Underwater P.O.V.
Underwater P.O.V. is track 9 of the 27 tracks on the Carbon Harbor soundtrack album.
In my previous post I mentioned that Blake Synder's new book, Save the Cat! has already helped me with my rewrite of my Carbon Harbor screenplay. I'll offer some detail here, in my usual round about way.
Oddly, I guess, I got some new insight into why or how it was that my having created a Carbon Harbor soundtrack helped me in coming up with the story. First, I need to add here that, though I do have all this music for the story, I am not so naive as to believe for one second that, even in the joyous event that I sold this screenplay and it were actually made into a film and that film still remotely resembled my script, I would ever actually hear any of this music be used. That would be great and all, but it's not an important factor to me as is the screenplay itself. Sure, I'd love to have the opportunity to at least have it heard once and ignored. I'd be ecstatic if any of it were actually used or borrowed or stolen from in the making of the film's actual soundtrack, but, again, no way do I count on it. I'm not that sure the music will even match my final draft. What the music really is, when I describe it as a soundtrack, is a soundtrack for helping me in writing the script. And I understood that even better than I originally did because Snyder's book made me realize what the music was doing for me and how it helped to prime my imagination.
You see, he goes deep into his method of structuring a screenplay into beats. I won't go into it (you can read his book for that) but he names and defines 16 beats. Some of them are familiar to you, even if you just enjoy watching movies. It made me realize that, in several ways, I had done a very similar thing in the way I had come up with the music. It was the reason I kept thinking of the music as being "cinematic." I've got 27 tracks in total, and many of them make almost perfect matches to Synder's movie beats. Generally speaking, they have very similar emotional high points and low points and/or tones. So, for instance, one of Blake's beats is one he calls "Debate." This is the beat that comes right after the main character has received a phone call, telegram, package or some other event takes place in which the character is called upon to go do something, something that is going to change their whole world. In a movie that works, the character never drops what they're doing and jumps right in, but they mull it over and/or try to get out of it or resist it in some way, before something within them causes them to decide to get going on it.
Early on, I had this track called, "Reluctant Warrior" (which I have not yet posted but will do so soon). I realized right as I was reading about the "Debate" beat that I already had my Debate track. In the earliest stages of my story, before I knew hardly anything about it, I had already established this really vague notion that my character was going to be called upon to do something he really didn't want to do and that he even had compelling reasons for not being bothered with it, but, he would decide to go do it. That was it. I still didn't even have the foggiest idea of what the "it" was that he would end up doing or anything else. But I hashed it all out over time.
If you've followed along this far, I'll now go into some more of what the hell I am talking about.
Draft One of Carbon Harbor is about a guy, Chic, who is the Sheriff of a small town, Carbon Harbor, where nothing ever happens, at least not most of the time. His life makes the Maytag guy look busy as hell. He gets engaged to a woman who happens to be the daughter of the richest man in town and within moments after he slips the engagement ring on her finger -- wouldn't you just know it -- something happens. A horribly bloated and decayed body rises to the surface of Carbon Bay. Chic ends up with a murder investigation on his hands. Some early clues seem to indicate to him that this might be somewhat more than a murder case. And there are some in the town who, because they like him, try to hint to him that it's not in his best interest to dig too deeply. But he decides to pursue it to wherever it leads him. Once his decision is made, even though the body in the bay has only been there a matter of weeks, it leads him all the way back though over 40 years of the town's history and certain events that happened on the eve of our involvement in World War II. The bad thing for Chic is that it also leads him directly to the bad guy, who just happens to be his future father-in-law. Bummer!
Draft Two is essentially the same story, but told very differently. Actually, I kind of misled you above, because that's really Draft Two I described. In Draft One Chic was only in love with the daughter of the richest man in town, but accusing her father of current and past crimes was still going to be difficult. But I got smarter in Draft Two and now he is engaged to her and it does occur as I described above.
