Yesterday, I received David Seidler’s screenplay for “The King’s Speech.” Reading it, I immediately noted something that all filmmakers know: while a film of lasting power cannot be made from a poor text, the script is never brought to the screen without, literally, hundreds of changes. A film is so different from its screenplay — there are so many re-writes during pre-production and principal photography, as well as deletions, changes in structure and additional shooting during “post” — that it’s hard to tell what version of a writer’s work members actually peruse.
The published text of a stage play matches what its opening night audience sees after a period of rehearsals and previews, during which there is much editing and rethinking. This may be the case, as well, with published screenplays. Academy members, however, judge a hybrid of a film’s original shooting draft and its final cut. With “The King’s Speech” voters received an incarnation that contains only scenes which are in the theatrical release.
But when a film is as good as director Tom Hooper’s story of the stammering Prince of York, I guarantee you, there were countless dialogue deletions as well as cuts of whole scenes. While assembling a movie, a director and editor must be sensitive to ways in which brilliant actors express with a gesture what a page of words might only approximate. They must be aware of how quickly viewers comprehend a point of plot or character without all the scripted talk. We test movies in screenings for friends and strangers. And we always learn the same thing: if we didn’t make cuts — even in motion pictures made from superior texts — audiences would become worn out rather quickly.
— Michael R. Miller (via)
(Source: wesleyhill)
