How Tarantino Writes A Scene

when it comes to writers in the industry today there are many who stand out but if you were to ask me when it comes to the very best at writing dialogue nobody comes close to Quentin Tarantino so what's the deal with Tarantino why is his dialogue just so hypnotising well there are many reasons why but I think a great place to start is the first scene of an indie film you might have heard of called Pulp Fiction we go terrific that was it the very first one of the movie and he already has the viewers attention and the reason he's grabbed us is because he uses a very specific device and it's a device that is not often talked about in fact it's talked about so little it's in device that doesn't even have its own name so because of that it's something I've come to call the pledge now please bear in mind this is just my own thinking the pledge is not some famous literary device but just a little phrase I've coined to try and understand how to tell a good story simply put a pledge is a promise to the audience that at some point in the future whether it be far-off or immediate something interesting will happen and Tarantino is the master of the pledge it's how he already has the viewers attention within the first five words of the film what he says okay terrific the line is essentially saying that they are planning something and what they're planning is very dangerous naturally dangerous things are going to interest the viewer so for the next few minutes that pledge is stuck in the viewers minds what are they planning why is it so risky the viewer doesn't know exactly what it is but what they do know is that something dangerous is going to happen all that investment created from only five words set and of course a pledge doesn't necessarily have to promise just conflict or even conflict at all because if conflict were the only thing that an audience would find interesting then all movies and stories would be nothing short of one long argument or fight sequence so to better understand the pledge let's look at another way Tarantino uses the device let's look at the hateful eight so here's the summary major marquest Sam Jackson's character had a massive Confederate bounty on his head because he broke out of one of their most famous prisons you bust up major Marquess did more than bust out hey Jamal Quest had a bright idea so bright you got to wonder why nobody never thought about it before dear Johnny with your bright idea you want to know what he says next right and the fact I just pause that clip at that moment almost annoys you because you want to hear the story of how he broke our prison and gained a bounty on his head that's the whole point and that is the pledge in action it's one of the reasons Tarantino writes such great scenes because he often builds an anticipation towards the future whether it be the next scene or simply the next line of dialogue not all but many of his lines build a larger picture they don't just serve themselves but they also serve the next line so the audience is kept in a perpetual state of wanting to know what happens next and that's why it's just so hard to stop watching a Tarantino film especially when there's an exchange of dialogue in relation to the first line of pop fiction I can imagine you might ask but that line of dialogue ago that isn't a pledge that's a hook and you'd be right that line is a hook just like a great line of prose at the start of a good book that grabs the reader's attention but this line also serves the purpose of being the pledge for the scene and then you might ask so aren't hooking a pledge the exact same thing well not really a pledge is more fundamental to telling a good story because a hook is cheap it grabs the viewers attention a pledge maintains it and I think what's worth noting about Tarantino and his scenes is how there is always conflict in them let's look at the star of the hatefully the first scene the major is held at gunpoint in a tense first encounter with another character the second they having an argument on whether a bounty should be taken in dead or alive the third they have a tense encounter with another man where he claims to be the sheriff and they don't believe him the fourth the three characters have an argument about the Civil War which ends with a gun pointed in someone's face the next they meet everyone in the haberdashery and they are all very suspicious of one another with a few exceptions here and there in Tarantino's films every scene every conversation every line dialogue has some conflict attached to it there is always something at stake in a Tarantino scene whether it be something as simple as a character losing an argument about a foot rub to being discovered as a spy or just being shot because there is always something at stake there is always conflict which is the core of any good story when it comes to writing great dialogue there is another quality that makes a dialogue interesting that many writers fail to capture and it is something that Tarantino has proved time and time again that he is a master of and that quality is subtext and what is subtext quite simply is what is not set it is the show don't tell rule applied to dialogue it is the difference between the words that come out of a character's mouth and the thoughts that stay in his head so as a purely hypothetical example let's say there is a German officer in World War 2 and he comes across three American soldiers who are trying to pass off as Italians however he knows full well that they are in fact spies how would a bad writer write that scene well it might go something like this the Americans try to speak Italian but miserably fail the officers face drops as he realizes that they are lying and then he tells them something on the lines