When anyone makes a film, it’s because they have something that they want to say. But as a writer, as a director in the film industry, you have to make sure that you’re not spoon-feeding that message to the audience. If you do, it won’t land in the same way,” explains Kimberly Aleah.
Digging deep-building realistic characters for authentic storytelling
“So, for me, the thing that I do to make sure I’m not doing that—I start with real characters. I know everything about them. “
“I know where they grew up. I know if they were bad at math in elementary school, how that affects them in their modern life when they’re calculating tips at restaurants.”
“I know where and what day of the week they get their hair done. I know if they quit their first job. I know what their grandmother got them for the last holiday,” says Aleah.
You have to know so much, so many specifics about your characters. Because if you start with real characters, and you put them in real places and let them interact organically, you’ll always end up seeing some of those truths you originally wanted to convey.
“You have to really know them intimately—that makes them real people. Once you have real people, you can put them in real environments. The conversations and events that happen between your characters in these environments are the conflict that drives your story.”
Naturally, if there are things that you wanted to say, you’ve already embedded those different elements in the characters. They’ll naturally present those truths.
Using research to make your characters’ world more believable
“Another technique I use to ensure I’m keeping these characters grounded, and that the story sounds authentic is to do my research. For example, I have this film that is set at a university, it’s about hazing.”
“What other films exist out there like this? What TV shows exist in that ecosystem? What’s been done? Which elements of these characters could be contributed to stereotype? How do I avoid that?
“I think about this especially because when you’re presenting diverse narratives, and characters that historically in the American media landscape have been presented so two-dimensionally—I consider ways I can avoid stereotypes, or tropes. How can my script still present some of the conflicts that those characters are facing—problems, unfortunately, that a lot of people still can relate.
I think about that push and pull. How to universally represent this experience, but also how to let a character exist as an individual.
“A living, breathing person really comes from, you know, writing multiple versions of the script. I really find dialogue is an immensely powerful tool because when you’re writing multiple versions of the script, you begin to hear a character’s unique voice,” Aleah ends.
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During the early stages of a project, actors can improvise. If anything good comes out of the improvisation, that work may be put into the script, or simply kept in the notes for later. So when I’m doing a movie like The King of Staten Island, the writers– Dave Sirus, Pete Davidson, and I— work on the script.

On that project, we spent a couple of years writing the script together. Then we had auditions. Pete read with an enormous number of the people. That was a way for him to play and improvise and figure out who his character was, and to hear a lot of interpretations of the other characters.

We tried to cast the movie as early as possible, so that we could bring all the actors and actresses into our collaboration. We did early table reads and rehearsals. In the rehearsals, first, we would do the scene as written, then we would play and improvise. Based on that, we wrote our revisions. Then, we would do another rehearsal.

So we kept feathering in stuff from these creative sessions into the script. When we get to the shoot, we have all of these ideas. We’ve rewritten the scene as best as we can, but we also have six or seven versions of it from improvisations. We’ve circled all the lines of dialogue we wanted to remember. Maybe there are several completely different versions of the scene we might want to play with.

So, for me, when I get to the set to do a scene, I’m not just shooting the script, I’m also trying to create a loose situation where I can reintroduce some other ideas that we like. And then, at the very end, say to the actors, let’s just play.

We just have to get from this idea to that idea. Let’s just feel it out and see if we can come up with something on the spot. Some days we don’t. Some days we like the script and believe what we have works. Other days, we realize that what we have doesn’t work at all. We go back to the notes to see what else did we did in rehearsal. What are the fresh ideas. And sometimes we get a computer out and we rewrite the scene on the spot.

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“You know, it’s very easy to write one script and then talk about it for three years,” says filmmaker Judd Apatow. But according to Judd, successful writers don’t stop there. They stay consistent.

“The people who succeed are the people who write a script and then start the next one the second they’re done,” Judd continues. “When I was first starting up, a friend told me that he sold the tenth script he wrote.” That knowledge helped Judd, who learned that it takes a long time to sell a script. “I’m not supposed to become some famous rich person on the first script,” he realized. “You have to hope it happens early but be willing to write those ten scripts to make it.”

Filmmaker Caran Hartsfield agrees. “It’s an incredibly daunting process, even for professionals,” she says. “And it’s hard to settle in and just go step by step. The first step is to exhale and know that it’s going to be a roller coaster ride.”

Caran also points out that not every writing session comes easily. “There are going to be days when you are so excited that it’s coming together. And there are going to be days of ‘What was I thinking yesterday?’”

On some days, filmmaking and writing can feel out of reach, and writers can doubt themselves. Still Caran offers encouragement for writers. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “A writer writes. If you write, you’re a writer. So just write a little bit more every day, and make that a habit.”

Caran has a friend who commits to writing every day, even if it’s just one sentence. “I think that’s a really good practice,” Caran says, “and it’s something that I have personally incorporated into my own practice. I find that it creates momentum.”

When it comes to developing a screenplay, film director and screenwriter David Irving points to one simple industry expression: “You cannot make a good film without a good script. You can certainly make a bad film from a good script. But to repeat, you cannot make a good film from a bad script.”

Everybody’s looking for a good script. And good scripts are few and far between.

There are different elements to a successful screenplay, as Irving notes. A good script has to be a certain length, proper format, and it has to have a beginning, middle, and an end. It’s a blueprint for the actual film.

