Lecture Notes(Week 8)

Elements of Dialogue
Good dialogue:
- Makes you reflect
- Impactful
- Realistic

Bad dialogue:
- Draggy/ Long-winded
- Unnecessary
- Cheesy lines
- On the nose (stating the obvious)
- Mundane

Dialogue reveals character
- A character will talk about himself and other people will talk about him.

Dialogue also reveals…
- A person’s background
- Emotions
- Educational background

Dialogue establishes relationships between characters
- Once you have established your main character’s POV, you can use dialogue with other characters to show that they have other attitudes, creating opposite/alternative POVs.
- This helps to create and sustain the element of CONFLICT between characters.

Good effective dialogue will move the story forward
- It must always give new information to your viewers

Dialogue communicates faces and information to the audience
- It conveys essential exposition
- Characters will talk about what happened, establishing the storyline.

Dialogue comments on the action.

Dialogue should be in present tense (present situation)

Dialogue ties the script together (Links two scenes together)
- It is one of the devices that YOU as a writer can use to expand and enlarge your characters.

“If you can see it or hear it, don’t write it.” -Neville Smith (Do not state the obvious)

Dialogue should be used sparingly

NEVER tell the audience what they can see for themselves!!!

DIALOGUE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ACTION

In Hollywood, when they look at a page and it’s got too much black, too much ink on the paper, they say: “SHIT! IT’S FREEZE THE CAMERA TIME!

Common Mistake:
- Students sometimes never achieve a level of competence as they tend to reproduce conventional spoken language, long statements of “REAL TALKING”, and defend their decision by telling that: “It’s how the character speaks.”

GOOD DIALOGUE is not somebody’s ability to write authentic speech heard in real life.
- If that was all there is to it, you can just push a button on the tape recorder and then go collect your Oscar.

When giving characters a ‘voice’, note his:
- Race
- Age
- Gender
- Background
- Educational qualifications
- Physical looks
(come out with a biography)

GOOD DIALOGUE is the illusion of reality.
- You’ve got to know how to edit what people say without losing any of the spirit.

Common mistake:
- Students tend to create radio shows with images

FILM IS A VISUAL MEDIUM

A SCREENPLAY IS A STORY TOLD IN PICTURES.

Assignment:

THE REAL EXERCISE
- repeat “the experiment” but:
- Husband and wife are YOUR own parents
- Get two people to read the dialogue
- Record the reading
- Post it to your blog (using Youtube, Multiply, etc)
- Try not to be more than 2 minutes
- BY 20TH JUNE