As it's writing season again for FC De Kampioenen, and I'm in the process of writing (hopefully) a couple of scripts, I thought it might be interesting to let you, gentle reader, follow the steps in my creative process.
Of course everyone works in a different way, but it's always revealing to see how writers deal with all the theoretical concepts and 'rules' in the real world, i.e. the actual creative process. International readers may get an impression of how the scriptwriting development process works in Flemish television.
So, first up, is the IDEA for the episode.
This is the germ of everything that follows. So it's important that the idea has sufficient potential to power an entire episode, and that it fits with the series you're writing for (if you're writing for television, that is).
Many of the writers I work with seem to be very resistant towards providing nutshells. They immediately go into one- or two-page treatments as the first step of their process. Personally, I prefer the shorter version, no longer than a paragraph: if you immediately start seeing the possibilities inherent in the idea, without knowing any of the details, that's a clear indication that the idea has legs. On the other hand, if the idea fails to stimulate the imagination of the intended audience (producer, director, script-editor, fellow writers), then it's best to either drop it or revise it considerably. And it's much easier to do this when you haven't yet spent days or weeks designing the entire plot.
Incidentally, in some manuals on sitcom writing you will find the advice to come up with a story first, and add the comedy later.
WRONG!!!
The idea for a comedy episode MUST have the humourous element embedded in it. That's not to say the same basic topic couldn't be treated dramatically, but the comedic possibilities must leap out at whoever you pitch the idea to.
It's my experience (and I've been doing this since 1991) that an idea for an episode which doesn't strike me as funny, will never become really funny in its further development.
Basically, a comedy series idea which isn't (potentially) funny is like an idea for a whodunit without a murder...
What else should your idea have? Well, it must be clear who the main character is going to be (in an ensemble comedy series like FCDK that's truly essential), what the source of the problem or conflict is going to be, and - usually - who the main opponent is going to be. You can add a bit of story development if it's important to get the essence of the episode across as well, but if the above ingredients are well-chosen, that will often not even be necessary.
How do I find my ideas? It depends - it can be because a specific episode needs to be written (introducing a new character, for example), or because of specific productional limitations (we need an episode with no exterior scenes). It often comes from juxtaposing characters, and looking for character elements which are present in the write-up but which haven't been used sufficiently or at all; from looking for ways in which the characters can be put in a new and unfamiliar situation; and from trying to create a relationship or conflict between two characters who don't usually have a lot to do with each other.
Plus, of course, the usual inspiration from life, newspaper articles, trends in society, and occasionally even other series or movies. Inspiration can strike at any time - but it can also stay absent for far too long, at times.
To finish, here's the idea for the last FCDK episode I wrote, 'Vraag Het Aan Vertongen' (Ask Vertongen). For the readers who don't know the series, Marc is our resident Jerry Lewis-type character (a bumbling fool), and Boma is the owner of the team and of a sausage factory. Despite his status, he's definitely not the brightest bulb of the lot.
'Marc decides to become a business consultant, despite having no experience in the field. When Boma's main business rival hires him and declares him a genius, all the Champions start to take him seriously and ask him for business advice - with predictably disastrous results all round, especially for Boma's company...'
We have the main character (Marc), the main problem of the episode (everyone asks him for advice and follows it with disastrous results). The main thrust of the episode (Boma's company is almost brought to its knees by Marc's creative ideas) is mentioned explicitly, the other storylines are implied. Inspiration for the episode came from my lack of respect for consultants, who generally make tons of money for providing advice which is either impractical or self-evident. And putting Marc in the role of a business consultant was the most effective way of making fun (and satirising) the whole trend.
Showing posts with label FC De Kampioenen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FC De Kampioenen. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Getting To Know You
Make sure you know who your characters are before you unleash them on the audience.
A couple of years ago, I was involved as script-editor in the creation of a new Flemish comedy series called Urbain. Starring Flanders’ best-known comedian, Urbanus, the series’ premise was a fictitious look at the home life of the comedian. When his wife decides to go back to work, he agrees to look after the kids, helped and hindered by his mother, brother-in-law/manager and his young female chauffeur. Though Urbanus had made a few films and several TV series, he’d never been involved with a sitcom before. As we developed the scripts, one major problem quickly arose which never got solved satisfactorily. The secondary characters never gelled. Urbain’s mother was borderline demented in one episode, sharp-witted and romantically hyperactive in the next. His brother-in-law fancied the chauffeur one moment, and ignored her the next; his relationship with Urbain was never clearly defined, and his central comedic archetype remained maddeningly vague. Despite my best efforts, it proved impossible to get a consensus on these matters. Though ratings weren’t a disaster, the series never found its audience, and a second series never materialized. The reasons for its lack of success were many, but the lack of strongly defined characters certainly didn’t help matters.
