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Delving into the inner workings of this season's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel |
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How to write a Script / Deconstructing Buffy & Angel - Jane Espenson / Tim Minear The main components in the composition of writing a script are: The Story Break The Outline 1st Draft 2nd Draft An important element to Buffy and Angel are: The Teaser The Act Breaks And then there are... Onions? Now that we understand what goes into the script, Jane and Tim gave us examples of episodes and how they were constructed. Superstar:
Who ya gonna call? In the ‘break’ the opener was discussed. Jane made an unordered list of items she wanted in it, but at the bottom was Jonathan in the trench coat! Doug pitched the idea of the WB shot but that was never filmed. They determined that Buffy grows to become a more rounded Buffy. "Not only is she the muscle, but she can fight alone ‘and’ command the troops. At this point there’s enough of a Buffy to now have fun." "The monster was supposed to be this horrific, pustules nightmare version of being a teenager but he ended up looking like an angry Gnome." (laughter) "We’ve got shape to the story, we know there’s going to be a big fight at the end ala the Danny Kaye movie ‘The Court Jester.’ Notice I’m not doing this in any particular order." As so often happens when putting the ideas together, they never just flow out the way we see them in the final product. "The Act 2 arc break comes when Jonathan removes his rob and we see the mark on his shoulder. This ‘turns’ the story and we realize he’s more connected with the monster than we thought. "Every now and then we’ll have one of these symbols that shows up and is very important because it tells us what the bad thing is connected to. Someone will always say, ‘but we’ve done this already and Joss will reply, ‘This is part of our business, that’s part of how Buffy works.’ We’ve established that’s part of how magic works. There are clues and traces and marks that you follow. As a writer you can end up making your job harder than you need to, to try and avoid something that doesn’t need avoiding." And the final addition of music helps make the scenes better. In the fight scene at the end for example, it wasn’t clear that when Buffy hurt the demon Jonathon gets weak and when the monster is winning Jonathan is strong. But when the music was added, "scary music, brave music." It made perfect sense after the editing of all these shots of Jonathan being brave and him being frightened.
Somnambulist:
Moral of the story: Some things written in the script don’t always translate to the director or the editor. One example of this is where Penn arrives at Angel’s office and Cordelia has opened the blinds. "In the script ‘it’s very dark’, which it never is (laughter)... ‘they’re separated by a shaft of sunlight between them.’ The director didn’t get it." The way it looked after shooting was two guys standing in a room with the blinds open talking. They went back with body doubles and re-shot it with an overhead to capture the desired appearance. The point of the montage where we see Angel, Kate and Penn "... was that while Kate is researching and discovering Angel was bad, Penn is discovering that Angel is now good and they are both revolted about what they are discovering about this guy." Fans drew on a major controversy when Kate appeared to enter an abandoned building after Penn alone with no backup. Tim sets the story straight, "There’s a whole sequence where Kate walks into the building, meets up with some cops, she hears a noise, they go off in opposite directions. I never sent her in alone! It just was never shot." Jane also jumps in defense of comments that "Buffy’s going down in quality because (Joss) spends all his time with Angel. Not true! Buffy gets all his time and Angel gets the leftovers." (laughter) "Yeah," Tim agrees, "We get the leftovers." One final highlight was Tim’s recount of a scene in ‘Sanctuary’ "I had like two days to write the script. It wasn’t broken until the last screaming second. I was writing Faith for the first time and asked Joss ‘could you please write the Buffy scenes?’ And I thought ‘oh I’m going to have to protect Buffy and I can’t make her sound whiny and how do I do this and what’s the point of view?’ So I gave it to Joss thinking ‘oh he’s gonna protect Buffy’ and I get these scenes back and I’m like, ‘What a bitch!’ (roar of laughter) We were looking for Angel’s point of view, but [Joss] wasn’t afraid to have her look petulant." Jane also adds, "The argument between Buffy and Angel was written, not to show Buffy was wrong, but that both arguments were valid. Unfortunately it didn’t come off that way." Joss obviously has a unique and amazing idea style. Tim and Jane gave us some reflection on what writing for these shows is based upon. "This is just my interpretation," Jane explains, "Joss doesn’t want a lot of codas wrapped up, ‘here’s where we’ve arrived’. He would just rather have you experience it as if you were among the characters, talk and resolve their differences. If you see them fighting side by side, one throws a weapon to the other, that shows that they’re back together and he’d rather have that than a conversation." When considering if a character should return, Jane continues, that you have to ask, " ‘Do you ‘need’ to bring him back? (Joss) will only bring back a character because it makes the story better. He’s all about story, which can sometimes be so irritating. Because sometimes you just wanna play with your action figures!" (laughter) Okay people, the visual here is so important! Imagine Jane sitting at the table and in each hand she’s holding an action figure. She bounces her hands up and down as if the figures are moving and she says in childlike frustration, ‘But I want Jonathan! I want Evil Willow!’" (more laughter) Tim finishes off the panel with this comment. "The great thing about working for Joss is he’s a namebrand writer. He’s a man with a vision. Writers are here to service this vision. He’s very quick to give credit where it’s due, he won’t change something just to change it. He always makes it better." And you can’t get any better than that!
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