THE CHANGING SCREENWRITING WORLD

THE CHANGING SCREENWRITING WORLD 
Years ago when I started this blog I took a lot of heat from writers who did not understand what I was trying to tell them.
 Five years ago I suspected that no budget screenwriting would be the future of the industry and those who had dreams of million dollar options hated everything that I had to say. 
 How can you write a screenplay for a movie that cost less than fifty thousand dollars to produce? Who would even make such a movie? 
Who would watch such a movie? 
And how would I get paid a living wage?
 I saw the Dslr revolution coming to the low budget film world. I was part of it. I understood that film could be shoot in 4K on consumer cameras and edited on laptops. I understood that the days of the big screen premiere were coming to an end and the days of streaming content had arrived. 
 Netflix started it and now there are half a dozen giant screaming services and dozens of smaller ones. To be a working screenwriter you have to think like a working middle class film maker. These filmmakers need to produce massive amounts of content. 
This means that they need screenplays. 
This means that we are in a golden age for writers who care about seeing their work produced. Writers who are willing to enter into partnerships with filmmakers and gamble on playing the long term game of profit sharing. If you are willing to learn the basics of micro budget filmmaking then you can and will see your work produced. From films to online series, the sky's the limit. There is a need for content out there and this is now the golden age for the content producer as long as he or she is willing to understand that the fifty million dollar star-driven suspense thriller has been replaced by the fifty thousand dollar indie horror film.

  Please do not panic. The road to fame, fortune and glory do not end there, it can begin there. Many writers of micro budget films have gone on to work at the major studios. To achieve that goal all that I believe that you have to do is to write a few micro budget films and get not only paid but the experience along the way.

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.

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.

Vampires And Budgets, Your Screenplay

            Vampires And Budgets


    There is a mega budget feature film world that is dominated by Vampires. Sure they are vampires covered in glitter, but still vampires. There is room in the low budget and micro budget world for vampires to dominate as well.

    When writing your screenplay it is okay to glance at some of the films that are being made and are dominating the competition. If you did not do this you would not be doing your job as a screenwriter. Look to the big budget films and understand that they are mostly dominated by over paid stars and massive special effects.  The low budget counterparts are usually plot and character driven.

    Today we are going to look at the most successful vampire saga in modern history and the best vampire movie produced during the last twenty years and they do have many similarities.

    The most successful is of course the Twilight Saga.

    The best is the amazing low budget foreign film Let the Right One In. Please do not confuse this movie with the watered down and dumbed down Hollywood remake that came out a year after the original.

    Okay both movies are basically love stories. Twilight buries the fact that this is a somewhat creepy relationship between a old old man and a teenage girl. Appearances are all that matter in the universe of this film. Everyone looks good and that is all that counts.

    In Let The Right One In, it is more of the love between two friends than an actual romance. The boy is twelve and is on the verge of being hazed to death by other vicious boys at school. The girl appears to be twelve and since she is a vampire is a great deal older. This character is handle much better than any in the world of twilight. Though there are special effects in this film and because they are far between and amazingly well paced they are far more affective and realistic than those in the mega budget Twilight. The script of this film is so well crafted you never for a moment get that waiting for the next massive explosion that most larger budget horror films give their audiences. The final act of Let The Right One In is about the price of friendship. Both characters have to make sacrifices and take risks for the other. The characters are younger than those in Twilight but are so much more mature in how they interact with their world and the people around them.

    Let The Right One In shows us how plot and character can make up for a massive budget. Your no budget script can be one that stands out from the rest if you focus on the idea that we stick with and stand by characters that we know and can relate to. Hey not everyone has been the outcast, but all most everyone has felt like an outcast at one time or another. The children of Let The Right On In feel more familiar than the Romeo and Juliet like teens of Twilight.

    The no budget screenplay world is usually a world filled with characters who do not have it all together and never will. The character we introduce at the beginning will most likely be just as screwed up at the end of the story with the only difference being that they have someone to share their journey with.  The greatness of Let The Right One In is that the characters only seem to have it together, to have control over the world they occupy when they are together.

    Good luck with your screenplay and remember to try to write something everyday.