The Screenplay: The Beat

The indefinable atom of a scene

The Beat as Actor’s Business

What is a ‘beat’? I confess I don’t know. I first heard the term from a New York actor, and he defined it in acting terms. To him, a ‘beat’ was a bit of business, some concrete thing an actor did, and it was an atomic level part of the actor’s performance. The performance of an actor is built up out of beats. A beat is not a line of dialogue but a nonverbal bit of physical action. It could be opening an envelope or shutting a door, or picking up a paperweight, or closing some drapes.

I also got the impression that one could use the term ‘beat’ for larger parts of a performance, and parts that involve more than one actor. A clench or a kiss might be a beat in this sense. I’m not sure I’m correct in saying this.

The idea of a beat was quite vague as I understood it, but then, I was never an actor. Be aware, then, that to an actor a ‘beat’ is something different, and I probably am wrong in describing it as I have.

Luckily, this sense of the word is not something the screenwriter per se has to deal with.

The Beat as Pause

There is though another sense of the term beat that does involve the screenwriter. It means, or seems to mean, the same thing as ‘pause.’ Here is an example of the term in use:

JOHN
I don’t know why I’m telling you this. (Beat) I don’t even know why I’m here.

I have seen the word used in this way in many professional screenplays. I’ve never used it myself, and never heard anyone explain its meaning or use, but the function of the term in every case I’ve seen has been to dictate to the actor that he pause before delivering the next words of his lines. Since I don’t know the meaning of the term, I use an ellipsis when I have wanted to try to force a pause:

JOHN
I don’t know why I’m telling you this… I don’t even know why I’m here.

All the same, the use of ‘beat’ seems fashionable, so I wanted to mention it. I have no doubt (and no evidence) that the use of ‘beat’ in screenplays derives from the actor’s term. It may have started as notes actors put into their own copies of scripts, where they wanted to pause; actors writing screenplays then may have formalized its use.

There doesn’t seem to be any action indicated by the term in the scripts I’ve seen. The actor, faced with the dictate that he pause, may of course feel the need to invent some bit of business to cover the pause in his delivery of the lines.

The Beat as Change of Tack

Implied at times in such a pause may be other things:

• A change of subject
• A change of thought
• A change of mood
• A memory
• A new idea
• A plan
• The beginning of a lie or other ploy

In cases such as these, the beat directive serves as a signpost to the actor. It is as though a new speech now begins, a new idea, without any action significant enough to be noted in description, and without any intervening line from the other characters, if any, in the scene. In traditional drama such signposts were left out, and the changes were implied. Back then actors got ample time for rehearsal and to learn their roles, but today (in television and low-budget or independent films particularly) time is short, and rehearsal may be deemed a luxury that may be omitted.

In this last sense, as a marker to the actor that his character will here switch subjects or moods, the word is useful.

For those talesmen who only use the screenplay form as a proto-draft for a later non-dramatic telling of the tale, the ellipsis is better to mark a mere pause, but the change in mood or subject can well be marked off by use of beat. In this case, the writer signals himself to mark off the change for the reader by some other means. In the meantime, the writer wants to get the flow of the dialogue recorded without bothering to consider what sort of description or other action to introduce to mark the switch.

(Composed on keyboard Wednesday, June 4, 2008)