Robert Ausura Writing

     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 green, 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 purple notes to myself, highlighted doubtful script sections in red, and made strikeouts indicating audio edits in pink.  In the revision stage, these colors guided me to what had to be done and prevented me from overlooking items that needed attentiion before the script was sent out for review.

     The final script was 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 toolbox and has help me not only to track script elements more easily but also to envision new possibilities.