It takes a very special person to be able to read through a script and see the movie. A director who reads through the script is putting a lot of brain effort into it — How can I make this happen? How can I realize this particular film?

At the same time, you’re reading through a script to find an emotional arc and connection. Will this be a film that I want to work on for a very long time? Will this film entertain and engage an audience? Will it be of some value to put all that effort into the screenplay? The screenplay is first and foremost the document you need in order to be able to proceed with a film.

While a screenplay may attract a lot of people to a motion picture, it goes through a lot of transitions along the way. You have a first draft, second draft, third draft, polished draft, shooting draft — there are lots of changes that scripts go through to get to the first day of principal photography.

Even during principal photography, that script will change. In post production, that script will continue to change. That’s why you must have a very solid screenplay upfront, and it takes a real professional to be able to read it and see what that movie might be.

”It’s really important to pay attention to the things that are around you, to the people you know, that are happening in your community, that you’re watching on the news, or anything that’s coming into your life, and realizing that those are the kernels, the nuggets of gold for you,” says Caran Hartsfield.

You probably have that uncle, grandfather, auntie, sister, or whoever who was an incredible character. That often gets overlooked. The real people in our lives that are great characters, or those real moments that happen between two friends on a Tuesday. Write those things down. Use those little golden nuggets to create great scenes.

“It’s so much easier to use real people than to make this Frankensteinian, made-up person that you’re really basing on other films that you’ve seen. You have the luck of knowing the people that probably only you know.” Hartsfield explains. “I don’t know them; most screenwriters don’t know them. You know them. I don’t have the life experiences you have. Most screenwriters don’t have the life experience you have. That’s what’s so exciting. We all have the stories that only we can bring.”

“The world is not monolithic. The world is not homogeneous. Art has always reflected life to a certain extent. The notion that it should not be diverse is insane,” says Seith Mann. “I think that there are so many different and wonderful stories out there, and the more diverse the talent base telling those stories is, the more different, interesting stories that you will have.”

We all benefit from hearing stories from multiple voices. From gaining insight from characters and worlds that have a lived experience that is not necessarily our own. Then, at the same time, it’s important for people to see themselves and stories. If you have a marketplace that doesn’t reflect anything but a particular demographic, that makes it harder for different people to identify with those characters. It’s difficult for them to be truly invested in those stories, which is, ultimately, what is behind all the human need that we have for this illumination that comes from storytelling.

In Hollywood, there’s a profit motive. Hollywood’s going to make more money if it draws in a greater audience, and part of the way you do that is to have diverse storytellers telling different stories. It isn’t rocket science.

”You have these very early experiments with drawings that move. You have these ideas of taking characters that were either in a comic, or in the newspaper and turning those into animated shorts,” Says Kimson Albert. “For example, Gertie the Dinosaur with Winsor McCay was an early version of animation.”

He had a Gorgo act where he actually interacted with an animated version of Gertie the Dinosaur. Behind him, he would throw grid an apple and all these interactive things. It was very new. It was kind of a novelty thing at that time.

You have the early Disney shorts, and you have early Fritz the Cat shorts. Everything is a mouse or some sort of animal that’s cute or mischievous or any of these things.

Steamboat Willie is a short that’s the first sound short animated short. Before then, you wouldn’t have sound synced to the action, which is a Disney film. This turns everything around. Now that the cartoon has sound to it, we’re in a whole of the universe essentially. Film goes from like a Dark Age and then after one film into this incredibly new territory of sound. Then there’s time to adjust that.

With Disney, he was able to experiment with these shorts, prove the kind of ideas, and prove the experiments that they were working on with movement and character in the shorts. They would do all these incredible things with camera. They would test out things with the facts and everything like that.

Then when it came time to do his first feature, which was Snow White, he takes all of this knowledge and his best animators and effects people and throws them on this incredible project that transforms the entire film industry period. It is the biggest thing at the time. Snow White is the definitive mother of invention when it comes to animated film. If you do your research, you will know that the DNA of all animated film features comes from Snow White and character animation.

The evolution of the animated feature is basically the evolution of the Disney studio. They were the ones who were rolling out the Cadillacs of animation. They were the highest level of quality in terms of character animation, in terms of backgrounds, and in terms of camera.

David K. Irving believes that documentary is an exciting form of filmmaking. One of the most exciting things about documentary is that it’s about the truth, and he thinks that’s important. The truth can be very scary. Getting personal and close to the truth is a very rewarding experience for any filmmaker, in David’s view.
The major difference between documentary film and narrative film is that documentary films are usually built during post-production. You do a series of interviews. You come up with a script. You find all the images that you want. But ultimately, it’s based on what images, stories, and interviews you do have in the editing room. David thinks that the documentary often takes shape in the post-production phase.
He says this is very different from a narrative film. Much preproduction can be done in terms of identifying what the shape of the film will be the better. In post-production, it’s a question of realizing that vision. Documentaries are very exciting because they all happen in the moment.
David personally feels there are many different kinds of documentaries. “Cinéma verité, for instance, is a wonderful form of documentary,” says David. He thinks Ken Burns did a terrific job covering the Civil War and baseball to introduce this kind of documentary into the mainstream in American cinema. He thinks it’s become a very popular format for people to enjoy films.
And for David, the major point of documentary film is the same as narrative film. Both types of film have to tell a story.
He’s seen many documentaries that were just a series of interviews and images where there was no edification. There was no climax. The better documentaries are the ones where when you finished watching it, it feels like it’s the end of the story.
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