Fixing Story Problems

It’s impossible to say what makes a film great. Useless to prescribe any rules, since often the best films break them anyway. A more helpful discussion, then, might be to talk about what makes a film bad — and what can be done about it (this is the helpful part).

Lately we’ve been reading Blake Snyder’s classic book on screenwriting, Save the Cat!, to see what lessons a major Hollywood screenwriter offers independent filmmakers like ourselves. One of the most useful sections comes toward the end, when Snyder discusses common story problems and what he suggests writers do about them. Even though we’re not particularly interested in writing the next Hollywood blockbuster, these tips were surprisingly great and helped clarify some story fundamentals in our minds. So we thought we’d share them.

...Read the full article here to find fixes for these common problem:

1. The Problem of the Passive Hero

2. The Problem of Talking the Plot

3. The Problem of Nothing on the Line

4. The Problem of One Thing After Another

5. The Problem of the Emotional Color Wheel

6. The Problem of Primality

The Art of Villainy

by Geoffrey Botkin (article source)
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Pop quiz. Read and then answer:

There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the Government has deployed the Army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have stopped. But 25 protesters have been killed by the Army. You are the Prime Minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral.

The above question was recently given to 12-year-old boys whose parents want them to be admitted to Eton, the elite British school for the governing class. So what is the passing answer to this question?

Well, it all depends on what kind of ethical system you want your national leaders to follow. What is necessary and moral? What moral standard are young Brits bringing with them into the college, and what will they take with them into the Prime Minister’s office? Exactly how is it these Eton professors want tomorrow’s Prime Ministers making life-and-death moral decisions?

Do the parents of these boys really care? Or is the road to power what matters most? Names of boys go on the Eaton waiting list at birth, and parents pay more than $50,000 per year to keep those who are accepted on target for places of privilege and raw power. At Eton, Eton boys are taught that they are born to lord it over others. They will rule, some day. They know it, and everyone else knows it. Eton boys graduate with a certain air of competence at doing exactly what they think needs to be done…with privileges others don’t have, and with an ethical system that will be consistently pragmatic and sentimentally British. But will it be moral? Or elegantly evil?

Maybe one of the perks of privilege is not having to worry about ethics. You simply do what you think needs to be done – for pragmatic reasons – and then you write a speech justifying it all. Eton boys are quite good at this. Out of Eton have arisen 19 headstrong Prime Ministers, and more than a dozen flamboyant villains, each of whom made a lot of money. Thanks to Hollywood, educated Brits have earned a reputation for being good at abusing privilege, and making villainy look “proper.” And thanks to Hollywood, this educated, elegant variety of villainy is now wildly popular and more accessible than ever.

“When Preparing for Villainy…One Must Sound Like a Proper Villain.” 1

What is a “proper villain?” In Britain, he is a high-class abuser of power, and his vocation can be learned as an art form. Different varieties of villainy have a learnable aesthetic. America is familiar with the lowest-class variety. Grand Theft Auto teaches millions of boys gutter villainy and disorganized crime. Violent feats of debauchery are glamorized. Petty criminals kill in vulgar ways that are different from the blood porn of Isis beheadings, which requires a more refined aesthetic. White collar villainy is yet more refined.

Villainy is a curious discipline and a cruel obsession. Because villains cannot lead from positions of moral integrity, trainee villains learn artifice and affectation by rote. Even the highbrow criminals have to learn to act the part and look the part. One new lesson of 2014: Just buy a Jag. “We all drive Jaguars,” intones British villain Mark Strong about his fellow British villains.

On Jaguar’s British Villains Dot Com website, new customers are invited to join the vocation of villainy by driving British Jaguars and acting like British villains. Stylish villainy of a British flavor is presented as High Art. That’s art with a capital “A” and high with a capital “H.” Aspiring villains of any criminal caste can visit the site and refine their style upwardly. They can learn how to dress like a villain, how to sound like a villain, how to corrupt like a villain, how to plan world domination as a villain, and how to plan one’s escape as a villain. A proper villain.

