“What we can learn from…” type articles.
You’re no stranger to getting advice if you’re a writer. Thousands of books, hundreds of films, and even entire college majors have been dedicated to the art of honing the …
Let’s be blunt about it: the financial outlook isn’t great for Film Producers at the moment. A Film Producer Salary is firmly not what it once was… I remember the …
Read moreThe Film Producer Salary & A Pocket Full of Dollars
The Berlin International Film Festival was distinctly different this year. Sure, there was the typical melee of execs taking pictures around remnants of the Berlin Wall. And yes, as per …
Welcome and hello to the thousands of you who visit the IS website every week. By way of an introduction, I’m Miranda Fleming, and I’m thrilled to be starting this …
Read moreSwerving Development Hell in the New Dawn of Crowdfunding
Like it or lump it, the role of the industry script reader is becoming increasingly important in film and TV. With the volume of scripts increasing year-on-year, the challenge for …
How to Write a Screenplay: Your 30-Step Guide. So – you want to learn how to write a screenplay. You think about it constantly. Whenever you watch a movie you …
Even the notion of screenwriting rules gets some people into a serious tizz, and it’s this controversial topic I want to explore this week. I’ve spent the last three weeks …
Read moreFive Screenwriting Rules You Can Break and Five You Can’t
In Screenwriting, the truth matters… Today we’re going to talk about The Truth. Not this sort of truth. Or this. Or even this. We’re going to talk about the kind …
What I’ve Learnt about Screenwriting: Part 1, The Idea So I’ve been doing this for a while now, and for some reason I feel a powerful, hubristic, intimations-of-mortality urge to …
Read moreWhat I’ve Learnt about Screenwriting: Part I, The Idea
Write What You Know or Just Say No! (and other rhymes) I’m going to give you procrastinating scribblers a little bit of advice today. Yes me, who gets up at the …
Screenplay Format – Your 30-step Guide Before you start writing the next great film, it is essential that you have a comprehensive understanding of screenplay format. It won’t matter how amazing …
Screenwriting Envy “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure”. Guess who said that? You never will. It was Bill Cosby! I …
The Screenplay. Like some kind of Mordorian tower it looms over the land. We can barely make out the top of it, so shrouded is it in snow, ice and …
The Rafn Column Part II 10 Ways to Irritate a Development Executive When I finally made the transition from being a Development Executive to becoming a writer, I believed that …
Nobody worships more reverently at the altar of screenwriting than us. We believe in The Screenplay. We recognise it as the critical component in whether a film or TV shows lives, …
Read more10 Honest Quotes about the Life of the Screenwriter
Script Hosting Sites – Friend or Foe? Script hosting sites divide opinion, arguably more than any other screenwriter or filmmaker resource. Maybe it’s the business model which sticks in many …
Read moreWhy Writers Should be Sceptical of Script Hosting sites
Michael Mann Michael Mann started out writing for TV in the 1970s but made his feature directorial debut with THE JERICHO MILE in 1979. Several films later he finally struck …
Read more10 Great Michael Mann Quotes for Screenwriters & Filmmakers
Be in no doubt about it – if you’re going to write for the screen, then you’re going to be writing genre. Thriller, sci-fi, crime, fantasy, comedy, horror and so …
How many times have you heard someone describe a film as “it’s something meets something”? Unoriginal, or the keys to producers’ bank vaults? Industrial Scripts examines how to improve …
With the arrival of GODZILLA at your local multiplex you might be thinking it’s time to get writing some monster movies of your own — how hard can it be, …
Read moreWhy The Holy Trinity of Monster Movies are Impossible to Top
Fertile stories and multi-faceted characters will only take a script so far if the writer cannot repeatedly craft memorable and compelling framing scenes. Industrial Scripts looks at Ewan McGregor …
Read moreFraming Scenes for Maximum Impact – Lessons from BEGINNERS
Mastering the basics is an essential step in any screenwriter’s career progression – and yet many aspiring screenwriters forego very simple script choices which would make their projects stand out from the swirling mass of unfilmable spec scripts.
As our article on Jeffrey Katzenberg highlighted, gathering industry intel is vital for making it in this business. Industrial Scripts looks to the best Twitter Screenwriting resources – from box office numbers, to job opportunities and just plain amusing screenwriters given a voice. Of course, there’s also our own @Indust_Scripts account to follow…
Read moreTwitter Screenwriting Accounts Screenwriters Must Follow
Jeffrey Katzanberg From bringing STAR TREK to the big screen, reviving Disney’s fortunes in the 80s and 90s, to being the K in Dreamworks SKG, Jeffrey Katzenberg has been a …
“You can make the movie or you can make excuses”
The path from script to screen is often torturous – but made longer when excuse making and defeatism set in. Industrial Scripts looks at common film industry excuses and defences no writer should be making – and how to overcome the seeming obstacles.
Read more10 Common Film Industry Excuses – and how to Avoid Making Them
“I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills …
With the box office increasingly dominated by big budget ‘Four Quadrant’ movies, squeezing out mid-budget releases, Industrial Scripts looks at the recipe for quadrant movies’ success in that seemingly …
Read more10 Great Quadrant Movies Screenwriters Can Learn From
In America, screenwriters can earn an average annual wage of $77,260. At least, that’s what the Bureau of Labour Statistics tells us. The evidence is there: Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio earned …
This is a brilliant page from the Knight Hall Literary Agency – one of the UK’s leading screenplay agent company who are representing screenwriters, directors and authors.
It’s essential reading for screenwriters in particular, and while there are some extreme (true life!) examples below, general etiquette and knowing how to deal with a screenplay agent and industry people in such a way that they think “wow, I could really work with that person” is incredibly important.
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