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Usenet Posted 19 years ago
Screenwriting
Epistolary style
I've been thinking about this for awhile and it struck me recently when I saw the movie version of "Touching the Void" which was, I guess you might call it a semi-documentary adaptation of the book of the same name about a harrowing mountain-climbing accident.
"Semi-documentary" because all of the actual events on the mountain, though they were based on real events, were actually re-staged and shot using actors (although, apparently, for certain scenes the actual men who were involved in the actual events went back to the actual mountain and climbed around for some long shots, it seems, in retrospect, that this was done as much for publicity reasons as for any particular need to have these men actually involved directly in actual mountain shooting).
However, binding all of this footage together was actual documentary footage of the three actual participants now, of course, many years later, discussing what happened as a framing device they talk about what happened, what they were feeling, what they were thinking and then we go and see these people, portrayed as actors, out on the mountain.
Now, clearly, it's a little difficult to say exactly what this end product is it's not a documentary. It's obviously based on a true story and the events that it dramatized sticks very close to the actual events and it uses the real people, describing the real events as part of the story.
So I guess that one would have to say that it's a "docu-drama" whatever exactly that term means.
But my thoughts, in watching this movie, went elsewhere because in the little featurette that dealt with the making of the movie, the director described how he wrestled with the issue of how to bring the book to the screen how to effectively dramatize it and how he arrived at the decision to use the interviews of the actual men as a framing device, as the means to solve what amounted to a dramatic problem.
And clearly, when we look at other works works that are not necessarily based on real events, that are works of fiction from start to finish we see similar devices being used things like interspersed news reports, or the participants being apparently interviewed somwhere about what happened during the body of the story pieces of the story shown as if "found footage."
Then, of course, you have something like "Blair Witch" in which the entire story is presented as if it were "found footage."
It's clear, when you look at this as a dramatic device in movies, that there is a corresponding literary device the so-called "epistolary style" in which novels consist of series of letters or correspondences or diary entries.
Both Frankenstein and Dracula, for instance, are both written in this style.
Yet clearly, we are not meant to believe that someone has actually sat down and written a forty-page letter, quoting thirty and forty speeches verbatim, only to be answered by somebody else doing the same.
In the same way, when we watch "Into the Void" we sort of understand, in some sense, that we are moving from watching the actual participants, describing what happened, to well, somehow or other, somebody who is not actually the actual participants, portraying what happened.
And yet the style, in both cases, has the effect of drawing us in.
When we start to read a novel, our first thought is okay novel, work of fiction.
When we start to read something, and it starts out, and it's an, excerpt from letter, or a diary entry, or a quote from a newspaper well, maybe that's part of the fiction, or maybe that's really an excerpt from a letter.
That inherent uncertainty that a letter, a diary entry or a news report, a talking head, something that convention tells us "just might be real" even if we sort of know that it's not has a way of fuzzing that line so as to render us just that much more receptive for the events that will come.
It seems to me that that style the epistolary style, whether in its literary or its cinematic form seems to have the effect of easing us in to the alternate reality of the world that it is presenting to us, drawing us more deeply into it, and in that way, hooking us into it that much more firmly.
NMS
"Semi-documentary" because all of the actual events on the mountain, though they were based on real events, were actually re-staged and shot using actors (although, apparently, for certain scenes the actual men who were involved in the actual events went back to the actual mountain and climbed around for some long shots, it seems, in retrospect, that this was done as much for publicity reasons as for any particular need to have these men actually involved directly in actual mountain shooting).
However, binding all of this footage together was actual documentary footage of the three actual participants now, of course, many years later, discussing what happened as a framing device they talk about what happened, what they were feeling, what they were thinking and then we go and see these people, portrayed as actors, out on the mountain.
Now, clearly, it's a little difficult to say exactly what this end product is it's not a documentary. It's obviously based on a true story and the events that it dramatized sticks very close to the actual events and it uses the real people, describing the real events as part of the story.
So I guess that one would have to say that it's a "docu-drama" whatever exactly that term means.
But my thoughts, in watching this movie, went elsewhere because in the little featurette that dealt with the making of the movie, the director described how he wrestled with the issue of how to bring the book to the screen how to effectively dramatize it and how he arrived at the decision to use the interviews of the actual men as a framing device, as the means to solve what amounted to a dramatic problem.
And clearly, when we look at other works works that are not necessarily based on real events, that are works of fiction from start to finish we see similar devices being used things like interspersed news reports, or the participants being apparently interviewed somwhere about what happened during the body of the story pieces of the story shown as if "found footage."
Then, of course, you have something like "Blair Witch" in which the entire story is presented as if it were "found footage."
It's clear, when you look at this as a dramatic device in movies, that there is a corresponding literary device the so-called "epistolary style" in which novels consist of series of letters or correspondences or diary entries.
Both Frankenstein and Dracula, for instance, are both written in this style.
Yet clearly, we are not meant to believe that someone has actually sat down and written a forty-page letter, quoting thirty and forty speeches verbatim, only to be answered by somebody else doing the same.
In the same way, when we watch "Into the Void" we sort of understand, in some sense, that we are moving from watching the actual participants, describing what happened, to well, somehow or other, somebody who is not actually the actual participants, portraying what happened.
And yet the style, in both cases, has the effect of drawing us in.
When we start to read a novel, our first thought is okay novel, work of fiction.
When we start to read something, and it starts out, and it's an, excerpt from letter, or a diary entry, or a quote from a newspaper well, maybe that's part of the fiction, or maybe that's really an excerpt from a letter.
That inherent uncertainty that a letter, a diary entry or a news report, a talking head, something that convention tells us "just might be real" even if we sort of know that it's not has a way of fuzzing that line so as to render us just that much more receptive for the events that will come.
It seems to me that that style the epistolary style, whether in its literary or its cinematic form seems to have the effect of easing us in to the alternate reality of the world that it is presenting to us, drawing us more deeply into it, and in that way, hooking us into it that much more firmly.
NMS
Top answer
The epistolary style is like person-narrative, but multiplied. You can have more than one viewpoint, but each viewpoint, while it controls, fills up the world. Loved Touching The Void saw it in a movie theater.
- The epistolary style is like person-narrative, but multiplied.
- You can have more than one viewpoint, but each viewpoint, while it controls, fills up the world.
- Loved Touching The Void saw it in a movie theater.
- Two examples of epistolary books which were turned into stage plays.
- Both books were completely in the form of letters back and forth, with no additional narration or comments.
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3 Answers
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The epistolary style is like person-narrative, but multiplied. You can have more than one viewpoint, but each viewpoint, while it controls, fills up the world.
Loved Touching The Void saw it in a movie theater.
Two examples of epistolary books which were turned into stage plays. Both books were completely in the form of letters back and forth, with no additional narration or comments.
Loved Touching The Void saw it in a movie theater.
Two examples of epistolary books which were turned into stage plays. Both books were completely in the form of letters back and forth, with no additional narration or comments.
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When I was teaching screenwriting, I used the Mitzi Gaynor - Frederic March version of "A Star Is Born" to show students what a framing device is. That version of the movie begins and ends with a giant close-up of the actual script on screen. The advantage to it as a teeaching tool is that it's silent (though it does grab your attention!) and can be freeze framed to show students how little has ch
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