Eton boy Tom Hiddleston has had such a successful career as a movie villain that he too has been hired by Jaguar to articulate the most purposeful, elegant villainy. And to teach it. In one ad, Hiddleston takes the driver’s seat, listens to some patriotic Shakespeare, switches it off and turns to the camera. “They say Brits play the best villains,” he begins. And then Hiddleston proceeds with an authoritative lesson on the art of “great” villainy, which is chillingly proper. It looks…gentlemanly. If that strikes you as oxymoronic as “proper villain,” listen to the name of the Jaguar campaign: “It’s good to be bad.”

It Is Not Good To Be Bad

Moral heroism fell out of favor with popular culture two generations ago. In the movies, moral consistency and moral certainty is now a vice. Immoral consistency is a virtue. Not only are villains in control of themselves, they often drive the plot. Purposeful villains are far more interesting characters than the moralistic imbeciles who portray “heroes” in today’s cinema and television. Ever wonder why Hollywood casting directors seek out Brits to play iconic bad guys? Americans don’t have the comparative discipline or the education to carry a focused role. Educated British schoolboys have the foundational disciplines to speak with authority, precision, distinction and command. They clearly stand head and shoulders above undisciplined Americans. Ask the American female audience, "Who captures your attention?" It’s the bad guys who can consistently focus, who know exactly what to do, and how to do it without ambiguity, hesitancy, or cowardice. The British villain acts in a fully disciplined way. He knows what he wants. He prepares. He prepares for villainy. He is not afraid of planning to get what he wants. He is not ashamed to want dominion over all he sees. These new villains seem to be the closest thing to…informed manhood.

But redefining manhood into knavery is an act of villainy itself. It is not good to be bad. No man should twist manhood into something injurious. Real men should never confuse virtue with vice. It is never good to frown at the gutter thieves and excuse the cool, confident ones because they have learned to buy nice suits and fast cars. Around 500 BC, Aesop reputedly said, “we hang our petty thieves and elevate our great ones to high public office.” Today we train elite schoolboys to be bureaucrats in high public office. And we train them to define what is necessary and moral on their own terms. So how do they decide? But what is their vision of dominion? Is it the rule of law? Or is it to steal the law and replace authority with the razor-sharp personal style of the high-class villain?

In the US, we glorify villainy in cinema, and find it easy to emulate it. We vote for public officials who betray the rule of law for clever pragmatic agendas. Jaguar says gentlemen villains “have the character, intelligence and sheer determination to turn the world upside-down.” They have character, all right. And they are inverting the world. But it is not good character that puts lawlessness above the law. It is not good character that inspires impressionable men to live as recklessly as Jaguar’s devilish spokesman, who, with a flick of his finger, throws his car into growling overdrive on urban streets, racing faster and faster. The villain grins. The villain quotes Shakespeare. The London Symphony Orchestra swells. The car roars louder, and fine print appears in subtitle: ALWAYS OBEY SPEED LIMITS.

What? What is this? This is your quiet reminder that even the most brilliant, artistic villainy will always be restrained by the law and subject to the dominion of law. This is what is moral and necessary.

Celtx Script for iPhone and iPad

Review by: Stu Maschwitz

Kudos to Celtx for figuring out exactly what to include and what to leave out when designing a screenwriting app for mobile devices. Celtx Script (US$9.99) is the first iPad screenwriting app that “just works” in the way that Apple users expect. This is a welcome surprise given how clunky and homely the desktop Celtx application is on OS X.

Celtx Script on the iPad is as simple and elegant as one would hope. You can do most of what you need to just by typing. In portrait view you have a distraction-free view of your script. In landscape, there’s a handy scene list to the right for navigation.

Landscape view has a centering problem where the last character is cut off on the right. I trust that this is an easy bug to fix.

A feature I would love for both the iPad and the desktop version is folders in the scene list. Color-coding scenes would also be nice.

Notice how I praise the app for its minimalism and then request new features. See how difficult life is for developers?

