Where Do Ideas Come From? (Patrick McLean)
Patrick McLean, in his usual seemingly-effortless fashion, breaks down his theory of where ideas come from.
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Live Some Life
Mid-stride through a three-day writing blitz, it occurred to me (as I tucked away my keyboard for the evening):
Hey, I know stuff.
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago at 12:00 pm. Add a comment
Canon T2i: A Long-Thought-Out Impulse Buy
After news of these magical DSLRS with the powers of Movie inside them, I decided I had to find out what the fuss was about.
So yesterday, I bought this.
And yesterday, slightly later, I started shooting a short film, and it looks like this.
Will post the film when it’s done.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 1:05 pm. 2 comments
WGA says: “Get Outside the Box, Get Into the Tubez”
Maybe not in those words, but basically, yes.
I found this terrific video from the WGA about the way the Internet can enable writers to break beyond the written page to take control of their own work and how it’s seen. (I touched on this topic of writers in The End of the Screenwriter ).
Posted 4 months, 4 weeks ago at 9:53 am. Add a comment
Less Talk, More Rock (Video Game Narrative)
Boingboing.net is hosting a terrific manifesto by Craig Adams (AKA Superbrothers). It speaks about the narrative experience of video games, but storytellers of all sorts can find something here.
Here are a few excerpts to whet the appetite:
When there’s just a little bit of talk…it has a peculiar, haunting, poetic effect. It tickles the intellect just enough for it to stir, but not enough to irritate it.
An entire generation seems to have become used to experiences …choked by voice acting, mangled by incongruent narrative…These elements serve to undermine the aesthetic coherence of the work — they can dilute the magic, they can interrupt the flow, they can disrupt the basic audiovisual communication, they can break the spell.
Find the link to the whole manifesto below.
Posted 5 months ago at 7:56 am. Add a comment
Test-Screening Your Screenplay
I read a blog post from Bill Cunningham tonight about an Uma Thurman film that made less than $200 on opening weekend. Bill blamed the lack of an interesting story, I agree. Read his whole post for some hard truths about the movie business that indies can’t ignore.
The natural question arises: how do you tell if your story is interesting?
Shortest answer: if people are interested when you tell it.
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago at 5:01 pm. Add a comment
Read This Instead of Screenwriting Books
I have read a number of instructional screenwriting books, but I can’t really think of anything useful I’ve taken from them. Most of the sources that inform my screenwriting aren’t about it at all.
Here’s the advice I refer to whenever I’m writing:
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago at 8:32 pm. Add a comment
The best advice on screenwriting you can get
Today, Marc Scott Zicree related the description of story theory I’ve ever heard: “You start with a character with a problem. You continually throw shit at him in Act Two, until he is in the deepest shit possible.
“If it’s a tragedy, he doesn’t escape it.
“If it’s a happy ending, he or she figures out their problems and succeeds. That’s it.”
Were you looking for something more complicated?
Posted 6 months ago at 6:49 am. Add a comment
Matt Wallace’s Top 10 Points for Professional Writers
Would-be professionals: take “writer” and put “director / actor / editor,” etc.
Matt Wallace’s Top 10 Points for Professional Writers
Posted 6 months ago at 12:29 am. Add a comment
Req’d Viewing: 70-min Star Wars Review
A good movie succeeds for its own reasons, but most bad movies tend to fail in the same ways. When the movie has an enormous budget, the actual creative mistakes become more clear: there can be no excuse of “we couldn’t afford it.”
Friend and composer Alistair Cooper turned me onto the 70-minute Phantom Menace, and having seen it, I think it’s a quintessential example of learning from a big-budget mistake. It should be required viewing for any storyteller.
You don’t have to have seen Phantom Menace to understand most of this, but it would help. It begins as an overview of the story and characters, and then delves deep into a beat-by-beat analysis of the film. Some of the later sections address specific character concerns (Qui-Gonn is a drunk), but there’s still enough important storytelling theory to make it worth anyone’s while.
(There are some “You Suck at Photoshop” author-as-character moments interspersed within the review, presumedly to break up the rhythm, so be ready for some weirdness. I can tell you the review is worth it. I also find it funny how the author has an excellent grasp of story structure and theory, and yet his own works ends with an awkward anticlimax. Nobody’s perfect.)
Part 1/7:
