers make.

In our screenwriting module for example, our students are asked to enroll in live online “lab Chats” where they learn about the rules of Western Dramatic Structure. They learn about character arc, story arc, protagonist development, catalysts, plot points, pivotal characters, scene pacing, denouements and all of the other structural elements that go into creating a story. There is a science to story telling and it’s important to study it. Essentially, if you’re going to break the rules, it’s important to know what the rules are first.

While these rules may seem overly technical, academic or clinical, I doubt there is a successful filmmaker today who doesn’t know how to use these rules in the development of their stories.

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IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR EXPOSURE, RECOGNITION & EVALUATION THEN CONSIDER IMPROVING YOUR FILMMAKING SKILLS BY SIGNING UP FOR OUR INTENSIVE 4 MONTH ONLINE FILMMAKING COURSE HERE.

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The same goes for cinematography. It’s simply not enough to know how to press the record button on your video camera. That is simply not enough skill to qualify yourself as a cinematographer or director. You need to know how staging, lighting, editing, movement and dramatic beats work together to punctuate a scene. Movement requires motivation and lighting helps you create a mood. There are right and wrong ways to approach these things. These are subjects that require technical study. To guess, or even worse, ignore these topics, is quite simply filmmaker suicide.

That is why it’s imperative that serious filmmakers take the time to educate themselves. Whether it’s through our online film course, other film schools, books, weekend crash courses, websites, professional mentors or workshops you need to have a strong theoretical and technical background before your films will be worth watching.

So what makes a great filmmaker? The answer to this question would require more time than this blog post would allow for, so let’s instead focus on 6 identifying points that allow us to gauge if a filmmaker is on the right track.

1. Understand Lighting
One of the biggest stylistic differences between a small budget and a big budget production is the use of lighting. Filmmakers need to study lighting to be able to help support the mood of their story. They will need to know how to light a set using either artificial or natural light. Independent films don’t require cube vans and huge lighting kits but that doesn’t mean that filmmakers can ignore lighting altogether. Sure you won’t be able to properly light an entire city block at night, but you should be able to light your protagonist’s bedroom. In order to do this properly you need to study lighting.

2. Understand Design
Another stylistic issue which turns a lot of audience’s off, is the lack of design in a film. All large budget productions will hire a production designer to conceptualize the look of a film. Essentially, a film’s designer is the film’s architect. They work with the director, stylists and set decorators to help design a color palette, incorporate texture and find outfits and props that fit into the overall design of a film.

Independent filmmakers often shoot in natural environments. This helps indie filmmakers save money and use the locations they have available to them. However, it’s important to understand that most natural environments have neutral design elements. For example, most homes and apartments have white walls. However, most audiences will find white walls infinitely boring and from a filmmaking standpoint white walls won’t often support the emotional tone of a scene. It’s a filmmaker’s responsibility to adapt these natural environments in creative and low cost ways to support the tone of their film. What about putting up wallpaper with double sided tape? What about shooting against a patterned curtain? The design potential is limitless. The idea however, is to keep your costs low and your design high.

3. Script Analysis
As discussed above, a filmmaker needs to be able to identify a good story. A good director will always be able to go through a script and look for the dramatic peaks and valleys. They should also be able to identify issues with relationships, character arcs, scene wants, acting beats, story beats and so on. Filmmakers need to study how to analyze and deconstruct a story if they plan on keeping an audience interested for 90 minutes. This is not an easy task but there are methods and strategies you can study to help increase your chances of success.

Indie films also have a tendency to have strong dogmatic undertones. They often come across as preachy and in some cases even condescending in their film’s message. If your film has a message, try to embed it in a compelling story and make sure you challenge your own message as well. Audience’s don’t like being talked down to. If they know you’re trying to prove them wrong about life, they likely won’t show up to watch your film in the first place. It’s a double edged sword: You’ll often want some sort of commentary embedded in your story, but you need to be careful not to alienate your audience with any hints of pretentiousness.

4. Ability to Work with Actors
If you’re a documentary filmmaker you need to know how to work with your subjects and if you’re a fiction filmmaker you need to know how to work with actors. Filmmakers need to learn and understand the communicative tools used to help shape your story. This means understanding character back-story, knowing how to communicate using active verbs, being able to identify scene wants and so on. You’ll also need to focus your attention on details such as scene beats and how to properly punctuate your scenes. A filmmaker’s responsibility isn’t just to say “action”. You need to know what “action” you’re looking for. This requires intimate and detailed work with your actors.

I’ve found the process of taking (and auditing) acting classes a valuable resource in my quest to better understand how to communicate effectively with actors.