Speaking of which, the developers were caught by surprise with Celtx Script hitting the App Store on a Saturday, so while the free Celtx Sync function would work between an iPhone and an iPad running Celtx Script, there was no way to sync between the free desktop Celtx and your mobile device. One of the developers managed to get the free syncing plug-in posted within a few hours though. Once you get the plug-in installed, you can import a screenplay from the free cloud backup using desktop Celtx’s Script > Import Script > From iPhone/iPad menu item. There’s a corresponding Export option as well. It’s not quite the same thing as a true Google Docs-style cloud sync, but it’s close, and it’s free.

I would love some assurance from the Celtx team about the security of the cloud storage.

I’m delighted that someone finally made a solid and elegant screenwriting solution for the iPad. That it works on the iPhone as well and syncs with free desktop software makes the $10 price a bargain.

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Source Review



The State of Screenwriting Software

Every day, those of us involved in film and video post-production use some truly amazing software. Applications that transcode video, present complex changes in real time, and allow us to transform our images from footage into filmmaking. We manage terabytes of data, we reverse-engineer camera motion by tracking a million moving details, and we create entire worlds using nothing but mouse clicks.

So I’m always a bit surprised at how what seems to be such a simple task by comparison, putting words on a page, has perennially been handled in a way dissatisfying to so many writers.

Final Draft

Final Draft ($249 MSRP, $186.68 from Amazon) is the gold standard, if you take that analogy in the direction of gold being an outdated, unwieldy encumbrance, the continued practical significance of which is more imagined than real. Every “real” screenwriter uses Final Draft, and Final Draft’s .fdx file format is as close to a lingua franca as exists in Hollywood.

Final Draft is an essential tool for films in production because of its industry-standard revision management and compatibility with popular scheduling software, but over the years it has often been less than a joy to use for actual writing. If you used it on a Mac, Final Draft was always the app that made you most painfully aware of Apple’s willingness to start fresh with a new operating system. Final Draft sometimes felt like it was running in an invisible Macintosh Plus emulator ported to Linux and running in OS X’s X11 environment. Even as recently as version 7, Final Draft would only sporadically display screenplay text with an anti-aliasd font.

In fairness, the current version 8, which I was just forced to upgrade to thanks to Snow Leopard, is pretty good. It’s aesthetically minimal and feels like a good, native Mac app. But without wanting to discount the many complex features that Final Draft has under the hood, lets remember that its main task is to place the letters that you type on the screen, and format them like a script—which, by definition, excluded anything not possible using a 100-year-old typewriter. Even in version 8, some aspects of this simple task remain buggy. I find that I can wind up with lower-case letters in a character name depending on the mood of the (admittedly quite handy) auto-complete feature. Similarly, I don’t know if it’s a feature or a bug that I can occasionally type lower-case letter into a slug line, the formatting of which is set to all caps.

But the thing that absolutely flabbergasts me about Final Draft is that, after all these years, it still reflects not one ounce of understanding of how screenwriters think about organizing their work.

Almost every screenwriting application has a “notecards” feature, where scenes are displayed as virtual 3x5” notecards that can be color coded, annotated, and rearranged. This is mean to to emulate the age old screenwriter practice of avoiding actual work by dicking around with 3x5” notecards.

The problem is that Final Draft, like most screenwriting apps, assigns one notecard to each slugline, rendering the entire idea completely worthless. When writes use cards, they might break things down as far as one scene per card — but a scene usually contains multiple sluglines.

Here’s a scene from The Bourne Supermacy (Tony Gilroy, Brian Helgeland screenwriters). On this one page there are five sluglines. Every page in this tense action scene is like this—cross-cutting between Bourne and the Treadstone assassin, moving from setting to setting, punching in for crucial details. In Final Draft, each of these sluglines becomes an index card:

Which is not at all how a writer would use cards. This entire eight-page scene would probably be one card called “CAR CHASE - KIRIL TRIES TO KILL BOURNE.” Or, for another writer, maybe the chase would be broken up into a few cards. BOURNE SEARCHES THE BEACH TOWN FOR MARIE, CAR CHASE - KIRILL PURSUES BOURNE AND MARIE, KIRIL SETS UP HIS RIFLE, TRIES TO KILL BOURNE, etc.