But in Draft One I was trying to come up with a reason for Chic not to have to be bothered with this investigation. Maybe he was about to retire, leave town, maybe this, maybe that. Finally, I decided to have him win the Lottery early on, making it possible for him to say "Take this job and shove it." I thought maybe that would make him seem more heroic if he decided to just be good ol' Chic and be the richest Sheriff in the town's history and do his job regardless. Well, I was having a hard time buying that myself. There were also others who read my first draft and, while it wasn't a unanimous decision, the Lottery had to go!
What's this got to do with Underwater P.O.V.? Right. Let's get back to that.
Back to the beats thing, I also realized that my track, Underwater P.O.V. was the perfect track for the beat that Blake Snyder calls, "All is Lost." Again, if you watch a lot of movies, you know that beat. That's the part of the movie where the main character's quest is seriously beginning to look like a miserably lost cause. The part where you just about wouldn't blame them if they decided to quit and go home, except that's not why you paid to see their story!
In Draft One, I saw Underwater P.O.V. belonging to a scene I wanted to use right before Chic learns he has won the lottery. I had this rather cliche scene where he is in the diner and trying to eat while the owner, Ed, is grossing him out describing to him in detail about what would make a dead body in the bay gas up, bloat and rise to the surface of the water. Chic tries to ignore Ed and keeps his eyes on the TV where they are about to pick out the little floating balls with the lottery numbers on them. As he watches the balls floating about they turn into small bubbles rising up from the bottom of the bay and we follow them down, looking for the source, only to discover he has imagined himself as a dead body that is trapped on the bottom of the bay. It was this very dark, dreamy sequence that I thought might show his not wanting to investigate this murder and/or feeling overwhelmed by it all and/or a too cute image on one's "number coming up."
But once I decided to rip the whole lottery idea out of my story, I had nowhere to use that underwater imagery.
Then I read Save the Cat! I was working on some logline exercises when I realized I didn't know squat about my own main character. This was an outrageous oversight (to understate it). It was also terribly ironic because I had loads of backstory on Carbon Harbor the town and all the characters in it. I knew everything about everyone but him! The only thing I sort of half-assed knew about him was that he was the only character in the story and town who was not born and raised there. He was an outsider by X number of years. So I had a lot of work to do to figure out how I was going to fix all that.
In the process was when I thought about Underwater P.O.V. and how that not only would fit Blake's "All is Lost" beat, but it was a "dead on" match for a portion of that beat Snyder calls, "whiff of death." So I sort of started there and worked my way backwards to figure out some things about Chic and why he ever came to Carbon Harbor and just who he was and why, now that he was going to marry the rich girl in town, why that marriage was very important to him.
I decided that Chic was in many ways hiding out from what was previously the darkest chapter of his life. I made him a widower. A man who had previously had a young wife and five year old child and lost them both. Then I thought about a friend of mine who just lost a great dog, Mischa, who lived to be 14 years old. I brought Mischa back to life and gave her to Chic, at about age 12 or 13. Then I knew what haunted him. He had lost his family in a freak accident in which only he and the puppy had survived. So I took all of that and went back to the beginning of my screenplay and reintroduced Chic.
He lives in small house boat with a 13 year old dog. You can see for yourself it is a pretty messy bachelor's pad and that in this first scene he appears to be getting ready to go out on a date. He gets out the door before he realizes he has forgotten something very important, for this date in particular. He can't seem to find a damn thing in his own house, but we see the ring case he is looking for, which happens to be sitting near some old pictures of Chic and his first wife and child. We don't have any idea how he lost them but it's clear they are no longer in his life. Once he finds it we also see that it's a diamond engagement ring in the case, and that he looks longingly at the first family and needs some reassurance from them that they understand why he wants a new family. Since he's dressed for a date, it's not until the very end of the scene, when he finally leaves and hops into his boat, that we see that this hapless, widower who appears to be preparing to get engaged, and who can't seem to find a damn thing in his own house, also just happens to be the Sheriff of Carbon Harbor.
Later on, it will become clearer how he lost his family. Then, when he hits bottom and all seems lost and he is almost ready to just give up and feel sorry for himself I can revive that lottery balls/underwater image (he won't win anything this time) and in this draft of the script the underwater image will be a sinking man, along with a puppy, sinking deep down into the water to join the rest of his family that is already there.
