Historical movie screen play writing

[1493541]

I have to say, I think an accurate script is certainly possible, in gladiator there were so many fixable things (even though it is my favorite movie) take for example the appalling specimens of Lorica segmentata. For some reason they also wanted to make the soldiers hack and slash there enemies instead of stab. All of these were very fixable. I love that you want to make modern people more interested in history because in my high school when people ask me my interest and I say Ancient Rome, they are like
"What the hell is wrong with you". I wish you luck on your screenplay, VALĒ

[john m roberts]

When you consider the time gap, these inaccuracies seem minor. A mere 132 years ago, in October 1881, there was a squalid little shootout in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, that left 3 men dead, one of them unarmed. From this unpromising beginning there sprang a veritable cinematic industry with dozens of movie depictions, some of them of genuinely operatic grandeur. Now add a 2000 year interval. The O.K. Corral incident by then will be bigger than WWI and WWII combined.

[Olaf]

Costumes, arms and armor and their usage is often influenced by the visual style the costume department wants to achieve, as well as the experience of the stunt crew and swordmasters.
The possibility to cash in with licensed gear is another factor not to have the cast wear gear that look like historically accurate replicas.

Taking Gladiator as an example, none of the Gladiators shown even resemble any armatura.
The Spartacus TV show at least made some progress in that regard, but still had the Gladius used mainly as a slashing weapon. Worse still the Scuti were not carried by the handle behind the Umbo, but by a leather thong arranged like those on medieval shields

[antiochus]

Olaf wrote:
Costumes, arms and armor and their usage is often influenced by the visual style the costume department wants to achieve,

This is not necessarily true. I have worked in the Oz film industry for over 30 years and have worked with the Yanks as well in the capacity of sound engineer, then script editor, then assistant director, and director. A lot of my work, because I have a very imaginative mind, involved being called into script development meeting and developing story outlines. When it comes to period costumes like Roman armour, in order to work within a costume budget, it is cheaper to hire costumes from the major movie hire companies than it is to make the correct armour for a particular period. So if the major costume hire companies have only Roman uniforms and armour for the period of the principate and your movies is for the Second Punic War then you are going to get the uniforms for the principate.

The hard fact is this is how it works. If you’re doing a TV series about doctors in a hospital, within that episode, the doctor’s have a patients test back within minutes, whereas in real life it could take days. Do us, the film makers care if it is not accurate? Hell no! Doctors represent less than zero point five of the population so we aren’t interested if we distorted what they do. And besides, doctors don’t want to come home from work and then immerse themselves in some hospital drama on TV, so they are not our target audience.

In the end it comes down to money, so no matter how much re-enactors, wargamers or historians complain about the uniforms, armour or how the Roman army is portrayed, unless you want to put up the money, no one is interested in your complaints because you represent such a small and insignificant proportion of the market. Now if there were 200 million historians, wargamers and re-enactors out there, only then will producers be willing to make any serious effort to satisfy your tastes.

Another thing is the script process. If you haven’t worked in the film industry you have no idea of the bastardisation process the script will go through. At the premier of one movie, I remember talking to the writer and the only thing he could recognise in the movie from the original script he wrote was the title of the movie. That was all that was left after it went through the hands of so many people and their egos. Actors also are notorious for changing the dialogue in a script so that it fits into their comfort zone. Most people producing a film are literally terrified people. The slash and burn mentality of the American film industry is one of the greatest inhibitors for producing original and ground breaking films. It creates an environment of not being original which involves taking risks. If you’re doing a film about a Roman soldier, the producers, so worried about their careers and reputation will start meddling with the structure of the film so that it includes elements from other films that were successful. So what happens is elements of Gladiator will creep into the film about the life of your Roman soldier. Yes, yes the producers will argue, just like in Gladiator, the soldier’s wife and child must be murdered. Oh yes, the soldier must wear a wolf skin just like the one worn by Russell Crowe. This sort of mentality is of epidemic proportions in the film industry.

