Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Tip and Quote of the Week: Write A Great Opening Scene


Write A Great Opening Scene

It's tough with today's spec market.

Help yourself out with a great opening scene.

It doesn't matter if it's a drama or a comedy or a thriller: have the opening be gripping, or intriguing, or mysterious, or exciting, or all four.

A great opening scene will get you a lot of leeway when it comes to how long an industry player will sit down to read your script. If you keep the scenes consistently great, you might achieve that rarity of all rarities – an agent who reads a script from cover to cover.

"There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay."
-Richard Attenborough

Sources: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/screenplay.html#Qt2XAKBwUuITJCDb.99 and http://www.screenplay.com/default.aspx.

A former Hollywood Lit Manager, Michael Ferris started ScriptAWish.com as a way to help other writers get their foot in the door and has helped several writers sell their scripts (like Travis Beacham of PACIFIC RIM) and set up projects with producers like Academy Award Winner Arnold Kopelson. The mission of ScriptAWish.com is to help aspiring writers get their scripts into shape and then get their foot in the door. His new venture is a collaboration with several professional screenwriters called StudioGhostwriters.com and is intended to help producers get their movie ideas on paper or their drafts polished for production.



Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Tip and Quote of the Week: Breaking into TV

Breaking Into TV

Breaking into TV is tough and you need to make sure your pilot and/or show specs move FAST.

Hit it hard from page one and don’t let off the gas!

Don’t just write a great episode, write the kind of episode for a show that people would talk about at the water cooler if they had actually seen it on TV.

"There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't."
-Charlie Kaufman

Sources: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/screenplay.html#Qt2XAKBwUuITJCDb.99 and http://www.screenplay.com/default.aspx.

A former Hollywood Lit Manager, Michael Ferris started ScriptAWish.com as a way to help other writers get their foot in the door and has helped several writers sell their scripts (like Travis Beacham of PACIFIC RIM) and set up projects with producers like Academy Award Winner Arnold Kopelson. The mission of ScriptAWish.com is to help aspiring writers get their scripts into shape and then get their foot in the door. His new venture is a collaboration with several professional screenwriters called StudioGhostwriters.com and is intended to help producers get their movie ideas on paper or their drafts polished for production.



Monday, October 15, 2012

Rian Johnson on Screenwriting

Also, Rian Johnson, who wrote and directed the recently released "Looper", starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, talked about screenwriting for half an hour with "Making Of":



Here is the link to watch it on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gux9zyFPDeA&feature=related.




Sunday, October 14, 2012

WGA's 101 Greatest Screenplays!

"Writers Guild of America,
West" logo.
"Writers Guild of America,
East" logo.
There is a list of Writer's Guild of America's 101 Greatest Screenplays!

They even went a step further and listed where the scripts can be found online, whether they can found in their entirety or just a short clipping of the script, and who wrote it.

Check it out: http://www.simplyscripts.com/wga_top_101_scripts.html.




"Hide and Seek" Movie Review

"Hide and Seek" movie poster.
"After his wife commits suicide, David Callway (Robert DeNiro) and his daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), move upstate to find peace and 'restart' their lives. But when mysterious and dangerous things start happening, and Emily makes a new friend named Charlie, David and Emily's doctor, Katherine (Famke Janssen), begin to worry. Now, David and Emily must find a way out of this mess...if they are to survive." Written by jmfirecracker (Link below.)
Directed by John Polson (director of "Swimfan" and "Siam Sunset") and written by Ari Schlossberg (writer for "Harper's Island" and "Lucky 13"), "Hide and Seek" is a decent horror or psychological thriller geared towards adults. It reminded me of "Secret Window" (starring Johnny Depp and based on the short story by Stephen King). Also, "Psycho" with it's shower curtain references. If you have seen either of those movies, I just might have given the ending away. Even still, you should watch this film for its great pacing and interesting plot.

Dakota Fanning.
The only thing I found unsettling was DeNiro. Fanning was supposed to be creepy, and she was; a great actress even then. But DeNiro played an extremely calm father throughout everything in his life going to hell. He was a psychologist, but I think most everybody would've lost their cool after the cat died.

I think if I had not been watching this with my friend, who had already seen it, and didn't want me to figure out who it was too early, kept shouting off, "Did you SEE that?! That's telling! Remember that!" It got to the point where I couldn't completely pay attention to the movie. If I had been able to watch it by myself, I may have figured out what was going on a lot sooner than I did. Not that this is see-through, it just wasn't that big a surprise and makes the movie one that you can only watch once, unless you're a nerd and want to see what clues you missed the first go-around.

The dialogue transcript is available here: http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/h/hide-and-seek-script-transcript.html.

Robert DeNiro.
Favorite Lines:

Emily: Do you like her, Daddy?
David: Emily.
Emily: Charlie says you do.
David: Stop this.
Emily: Did Daddy tell you about my mommy?
David: I'm sure Elizabeth doesn't want to hear such things.
Emily: She killed herself. She slit her wrists and drowned in the bathtub. Let's hope you don't wind up like her.

Emily: I have a new friend.
David: A new friend?
Emily: He told me to call him Charlie.
David: When did you meet Charlie?
Emily: Today.
David: When we went to town?
Emily: Just before that.
David: Is he here right now?
Emily: I think he's sleeping.
David: Okay. Well, in that case, we better not wake him.

Katherine: It's not unusual for a child to create an imaginary friend.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Tip and Quote of the Week: Great Titles Are A Must


Great Titles are a Must

Great titles that grab you – off the bat – are paramount in this day and age.

Don’t write cutesy titles that require a person to read the script to “get” why it’s a funny or an interesting title.

Write a title that both tells a potential reader EXACTLY what kind (see: genre) of script they are about to read, and one that is attention grabbing and/or interesting.

Many times, your title will not be something that would ever possibly end up on the poster were it to get made (See: “F*ckbuddies”, which eventually became NO STRINGS ATTACHED, or "Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Most Readers Will Probably Hate But I Think You Will Love" that eventually became AMERICAN PIE).

 "All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath." 
— F. Scott Fitzgerald


A former Hollywood Lit Manager, Michael Ferris started ScriptAWish.com as a way to help other writers get their foot in the door and has helped several writers sell their scripts (like Travis Beacham of PACIFIC RIM) and set up projects with producers like Academy Award Winner Arnold Kopelson. The mission of ScriptAWish.com is to help aspiring writers get their scripts into shape and then get their foot in the door. His new venture is a collaboration with several professional screenwriters called StudioGhostwriters.com and is intended to help producers get their movie ideas on paper or their drafts polished for production.



Tuesday, October 2, 2012

"Looper" Movie Review

"Looper" movie poster.
"In 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by transporting back Joe's future self (Bruce Willis)." (Link below.)


Written and directed by Rian Johnson (wrote the screenplay for "Brick"), starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("Inception", "The Dark Knight Rises"), Bruce Willis ("Die Hard", "The Sixth Sense"), Emily Blunt ("The Young Victoria", "The Devil Wears Prada"), Paul Dano ("Cowboys & Aliens", "There Will Be Blood"), and Jeff Daniels ("Good Night and Good Luck", "Speed"). It's an interesting concept and the first time travel movie in the last few years that has nothing to do with romantic bullshit.

Also, Sourcefed's review of it convinced me to go and now, after having seen it, I agree with a lot of their observations (you can see their review below).

The makeup was very well done. They had Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis shot in profile in this one scene and they freakishly looked the same. I'm really glad they decided to make Gordon-Levitt look and act like Willis, because trying to make Willis look like Gordon-Levitt may have been impossible. But great work on their part.


One of the parts that I thought was well-done, but made me a bit squeamish, was when they got the one looper to come back by torturing his young, past self. So you could see him getting scars, losing fingers, his nose, his tongue, his feet, and basically every appendage until he gets close enough so that they can kill him. You couldn't see the actual torture, just the effects of it and that was more disturbing. 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (driving) and Paul Dano.
But it made me think that wouldn't that effect how the rest of that particular man's life would change and therefore he wouldn't be there to be tortured? Time travel is sort of a tricky subject like that. 

I also liked how they made the future more realistic than in previous science fiction movies. There are flying vehicles, but they are not quite up to speed. It seemed very messy there, like the world wasn't 'clean', which is probable with how people treat this planet. Everyone has solar panels on their houses and even their cars. They did a lot of good work with that aspect of it.

Bruce Willis.
I just couldn't completely feel for these loopers though. There were moments where I felt sympathy but then they usually involved somebody else. When things went wrong for them it really sucked, but they were still killing people and had a pretty good time doing it: cars, women, drugs, expensive getaways. I couldn't relate to them in that way.

I enjoyed it. There was gratuitous violence involving gunfire and torture. There was telekinesis, called TK. There was an interesting drug that you would drop into your eyes to get high. There was Bruce Willis yelling "Motherfucker!" which is always a treat. Also, there are boobies. 

Favorite Lines:

Found this awesome poster here.
Joe: Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now, it will have been.

Joe: Loopers are well paid, they lead a good life...

Abe: This time travel crap, just fries your brain like a egg...

[from trailer
Joe: I work as a specialized assassin, in an outfit called the Loopers. When my organization from the future wants someone to die, they zap them back to me and I eliminate the target from the future. The only rule is: never let your target escape... even if your target is you.

Older Joe: I'm going to stop this guy. 
Joe: None of this concerns me... 
Older Joe: It is going to happen to you! 
Joe: It's going to happen to YOU, it's not going to happen to ME!

Abe: I'm from the future, go to China.


I give this movie 4.5 out of 5 typewriters.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Tip and Quote of the Week: Writing TV Pilots


If you write an original TV pilot, you should have an existing show spec to package with it when you send it to Agents.

Make sure it's the same tone of show as your pilot if your interest is in getting staffed on a show (which it should be).

The odds of a first time writer selling a show are extremely low (though not unheard of), so your goal when writing TV should be:

1 – getting an agent

2 – getting staffed.


"You sell a screenplay like you sell a car.
If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it."
-Rita Mae Brown


A former Hollywood Lit Manager, Michael Ferris started ScriptAWish.com as a way to help other writers get their foot in the door and has helped several writers sell their scripts (like Travis Beacham of PACIFIC RIM) and set up projects with producers like Academy Award Winner Arnold Kopelson. The mission of ScriptAWish.com is to help aspiring writers get their scripts into shape and then get their foot in the door. His new venture is a collaboration with several professional screenwriters called StudioGhostwriters.com and is intended to help producers get their movie ideas on paper or their drafts polished for production.