Today was the last day of the long awaited two day workshop with the awe-inspiring Karel Segers. Now, hang on a second. Just wait a moment. I don’t use the term ‘awe-inspiring’ lightly. In fact, I don’t really use it at all. But in Karel’s case, it’s absolutely required.
You have to understand something. I believe that when you love doing a certain activity, you tend to think about that activity a lot. You tend to read about it, or watch videos on it, attend courses on it and talk about it a hell of a lot with other people who love it, too. And of course, you’re always doing that activity. Finding joy in it. Refining the little things. Celebrating the small steps. Getting emotional when you complete the big steps. Losing track of time when you do all of the above. Unfortunately, when you immerse yourself in an activity like that – the way Ryan and I have immersed ourselves in the act of screenwriting – the rate in which you learn new things slows down. Oh, you never stop learning. Never. But the amount of moments where you have revelatory “ah HA!” lessons about that which you love slowly and steadily decreases. Sure, you more value the moments when you know that your craft just got better, but gone are the days when you are on an almost continual rush of learning about something that you love.
At least, that’s what we thought.
If you’re very lucky, once you get to that point in your life, you meet someone like Karel. We thought we knew story. We thought we knew about writing screenplays. But when we sat down in that first classroom session of POD last year and Karel started to speak, we quickly realised that we didn’t know shit.
The man knows story. But even that statement isn’t weighty enough.
Look, here’s the thing. Creative stories sit in genres. At it’s core, the genre tells a potential audience member what they are getting for their money. With books, for example, this is pretty easy to communicate to an audience because you’ve got the cover artwork, the blurb on the back cover and the first couple of pages of the book to get that message across and make the potential buyer feel comfortable about that purchase. After that point, if they’re not happy with what they got, it’s on them. With film, it’s not that easy. Sure, you’ve got the poster. And you’ve got the logline and other marketing collateral. But the difference is that the potential audience member has an unconscious and implicit understanding of what makes a film successfully sit in the genre it was intended to be placed, and will hold the filmmaker responsible if they screw it up. If you don’t satisfy those requirements in their collective minds, they will be on to you in a flash. Your screenplay almost certainly won’t get picked up. And if it somehow does, your film will die the death of ‘bad word of mouth’. Audiences who handed over their hard-earned cash to ‘get what they paid for’ but didn’t will justifiably destroy your film. Genre is an agreement between filmmaker and audience member. It’s a covenant, and you need to hold up your end of the deal.
Now imagine the value of an individual who knows story so well, that he can teach you the many subtle variations of requirements and pay off that sit within each of those genres, and do it in a way that even simpletons like us can understand. Imagine if that person, in addition to this almost paranormal level of knowledge, was also aware of pretty much every screenwriting theory that is out there, from Campbell to Hague and everything in between. If you can conceive of that, and then throw into the mix a genuine love of teaching people and seeing them improve – then, Dear Reader, you will start to get an idea of the measure of the man that is Karel Segers.
If you think I’m laying it on a bit thick, if you think that there’s no way that there could be such an individual out there, you have to understand that even before we came to the end of POD, we had already completely overhauled our screenwriting process to include the knowledge and processes that he had imparted to us and everyone else in that room over the months of the program. We knew that if nothing came out of our participation in POD other than learning from one of the best story theorists in the world today, we would be well ahead.
And so, Dear Reader, if you happen to be interested in the gentle art of screenwriting, you would do well to look the man up and start learning from him.
The two day workshop with him was great, of course, but mainly because of it’s efficiency. By this point in the screenplay development, Karel knows how we work and we all have a shorthand about the pages and where they are at. That’s not to say he didn’t blow us away with something new to learn, of course. He did. Again. He showed us a method for applying structure within scenes to ensure interest and dramatic intent that was better than anything we had been doing before. Aside from being just a good thing to learn and know in general, it’s so crucial for our story. Because the vast majority of the scenes are occurring in an enclosed and restrictive location, the real danger is that we just end up with talking heads that sends our audience to sleep. Karel, once again, showed us the way.
My only hope is that what we end up writing in some way measures up to what Karel’s guidance shows is possible.
The only way to find out, of course, is to roll up our sleeves and get it done.
