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The Five Ws of Screenwriting

How do you turn an idea into a script? Start by asking the five “W” questions – as explained by Charles Kipps.

I have an idea…

I hear this all the time. It could be an idea for a television series or a film. And it may be a wonderful idea with a fascinating logline. There’s one problem with an idea, however. It needs to be fleshed out. As Shakespeare might put it: Ay, there’s the rub.

The truth is, execution is far more important than simply an idea when it comes to film and television. An idea is a seed, not a mature, fruit-bearing plant. But just as it is difficult to successfully cultivate a garden, creating all the elements necessary to bring an idea to fruition also is a challenge.

I have an idea for a movie.

Okay, what is it?

A UFO lands in somebody’s yard.

Right. And then what?

No response. Just a blank stare.

When asked to elaborate on an idea enthusiastically and earnestly offered (with a great flourish and intensity and waving of hands for emphasis) most people are suddenly deflated and stunned into silence. Either that or they babble forth with a disjointed string of non sequiturs that make little sense in terms of story.

So how do you turn your idea into something coherent and ready for primetime?

Script Mag | Read the Full Article

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Dark Forces: The Story Of Shooting Zero Dark Thirty

For the movie Zero Dark Thirty DoP Greig Fraser had his hands full with extreme weather, local protests and custom’s delays but before that he had to decide which camera was going to excel in high sun days and black ‘full action’ nights.

Zero Dark Thirty’s contrast range goes from the boiling midday sun of Jordan to the zero light of the Navy S.E.A.L raid that caps the movie. It’s like the ultimate camera test scenario. But throw in to that equation a reduced preparation time for the shoot and the large location schedule in India and Jordan, plus the weather, the desert and the complete lack of labs and reduced technical support in the location areas. Add to that the danger of locally arranged protests against the film. That test has suddenly got a lot more difficult.

DP Greig Fraser seemed to take all that in his stride, perhaps why Kathryn Bigelow picked him for her movie, “When you start a movie the world is your oyster as far as cameras are concerned. You’ve got 16mm, 35mm, RED and also Sony F65 at that time. Sony distributed the movie and were keen to get their camera on it. We got a camera and tested it, we also tested anamorphic lenses but we needed a set-up that was bullet proof in that environment. We knew that film would do the job but we were a long way away from Kodak and anything technical. 

“We had to choose the most user friendly bullet-proof system that we could and we felt that the Alexa had just been really tested in similarly scenarios, tested in other shows and it was the best digital camera at that point in time. Here’s another reason why the lab was so important for this shoot. If I was using a new digital format and I was pushing the boundaries of that format and I didn’t have at my disposal a lab, the chances are I probably would have been a little more safe, a little bit more predictable. As a DP you can’t afford to screw the thing up. If I’m doing a film and can look at dailies every weekend I become a little bit more adventurous. You can push the boundaries a bit further each time. Having access to that at the end of every day is quite brilliant. It was also quite taxing on the body because you look at hundreds of images a day while you’re shooting and then you come back in to the lab and you’re looking at the same 100 images. It’s quite a hard process. But it means you can push the process a bit, go dark, dark, dark or bright, bright, bright, and you maintain detail or are losing detail when you want to.”

Definition Magazine | Read the Full Article

 

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Storytelling Made Easy – Marcus Donner on How to Tell a Story Through Images

Great photos and video don’t happen by accident. It’s a balancing act of good planning and quick thinking. Whether you are an amateur or a pro, everyone wants their photos and videos to tell a compelling story.

In this presentation, Marcus Donner, who has been telling people’s stories in pictures for more than 20 years, will share his strategies for making compelling portraits, location photography, and videos with the Samsung NX cameras. From how to put your subjects at ease, to easy lighting set-ups, to understanding how quantity leads to quality, Marcus will discuss key techniques gathered from years of professional shooting that you can use immediately to improve your pictures or video. He will also demonstrate how easy and seamless it is to share photos and video instantly to social media or the Web using the Wi-Fi-enabled Samsung NX Smart Cameras.

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Do Knock-Offs Prove the Value of a Brand?

Living in the consumer culture that we do, we’ve learned that specific brands can carry very different meanings and values. We’re willing to pay hundreds or thousands more for a specific brand name item, but sometimes it can be tempting to go the way of the knock-off for a fraction of the price. The counterfeit industry is huge and isn’t going anywhere, and companies spend huge amounts to dissuade people from buying “fakes”. But are knock-offs REALLY a negative for the brand?

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Five Steps To Pitching Success

Jacob Krueger presents 5 steps to getting your script off the ground and into producers’ hands.

Step 1:  Target The Right Producers

It’s astounding how many writers disregard this vital principal—and I’m not just talking about emerging writers.  I’m talking about professional writers, with fancy agents and big mortgages.