It’s not just fairly obscure Belgian sitcoms which suffer from this problem, though. Not Going Out, the new BBC comedy series starring stand-up comedians Lee Mack and Tim Vine, is in exactly the same boat. Now, this show has been successful (series three has been ordered), and it’s a great vehicle for Mack’s stand-up persona. But in series one, Lee’s flatmate and potential love interest Kate (Megan Dodds) was funny, level-headed, and self-assured one moment, humour-impaired, insecure and frankly insane the next (she sincerely tries to turn a dog into a vegetarian, for instance). In season two, Kate was replaced by career-girl Lucy (Sally Bretton), Tim’s younger sister, who moves in with Lee but quickly falls in love with the much older Guy (Simon Dutton). Once again, both characters are ill-defined. Guy is the worst offender : in his introductory episode he’s thought to be gay (he isn’t, but does hang around in a gay club in the afternoon), later he’s discovered to be the owner of a lapdance club (as well as being a successful ‘ordinary’ businessman), and finally he’s sinister enough to be thought a gangster. Simon Dutton struggles manfully with the part, but it’s a relief all around when Lucy (arbitrarily) dumps him in the final episode of season 2. Lucy’s love for Guy is equally unfounded – at no time during the series do we get the feeling that her emotions are based on anything but the dramatic need for there to be an obstacle between her and Lee.
So what are the underlying causes for this phenomenon? I think there are two main offenders:
1) Placing plot before character. The writer(s) come up with a really funny situation for the lead character, and the secondary character is then forced into a role which allows that situation to occur. Two good examples from Not Going Out, season two: in the aforementioned episode which introduces Guy, Lucy and Lee have to think he’s gay. This is so that Lee can pretend to be gay as well in order to go to football matches with Guy as his ‘date’. Guy spends much of the episode ‘testing’ Lee to see whether he’s faking his sexual orientation or not. But since Guy isn’t gay, what does he care if Lee is ‘honestly’ homosexual? What’s really going on is that Lee having to pretend to be gay is a powerful comedic situation. Unfortunately, Guy’s integrity as a character is sacrificed in order to get to the funny stuff. In a later episode Lucy suddenly decides to open an art gallery – just so that Lee can pretend to be an expert and give her disastrous buying advice, which she then foolishly takes. Just for the record, I like Not Going Out, which is one of the only good mainstream UK sitcoms of recent years. It’s just that these weaknesses in characterization keep it from becoming an all-time classic.
2) ‘Fear of commitment’. Once you decide how your characters act and think, a lot of avenues are closed off. And yes, there will be ideas which can no longer be implemented, and yes, sometimes that will be regrettable. But the benefits of clearly defining your characters far outweigh these minor annoyances. Not only are you able to create better plots, which flow from the nature of your characters and therefore are more truthful and affecting, but you will also allow the actor playing the role to really bring the character fully to life. Otherwise, they will have to interpret the role and make some personal choices which might not be good for the script – or for the series as a whole.
How do you remedy this situation, once it occurs? Put the character first. Forget about plots and situations, make sure that you arrive at a psychological profile that makes sense and is multi-layered. In certain cases, you will be able to use what’s written already to help you out. Maybe it’s disjointed, but try to find a psychological model which makes sense out of what you already have. Then it’s a question of filling in the blanks, or finding a basic motivation or contradiction within the character which creates the necessary guiding framework. You may even find that what seems an incoherent mess actually already holds the seeds of the solution within it.
As an example from my own experience: when I rejoined FC De Kampioenen as script-editor after having been away for several years, I was faced with a new character, Maurice, whom I didn't understand at all. The actor playing the character, Tuur De Weerdt, an excellent thespian with a very broad range, managed to make the character work on screen, but nevertheless Maurice was not defined well enough for me to know how he should be used in the storylines. He was polite, lived with a very domineering mother, belonged to the nobility but kept this hidden, and knew everything about anything (sort of a Cliff Clavin who actually got his facts right). He was also deliberatly designed to be mysterious, but the core of his mystery was not known. And this was the main problem: at the heart of the character was an empty space, waiting to be filled.
So we did a brainstorm about Maurice, talking through the several options and trying to find a framework which made all the disparate elements fall into place. The most recent script in which Maurice was featured had him participate in a beer-tasting competition: he knew everything there was to know about the different types of beer but refused to drink any. Once he was forced to, he immediately lost all inhibitions and became roaring drunk.
Using this incident as a springboard, we decided that Maurice used to be a hell-raising playboy when he was young, who managed to lose the family fortune at the roulette table. Feeling guilty, he consciously suppressed his wild side, let his mother dominate him to keep hem in check, and became the opposite of the bad boy he had been before. However, the darkness was still inside him, and in order to satisfy his hunger for intoxicating experiences, he started to read and study voraciously. His encyclopedic knowledge about every topic known to man stemmed from his attempts to experience the fullness of life at one remove.