The point is, sluglines and index cards have nothing to do with one another. In order for index cards to be of any use, they must be able to contain an arbitrary amount of screenplay.

Which brings us to…

Scrivener

I’m skipping over Movie Magic Screenwriter…  oh wait, let’s not skip them entirely—just take a gander at this screenshot, which I just today pulled from their website. Wow. Anyway, on to Scrivener—the best screenwriting application in existence, and without even trying to be.

Scrivener ($39.95) is a Mac-only app developed by a frustrated novelist who wanted a better writing tool for himself. He does all the coding himself and you can expect a prompt reply from him on his company’s forum if you have ideas for improvements or if you’ve found a bug.

I know, crazy.

The catch is that Scrivener is a general-purpose writing app, with a few screenwriting features thrown in. It offers the basic formatting features, but makes no attempt at street-legal pagination, or managing a character list, or tracking revisions.

Which is so great, because it lets you Just Write.

I could write a hundred love letters to Scrivener, but the one feature I’ll focus n today is the notecards. They are notecards done right. You can, get this, put as much or as little script in one notecard as you like. I never would have dreamed we even had such revolutionary technology.

Not only that, but you can have nested sets of cards. A card can contain more cards.

Whoa.

If that sounds like files and folders, then you’re getting it. In fact, the best feature of Scrivener’s notecards is that you don’t have to view them as notecards. You can always see them as a hierarchy of folders on the side of your screen.

What you see here is the method of screenplay organization described in Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat. While everyone agrees on Acts I, II and III (yes, they do), different writers have different ways of breaking up what happens in each act. Scrivener lets you nest as many folders deep as you like, creating your own template, which you can load in at the start of a new project. At every nesting level, the folders can also be viewed as cards.

What this buys you is the ability to organize by cards at a high level and at a macro level—where cards become scenes. Real scenes, not sluglines. Scenes the way a writer thinks about scenes.

It’s so awesome that it takes a little time to get used to, but it’s worth it.

The only problem is that at some point, if you’re writing a real screenplay that will be read by real people, you have to leave the Scrivener party, put on a tie and show up for work at Final Draft. You need pagination. You need revision tracking. You need MOREs and CONTINUEDs (I guess). I respect Scrivener’s stated goal to not allow their creative writing app to sprawl into a full-fledged movie production tool. Scrivener is for writing. And man, it works. It’s almost like the guy who created it is a writer or something.

So I write this in the hope that Final Draft takes a stab at a folder or notecard system that makes one lick of sense. If you don’t, someone else will. In the meantime, I’ll continue to work in Scrivener for as long as I can.

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Source Article

10 Commandments of Screenwriting

1. Entertain us…or it’s over!

Entertainment is the number one reason that people go to movies. Every producer and agent knows that. So it should be the #1 focus of your screenwriting. Become a master at making any character or situation entertaining and you’ll be a writer in demand.

To be blunt, if there is anything in your script that doesn’t entertain, fix it.

2. Make EVERYTHING more interesting.

The industry is filled with readers who are fed a gourmet diet of professional screenplays. If you want yours to stand out, it has to captivate their attention and cause them to forget that they are doing a job.

This should be an ongoing campaign of yours. Make your scenes more interesting. Make your characters more interesting. Make your dialogue more interesting. Make everything more interesting.

3. Give us a lead character we can’t stop following.

Professional screenwriters intentionally create characters we want to follow. They are unique, yet familiar. We can relate to them and want to go on the journey with that character.

In general, your protagonist should be the perfect person to lead us deep into this story and the conflict that is about to occur. Don’t settle for a good lead. Go for great.

4. Promise us something special…and deliver on it.

Somehow, you have to keep people reading until the last page. Here’s a solution.

About 15 years ago, I read a book called “A Story Is A Promise” by Bill Johnson. Since then, I’ve always looked at a script from the perspective of “What is the promise you’re making to the reader/audience and how do you keep it in a unique way?”

Essentially, you are promising some major achievement by the protagonist or some big confrontation that will happen in the 3rd Act between protag and antag. If the promise is strong enough, we’ll read every page to see what happens.

