Hollywood Film Coach

Bob Degus: 00:00

€5,500. That's what it cost to make the film that I'm gonna talk about in this episode. Not €500,000, not €50,000, but 5,500. That's basically $6,000 in American money. The film is called Stutterer, and by the end of this podcast, you're gonna understand why it won the Oscar that year and why making it for a million dollars wouldn't have made any difference.

Bob Degus: 00:39

After forty years in Hollywood and watching more than 3,000 short films as an Oscar voter. I know what separates a good short film from one that wins awards. My name is Bob Degus. This is the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast where we'll help you create award winning short films. Episode five, Story is Everything, The Nonnegotiable Foundation.

Bob Degus: 01:08

So in the last episode of the Hollywood Film Coach Podcast, I took you inside the room where the Oscar voting happens and shared with you who the voters are and how we think about films. The short answer is we're all filmmakers just like you, and we're also human, and we're looking to be told stories that inspire us. And that's the point of this episode is to look at a film like Stutterer that cost basically $6,000 and look at why it worked and why it was despite its modest budget, despite the fact that it was a first time director, that it had no movie stars in it, why it won the Oscar that year. And I think you're going to come away at the end of this episode, and I hope you're inspired to do something similar with the ideas that you and only you can share with the world. Now one of the things I should tell you with this episode, there are going to be spoilers about the film that I'm going to share in discussing it.

Bob Degus: 02:13

I have a companion substack series of articles that go with each of these episodes. So if you go and find the substack that goes with episode five, there'll be links to where you can watch the film Stutterer. And I would suggest that before you continue listening to me, who's going to ruin what happens in the film for you, that you go onto my Substack, find those links, and actually watch the film. If this was something I was teaching at a university level, right now we would actually watch the film. But in a podcast situation like this, you're going to have to do that on your own.

Bob Degus: 02:52

And if you're someone who's serious about studying filmmaking and making the best short you can, it's really critical that you actually watch these short films. So check out the Substack, watch the film, and then come back. And let's go through the analysis about why that film was so successful and how you can replicate the things in your own work. So hopefully you took a moment to actually watch the film, and let's dive in and and talk about how it works. So the main character is a guy named Greenwood, and he is a lonely typographer.

Bob Degus: 03:28

He sets up type for printing, and he's having an online relationship with a woman named Ellie. And right at the beginning of the film, she writes him and says, Hey, I'm going to be near you. Can we meet? And this is his worst nightmare because he has a stutter and he hasn't told her that. And because it's an online relationship where they're just texting, she doesn't know it.

Bob Degus: 04:01

And the eloquence with which this film is made, it opens with a shot of Greenwood's lips moving. And he's trying to talk with, you know, I think it's someone at his phone company or, you know, a customer service person on the line. And we see that he can't get his words out, and he can't communicate. And he's like, really struggling. But the genius of the film and the genius thing that the director Benjamin Cleary did is simultaneous to that, we get to hear the thoughts that are going on in his mind.

Bob Degus: 04:42

And the thoughts that are in his mind are completely clear, And he's eloquent and he's well spoken. It's just that when he goes to use his mouth, he can't speak. And so that sets up this this challenge for him that he's able to think fully complete beautiful thoughts, but he just can't get them out of his mouth. And in the first sixty seconds of the film, we learn all of these very powerful things. And we have set up now this incredible conflict that we're interested to see how it resolves, which is, is he going to tell this girl that he's been having this online relationship with that he has this stutter and can't speak?

Bob Degus: 05:27

And you're immediately hooked to find out what happens. And now this is a twelve minute film and like I said in the opening, it was made for around $6,000 without movie stars, with a first time director, and it won the Oscar. And so let's break this down now knowing what the the setup of the story is and see why it worked so well. And part of it was that opening that I just described. So let's use stutterer to look at story and especially story in a short film because many filmmakers think they understand story when they don't.