I hope everything else works, because I like it.
In my previous post I mentioned that Blake Synder's new book, Save the Cat! has already helped me with my rewrite of my Carbon Harbor screenplay. I'll offer some detail here, in my usual round about way.
Oddly, I guess, I got some new insight into why or how it was that my having created a Carbon Harbor soundtrack helped me in coming up with the story. First, I need to add here that, though I do have all this music for the story, I am not so naive as to believe for one second that, even in the joyous event that I sold this screenplay and it were actually made into a film and that film still remotely resembled my script, I would ever actually hear any of this music be used. That would be great and all, but it's not an important factor to me as is the screenplay itself. Sure, I'd love to have the opportunity to at least have it heard once and ignored. I'd be ecstatic if any of it were actually used or borrowed or stolen from in the making of the film's actual soundtrack, but, again, no way do I count on it. I'm not that sure the music will even match my final draft. What the music really is, when I describe it as a soundtrack, is a soundtrack for helping me in writing the script. And I understood that even better than I originally did because Snyder's book made me realize what the music was doing for me and how it helped to prime my imagination.
You see, he goes deep into his method of structuring a screenplay into beats. I won't go into it (you can read his book for that) but he names and defines 16 beats. Some of them are familiar to you, even if you just enjoy watching movies. It made me realize that, in several ways, I had done a very similar thing in the way I had come up with the music. It was the reason I kept thinking of the music as being "cinematic." I've got 27 tracks in total, and many of them make almost perfect matches to Synder's movie beats. Generally speaking, they have very similar emotional high points and low points and/or tones. So, for instance, one of Blake's beats is one he calls "Debate." This is the beat that comes right after the main character has received a phone call, telegram, package or some other event takes place in which the character is called upon to go do something, something that is going to change their whole world. In a movie that works, the character never drops what they're doing and jumps right in, but they mull it over and/or try to get out of it or resist it in some way, before something within them causes them to decide to get going on it.
Early on, I had this track called, "Reluctant Warrior" (which I have not yet posted but will do so soon). I realized right as I was reading about the "Debate" beat that I already had my Debate track. In the earliest stages of my story, before I knew hardly anything about it, I had already established this really vague notion that my character was going to be called upon to do something he really didn't want to do and that he even had compelling reasons for not being bothered with it, but, he would decide to go do it. That was it. I still didn't even have the foggiest idea of what the "it" was that he would end up doing or anything else. But I hashed it all out over time.
If you've followed along this far, I'll now go into some more of what the hell I am talking about.
Draft One of Carbon Harbor is about a guy, Chic, who is the Sheriff of a small town, Carbon Harbor, where nothing ever happens, at least not most of the time. His life makes the Maytag guy look busy as hell. He gets engaged to a woman who happens to be the daughter of the richest man in town and within moments after he slips the engagement ring on her finger -- wouldn't you just know it -- something happens. A horribly bloated and decayed body rises to the surface of Carbon Bay. Chic ends up with a murder investigation on his hands. Some early clues seem to indicate to him that this might be somewhat more than a murder case. And there are some in the town who, because they like him, try to hint to him that it's not in his best interest to dig too deeply. But he decides to pursue it to wherever it leads him. Once his decision is made, even though the body in the bay has only been there a matter of weeks, it leads him all the way back though over 40 years of the town's history and certain events that happened on the eve of our involvement in World War II. The bad thing for Chic is that it also leads him directly to the bad guy, who just happens to be his future father-in-law. Bummer!
Draft Two is essentially the same story, but told very differently. Actually, I kind of misled you above, because that's really Draft Two I described. In Draft One Chic was only in love with the daughter of the richest man in town, but accusing her father of current and past crimes was still going to be difficult. But I got smarter in Draft Two and now he is engaged to her and it does occur as I described above.
But in Draft One I was trying to come up with a reason for Chic not to have to be bothered with this investigation. Maybe he was about to retire, leave town, maybe this, maybe that. Finally, I decided to have him win the Lottery early on, making it possible for him to say "Take this job and shove it." I thought maybe that would make him seem more heroic if he decided to just be good ol' Chic and be the richest Sheriff in the town's history and do his job regardless. Well, I was having a hard time buying that myself. There were also others who read my first draft and, while it wasn't a unanimous decision, the Lottery had to go!
