The Low Budget Holiday Script

Another holiday season has arrived and we find movies in theatres and on television with holiday themes. This is nothing new. Holiday movies have been part of the film making landscape since the very early days. Simple stories about home and faith and family.

I say home and faith and family while leaving out Santa Claus because after watching two weeks non stop of these kinds of films I am going to suggest that we all take a step away from the I am Santa films.

I understand why many filmmakers pick the Santa film, it is a way of making a movie all inclusive and a way of avoiding questions of faith. I would ask those film makers the question “Is that what you really want to be?” The equivalent of oatmeal or canned tuna? The holiday film that embraces faith and family most of all is the most popular of them all, It’s A Wonderful Life. The second most popular are versions of A Christmas Carol. Even the story of Santa Claus is based upon the life of a Christian Saint.

To do something truly memorable and lasting you may need to embrace this part of the holiday theme.

Switch for a moment to the area of comedy I am not against in anyway films such as - Plains, Trains and Automobiles or the first two Home Alone films. Comedy has its place. Although those movies are not low budget. You should always try to find a place to include a little comedy in your film even if is a serious drama. A holiday film script that is too down beat can be a hard sell. I wish that good old fashion tear jerkers were still popular, but audience are not demanding them. A lead character with a strong sense of humor is a good thing. They may not tell the jokes, but they should be able to get the joke or have the ability to laugh at themselves. 

   

 The great thing about holiday films is that most of them are at their core very simple scripts to write. The plots usually come down to two subjects. Either going home or appreciating what you had at home. A nice twist on this theme is the Nicholas Cage film, The Family Man.

The going home plot can fit perfectly into the no budget screenplay world. You can set one of these stories inside of a car or on a bus. Keeping your characters on the move can keep your story fresh as you introduce new characters and situations every few pages.

A few words on watching your budget in the travel and home types of scripts. Do not constantly change mode of transportation. This works great in a large budget film like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but will kill a micro budget film. If your character or characters are travelling by car you can change vehicles a few times without blowing up a budget. If it is by bus the same bus location can double for multiple buses locations. After all if you have seen the inside of one cross country bus then you have seen them all. Plane and train travel can be done on a low budget depending on area of the country and access to sets. If you or the person that will be shooting your script lives in LA. NY. or a Canadian film making center then this can be done without blowing up a budget.

Now a note on the faith based holiday film.

You can write for a larger cast and crew than a standard low budget film because the film maker will, if he or she is smart, partner with a church or community organization that will open the doors to many free locations such as churches and community centers along with many people who will be willing to offer their services for free. Just remember the trade off in this area is that you must present a G or PG rated story with no subject material that will be objected to. This will include Santa and elves, do not include them. In the faith based world Christmas is a high holy day. Christmas is the beginning of the love story between mankind and god. Although there are a few dozen new family and faith based films coming to television this year there is only one that will playing in theaters. The Christmas Candle, and it like almost every such film has been beaten up by critics. If you want to be loved by critics and to win awards you are not going to get them if you write in this niche. Critics did not care much for It’s A Wonderful Life so understand that you will have little to no hope of winning them over.
    

I may have suggested rules, but the truth is that there are no rules. You can tell your holiday story anyway that you wish if you are going to be the film maker. If you want to take your screenplay to market then you will have to consider some of the basic rules. Directors and producers seem to want the familiar. This is perhaps why there has been hundreds of variations of the Christmas Carol plot.

Last note on the subject, you can mine classic songs for material. By classic I mean those in public domain. If you want to use a modern song then go out and negotiate for permission to do so. One of the most popular Christmas films in recent years was the movie Christmas Shoes. I believe that most movies based upon songs are thinly plotted, but it can get you from start to finish and just finishing a script gets you ninety percent of the way to seeing it produced someday.

Now if you feel that I have left out the subject of horror and holiday films. I did this because I have seen all of the Silent Night Deadly Night films. A few about killer snow men and the legendarily bad Santa Slays. I do not want to aid you in writing a horror movie for the holidays.

Peace on earth and good will towards men.

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Thank you for visiting and happy holidays. 

Your Screenplay, No Need to Type

Your Screenplay, No Need to Type Recently

I had a long talk with a film maker who said that she was not getting the types of screenplays that she could relate to. That the characters did not look like her. At first this struck me as sounding unusual, after all characters are characters. They are just names on a piece of paper. Well as we talk about it I began to see what she was saying.

The film maker in question is Asian and most of the screenplays that she had been sent introduced each character with a short description of the characters. Are you seeing where this is headed? Beyond the name and age of the character there was usually a lot of extras.

What this taught me a very important lesson that I wish to share with you. Film makers will come in all different shapes, sizes, ages and races. If your primary goal is to craft a screenplay that you can market then you need to consider this when you are doing your final edit. The best seller item on earth is generic. The generic brand is a great brand. I am not suggesting that you make a generic screenplay, but characters that can be preformed by as many actors as possible. Keep in mind that thanks to digital film making more and more actors are looking for material to produce for themselves.

Let’s look at it in Charles Angels terms for a second. You write a screenplay. You have Drew Barrymore in mind. She reads it, does not care for it, but Lucy Liu picks it up. She likes the script, but the lead character is clearly written for Drew, right down to her goofy smile. Lucy says no because of this. Lucy is a type and Drew is a different type. Both can give you a quality performance. More importantly both have the kind of resources to pay you well for your screenplay.

    

 In the low budget world of screen writing you are going to be introduced to film makers from all over the world and of all races and creeds. Keep the character description simple and generic unless it is important to the story. Also when you take a chance it would be cool to take a risk or two with characters. A woman could be your villain instead of the cookie cutter guy. Who would have thought a few years ago that the most well known drug trafficked in television history would look like the guy on Breaking Bad.

Make your screenplay more marketable by giving directors and producers more freedom to pick a cast.

One of my favorite thrillers is the movie Taken. I have written about it often here. The cast is solid, but the script and the direction are the things that elevate it to another level. This year I was introduced to an asian film that I was told was as good. The movie is the Man From Nowhere and I believe that it is actually a better film than Taken because the script does not allow us to look away for even a moment from the hard choices that the characters must make. You could find the movie on Netflix and I strongly suggest you watch it and tell me what you think. By the way, the trailer does not do it justice. The film and the script behind it works on so many levels.
  

 Thank you for visiting my blog. Please take a moment to share this post and to add me to your google plus. 

Characters, Do They Care

Characters, Do They Care

Any type of action,horror, suspense or drama will come down to the one basic question.

Do they care?

There is a huge debate as to what makes the audience care about a character. If you can get them to care you will be very close to winning them over.

Here is how one writer sees it.



How I see it is more focused than that. They will care if others care.
They will like the song if everyone else in the room is dancing to. In other words if there is caring happening on the screen then it will be happening inside the viewer. You see human beings are great at empathy.
 The second way it to introduce them to a situation or a relationship that is fundamental.

We all understand and can relate to family relationships. The most powerful is a parent for a child or child for parent. Next is siblings. Then comes love relationship and finally friendships.

Friendships can be very powerful tools. If you do not believe me then look at the success of two major film franchises. The Harry Potter series and the original Star Trek series are all films about friendships and the prices that the characters are willing to pay to maintain those friendships.

The movie Taken is so easy for an audience to access because of the father/daughter relationship. The Exorcist is mother/daughter. The horror movie Jeepers Creepers is brother/sister. You care as an audience because you understand and can easily relate. Die Hard works because it is husband/wife. Same thing for the film Fireproof.

I know this person, I understand this person. I could be this person is the road you need to walk if you wish to get them to care.

I do not believe in the goal theory. Is it the goal that makes Lord of the Rings work or is it the friendships that develop? We want these friends to make it through together and get back home again.

I will give one goal its due. The revenge goal seems to get an audiences attention better than any other. For some reason we can universally relate to the concept of payback. From the Godfather to Kill Bill we can not seem to get enough of this. The action committed against the lead and or his closest must be so terrible that it strikes a chord inside of each of us and we connect because we wish we could do the same thing under those circumstances.

Think about the Godfather and the tremendous number of blows the family suffers one after another. Blows that leaves a battered and emotional wounded Michael as head of the family. As one after another of his enemies are take out we are all hoping that he is successful in his revenge plot. 


Consider this when you are reviewing your script. If you believed that you have written a great script, but it gets rejected then perhaps it comes down to characters that you have created. You may have created great characters, but no one cares about them. Go back and see if you can fix this.

