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WE SEE… Why Screenwriters Started Using WE

As a playwright, I am accustomed to “directing” the action. One of the attractions of writing for the stage is the primacy of the script, as submitted by the writer to a director. Changes require the approval of the playwright, and well-known playwrights have challenged directors who felt the need to “improve” plays (and the writers win these challenges).

By comparison, the director is in charge of screen productions. Always. The writer produces a work-for-hire owned by the production company, with creative control falling to the director, except in the rarest of cases. Short of being a writer-director, the screenwriter’s “vision” of the work is nothing more than a suggestion.

In the early years, directors of films were like theater directors. They adhered to the script because a lot of movies were made quickly. Changes happened, but the early industry was focused on releasing works to meet a high demand.

Over time, directors started to exert greater control.

Up through the 1970s, spec scripts (speculative, meaning written with the hope of selling the work) and initial drafts included some camera direction, and a good deal of narrative direction. The director might change these directions, but they were included by the screenwriter to suggest a vision.

Though there had been powerful directors since the start of film and television, things changed dramatically during the 1970s. Theatrical feature directors told writers to stop directing in the spec script or initial draft. Television directors started to adopt the same policy. (It should be noted that in series television, many producers are writers, so the tensions are little different.)

Told not to direct on the page, writers have continued to bend this commandment from the film gods by writing narrative and action that attempts to direct. You often spot these non-directing directions with WE SEE and WE HEAR in contemporary scripts. You also spot the direction with objects, sounds, and other elements types in ALL CAPS, as if screaming to the director that “This must be so!”

Consider Lynne Pembroke’s reaction to these non-directing tricks of screenwriters:

COVERSCRIPT TIPS – A Heated Disagreement

https://pembrokely.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/coverscript-tips-a-heated-disagreement/

July 21, 2015, Lynne Pembroke

A heated disagreement. In this case, about two teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy phrases. And a personal much-detested pet peeve. Contained wrath is the immediate reaction when I run across them….

Using these two phrases is a writing cop-out. Because it’s easy; without them a screenwriter is forced to Show not Tell.

Besides, “we” are in the theater seats watching, or in our office chairs reading, not in the &%#$@% story! I don’t disagree in principle, but directors set the standards no matter what anyone else argues. I swapped to WE SEE, but only for very specific camera changes.

TOURISTS mill about a fountain.

(No need for WE SEE.)

WE SEE the feet of tourists, splashing in water. (Very specific visual wanted.) Could WE SEE be omitted?

BARE FEET splash in the fountain.

It would then be up to a director if this is a close up or not. The old days, when spec writers included more shots, before directors told writers not to direct:

CLOSE UP:

Feet splash in the fountain.

Personally, I would rather have “CLOSE UP:” in the spec script, instead of “WE SEE” or or “BARE FEET” capitalized. I suppose there’s no perfect approach to trying to direct, without being the director, short of getting rewrite and shooting script duties in your script deal. If you are hired for the shooting script, the SFX and shot slugs can replace WE SEE and WE HEAR.

As a playwright, I am the all-mighty last and final word on the direction. As a screenwriter, I have to accept my position and do my best to cajole a director to accept my ideas. Some directors will recoil at any suggest shot, WE SEE stunts, or other direction. Other directors recognize that the writer had a vision or there wouldn’t be a screenplay.

My suggestion: avoid WE SEE and WE HEAR and all the capitalization stunts unless you lack a better way to convey an absolutely essential visual or sound in the script.

Photo by Carl Mikoy