Local teledramas require more, better scriptwriters

Local teledramas require more, better scriptwriters

By Sunaryono Basuki Ks

DENPASAR (JP): The growth of Indonesian teledramas requires
good materials for the stories. Many television workers have
complained about the lack of good sources for their films because
today, they are forced to produce their own programs to reduce
the number of imported telefilms.

The number of existing telescripts cannot cope with the rising
demand. Good scriptwriters, such as Asrul Sani, Emil Sanossa and
Alex Suprapto Yudo, who have given Indonesian television
audiences good quality telefilms are, today, much less
productive.

New names have appeared, like Arswendo Atmowiloto, Nasri
Cheppy and Hilman Lupus, specializing in writing stories for
young people. Others are Zara Zettira and Jujur Prananto, a young
short story writer, and some old names from the theater world,
such as Teguh Karya and Putu Wijaya.

To overcome the lack of material for telescripts, some writers
have suggested that television workers turn to Indonesian novels.
The United States, for example, has a long history of adapting
novels for films and television. One of many successes was The
Godfather.

In the 1960s alone we could enjoy film adaptations from well-
known novels such as War and Peace (Tolstoy), and Crime and
Punishment (Dostoyevsky), or from contemporary novels such as
Peyton Place or Bonjour Tristesse (Franscoise Sagan, then a very
young French novelist).

That decade also adapted famous plays by Shakespeare, not only
by American or European producers but also by Russian and
Japanese ones.

Othello was produced in Russia, its characters still wore
European costumes, while in the Japanese adaptation of Macbeth,
the story was set in Japan. In the past, Indonesian black-and-
white films included the adaptation of Anak Perawan di Sarang
Penyamun (Virgin in the Nest of Robbers), based on a novel by
Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana, and Sukreni Gadis Bali (Sukreni, the
Balinese Girl), based on a novel by AA Pandji Tisna.

Some adaptation problems hinder telefilm scriptwriters. A
novel is literature using narration and dialog. All the incidents
and character revelations are described in wordy detail.

Words

In short, the novel is a written form of art, while a film is
visual art. Rambo particularly shows the use of words is not
considered overly necessary.

In a way, a film script, with its dialogs, settings, etc., is
like a novel, while a stage-play script, generally, contains only
dialog and a little description (except in the case of George
Bernard Shaw, who liked to include detailed descriptions of
characters and their actions in his plays).

In many Indonesian films and teledramas, the use of words is
dominant. In almost any Indonesian television serial, we have
characters speaking, even in a situation when speech should be
replaced by pictures.

This normally happens in teledrama scripts which were
initially made for film by inexperienced scriptwriters. Emil
Sanossa, who wrote many scripts for the state television station
TVRI in the 1980s, wrote good-quality scripts, showing his
mastery of writing film scripts.

Sanossa, who started in the 1960s as a playwright, director
and actor, wrote scripts following the standard techniques of
writing a film script, giving detailed guides for audio and
visual aspects of the film in the text.

In all his scripts he divides the page into two equal columns,
the left for writing the visual aspects of the film, and the
right for the audio.

His perfectness in writing techniques and interesting stories
resulted in him winning five out of six scriptwriting
competitions held by TVRI's Surabaya station in the 1980s.

He continued with his writing, producing good quality scripts
such as Bertahan dalam Badai (Surviving the Storm, 1984) about
the struggle of Indonesian nationalists in 1934, Luka Bayang
(Wounded Shadow, 1983), Ketika Tebu Berbunga (When the Sugar Cane
Blossomed) and many others.

Actors in his teledramas included the likes of noted actors
Rano Karno, WD Mochtar and Adi Kurdi. Many were directed by Dedi
Setiadi, a prominent TVRI director. Sanossa's scripts made a film
director's work easy because they were already perfect shooting
scripts. Other scriptwriters, especially those who directed
productions themselves, only wrote outlines of their works.

The script for Non, written and directed by Putu Wijaya,
looks like a play script, containing only the names of the
characters and the dialog that each character speaks.

Putu can finish writing a script in two days, and then spends
two days shooting to produce one episode. This method may explain
why he is very productive; his work is popular, though quality
could be questioned.

The different media used in novels and films have,
occasionally, resulted in protests from novelists.

Ernest Hemingway once stated he was not satisfied with a film
based one of his novels. In Indonesia, YB Mangunwijaya rejected
the film Roro Mendut, which was based on his novel, because the
scriptwriter changed the ending.

As long as a film is credited as an adaptation of a novel and
not an imitation of it, such problems could be avoided.

Both scriptwriters and novelists should acknowledge that the
film and the novel on which it was based are separate works of
art.

Filmmakers cannot be forced to follow a storyline in detail
from the original source, using the same way of expressing ideas.

A scriptwriter is required to use his own imagination and
creativity to make a visually good film based on a written text.

One example is the adaptation of the novel Karmila by Marga
T., which was popular in the 1970s. It is said to be different
from an earlier film adaptation of the same novel.

Asrul Sani has also proved the possibility of good adaptation
by writing a more lively and interesting script based on a famous
old Indonesian novel, Siti Nurbaya.

Scriptwriters should keep in mind that unlike novels,
the interchange of normally short sequences for teledramas are
parts of a jigsaw puzzle gradually taking shape in the viewers'
mind. Visual representations of the settings and actions no
longer require a narrative, which makes many of our teledramas
rather boring.

It is clear that the main problem of the increasing need for
telescripts is the shortage of creative scriptwriters. Prominent
novelists such as Putu, Iwan Simatupang, Mangunwijaya, Umar Kayam
and many others have written a number of good novels just waiting
to be adapted for television.