Bob Degus: 06:03

And I really, really struggled with owning and understanding these concepts that I'm about to explain to you. And stutter is the perfect example to really explore these concepts. So what story is not, it's not plot. And so in stutterer, the plot is the sequence of events that are going to happen. And in Stutterer, the plot is simple.

Bob Degus: 06:30

It's a man with a stutter who's trying to decide whether or not to meet his girlfriend or his online girlfriend. And that's not that's not why the this film won the Oscar. The concept is the interesting idea that your short film is built around. So in this case, it's a man whose stutter disappears when he types. That's kind of a cool concept.

Bob Degus: 06:54

But again, that is not why this film won the Oscar. The theme is the intellectual territory that the film is built around. So in this case, it's exploring ideas like communication, disability, digital intimacy with someone. But again, that isn't why this film won the Oscar. Style is the tone and language that the story is going to be told through or the film is going to be told through.

Bob Degus: 07:23

And again, that's very appealing and rich and interesting, but it's not why this film won the Oscar. So in an earlier episode, we talked about premise. And what is the premise of stutterer? Well, it's a man whose inner voice is eloquent and whose outer voice is silent. And he discovers that the person he fears the most being seen by is the person who cannot hear his silence.

Bob Degus: 07:56

And so the way this film progresses, and this is the spoiler, is he he's really he's paralyzed about wanting about meeting her because if he meets her, she's gonna discover that he has a stutter. In the ending, we learn in the the very last frame or two of the film is that she's deaf. So she can't hear his stutter. And it's this very beautiful, poetic ending to this twelve minute film that really, really speaks to you. So we've talked here in this about these issues.

Bob Degus: 08:38

So the question is, what exactly is story? And story is a specific human being in a specific situation who wants or needs something specific, and the journey toward or away from that thing. And that's what's going to draw us in. So in Stutterer, Greenwood, he's this lonely typographer, right? And he has this cruel speech impediment that prevents him from connecting with the world.

Bob Degus: 09:05

And yet he has this eloquent inner voice. And that's in the story is about his journey to connecting these two versions of himself in a way that he finds wholeness. And that's why Stutterer won the Oscar because there was something for the audience to connect with in Greenwood's journey. We all have those things like his stuttering that we all each of us struggle with. So we immediately understand what he's struggling with, what his dilemma is, being afraid to be seen by the very person who he wants to be seen by.

Bob Degus: 09:53

And we go on this journey with him, and it's a journey that takes us into our own soul, and we can see ourselves in it. So in a short film, story is even more essential and fundamental than it is in a feature film. Because in a feature film, you have more time to develop themes and textures and layers. And in a short film, where you have only twelve minutes, you really only have time to tell an extraordinarily condensed and powerful story. So let's break down what those key big elements are to help you understand what story really is so you can look at your own work and determine how to apply it to the projects that you want to bring into the world.

Bob Degus: 10:40

So first of all, the number one thing in story is character. And it's a character that we care about immediately because that's who we're following. That's what connects to our heart. That's what connects to our soul. That's the individual we're watching.

Bob Degus: 11:02

So in this case, we meet Greenwood, and we immediately empathize with him and connect to him because he has this really challenging issue that he can't connect and communicate to the world. And so we're immediately rooting for him, and we feel ourselves through his struggle. And we want him to succeed, and we want to see him thrive, and we're interested to find out what his journey is because right away, at the beginning of the film, very similar to Wasp, like right away at the first sixty seconds of the film, we're presented with someone who can't speak, but whose inner monologue we know, Oh, wow, this is an extraordinary human being. He just can't get it out of his mouth. So we know those two things.

Bob Degus: 11:58

We know he has this online girlfriend who doesn't know that he has a stutter, who he really wants to meet but he's terrified of meeting. And so we want to find out what happens on that journey that they're going to go on. And that's so character is the number one thing that's critical for you to really think about and have in place as you're working on creating your film. The second situation that's important in a story is having really genuine stakes. Now, what are stakes?

