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Script Market News September 10, 2001 |
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| Break into Screenwriting: Script Marketing Advice | |
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Script Market News TABLE OF CONTENTS
S P E C I A L M E S S A G E -------------------------->
Don't Dress for Success
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In The Spotlight ---> MICHAEL HAUGE |
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| Interview with script consultant, Michael Hauge In addition to writing one of the best-selling books (ever!) on screenplay writing - WRITING SCREENPLAYS THAT SELL - Michael has two decades of experience as a very successful writer and script consultant. He offers two-day intensive screenwriting seminars throughout the US, Canada and England. Part I: Getting Started! Lenore Wright: This is a basic question, Michael, but one that always gets asked. How much time should an aspiring screenwriter plan to spend writing and rewriting their first few scripts and pitching stories before they get their first genuine screenwriting opportunity? Michael Hauge: An interesting way to put that question, because I don’t really think in those terms. I’m going to give you a ‘non-answer’. I think a question like that is self-defeating because if it’s taking you longer than some artificial deadline you’ve set, that will just get you frustrated and feed your fear, and that will eventually block you. And that will discourage you and you’ll stop doing what you want to do. I approach it differently. You write because you want to tell stories for the movies and you love the process. Every six months ask yourself, Do I still love the process? As long as the answer is yes, then you keep writing. If the answer is ever no, then stop and choose another game to play because then you’re just doing it for some goodies at the end of the road and that’s not a reason to do anything – certainly nothing creative. So I discourage people from putting time limits on their process. Having said that… I will say that the number one time consideration a writer should make is: You’ve got to commit to a regular regimen. If you could spend an hour a day working on your screenplay, that would result in amazing progress. But if it’s just something you pick up when you feel like it or when the spirit moves you, or you just save it to do on weekends that’s pretty tough. The writers that succeed have a real regimen. It’s like eating and sleeping. They eat, they sleep and they write - every single day. And that’s how they get the stuff done. Now writing could be in the form of research, it could be in the form of brainstorming, or it could be writing actual scenes. One of my clients isn’t writing now because she’s drawing pictures of the scenes, kind of storyboarding and writing a lot of bios. She feels it gets her into the story deeper and deeper and then when she just can’t resist any more, she’ll start writing and it’ll be better. That’s her process. So the hour or more a day can be anything moving your story forward. But that is the regimen you have got to make. And the second thing is you can not go into it thinking you are going to be with the project any less than a year. Keeping in mind, you have got to rewrite it and rewrite it and polish it until it is as good as you can get it. And then you have to give it to people whose judgment you trust to give you feedback before you try and sell it. And then based on their feedback, you have got to rewrite it and polish it again and again. And once you start trying to sell it (which is part of the job of being a screenwriter) that alone is going to take months to years. So, do not expect things to start popping in less than a year. After a year, you will get a good sense whether you are doing something you love. And you can decide if you are in this for the long haul or not. LW: This is obviously a job you learn by doing. Many people go to film school or take training programs or seminars. Does it help writers to write a film short and get it produced or write a one-act play and get it staged? MH: Are you asking is it helpful in perfecting your craft or helpful in getting a deal? LW: Both. MH: Writing a short film would be very helpful in perfecting your craft, but not essential. Most of the people who have succeeded as screenwriters did not start by writing short films. If you want to be a director, making a short film would be a big step in that direction. But talking just to screenwriters, writing a short fictional film would hone your skills and be a step towards it but certainly not a necessary one because most screenwriters begin by writing script after script for the arena they are pursuing. You will not usually get a deal to write a feature because you have a credit on a short film as the screenwriter. Writing a play is usually irrelevant, because plays are not movies. It is a big error to think that novels and plays are the same as movies. They have distinctly different requirements. Of course anything that puts words on a page is going to hone your writing skills. But if you want to write screenplays, write screenplays. So I would say do not think that writing in some other arena is a step to being a screenwriter other than just to get practice using the language. My advice is to write for the market you want to pursue. If you want to be a comedy writer, write a feature comedy. If you want to be a sitcom writer, write a sample episode of a current sitcom, and so on... FIND OUT... what Michael says about skipping steps. Read the rest of this interview ONLINE at http://breakingin.net/hauge1.htm Check out Michael's new site ---> www.ScreenplayMastery.com (It's terrific!) ----> Michael Hauge Redux Michael Hauge (Part 2) reveals the essential components for a successful screenplay and offer practical suggestions for marketing your screenplay effectively. Read it online: http://breakingin.net/hauge2.htm Subscribe to Script Market News
