Unfortuantly, I was only able to find a PDF file for only one publication - Raindance Writers' Lab: Write & Sell the Hot Screenplay by Elliot Grove. However, it did teach me a few things about how to write a good screenplay.
Firstly, it has taught me that there are 7 key points to think about when writing:
1) Entertainment - The primary reason the screenplay has been written/going to be wrote is to entertain your target audience. Although this may be seen by some as a job for the director, the editors and key roles during production, it is the writers role to control the original content of the script. The direct and editor etc are only responsible for how the content is presented.
2) Comerce - "Orson Welles said ‘A poet needs a pen, a painter needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs a whole army’." "Writers who forget the business side of the industry do so at their peril. The bankers and financiers, the marketing and public relations people, the owners and employees of the cinemas, the accountants with their complex procedures, the tax lawyers, the copyright and royalty collectors: these are a few of the silent faces who are employed by the business side of the film industry. Add in the more glamorous roles of the actors, the directors, the editors, make-up artists, scenic artists, lighting and sound specialists and you really do have an army of people involved in the making of a film. Each area is really a sub-industry and the people in each sub-industry tend to distrust, and sometimes even hate the people in other sub-industries. But money and collaboration govern the entire movie business. Therefore a writer who includes camera directions in a screenplay, or is too specific with stage directions, is precluding the possibility of collaboration with the cameraman and the actors – two very important categories of creatives. The trick is to write a screenplay that inspires each and every category of person likely to be involved in the making of the movie." http://escrituraavcontemporaneo.wikispaces.com/file/view/write+%2B+sell+the+hot+screenplay.pdf
3) Contrivance - As screenwriters, we must learn to fill the void of the screen with images and voices that follow the contrivance in the cinemas. Remember too, that as children we all looked forward to the bedtime stories that our parents told us. Now that we are adults, we still love a good story and go to the cinema to get one. The fact that filmmakers use a series of contrivances to bring us the story is something that we expect and accept.
4) Peeping Tom - "The challenge for screenwriters is to write a script that is so compelling that the audience will find it very difficult to stop following. For screenwriters, the challenge is to create a world that people want to stare at, and to make the screen characters, dialogue, setting and action so compelling that they cannot wrench themselves away from the screen until the very last frame, the very last words in the script."
http://escrituraavcontemporaneo.wikispaces.com/file/view/write+%2B+sell+the+hot+screenplay.pdf
5) Maximise, in minimal circustances - Use every technique you can possible, but avoid using poet techniques such as similes, metaphors and alliterations etc. Also you can only write what is on the screen. For example, you can't say "it's very hot" because how would you show that? Handling your personal life around your script writing is very important too. It is very easy to get distract by the smallest things such as a noise from outside the room you are writing in.
6) Hollywood, love it or leave it? - This is all down to personal opinion. Do you like films that are filmed in major cities and also you special effects and grand camera movements or do you prefer original, independant films? Your own answer to this decides what you include in your own script.
7) Audience - Remember you are writing for only one audience, the reader! You have to impress the reader because they have the one thing you want - a cheque book. The people who are responsible for presenting the film to potentially millions are the film makers themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment