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Writing Rainbows    Return to Views Directory Page

"If you can't make it good, make it big. If you can't make it big, make it in color."

I've been hearing this quotation for years, and I'm still not certain who said it.  I know it was one of the moguls of Hollywood's Golden Era, when the wondrous (or blasphemous, depending on your point of view) technology of color film first appeared.   Now we are entering the age of color printers attached to our personal computers.   As recently as a year ago, I looked on them as toys -- great for generating homemade greeting cards and dressing up school reports, but not a tool for serious writing.

I was wrong.

I recently finished a week-long project for a new client who came to me with a stack of beautifully shot interview tapes, a detailed outline, and a need for someone to the two into a stylish image piece.  This is a fairly typical assignment in my line of work, and it can be a complicated one: an intricate piecing together of naturally occurring bits of conversation into an artificially designed message.  A lot depends on the materials the writer is given.   In this case, I got what I needed most: good VHS window dubs and a complete transcript of the interview (on paper and disk) with accurate time codes.

So what does all this have to do with color? Color gave me a new approach to this kind of project.  It added to the final product a dimension that helped me, the producer, and the client visualize the interplay of characters and the piecing together of elements.

Here's what I did.  As always, I read the transcript while watching the window dubs and marked the interview bites that were candidates for the program.  (I never rely on the transcript alone.  Often a sound bite that looks great on paper can be spoiled by the interview subject squirming or glancing at the camera, forcing the writer and the producer to invent ways to salvage it, usually by covering it with B-roll.)  Then, I did something I never did before.

As I cut and pasted what I call "interview selects" from the master transcript file to my working file, I color-coded each interview subject's comments.  One speaker's comments I made blue; another's orange; another's pink, etc. I left editing directions (DISSOLVE, KEY, etc.) and graphic effects black. When I assembled the final script, the colors created a mosaic within the script, a pattern that showed me the frequency and balance among the speakers. This scheme also solved time code disputes.  Three of the program' s 12 tapes had been shot with identical time code.  By colorizing my script, I indicated to the director and the editor exactly where to find each bite in the script.

Once I got started, I found all kinds of new uses for color. I inserted green notes to myself, highlighted doubtful script sections in purple, and colored footnote numerals bright blue -- all to make them easier to locate in the document. I made strikeouts indicating audio edits bright yellow.  I even added decorative color to the title page.

It is by far the most colorful script -- literally -- that I've ever written, so different in appearance from my traditional black-on-white manuscripts that I was afraid of how my client and her client might react.  So I warned them both ahead of time what to expect, explained what I had done, and sent them two hard copies -- one printed in color, the other in simple black-and-white.  To my delight, the color version was a big hit.  Every reviewer commented on how easy it was to visualize transitions and see the balance among speakers and the frequency of graphic effects.

This experience has established color as a permanent resident in my toolboxtool, and has help me to envision new possibilities.

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