Adapting a Public Domain Comic Book

How About Public Domain Comic Books

 As we watch another summer where many of the massive budget films were adapted from popular comic books. as a micro budget screenwriter there are not many direct ways for you to get in on the action. These adaptations are for those who have worked in the Hollywood system for a while. There are however ways for you to prove yourself capable of writing one of these types of screenplays. I have superheroe dreams like many of your. I would love to do a Green Hornet screenplay, but no one is going to offer me a shot unless I have a track record. 

 How do you build a track record in this genre? 

 You can write a great fan film based upon one of your favorite heroes. The best micro budget superhero film that I have ever seen (better than a few of the big budget versions as well) is a fan film titled Joker Rising. That movie’s script is a great calling card. You could do the same thing. The only problem with this is that you either need to be a film maker or network with film makers who are interested in shooting a fan film.


    

 Recently I was introduced to a new concept. Instead of adapting a famous comic book into a screenplay why not adapt a public domain comic book. A little known fact is that there are thousands of comics that have fallen into the public domain due to the fact that the companies in the forties and fifties that released them went out of businesses and never renewed the copyrights. 

 “That was a long time ago. You can not be serious. Who wants to bring back a character from the forties or fifties?”You say. 

 

Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman and my favorite Captain America began their careers around World War 2. Those characters have endured and changed with the times. You should take the time to investigate these lost characters. There are also characters that are based upon mythical heroes such as Thor or Isis. You can take these heroes and created a screenplay featuring them as long as they do not resemble their comic book counterparts. Sci-fi channel does things like this all the time. They did a Thor movie and it was pretty bad, but they did it and had no problem with the copyright. 

You can make the Frankenstein monster into a hero an antihero like Dracula which is done to perfection in the anime series Hellsing.

 

  If you chose to do this you must first find a subject that you love. Read the original material over and over until you know every single detail and then get to work on the story. If you do not love a character and comic book based films are usually character driven stories then you should not attempt the task of writing a screenplay based upon that character. 


 Good luck with your project and please take a moment to add me to your google plus. I may have some news soon about a screenplay I have been working on for sometime.

Consider The Audience

Consider The Audience

 My favorite film maker Alfred Hitchcock would constantly talk about the audience. He always had what each and ever scene was doing to his audience. Film making to him was the art of conducting an audience like a conduct would conduct an orchestra. 

 When sitting down to craft your screenplay are you only considering the characters on the page or are you thinking about the audience that someday will be getting to know them. When you have mastered your craft you will find yourself considering what each scene and within those scenes what each line of dialogue and or action is going to be doing to this audience.

  

The first and best way to get the audience involved with your screenplay is to get them to care about you characters. These characters do not have to be likeable, but they do need to be understandable and relatable. If they care about your lead character or villain then you are half way home.


 



  Thank you very much for visiting my blog. If you are interested in learning all the basics of writing a micro budget screenplay then I would recommend my ebook on the subject. Good luck with your screen writing and have a nice day.

Screenwriting Advice, From the Pros

Screenwriting Advice, From the Pros


 I know that it has been over six months since my last post. I have been busy writing a series of ebooks, two of which will be available by the middle of the month of November. Until then I thought that I would touch base with all of my blogs. I have had little to say about screenwriting due to the fact that I published a really good book on the subject last year and the fact that it comes easy to me these days. 

Part of writing about any given subject is the effort to find a better way to understand that subject. I write about film making at my other blog because there is a lifetime of lessons left to learn on that subject. Returning to this blog I can predict that I will approach future post more from the angle of a film maker rather than a screen writer. 

As a writer first, I thought only in terms of story. Now I look at the screenplay in a new light. I will explain what I mean by this in future post. Right now I would like to share a backlog of videos from a few accomplished screen writers.

 First up is Joe Eszterhas. 

 

Next up is Peter Russell.





 The last writer we are going to hear from is Thunder Levin. If you do not know him he wrote a certain shark/tornado movie. Okay, fine, I will say it. He wrote Sharknado and he seems to be proud of it. 

 


 Thank you for visiting my blog and if you would like a complete tutorial on how to write a micro budget screenplay you may want to check out my book pictured below. Good luck and please take a moment to share this post and to like it on stumbleupon. 

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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 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.

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.

The Found Footage Saga, Cont.

                The Found Footage Saga Cont.