That is it for today. Take a moment to share this post and to stumble us on Stumbleupon. I am sorry that I have not been posting as often as I use to, but the ebook on screen writing has been doing very well and I have to find areas that are not covered in the book. The next post will be about how less can be worth more where it comes to describing characters in screenplays that sell.

Mining What Exist for Plots and Characters

One of the hardest parts about being a writer is finding material to write about.Sometimes the best place to look is in the past. Many screen writers earn their living by adapting other works of fiction and writing sequels.

A few weeks ago a friend told me that he was writing a sequel to a public domain film. This was something that I had never considered before. Sure I was well aware of the fact that many writers have profited greatly from the fact that the movie Night of The Living Dead is Public Domain. It established rules and situations that have been copied over and over again. The show The Walking Dead could not exist if Romero had not failed to copyright his film properly.

 

Public domain means that the property is free from the public to use in any way that they see fit. You can rewrite a public domain film and not have to pay for the rights to do so. You can write a sequel to a public domain film and do not have to ask permission. There are hundreds of well know films that are now in the public domain and thousands of foreign films. You can do a google search on these films and make a list of the ones that you believed were entertaining. Perhaps you can see a way to continue the story or used the characters in new and exciting situations.

Why would you want to do this?

You would want to do this because the already established character is easier to work with than one that you are trying to bring to life. These characters and situations sometimes make the work easier. The next thing that you can look into is Fan Films. They do not pay, but sometimes writing is for the love of the game. If you love an existing character or movie or tv series then you can expand that existing universe. There are Star Wars and Batman and Dr.Who and House and The Matrix. You can write the episode of that series that you love or a sequel to that movie. The good thing about the fan film universe is that it is easy to find those who are also fans. Fans who would love to make a short or feature based upon their favorite movie or tv show. This is a way to get your work produced. To hear your dialogue actually being spoken by an actor.

You don’t believe that fan films can be very good?

Some of them are amazing.

   
  

 These are areas for a writer to find material. Try it and you may be surprised at how easy these characters will be to write for. Thank you for visiting, please take a moment to stumble us on stumbleupon and to share this post with a friend.

   

My Screen Writing Book

My Screen Writing Book

 I have just published a book on how to write a low budget screenplay. Hang in there for a moment this is not just going to be a shameless plug for my ebook  On Writing A Low Budget Screenplay, available now for the low price of 2.99 at iTunes, Barnes and Noble and Amazon. That was not totally shameless was it?

I thought that the book was needed when looking at all the other ones out there. No one really seems to get that this is becoming a digital - Dslr driven film industry yet and how to craft screenplays that can be made in that ten thousand dollar or less range. If you decide to invest in a copy of the book you will find that a third of it is made of post that have appeared on this blog. The rest consist of new content.

Okay today I would like to offer an excerpt from the book. A chapter about what I would like to call the SaberMetrics of Screenwriting. I hope that most of you have seen Moneyball and perhaps ever read the script. If you cut the on field stuff out and there is not much of that in the film, it could have easily been done on a low budget. Before we begin here is a clip from the film.

The Sabermetrics Of Screenwriting.

Many of you have seen the movie Moneyball. I think that I have seen it a dozen times largely due to the facts that I love baseball and I love the very idea that just because there is a way that things have been done, does not mean that there is a way that things will always be done or should be done.

If you are unfamiliar with the film and the concept of Sabermetrics. At the end of the day you can boil almost everything including baseball down to a single number. A mathematical equation that will make you a winner and or a loser. Despite the fact that this low cost concept worked there are many in baseball who believe to this day that it is all smoke and mirrors or dumb luck.

The micro budget film is sort of sabermetrics being played out in the film industry. Here comes another summer of bloated films that cost between one hundred million to two hundred and fifty million dollars. One of those films will win the yearly box office race. That is the top of the line number, but not the whole story. A super hero movie that cost two hundred million dollars makes one point two billion world wide and the studio heads go crazy. That is a 6 to 1 return on investment not counting in the two hundred million that was also spend to advertise it.

A low budget film like Paranormal Activity cost less than a hundred thousand to make. It gets two to four million in advertising. Most of it online. Let us say a total of five million invested in the release of a film that goes on to make over one hundred million in the US alone. The return on investment is 20 to 1.
The world that Hollywood has created will be rocked to its core when someone makes a comedy for thirty thousand dollars that makes a hundred million. This is going to happen and perhaps you will be the one to write it. The 1929 stock market crash moment for Hollywood studios will be one of us writes a super hero movie that is shoot for under a hundred grand and the thing makes a hundred million plus selling merchandise and spawning toys.

