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04/06/2006: Girls Just Wanna Have Funnel


I've had a couple chances this week to talk or get together with ex-colleagues from various shows. I had a wonderful lunch with Andrew Green from Jake in Progress, and a great dinner with Rich Hatem and Doris Egan from Tru Calling. These little reunions always remind me of how each writers' room is a little culture unto itself. What is valued in that room may be very different than what is valued in another room. Some rooms are free-wheeling, with writers talk-thinking their way into an idea about a story. Others are quiet and thoughtful, where the succinctly-presented idea is more likely to shine. Some rooms are always all on a diet together. Other rooms are food snob rooms (oh, let's not go to a chain restaurant, we might die of shame). Still others are filled with Build-a-Burger menus and pizza boxes.

And, always, rooms get some degree of their own vocabulary. Usually, something gets named after a writer. A joke run using repeated words might be named after a writer who favors that form, for example. Punny writing has been called "Espensonian," which just makes giggle with delight. That kind of thing is inevitable as you get to know the writing preferences of people you spend long hours with. Sometimes the vocabulary is more ornate, requiring the kind of analysis used to explain Cockney rhyming slang. Conceptual meetings at Buffy were called Onions. [State of the Union -> State of the Onion -> Onion.]

And then there is "funneling." This was a term we came up with on a sitcom I worked on very early in my career. It has turned out to be so useful that I have never forgotten it. It describes a writing technique that is used so often, to such good effect, that I'm a little surprised I've never heard of anyone else coming up with a name for it. Well, actually, I suppose they might have. Maybe there's totally a well-known name for this, but I've never heard it. Here's the technique.

Remember when we talked about intercutting between two scenes that are happening simultaneously? The hypothetical example had to with breaking up an unusually long party scene by repeatedly cutting away to another scene. Obviously, this technique is used all the time, even when neither scene was too long. You can use it to emphasize the irony of a certain two events occurring at the same time, for example. (While she was plotting his murder, he was planning her birthday party!! That kind of thing).

Anyway, there you are, cutting back and forth between two scenes, letting them comment on each other, both of them driving toward their respective blows. Many times you want a sense of acceleration here. So you start with longer chunks of each scene between each transition back to the other scene. Then with shorter pieces. Often ending with BOOM – the blow to one scene and then, BAM, the blow to the other scene. That is what we named funneling.

Sometimes the eventual tip of the funnel will be a collision between the two scenes. If one scene has been of someone in danger and the other has been of the people trying to rescue them, the funnel will end with the arrival of the rescuers. That's a dramatic funnel. A comedic funnel will more likely end with something like two characters separately reaching decisions that we, the viewers, know will escalate their conflict. (Blow to scene one: Wife: "I'm going to demand my equal part of this marriage!" Blow to scene two: Husband: "I think I WILL buy that car without asking her advice!")

You do not always have to do this. There are many examples, among my Buffy scripts, for instance, of intercut scenes which had no funneling pattern. But if you have scenes in which you would like to call the viewers' attention to either an alignment or a contrast at the end of the scenes, add a funnel to your writing toolbox.

Lunch: beef and vegetables cooked shabu-shabu style -- immersed in boiling water at the table. Yummy yummy.