What's this got to do with Underwater P.O.V.? Right. Let's get back to that.
Back to the beats thing, I also realized that my track, Underwater P.O.V. was the perfect track for the beat that Blake Snyder calls, "All is Lost." Again, if you watch a lot of movies, you know that beat. That's the part of the movie where the main character's quest is seriously beginning to look like a miserably lost cause. The part where you just about wouldn't blame them if they decided to quit and go home, except that's not why you paid to see their story!
In Draft One, I saw Underwater P.O.V. belonging to a scene I wanted to use right before Chic learns he has won the lottery. I had this rather cliche scene where he is in the diner and trying to eat while the owner, Ed, is grossing him out describing to him in detail about what would make a dead body in the bay gas up, bloat and rise to the surface of the water. Chic tries to ignore Ed and keeps his eyes on the TV where they are about to pick out the little floating balls with the lottery numbers on them. As he watches the balls floating about they turn into small bubbles rising up from the bottom of the bay and we follow them down, looking for the source, only to discover he has imagined himself as a dead body that is trapped on the bottom of the bay. It was this very dark, dreamy sequence that I thought might show his not wanting to investigate this murder and/or feeling overwhelmed by it all and/or a too cute image on one's "number coming up."
But once I decided to rip the whole lottery idea out of my story, I had nowhere to use that underwater imagery.
Then I read Save the Cat! I was working on some logline exercises when I realized I didn't know squat about my own main character. This was an outrageous oversight (to understate it). It was also terribly ironic because I had loads of backstory on Carbon Harbor the town and all the characters in it. I knew everything about everyone but him! The only thing I sort of half-assed knew about him was that he was the only character in the story and town who was not born and raised there. He was an outsider by X number of years. So I had a lot of work to do to figure out how I was going to fix all that.
In the process was when I thought about Underwater P.O.V. and how that not only would fit Blake's "All is Lost" beat, but it was a "dead on" match for a portion of that beat Snyder calls, "whiff of death." So I sort of started there and worked my way backwards to figure out some things about Chic and why he ever came to Carbon Harbor and just who he was and why, now that he was going to marry the rich girl in town, why that marriage was very important to him.
I decided that Chic was in many ways hiding out from what was previously the darkest chapter of his life. I made him a widower. A man who had previously had a young wife and five year old child and lost them both. Then I thought about a friend of mine who just lost a great dog, Mischa, who lived to be 14 years old. I brought Mischa back to life and gave her to Chic, at about age 12 or 13. Then I knew what haunted him. He had lost his family in a freak accident in which only he and the puppy had survived. So I took all of that and went back to the beginning of my screenplay and reintroduced Chic.
He lives in small house boat with a 13 year old dog. You can see for yourself it is a pretty messy bachelor's pad and that in this first scene he appears to be getting ready to go out on a date. He gets out the door before he realizes he has forgotten something very important, for this date in particular. He can't seem to find a damn thing in his own house, but we see the ring case he is looking for, which happens to be sitting near some old pictures of Chic and his first wife and child. We don't have any idea how he lost them but it's clear they are no longer in his life. Once he finds it we also see that it's a diamond engagement ring in the case, and that he looks longingly at the first family and needs some reassurance from them that they understand why he wants a new family. Since he's dressed for a date, it's not until the very end of the scene, when he finally leaves and hops into his boat, that we see that this hapless, widower who appears to be preparing to get engaged, and who can't seem to find a damn thing in his own house, also just happens to be the Sheriff of Carbon Harbor.
Later on, it will become clearer how he lost his family. Then, when he hits bottom and all seems lost and he is almost ready to just give up and feel sorry for himself I can revive that lottery balls/underwater image (he won't win anything this time) and in this draft of the script the underwater image will be a sinking man, along with a puppy, sinking deep down into the water to join the rest of his family that is already there.
I hope everything else works, because I like it.
posted by Bryrock at 8:10 PM
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