The goal of writing a micro budget film is not to create a movie that will generate a micro budget return. The goal is to write the best movie possible. To create a story that the whole world will embrace.

Your budget should be small, but your goals should never ever be small. The idea behind sabermetrics was that a small market team with a limited payroll could compete with the riches and most powerful teams on earth. They could beat them by paying attention to the little things that had gone totally ignored.

The script that you write can easily be better than the ones that will populate theaters this summer. Low to micro budget does not mean that your screenplay will not be fantastic.

You will be writing a small and compact story, but your aims should never be small.


     Okay that is it for this post. Please take a moment to share this post and to stumble it on stumbleupon. The idea of selling the book is a nice one, but the idea of screenwriters learning the proper way to not only write a low budget screenplay, but write a really good one is more important to me. I am not impressed so far by this summers big budget blockbusters and just as disappointed with many of the low and micro budget films I have seen. The weakness in most of these films begin and end with the screenplays. We can do better. We have to do better.

Thank you and good luck.

About Being A Writer

 
I have written over forty post on this blog and I have failed to mention one the most important thing.

We are writers.

It is not easy to be a writer.

If you are really good at it then you are a rare and wonderful thing. Writing is like performing magic. We start with a blank page. We produce something from no where and even after it has appeared we are the last person who could possible explain where it came from.

How did you do that?

How did you come up with that character?

Where did that plot twist come from?

The most frightening question of all is, “What are you going to write about next?” Screenwriting is still writing. It depends more on form, style and technique that the art of the novel, but it is still writing. In some ways it is harder than writing a novel because you have no real restrictions where the novel is concerned.  

  You have decided to write screenplays. You have a talent for writing in general or you would not be here or would not have chosen this path in life. I tell people that if someone would pay me money to play baseball instead of writing I would never write again. That is a lie of course. I was a pitcher and that was mostly by choice. You see the pitcher is the one who controls the narrative flow of the game or in other words the plot.

I remember that Mickey Spillane would say that he would be a house painter if they paid as much for painting as they did writing the Mike Hammer novels. Maybe he really believed that, but I believe that after a few weeks of painting walls he would have looked up at the end of the day to find that instead of putting primer on the wall he painted pictures of hot dames and sleek 45 caliber guns.  

If I were forced to do only one thing in the film making industry it would not be acting. I have wore the hat of a producer and will wear it again and that will only be because I will have to. I like directing, but I would not trade control of a film set for control over that blank computer screen.

I have written Fade In a few hundred times and only managed to write Fade Out less that two dozen times, but the act of finishing with those two words even though I knew at the time I would have to go back over it and cut and repair the thing over and over were still some of the happiest moments of my life.

Today I wanted to remind you that you are a writer.

When people ask you who you are and what you do the words, if they are true, will come immediately to your lips. Say to them, I am a writer. I write movies. I write screenplays. I am a screenwriter.

Screenwriting, A Learned Skill

Screenwriting, A Learned Skill


You need some talent to be a writer. Talent for the chosen field is a given, but just about everyone can tell a simple story. The art of the novel is 80 percent talent and twenty percent technique. The art of screen writing is twenty percent talent, forty percent technique and forty percent persistence.

The good news is that the technical aspect can largely be gotten through basic software programs. We have gone over them before and I can do a quick listing of some of the best no budget options for you.
 Celtx is great and is free to use. There is a upgraded version that cost about ten dollars. Unless you are going to be producing the movie as well the upgraded copy is not necessary. There is the great store and working on your screenplay online resource Scripped. This site s free to sign up at. Free to use. Free to store your screenplay there online. They have a screenplay registration service that is great if you do not use the writer’s guild or want to file for a copy write. There is also the free software known as Roughdraft. It has templates for stageplay screenplay and novel. It is great and very simple to use.

Next I can not teach you to have talent. Either you do or you do not. If you have little or no story telling talent that is okay. You can still find a way to craft a screenplay. You can adapt someone else’s story or a true story that you have read about or heard about. The talent to tell a great story is not needed if you can find a great story. Once the story is found all you have to do is to fall back on the technique of writing the screenplay. Identify the lead character. Figure out who or what are the protagonist and the antagonist. Learn all that you can about creating conflict. Conflict is what drives a narrative story forward. Opposing forces pushing against each other.

