SCREENWRITING: The Hero's Journey Monomyth

The Hero's Journey pattern (also known as the Monomyth) is the template upon which the vast majority of successful stories and Hollywood blockbusters are based.

Our detailed deconstruction of hundreds of successful stories and Hollywood blockbusters has revealed more than 510 stages of the Hero's Journey that writers and filmmakers should know about...

READ MORE - http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html

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Pitching to Get Started; Pitching to Sell

A writer needs to pitch twice.

The first time is when you’re thinking about an idea and may want to try it out on fellow writers and friends to assess their interest.

The second time is when you are ready to sell a storyline and hope that it has the pizazz necessary to create interest in your script.

There are good ideas and not-so-good ideas, and usually the best way to test an idea is to see what kind of interest you get with a simple pitch.

“Two teen-agers meet at summer camp and fall in love”. Ho-hum. It sounds like a million other ideas and there’s nothing special or compelling. If you pitched this to a few friends and you saw their eyes glaze over, you’d know it needs some work.

So, how to change the pitch? A good unique pitch will imply conflict, give a sense of the action of the storyline, suggest character and give a feeling for the context if the context is unusual or particularly cinematic.

CLICK HERE to read more by Dr. Linda Seger - http://www.inktip.com/sa_article_page.php?cat=sa&sub=resources&pg=48

©1998-2008 InkTip. All rights reserved.

OPTIONING A SCREENPLAY

One of my ex-students read a great screenplay recently. He thinks it could make a fantastic ultra low budget independent new media film (for under 400k). He asked about the process of showing the script to two potential backers but he’s afraid he might get cut out of the loop.

He wants to try to produce the script himself. He plans to option the script before he shows it to his potential backers. He then plans to give them the general idea about the story but when it comes to optioning scripts, he doesn’t really know how to go about it.

The writer of the screenplay is non WGA and she has not sold anything prior to this. My ex-student wants to be fair to the writer, but also doesn't want to tie up much of his own money if the deal fails to go through.

To maintain control of the project before he shows it to his backers, he will option the script for six months by paying a nominal fee of one dollar. The option for the script (for this or any other price) will be a contract stating the purchase price the writer will accept as the price for the screenplay.

With a planned budget of 400k, if the deal is acceptable and if he obtains the financing, the usual fee to purchase a script is 5% of the budget. Because he wants to pay as little as possible, he plans to try to get the script for 2.5% or 10K but this agreement will be subject to bargaining with the writer.

©2008, Stanley N. Lozowski. All Rights Reserved.

Things Investors want to know before investing

Investors don’t give a damn about your screenplay. They also do not care if you are talented or if you have written the Great American Novel.

They do want to see your Business Plan and learn about their Return on Investment (ROI). They are interested in learning how you plan distribution of your completed film and they also want to know who’s running your company. And ultimately, the largest concern is how long will it take and when can they expect to see profits.

Filmmaking is a business and if you're in this business you have to speak their language.

© 2008 Stanley Lozowski, All Rights Reserved.

WRITING FOR REAL

The main reason that the late Michael Crichton's books and films were so successful, is because the science was so well researched, and thus, the films made from his stories were plausible. The same is true for the late Arthur Hailey. All his films had great stories behind them because Hailey spent a year or longer researching of commercial aviation (AIRPORT), the auto industry (WHEELS), banking (THE MONEYCHANGERS), etc.

When writing your screenplay, the more you know about any subject the more plausible your story is likely to be.

Plausibility is only one slant of story telling but if we look at the Sci-Fi genre as an example, the Star Wars stories are completely implausible and yet, no one cares. They are great entertainment; old fashioned swashbuckling pirate and princess stories, dressed up in a new time and location. Instead of galleons with cannons, we have tie-fighters with lasers. STAR WARS never mentions Earth and when we are asked to suspend all disbelief, we gladly do do.

© 2008 Stanley Lozowski, All Rights Reserved.

7 Terrible Early Versions of Great Movies

There are THREE great lessons in this story for all screenplay writers and wannabe screenplay writers:

REWRITE, REWRITE and REWRITE!

On every street corner in Hollywood there are screenwriters moaning about how the studio ruined the original vision of their screenplay.

But what we never hear about is the opposite side of the coin where some truly horrific piece of writing got turned into a awesome motion pictures that became amazing successes.

It we believe the facts, it turns out that some of your favorite movies started out as truly terrible screenplays that somebody had the good taste to rewrite (and rewrite several times in some cases) before the cameras ever started rolling.

In 1976, screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett decided to expand on an unfinished O'Bannon screenplay titled MEMORY. This was a sci-fi story about a spaceship crew answering a distress call on a desolate planetoid.

By simply adding an alien monster to the story, everything about the story changed and the new script was titled STARBEAST.

Then, lightning struck and they immediately realized that Starbeast was a f**king terrible title! They had the inspiration and the good sense to come up with a better title and they renamed the screenplay ALIEN.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE By Steve Clark - http://www.cracked.com/article_16716_7-terrible-early-versions-great-movies.html

Copyright © 2005 - 2007 Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. CRACKED, CRACKED.COM and the "CRACKED" logo are trademarks owned by Cracked Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.

3 Common Film Script Errors

The number one offender is: The film’s central idea isn’t good enough.

How can you know for certain if you’ve got a weak central idea for a film?

Actually, this is a simple question to answer. Ask yourself the following question, "Is there one visual image that sums up the movie, a great ten word tagline and a hundred words of text that can sell the story?"

You’d be amazed at how many people don’t even look at this issue until their film is in the can. Most people also have very weak sale’s pitches. If you can’t persuade someone to rent your movie based on a DVD cover image and a hundred words, then it stands to reasoon that your central film concept isn’t strong enough. To take it a step further, your cover image has to be strong enough to persuade someone to read the one hundred words.

READ MORE by Clive - http://www.1000dollarfilm.com/3-common-film-script-errors/news/2008/08/19/#more-376

Copyright © 2008, 1000 Dollar Film

PITCHING at MEETS, FESTIVALS and EVENTS

To the readers asking for advice on pitching at events, maybe we should call this, "How to throw your money away" since it seems that someone will always figure out a novel method to take your dollars.

Looking at the lines outside the hotel of one of these so-called "pitch" festivals and "pitch" meetings, it would appear that the promoters have discovered the "goose that lays the golden eggs". Amazingly, people are paying good money to be here and they are so desperate to tell others their ideas that they will pay to fly across the country and do whatever it takes for the privilege of doing so in style at a Los Angeles hotel. What was it that P.T. Barnum once said?

The trick in trying to sell your idea and get it produced is not to be one of the hundreds paying to pitch your idea to people sitting back and wearing dark sunglasses. These people, as a group, can best be described as "Simon Cowell wanna-bees" and they are there to be entertained and to watch you make a fool of yourself. Some have been bribed into attending with free rooms, dinners and drinks from those sponsoring the event and while they might really be representing a production company, they don't have a care in the world about you or your project.

It's amazing how easy it is to exploit screenplay writers just starting out in the film industry. Many will spend hundreds of dollars so they can return home and tell their friends how they had their fifteen minutes of fame and how some unknown production company promised to contact them in the future.

There are plenty of better ways to get production companies to look at your work and hear you out but sad to say, they are not as glamorous as visiting a big hotel and attending a pitch meeting.

Instead of paying to speak to reps from production companies you would be far better off spending your money on cell phone bills, certified letters and contracts or developing your screenplay and getting your business plans in order. Yes, it takes leg work and it takes time to make phone calls every day. Be persistent!

And after all is said and done, you can tell screenplay writers that they are being "had" but they will all do what they want to do.

©2008, Stanley Lozowski. All Rights Reserved.

The BEST just got BETTER! Celtx 1.0.

Celtx today announced the free public availability of version 1.0 of their software.

Celtx 1.0 new features include:

1. Adapt To - a single click now converts a fully formatted script of one type into a fully formatted script of another – for example a Stageplay to a Screenplay – displaying instantly the multi-media potential of your work.

2. Comic Book - a new editor to write properly formatted Comic Books, and a common framework for collaboration between writer and artist.

3. iPhone - now view your Celtx projects from just about anywhere with a display optimized for your iPhone.

4. Catalogs - a new organization and searchable dashboard view of all your story’s elements and production items.

5. Sidebar - annotate and break down each scene with notes, media (images, audio, and video clips), and production items through an easy to manage, thoroughly upgraded new sidebar.

6. Project Scheduling – has been vastly upgraded to fully integrate with the script breakdown and provide a Call Sheet and a host of new shooting reports.

7. Storyboarding - you can now choose from a variety of ways to view and manage your images, create a storyboard outline based on your script, and add shot descriptions to each image.

To download Celtx 1.0 FREE, please visit http://www.celtx.com/

And look at what it can do! http://blip.tv/file/948797

NO OTHER program does this much.

http://www.pixelheadsnetwork.com/2008/06/09/tip-43-celtx-new-features-in-version-10/