The Art of film making without a Script?

[Ted Spencer]

I love Hitchcock's quote on this:

"Once the script has been written and the dialog added..."

...which places story squarely above dialog in the hierarchy of screenwriting. Right where it should be. But Hitchcock's scripts were written, not improvised...

As for me, I'm not a fan of most 'improvised dialog' films. I think it makes the mistake of assuming that good 'dialog creation' is a reflexive ability of good actors. IMHO, it simply isn't in all but rare cases (improvisational comedian/actors being perhaps the most notable exception - see "This Is Spinal Tap", which was heavily improvised). Good dialog creation is otherwise an ability possessed almost exclusively by good writers...

 

[jwing]

Yes, I can very much agree with that. There is absolutely no "Right Way" to anything creative. I also think that the inverse of the "No Script" apporach, that is, having a detailed script, and not allowing any creative changes during production, is probably not the correct approach for most filmmakers either. A mid ground, of being prepared, while also being flexible and using the talents of your actors and other collaborators sounds very good.

Yeah, my personal approach has always been in the middle. I love to write and work on dialogue, but I also love for other people to bring their own ideas, even if it means a spur of the moment change in the middle of shooting. Always gotta stay open to something great that may come along. I think what Jarmusch and Fellini and Leigh and others do is gutsy, and I personally couldn't really do it (not without a proper budget and team, at least), but I can totally admire their style.

Good dialog creation is otherwise an ability possessed almost exclusively by good writers...

Sometimes, but sometimes not. There are times when a writer can't really get into the "voice" of a character the way an actor can, and when an actor gets into character they really start to talk the way the character should talk, making the dialogue more natural, less forced. Sometimes even a great writer creates an awkward line of dialogue that the actor just flips around and improvises, and suddenly it's way better. Of course, the actor has to be good for this to happen, but when it does, it's lovely. And good actors, in this sense, are like good writers, and I think it's important to leave room for that creativity. And hell, if I was working with really great actors, I probably wouldn't write much dialogue either. The chemistry and dialogue that flows naturally and organically between actors can be at times way better than even what the best writer comes up with. That's called collaboration, something writers aren't so accustomed to.

 

[Bob Gruen]

For the past while now I've been thinking more and more about this subject because it affects me greatly..

Basically, when I come up with an idea for a short film or some other sort of video where it involves actors.. I don't really write a script or screenplay for it.

I like keeping all my idea's in my head, or small notations in a notepad or on my PC.

I will however write out a "script-like" thing just for a persons lines, but even when I'm filming I usually just tell them what to say.

I'm very passionate about having it the way I want it as I see it in my head, I'm not controlling over an actors gut feeling about characters and such and I value their opinions on scene's and their characters but I usually tell them exactly what I want done and then I let them go at it.

Do you think this okay or am I getting into a bad habbit?

My mind is always making idea's but the most I'll do is write down very vague notes, I still have clear visions of film idea's I've had since early 2008 so I'm not sure if it's okay to go with this because it works or if it's just a horrible idea.

Opinions?

Of course its a horrible practice...

First, film is story telling, so you have to have a story.

Second, film making is a business process, and any business process (no matter how complicated) needs a project plan. That plan is distilled from the script.

Third, film making is collaborative process, and you are denying everyone else on your project the materials they need to be fully engaged in the creative process. Stop kidding yourself: you are terribly controlling over the actors. You are only giving them their lines at the last minute so they have no opportunity to see the character in full context (which is required to develop the characters). I'm surprised anyone who takes acting seriously as a trade would work under such conditions.

I am dismayed at some of the responses listed in this thread. Many people seem to have adopted this notion that there are no right or wrong answers, no right or wrong approaches, and that's nonsense. What you have outlined is a recipe for failure, you will waste your time and have nothing of quality to show for it in the end. If you are not paying people to work on this effort then you will be wasting their time as well. Debates over whether some big time director threw out a script and shot from the cuff are not really germane to your situation. Many of these responses are from people who insist that life is nothing but gray area, and they promote this philosophy to others especially when the answer is obviously black and white.

Your post indicates an inability to do the work or simply an unwillingness to do so. Either way it sounds like you should find someone else to write the script(s) that you seem to want to produce / direct. Find someone who wants to be a screen writer, give them the idea(s) that you want to see put in a movie, and pay them to do the work. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, in fact it dominates the industry.

If you just want to create You Tube fodder then don't bother with this board, go out and make it how you want to. If you're serious about what you are doing then follow all the steps; they have been shaped by 100+ years of film-making and the only right answer is to follow them.

Bob

 

[Gord.T]

I'd suggest collaborating with a screenwriter as well if writing isn't your thing.
I did that very recently and early reviews of the script so far are overwhelmingly encouraging.
Something I would never have been able to do myself.

If you have weaknesses in certain areas, and we all do, then it's best to let those areas go into the hands of someone who knows that they are doing. It really, really pays off.
And we're very fortunate enough to have people here at dvxuser willing to help out if asked.

 

[ShowMaker]

I've never scripted a single show I've produced. They are all reality/documentary shows and the best way to make a show like these fake is to write it. I love watching shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Mr. David has mastered the craft of outlining a story and allowing his talent to wing their way to the point. It makes it real, spontaneous and infinately easier on a budget.

 

[filmman]

I like the felliniesque style. In fact, I have the domain www.felliniesque.com

If there is a budget, and I'm hired to direct a movie, of course I won't work without a script. If it's a union project, I will work from a script.

But if I have no money and too much time has gone by without my having made a movie, I go out and find a couple of actors and begin shooting a movie. I just say, "Action!" as soon as I have a camera with film in it or my Sony Z1U with a tape in it (that's when I'm real broke

You want to see my best movie shot felliniesque? It will cost you a whopping $1.99 at Amazon.com VOD (you have one week to watch it at this price.)

Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/The-RED-QUEEN...ie=UTF8&s=digital-video&qid=1260073446&sr=1-4

You want to see a truly improvised movie: Here is my last movie: THE CHASE by Vic Alexander. Also on Amazon. (DVD)

http://www.amazon.com/CHASE-Vic-Ale...1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1260073587&sr=8-1-catcorr
http://www.amazon.com/The-RED-QUEEN...ie=UTF8&s=digital-video&qid=1260073446&sr=1-4

 

[Martti Ekstrand]

Well, with a director and leading man well versed in improv even blockbusters are made without a final script. Check this interview with Jeff Bridges

http://incontention.com/?p=18384

It only seems a matter of time these days before studios come calling for actors, however legendary, to take part in the trendy wave of superhero vehicles that are dominating the marketplace. For Bridges, the movie was “Iron Man” in 2007, and having just finished principle photography on the sequel to “TRON,” he felt like it would be a smooth transition.

For a moment, it was anything but.

“They had no script, man,” Bridges exclaims. “They had an outline. We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn’t know what we were going to say. We would have to go into our trailer and work on this scene and call up writers on the phone, ‘You got any ideas?’ Meanwhile the crew is tapping their foot on the stage waiting for us to come on.”

Bridges, director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. would literally act out sequences during primitive rehearsals, Downey taking on Bridges’s role and vice versa, to find and essentially improvise their way to full scenes, the actor recounts.

 

[timbook2]

I think there are only a handful of geniuses who can do it......as much as I adore them, they are a rare bunch and good improvising is a gift not given to many. If you work with actors they better be 2 of those, if you do more documentary related work, there really is no script and you have to catch that one take when it happens...another challenge, BUT you better dont go out there and start shooting without an IDEA/ Concept/ whatsoever!!

 

[timbook2]

I've never scripted a single show I've produced. They are all reality/documentary shows and the best way to make a show like these fake is to write it. I love watching shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm. Mr. David has mastered the craft of outlining a story and allowing his talent to wing their way to the point. It makes it real, spontaneous and infinately easier on a budget.

over her ein Germany we have one guy doing the "Kroemer" show on rbb.de tv. He ad libs a lot and its a delight to watch him with politicians!!! He is improvising almost entirely but for safety has a piece of paper at hand ...just in case....

 

[Ted Spencer]

“They had no script, man,” Bridges exclaims. “They had an outline. We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn’t know what we were going to say. We would have to go into our trailer and work on this scene and call up writers on the phone, ‘You got any ideas?’ Meanwhile the crew is tapping their foot on the stage waiting for us to come on.”

Bridges, director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. would literally act out sequences during primitive rehearsals, Downey taking on Bridges’s role and vice versa, to find and essentially improvise their way to full scenes, the actor recounts.

Maybe *that's* why I always felt there was something oddly weak about that film. Especially the performance by the usually amazing Robert Downey Jr.

 

[rsbush]

There is a huge difference between dramatic improvisation and comedic improvisation. Different rules for different results. For example, it's just fine to be glib in a comedic improvisation, not so for a dramatic improvisation. This is one of the reasons it is actually used during filming in many, many more comedies than dramas.
And everything I've read here about Mike Leigh is incorrect or incomplete . I understand how this happens because he routinely gives half answers at best in interviews. For a better understanding of his process, developed over 30 odd years, read "Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh". But in a nutshell, he starts with actors and an idea he wants to explore. The actors are improvising on the character's of actual people they know. They only know what they need to know to interact with the other actors. The film is built from the interaction of these improvisations and Mike Leigh's writing. In the end, absolutely everything is scripted before it is shot and the actors are playing the script. The only exception to this rule, according to Leigh, is one short scene in "Naked" where Johnny as played by David Thewlis, gets into an argument with a delivery guy.
Cassavetes is also thought to have improvised much of his films and although he used improv extensively as a tool for character exploration and to rewrite, his contention was that almost every frame he ever shot was scripted.
One of the fundamental rules of dramatic improvisation is to "not anticipate", and if a scene needs to get somewhere, you can not take it there without anticipating. If you're playing a scene using your own words rather than the script, you are actually ad libbing, not improvising.

 

[KevinP]

Take a look (if you can find it) at a UK film called Confetti - it is made exactly in this way. In each scene the actors are just told where their character starts and ends and then they are left to it - all improv.

 

[djkarn105]

This film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1064215/

Strangers (Zarim) was my favorite film last year. It was shot with no script and the leads met the day of the first shoot. It was based on a short the directors had previously shot but that's really just a starting point for this story.

Going into it though, the characters were already fully developed and I think the film is successful because it's capturing these characters responding to what was actually unfolding around them at the time.

It's a shame it didn't see wider distribution but you can watch the whole thing here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3770580132677751992&ei=evgfS_uVFaWKqQO477TLDw&q=zarim

 

[djkarn105]

And in regards to Wong Kar Wai shooting with little or no script, he is also notorious for going horrendously over schedule and over budget.

 

[Gary Huff]

I see this as indicative of the "lazy filmmaker syndrome". "I don't want to put the effort into writing a script, so can I just make a movie without one?" or "I don't want to have to spend money on lights or take the time to learn how to light a scene properly, so can I just get a camera that will let me shoot without using any?" or "Can I just film a static shot all at once so I don't have to do any cutting?"

If your ideas are not good enough to be worth the effort of making something that looks professional and is enjoyable to watch, then why are you wasting any time on it at all? Film is not about splashing some paint on a canvas, strumming a few chords on your guitar, or going palms deep into clay. Film is an expensive, collaborative art form that takes a lot of different skills from different people. If you shortchange any of that, far more often than not you're going to come out with a lackluster or downright "bad" product.

 

[greymog]

I see this as indicative of the "lazy filmmaker syndrome". "I don't want to put the effort into writing a script, so can I just make a movie without one?" or "I don't want to have to spend money on lights or take the time to learn how to light a scene properly, so can I just get a camera that will let me shoot without using any?" or "Can I just film a static shot all at once so I don't have to do any cutting?"

If your ideas are not good enough to be worth the effort of making something that looks professional and is enjoyable to watch, then why are you wasting any time on it at all? Film is not about splashing some paint on a canvas, strumming a few chords on your guitar, or going palms deep into clay. Film is an expensive, collaborative art form that takes a lot of different skills from different people. If you shortchange any of that, far more often than not you're going to come out with a lackluster or downright "bad" product.

couldn't have put it better meself.

this is how i've felt for months. tried to get into it sans script. i can't believe i did that. write everything. in most cases, that kind of 'avante garde' attempt should really come after years and years and years of experience.

then again this is how i feel these months.

 

[djkarn105]

If you are shooting without a script because of lack of time or resources then yes, I think it is an ill-conceived idea from the start.

I think films shot without a fully fleshed script do so in an attempt to stay more open to the possibilities of what the piece can become. You often hear from writers "I didn't start out knowing the character would do this and this, the character just went there."

I think there's a very special recipe that's needed to to successfully shoot without a formal script. You need the right actors, the right director, and the right subject matter. I don't think an action movie would be very good if it was shot this way *cough Transformers 2 cough*. But if you take for example that Israeli movie I linked - Zarim - it's an intensely intimate story about two people trying to make something small (their potential love) work against the backdrop of a war. Or in the mood for love, again, an intimate film about two people against a larger social context.

Both these films were made by very talented crews who by no means did not prepare. They just went into it without a pre-written destination in mind.

 

[Mark Harris]

There is a huge difference between dramatic improvisation and comedic improvisation. Different rules for different results. For example, it's just fine to be glib in a comedic improvisation, not so for a dramatic improvisation. This is one of the reasons it is actually used during filming in many, many more comedies than dramas.
And everything I've read here about Mike Leigh is incorrect or incomplete . I understand how this happens because he routinely gives half answers at best in interviews. For a better understanding of his process, developed over 30 odd years, read "Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh". But in a nutshell, he starts with actors and an idea he wants to explore. The actors are improvising on the character's of actual people they know. They only know what they need to know to interact with the other actors. The film is built from the interaction of these improvisations and Mike Leigh's writing. In the end, absolutely everything is scripted before it is shot and the actors are playing the script. The only exception to this rule, according to Leigh, is one short scene in "Naked" where Johnny as played by David Thewlis, gets into an argument with a delivery guy.
Cassavetes is also thought to have improvised much of his films and although he used improv extensively as a tool for character exploration and to rewrite, his contention was that almost every frame he ever shot was scripted.
One of the fundamental rules of dramatic improvisation is to "not anticipate", and if a scene needs to get somewhere, you can not take it there without anticipating. If you're playing a scene using your own words rather than the script, you are actually ad libbing, not improvising.

This is similar to the technique we're using on my current feature, and I've used on some shorts in the past.

I love using extensive improv in rehearsals, allowing the actors to explore the scenes. But by the time it comes to shoot, we don't necessarily have a script, but we do always have a very detailed outline where every beat is pretty much locked down. What the actors say within those beats is left up to them, and because they know their objectives, relationships, given circumstances, etc, what they say is usually the right thing to say. But we know the beats they have to hit within a scene, and it's all pretty well structured in the end.

But because they never know what words are going to come out of the other actors' mouths, this technique also encourages good moment-to-moment work and genuine listening.

I think it's a very valuable approach that gives some good results, meaning the actors come up with things in the rehearsal that I would never have dreamed up in a million years of sitting at a computer. But also this technique empowers the actors to really feel like collaborators. It encourages them to really do their homework and build their characters.

We're close to going into a month long rehearsal using these techniques for our feature.

It's clearly not suitable for every kind of film, like a massive EFX-heavy film needs more precision. But even that might be changing with advances in technology that can free the actors up to improv even in the craziest CG worlds.

 

[ocpmovie]

In high school and early college I shot a bunch of no-budget features, which were usually comedies. There was wiggle room to do improv, as there usually is in comedy.

The funniest moments were the unscripted ones, and I wound up shooting several features and "long shorts" that were entirely unscripted. Some of them threw plot out the window, some didn't. Some were intended to be serious, and their improvised nature lent humor and reality to the films.

I find that gets harder and harder as you get older and more professional. Untrained actors, who've never taken acting classes and are going on instinct, are often just as comfortable with an improvised scene as a scripted one. Learning lines isn't something they're 100% used to and it can kill some of their spontaneity, particularly in comedy .... the fact is that it's funnier onscreen if it's funny to the actor who is performing it, and things stop being funny after multiple takes. Coming up with a brand new line in the heat of the moment brings that spontaneity and comedy back ...

Comedy should break the rules, should break structure and confound the expected. Comedy is about the unexpected, those strange little leaps of logic, flights of fancy, never going from A to B to C but from A to G to pineapple.

But if an actor is professional, and doesn't consider him/herself a comedian, he or she will just want to do the script, because if you're deviating from the script it means you're being sloppy and unprofessional and perhaps don't know what you're doing. When a professional actor improvises, it's just because the actor didn't like the line as scripted, and has a better idea. This is great because it gives the actor a stake in the character and keeps the character fresh and logical and complete as a performance. It would take a very, very comfortable relationship between director and actor to improvise everything.

When money's on the line it's very hard to be that loose.

However, if you have rehearsal time, most of the dialogue for a script could certainly be improvised for an amateur camera before shooting.

A Chorus Line was written that way, and it became the most successful Broadway musical of all time .... at the time. What's terrific about A Chorus Line is that it has many characters and all their stories ring true, giving a voice to the background chorus dancers who never get to play the lead .... telling their own life stories in word and song. It rings true because those were the life stories of dancers, recorded in rehearsal sessions and then rewritten and revised into a musical form.

It's surprising what you can learn when you get outside your bubble, as one writer, and talk to other people about a subject and really get other ideas in. People's real lives are so much more surprising and strange than anything a screenwriter could come up with.

Larry David, of Curb Your Enthusiasm, really clicks with improv because he's not really much of an actor, and there's a joy of him just playing a version of himself and coming up with funny lines on the fly, and laughing [or not laughing] at the funny lines others come up with. He's also a master of plot - those Seinfeldian complicated plots where everything clicks together at the end in an unsuspected way. The dialogue on the way there is almost incidental - it just has to have a joy and humor to it, which improv gives him. One of the great sitcoms of all time, it's nonetheless an acquired taste as one has to get used to the acting style a bit.

I've appeared in no-budget features for other directors where the movie was scripted, but that script was only followed half the time, in favor of improvisation when the inspiration was there, which is usually a good way to go. However, the actual scripts we were working from were fairly bland, so the segments without improvisation fall flatter.

I would really like to do an all improvised film again, and I have an idea for it, but I'd need to get hold of certain actors whose improv I really admire.

One thing I discovered is that sequels to improvised movies tended not to come off. To get a halfway decent improvised movie we had to have tons and tons of ideas which went unused, and simply copying the original movie always resulted in a much diminished return. You need to put your ALL into these things, and really be trying to do something different.

Also, the general public was pretty much never as interested in the final product of these things as I was in editing them together and discovering them. Though sometimes I'd get letters by people gushing with praise about this world and these characters ....


At this point I wrote a looong list of the more improv-centric movies I did back then and the thought process behind them, but this post is already too long so ...

to sum up though ...


The ideas have to be strong. The process of improv dumbs things down. It can make them stranger, funnier, more interesting and unexpected, but its the equivalent of adding "um" to the middle of a sentence. That had better be a very intelligent sounding sentence to begin with to survive that and come out strong.