Next learn the basics of the three act structure. It is as simple as beginning middle and end. If you can understand that Act I is the beginning, Act II is the middle and Act III is how to script will reach an end.
Now since this blog is about low to no budget screen writing then I have to remind you that you must limit the size of your cast and the number of locations. To pick up and move a crew and actors cost money every time that you do it. To secure a location cost. To move equipment cost. Even if a production does not pay the actors they have to be fed and travel cost as well so keep those things in the back of your mind when writing your micro budget screenplay and in the front of your mind when rewriting it.

The last word has to be about persistence. You have to face that plank screen everyday. Write something everyday. Aim for a rough draft pace of five to six pages a day. That is between a thousand to fifteen hundred words. At this pace you can finish your first draft in about three weeks. It this pace is too much that is okay. One page a day, everyday, for a year is equal to four ninety page screenplays a year. That is a great
pace. What I am trying to tell you is that as long as you write something everyday you are doing better than ninety five percent of the writers out there. Write as often as possible. Writing is like lifting weights. You get stronger and it gets easier. Persistence pays off over time. Keep writing. Keep writing and did I mention that I think you should keep writing?

Okay that is it for today. Thank you for visiting and please take a moment to stumble us on stumbleupon and to share this post.

The Anthology Script, Know Your Nouns

The Anthology Script, Know Your Nouns

The problem with many Anthology scripts in not the individual stories within the movie. It is how they connect. Imagine trying to write a hit song and the backing music constantly changes with each verse and every time that the chorus repeats. That song would not sound good and it is a sort of back beat that is required for an Anthology film script to work.



What I am saying is that there needs to be a connecting element.

There needs to be something that binds it all together. That something is a NOUN. Some of us who are beyond the age of thirty learned first about nouns by watching a Saturday morning cartoon named schoolhouse rock. A really cool two minute song that taught us that a noun is a person, place or thing. Every person that you know and every place that you can go, you know that they are nouns, they are nouns.
The binding element should be a person, place or thing that recurs and connects each short film that will form the complete feature length Anthology film. There have been some good tries at making anthology films, but I think they missed greatness because of the problem with nouns. Look at the movie VHS, the connecting element is a video tape and I would argue that this is so vague that would it had been any different if they had used a television to connect the stories. The parts do not fit because the noun is not strong enough to hold the entire film together. We get two good stories and three okay ones that do not have anything internally to connect them. They are not even all the same genre.



When writing your anthology screenplay I would suggest picking your noun and sticking to it for three to six stories, any more than that and you are talking the ABC’s of Death and I do have to say that the alphabet is not the best way to connect one story with another. People will get tired after five or six stories. That is just the history of the genre. Again find the noun. A place that connects all the stories. This is a good idea when writing a micro budget script. Using the same location as much as possible really helps to keep a budget in line. Pick an object that connects the stories. It could be a book or a smartphone or a mirror or a ring. Anything that can move from person to person and or place to place logically. Then there is the person. The person can be the actor who will play many roles, think of the amazing anthology Trilogy of Terror where Karen Black plays a school teacher, then twins and then a woman being menaced by a killer doll. Always the same face with a different name and location for each story. The face connects the stories. A common character or group of characters and do this as well. A lawyer or a priest or a group of cops. They can begin the story together and spread out over the entire length of the film script and perhaps finish the story together.
There are a thousand ways to do this, but it will be so much easier to get from fade in to fade out if you keep focused on the nouns.

Final note about this subject. It does not have to be horror. I know that most modern anthologies are horror films, but it can be done with drama, suspense or even comedy. Do not limit yourself to one genre because it is popular or you think that it will make more money. Write what you love. If that noun allows you to combine genres then go for it.

Try to write everyday and try to read as many scripts as you can. It will make you a better writer.
Good luck guys and please take a moment to share this post with a friend.

Screenwriting, A Lose Of Suspense

Screenwriting, A Lose Of Suspense

When people think about writing a low budget screenplay they tend to turn in one of three directions. Comedy, drama or horror. I understand this. These are the movies that populate theaters and cable tv these days. We write what we read and we write what we see. That old run of writing what you know comes into play. The problem is that the two dominate forms of screen writing has all but been lost during the last decade.

