The Kingdom of Ants - Full Screenplay

The screenplay is now at draft 12 and contains a wide variety of sound writing experimentation taking inspiration and techniques from Fillipo Marinetti the founder of Futurism and “Words in Freedom”, Sound Symbolism, William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin Cut-Up Technique (with a nod to Tristan Tzara & DADA), the use of onomatopoeia in comics and graphic novels, and poetry and literature in general.

The representation of sound in the written language of the screenplay also utilises experimentation with spacing, grammar, punctuation and syntax, as well with the graphical ‘look’ of letters, words and sentences based on the ideas and experimentations of the sources briefly outlined above.

The Kingdom of Ants is a wild screenplay: stoners & loners, taxi-drivers and Tuareg warriors, drugs, field-recorders & aliens, tarot & taxidermy incarnates, steam-train recordings & government fumigation squadrons, voodoo priestess & giant sinkholes, more drugs and secret government weapons labs & space-dust collectors. And, of course, ants…lots, and lost of ants. What is the tagline you ask? To me, it’s always been Malick’s Tree of Life meets Cheech & Chong.

The screenplay and the character bio can be downloaded below, and there is a playlist of music tracks to play while you read at the bottom of the post.

The screenplay wants to be a film – I think this is the best current definition of ‘Screenplay’ because it captures what it is: a structure— both literally and metaphorically: it is a narrative structure and a an edifice of words— and a form that is yet to achieve its final form: a form constructed of written language that wants to be a form constructed sound and moving images—re-rendered into audio-vision.

And so, the definition also captures the dominant understanding of the screenplay text, that the screenplay is not really something until it becomes something else, that without becoming a film it has no value, and once it is a film, the screenplay longer has any use, that it is simply the crumpled chrysalis left behind the butterfly fluttering away—this, of course, is not correct, but more on that another time.

The cinematic experience, the act of watching a film is often characterised and discussed in terms of seeing, in relation to the sense of vision, and the technology of the lens. But film, and thus also the film experience, is as much an aural construction, ‘seen’ with our ears. The film form, as Michel Chion says, is simultaneous and synchronised “audio-vision”, an ensemble of sounds and images in a reciprocal relationship similar to that of putting several simultaneous notes together to create harmonies or dissonances. 

This allows the film to represent an immersive ‘real’ world imbued with emotive meaning from what is actually a meticulously constructed artifice of carefully selected formal elements and discriminate metonymy. This process of selection, creation and audio-visual indication often starts years in advance, in the form and purpose of the written screenplay text. 

The screenplay is a complex text. Its authorship can be both tangled and multifarious, with the normative screenwriting process often involving several authors, sometimes working in tandem, often separate and sequentially, or in parallel, many going uncredited. The form is also heterogenous with several distinct categories of screenplays, having varying intentions and objectives, written for, and read by different readers for different purposes. Its main purpose I would argue is to be a ‘monstration’ of the audio-vision it could become—to have its materials, devices, and styles, the written words that make up its text, transformed and rendered into the audio-visual language of film. 

This expectation of having its form re-rendered means the screenplay text is generally considered to be, as discussed, a ‘blueprint’; a design for another form, a set of plans outlining the construction process of what it wants to ultimately be: a film. But I believe, that this anticipation of a re-rendering whose purpose is to advice, or guide, or—hopefully—inspire the diverse selection processes necessary to construct the audio-vision of film text, actually requires the screenplay to also be a poetic text. 

But the screenplay is implicitly understood as a planning record segmenting, regulating, and indicating production processes and many practical and technological requirements for the construction of the film. Along with the screenplay’s strict formatting regulations of document margins and prescribed placement of line breaks, font and font size are set out to provide a ratio of 60 seconds of screen time per page of screenplay, and the highly prescriptive format and structural admissions provided by screenwriting gurus such as Syd Field and  Robert McKee, to name the two probably most well knowns one would think that the screenplay would be a highly uniform and homogenous document. But a quick survey of a few different screenplays form different periods shows as many possibilities as there are screenwriters.

Stanley Kubrick Barry Lyndon (1975)

The total eschewing of the screenplay format by Stanley Kubrick – having the dialogue be the widest sections of writing, usually reserved for the direction.

Walter Hill & David Giler Alien (1978)

The ’down-the-page’ formatting of Walter Hill’s Alien.

