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Is it possible to have a film that tells a story without conflict? Conventional wisdom would say no. However, this doesn’t mean that every film needs a world-ending threat. Not every film …
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. This instalment focuses on Conor, a.k.a. …
A character sacrifice is a difficult moment to get right. Audiences today are incredibly cine-literate. They’ve seen it all before, and can tell when a film or TV show has used …
In our Genius Character Reveals series we examine scenes and moments where a film or TV show reveals a tremendous amount of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. This month’s instalment focuses on FBI …
Alongside an eclectic filmography that includes vampires in NEAR DARK, surfing in POINT BREAK, and war in THE HURT LOCKER (though as yet fails to combine them), Kathryn Bigelow is …
The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE KING’S SPEECH, Ben Wheatley and …
15 John Carpenter Quotes Writers & Filmmakers Can Learn From John Carpenter entered film wanting to make cowboy films. He claims that horror as a genre found him, not the other way …
Writers at the start of their career have a lot to contend with. For one, they get called ’emerging’, something better done from swamps or during childbirth than at the …
Is the Subtle, Theme-rich Screenplay Dead? Theme-rich Screenplay Treated Unfairly? The plot-light, theme-rich screenplay is often – at the script development stage at least – unfairly maligned with the phrase …
There’s an old Hollywood saying to writers that if you want to send a message, use Western Union. The idea is that audiences want films to entertain them, not to …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
The Insider Interviews The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE KING’S SPEECH, Ben …
THE INSIDER INTERVIEWS: CAMILLE GATIN The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE KING’S …
Stirring Interest If a story doesn’t pose a dramatic question, you’re probably reading a shopping list. Story questions are the narrative equivalent of a sales pitch, the means by which …
It’s a cliché, but the entertainment industry is an industry. Show business is a business. It behoves screenwriters to remember this and to consider why write films in the first place. What …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
A major problem with crafting convincing children and teenage characters is that as we grow up it’s too easy to forget what it’s like to be young. Whether a project …
THE INSIDER INTERVIEWS: EMILY LEO The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE KING’S SPEECH, …
THE INSIDER INTERVIEWS: REBECCA O’BRIEN The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE …
One of the major exceptions to the oft-repeated “show, don’t tell” screenwriting rule is the equally common received wisdom that screenplays should avoid using flashbacks. The criticisms are familiar from scores …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
There are, broadly speaking, two ways to convey conflict: implicitly and explicitly. The former involves illustrating some kind of dissonance through setting, silence, the way one character looks at another. …
THE INSIDER INTERVIEWS: COLIN VAINES The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE KING’S SPEECH, Ben Wheatley and Hossein Amini, …
THE INSIDER INTERVIEWS: SARAH RADCLYFFE The Insider Interviews series started in 2010 as a set of recorded interviews, featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Gareth Unwin, who produced THE KING’S SPEECH, Ben Wheatley and Hossein Amini, the …
Audience Nostalgia From looking down 2016’s box office results, it’s clear that a certain trend shows no sign of stopping. Sequels, remakes and reboots abound, tapping into audience nostalgia to massive success. …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. In …
Like much of Paul Thomas Anderson’s work, the BOOGIE NIGHTS screenplay has an odd structure, divergent POV and a hefty length, yet every page of it is full of worthwhile …
To write omnisciently as a screenwriter often entails, for better or worse, including elements that may never show up onscreen: jokes in descriptions or insights into characters’ thoughts and histories …
ANGEL HEART Alan Parker’s ANGEL HEART is an odd blend of genres, taking noir, psychological thriller and horror to a three-way shotgun wedding. The screenwriting lessons it can teach us …
Thriller Screenplay Power As a genre, ‘thriller’ tends to gently caress several others, namely horror, sci-fi, and drama. As such, thriller screenplays provide a goldmine of various narrative and structural …
While first and third acts pose their own challenges, it’s in the weeds of the second act that many scripts (and movies for that matter) go astray. Introducing a second …
The Brit List Scripts 2016 As reported by ScreenDaily, The Brit List (a kind of contained, sporadic knock-off of The Black List) was released today. Reportedly more than 80 producers, …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
One facet of screenwriting which causes writers enormous headaches is conveying a lot with a little. Studying great minor characters is one way of learning this kind of efficiency. Minor Characters To …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a short amount of screen time. …
Endings are crucial. The feeling an ending gives an audience is the feeling they leave the cinema with. It’s the feeling that will colour their perception of their whole experience …
There are two kinds of rugby player”, the legendary Scottish coach Jim Telfer told his players, “there are the honest ones, and there’s the rest. The honest player gets up in …
In 9/10 cases the protagonist is the driving force of a successful film narrative. We invest in their story because we identify with their goal and become invested in it; …
In this series we look at scenes and moments where a film or TV show has revealed a great deal of character information in a compressed amount of screen time. Writer-director …
Films that are set in the past are often judged for their authenticity. The “goofs” section of IMDb is overrun with anachronisms: this porcelain wasn’t made until six years later; or …
When a TV or Movie Setting IS A Character In the Narrative… Ask yourself this: what is a TV or movie setting? Really think about it. Is it just a …
Francis Ford Coppola Francis Ford Coppola is one of the greatest writer-directors to come out of the so-called “New Hollywood” wave of filmmaking, having made THE GODFATHER, THE GODFATHER PART …
Writing mythically with cliché is relatively easy: watch a couple of films, read a couple of books then regurgitate the obvious stuff: quasi-religious story world, the quest, the mentor, initiation, …
20 Great James Cameron Quotes on Storytelling With a filmography that boasts the likes of THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, and THE ABYSS, James Cameron is undoubtedly one of the finest genre …
An almost-great screenplay can be more frustrating than a really bad one. The potential is strong and the execution is almost there, but something went wrong at the final hurdle. …
Computers are not the most interesting subjects. Anyone who’s had to watch someone else type very slowly into a search bar can attest to this. In a visual medium like film …
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