We no longer write westerns. I understand this based upon budget to a certain extent, but the micro budget rules can apply to a western as well as other types of films. If you are the writer and the film maker and you live in an area of the country that offers a western setting then you should not be afraid to write a western.




The suspense script is not so much about budget as it is about technique. Most of you have not been taught how to write a suspense script. Many confuse suspense with mystery. For most of the past century suspense was king and horror lived in a back room. Hitchcock dominated the box office with one suspense story after another. Suspense films still are a large part of the international film market it is just here where the suspense film has been filed away.

Why should you consider writing a suspense script?

Suspense offers the best of all worlds. A little horror, comedy, action and drama. When done well they stand the test of time. They will challenge you as a writer.

What are the rules for writing a suspense story?

One rule applies always. This rule is the exact opposite of a horror script.

In a horror story something is chasing you. In a suspense story you are chasing something. You being your lead character of course.

Jason, Michael Myers, Freddie and the shark from Jaws is chasing the lead. They are always being stalked or menaced by the creature in the darkness.

In a suspense story the lead is doing all the chasing. He or she is trying to track down the monster. Find the threat before it is realized. Locate the bomb before it can go off. Get the wife or child back before it is too late.

Modern suspense classics are Disturbia (remake of Rear Window), Taken, Basic Instinct, The Usual Suspects and Momento. I recently saw the movie Stoker and this disturbing little film reminded me of what world class suspense is like. I watched the movie the first time as a writer and the second time as a film maker. The budget is listed at twelve million dollars. I imagine that a lot of that budget went to pay the stars and for once I have to admit they earned their salaries. Every performance was pitch perfect and the suspense does not work nearly as well if the number one person who is in danger is not some one that we as viewers are not familiar with. The movie need Nicole Kidman in the same way that Hitchcock’s films need Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly.



Okay back to the budget. If you take away the salaries for the stars and the director and shot it using a small digital production crew this film could have been shot on an ultra low budget.

You need to look at movies and read script from films shoot in the forties and fifties. Many of the great suspense films from those days were low budget B suspense films. Many of the rules that apply to micro budget film scripts were learned from those films. Limit the cast and the locations and the number of sets. Find a lead character that can not let it go. A character who has to chase the answers down. A character who does not blink and then let them go for it. Or you could show us two sides of a characters personality. One side decent and kind, the other side dark and violent. Which side will come out in the end? Which person will reveal themselves and to whom? Suspense is built that way. It comes down to when will the bomb go off. Just keep in mind that sometime the bomb is a secret or sometimes it’s a person.

Okay that is it for today guys. Good luck with your no budget screenplay. Please take a moment to stumble us on stumble upon and to share this post with a friend.

Low Budget Screenplay, Characters and Dimensions

Low Budget Screenplay, Characters and Dimensions

The problem with most screenplays begin before we get to whether or not the plot is sound. The problems begin at the level of characterization.

You have heard about three dimensional characters. In an effort to produce such a character you go out and write a character with a series of traits and skills that you hope will add depth to your character. This never works. This is not how a three dimensional character is created.

Look at dimensions as layers. Try to create a character when writing your screenplay that has layers.


Ask yourself a question about the lead character.

Who do they say that they are?

If they say I am a good person who loves my family, my dog, my friends and the whole wide world. Or the reverse I am a good person, but I can not stand my family, my dog, my so called friends or this crazy world I live in.

That is fine to start of with, but if that is your character from page one to page one hundred and one you have created a boring one dimensional character.

Here is a quick glimpse at a villain who is definitely not one dimensional.



Go beyond this to the next layer.

Who is this person underneath?

I love my family, but I need to spend hours away from them one a fishing trip or at work just to get away from them. I love the world, but I do not care about everything that happens to it, on it or inside it. I love my friends, but I am tired of dealing with their problems, their drama or even their upbeat attitude.

Or I hate the world, but there is one person that would make me fight to save it. It could be a child. It could be a love. It could be someone that they know, but has never said anything to. Shyness in a character or self doubt is a great second dimension. There are any number of character traits that can add dimension to a character in your low budget script.

To review. What a character says they are or even what other characters say about the lead character and who or what they actually say or do in reality adds a second dimension.

