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Screenwriting Visual Grammar:
Brokeback Mountain
In all the advice about screenwriting, visual grammar is one of the most overlooked elements, which is quite astonishing when you think about it. A script is the blueprint for a movie that consists of ... well, moving images and sound.
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Brokeback Mountain:
From Story to Screenplay
Read The Script and How It Was Written
One of the most illuminating and fascinating books about screenwriting is on how Proulx's story got to the screen. Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay by Annie Proulx, and screenwriters Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana is invaluable for many reasons. It contains the original story which was first published in The New Yorker, but best of all for screenwriters, it gives the screenplay in its entirety, including all the end credits.
The script for Brokeback used to be available on the internet but all the scripts online sites no longer carry it. As far as I can find out, the screenplay can not be found anywhere through the usual sources. You need to read it.
Brokeback Mountain is a masterclass for writers who want to discover how to use one of the most powerful elements in screenwriting. Visual grammar in this movie helps to give story and characters greater depth.
There is also an essay by each writer on their experience of how the story was adapted for the screen. This is not just a book for writers wanting to adapted prose fiction into movie scripts, it offers invaluable insights into how to write a screenplay of cinematic power.
Insights into the kind of choices screenwriters make and why they make them, both creative and practical. It's not often that we get the opportunity to be offered insights into the art and craft of screenwriting from such superb practitioners. Reading a movie script and watching the finished movie is probably the most important exercise any screenwriter can do. It should be scheduled into the writer's working life however experienced a screenwriter you are.
Studying a script and the movie it became is worth reading more than a stack of How To Write a Screenplay manuals.
Visual Grammar is Essential to Great Screenwriting
If you look through all the How To books or attend the scriptwriting seminars, the emphasis is almost always on things like structure, plot, dialogue, character, pace and so on. The vital aspect of visual grammar can often be almost completely absent from writing advice.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
in Brokeback Mountain.
Screenwriters: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana
Based on the novel by Annie Proulx.
Director: Ang Lee. Alberta Film. Focus Features.
Screenwriting Visual Grammar
For Everything
In screenwriting, visual grammar is not just about subjective camera, objective camera, camera angles, dissolves, jumpcuts, where to position the actor in the frame and so on.
These are for the director to choose, and they are absolutely critical aspects of film making. But visual grammar - cincematic story-telling - covers a much broader range, and has to start at the script stage.
Visualizing the film is one of the most crucial tasks for a scriptwriter.The director and cinematographer will be ultimately responsible for how the scenes are shot, and with the editor, will determine the final cut, but the writer still has a great opportunity to create the imagery, mood and atmosphere on the page.
The director and cinematographer will be ultimately responsible for how the scenes are shot, and with the editor, will determine the final cut, but the writer still has a great opportunity to create the imagery, mood and atmosphere on the page. This is, after all, where all movies start. Everything is an extension of the screenwriting process.
If there is just one movie to watch and its screenplay to read to help you with screenwriting visual grammar, I urge you to study Brokeback Mountain. If you haven't got a copy of the movie rent one or buy one here. And, as I say, the book is a must-read for every screenwriter. Both DVD and book are heavily discounted here.
Screenwriting visual grammar isn't really about pretty pictures. The visuals are not there simply to 'decorate' the story and give it a pictorial setting.
Mood and imagery are only a small part of what screenwriting visual grammar is about. It must involve the creation of the world of the story, character, the emotional plot, the narrative structure - just about everything.
Screenwriting Visual Grammar
for Expressing Psychological States
The really exhilarating aspect of visual grammar for the screenwriter is how much it can be used in all kinds of imaginative ways with which to help create tone, texture and feel of the story you are telling.
But, even better, you can also make it contribute in powerful ways to the creation of character and emotional resonance.
In the most distinctive screenwriting, visual grammar at it best makes meaning.Brokeback Mountain is a masterly example of the power of visual grammar. The stunning landscape that the characters inhabit is not there just to be a sumptuous feast for the eyes. It's not to provide a mere backdrop to the action.
The place is not only a major 'character', it influences every element of the movie - character, story, emotion, narrative structure, and way that the natural world itself affects and reflects the psychological and emotional states of human beings.
It's an absolutely essential element for telling this heart-achingly poignant love tragedy.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
in Brokeback Mountain.
Screenwriters: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana
Based on the novel by Annie Proulx.
Director: Ang Lee. Alberta Film. Focus Features
A Sense of Place to Power Emotion
For Rodeo rider Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and ranch hand Ennis ( Heath Ledger), Brokeback Mountain becomes the place where they can become the person they're meant to be. Free from society's constraints, living in a wilderness where no humans roam, the two cowboys gradually come to find a kind of freedom. It's here that they feel comfortable in their skins, a natural part of nature itself.
Screenwriting Visual Grammar
for Contrasting Worlds
Look at the scenes in the movie where we see Jack and Ennis back in the world where they have to suppress their new-found selves - they're also brilliant examples of screenwriting. Visual grammar is used here, among other things, to express the contrast between that world with the natural world of Brokeback Mountain.
And again, the visuals play their part in strengthening emotional plot and character. They help to show how in each enclosed space, the characters look and feel uncomfortable, and remind the audience of the vast empty spaces of Brokeback Mountain where Jack and Ennis felt at home.
Writing visual grammar in your script can be a three-word description of how a character wears their clothes. Look at the scene inside the church at Ennis' wedding. His suit, the shirt, the tie - tiny detail that adds something to the character feeling uncomfortable.
Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams
in Brokeback Mountain.
Screenwriters: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana
Based on the novel by Annie Proulx.
Director: Ang Lee. Alberta Film. Focus Features
Screenwriting Visual Grammar -
Feeling as well as Seeing.
Evoking feeling - this is one of the essences of great screenwriting. Visual grammar can provide not only powerful images, but can persuade the audience to touch and feel and smell the physical world of the movie.
Look at any scene in the script where Jack and Ennis are in the mountainous terrain, and see how little dialogue is there. Compare the scenes in the script with the movie. The screenplay shows a wonderful restraint in the dialogue too. McMurty and Ossana and director Lee were sensitive to the needs of the emotional plot, and recognized that silence and the land could do a much more effective job of showing the characters' feelings.
Restraint, as so often in screenwriting,
is a powerful tool.
The silent landscape in Brokeback Mountain works as a powerful presence - it reflects the buried emotion of Heath Ledger's taciturn ranch hand.
It almost seems to articulate what he cannot himself express in words.
And this shows us something else about McMurty and Ossana's screenwriting. Visual grammar is used for the evocation of emotion. The Proulx story on which they based the screenplay brilliantly conveyed the suppressed emotions of the two characters in the way the writer handled dialogue. McMurty and Ossana and Lee used the power of wordless emotion and allowed the actors to find ways to reveal it.
Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal
inBrokeback Mountain.
Screenwriters: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana
Based on the novel by Annie Proulx.
Director: Ang Lee. Alberta Film. Focus Features
There is a real sense in this film that the huge, expansive wilderness of mountain, forest and silence is pulling the characters further and further away from the world they have come from and the world they will have to go back to.
This goes right to the heart of the tragedy.
They find what their true nature is, but they will not be able to live by it.
Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain.
Screenwriters: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana
Based on the novel by Annie Proulx.
Director: Ang Lee. Alberta Film. Focus Features
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