MYSTERIES OF SCREENWRITING.
Well since I'm in the midst of writing, I thought I might as well try and illuminate those who are interested into the great mysterious world of screenwriting. Writing a script is one of those things that seem like 'magic,' but really its equivalent to actually making a movie- its hard work. I think its an exciting process because you get to make the movie your way in your head with no limitations.
There are numerous books that tell you the secret formula, and I must admit my mistakes were trying to prescribe to that formula (and lets just say I had many crap pieces of writing that noone should ever read!) But they were helpful; of course Syd Field's Screenplay is a must-read. The paradigm that he describes is one of those things that gets grossly misinterpreted.
Screenplay is about structure, and since I come from an analytical background I am a great advocate for this.
Everyone has their way of writing, but I was reading an article recently about a film-maker who went through the film school route with the dream of being a director but ignored his screenwriting courses. Realizing that after graduation the quickest route to being a director, is writing your own screenplay he endeavoured to write the best script ever (heck been there done that) unfortunately when he showed it to his agent, his agent didn't think the same. So to get to the point, he had to re-learn everything - read Syd's books, studied films and yes he found that most great films do conform to the 'paradigm.'
Oh yeah a very good blog is www.johnaugust.com a lot of great info about screenwriting.
I had a point to all this, oh yeah I prescribed to a formula and found I failed with this, the lesson I learnt was its good to understand the foundations of a screenplay but when you start writing you kinda have to throw that all out the window and just let your thoughts guide you(that is if you've done your outline and done all the character bios, research etc). Its like any other craft.
Oh yeah, read more and more scripts, check out this website: www.script-o-rama.com
Well since I'm in the midst of writing, I thought I might as well try and illuminate those who are interested into the great mysterious world of screenwriting. Writing a script is one of those things that seem like 'magic,' but really its equivalent to actually making a movie- its hard work. I think its an exciting process because you get to make the movie your way in your head with no limitations.
There are numerous books that tell you the secret formula, and I must admit my mistakes were trying to prescribe to that formula (and lets just say I had many crap pieces of writing that noone should ever read!) But they were helpful; of course Syd Field's Screenplay is a must-read. The paradigm that he describes is one of those things that gets grossly misinterpreted.
Screenplay is about structure, and since I come from an analytical background I am a great advocate for this.
Everyone has their way of writing, but I was reading an article recently about a film-maker who went through the film school route with the dream of being a director but ignored his screenwriting courses. Realizing that after graduation the quickest route to being a director, is writing your own screenplay he endeavoured to write the best script ever (heck been there done that) unfortunately when he showed it to his agent, his agent didn't think the same. So to get to the point, he had to re-learn everything - read Syd's books, studied films and yes he found that most great films do conform to the 'paradigm.'
Oh yeah a very good blog is www.johnaugust.com a lot of great info about screenwriting.
I had a point to all this, oh yeah I prescribed to a formula and found I failed with this, the lesson I learnt was its good to understand the foundations of a screenplay but when you start writing you kinda have to throw that all out the window and just let your thoughts guide you(that is if you've done your outline and done all the character bios, research etc). Its like any other craft.
Oh yeah, read more and more scripts, check out this website: www.script-o-rama.com
posted by zarina at 11:06 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home