What is a beat?

An arbitrary unit of time akin to a 'moment' determined by the energy of a scene. i.e. "take a beat before shooting him." This would be a smaller unit of time than if the director said, "take a beat before kissing him."
 
depends. on the page it's the components of a scene -- he walk thru the door, then talks on the phone, then walks to the pool table and takes out his wallet. each is a beat. however, on set they can also be defined as simply a moment, a breath, a notion.
 
Most commonly in a script, beat means: take a moment -- like a beat in music...

Here's an example where a beat makes a big difference:

Harry Callahan
in Dirty Harry

(I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five?
Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clear off,)

you've got to ask yourself one question:
(beat)
Do I feel lucky?
(beat)
Well, do ya?
(beat)
punk!

A beat can be a powerful weapon. LOL
 
10s said:
What's a beat?
Click to expand...

A misspelt ingredient for borscht...

An attempt at direction by the scriptwriter, actually even worse, an attempt by the scriptwriter to coach the actor/actress... along with other things like 'ANGLE ON', etc. it seems these sorts of items in scripts are becoming or considered not in keeping with current ideas on what is the script writing Standard... for whatever value of Standard there may be...

I've seen some writers use ellipses, where they purposely feel a need to pause in dialog, and inserting a line of action in the script would be awkward.

As a note the '--' is used to break dialog mid course, due to some action event that takes priority.
 
10s said:
what about a dramatic beat?
Click to expand...

Dramatic beat has to do with the moment in a scene...

it could be a split second, to 10 seconds... it all depends on the scene

Action Dramatic beat could be, because of the fast paced scene, a split second... so "take a beat before you grab the gun" so he holds off, giving the gun a look over before he picks it up"

Thriller "Hold off for a beat after she enters the room" this could be two, three seconds...


Once you're directing a film, you'll see yourself using this phrase... actors understand it... its the only word that fits... it means "hold off" or use an emotion
 
Actually there are two types of beats, and unfortunately this tends to cause confusion.
  1. one being a "pause," which shows up in a screenplay as ... between words, or the older way "beat"
  2. and the other way, the "dramatic beat," is the term for where there's a change in the character's awareness.
If directing is about storytelling and stories are about characters and how they change as they undergo a series of events, then directors need to identify and speak about these small changes of character development as they progress through the arc.

If I remember correctly the term beat is used to identify a dramatic unit, the smallest of all dramatic units. The term comes from the Russian Stanislavski drama teacher who taught "Method"/ "System" acting in New York. He would mention the dramatic "bit" referring to a small incremental change in performance but given his accent, it sounded like "beat" and now we have the term beat. Kind of like MOS meaning Mitt Out Sound, which was a German Director's accented way of saying, "we viel shoot dis mit out sound." (we will shoot this without sound) The American crew, being a bunch of jokers, used it and it stuck.

The term also references timing, like give it a beat. Something we do with musical timing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(filmmaking)





dramaticbeat (plural dramatic beats)
  1. (theater, filmology) The smallest division of action in a play, film or other work of drama; The moment at which increasing dramatic tension produces a noticable change in the consciousness of one or more characters.
 
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if you're asking this so you can use it to communicate to actors, you're better off saying "your awareness changes here" than you are coding it as a request for a "dramatic beat". and 100x better than that is to give them a playable action, instead of asking for a result (that is the purpose of "direction", afterall -- to advise an actor on what path to take toward the result, not simply asking them to get there).
 
Good points Zak. For me, the idea of thinking in small dramatic beats is so these small increments can be laid out and a roadmap of "playable actions" can be constructed ahead of time. This helps the director to define exactly these character development changes. Once this is done, then a director can figure out how to communicate and direct actors effectively.
 
Like 10s said:

A beat is unit of action.

That is how most contemporary actors usually prepare their scripts. By dividing the action into different "beats". This makes scene preparation and dialogue memorization much more easily categorized. When I took acting classes, this practice was encouraged by making us line the side of our scripts with brackets and little notes.

It really does help the actor.

If a director says "take a beat and sit down" this is a prescriptive way to tell the actor to wait a few seconds, although this instruction fails to provide the actor any real objective during that time of his/her performance.
 
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j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
A misspelt ingredient for borscht...

An attempt at direction by the scriptwriter, actually even worse, an attempt by the scriptwriter to coach the actor/actress... along with other things like 'ANGLE ON', etc. it seems these sorts of items in scripts are becoming or considered not in keeping with current ideas on what is the script writing Standard... for whatever value of Standard there may be...

I've seen some writers use ellipses, where they purposely feel a need to pause in dialog, and inserting a line of action in the script would be awkward.

As a note the '--' is used to break dialog mid course, due to some action event that takes priority.
Click to expand...


I do love borscht!

Beats are extremely useful. You can save lots of space by using them.

Rather than

TIM
Yo!

theres a silence

TIM
Whats Up?
_____
you can just go

TIME
Yo!
(Beat)
What's up?
 
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