    I keep coming back to found footage for two reasons. First there is a part of me that thinks that it will fade away and die off in its present form. Mostly horror films and dark suspense. And the second reason is that they keep coming. This fall we have a slate of new found footage films, some look good and at least one is a sequel to the found footage franchise Paranormal Activity.

    My last post was about Anthologies and the movie that sparked that post was V/H/S. Found footage told in a multi story format.

    The best series of found footage movies for me at least is the foreign series know as Rec. So far a trilogy of horror films about a demonic plague. I like the concept of the third film, I have not seen it yet. I plan on seeing it on demand this weekend with friends.  The concept seems to revolve around a wedding video. Why hasn’t that territory been tapped sooner. Many film makers start off filming wedding videos to help pay the bills. There are so many stories that can be told using that kind of footage. From drama to screwball comedy.

    The movie Cloverfield showed us that you can start with footage taken at a party and branch off into a totally different direction.

    What I am suggesting is that we need to do different things with this format or it will disappear. Right now I am in the middle of a screenplay where I have decided that the entire second act will revolve around found footage.

    What, what was that? What genre?

    Okay.

    You caught me. It is a horror movie. Hey, I am writing this one to actually shoot, hopefully by the end of the year, and for all involved horror was the best economic choice. Meaning cost to shoot, cost to market and return on investment.

    Keep in mind that no movie has to be made. I cringe when I hear an actor or director say of a movie that it had to be made. No it does not. Pick the ten most important or impressive movies ever released and none of them had to be made. At least breaking even has to be considered when crafting your script. People are going to be investing money based upon your script. This act is going to be the their clearest way of saying that they believe in your talent. Found footage and horror movies are being done because they are cheap to make. They are easy to market. If well done they rarely loose money.

    Money should never be your first thought when writing a low to no budget script, but it should be a factor. Found footage is a response to economics as much as it is a genre that the public is willing to embrace.

    Okay enough about the money talk.

    Here is some advice about your main character in this type of film.

    He or she must be driven. Must be the type of person who could not turn that camera away even if their children were being eaten by wild dogs.

To quote a fantastic episode of Doctor Who, “Don’t Blink.”

    They are the one’s in the story who never blink and you need to answer why before the interesting stuff starts to happen.

    The audience will want to know why he or she won’t drop that camera and run. Why is it so important that they keep shooting. Perhaps it is as complex as the fact that they are obsessive compulsive or as simple as the can not see what is happening without the camera. Give a good reason during the first few minutes and the audience will have one less voice whispering in the back of their minds. 

    Okay, I think that is it for today.

    Remember to add us to your google plus. Stumble us on stumbleupon and tell a few friends about this blog.

    This is where I will make this offer again. If someone out there wants to write a guest post I am open to it. If you have written a low to no budget script or two and you believe that you can offer some good advice. You can contact me by leaving a comment and I will get back to you.

    That is all, now get back to writing guys.

Busy Work

                  The Busy Work Curse

    Sounds like the title of a bad short film. If you like it then use it, but that is not the subject of this post. Busy work is. Busy work and why it is one of the great curses that afflict every writer from time to time.
    Busy work is the work that you do that keeps you from doing the work that you are afraid to do; writing your no budget screenplay.
    I am busy doing research, can’t write today.
    I am busy going over last years collection of bill receipts, can’t write today.
    I am busy writing the treatment for the new screenplay that I am planning, can’t finish the one that I am working on.
    I am waiting for the hairdresser I found online who moonlights as a demon slayer to come by and get rid of that entity who lives inside my playstation 2.
    Really?
    Seriously?
    Let it go.
    Push all of these excuses aside and make your busy work the actual act of writing. I am guilty of this myself. I have a dozen scripts that have died thanks to the curse known as busy work.
    The only busy work that is acceptable in this universe involves Jennifer Love Hewitt, a dwarf, a camcorder, silly string and Snapple. You figure it out and if your imagination has Jennifer holding the camcorder at any time you are both wrong and sick.
    Busy work is writing.
    Writing is your job.
    We avoid it because if we are good at it we open up and lose ourselves. We are not only revealing things about our characters, but about ourselves as well. That is a scary experience and on some level each of us who write realize this. Not one of us who manage to do this for a living will look back on the experience of writing and wish that we had done it less often. (Do I have to mention Jennifer Love Hewitt again? Why did she have to do that new show? I was recovering from watch the Ghost Whisperer. The medication was working and now its little maid outfits. Why does it have to be on demand too?)
    Okay I am back and that will not happen again. Well again today.
    Here is the perfect counter to busy work.

