Hello Nick. I haven't checked this thread in over a month, so I haven't caught your reply until now. But be prepared: this post is without a doubt tl;dr.
First of all, if you had not merely "skimmed briefly" over my posts, you would have realised that I was *not* participating in a discussion that aimed to discover "the defining factors in writing effective dialogue and producing good movies." I was participating in a discussion that disputed what qualities constitute *subtle acting and dialogue.* There’s clearly a very, very large difference. I *don't* believe that subtext is the central factor in producing good films. I don't believe that at all. (If you want to start up a conversation about what I consider to be the many aspects that make a film good, I'll happily oblige.) However, I *do* believe that utilising subtext and avoiding melodrama are central factors in writing *subtle* dialogue. You’ve accused me of not properly understanding the context of your scenes. Well, take your own advice. Make more of an effort to properly understand the context of this discussion before you reply. In your reply you openly admitted that you *purposely* wrote Gabriel's dialogue in direct, obvious ways. Well, that just proves my point! The dialogue in Gabriel is *not* subtle, and was never supposed to be. If one of the screenwriters of the film admits as much, Hap99's claim that Gabriel had "subtle acting and dialogue" is pretty well sunk. Thanks for agreeing with me. I can go home now.
Nonetheless, the point remains that what I found least successful about your film was the hokey dialogue, whether it was intentional or not. I was honestly cringing throughout many scenes of the film because the dialogue seemed so false. During other scenes I started mumbling to myself, "blah, blah, blah..." over the actors because their lines were so silly. At other moments I wanted to throw something at the screen. Clearly, this is not the reaction you want your audience to have. It's not just me either. Many credible film critics criticised the dialogue in their reviews of your film:
- The Sydney Morning Herald review called your dialogue "stilted."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/film-reviews/gabriel/2007/11/15/1194766813387.html
-Variety wrote: "As with the other actors, Noble's mannequin-like perf is not helped by the script's tendency to favor platitudes and speeches over real dialogue."
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935538.html?categoryid=31&cs=1
-The Herald Sun called the dialogue "unfathomable gibberish."
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22769368-5014207,00.html
-FILMINK described Sammael's dialogue as "twaddle."
http://www.filmink.com.au/reviews/index.php?movie_id=5447&smallscreen_id=
-Empire wrote that the abundance of "exposition wears us out"
http://www.empireonline.com.au/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=1000000675
- David Stratton derided your dialogue, saying that it "is of the 'It doesn’t have to BE this way' variety."
http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2066063.htm
It's clear that you have well thought out justifications for deliberately writing the screenplay the way you did. But I don't think you've fully succeeded in pulling off all that you intended to. Instead of interpreting direct dialogue as evidence of the characters' innocence, I just found it annoying.
1. Your first point was that by writing the characters openly discussing their woes in frequently direct, emotional ways, it conveys to the audience that the characters' situations have become almost unbearable. Well, when melodrama is used sparingly it has real impact. I'm not advocating that you can never have characters react in intensely emotional ways. The thing is, when almost every scene is melodramatic, the impact of melodrama begins to cancel itself out. The audience becomes desensitised to it. Instead of a highly emotional scene being significant, it becomes routine.
For example, take the film Little Miss Sunshine (Oscar for Best Original Screenplay). The character of Dwayne (the son) remains calm and silent throughout almost the entire film. But then he learns that because of his colour-blindness he will never achieve his dream of become a fighter-pilot. He goes on an extremely emotional outburst- screaming, swearing and so on. This is significant to the audience- we can see that he is acting extremely differently to his normal behaviour. He has restrained his emotions so much throughout the film, that when he lets them loose, it means something. We can see that he's extremely upset. If Dwayne had been angry and emotional throughout the entire film, this outburst would have had no significance at all. It would have been ordinary, uneventful behaviour. We would have been so used to such behaviour that we wouldn't even notice it. Saving the extreme emotional reactions for when they truly count means that they have more impact. If you write characters that always speak the direct truth, it makes the trait of honesty invisible. To convince the audience that the angels find their existence in purgatory unbearable we need to see some sort of contrast with their normal behaviour.
2. You second claim that was conveying a character's meaning through subtext (action/body language) or through dialogue is exactly the same; that is, the form of expression is different, but the ultimate meaning/depth conveyed to the audience is identical. Well, think of it this way, a character has two main ways of conveying meaning to the audience: through their dialogue and through their actions. If dialogue and action are aligned, you say the same thing twice. If dialogue and action are contradictory or different, you can convey twice as much information to the audience in the same amount of time. Therefore, a character that utilises action/body language/subtext can potentially have twice as much depth as one that doesn't.
