I’ve seen a lot of short films over the years. Frequently I’ve been impressed by the visuals, the level of the acting, sometimes the innovative use of a mix of media. Can you guess what most often is the weakest link?
To avoid having any one element of foreshadowing be too obvious, often the writer will throw in some red herrings–some things that could be foreshadowing but in fact don’t pay off or pay off in a different way than we expect. The person who has the gun in the drawer may become an immediate suspect in our minds, but later maybe we see him use it to light his cigarette and we realize it’s not a real gun (of course he may have a real one somewhere else….). That kind of misdirection keeps the audience guessing.
If you want to write a good movie, you need to give your screenplay emotional intelligence. “Chasing the Monster Idea” is a book by …
When writing a screenplay, there are lots of questions you can ask about your characters to get to know them better. Read this Filmmaking Stuff guest article from screenwriter Jurgen Wolff.
Looking for free Filmmaking Books? Download The Modern Moviemaking Movement. Ten of Hollywood’s most innovative filmmakers share tips on navigating the indie film landscape.
Because I’ve written a few books about screenwriting I sometimes get questions from people just starting out on their careers. One query that has started coming up more often recently is whether it’s better to chase the Hollywood dream or get involved with indie films, including ones made for the web…
The idea is that you set a goal for the day and declare it on the MAD website and check in every hour to report your progress and watch a five minute live broadcast in which Jurgen gives tips and answers questions.
I see that there’s a one day workshop being offered with the pitch, “Who better to teach you to understand characters than EXPERT BEHAVIOR ANALYSTS?” It’s not my intention to diss the people offering the workshop (which I also why I’m not going to name them)—they are both screenwriters as well as Expert Behavior Analysts and sound like a couple of smart guys with credible credits.
Some screenwriters think that just about every screenplay should open with a bang of some kind: perhaps a literal explosion, or a murder, or a chase.Those may well be good choices for certain stories, but my take on this is that what an opening actually needs to do is to prompt two questions and one feeling in your audience…
People always point out that a relationship with an agent is something like a marriage, but without the sex (usually). Which means that sometimes there will be a divorce—at this point, the high profile one is J. K. Rowling dumping hers…
I think what we can learn from documentary makers is to pause before we launch into the obvious story and dig deeper to see if there’s a more interesting, perhaps more subtle, one lurking underneath…
You don’t really want totally arbitrary events in your script, but if you need to capture their attention, put it in and then in the next draft work your way backward in the story so it has some motivation…