But aren’t we a bit hard on dialogue?  Even Eisenstein, the famous Russian formalist known for his silent “montage”, saw it’s uses.

My interest in dialogue goes back to the old days when I read plays.  Most people think of a screenplay, or a film script, as the story and the dialogue.

I tried showing films in a foreign language, and have found that children over 5 tend to complain.  (Children under five, however, seem satisfied with cartoons in foreign languages.)

When I watch a film in a foreign language, even if it’s a language I know well (like French), subtitles in English will distract me.  I’ll find myself reading the subtitles and perhaps missing some of the action.

With this reliance on dialogue, I start to think that maybe the purists are being a bit eccentric.  Can you understand a film without dialogue?

Murnau and others strived to make such a film.  So did many of us in film school.

The silent filmmaker’s reasoning may have been that cards inserted into a film were annoying, and took away from the story and its pace.  Dialogue in the pre-sound days wasn’t filmmaking, it was subtitling.

A few filmmakers experimented with bringing art to these subtitles, but the text looked wrong.  Others tried to minimize it.

Now that we have sound, a film student’s main reason for dropping sound, or shooting MOS (without sound), is because shooting “sync” (synchronized) sound is expensive.  It’s simpler to shoot films without dialogue.

It’s difficult to shoot sound and a moving subject at once.  The mic (especially a boom microphone) could end up in shot.  You could pick up interference, or off screen sounds.  On camera mics usually aren’t very good.  Seperate microphones either limit movement or require extra crew members.

Yes, I have shot films where I monitored picture and mic at the same time.  It’s kind of like a circus feat.  That is, unless your subject is speaking in monotone or standing still.

Yes, I have used detached mics.  I have some amusing stories to tell you people forgetting they are wearing them.  These, however, pick up background sounds (like shirts ruffling) and do need to be monitored.

Dialogue is unquestioningly expensive, and it can distract us from the other things going on.

So why keep it?

To explore this, I have tried watching films without it.  Even Eisenstein admits that America’s fast paced talk was more gripping than Soviet poetics.  His reasoning for using silent film was partly that they didn’t have money.

If we look at propaganda from another angle, we see unsuccessful attempts by the Italians to send messages to the colonies.

Colonized people in Ethiopia, Italian Somalia, and even a great deal of people in Libya didn’t understand the Italian language and probably didn’t get Italian (or western) mannerisms.  Thus when they were shown Italian films, the propaganda value wore off.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat points out that the non-Italians brought their own meaning to these films.  Italian filmmakers didn’t realize how much they relied on dialogue (and other assumed understandings) to get their stories across.

As a result, the natives were cheering for “the wrong protagonists.”

Yes, I’ve cheered for the “bad” guy in a poorly made propaganda film, so I get where the “natives” where coming from.  That’s even when I understood the dialogue.

We bring a lot into a film when we watch it.  A big crutch we rely on in language.  That doesn’t mean that clear dialogue can save a bad movie.

I remember watching “An American President.”  Thrown in that film are statistics, seemingly invented on the spot, concerning gun control and other topical issues of the day.  I remember listening to Michael J. Fox spouting out these “facts” and having my cinema experience ruined.

Maybe I laughed, I don’t know.  I sure know that others laugh when a filmmaker shoves ideas down their throat through dialogue.

Take Poison Ivy’s environment speech in Batman and Robin, and Bruce Wayne’s “but what about the old people” counter argument.   What was the point of those lines?

Yes, the film wasn’t storyboarded well either, but the dialogue couldn’t move a bad story forward.

There are cases, however, when dialogue tends to work.  “Luke, I am your father” and “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” both work well with words.

You could have a flashback to Darth Vader with Luke’s mother, and then being there at Luke’s birth, but that just wouldn’t work as well.  You could have Rhet slam the door in Scarlett’s face, or walk away without saying anything, or do any number of things, but I think dialogue works best to show what Rhet really means.

Many great visual moments don’t rely on these dialogue points.

Take High Noon. The symbolic meaning of the Sheriff dropping the star and riding off without saying much really tells you the protagonist’s attitude.  In The Graduate, the opening and closing both show characters who are emotionally lost.  Without saying words, both movies say more than dialogue ever could.

But why does silence speak so well?  I think it’s because so much of the rest of the film relies on dialogue.

The absense of something only has meaning when contrasted with its presense.

If there are hundreds of children playing and talking in a field at the start of a scene, and no children at the same location later, we have change, and that change brings meaning.  If however, there are no children in either scene, and nothing to remind us of the existence of children, the lack of children at the end doesn’t carry as much meaning.

In the case of laughing children in a scene such as this, you can allow your actors to ad lib.  The noise may be more important than what is actually said.

Sometimes, mumbled background noise is unnecessarily subtitled, adding unintentional meaning to a film and distracting from the main storyline.  In a disco or a playground, the presence of sound means more than the mundane details of the dialogue that makes that sound.

In the end, only you will know how much dialogue your story really needs.  Each story is different, and every decision you make could produce a different outcome.