of I know you are spies and you are screwed so that is an exactly terrible dialogue but it could be made a lot more interesting and what more by a pure coincidence Tarantino has his scene exactly like that with that subtext in Inglourious Basterds however he handles it far more gracefully so the subtext hands landed the German officer knows that the three Americans are pretending to be Italian so then this happens you're alarming exquisite commits gore alarming i'm carnival de la me la dominick the coco coming dominic de coco Bravo Bravo this conversation is incredibly well done it would be noble to ask them on their name but he makes them repeat it again and again with a smile and when he turns to the left one who pronounces his name authentically Landis slaps on the back and says well done that when I first saw this scene I thought that Landa was trying to figure out if they were allied spies or not and I didn't notice the clues hidden in the dialogue but in this conversation Lander straight out confesses that he knows they are allied spies because no person would ever applaud a man for doing his own accent correctly on the screen it is incredibly subtle to the point that many viewers even after multiple viewings could easily miss it but he begins to complement one of them specifically on how well he is imitating being the Italian he is pretending to be and if Lander thought they really were Italian he would have never said well done or asked them to repeat their name so many times and let out such a grin every single time they say it antonio margheriti a corner Marguerite de una Travolta ma de su propio de la musica de la parola margheriti that right there is a perfect example of well done subtext a bad writer would have each and every line of dialogue surface-level every character would say exactly what they mean to say and nothing would be left to the imagination but Tarantino has an abundance of subtext to many of his lines there is often a hidden purpose or train of thought that is incredibly easy for the viewer to miss and be none the wiser too but for a perceptive viewer all those little nuggets of subtext make that dialogue just that little bit more witty just that little bit more fun to watch but if you were to ask me the real Tarantino style the real area is filmmaking where his talent truly shines is in how Tarantino create suspense and holds that suspense over the course of a long scene what sounds on the surface to be quite a simple task is in practice exceptionally hard to pull off now there are many examples of Tarantino creating this long-form suspense such as the story about how the generals son was murdered in the hateful eight or the poisoned coffee scene from the very same movie but I think one of his very best examples is the opening scene to inglorious basterds so here is the premise a French farmer gets a visit from the German Colonel Landa reason phase visit is left a mystery for the first couple minutes when finally it is revealed I've heard that difference between charge of running up that she was left in class while in the hiding or passing for ten time so for the next few minutes they have a conversation with a small uneasiness but in the middle of that conversation the truth is finally revealed the Jewish family he is hunting is hiding beneath the floorboards from this moment on the dread builds like a snowball rolling down a hill the farmer reveals that a squad of Germans already searched his house months ago then Lander goes off on a tangent about animals and how they are in his opinion related to humans if one were to determine what attribute the German people share with a beast there will be the cunning and the predatory instinct of a hawk but if one were to determine what attributes the Jews share with the Beast it would be that of the rat tarantino takes his time going on tangents being extra sure not to rush the next few moments all the while the viewer doesn't really know well and this analogy is going until he finally says this a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews where does the hawk look he looks in the barn he looks in the Attic he looks everywhere he would hide but there's so many places it wouldn't allow her to hawk to hide the audience remembers about the German squad who searched the house and couldn't find anything and then they make the connection lambda is saying that the Germans did not know what they were doing and did not check the house properly this by the way is a good example of well done subtext and then the viewer stomach sinks as they realize exactly what Lander is implying and it seems very possible he suspects the Jewish family is in fact inside the house and then after some small talk a silence takes the room you're sheltering enemies of the state I do not yes you shall bring them underneath your floor turn to you and then the terrible conclusion that the audience suspected might happen at the start of the scene has become a certainty this is fantastic suspense and there are a lot of lessons to be learned just from looking at this scene alone near the start the scene the audience is informed of the offices mission and the fact his targets are beneath the floorboards as the audience has been given the information they can piece together the characters had the potential to collide with devastating consequence for the French farmer and the Jews hiding beneath the floor what's interesting to know about this scene is how the tension in this scene does not stagnate it is constantly building and how exactly does the tension build well the moment the audience learns the information about Landers mission and the people hiding below that possibility that they will collide with one another enters the viewers head as the tension in the scene