For instance, take the film The Departed (Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay). Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Billy, is constantly lying about being an undercover cop. He's forever trying to uphold his facade against suspicion. He's almost always in a high risk situation, under threat of being killed. But he doesn't put all this on the surface in every scene. (There are a few scenes where he lets it all out- they are significant because most of the time he holds it back). Take the scene where Billy meets Jack Nicholson's character, Costello, for the first time: we see Billy putting on this facade of being a tough guy who can murder anyone he likes, playing the role on a gangster when we know he really wants to be a law abiding policeman. When Costello twists his broken arm and asks him "Are you still a cop?" we see the painful extent to which Billy is prepared to go to in order to one day fulfil his goal of becoming a real cop. This is what I call depth. Would you recommend to Martin Scorsese that he throw out William Monahan's script and rewrite it so that DiCaprio outright stated all his feelings in this scene? So that his thoughts, actions and dialogue perfectly mirrored each other? Do that, and half the information about the character would be lost. Billy would become much more shallow. He could be either a tough criminal OR a scared policeman, but there wouldn't be room in the scene for him to be both at the same time.
All people are like undercover cops to some degree. Even in day to day life people maintain facades, trying to appear to be more successful than they actually are, trying to play the role that others expect of them. I would find Jade a deeper, more complex character if she found purgatory completely unbearable, but still tried to put on the facade of being positive and hopeful because that's who Gabriel expected her to be. I think she would show much more depth if, despite her utter hopelessness, she tried to sound upbeat, hopeful and supportive of Gabriel's quest. We'd get much more information about her character this way: not only would we get her true feelings of horror, but we'd see her beliefs on how she thinks everyone wants her to behave plus what she thought Gabriel wanted/needed to here. This depth doesn't exist in your movie.
3. Your third assertion was that I don't understand the context of the dialogue enough; that is, if I understood the situation, I would see that the dialogue wasn't melodramatic at all, but matched perfectly with its context. Cheesy dialogue is the audience's fault not the screenwriter's? Pull the other one, Nicko. Are you sending David Stratton a letter too, accusing him of having no idea how to watch films? He's only one of Australia's leading film critics... If large chunks of your audience can't properly appreciate the context of the scene, then that's your fault for not writing it better.
Nevertheless, you're absolutely right in saying that the context affects the believability of a scene. The biggest reason why soap operas are so melodramatic is because they feature characters who react in extreme, emotional ways without any adequate cause; every minor hiccup on a soapie gets treated like a life or death situation. If life were really like a soap opera, people would be so used to dealing with life and death situations, that they would become desensitised to them. This applies to Gabriel, too. If Jade had been forced to live her horrible life for years, she'd probably be used to it. I'm not saying she'd have grown to like it or anything. I just think she wouldn't see the horrors of it anymore. If the newly arrived Gabriel reacted with intense disgust and anger to Jade's position, but Jade just shrugged and said, "That's just how it is down here," I would have no trouble at all believing that such an intensely emotional reaction would have a place in that scene (albeit, in the mouth of a different character).
Anyway, do you actually consider a few pieces of exposition in a preceeding scene to be enough to adequately establish the context for Jade's situation? Uriel and Gabriel barely talk about what Amitiel was like as an angel. I've read the production notes, so I know that she was supposed to be the stealth assassin of the Arcs, valued for her ability to nurture and heal more than her strength in battle, etc. But that information wasn't conveyed in the film. In order to understand the horrifying extent to which Jade has been changed by purgatory, we need some indication of her existence beforehand. For instance, in the film The Shawshank Redemption (Nominated Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay), when the character of Brooks hangs himself, we aren't left thinking "What a melodramatic scene!" because we have actually seen his contented life in the prison, and can compare it to his lonely life outside. Without that establishment there is no way we could appreciate the context that forced him to behave in such an extreme way. I don't think a few lines of exposition is a enough to adequately establish a context for Jade's extreme behaviour.
4. Your last point was that the overtness in dialogue conveys the inherent innocence of the angelic characters. Well, why don't the evil characters speak in a completely different way? Surely the evil characters are used to lying. Yet, they used the same silly style of dialogue. Why isn't there some sort of gradual scale: the newly arrived Arcs were incredibly emotionally inexperienced, but the eariler Arcs have matured?
