Pamela Jaye Smith spoke at the Scriptwriters Network on the use of mythic tools in storytelling. Symbols and images are potent tools to enhance stories. Consider the use of trees in “Avatar” to highlight the connectivity of the Nevi to the earth or the color red in “American Beauty” to highlight passion, rebellion and anger.… [Read more…]
May 30, 2012
Hal Croasmun writes on assessing the quality of your characters in your screenplay. In the first five pages of your screenplay, we should see an extremely interesting lead character. Great lead characters make great screenplays. There is something about them that is so interesting and entertaining that they carried the movie by themselves. 1. UNIQUE… [Read more…]
May 27, 2012
RESIDUALS are monies paid to WGA screenwriters writing for a WGA signatory company under a WGA agreements. They are based on reuse of your work rather than a profit sharing model. Writers in the US don’t own copyright to their work. They sell it to the studio system for commercial exploitation. In other parts of… [Read more…]
May 24, 2012
Danny Manus, an L.A. based script consultant sums up what a one sheet should contain. Your one-pager (another term for one-sheet) is your calling card; a selling tool for your story and also for yourself. It differs from a synopsis in a few ways. First, as its name dictates, it’s only ONE page. Secondly, unlike… [Read more…]
May 21, 2012
The average budget for a Hollywood movie is well over 8o million dollars according to David Santo. But if you’re waiting for a producer with a Scrooge McDuck sized jack to come along and finance your film you’re begging. A bigshot producer that doesn’t personally know you is not going to trust you to write… [Read more…]
May 18, 2012
Corey Mandell spoke to the Scriptwriters Network members on how professional writers broach rewriting. The key problem with many early drafts is that readers often perceive a different story to what the writer intended. This often results from writers making too many assumptions about what the reader should know about the main character, their backstory… [Read more…]
May 15, 2012
There are a number of questions writers should ask about their main character before they start writing. Creating the more complex rounded characters takes time — time spent thinking about how your characters look, where they’re from, and what motivates them, for instance. The questions by Ginny Wiehart provide structure to this all-important thought process.… [Read more…]
May 12, 2012
Anita Riggio asks how much about your characters do you really know? Small details might seem superfluous even irrelevant to the story you intend to write, but the smallest detail informs the bigger picture. The more you know about your characters, the better you’ll create believable characters who live and breathe on the page and… [Read more…]
May 9, 2012
squidoo.com has compiled groups of questions you should ask before writing your characters 1) THE BASICS These are the first questions you need to answer about your character – the stuff you probably need to know to get started. Name Age Approximate height Approximate weight (Hint: if you’re going to reference one or the other,… [Read more…]
May 6, 2012
Have you ever wondered how film budgets are allocated, particularly in the studio system, where expenditures of $100 to $200 million are the norm? Most film budgets are deliberately obtuse in nature. They are either grossly inflated to impress the audience, or deliberately depressed to appease investors and the IRS. What elements contribute to production… [Read more…]
Fellow screenwriters have been bugging me to do script consultations. Contact me for details via my twitter account @jgsarantinos
The next deadline for the Hollywood Outreach Program at The Scriptwriters Network is Saturday 15 September 2012. Visit www.scriptwritersnetwork.org for more details. Get studio quality coverage. Top scripts are recommended to agents, managers and production companies.
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June 2, 2012
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