In fact, Hollywood is clogged like Fat Albert’s arteries with half-baked pitches, flung haphazardly and repeatedly at any producer willing to listen, without any thought about what that producer is actually looking for, or what’s in it for them.

This is understandable—as writers, we often feel so desperate to sell our scripts, and so excited for the opportunity at any connection that we exhaust ourselves pitching our hearts out to people who have no intention of making our scripts, rather than seeking out the people who do.

A good screenplay is a rare commodity—something very scarcely seen in Hollywood—and something that absolutely every producer is dying to get their hands on.

But what constitutes good is different for every producer—just like it’s different for every writer and every audience member.

As some of you who have studied with me may know, there are proven ways to identify and target producers who are likely to connect to your writing.  And while those concepts may go beyond the scope of this article, there’s one thing we all can agree on:

Jerry Bruckheimer is not going to produce your experimental character driven drama.

Your job as a writer is not to shove that movie down Jerry Bruckheimer’s throat, to change your whole project to fit his tastes or to convince him that this is the experimental feature worth taking a chance on.

If you try, you’re just going to alienate a connection that could have helped you in the future, when you finally do get around to writing that action movie you’ve been kicking around in the back of your head.

Your job is to seek out the producers who are already looking for projects like yours, get to know as much as you can about them, and build the personal connections that can get you in the room with them, at the right time and in the right way.

ScriptMag | Read the Full Article

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DIY Sponge Filter Holder

If you’re willing to put your filters in the hands of a sponge – here’s an inexpensive way to hold filters on your DSLR.

A few years ago, photographer Samuel Chapman of The Rocket Factory found himself with an annoying problem on his hands. After purchasing a number of neutral density filters for his DSLR, he found that Nikon’s $2,000 14-24mm lens didn’t have any good way of being used with a filter.

He had already paid hundreds of dollars each for his fancy filters, so he decided to make a makeshift adapter for the 14-24mm lens… using a sponge. The result is a product Chapman calls the “FX Sponge Filter Holder 5000.”

Basically, Chapman purchased a $1.50 all purpose sponge from his local hardware store and cut out a hole in the back for the lens and a square chunk in the front for the filters.

PetaPixel | Read the Full Article

Tropfest NY 2013
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Introducing Vimeo On-Demand – A DIY distribution platform

Vimeo On Demand is direct-to-fan distribution done the Vimeo way — with all the power of Vimeo’s best-in-class video player, easy-to-use tools, and passionate audience. Creators of all types can distribute their work online, find and connect with audiences, and make more money with a 90/10 revenue split.

Vimeo On Demand gives creators unparalleled flexibility and control: creators can showcase their work on beautiful, highly customizable pages; set their own price; and sell their work from their site, from Vimeo, or from both. All On Demand pages are built into Vimeo’s worldwide creative network that reaches more than 90 million viewers.

Learn more here

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The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots

Tracking a journey of camera journeys from Hard Eight to There Will Be Blood, Kevin B. Lee wonders if the director has put away showy things.

Thinking on what sets The Master apart from Paul Thomas Anderson’s earlier films, what strikes me most vividly is a marked difference in camera movement and staging. I wouldn’t be surprised if a proper cinemetric analysis found that up to half of the film’s running time consists of close-ups with little to no camera movement.

This is a far cry from the run-and-gun days of Boogie Nights and Magnolia with their stunning array of sweeping Steadicam shots, push-ins and whip pans. But upon surveying his career film by film, one can trace an evolution in his technique. This video essay examines one signature tracking shot from each of Anderson’s five previous features, showing how each epitomises his cinematography at each point, from the flashiness of his earlier films to a more subtle approach that favours composition over movement.

While The Master offers a couple of swirling tracking shots in a department store, and later a pair of straight-line lateral tracking shots to match the onanistic thrill of motorcycle joyriding, the film settles more often into shot/reverse shot dialogues in cozy interior sets. It seems that Anderson’s camera strategy here has less in common with Scorsese, Altman or even Kubrick (with all of whom he’s frequently compared) than with Jonathan Demme. Indeed, in the DVD commentary of Boogie Nights, Anderson expresses a profound emulation of Demme, though Demme himself couldn’t recognise a shot from Boogie Nights that Anderson claimed to have blatantly derived from him.

BFI.org | Read the Full Article

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The Quality of Light: Hard vs Soft

The understanding of light is the most fundamental skill in cinematography. In this 3 minute film lighting tutorial video, watch and learn about the two basic types of light used in filmmaking and photography; hard and soft. Hard light creates a sharp solid shadow; while soft light creates a rounded gradient shadow. We break down these concepts and show you how to harness their power to improve your lighting.

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