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FEATURED TUTORIAL ----> Invisible Script Format |
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by Lenore Wright Screenwriting is a DISCIPLINED form of creative writing. No doubt imagination plays an important role in the creation of a great movie script, but - I repeat myself - screenwriting is a DISCIPLINED form of creative writing. Hey, I know I sound like Nurse Ratchet and in fact I look a bit like her too, but honestly I'm trying to help. Why are movie scripts formatted? In order for your screenplay to be transformed into a motion picture, hundreds of film professionals (often thousands) will read your script so they can do their part to make it a motion picture. These readers have different talents and varying skills: some are technicians, many are artists, others are accountants or secretaries or production managers or teamsters trying out for a walk-on. The script must be accessible to all these people so they can do their jobs. So if you believe you will revolutionize filmmaking by starting with film formatting - guess again. You will NEVER revolutionize filmmaking that way. How do I know this? Because I know you will not even get your scripts READ unless they are properly formatted! So when you're tempted to enhance your title page with artwork or draw attention to the star's character description by using that color laser printer you bought off a dying dot-com, control yourself. Before I direct you to some properly formatted screenplay pages, here are some practical reasons why there is standard formatting for screenplays: ----> Scheduling The artists and technicians who break down the screenplay into a schedule of days and nights of filming must have parameters for estimating how long each sequence will take to film. Here's the formula they use: one film script page equals one minute of film. If you triple space your florid descriptions or stretch out your snappy dialogue all the way to the left and right margins, the scene breakdown estimates will be awry, perhaps disastrously so. ----> Rhythm Movies create their own story-telling rhythm through action, camera techniques, use of music and sound effects, the dialogue and the juxtaposition of scenes. The agents, producers, directors and film executives reading your script - if they are experienced professionals - will have at least a rudimentary ability to sense the rhythm of your movie. If your formatting is unfamiliar they will be mislead and probably frustrated as well. ----> Marketing Studios market movies as two-hour entertainments. Theatres schedule a certain number of seatings a day - just like restaurants. Screenplays usually run 110-130 pages in format which when filmed puts the running time at somewhere close to two hours. Comedies run shorter - there's probably less action description and though the dialogue might be longer, it is probably spoken quickly or over-lapped for comic effect. Unless scripts are formatted conventionally, it's difficult to tell if the movie will run 3 hours or 30 minutes. ----> Attention Span Deficit Movie pros love the projects they have in development, yet they don't want to miss out on anything else that might be floating around town. Standardized script formatting lets them wade through a lot more movie projects than they'd be able to read if they were all formatted as thousand page novels. ----> Rewrite Demands Market ready screenplays are printed on white paper with black ink in a 12 point font. Final Draft Courier (12 point font) or Courier New (12 point font) are the current fonts of choice. No exceptions, no substitutions. Any of you who have worked on movie sets know one important reason for this. Rewritten pages of movies in production are printed on colored paper - each set of revisions gets pages of a new color. The official color order: white, blue, pink, green, yellow, goldenrod and salmon. That way, the cast and crew on the movie set don't have to read through the entire script to see what has been revised. (Now you know why Joan Didion called her novel about a movie rewriter BLUE PAGES.) Check Out my Script Tutorial Page to find: + Properly formatted script pages + Free script format programs + Free demos of professional format programs CLICK ----> http://breakingin.net/format_tutorial.htm |
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Script Marketing Tips |
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| -----> Moondance International Film Festival Writing Competitions Moondance invites screenwriters, playwrights, short story writers, TV writers and radio dramatists to participate in their annual festival writing competitions. They offer eleven (11!!) different writing categories. INSIDER TIP: They encourage non-violent conflict resolution in film, depictions of women and girls in a positive manner, appreciation of ethnic diversity and promotion of cultural understanding among the peoples of the world. Lofty aims. Check out the details - http://moondancefilmfestival.com - and enter your heartfelt projects. ----> American Screenwriters Association Screenplay Competition The ASA and their sponsors offer more than $10,000 in cash and prizes in their annual script contest. The Grand Prize Winner receives $5000 and a four-day trip to Los Angeles for the Hollywood Screenwriters Conference. Deadline: October 31st Details: http://www.asascreenwriters.com
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