Next obstacle for the script writer is many producers do not care about the film they are making. They just want profits and will go to great lengths to reduce the film’s cost. Many producers don’t have an emotional attachment to a film like the script writer does. It is the same with book publishers. I have found no difference in book publishers and film producers. It’s all about profit to them.

Olaf wrote:
The Spartacus TV show at least made some progress in that regard, but still had the Gladius used mainly as a slashing weapon. Worse still the Scuti were not carried by the handle behind the Umbo, but by a leather thong arranged like those on medieval shields.

From a film maker’s point of view…..so what. The number of people who watched Gladiator wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care. Met a pilot some years back while working on a BBC documentary who hated the movie Blue Max because they used Tiger Moths in the show. He couldn’t get passed that. Seems the machine guns on the planes having no ammunition being fed into them didn’t bother him, but the fact they used Tiger Moths for WWI German aircraft was an unforgivable sin.

Back in the 80’s when I was working on the mini-series Anzacs, we had one director who, because he wanted everything to be historical (so why did we film Gallipoli at the Philip Island holiday resort), had the wardrobe department working to 2-00 am in the morning taking off the German division patches from their uniforms so they would have the correct German division patches for the next day’s filming which would correspond to a different section of the Western front. The audiences never saw the German division patches because they were so small and there was no justification to do a close up shot of them. All this director achieved was helping to blow the budget by having to pay the wardrobe department masses of overtime. The money could have gone towards employing more extras to act as German soldiers. This lack of money resulted in us having only eight extras to represent operation Michael. Because of this, the shots were all tight shots, very similar to a battle from the Sharpe’s TV series. Very cheap and very badly done.

So complain all you want guys about historical accuracy, the film makers aren’t listening.

Steven

[M. Demetrius]

...and dialog between soldiers is, of course, made up. Just before a battle, I doubt some soldier in the line was seen busily copying down what the Centurio said to the Optio about the General's idea of how to conduct the battle in his area, just so we would know how that went.

As much as I would like to see a depiction of Caesar's Gallic Campaign, with wintering, battle staff meetings, scouting parties, circumvallation, etc., for most people that would be a boring film. They'd want to know where the blonde Chieftan's wife was, and why she wasn't having an affair with Caesar while trying to extract information about his battle plan.

[antiochus]

Demetrius wrote:
As much as I would like to see a depiction of Caesar's Gallic Campaign, with wintering, battle staff meetings, scouting parties, circumvallation, etc., for most people that would be a boring film. They'd want to know where the blonde Chieftain’s wife was, and why she wasn't having an affair with Caesar while trying to extract information about his battle plan.

This is the true heart of the matter. The abysmal story lines as found in The Eagle, Centurion, The Ninth Legion etc. etc. are insulting to any intelligent person over the age of six. These cheap pieces of garbage will and most likely have killed this genre completely. Someone someday will write a brilliant historical script but it won’t get read by the producers because they know such films are box office failures.

While liaising with an America production company in L.A., I was making small talk with one of the office staff who was all of 18 years of age. During the conversation I learnt she was a gofer who ran messages and did odd bits and pieces plus receptionist when need be. However, she did with some pride tell me she was the script reader. This meant she was required to read the scripts sent by the literary agencies, and it was her who made the decisions what was good and what was bad. Now some production companies do have professional script readers but these cost money, so it is common for some staff members in order to cut cost, be delegated as the script reader. Further into my conversation I discovered that previous to this job she had never read a book in her life and her goal in life was to marry a rich guy and live on a farm.

It did not take me long to realise any script read by her that would be mature and have a deep plot line would be assigned to the garbage bin. However, should the script not have “big words” and be about a bimbo who marries a rich man and they live happily ever after, you can bet this script will get her approval.

The longer I was in America and the more I learnt about their modus operandi regarding film making, the faster I knew I had to get out. If you like sucking up to people and are a natural sycophant then you will feel right at home in the America film industry.

Steven