The third dimension is more tricky.

Here is a character that is fully three dimensional.



It could be something that the character discovers about themselves. Something good or bad that they never knew was there. A hero finds out that he is a coward when the going gets really tough. A person who has never stuck his neck out for anyone finds that he is willing to risk his life for a stranger. It is what the character does not know that adds that extra. It surprises both the character and more importantly the audience.

Writing a low budget screenplay requires that you pay more attention to characterization. Big budget films can and do get away with paper thin characters. They can hide this behind massive special effect and stars. The success of your low budget screenplay will depend on how well it is written. On how strong your characters are. Get to know these characters. You will over time discover things about them as they discover things about themselves. I am not going to lie to you and tell you that it is easier to write fully realized characters. It is harder, but is is also more rewarding.

Good luck with the screenplay. Please take a moment to bookmark this post and to share it.

Horror Film Writing, Beyond Props

Horror Film Writing, Beyond Props

Hitchcock when asked about horror films said that he did not make them (maybe the Birds). He said that all they really amounted to were movies about walking props.

The Frankenstein monster was just a prop and the history of horror movies is mostly dependent upon them.


Jason is just a walking machete.


Michael Myers a walking kitchen knife.


Freddy is a walking glove that cracks jokes.


These films in their original forms were not all prop and no content. I would argue that Michael Myers in the
original film was more than a knife. The character represented a total lack of humanity that in is own way made him a compelling creation. In the Rob Zombie remake (the only remake worth talking about) the character represents aggression and rage. A kind of overwhelming rage that is triggered all to easily by people in the world around him.


Freddy when he was first introduced represented our own inner demons. Our worst nightmares come to life. Then the character began a franchise and soon after he became little more than comic relief.


When sitting down to write a screenplay we all to often go for the cheap scare. Creating characters who’s sole purpose is to die in as gruesome a way as possible. Is this the best that we can do?


Can you name any of the character who went out like that?


I can name Heather from the Freddie films because she is the only real character in those movies. She fought, she struggled, she tried to survive as any of us would do.


I know that Ripley was the star of the Alien films that were good.


I remember Sam and Juno from the Descent.


Can you name one single character from any of the Final destination films? Who were they? You do not know because you were never asked to care.


It is the character first and not the situation that makes for great horror films. Far too many horror movie scripts are written with situation in mind. When writing a horror screenplay it is easy to think up a place where character will find themselves trapped and then butchered by another character who is nothing more than a prop. Look at the movie Saw. It could have been just another slasher film and that is the problem with its sequels, but the first one does a great job of getting you inside the heads and lives of the two guys we meet chained in that filthy bathroom.


Writing about characters that you know and like will be one of the easier things that you ever do. Can you imagine being Sam Raimi and partner sitting down to write more dialogue for Ash in one of the Evil Dead movies. That trash talking character has become loved by millions of fans because he was first loved by the person who created him.


Create good characters and the story will take care of itself.


Or create Props and they will lumber around like the dead weight that they are.


No one ever said that screen writing was going to be easy. It is fun at times, but rarely easy. None of us really consider ourselves masters of this craft. We have good weeks and bad weeks. There are times when pages will flow and then there will be weeks when you will not be able to write more than a sentence or two. Just try to do one thing when ever you sit down in front of that blank screen, try to do your very best. Try to create characters that are more than blocks of wood.


Okay that is it for today. Please take a moment to share this post with a friend.

Horror Movie Writing

                Writing A Good Horror Film


    There is a pattern that has developed over the past few years at the box office. Horror films open up at number one and then the bottom drops out of their box office.

    Hollywood is a hype machine and they have become expert at hyping horror movies. The problem is that they pick really bad movies in an effort to steal a few quick bucks. Most of these movies fall into three categories. Terrible originals, terrible remakes and terrible redone versions of foreign horror films.

    Let Me In vs. Let The Right One In.

    The Chainsaw Massacre 3D vs. The Chainsaw Massacre.
   
    Some of this is the quest for money. Some of this is the directors fault and some of this is poor writing. In the case of Let Me In it is the director’s fault because the original has an almost perfect script.

    This post needed to be written for the simple fact that many of the micro to no budget scripts that will be written will be horror screenplays.

There are actual rules to writing a good one and I guess that it is about time someone wrote them down and reminded the screenwriting world of them.