For instance, the film Big (Nominated for Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) draws out the ways a teenage boy, Josh played by Tom Hanks, newly made into an adult reacts to the world differently than most adults do. It seems to me I keep coming back to the idea of conveying information through contrast, but here it is again. To prove that a character is innocent (and that's why they speak a certain way), you need to contrast them with a character who isn't innocent (and consequently speaks in a completely different way). Imagine if the makers of Big had written the screenplay so that every character spoke in an adolescent/pure way, regardless of how old they were. If they then tried to claim that the style of dialogue proved how innocent Josh was, you would never believe them. It's because *only Josh* speaks in that way that it has any significance. If *only Gabriel* spoke in an adolescent way, your intentions would have been conveyed much more successfully.
And that's enough from me (for now).
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16 years ago
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iscaria
16 years ago
Here’s part of my problem. You claim to be the third screenwriter for ‘Gabriel,’ but your name doesn’t appear in the writing credits alongside Shane Abbess and Matt Hylton Todd. I’ve assumed good faith for the sake of this discussion, believing that you could’ve made uncredited contributions to the screenplay, or worked on the story ideas. But the simple fact is that there is absolutely no way I can verify this. So you must understand that I find it difficult to give much credibility to your claims. Are you a liar? Are you a sockpuppet? Are you Shane Abbess or Matt Hylton Todd in disguise? Or are you a staunch defender of a screenplay that you contributed to in minor-enough ways that you didn’t deserve any credit for your efforts? Why aren’t you credited? What aspects of the film did you work on, what aspects have nothing to do with you? Please tell me so I can give you whatever respect you deserve.
You seem to be taking my criticisms of Gabriel personally, and I never intended them to be. We’ve been putting words into each other’s mouths, and completely misunderstanding each other’s arguments. But I suspect we actually agree on most points. It will be less frustrating for me if we can end this discussion by coming to some resolution, instead of snarking at each other until someone gives up. I’m going to try to make myself absolutely clear.
I’m not obsessed with subtext, as you have repeatedly asserted. I consider subtext important in creating subtlety, but I don’t think subtlety is a compulsory feature of all good films. There are plenty of film genres out there that use subtext only rarely. Japanese anime is a well-known one, but that hasn’t stopped a few anime films from appearing in IMDb’s Top 250. One of the reasons why reason why anime dialogue is frequently obvious is because of its visual style: anime is generally produced extremely cheaply, using as little animation as possible. Single static frames are used for extended periods; animators use tricks to avoid seeing a character’s mouth when they’re talking (eg. framing the shot so it obscures a character’s mouth, giving characters giant moustaches, including characters who communicate telepathically, etc.). Because the visual style is generally minimal, obvious dialogue doesn’t feel as hokey as it would in a live action film. Live theatre, radio plays, etc use more extreme acting and dialogue styles for the same reason: there isn’t the same amount of visual information available to the audience. Likewise, in my previous post I’ve explained many instances where obvious/extreme dialogue would be extremely effective in conveying meaning in *any* story because of its contrast to normal, restrained behaviour.
I see my participation in this discussion in regards to one specific issue only: “Is Gabriel’s dialogue and acting subtle?” I gave my definition of subtle dialogue and acting, then explained why, on the whole, I didn’t think ‘Gabriel’ met that definition. I don’t see my participation in terms of the more general question: “Is subtlety good or bad?” Or in regards to the question: “What are the alternatives to subtlety?” You’ve read too much into my posts, and have come to the conclusion that I think everything besides subtlety is crap and melodramatic. That’s not my view at all. I don’t believe that subtlety is the only alternative for melodramatic dialogue. Dialogue and acting come in a wide spectrum of intensities- extreme subtlety on one end, and extreme melodrama on the other. Your assertion that, “Anything outside of this element of subtext, according to you is: “hokey dialogue”, annoying, melodramatic, extreme, silly etc.)” is a misunderstanding. I never said it and I never meant to imply it.
Secondly, I don’t have an across-the-board view on the value of subtlety. Whether subtlety is effective depends on the medium, genre, style and context. Your assertion that, “The point I’m trying to make is, you take a stance of “utilising subtext and avoiding melodrama” and place emphasis on it through long winded discussion as though it’s *the* defining factor of effective dialogue” is also a misunderstanding. If one’s aim is to write subtle dialogue, then, yes, I believe subtext will be a step in the right direction. If one’s aim is to write effective dialogue, then I believe there are many more factors to take into consideration.
You’ve asserted that I am mistaken in my suggestion that subtext is central to subtle dialogue and acting. Well, how do you define subtle dialogue and acting? There’s no point in arguing if we aren’t even talking about the same thing. If you define subtle dialogue and acting in wildly different ways to me, its no wonder we can’t agree on whether ‘Gabriel’ has it nor not. To save you the trouble of going back and finding my lengthy understanding of subtle acting/dialogue, here it is: “To me, 'subtle acting' is subdued. 'Subtle acting' is when the emotion of a moment doesn't need to be shouted or exaggerated, but can be delicately communicated through a slight facial expression or tone of voice or body language. 'Subtle acting' is when the subtextual meaning is slyly included underneath the surface dialogue, without stating itself directly … To me, 'subtle dialogue' reveals what a character is thinking, without them needing to outright say it.” Additionally, if you don’t believe that utilising subtext and avoiding melodrama are effective approaches to writing subtle dialogue, then, please, share with me your other strategies. How do you go about writing subtle dialogue?
All that having been said, I have levelled many criticisms at ‘Gabriel’ in regards to its dialogue. This is because my opinion is that *taking into account* ‘Gabriel’s’ medium, genre, style and context, the obvious style of dialogue wasn’t entirely effective; it distracted from my enjoyment of the film. My opinion is *not* that obvious dialogue can never been effective. My opinion is *not* that subtle dialogue is only type of effective dialogue. My opinion is *not* that anything besides subtlety is melodramatic. My opinion is *not* that subtlety is the defining feature in producing good films.
And more to the point, I don’t even dislike your film. As I have written in other posts around this board, I’m in the middle of the road as far as ‘Gabriel’ is concerned. I’ve given it 5/10. I thoroughly enjoyed some aspects of it.
I hope that clears up the instances where you have misunderstood my argument. Feel free to clear up any instances where I have misunderstood your argument. And then we can both go home.
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tessie_bear7
16 years ago
It doesn't really matter who did what right? Except Andy Whitfield, he blew me away, then imdb shocked me by showing that he's hardly been in anything else! I would pay about $500 just to watch him sitting on a chair doing nothing!
Yes he's extremely gorgeous, but also talented!
Anyways, this movie was awesome. It was so original! yes, I'm 16, (if you want proof, see the first paragraph ;):P ), but i want to see this movie a hundred more times-it's one of those movies where you get something new out of it each time.
I guess it's one of those movies that make you fall in love with the characters, the themes, even all of darkened purgatory, and what it represents.
By the way, if anyone likes the themes of purity, of evil, of choice, etc, I suggest reading "The Divine Comedy", yes it's old, but it is SO good. But you MIGHT want the translated version. Just a tip.
Peace to all, and all for peace! :)
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smartbomb
16 years ago
iscaria, I feel your pain. Despite their claims, I don't believe the people you're conversing with understand what you're saying.
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gotmyorangecrush
16 years ago
Oh god enough with the subtext already. I mean for gods sake, talk about being obsessed with such a singular and shallow viewpoint on both writing and acting.
As for NickHalo, I for one believe what he says as I have no reason not to. If he says he worked on the film then I believe it. I know one thing and that is there are always tons of people who end up contributing to movies in lots of different ways who never make it on the official credits.
As for the film itself I was blown away. Expectations play such a large role in how we ultimately end up perceiving a film and I for one went into this film expecting a straight to video type quality film as I personally had not heard anything about this film. Needless to say 15 minutes in and I was already hooked. What an outstanding job by Andy Whitfield! I was immediately sucked into his amazing portrayal of Gabriel. I am expecting to see alot more of him in the future.
I wont get into a long drawn out review of this film as its late and I am really exhausted from a really long photo shoot earlier today. I will say that I see movies ever week that have budgets 10-100 times bigger than this films budget yet dont even have half of this films style and dont have stories or characters even remotely as interesting as this film had. What an amazing accomplishment. Passion can be an extremely powerful tool in the arts and you can definitly see that the people involved with the making of this film were passionate about what they were doing.
Sure there were some problems with this film but they were relatively small problems that literally melted away behind the countless positive aspects of this film. I am really just in complete awe that this film was made for only 175,000 dollars and I think ultimately that has to be a very enlightening thing for a lot of young filmmakers out there. If I were a film maker, which is actually something I had thought about for many years, this film would be a huge inspiration after all money has more to do with film making than most people would like. This film shows that with the right people and whole heap load of passion, anything is possible.
So to sum this up let me say congratulations to everyone that was involved with this film. Again its not a perfect film but it is a highly enjoyable film and you can see that there is just a ton of talent both behind the lens and in front of it. I for one will be anxiously waiting to see what comes next for alot of the people involved with this film. Again I am expecting to see Andy Whitfield alot more in the coming years and I can say the same for Shane Abbess. Making this film for under 200k is going to look very very good to alot of writers and production companies out there. I have no doubt we will be seeing alot more from this group of people.
Again great job, you have so much to be proud of with this production!!
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