Bob Degus: 12:35

Stakes are something that's extraordinarily important that this character wants. And in this case, Greenwood really wants to meet this girlfriend that he's been having this online relationship with. And at the same time, it's the thing he's most terrified of. Because if he meets her and she discovers that he has this stutter, the relationship's going to be over. Or at least that's his fear.

Bob Degus: 13:06

And so it's life or death. I mean, you'll often hear it described this way. It's a life or death situation. And that's the higher you make the stakes for your character, the more interesting it's going to be for us. And because stutterer is really about his, on some levels, his public embarrassment about how he speaks.

Bob Degus: 13:29

Again, that's something we all can relate to because we all have things that we are embarrassed about and maybe don't want to share. And so we're very curious how he's going to solve this issue because the setup in the early part of the film is she writes and says, Hey, do you want to meet? And he doesn't respond. And if he doesn't respond, he's not going to get to meet her. And if he does respond, he's going to get to meet her and she's going to find out that he can't talk very well and has this stutter.

Bob Degus: 14:04

So that's genuine stakes and they're very high and he has to resolve them to get to the end of the story. And that brings me to the third critical point about story is that it's a journey with a destination. It's a very clear thing that is set up right at the beginning of the film. He's having this online relationship, and she wants to meet for the first time. So what has to be the ending?

Bob Degus: 14:37

The ending has to be their meeting. And our question is, audience members, is what's going to happen in that meeting? And we want to know. And so we watch the film and we go on the journey. And the journey takes us from the beginning where there's this crisis and problem that has to get solved, to what the ending is.

Bob Degus: 15:00

And then the ending has this very powerful, beautiful it isn't really even a twist, it's a revelation where we discover that this woman she's deaf and can't hear him. And so it's this just beautiful journey that leaves you almost with your breath taken away. And so those three structure points, or three story points, more correctly, you want to make sure as you're looking at the structure of your film, as you're writing it or as you're editing it, that those things are very, very clear, that you have a clear character, that they have very high the issue that they're trying to solve is at a crisis point, and that the journey and the destination of that crisis point takes you from the beginning of the film where there's a problem all the way through to the end where we see the resolution. And that's why Studover, amongst a whole bunch of other reasons, was nominated and won the Oscar because it did all that flawlessly and then it did it in twelve minutes. So it didn't take forty minutes to get there, it didn't take thirty minutes to get there.

Bob Degus: 16:20

It was very concise and well told. So the big question is, how is story structure in a short film different than it is in a feature film? I find story structure to be a fascinating topic, and I love all the different layers that go into the traditional, what's called the three act structure, that is used to build and tell feature films. And of course, short films, because they're stories in the tradition of storytelling, also share this three act structure with feature films. The difference, however, is that the structure form is incredibly compressed.

Bob Degus: 16:59

So if you think about in a feature film where you might have fifteen or twenty minutes to set up what's often called the ordinary world of your character, where you get to see how the character is, where they live, what their life is like before this big event, often called the inciting incident happens, that then sets the film in motion, in a short film, that ordinary world period, that what in a feature would be ten or fifteen minutes, gets shortened down to thirty seconds or a minute or at most ninety seconds depending on the overall running time of the film. And you have to be very efficient with the beginning of the movie because you don't have like in the case of Stutterer, it's twelve minutes, so you have to immediately set up the situation of the film. And the the strength of Stutterer and also Wasp, which I talked about earlier, is that both those films do that very efficiently in the first minute or minute and a half of the film. And with Stutterer, you right away know that this guy has a problem communicating with the world. And you also know, and this is key, that there's this gap that in his mind he's very eloquent and thinks full and complete thoughts.

Bob Degus: 18:23

He just can't communicate them with the world. And that makes him very sympathetic. But we know that right away. So that that opening part of a short film has to be very tight and condensed. And it's a fascinating subject that I'll do a a much more in-depth podcast on later on in the series because there's a lot to talk about this issue.

