Writing for Small-Budget Productions

Last night Lights Film School held an online lab chat entitled “Writing for Small-Budget Productions”. One of our screenwriting teachers held the lab chat and helped guide our students through the process of thinking about their story while keeping the budget of their films in mind. The 2 hour lab chat covered many topics but much of the focus was on developing a strong character driven story.

We thought it would be helpful to post some information here on how to develop strong characters. Enjoy!

Building Characters:
Your characters are the most important part of your story. They are the lifeblood of the narrative – the vehicles that take your theme and story and make them personable and relatable on a human level. In more concrete terms, a character is the embodiment of action. Their actions are what make your story move from Point A to Point B. Aristotle said that men are certain kinds of individuals as a result of their characters, but they become happy or miserable as a result of their actions. Without action you have no characters and without characters you have no action.

Building Great Characters:
When you think of the great characters of film, which come to mind? Is it Jim Stark (James Dean) in Rebel Without a Cause? Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day–Lewis) in There Will Be Blood? All of these characters – and many more unnamed – are iconic for many reasons, but they all share one commonality: their depth. In essence, to succeed in character development, you must make your action resonate on many levels. Depth is also what makes an actor really latch onto a role and work to make that character a real entity. When a character possesses depth, the audience becomes part of their action – the experiences of the characters become the experiences of the audience. In Breakfast in Tiffany’s, the audience sees that Holly isn’t the nonchalant party girl that she pretends to be. They feel for her when her troubled past comes back to haunt her in Manhattan. And their hearts ache with her’s when her relationship with Paul seems as though it isn’t meant to be.

Where to Start:
First you must decide which character is your protagonist – or main character, or in Greek drama terms, your Hero. In most instances, the story will be their story and told from his/her perspective. Your protagonist will face trials and tribulations, and ultimately come out either better or worse because of them. Secondly, you need your antagonist – or villain. In some stories, this character will be very apparent. It will be the one character that constantly stands in the way of the protagonist – think Lex Luther to Darth Vader.

There are going to be cases where your protagonist will appear to be their own antagonist. This is completely valid – but your antagonist still needs to manifest itself in human obstacles. For example, let’s that say your character is a drunk who can’t seem to get his life straight. While the main antagonist may be the character’s addiction, this addiction
must be shown as the landlord who serves the eviction notices, the cop that keeps coming to door for noise complaints, or any other obstacle that is a direct result to your protagonist’s faults. This human connection is one of the cornerstones of all drama, and is necessary in even the most visceral stories.

After you have identified the protagonist and antagonist(s) in your narrative, it is time to identify any and all other characters that you will introduce in your story. No character is too minor to identify here. It could be a major secondary character – like your protagonist’s best friend and confidant – or a tertiary character that the audience only meets once or twice – like a convenience store clerk. Every character should be given the same weight and 5 of 8 a character should never be added to a story unless they have a purpose in the narrative.

Once you have a list that identifies your protagonist, antagonist, and secondary / tertiary characters, you can begin the daunting task of developing them further.

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