builds so does the possibility that the terrible eventualities will become reality the scene gradually progresses from it being possible that London will find and kill the Jews to it being absolutely certain that that will happen that is the source for the entirety of the suspense in this scene and that's the thing the serious majority of writers simply cannot create tension in the way Tarantino does because they are so very often in a rush the characters say all their lines efficiently and purposefully so that the viewer can move on to the next scene as quickly as possible and I will confess it's a failure in dialogue that I as a writer constantly stumble into you cannot have a strong long palpable tension in a conversation when that conversation is over in less than 30 seconds but if you do what Tarantino does establish the goals of the two characters where they have the potential to collide with devastating conflicts and then you over the course of a five-minute conversation peel back the layers as the audience slowly puts the pieces together and after each and every piece is put forth from the screen the tension only grow stronger as the viewer gradually realises that that horrible outcome they initially suspected is becoming more and more certain until what feels like after an unbearably lengthy dread it finally culminates in the worst possible scenario approach makes not just for good dialogue but great cinema as a whole and I think another good example of Tarantino creating suspense is later on in the same movie when there is a British spy and an SS officer sitting at a table and there is a long drawn-out sequence of the officer is suspicious of his German accent and later on in that scene the spy says this guy Glaser and then the officer makes this expression as a first viewing this expression means nothing and when the shooting starts 60 seconds later it is almost a moment of shock only in the next scene as it revealed the subtle manner in which he gave away the fact that he was in German due to his hand gestures he ordered three glasses the order Slee glasses that's the German see so on a second viewing as the viewer knows the tale and the way in which the spy gives himself up that expression the officer pulls has a totally different meaning to the first viewing as the viewer knows that the officer has just realized that he is a spy as Alfred Hitchcock once said the essential fact is to get real suspense you must let the audience have information now let's take the old-fashioned bomb theory you and I are sitting talking we'll say about baseball we're talking for five minutes sadly a bomb goes off and the audience have a ten-second terrible shock now let's take the temps in same situation tell the audience at the beginning that under the table I'll show it to them there's a bomb and it's gonna go off in five minutes and we talk baseball what are the audience if they don't talk about baseball there's a bomb under there now giving the audience the correct amount of information and turning that scene into a suspenseful one now that's good filmmaking but writing it in a way were on the first viewing it's a moment of shock and on the second it is a scene of suspense now that's downright genius filmmaking but ultimately the climax of the conflict the moment where the argument is lost or the character is killed that isn't the moment that is the most interesting part but rather the most interesting parts when the climax of that conflict is impending it's for this reason i imagine that tarantino could direct an exceptionally good horror film as he is a master building and milking that big release of tension Tarantino is a master at storytelling and I know a lot of you guys who watch this channel just like me aspire to one day make your own movies and write your own stories which is a very admirable goal however it's hard it is hard to write a good story or make a good film especially without the proper knowledge on how to do it even for veterans in the field there is always something more to learn and when it comes to increasing your knowledge and holding down your craft there is no place I would recommend more than skill share and I can happily thank skill share for sponsoring today's video I've been using this service for six months now and it's a resource for learning that I've personally found invaluable skill share has over 19,000 courses from creative writing to graphic design to business management and everything in between there are a lot of courses that I found useful but I think a great place to start for you writers out there is the writing Academy series by Steve alcohol it is classes he covers pretty much every topic on writing that you could think of and he's helped me learn quite a bit about character creation and dialogue so that would be a great place to get started Premium Membership begins for around $10 a month but for the first 699 people to sign up with that link in the description you will get two months of Skillshare totally for free no catch no cost two months of premium membership totally for free however these spots are expected to go very quickly so please before it's too late click that link in the description while the offer still stands anyway thanks for watching don't forget to Like and subscribe and I'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 2,552,477

Rating: 4.9192033 out of 5

Keywords: tarantino, quentin, screenplay, django, unchained, pulp, fiction, pulp fiction, pledge, inglorious, the, closer, look, closer look, the closer look, video, essay, video essay, hateful, eight, dialogue, analysis, star wars, star, wars, lesson, advice, tips, writing, writer, quentin tarantino, review, trailer

Id: XATONsyKml0

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 10 2018