Posted on May 23, 2012 in Filmmaking 360, Story | No Comments
Making a short documentary about the iconic documentary filmmaker is a tall order in itself. Sarah Klein and Tom Mason sit down with the Atlantic to discuss how they approached the form and how they found b-roll for lofty ideas such as “1+1=3″.
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Posted on May 8, 2012 in Story | 1 Comment
John Truby discusses the Masterpiece Genre. Learn two key techniques to master this Genre as well several questions and point to keep in mind while writing.
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Posted on May 8, 2012 in General Screenwriting, Story | No Comments
Everybody wants to play the lead, but being the supporting character has its perks too.
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Posted on May 2, 2012 in Story | No Comments
Myths are the oldest and most popular story genre – From Gilgamesh to the Odyssey, Star Wars to Batman, myths are the foundation to our favorite stories of all time. John Truby breaks down how to approach the myth genre.
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Posted on April 23, 2012 in Story | No Comments
Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (“Toy Story,” “WALL-E”) shares what he knows about storytelling — starting at the end and working back to the beginning.
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Posted on April 23, 2012 in Story, Structure | No Comments
Dan Harmon drives himself crazy writing the scripts for Community. As the series creator, he’s been hard at work studying story and looking for a common structure. Brian Raftery reports on Dan Harmon’s story philosophy and spends some time with this interesting individual.
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Posted on March 2, 2012 in General Screenwriting, Story | No Comments
The Script Lab takes a look at Five Iconic Movies (Edward Scissorhands, Cool Hand Luke, The Big Lebowski, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and 500 Days of Summer) and how they cover the five essential elements in the first 10 pages for an attention grabbing script.
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Posted on February 15, 2012 in Story | No Comments
Ideas are the seeds of great project. But sometimes you find yourself unable to pluck them from the create-o-sphere. Adam Campbell uncovers weird places where those little nuggets may lie dormant.
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Posted on January 19, 2012 in Story, Structure | No Comments
James Strzelinski explores what he calls the “Mirror Moment” – the turning point of a character arc which has the lead metaphorically (or literally) looking in the mirror and reevaluating everything.
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Posted on December 20, 2011 in General Screenwriting, Story | No Comments
Robert McKee answers this question from writer Steve Ericsson:
“Introducing many characters within a story, even if you have just one or two main characters, is quite a challenge when writing a screenplay. How would you go about introducing several important characters during the first act/first half of the story in an effective and compelling way?”
Posted on November 9, 2011 in General Screenwriting, Story | No Comments
The author of “Writing the Romantic Comedy” Billy Mernit reflects on writing Romantic Comedy and how brevity still is the soul of wit.
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Posted on October 13, 2011 in General Screenwriting, Story | No Comments
Writing inside a genre means you will have specific requirements for feel and characterization. Carson Reeves explores the biggest systematic mistakes writers make writing in their genre:
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Posted on September 14, 2011 in General Screenwriting, Story | No Comments
What constitute a genre? Using a database of 897 scripts, genres are broken down using good old statistics and graphs, which is really the only way to discuss films.
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Posted on July 15, 2011 in General Screenwriting, Story | 1 Comment
It used to be that summer was the season for blockbuster movies. Now it’s a year-round phenomenon. Hollywood is in the business of selling films to a worldwide audience, which means they are always looking for a script with blockbuster potential.
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Posted on July 6, 2011 in Filmmaking 360, Internet, Story | 1 Comment
Jeff Parkin, filmmaker and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Media Arts, Brigham Young University, discusses the power of transmedia stories in reaching wide audiences and his experiences in creating the Webby Award honored webseries, The Book of Jer3miah.
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