Bob Degus: 18:46

But the shorthand for you right now is really condensing the beginning of your film so that right away, the audience knows who the character is, what their world is like, and what their problem is. Oh, no, this girlfriend that I've had an online relationship with wants to meet in person. That grabs your audience right away. The second thing to think about with short film is different than features. In a feature, you have your main arc that your main characters are going through.

Bob Degus: 19:22

And then you also have subplots that oftentimes are comments on the main arc and offer maybe a different perspective or different layering or different colors on the main theme that you're following in the feature film. In short films, you rarely have that time. But what you get that's interesting and different in a short film is that the storyline is explored in-depth, because that's all the time you have to do. So you go deeper into the story, and you go deeper into those those themes of the one thing that you're trying to communicate. And that becomes a very rich exploration for an audience because you're not tracking multiple layerings and themes.

Bob Degus: 20:08

You're exploring one thing, but you're going very deep with it. And again, Stutter does that so powerfully, and there isn't a minute that's wasted in the telling of that film and in the journey that we're witnessing the character go on. So that's the second thing. The third thing that is really critically important is that the ending carries a disproportionate amount of weight. And if you think about the ending of Stutterer and the beautiful revelation that his fear that he's going to be rejected by this woman that he likes and that she can't hear what he's ashamed of is this powerful human moment.

Bob Degus: 20:55

And that's a really key thing in a short film, especially is the ending because like the beginning, where you only have sixty seconds or maybe a minute and a half to start the film, your ending also has to be compressed and really has to follow from what is the thing that was set up at the beginning. And in the case of stutterer, it's he has a stutter and this woman that he likes wants to now meet him in person. And will he meet her or won't he? And will he will the relationship blossom or will it end? And then the ending, it has to be the inevitable conclusion of what the question was that you set up at the beginning of the film.

Bob Degus: 21:44

That also is the same in features, but in a short film, it is compressed and in some ways made more concentrated. And in that, I think oftentimes it's more powerful in a way. So those three elements you need to be looking at in your scripts and in the short films that you want to make and make sure that they are absolutely functioning. Because the reason Stutterer won the Oscar is because it did all of these things flawlessly. So earlier in this podcast, I talked about the importance of you telling a story that only you can tell.

Bob Degus: 22:28

And that's another reason why I think that Stutterer won the Oscar because it really was a story that only Benjamin Cleary could tell. And he had a number of inspirations for it. He had a childhood friend who stuttered, and he knew how difficult it was for that friend to be able to communicate with the world. So he had a firsthand connection with someone who stuttered. He also his own self as a child, as many of us do, felt a sense of isolation and disconnection from the world.

Bob Degus: 23:04

So he had those two thematic things that really helped him connect with this idea. And then he had a spark on the internet where he saw a story, I believe, of a man who could only communicate through text and who had difficulty speaking, like me. And he combined all of those things together in a story that explored something more powerful and more deeper than any of them individually. And that's the real key thing. This was a story that only he could tell.

Bob Degus: 23:51

And that singular vision and voice combined with with a story that's really functioning, as we've described in this episode, as a journey from from a starting place to an inevitable conclusion is what made the film so powerful. And for all of you who are thinking about, well, I don't have the money to make my short film, or I don't know famous actors, or all the reasons that go through all of our heads about why we can't do something. I hope this film stutterer gives you the inspiration to look at your own ideas and your own stories that you want to tell and see that it is possible to make for not a lot of money a story that is extraordinarily well received because it was executed so well. So I want to take a moment to address the difference between story and concept because it's an important thing to underline so that you're actually thinking about story in the most productive way possible. So concept would be this idea that a man with a severe stutter falls in love with someone online.

Bob Degus: 25:11

That's the concept. That's not what the story is about in Stutterer. In Stutterer, it's about this idea of one man's specific terror of being truly seen in the grace of finding someone who sees him anyways. That's the story. That's what is going on deeper in Stutterer.