5. Focus on the Microscopic Details & Don’t Ignore Sound
I can’t stress the importance of this point enough: Great filmmakers need to be detail oriented. You need to know how to recognize the differences in camera movement between hand-held footage and steadycam footage. You need to be able to recognize bumps or movement inconsistencies in your tracking shots. These small details can make or break your film.

As a filmmaker you also need to study and understand the different parts that go into the final film product. One of the technical things many inexperienced filmmakers neglect (or only think of as an afterthought) is sound design. The emotional impact of sound is huge in the final film product. Audiences are unforgiving about bad sound. They will pick up on it immediately and immediately flag your film as a low budget film. Remember, first impressions count for a lot. Don’t give your audience a reason to dislike your film before you even get a chance to get into your story.

Spending your time finding a great crew to work with will make your job much easier. Finding a good sound designer, boom operator, first AD, producer, writer, director and designer will help you start your film off on the right foot. Working with a great crew is essential if you’re trying to make a great film.

6. Don’t Overstep Your Special Effects Boundaries
With low budget filmmaking comes limitations.  This is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just about knowing what you’re working with and doing the best job you can within those limitations. Having the urge to overstep boundaries established by your own skill level or budget will likely stand to do more harm than good. Unless you have access to talented animators or special effects artists willing to work for free or at a discount you should probably avoid elaborate shootout scenes, rotoscoping, CGI and any other visual effects.

While not a comprehensive list, the 6 points mentioned above are great identifiers for great filmmakers or at least filmmakers that are on the right track.

Do you have a film to share that takes into consideration 1 or more of the points discussed above? Do you have other points you’d like to add to the list? We’d love to hear about it.

A logline is generally a one to two sentence summery of your project. The logline generally consists of the following pieces of information:

1. The character
2. Their goal
3. The antagonistic force

As good sample log line would look as follows:

“A group of young, misguided rebels rush to save their leader’s sister from a gang of bandits”

There is no reference to subplots or character development. A logline is the script’s skeleton. Throughout your film or documentary your character may have many goals. However, with logline writing it’s important to stick with only the most important goal. Your character’s goal will generally be established by the end of the first act. But if you’re unsure as to what your main goal is then analyze your climax. During the climax is when your character will either accomplish or fail at achieving their goal.

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IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR EXPOSURE, RECOGNITION & EVALUATION THEN CONSIDER IMPROVING YOUR FILMMAKING SKILLS BY SIGNING UP FOR OUR INTENSIVE 4 MONTH ONLINE FILMMAKING COURSE HERE.

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When you’re writing your logline you should use a well chosen adjective to describe your character (i.e. isolated farm girl). When you juxtapose this adjective with your character’s goal your logline will have a stronger impact. For example, if your characters goal includes a strong social element, the fact that she’s been isolated for so long will mean she needs to learn to deal with more human interaction. The conflict in this situation writes itself!

When writing your logline you should also evoke questions from your audience by using words that create that reaction. For example you your character may be in a “mysterious land“ or on a “dangerous journey“. Words like this will help make your logline more interesting and engaging.

Please feel free to share your film loglines in the comment box below.

1. Ensure your actor understands who they are

This sounds like common sense, but it’s important you work your way past the shallow depths of your character archetypes and really dig deep into who your characters really are. You can study any great film and find that much of the brilliance of strong story telling is exposed through great performances. Essentially the backbone of any strong story is strong performances. In order to get your actors to give strong performances they must both attach to the script and the characters in the script.

In order to create colorful, textured characters your actors must know their character’s back-story. This means they need to study (or create) their past relationships, embarrassing moments, proud moments, accomplishments, bad habits, style of dress, influences, favorite TV shows, hobbies and political views to name only a few examples.

The only way you’re going to create great characters is by bringing them to life through giving them depth… and a lot of it.

Character depth is created through study and understanding. That is why it’s important to get your characters to understand who they are. The screenwriter should have already created character biographies  for all of the main characters. Give these  character biographies to your actors and allow them to use this as a jumping off point in their quest to design and understand their character.

As a guideline you should always aim to make your character biographies no less than 5 pages but generally 10 pages or more when possible. However, it’s important to let your actors breathe their own life into the character. Give your actors the opportunity not only to study, but also help create the character they will embody in your film.

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IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR EXPOSURE, RECOGNITION & EVALUATION THEN CONSIDER IMPROVING YOUR FILMMAKING SKILLS BY SIGNING UP FOR OUR INTENSIVE 4 MONTH ONLINE FILMMAKING COURSE HERE.

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2. Make sure you actor knows who they are speaking with

Once your character understand who they are they’ll be able to shape their behavior in social settings. For example, how would your character interact with their:

Boss?
New girlfriend?
Old girlfriend?
Mother?
Father?