    Don’t you wish that we could all have an Annie to help us get off of our butts and write every single day?

Your Screenplay, Four Corners

    Your Screenplay, Four Corners


          Here is a little advice I picked up from a well known Japanese director.  When asked how he writes a script he would say that he would start with a story board in the shape of a comic script.  Four corners to tell the whole story.  He would draw the 4 most important images in the whole movie
and then write toward those visual moments.  Take some of the greatest
movies of all time and see if you can come up with four shots that tell the whole story. 
    Next about the most important character.  The Antagonist.
    Yeah, you heard me right.
    Heroes are the characters that we love. They are our babies and we treat them
as such, but it is the villain who drives the tension of the story.  The antagonist is the
one that makes drama possible.
    The great Bond movies all had great villains .  The bad guys made Sean Connery
number one.  He had villains who were fun to be around and to watch get it in the
end. Treat them, while they are on the page, as if they were the stars of the story.
Also following a comic book rule here is not the worst thing you could do.  The
hero is usually the mirror opposite of the villain.
    The villain is strong where the hero is weak.  In superman his arch-enemy is the
smartest man on earth.  If your hero is made of water your villain should be made of
fire.  Keep this in mind.  And now some advice from the last action hero.  The
bigger the obstacle the bigger the hero must be.  I like Woody Allen, but he has
never fought aliens and saved the world because no one not even himself
would believe it.
    Also try to keep your characters, both good and bad guys, on their feet.  Tie
their shoes tight and make sure that they do not stumble and fall in moments
of crisis.  In Friday the 13th the girl always falls while running from Jason. 
In too many action film the hero is saved by the villain stumbling and falling
at the moment they are about to win.  Only in comedy should you have
characters flopping like Ric Flair in a title match.
    Let me  leave you with this.  If you want to learn more about writing scripts
read them.  Read your favorite movies, they are mostly free on line.  If you
want a master’s class on the subject read Hitchcock’s The Birds, or North by
North West or Psycho.  He did not do the actual writing on these scripts, the
director influenced every one of them and the attention to detail in these
scripts is why Hitchcock is considered the greatest of all time.

Your Screenplay is a Circle

        Your Screenplay is a Circle


    You are having problems with your screenplay.  You know how it begins,
but the middle and the end have you at a loss.  I can tell you this much.  The
place that you start should be the place where you finish.
    A good script is a perfect circle and allow me to explain how and why.
    You story will most like begin with your characters living in their idea
world.  A perfectly calm existence is shattered and it is a never ending scramble to return to that perfect life.
    Sounds crazy?
    Remember the Godfather?
    The opening scenes?
    The family is happy and intact.  They are celebrating a wedding.  The
Godfather and is inner circle are in total control of a world that is going to be
attacked from both outside and within.  This world is destroyed.  The Godfather
is shot. Sonny, his oldest son is killed, his enforcer is killed and his youngest
son Michael is beaten.  From this point on there is a never ending quest by those
left standing to put their universe back into its proper order.
    The last scene of the film, after all the violence and bloodshed, is Michael
in his father’s place as Godfather conducting business as his father did when the
film began.  All is right with the world.  The natural order has been restored.
    You can look at a saga like Lord of The Rings and the same holds true.  Where
does that story begin?  Home, comfortable and safe.  After an endless quest
where does it end up.  Frodo and Sam back to where they started.  Missing
a finger here and a lot of bruises there they are back to the perfect world
that they had to flee.
    Some stories begin with that perfect world already shattered and through
flashbacks it is revealed through out the story.  The character is forever trying to
find away to or back to their idea world.  Some characters do not realize that their
world was great until they venture outside of their comfort zone and after having
all of their illusions shattered to they really appreciate what they had going for them.
A great example of this is in the minor UK classic Mona Lisa starring Bob Hoskins.
    Your characters do not travel along an arc if the story is going to be
great and memorable, they travel along a circle.  That circle traveled in the Wizard
of Oz.   Dorothy has to leave home to realize that there is no place like home.
    Send your characters on grand adventures, but always keep the end zone
in sight.  The place that they are headed looks a great deal like the place that they
have just left behind.    I am not suggesting that it should be a steady walk
toward the place that they just left.  Put obstacles in their way.
See if they can jump through an endless series of hoops, but at the
end of it all if they have proven themselves worthy let them come home.
They do not need a hero’s welcome, but they need to return to
the world where they feel most welcome.  There is a line in one of the greatest
of all westerns, Ride the High Country, where the lead say that all he wants at the
end of the day is to come home Justified.  He wants to go off into the world, do
what his code of honor will allow him to do and come back home knowing
that he could not have done things any other way.
    Look at Michael in the Godfather or Sam in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy both
of these characters did things their way.  Always guided by their own personal
code and in the end they make it back to a world where they belong.
    The greatest stories ever told are not straight lines.
    They are not rocky hills and valleys, but as Scarlett traveled in
Gone With the Wind, they are a full circle and the fuller the better.