Bob Degus: 25:36

And the interesting thing for me personally is when I directed my short film, I had this great concept about a waitress trying to decide whether she was going to break up with her boyfriend. And I had had all these different technical ways to explore that concept. But what I didn't have is a story that spoke to someone's heart. I had pieces of that, but I didn't arc, as I've talked about here, something that is set up at the beginning and has an inevitable conclusion by the end. And that's really, I think, especially critical in your work and especially critical when you're working in the short film art form.

Bob Degus: 26:22

Because, again, everything is very compressed, and you have to use the time you have really I don't know if intensely is the right word, but vividly and with a lot of depth. So the question becomes how do you apply this to your work? And one of the most important things I think that you can be thinking about is do you have a personal connection to the story that you're telling? And personal doesn't have to mean it's autobiographical. I mean, Benjamin Cleary, he didn't have a stutter, but it was personal to him, and he had inspiration that impacted him deeply.

Bob Degus: 27:03

And I think you want to look for those same sorts of things in the stories that you're telling. And as I've said, that are stories that really only you can tell and stories that only you should be telling. And so how do you figure out what those are? Well, there's some questions that you can ask yourselves. One is, what's the most important thing that's ever happened to you?

Bob Degus: 27:25

Explore that, journal it, write about it, see themes come up and how you might turn them into powerful work. Another thing is, what do you understand about human life that most people around you don't seem to see? That's another really interesting way to communicate because if you see something that other people don't see, your film becomes a doorway or a window that helps them expand their understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to be alive on the planet. And then the most this is a good one, and it's a little terrifying, but what is the story that you've been afraid to tell? And really be honest with yourself, the one that feels too personal or too small or too strange to be worth making.

Bob Degus: 28:15

That is probably the gem that you can think about exploring that. And again, you can do it with journaling and you can work through how you might turn that idea of something that you have been too afraid to share or tell into something that's going to be powerful for a whole group of audience members who will maybe are also struggling with that same issue or a version of that issue that then in their lives could open up a way of healing and a way of learning something new about themselves. So those would be exercises that I think you can use right away to expand your work and to make your work stronger and more interesting. And then ask this question about your projects that you're working on. It's a simple sentence.

Bob Degus: 29:17

This film is about a person who blank and by the end of it, they will blank. And that gives you an architecture to think about how to structure your story. And then as you're looking at your script or you're looking at what you're doing when you're shooting or you're especially looking at it when you're editing, you're wanting to be asking the question, how does this scene impact the emotional journey of my character? How does it move it forward? How does it help the character?

Bob Degus: 29:53

And if you look at Stutterer and you look at Wasp and you look at probably every film that I will be sharing with you on this podcast, you're going to see that every scene in these films moves the main character's journey forward in some powerful and interesting and sometimes surprising way. And so you really want to bring these elements into your own work and explore them. And I feel that understanding what story is, is really a lifetime journey. It's not something that you're going to master from one podcast or reading one book. It's really something that you'll spend your entire life trying to understand, and that's what's exciting about it.

Bob Degus: 30:40

I mean, have over probably 25 books about story that I've read to try to understand it, and each one builds on that. And I think the key thing, though, is really taking the time and the desire to understand what it is, understand what story is from where you are in your life right now, and then to keep exploring how it evolves, how it opens and what it becomes and how you can tell better and better stories over your life as a filmmaker. One more thing. If today's episode sparked something for you, head over to hollywoodfilmcoach.substack.com for the companion piece. It's original writing that goes deeper into the most important idea from today's episode and includes links to every film we've talked about so you can watch them yourself and form your own conclusions.

Bob Degus: 31:40

The gap between a good short film and a great one that wins awards is smaller than you think. I'm Bob Degus. This is Hollywood Film Coach Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, follow us, and check out the next episode. Please join me in episode six, Working with Actors, What Every Short Film Director Needs to Know.