Film and writing

In his autobiography, Paul Hirsch reflects on his years editing Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars and Mission: Impossible. The term ‘editor’, he tells us, is a misnomer. The job involves more than simply splicing together bits of film for the director. It also involves sifting through raw footage; choosing the right shot; trimming or extending scenes; setting the pace for action; and sequencing the entire movie. The editor assembles, cuts, fixes. It takes patience and concentration. Yet editing is invisible to an audience. All it sees is the story – not the hundreds or thousands of choices that went into constructing the story.

The same goes for writing. It’s not just about getting words down on the page. It’s also about deciding which words to use, which scenes to include, which story to tell. And the reader should be unaware of these choices, oblivious to the effort it took to make our prose seem so effortless. Just as the cinema-goer sees movement and action on the screen, rather than still images on a celluloid strip, so the reader ought to see ideas come to life on the page – not the clanking machinery of grammar and syntax. Writing should feel as inevitable as a reel of film projected on to a screen. 

The similarities don’t end there. Writing, like film-making, also involves a ‘frame of view’ – that is, the observable environment we see in front of us. Sometimes the frame of view is wide and open, establishing the broader context of a story. Sometimes it’s close and narrow, providing detail and nuance in a scene. The best writers think about which frame of view is right for the story they want to tell. 

Consider the following extract from an article published in the journal Organization. The passage describes a group of musicians on their way to a guerrilla concert in Berlin: 

When the tour bus took off, the musicians were clapping and hooting with excitement, bolstering themselves for the coming challenges. The bus was stuffed with people and equipment and brimming with activity. While some of the musicians remained silent in their seats, concentrating on what was to come, others were preparing their costumes or their instruments. The camera team was filming, while the project managers were hastily going through the new, still vague, schedule for the day. Short conversations emerged in agitated tempi, interrupted by frequent laughter. In the buzz of voices, someone made a sipping sound and said, ‘Now I would love to have a beer’. And suddenly, a short hip-hop improvisation – by a staff member describing the ensemble’s current situation – filled the air. The rest of the ensemble joined in by clapping along in rhythm. Smiles appeared on their faces, and the final applause was accompanied by yells of excitement. Outside, endless streams of rain ran down the large windows of the tour bus. (Michels and Steyaert, 2017: 93) 

The scene is cinematic. There is a tracking shot: we pan across passengers on a tour bus, all of them absorbed by different activities. Some are preparing costumes and tuning instruments, others are checking schedules and planning the day. A few are just goofing around. Then there is a crowd shot: someone starts rapping and everyone claps along in unison until the improvisation dissolves into cheers and applause. And finally there is a hard cut: the scene transitions to outside the bus, the bleak weather in contrast to the human warmth within. 

It’s not a surprise to learn that the authors, Christoph Michels and Chris Steyaert, call themselves ‘filmmakers-researchers’. They accompanied the musicians not only with a notebook but also, literally, with a camera. The passage above works so well because it applies the visual techniques of cinema to an academic text, a form of writing that isn’t exactly known for its stylistic flair or aesthetic brilliance. In a parallel universe, less audacious writers might have been tempted to produce this kind of paragraph instead: 

During our ethnographic fieldwork, we observed the research participants – hereafter ‘musicians’ – as they carried out various organizational tasks, such as preparing for public performances. Alongside the formal aspects of their work, musicians also engaged in a range of informal activities, such as laughing, rapping, and pretending to drink alcoholic beverages. This had the effect of creating a feeling of communal belonging among the research participants. 

As a reader, we sense the difference immediately. The frame of view is flat; there is no depth of field, and hardly any real people – certainly none we can easily visualize. The passage lacks moving images, sounds, impressions. It’s not the kind of film anyone would want to watch at the cinema. 

So use sentences like a camera. Show the reader what you want them to see, and choose your frame of view with care.