Previously on… ‘Editing organazized’

Pre-titles recaps have been around for years. For serialised drama, they get everyone up to speed. “Previously on Hill Street Blues…” Sometimes the format of the show includes an implied recap: at the start of each episode of ‘L.A. Law’ the characters have an office meeting that gets the office (and the audience) up to [...]

Why “Show, not tell” works

The screenwriting principle of “show, not tell” works because people do not normally criticize their own work.
If you show the actions of a character, the audience will make their own judgements of who that character is and what they want. These judgements of the characters combine in the audience’s minds to build up their [...]

Creating empathy with your protagonist

A pretty good film that (co-incidentally) may have to say something about the Iraq Occupation (it isn’t a War).

Budget

Why do car commercials have bigger budgets than air freshener commercials?
Advertising is supposed to be ‘a good story, well told,’ yet why do some tales cost so much more to tell? It is down to sales people: The ad people who sell the budgets to the corporations. Political power within organisations usually goes to those [...]

Simple

The trick with movie (and TV) ideas is to come up with Simple stories with Complex characters. You may end up with intricate plots, but the story is simple: lucid and uncomplicated. That’s what makes them possible to summarise in a logline.

Headlines

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Silence of the Lambs, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Blair Witch Project
Every few years there is a film title that is so compelling that sub-editors in newspapers cannot help but use it as the source for pun-based headlines. The movie needs to be infamous. [...]

Recycle

According to an article at The Hollywood Reporter, the writer’s strike and imminent negotiations with the directors and actors may give TV networks the chance to break out of the development cycle. Each spring they fund many scripts that are produced as pilots (100+ per network), some of which are turned into pilots (around 25), [...]

Stop

In an article at The Hollywood Reporter, five screenwriters talk about the strike, adaptation and tips on how to organise your day:

When I was writing novels, I knew Graham Greene, and he gave me the best piece of advice ever given to any writer. He said, “Always stop when it’s going well.” [...] because you [...]

Momentum

Screenwriters are told not to put camera directions in scripts. That irritates directors. It is possible to put editing directions in scripts! If you want to read a script with built-in momentum take a look at the script of The Bourne Supremacy:

INT. THE AUDI/REST-STOP — NIGHT
    BOURNE’S EYES OPENING! — heart pounding — springing up –
    alone [...]

Flashback

When writing scripts, Syd Field says that you should only use flashbacks when there is no other way to give the facts to the audience. Flashbacks should happen in response to a character’s emotional state. They have been triggered by something in the present that reminds them of an extreme emotion in the past.
The rule [...]