Greetings, class!
This week, your assignment is to draft a script for the documentary project you initiated in class. If you are behind on blogs, catch up this week!
Don't forget to finish reading the script, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in your Adventures in the Screen Trade text. When we resume reading, the material will be based on this screenplay.
Have a wonderful week!
Truly,
Mariah
About Me
- Lightedstar
- Mariah Lichtenstern-Walebowa is an entrepreneur, media consultant and producer. She founded Lightedstar Entertainment and Mobile App Development Pro. Mariah's multimedia portfolio includes narrative film, documentaries, music videos, commercials, websites, blogs, and social networks.
1 comment:
Goldman's screenplay for Butch and Sundance exemplifies the qualities his strengths as a writer, but also tests the limits of what's acceptable and what's not.
The timing is incredible. His pace and brisk dialogue make the screenplay read easily and carry the story with tremendous momentum.
The interaction between Butch and Sundance feels like one long ongoing dialogue, the way a male friendship actually functions.
I think the strenghts of the script however, also quantify the weaknesses.
Example: Butch and Sundance are rarely not in one scene, either together or separate. This creates an intimate bond between us, the audience, and those characters. But since we don't know anything about the posse pursuing them, save the quick snipets of dialogue, they're just faces to us. Faces and names that we are told have some importance. But these faces don't do anything but pursue our heroes and show up an inopportune times.
I understand what Goldman's accomplishing here, putting us in the same position of Butch and Sundance, but I think we identify too strongly with them through this, to the point where we follow their logic and start to believe that no man could ever catch these guys. When it happens, we're just as shocked and taken aback as they are, and I think that leads to a lack of poignancy on Goldman's part. By keeping things so light and bouncy up and until the end, the tragedy behind these guys is a little lost.
On his format, I can never condone scripting a shot, and here Goldman does that and more, by going into song choices, and choosing photographs to go into his musical montages.
Goldman earned his place in Hollywood, and maybe this luxury can be afforded to him and a few others. But up and comers will be sadly disappointed when their own efforts aren't greeted with such enthusiasm. With writing, you need to let go, and just write, let the editors and the director worry about the nuts and bolts of a shot and a scene.
Overall, great sceenplay and a good read if you want to get inside the head of heavy hitter like Goldman.
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