    The rule that is broken most often and usually in the first five minutes. The rule that once broken the story has a huge mountain to climb before it can reach the level of watchable. The rules that you must keep in mind at all cost is,

    ESTABLISH REALITY!

    Your script must establish the real world before it can or should introduce the supernatural world.

    “But I want to start my script with a bang. I want to jump right into the story.”

    Seriously? If you want to write a great film that will be remembered over time then do not break this one rule.

    The movies that followed this rule as if it is religious doctrine are the following:

    The Sixth Sense. Wife, husband, home, normal world, violence, and then mom and boy, street, church and now the supernatural begins to creep in.

    The Exorcist, old Priest, dig in holy lands, people working, heart problems, a hint at something bizarre or supernatural. Jump to a city in America, a Mother and daughter, a home, a ordinary world that is rocked by something supernatural almost 30 pages later. The recipe for the greatest horror film of all time.

    The Descent, a rafting trip with friends, a drive home, a fatal car accident, friends gather at hospital, friends unite a year later for another group outing, they worry about the one who almost lost her life and did lose her family, they go cave diving in an un-explored cave because one of them is a risk taker and they end up in a life and death struggle with flesh eating cave dwellers.  Released at the end of a summer movie season, totally untouched by the Hollywood hype machine, barely lasted in theaters for three weeks and has gone on to be considered a modern horror classic.  (Note, I was lucky enough to see The Descent at a film festival where it won best after dark film. The house was sold out and the place rocked from almost beginning to end. There is nothing like seeing a really good horror film.)

    The Original Chainsaw Massacre watches like a documentary at times. The opening scenes of that movie establishes reality and then goes on to create what feels like a darker level of reality.
    The same could be said for the original The Hills Have Eyes.

    They all became classics by establishing reality first and then subverting it.

    The next Rule has been written about before at this blog and I must go over it again.
    Rule 2,

    THEY WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING ONCE!

    The audience will believe in a killer shark.

    They will believe in a possessed child.


    They will believe that a massive undersea creature is rampaging through New York, Cloverfield.

    They will believe in Vampires.

    They will believe in any one thing, but not two things. Two or more things is comedy and not horror.

    Child’s Play 1 and 2 are horror movies. Once you get to Bride of Chucky you are into comedy.
    A Killer Shark is Jaws, a Killer Shark that can swim under the sand is Sand Shark, it is a sci-fi channel film and it stinks.

    No matter what that second thing is do not include it in your screenplay. Do not make the argument that M. Night does it all the time. A twist ending is not the same as a second thing that they must believe. Hey I do not like the ending of The Village any more than the rest of you guys, but it was fair and he did not ask you to believe more than one thing. We were just fooled by what the story really was about.

    The movie that broke this rule and completely lost me and many of those who had high hopes for it is the movie Grave Encounters. Great premise. Solid Act I and part of Act II. This movie promises an experience like the Shining and out of no where jumps to Rose Red and a second rate episode of the Outer Limits. Spoiler Alert!  For those of you who have seen the movie the ghost hunting team arrives at the building and get locked inside. At this point we have a time limit given to us where around 6 AM the doors will be opened. Survive until then and all is well. Then the building starts changing shapes. Really? Then time does not run the way that it does in the rest of the known universe. Really?

Too much to believe. I think the movie falls apart when these things are introduced and never recovers. I will offer a slight defense and maybe a reason why this happened. The script was written by a writing team.  That could explain the introduction of these unnecessary elements.

    Find a horror film that disappointed you and ask yourself if it asked you to believe in more than one thing. I would bet that almost all of them did.

    There are a few more rules, but at the end of the day these rules are the most important. If you break any of them then you are probably writing a bad horror movie.

    How to write a really good horror film is going to be another post and I will try to be as helpful in this area as possible, but no one has perfected a formula for this yet. The greatest screen writers of all time are hit and miss.

    Okay that is it for today. I have added social marking tabs on the post so could you please share this and any other post you like and tell a friend about this site.

    Last note, I am working on doing an Anthology contest this year. Unlike most of the recent anthologies that have been released this one must have a common theme and the theme is still being discussed. It will be suspense/horror and it will need something to tie it together. Watch Trilogy of Terror (find it on Youtube) as an example of what we will be aiming for.