In our last entry, we discussed the basics of revising a screenplay, and why a solid revision process is so important. There’s several elements to take into consideration when revising your script, not least of which is time—are you picking at a personal project, or do you have a tight deadline? The amount of hacking, [ Read More ]
Revisions. Everyone does them, but there’s a lot of mystery surrounding them—what are these strange revisions, and how are they decided on? Many moviegoers assume a script leaps from a writer’s brain onto the screen without much challenge or change. It’s a lovely illusion, but that’s usually not the case. For the next few entries, [ Read More ]
At its heart, a good movie is a form of escapism, and its strongest segment is often the ending. Movies are roughly two hours of freedom from the outside world. We’re allowed to toss aside our worries and spend time with other people. These people may have familiar problems (issues with their love lives, job [ Read More ]
You’ve got a script due and you have a deadline…but before anything else, you need an idea. A precious few individuals may be able to sit down at the computer and start banging out words, completing a project in little time and with seemingly little effort. These people are generally referred to as freaks of [ Read More ]
Last week, we talked a lot about clothing making the character. It’s time to shift our focus a little bit to the setting, and how setting is almost a character itself. Set dressing, according to the hallowed Wikipedia, “includes the furnishings, wallpaper, lighting fixtures, and many of the other objects that will be seen in [ Read More ]
“Clothes make the man,” Mark Twain once declared. “Naked people have little or no influence on society.” Last week, we talked about audiences tuning in to movies and television to see characters. Unless you’re making a very specific type of movie that Mark Twain certainly wouldn’t approve of, your characters will most likely be clothed [ Read More ]
People go to the movies for the characters. Pretty elementary, right? Oh, sure, you have the occasional viewer who just wants to see what your digitized Tyrannosaurus Rex looks like up close, but for the most part, people go to the movies because movies tell a story, and stories are about characters. It doesn’t matter [ Read More ]
Money. You can’t live with it, but you can’t really burn it and shun it from your life forever. The dollar doesn’t stretch as far as it used to in the film industry, as evidenced by the steadily increasing pricetags attached to the big studio films. What’s the filmmaker without $100 million to do? Fortunately, [ Read More ]