5.  Show us deeper meaning.

Deeper meaning can be built into the plot, character, situations, actions, and dialogue of a script. It doesn’t have to be profound, just beneath the surface…and perceived by the audience.

Audiences and readers just don’t appreciate on-the-nose writing. Subtext gives them a chance to interact with the film. They have an internal experience of the story because they are interpreting what the dialogue and actions really mean.

Because of that, it is just as important to take care of the subtext of a story as it is to create the surface story.

6. Put your characters through hell.

Great parents take care of their children and don’t let harm come to them. Great writers put their characters in the worst possible places to challenge their beliefs and physical limitations.

Don’t get the two jobs mixed up. Audiences don’t go to movies to see characters lead safe lives. They want to see your characters take risks, experience danger, and barely escape from challenging situations.

By your final draft, your characters should hate you for all the terrible things you did to them.

7. Free up your dialogue so you can express more character.

Beginning writers often fill their dialogue with exposition and story details, thus reducing the amount of character and creativity that shows up in that dialogue. Don’t do it.

Instead, put the exposition, information, and story details into the action and situations.

For example, instead of a trainer telling a new boxer that a certain philosophy doesn’t work, have him put the character in the boxing ring and learn it by losing. Now, the trainer doesn’t have to lecture. In fact, he is free to talk about anything – breakfast, politics, his favorite dog, etc. – because the real meaning is being delivered through the action.

It completely frees you up so you can be much more creative with your dialogue.

8.  Turn cliches into fresh ideas.

In the film industry, a cliché is defined as “something we’ve seen before.” If you write a script with the same plot or the same lead characters or the same situations, people will balk at them.

Audiences want to see familiar stories told in different ways and familiar characters with something special about them. That means that your characters, situations, actions, and dialogue need to have something unique to them.

Your challenge: Hunt down every cliché in your script and brainstorm more unique ways to accomplish their purpose.  Give them a twist or unique spin or different voice.  It takes a bit of work, but it instantly improves your screenplay.

9. Give yourself permission to write terribly in your first draft…

…and push yourself for perfection in your final draft. Not the other way around.

Many writers try to be perfect on the first draft, thus giving themselves writer’s block. First drafts are the time for total freedom of expression, not criticizing your writing. You want to discover what you can about your story, characters, etc.

On the other side, writers often send drafts to producers that aren’t even close to ready. That’s the time to bring out your internal critic and make sure this is a perfect draft.

The more in sync you are with your creative process, the faster you’ll achieve perfection.

10. Rethink your script…until it is the most amazing it can be.

This is the ultimate challenge of a professional screenwriter – having to rethink the same script over and over until you discover the perfect way to tell this story.

Even if you think your story or character is perfect, you should have the skills to re-envision it in many different ways. Not only will this help you write a better story, it will also help you work with production companies and Studios when they request script changes.

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Source Article

Raw Talent Screenplay Contest

Looking for scripts for the Raw Talent Screenplay contest!

It is FREE to enter and the Grand Prize is $10,000.00!

Deadline April 1st.

Details at: www.rawtalentcontest.com
Trost Moving Pictures in association with HOSFU, LC

Mixing Message and Story - Part 2

In response to one of my previous posts, Nathanael spoke about how Christians have a tendency to infuse our stories with our own distinct brand of political correctness and how this hinders our ability to connect with an audience.

Here's my response:

I think people of all philosophical and ideological stripes have a tendency to reduce their ideologies into over-simplistic narratives. Any evidence or anecdote that fits the narrative is embraced. Any evidence or anecdote that conflicts with, or challenges, the narrative is dismissed or explained away. Then, people bring this mindset to the movies they make or the movies they watch. And truth is discarded for a simplistic narrative, which I do think is some kind of political correctness (conservative and liberal).

Job comes to mind. At the beginning of that story, everyone has a false, over-simplistic mindset of how a life with God works. Job’s friends fear God and want to do His will, which is a good and truthful thing, but there’s a greater (and more painful) truth that they (and many of us, I suppose) have yet to realize: to trust in God means something totally different than counting on Him to keep everything okay....

