http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-format-affects-content.html RB's challenge accepted. This article the other day was very timely for me. A lot of the ideas I have tend to be for film series, not just single films. I've been struggling lately to come up with a simpler standalone idea that could fit into a single 2 hour timeframe. It feels like a lot of effort inventing characters and building a world, to not take advantage of all that foundational work and develop more story and go into more detail. But serialized shows these days like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead have opened up a new avenue outside of the 2 hour time limit that feature films tend to require. Watching a show I think still feels different than watching a good movie. Some of that is still the budget limitations and production values that TV has. But the main difference is pacing. What film does really well is force a really fast paced storyline, and it forces the story to be streamlined in a way. Action pieces tend to do well under those conditions. Other types of stories too, more than others. I think film will begin to move more in that direction, as a medium for more streamlined, simple storytelling (I'm thinking of very mono-focused films like Whiplash, Mad Max, 127 Hours, Gravity) or stories where it helps convey an idea by digesting the beginning and end in one sitting as a single piece (like Spotlight, which is less about character drama and more about conveying a statement about a systemic socioeconomic situation) Because of the advent of this serialized format on television and online, the more character driven stories are going to naturally migrate that way, and feature film will become a medium more and more serviced to those other more streamlined ideas or sort of focused set piece storytelling.
Screenwriting : How Format Affects Content by Mikhail P. Schalk
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Mikhail: Great analysis. I agree and from your lips to God's ears, I really hope this happens. The features you cited are some of my personal favorites in the last few years. So, I hope this trend continues, for its in line with the type of material that I gravitate towards as a screenwriter. BTW, love this quote by Hitchcock, from the article you cite. "Audiences are really good at detecting what is necessary to the narrative and what is unnecessary. Whenever you're taking them down an extraneous side avenue, they get antsy. They check out. So you have to keep moving." "..keep it moving." Hey, after all is not called a MOTION PICTURE for nothing. Thanks, buddy. Great post.
@Jorge: Thanks. After I wrote that I was thinking I implied that pacing with longer shows doesn't matter at all. But it does. You still have to keep the story moving and have so much going on that you can't show it all. Just because you have more time, doesn't mean you automatically can put everything in. I think that's a trap that writers may fall into with more pages to work with. One great advantage of the 2 hour time goal for features is that it forces you to cut and keep things moving. That's still true for television, just with more breathing room and space to expand. It took me a while to get behind this whole idea, but I think film and television both are going in good directions. What's still a bit problematic is when you have a story that's more like a miniseries or a limited run show, something that's clearly longer than a film, but doesn't quite have the legs to run for multiple years. Maybe like a 6 or 8 hour storyline. I'm working on a concept right now that might be in that range. And that could be a struggle to get off the ground. Networks tend to like shows that have the possibility to run for 5 years. So if your story falls somewhere in between, or if it doesn't have an engine necessarily that can drive just more and more episodes, that could still be a bit of a tough spot. *And proper attribution. I think that quote was from the post author Mark Kennedy. The Hitchcock quotes are in images.