Tracy Choi

Movie director, her documentary I’m Here won the Jury Award at the 2012 Macao International Film and Video Festival and was subsequently invited to various festivals in Asia and Europe. Choi received her MFA degree in Cinema Production from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Her graduation film Sometimes Naive was short-listed in the 2013 Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. The Farming on the Wasteland won the The Jury’s Commendation Award of the 2014 Macao International Film and Video Festival. Her latest production Sisterhood was selected in the competition section at the 1st International Film Festival & Awards‧Macao and won the Macao Audience Choice Award at the festival. In addition, Sisterhood got two nominations at the 36th Hong Kong Film Awards.

The importance of scriptwriters

08 2019 | Issue 34

I recently discovered on the Internet that emerging and veteran film scriptwriters are voicing out issues about unequal pay through neighbouring regions’ scriptwriter unions. It seems that the film industry has been exploitative towards scriptwriters who are new to this industry as well. It is not uncommon to hear about how scriptwriters in the Chinese film industry to get disproportionate pay cheque for their hard work. Even though we often say the script is the very soul of a film, we are not sure how much efforts would actually be put into the development of the script and how much money would be invested in it.

Macao’s film industry always lacks scriptwriting talents since not that many people want to pursue this career path. Often times, if one has stories to tell, he or she would become a director as being the director allows one to tell stories directly and has more control over the production. For people who love to express themselves through writing, they would probably become writers instead of scriptwriters. This is the reason why there aren’t that many scriptwriters around in Macao.

Many new directors would need to play the role of scriptwriter in the initial production process because they don’t have the money to hire a scriptwriter or they don’t have access to such resources. I do agree that as a director one has to have basic scriptwriting skills and the capacity to analyse and deconstruct scripts. However, the director and scriptwriter are still two fundamentally different professions. Of course, there are a number of great directors who are scriptwriters themselves or at least play some part in the scriptwriting when producing films. Some directors have long-term collaborations with particular scriptwriters. With the script, the director can make use of his or her creativity and produce a good film with the production team.

Personally speaking, I prefer collaborating with a professional scriptwriter instead of writing the script myself. Besides, I don’t see myself as a person who is good at telling stories through writing. I am not very good at creating a structured framework for a film either. This is why I would want to have a professional scriptwriter to collaborate with if possible.

In addition, having another creator to examine the film story can bring a more comprehensive assessment of the production. This also helps me execute the script better in terms of storytelling and art designs because I will be able to take a step back and look at the script in a more objective way. Different from literature, scripts do not immerse readers in stories told by lines of words. Scripts are a reference for filmmakers to execute the filming process. They allow filmmakers to have an understanding of what the film should look like and what the story would be. It is crucial for everyone on the production team to have an understanding of the film’s structure and what roles different characters in the film will play. In fictions, the author can tell the readers what is happening by describing what the characters are thinking. But in film scripts, the scriptwriter would also need to describe the scene settings in order to allow the production team to realise the visions in the film script.

In general, if I were to collaborate with a professional scriptwriter, most of the time I would find a movie theme that I am really interested in and think about the general structure of the film and what the film would look like. After that, I would approach a scriptwriter. I have been very lucky to always have amazing scriptwriters to collaborate with. They make films more powerful. If the final result is not very satisfying, it is more likely that I did not do the best job when executing the script. When discussing a film idea with the scriptwriter, we start the process from researching relevant information. This is not really just about making the film more realistic or what not. Regardless of what kind of themes the directors are going for, there are universal topics to talk about. If we are talking about commercial films, we can still research on successful cases for reference and discuss the potential value of some film ideas. After we have identified our common goals, the scriptwriter would start developing the story. Then we would have several rounds of discussions to refine the outline and different scenes before finalising the script. The entire process is very fun and helps clarify the direction the production team would be going for.

I am hoping that more great local scriptwriters would emerge in Macao and that we would facilitate a supportive community.