The Ultra Low Budget Script

            The Ultra Low Budget Script

            Your Screenplay, Time to Write It

    1.
    As someone who has written a few of these things my advice for
the beginner is just to get it down on paper.  Beginning, middle and end
as fast as you possibly can for this reason, gravity will take over other
wise.  What I mean by Gravity is the pull of the other (dreaded better)
idea.  The story that you are trying to write will not seem nearly
as fresh or as interesting as the one you have just come up with.
Gravity is the weight of everyday life.  The normal doubts
about whether or not you can do this thing.  After all who do you
think that you are trying to write a screenplay.
    Other people write movies, but not me.
    They are so long and so complicated.
    These are the myths that will weight down.
    Allow me to kill these two myths.
    First screenplays are not that long.  90 pages and less than
20,000 words on average.
    What?
    90 pages sounds like a lot.
    Unless you are writing a silent movie over half of these pages will
be dialogue.  That is a lot of white space.
    I don’t know the format.
    Really?
    Really, I do not know the format.
    Fine, go online.  Google your favorite movie, search for the
script and read it.  It will not take long to read.  A good script is a
quick read.  The cool thing about doing this you will read where there
were changes made that are not even amongst the deleted dvd scenes.
Also the software that you pick may help you with the formatting. Last
bit of advice on this subject and it is the best writing advice I ever
got.  Get a notebook and a pen.  Sit down and hand copy 3 pages
of the favorite screenplay that you have read.  By doing this simple
exercise you will learn so many subtle details you missed by just
reading it.
    Secondly, it is not complicated.  Bad scripts are complicated.
Good ones are so simple that you wonder why there are not more
good movies.
    My girlfriend loves the Notebook.  As a guy it makes me
cringe.  As a writer it makes me smile.  On the surface it looks complicated.
Only because it bounces back and forth along the time-line to keep
you guessing.  The truth is that it is just a boy meets girl story.  Boy loses
girl, boy gets girl back, boy loses girl to illness and each day boy gets
girl back again.  Wow, that is so complicated.
    Need more examples?
    Fine.
    Lunatic tortures people to make them appreciate their lives more, Saw.
    Young couple falls in love on doomed ocean cruise, Titanic.
    Brain dead couple make all the wrong choices when dealing with a violent
supernatural entity, Paranormal Activity.
    Get the picture?
    Not that complicated at all.
    But my idea has twists and turns and surprises and is filled with deep
symbolic elements.
    Good grief who let M. Night in here?  Who told mister Happening,
mister The Village where we would be having our little chat?
    Fine, okay, I can deal with this.
    A group of strangers discover that they are trapped in an elevator with
the devil, The Devil.  Story by our good friend M. Night.
    Cut this nonsense out and make an entertain movie or all the studios
will stop answer your calls is a great motivator huh?
     Now you need software.
    Final draft is the best.  It cost a good amount.
    There is also Movie Magic screenwriter and Script Wizard.
    You could go for a free program.  There are 3 that I like.
    Scripped is a site where you write and save your screenplay at their
online site. You can even register it there.
    Celtx is a nice little free formatting software.  It also will help you
with the full production of your movie, but that is another article.
     I really like a freeware program called Roughdraft, it is bare bones
basic, but if you already know the elements of screen writing then it is a
solid program.
    Good luck with your screenplay and remember if you write just
3 pages a day for one month you have a screenplay.