Once we knew this, it opened up a lot of possibilities. We gave Maurice a dormant gambling addiction, it was revealed he was a frequent visitor of a brothel - where he did nothing but talk to the girls, and he also showed traces of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, an externalization of his need to keep his 'dark side' under control. As a character, Maurice was brought into focus, and every writer now knew what made him tick exactly. And best of all, the new character description still allowed us enormous leeway. We didn't really close off any options, the character was far richer than before and the comedic options increased exponentially.
And in case you're wondering: the audience doesn't know about this backstory at all (though at some point it may be revealed if an episode asks for it). They don't need it to enjoy the character. But for writers, directors and actors, this type of clarity is absolutely essential.
A couple of years ago, I was involved as script-editor in the creation of a new Flemish comedy series called Urbain. Starring Flanders’ best-known comedian, Urbanus, the series’ premise was a fictitious look at the home life of the comedian. When his wife decides to go back to work, he agrees to look after the kids, helped and hindered by his mother, brother-in-law/manager and his young female chauffeur. Though Urbanus had made a few films and several TV series, he’d never been involved with a sitcom before. As we developed the scripts, one major problem quickly arose which never got solved satisfactorily. The secondary characters never gelled. Urbain’s mother was borderline demented in one episode, sharp-witted and romantically hyperactive in the next. His brother-in-law fancied the chauffeur one moment, and ignored her the next; his relationship with Urbain was never clearly defined, and his central comedic archetype remained maddeningly vague. Despite my best efforts, it proved impossible to get a consensus on these matters. Though ratings weren’t a disaster, the series never found its audience, and a second series never materialized. The reasons for its lack of success were many, but the lack of strongly defined characters certainly didn’t help matters.
It’s not just fairly obscure Belgian sitcoms which suffer from this problem, though. Not Going Out, the new BBC comedy series starring stand-up comedians Lee Mack and Tim Vine, is in exactly the same boat. Now, this show has been successful (series three has been ordered), and it’s a great vehicle for Mack’s stand-up persona. But in series one, Lee’s flatmate and potential love interest Kate (Megan Dodds) was funny, level-headed, and self-assured one moment, humour-impaired, insecure and frankly insane the next (she sincerely tries to turn a dog into a vegetarian, for instance). In season two, Kate was replaced by career-girl Lucy (Sally Bretton), Tim’s younger sister, who moves in with Lee but quickly falls in love with the much older Guy (Simon Dutton). Once again, both characters are ill-defined. Guy is the worst offender : in his introductory episode he’s thought to be gay (he isn’t, but does hang around in a gay club in the afternoon), later he’s discovered to be the owner of a lapdance club (as well as being a successful ‘ordinary’ businessman), and finally he’s sinister enough to be thought a gangster. Simon Dutton struggles manfully with the part, but it’s a relief all around when Lucy (arbitrarily) dumps him in the final episode of season 2. Lucy’s love for Guy is equally unfounded – at no time during the series do we get the feeling that her emotions are based on anything but the dramatic need for there to be an obstacle between her and Lee.
So what are the underlying causes for this phenomenon? I think there are two main offenders:
1) Placing plot before character. The writer(s) come up with a really funny situation for the lead character, and the secondary character is then forced into a role which allows that situation to occur. Two good examples from Not Going Out, season two: in the aforementioned episode which introduces Guy, Lucy and Lee have to think he’s gay. This is so that Lee can pretend to be gay as well in order to go to football matches with Guy as his ‘date’. Guy spends much of the episode ‘testing’ Lee to see whether he’s faking his sexual orientation or not. But since Guy isn’t gay, what does he care if Lee is ‘honestly’ homosexual? What’s really going on is that Lee having to pretend to be gay is a powerful comedic situation. Unfortunately, Guy’s integrity as a character is sacrificed in order to get to the funny stuff. In a later episode Lucy suddenly decides to open an art gallery – just so that Lee can pretend to be an expert and give her disastrous buying advice, which she then foolishly takes. Just for the record, I like Not Going Out, which is one of the only good mainstream UK sitcoms of recent years. It’s just that these weaknesses in characterization keep it from becoming an all-time classic.
2) ‘Fear of commitment’. Once you decide how your characters act and think, a lot of avenues are closed off. And yes, there will be ideas which can no longer be implemented, and yes, sometimes that will be regrettable. But the benefits of clearly defining your characters far outweigh these minor annoyances. Not only are you able to create better plots, which flow from the nature of your characters and therefore are more truthful and affecting, but you will also allow the actor playing the role to really bring the character fully to life. Otherwise, they will have to interpret the role and make some personal choices which might not be good for the script – or for the series as a whole.