Can you make a film without dialogue?  Of course you can, it has been done.  Should you make a film without dialogue?  That depends on what message you want to bring across, and how you think it will best be conveyed.

If you can’t afford a microphone, but are creative enough to convey meaning without sinc sound, then go for it.  If you have a great sound team, but don’t have time to figure out how to tell a story without words, then there’s nothing immoral about using words.

In either case, remember that film, like language, is a form of communication.  Body language isn’t seen on the phone, but voice tone is heard.  Intonation isn’t heard in an email, but meanings are assumed from context and sentence structure.

The good news is, you don’t need a PhD in communication to communicate with your audience, whether you use dialogue or not.  No, all you need to do is put yourself in your audience’s place.

Who needs dialogue?  Those who can use it well.

Bibliography:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, editors. Italian Colonialism. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.)

Sergei M. Eisenstein. (translated by Alan Y. Upchurch.) On the composition of the short fiction scenario.  (Calcutta : Seagull Books and Eisenstein Cine Club, 1984.)

Oh, and not only do they make films, they also complain that the movies don’t accurately depict their country.

Now, before City of God came out, I’m sure hundreds of tourists ignored the news reports about kidnappings and other crimes.  Do you think after seeing that film people suddenly cancelled their holiday plans?

Let’s get real.  The fact that Brazilians can make movies which criticize their country is a good thing.  It shows that it’s not a fascist or communist dictatorship.

I mean seriously, some “patriotic” Brazilians are trying to attract Twilight and Woody Allen.  Why?  I think most people would rather get kidnapped by humans than get attacked by werewolves who suffer from teenage angst.

What do you think?  Do you think that Brazilians should only make movies that show the country as a happy, jungle-tree-hugging, Mardi-Gras-hoola-hoop, romantic utopia (kind of like Woody Allen’s Sleeper only the “leader’s nose” is the good guy)?  Or would you rather watch Jesse James and Al Capone?

Have you cancelled a trip to Brazil after seeing a Brazilian movie?

A lot of the public domain material out there is terrible.   If you look, you may find a gem, but that takes almost as long as writing one yourself.

So you look to experienced screenwriters.

Q. How do you get an experienced screenwriter to write you a screenplay?

A. Give the screenwriter what they want.

Q. What do screenwriters want?

A. Money and/or to get their film made.

How can you give a writer enough money to write a feature film?  This can take a year.

One thing you can do is option the screenplay, which is make a down payment to reserve the script until you get the rest of the money.  This can cost significantly less than commissioning an entire script, upfront at least.  And the option is something you can use to attract investors and pay for the top crew, cast, etc.

A good script, when optioned, can also be used to attract the cast and crew to your project, bringing credibility to your project when you show it to investors.

Still, why would a screenwriter want to settle for an option and not be paid everything upfront?  Because, besides just money, they want a guarantee that the film will be made.

At first, an option doesn’t look like a viable guarantee that a film will be made.  A multi-billion dollar (or pound, or euro) studio, with the money and know-how to make high quality a film, might prefer to buy a script outright.

And, as a beginning filmmaker, an option might not be enough to convince a talented and experienced screenwriter to send you a script.  It also may not be enough to convince investors to invest in your project.  You might need to first prove your abilities as a filmmaker.  Is this a catch 22?

It may seem like a catch 22, but there are ways of proving your ability without making a feature film.

One of those ways is by making a short film.  And even the shortest film starts with a good script.

But where do you find a good enough short script?  Something that can be shot on a reasonable budget, that is professional?

I’m sure you’ve all seen short scripts written by people who think screenwriting is easy money.  Although useful, screenwriting software shared by thousands, perhaps millions, does not produce a professional, just as seminars attended by hundreds every week do not produce experts.

In some parts of the business, people buy one book and nominate themselves as instant experts.

Wouldn’t you prefer a screenplay written by someone who tells stories to children every night?  Someone who has seriously studied storytelling since the first time he heard a ghost story by a campfire?   Someone who has been writing screenplays for well over a decade and can still enjoy films that are made for a mass audience?

Perhaps you’d prefer someone who has written screenplays for his own films, someone who has done the math and knows how much a certain shot will cost.

How can you get one of these writers to write a short script for you?  Make a small investment.

Think about all the money a good script could save you.  How much are you willing to spend on long seminars, expensive courses, over-rated software, or long winded and pretentious sounding books, only to find out some are useful and others are worthless?  Wouldn’t you rather spend your time, talent and energy on becoming a better filmmaker?   Wouldn’t you rather someone else did all that research for you?

A good script can help you attract the right kind of people to your project.  It’s the starting block for any good film.

There’s nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.
- Richard Attenborough

Vasco Phillip de Sousa has been involved in the production of every kind of short film: from music videos to gangster films to documentaries.

He knows which effects can be done on a budget, and which ones are easier said than done.

He knows what will make a child laugh, and what kind of story will captivate a grown up.

Vasco wants you to get your film made, so that later you’ll come back for more.