Or what about interaction with strangers or interaction with a co-worker they find annoying?

Issues of power, control, love and compassion enter into all of these relationships. By ensuring your actors understand who they are speaking with you will help ensure cohesive character development. When an actor approaches a scene they should ask themselves 2 questions

- How do the other characters in the scene make them feel? (be as specific as possible with the answer to this question)
- How would they describe their scene partner(s) in one word?

3. Make sure your actor knows what their objective  is

Alfred Hitchcock once said that “Drama is life with all the boring parts cut out of it.” You must remember this when you’re creating your scenes. Don’t simply show the mundane elements of day to day life to show how great your grasp on “reality” is. You need to focus on your film’s themes and get to the point(s) your film is setting out to explore. One way to help you do this is to ensure your actors know what their goals are in a scene. Before an actor approaches any scene they should ask themselves “what do I want from my scene partner”. What are they trying to get out of this scene in particular? Just like the film as a whole will have a goal, so will your smaller individual scenes. It’s important that you identify what those smaller goals are. Are others in the scene stopping them from them getting what they want? Are they active in pursuit of their objective or are they passive? Are they successful? Do they fail?

Tying it all together

Let’s look at an example that helps tie all three of the points discussed above together. For simplicity’s sake we’re going to keep the example short and 2 dimensional. It should, nevertheless, help illustrate the point we’re trying to make.

Example: Imagine your protagonist on the phone with her mother. Her mother is inviting her over for dinner while at the same time cautiously pry into her life.

1. Know who you are:
Following these three steps above both the mother and daughter would have worked extensively on their character back-stories. Maybe the mother is a 60 year old divorced mother with one daughter. The mother is dependent on her daughter for both emotional and financial support.

Her daughter was competitive in sports growing up. She took dance lessons and her younger daughter played both basketball and co-ed soccer in high school. He graduated with Honors and when to Berkeley to get her degree in business administration.

2. Know who you’re talking to: The mother is intimidated by her daughter’s intelligence and success. Gone are the days of the mother’s authority. Yet she’s still managed to maintain her motherly concern for the well being of her only daughter and she takes the liberty to pry into her daughter’s life when she feels it’s necessary.

Even though the daughter seems like she has her life under control, her mother senses something is wrong (her suspicion is that her daughter is lonely and this, of course, concerns her). The daughter on the other hand feels abandoned by her father and doesn’t ever “want to be accountable to a man” as she puts it.

3. Know your character’s objectives: Lastly, we need to look at what the character’s objectives are. In one sentence what would you say the character’s goals are? Be specific and commit to your ideas about objectives and goals. Don’t say things like “maybe” or “perhaps”. It’s also best to get your actors to say what their objectives are.

For example the mother’s objective is to get her daughter to open up to her without upsetting or annoying her.

The daughter’s goal is to get her mom off the phone as soon as possible without being rude while avoiding the conversation about relationships.

I hope this helps you work towards strong performances with your actors.

Best of luck

Over the 2 hour duration of the Lab Chat Lights Film School teachers and students discussed the role of tension in a screenplay  using examples from Munich as jumping off point for our larger discussion on tension.

As our students know, tension is essential in any film – whether it’s a thriller, romantic comedy, or anything in between. Without tension of some sort, a film runs the risk of being boring and uninspiring.

While that seems obvious, the actual craft of writing tension can be difficult. To successfully create tension, you must create conflict. This conflict can either be physical (between groups of people) or emotional (conflict between a person and his/her thoughts and emotions).

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In the film Munich, the protagonist begins to wonder if their revenge is only going to be responsible for more violence. Violence after all, begets more violence, as history shows. The film’s protagonist is not your average 2 dimensional “gun for hire” who is unaware of the consequences of his job. Much of the film’s tension lays within Avner, who seems to increasingly know he’s a walking contradiction.

We opened our discussion by deconstructing particular tension building tactics used in the film. Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list, but only as much as we could explore in our 2 hour online class.

1. Personal Doubts & Insecurities

The protagonist is a reluctant leader of a group of men. He is also living under his father’s hero shadow. This causes tension due to the fact that Avner is not presented as your typical “I have it all under control” leader. Tension is created because not only do others not believe in him, but he seems not to fully believe in himself.

2. Personal Identity vs. Professional Identity

The protagonist of the film (Avner), has two lives that constantly grate against each other. On the one hand he’s a family man with a pregnant wife at home. However, he’s also an assassin working for the Israeli government. This tension building technique is used in many films. Spend some time thinking of other examples of movies where the protagonist is developed as having two very conflicting lives that constantly work against one another.

