Impressionistic Screenwriting (Lessons from Soderbergh’s Solaris)
Don’t Look Now, Her, Point Blank, Upstream Color, Spring Breakers, and pretty much every Terrence Malick and Christopher Nolan film: they all have an impressionistic quality brought on by the use of fragmentary flashes in the editing. A quick flash to a moment from a character’s past. An insert of a scene yet unseen. A non-continuous style to how individual scenes are cut.
As a writer/director, writing scenes like this have always been difficult. It’s not that it’s always difficult to conceive of this kind of scene, but tricky to visually convey these editing patterns on the page before the movie has been shot. I’ve looked to Marguerite Dura’s script for Hiroshima Mon Amour for lessons. Although it’s an amazing, novelistic script, it doesn’t align with standardized screenplay formatting.
So how do we write non-linear, fragmented scenes the way we see it in our heads while honoring screenplay guidelines? I believe the answer can be found in Steven Soderbergh’s script for Solaris (2002).
Why Solaris? I saw the film a few years ago and I really loved it (I think it’s just as good as Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) — a controversial opinion, I know). The film had a really clear vision that was present in the performances, direction, and cinematography, but it was the editing that really caught my attention. Soderbergh, who edited the film under the pseudonym Mary Ann Bernard, weaved past, present, and future seamlessly over the course of the film without ever losing the audience. Upon reading the script, which can be found here [FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY], I was totally shocked to find that the script was written exactly how the movie plays out. Soderbergh had the visual plan for all the fragmentary, montage-y moments planned from when his fingers hit the keys.
Below is an analysis of how Soderbergh formatted and structured his screenplay to convey the impressionistic editing we see in the film, as well as other observations on his writing style that I think all screenwriters can learn from.
SCENE HEADINGS
Soderbergh uses periods for scene headings instead of dashes. For example, instead of:
INT. APARTMENT — DAWN
He says,
INT. APARTMENT. DAWN.
This isn’t a huge deal in and of itself — the same information is conveyed in both — but the periods add a sense of punctuation to the scene… which seems kind of obvious. There’s just something about the use of the period that feels hard-boiled and definitive.
Soderbergh also never mentions whether it’s a flashback or indicate any time period in the scene heading. The clues are always in the scene description.
SCENE TRANSITIONS
In the early pages of the script we see a CUT. at the end of nearly every scene. What purpose does this serve, since the reader automatically assumes a cut when we see the next scene heading? I believe the CUT. transition makes it very clear that the following scene is not meant to be read as continuous from the first. It’s a way of making the reader aware of the period on the scene and that the following scene is more of a new paragraph as opposed to a continuation of the same sentence.
At a certain point in the script, he forgoes the CUT. transition. Why? By establishing the CUT. transition to illustrate a definitive end to a scene, he suggests something more fluid when he doesn’t use a transition. As memory, present, fantasy all blend together, the scene transition is less defined. Between pages 14–16, we don’t get a CUT. until the sequence is over, despite the many scene changes within this sequence.
When transitioning within a single location to a later time, he’ll use CUT TO:.
He’ll also use FADE OUT., DISSOLVE TO:, and MATCH CUT TO:.
FORGOING ‘WE SEE’
Soderbergh will often put a CHARACTER or PROP in all caps and give it its own line. This is his way of saying “We see…” without ever having to actually type it. This gives the reader the sense of a cut to a specific shot within the scene.
Sometimes he will specify the type of shot it is. He doesn’t do this often, but he does use it for important visual details. Sometimes these details stand alone as a slugline; they’re not really coverage of the scene they’re a part of. For example:
EXTREME CLOSE UP:
A WOMAN’S LIPS, slightly parted.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The use of ANOTHER ANGLE to give life to something static. His way of saying, “We see x from a new angle.” This reminds me of Hitchcock’s interviews with Truffaut where he’s talking about the bomb under the seat. You see the person on the seat, unaware of the bomb underneath them. You cut to a shot of the bomb from Angle 1. Cut back to the person. And then you cut to a shot of the bomb from a new angle, Angle 2.
But why a new angle? Hitchcock says that if you use the same shot of the bomb from the first cut, you’re not adding anything new. You’re not allowing the audience to consider this object from a new perspective.*
*I don’t have my copy of Hitchcock/Truffaut on me so I can’t reference the specific pages where he discusses this.
CLEVER INSERTS
When Soderbergh cuts to a moment that is not part of the scene, he’ll use an INSERT.
INSERT:
A woman’s HAND, resting on the floor of an apartment.
All the inserts are from scenes that come later, which have their own slugline and scene number. We never read an ‘insert’ that doesn’t come from a later scene. If we do, it isn’t labelled as an insert but is given its own scene heading.
SUGGESTING A BEAT
If I had any complaint about the script, it’s its over-reliance on the use of ‘beat’ to signify a pause. That said, Soderbergh also repurposes the parenthetical, how an actor says a line, as a scene description, giving it a similar feel to ‘beat’. For example, a traditional script would have:
KELVIN
(calmly)
What do you mean?
Soderbergh instead writes:
Calmly:
KELVIN
What do you mean?
COMBINING ALL OF THESE TO CREATE IMPRESSIONISTIC SCENES
I would recommend reading the entire script, but if you want to see the principles above at play, read page 12–30. Soderbergh uses all the tools above to collapse memory, fantasy, past, and present. Everything is happening all at once.
Consider using these tips the next time you’re illustrating an intercut, impressionistic, fragmented timeline in your film.