Quentin Tarantino Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

The verbose ‘non-shootable’ of Quentin Tarantino.

Scott Beck & Bryan Woods A Quiet Place (2018)

or the graphic playfulness of the script for ‘A Quiet Place’.

The discussion and understanding of cinema, both in the vernacular, and in cinema research in general is and has been weighted and focussed on its visual properties, as is our understanding of the screenplay. We go to “the pictures” to “see” a film and screenwriters, deemed to be “visual poets” are admonished to “write in pictures” to “describe what we see”, to “show and not tell”. 

The issue of course, is that cinema is not simply images in a temporally structured flow, not just a visual experience—cinema is audio-vision, sound and moving images running side-by-side simultaneously and synchronised, providing a multi-modal narrative encounter. In terms of the screenplay as the written “monstration”, this raises a pertinent question: since the screenplay should ‘show’ the film, should it not then also let us ‘hear’ the film? Wouldn’t it be artistically and narratively beneficial to reveal and substantiate the aural constituents of the people, places and occurrences that are to be remediated?

The answer to this, I argue, is of course ‘yes’ but going through available literature one would think not. While there is literature on many aspects of sound in film and on specific director’s utilisation of sound there is a tendency to focus on music, specifically score music, and on the interaction of music and sound effects. Very little is written on the function, creation and application of sound effects, apart from more technically focussed texts but even these are surprisingly rare. And, since screenwriting research is a relatively new field, there is almost nothing written on the creation and application of sound in the screenplay itself.

Graphically Enhanced Onomatopoeia in Comic Books

The use of onomatopoeia is well established, even also integrated in the graphic art of the comic book. The graphicalisation of the word-sound using shape & dynamics, colour, texture, and size adds klangfarbe to the textual elements.

Below are some examples of graphically enhanced onomatopoeia.

Here is another example of onomatopoeia enhanced by shape & dynamics, as well as dialect represented through the graphicality of the dialogue.

And, here, noise as just repeated patterns of brushstrokes to ‘show’ the sound of flapping wings, or are the shapes the bird cries?

DADA, Futurism and “Words in Freedom”

Filippo Marinetti’s parole in libertà — “words in freedom,” often translated as “free word poetry.” was inspired by the intensity of his experiences as a war correspondent in Libya. The Futurists developed multi-sensory approaches to communicate the experiences of physical reality. Instead of description, Futurist poets used onomatopoeia to convey sounds directly. The title of Marinetti’s poem ZANG TUMB TUMB is onomatopoeic; the “words” are the successive sounds of an artillery shell firing, exploding, and reverberating. 

Marinetti - Zang Tumb Tumb

The poetic process of “words in freedom” was one of severe restrictions—ironically enough—and so mirrors, in that way, the prescriptions and formal restrictions of the screenplay format.

Marinetti - In the Evening, Lying on Her Bed, She Reread the Letter from Her Artilleryman at the Front

Tzara, Burroughs and the ‘Cut-Up’ Method

Dada founder Tristan Tzara ‘wrote’ poetry by randomly putting words cut out from other sources together to construct a poem

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin applied this method to literature as way to break free from the constraints of language. The ‘Cut-Up’ method created new meanings by cutting up the text you have written, re-arranging the words or sentences into various new forms, so that entirely new meanings would emerge. This of course is similar to how a film is constructed through montage: cut, move around, rep-arrange and put together.

Burroughs considered this method to be essential since, as he saw it, language was virus that would take over when you were writing, and turn your text into what it wanted it to be, not what you wanted it to be, and so the virus had to be dealt with by breaking it.

Brion Gysin & William S. Burroughs

The Kingdom of Ants

And so, we arrive at the creative practice element of my PhD: The Kingdom of Ants, a 90-page feature-film screenplay—specifically a ‘on spec’ screenplay—in which sound is a principal theme, a narrative driver, and a character element.

Sound as Thematic Element

The recording of sound—field recordings, notes &observations, reports and communiqués.

The creation of sound: experimental soundscapes.

The dissemination of sound: (hidden) sound installations and collected sounds on tapes and records.

Sound as Noise.

Sound as a physical and psychological affective force.