In this identity clash arises the contradictions of Avner’s life. In fact, during the lab chat the instructor argued that Avner’s emotional conflict is the key to film’s tension. Over the course of the film, he begins to realize that killing for revenge is doing nothing but propagating more violence. The tension in Avner’s mind begins to overshadow the physical tension of their mission. This becomes further complicated when it is slowly revealed that the assassins aren’t working purely to avenge the Black September killings, but they’re also doing some other political dirty work as well.

3. Likability of the Antagonists / Targets:

The likeability of the antagonists and victims is usuallyplayed up in the film Munich. For example, during the scene of Anver in the adjoining hotel room from one of his “assignments” he sees the man as a realy likable person. He engages in a funny conversation with the man and then once they part Avner watches the final ordinary, but seemingly tender moments of the man’s life before he blows him up.

These scenes are always fantastic where an assassin comes face to face with his target or a criminal comes face to face with his pursuer (catch me if you can), the tension writes itself. He must push past his personal feelings…feelings that have suddenly become very real and intimate…and still complete the task. The tension writes itself.

4. Flashbacks

The filmmaker’s are able to juggle both the physical and emotional tension by implementing a specific film technique known as “flashbacks”. Through flashback, the audience is always reminded of what Avner’s team is fighting for.

Whenever we, the audience, – along with the characters in the film – start to forget the impetus for the mission, we are reminded through a series of brutal flashbacks.

Flashbacks, when used properly, can add context to tension without disrupting the flow of the narrative.

Many films use this technique. For instance, any war film of recent where the soldier has come home and flashes back to his memories overseas while struggling to cope with his return home (i.e. Jacobs Ladder). Another example (which is a little “on the nose”) is Memento.

At the same time, flashbacks should be used cautiously. They run the risk of cutting a lot of the inborn tension of the storyline.

5. Play on Innocence

Playing on vulnerability and innocence is a great way to build tension. Audience attach strongly to children because of our seemingly innate desire to protect them. Therefore the scene when the little girl picks up the phone with a built in explosive device the audience is forced to slide towards the edge of their seats.

And although the same level of vulnerability isn’t attached to adults, a similar emotional attachment is built in when innocent people stand to loose their lives. For instance, when the athletes in the Olympic village are taken hostage the audience can’t help but hope for their safety. There is a lot of “squirm factor” in these scenes.

Which leads me to the last point we discussed.

6. Ticking Time Bomb Strategy

Using the “ticking time bomb” technique to build tension always works well. There are many times this technique  is used in the film but one of the most memorable occasions was the initial hostage taking scene. During this scene the hostage takers make demands that have an expiry date.  Again, the tension writes itself.

To continue reading about tension building read part 2 of this blog post: Writing Tension: The Slow Reveal

For those of you who need a quick refresher:

A NOUN is a person, place or thing
A VERB is an action word
An ADJECTIVE is a describing word

Example
Barney (<–Noun) quickly (<–Adjective) runs (<–verb) over the fence

When writing a screenplay it’s best to always write in the active and present tense. In fact, sometimes you might not even need to write in full sentences.

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Let’s look at an example. Instead of writing “Barney quickly runs next to the wall before stopping and looking over the wall. He suddenly jumps”

Instead write:

“Barney races to the wall. Stops. Jumps.”

Try to use strong verbs instead of adjective – verb combinations. Instead of saying “quickly runs” say “races” or instead of saying “enters through the door” say ‘barges through the door”.

Let’s take a poorly written action sequence and rewrite it to make it stronger, clearer and more vivid.  Okay, let’s test my vocabulary…

Here is an example of how NOT to write action sequences:

“Barney quickly runs up the fire escape. He looks terrified as he nervously drops his gun to the street below. Suddenly he hears footsteps on the ladder behind him”

Instead write:

“Barney races up the fire escape, stumbles, continues. He reaches for his gun which slides out of his sweaty fingers to the street below as footsteps creep up from behind.”

The key is to try to write economically while at the same time balancing that with vivid writing. Sometimes you’ll find that adjectives will be necessary to help you accomplish this goal.  In the above example I used the words “sweaty fingers”. In this case it was important to use the adjective “sweaty” because that stimulates a sensory image. As you can see, adjectives have their place in screenwriting as well. Just try to use them sparingly and only when necessary. It’s often the case that they can be replaced with stronger verbs.

Really, the decision to use adjectives or verbs will be decided on a case-by-case basis. The key is to read your script aloud (read it by yourself or have it read by friends or actors) and look for unnecessary adjectives that hinder the flow of your story and consider changing them to more dramatic verbs.

Good luck!