How do you remedy this situation, once it occurs? Put the character first. Forget about plots and situations, make sure that you arrive at a psychological profile that makes sense and is multi-layered. In certain cases, you will be able to use what’s written already to help you out. Maybe it’s disjointed, but try to find a psychological model which makes sense out of what you already have. Then it’s a question of filling in the blanks, or finding a basic motivation or contradiction within the character which creates the necessary guiding framework. You may even find that what seems an incoherent mess actually already holds the seeds of the solution within it.
As an example from my own experience: when I rejoined FC De Kampioenen as script-editor after having been away for several years, I was faced with a new character, Maurice, whom I didn't understand at all. The actor playing the character, Tuur De Weerdt, an excellent thespian with a very broad range, managed to make the character work on screen, but nevertheless Maurice was not defined well enough for me to know how he should be used in the storylines. He was polite, lived with a very domineering mother, belonged to the nobility but kept this hidden, and knew everything about anything (sort of a Cliff Clavin who actually got his facts right). He was also deliberatly designed to be mysterious, but the core of his mystery was not known. And this was the main problem: at the heart of the character was an empty space, waiting to be filled.
So we did a brainstorm about Maurice, talking through the several options and trying to find a framework which made all the disparate elements fall into place. The most recent script in which Maurice was featured had him participate in a beer-tasting competition: he knew everything there was to know about the different types of beer but refused to drink any. Once he was forced to, he immediately lost all inhibitions and became roaring drunk.
Using this incident as a springboard, we decided that Maurice used to be a hell-raising playboy when he was young, who managed to lose the family fortune at the roulette table. Feeling guilty, he consciously suppressed his wild side, let his mother dominate him to keep hem in check, and became the opposite of the bad boy he had been before. However, the darkness was still inside him, and in order to satisfy his hunger for intoxicating experiences, he started to read and study voraciously. His encyclopedic knowledge about every topic known to man stemmed from his attempts to experience the fullness of life at one remove.
Once we knew this, it opened up a lot of possibilities. We gave Maurice a dormant gambling addiction, it was revealed he was a frequent visitor of a brothel - where he did nothing but talk to the girls, and he also showed traces of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, an externalization of his need to keep his 'dark side' under control. As a character, Maurice was brought into focus, and every writer now knew what made him tick exactly. And best of all, the new character description still allowed us enormous leeway. We didn't really close off any options, the character was far richer than before and the comedic options increased exponentially.
And in case you're wondering: the audience doesn't know about this backstory at all (though at some point it may be revealed if an episode asks for it). They don't need it to enjoy the character. But for writers, directors and actors, this type of clarity is absolutely essential.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Welcome, bienvenu, welkom...
Hi everyone & hallo iedereen,
First post of my first blog! Wow, talk about a momentous occasion...
Introductions are in order. I'm Wout Thielemans, script-editor, writer and educator, and I've been doing nothing but working on screenplays and scriptwriting since 1991. I've worked on some of the most succesful fiction series on Belgian television of the last 20 years (to wit FC De Kampioenen, the most succesful sitcom ever made in Belgium and now in its 20th year, Thuis, the most popular daily soap and Witse, the number one crime series over here). I've also taught many succesful screenwriters over the years, and have written over 50 TV-scripts .
In this blog, I'll be talking about anything and everything script-related which I find to be of interest. There might be script, book, film and television reviews, there will be insights, reposts of articles, information about projects, possibly even some scripts which for whatever reason didn't get produced (though these will usually be in Dutch).
I hope to be able to provide an interesting, transatlantic point of view on scriptwriting and audiovisual storytelling, and I look forward to reading your comments! And of course, please don't hesitate to ask any questions. Let the screenwriting madness begin!
First post of my first blog! Wow, talk about a momentous occasion...
Introductions are in order. I'm Wout Thielemans, script-editor, writer and educator, and I've been doing nothing but working on screenplays and scriptwriting since 1991. I've worked on some of the most succesful fiction series on Belgian television of the last 20 years (to wit FC De Kampioenen, the most succesful sitcom ever made in Belgium and now in its 20th year, Thuis, the most popular daily soap and Witse, the number one crime series over here). I've also taught many succesful screenwriters over the years, and have written over 50 TV-scripts .
In this blog, I'll be talking about anything and everything script-related which I find to be of interest. There might be script, book, film and television reviews, there will be insights, reposts of articles, information about projects, possibly even some scripts which for whatever reason didn't get produced (though these will usually be in Dutch).
I hope to be able to provide an interesting, transatlantic point of view on scriptwriting and audiovisual storytelling, and I look forward to reading your comments! And of course, please don't hesitate to ask any questions. Let the screenwriting madness begin!
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