Sound as Narrative and Mise-en-scéne Element

  • Audio Props :

    • Field Recording Equipment;

    • Short-Wave radio;

    • Dictaphone;

    • Editing Equipment;

    • Steam Train Recordings.

  • Non-Dialogue Driven Sequences:

    • Mystical and Transcendental experiences:

      • Religious;

      • Drug-induced;

      • Audio Induced.

    • Sequences involving non-language entities, such as ants.

Sound as Character Element

Sound forms a crucial part of all the character’s lives and personalities.

Anton (29) - Field recorder, weed smoker and experimental sound artist; recording, relaying and broadcasting the sounds of suburbia throughout suburbia. Living and working in a garage in his grandmother’s apartment block.

Anna (27) - Solitary wanna-be myrmecologist and regular neurotic; Fentanyl addict and custard aficionado. Currently studying accounting but actually working on her magnum opus (many many years in the making): The Kingdom of Ants.

Bob aka Radiant Moon Flower (67) - weed dealer, stardust and field-recording collector, short-wave radio operator, and steam train enthusiast.

Onomatopoeia and Sound Symbolism

Below are two sets of excerpts from The Kingdom of Ants screen grabbed from the screenplay page to show the experimentation with sound writing utilise the methods described above.

The first set shows the use of onomatopoeia, ands some enhance meant using basic graphical changes to size and capitalisation of the words, as well as the use of punctuation, syntax and spacing. Many of the graphically enhanced word-sounds also functions as bridging elements between cuts. There is also experimentation with the creation of sentences to represent the sound of sifting sand through the use of sound symbolism.

 

Noise ‘Cut-Up’ and “Words in Freedom”

The second set highlights excerpts where noise is represented through the use of graphical ‘glitches’ put directly onto the letters, as well as whole paragraphs enhanced graphically in Photoshop to represent words from a recorded tape being resounded through sound or environmental effects, such as reverb, delay, and echo. The taped words had already been ‘heard’ earlier in the script, and so were ‘Cut-Up’ to now read as another relay of the tapes, often with several tapes overlapping or folding into each other. Noise was also represented through the insertion of non-English words, and letters from non-latin alphabets.

The Kingdom of Ants Soundtrack Playlist

References

Aronson, L. (2000). Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of Writing for the Screen. Sydney: Allan & Unwin

Batty, C. & Waldeback, Z. (2007). Writing for the Screen: Creative and Critical Approaches. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/curtin/detail.action?docID=4763781

Beck, S.  & Woods, B. (2018). A Quiet Place [Screenplay]. USA: Warner Brothers.

Chion, M. (1994). Audio-vision: sound on screen. New York: Columbia University Press.

Field, S. (1979). Screenplay: The foundations of screenwriting. New York: Dell Publishing Co.

–––– (1994). Four Screenplays: Studies in the American screenplay. New York: Dell Publishing Co.

Hill, W. & Giler, D. (1978). Alien [Screenplay]. USA: Warner Brothers.

Ingelstrom, A. (2014). Narrating Voices in the Screenplay Text: How the Writer Can Direct the Reader’s Visualisations of the Potential Film. In C. Batty (Ed.), Screenwriters and Screenwriting: Putting practice into context (pp. 30-45). UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kubrick, S.  (1975). Barry Lyndon [Screenplay]. USA: Warner Brothers.

Maras, S. (2009). Screenwriting: History, theory and practice. New York: Wallflower Press.

McKee, R. (1997). Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: Regan Books/Harper Collins.

Mehring, M. (1990). The Screenplay: A Blend of Film Form and Content. London: Focal Press.

Millard, K. (2006). Writing for the Screen: Beyond the Gospel of the Story. Scan, 3 (2). Retrieved from http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=77

Pasolini, P. P. (1986). THE SCREENPLAY AS A "STRUCTURE THAT WANTS TO BE ANOTHER STRUCTURE"*. The American Journal of Semiotics, 4(1), 53-72. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/213747053?accountid=10382

Silverman, K. (1983). The Subject of Semiotics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sonnenschein, D. (2001). Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions.

Sternberg, C. (1997). Written for the screen: The American motion-picture screenplay as text. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

Tarantino, Q.  (2003). Kill Bill: Vol. 1 [Screenplay]. USA: Warner Brothers.

Thompson, K. (1988). Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist film analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 

–––– (1999). Storytelling in the New Hollywood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.