You can read the full article here.

What Is Missing In Films Today

What's Missing

"What's missing in movies today that movies in the past possessed in spades is charm, which is one of the qualities that endears an audience to a film and gives it longevity. Special effects have mowed down all other qualities in film, and it's time to get back to what made films in the past great. Only an empty-headed, technology-crazed society would think that special effects are enough. Charm is a quality that both characters and story need if a film is to become a classic and survive from generation to generation. It is a quality that a society needs if it is to survive. Charm is the quality that marks all Pixar pictures. What better endorsement do you need than that?

Another quality that is missing from most films today is grace. Fortunately, it does appear occasionally, as it did this year in The Blind Side. When a film has grace, audiences love it and realize there is something different about that film. It's a quality that you can't get enough of, and it makes you want what the characters in the film have. It's God's fingerprint on a film.

Another missing quality is discretion, which is the better part of valor. Directors today want to show everything. They don't leave anything to the imagination. That is not good artistry, nor is it good humanity...By showing everything, directors today are raising an ante that future directors cannot possibly meet. There will eventually be a point at which a director will not be able to show any more nudity, any more violence, any more realism. At that point, movies will degenerate into something more perverse, or disintegrate entirely. It's time to get back to discretion in film, and life.

Do you realize that while the Motion Picture Production Code was in effect, which was from 1934 to 1968, the greatest films that have ever been made - the films we today call "classics" - were produced? 1939, the year when the Code was at its height, has been called the greatest year of cinema. More classic films were produced that year than in any year since. Today, there is no Code. Producers can make anything they like, and they are churning out the trash as fast as they can... and people are buying it.

There's something to be said for discipline. Having restraint makes one more creative. If you can do anything, you will, and it will be the same old anything that everyone else is doing. I'd like to see us get back to a Production Code in this country. I think it would give us better films. But it will take the American public demanding it of our government. It was the threat of government intervention that got the Motion Picture Association of America to come up with the Code the first time. It can happen again if we make it happen." ~Waitsel Smith

Excerpted from "Waitsel's Best Movies of 2009." Text © 2010 Waitsel Smith.

Mixing Message and Story

"Many speak as if message, in and of itself, were the Achilles’ heel of all creative [Christian] endeavors; that message cannot help but impede story, which in turn impedes audience reception, which in turn impedes commercial success. I disagree. However, I do think the wrong message is an Achilles heel of all Christian creative endeavors. And I think a lot of Christian creative endeavors send a…I couldn’t say wrong, but rather…an incomplete message.

With these assumptions, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Dickens never take a combative “you disagree because you’re lost and/or ignorant and/or evil” approach. They seem to be saying, “You know what’s right and you know what’s good. It’s self-evident. Stop repressing it and ignoring it.” (Romans 1:18)

To top it all, it seems Christian characters in these stories struggle both with and against the social ills. And in so doing, we get a active demonstration of what it means to be a Christian (not just in word, but in deed and in truth). It isn’t simply taking the fire insurance and improving your personal well-being. It’s actively combating real, tangible, oppressive evil in the world!

Largely as a result of their works, social ills were brought to light and eventually eradicated.

Why don’t more Christian films do this???" ~ Richard Ramsey

Read the full article here!

Telling A Good Story

"Phil Cooke, CEO of Cooke Pictures and a respected consultant for faith-based, non-profit media, recently spoke of the great need in our society for stories that demonstrate morals and codes of behavior. He further mentioned the poor quality associated with Christian films. "But in spite of that great need, most films, television programs, radio specials, and websites produced by Christians are still poor quality, and have a limited audience. That's because for most Christians, the message is everything, and we've forgotten the power of a great story."

I desire to encourage every Christian filmmaker to make sure they make story their priority, make mastering their craft their passion and Christ their focus. I’m tired of bad Christian films and I think it's time to step up, especially since secular companies are now making great Christian films. It’s time to be the best artists possible, especially since we are directly connected to the Creative One." ~CJ Powers

Excerpted from a movie review by CJ Powers.