greenlit magazine

amazonstudios: Star Trek to Writers: Go Boldly Classic Star...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:55:50 -0600

Star Trek to Writers: Go Boldly

Classic Star Trek sounds a lot like 21st-century Star Trek: “We maintain a fast pace … avoid long philosophical exchanges or tedious explanations of equipment. And note that our cutting technique is to use the shortest possible time between idea and execution.”

From slatevault:

Producers of the original Star Trek series distributed this photocopied guide to the show’s writers in 1967. They were all on a major mission to avoid cheesiness and scientific error. (Also forbidden: uniforms with pockets.) http://slate.me/YToqxJ

See more from the classic writers’ guide here.

insolacion: Quentin Tarantino / L’Envers du Décors

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:33:20 -0600

insolacion:

Quentin Tarantino / L’Envers du Décors

Stories From The Actors Life

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:47:20 -0600

Source: J. Kristopher

https://www.facebook.com/ActorJKristopher

http://www.jkristopher.com/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2657895/

So I booked a feature film and the call time was 9AM. It was NON PAYING but I felt good about it because I talked the director into using my friend as another character in the scene.

My friend and I arrived together. There weren’t any CARS around so I wasn’t sure I was at the right address. I knocked on the door to the place. The A.D. (assistant director) peeked out of the drapes with a dazed look on his face, like he’s been smoking a joint. I ALREADY KNEW WE WERE IN TROUBLE. He opens the door in boxers, “COME ON IN MAN, have a seat.”

ME: “Hey did I get the call time wrong, I thought it was 9AM.”

HIM: “No…they are going to start soon, they just wanted to actors here.”

Never in the history of projects have I ever seen actors arrive before the crew but whatever… So we are sitting there making small talk, all the while I’m thinking…..I WONDER WHEN EVERYONE ELSE IS GOING TO ARRIVE.

All of a sudden, the guy’s roommate walks out of the other bedroom (startling because I didn’t even know anyone else was home) and he yells, “DAMN IT BRO. YOU’VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THESE DISHES!!!”

The A.D. goes to the kitchen to try to calm his roommate down, “ok ok man….I said I would get to them. We have people over.”

ROOMMATE: “GOOD I DON’T GIVE A SH*T, MAYBE THEY KNOW THAT YOU DON’T CLEAN YOUR DISHES!!! COME ON BRO!!”

My friend and I look at each other as if we were witnessing a domestic dispute. I suddenly felt like an intruder. Finally, more actors came. THEY WAITED. By now, I’m thinking DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA WHEN THE CREW or THE DIRECTOR gets here? The A.D. gets on his cell phone and starts making calls. FINALLY someone is taking charge. He leaves for about 15 minutes.

My friend looks at me like WHAT DID YOU GET ME INTO? I felt bad. I wait a little while and decide to join him outside. I walked up to the A.D. interrupting his conversation on the phone “Hey man, what did they say? Did they tell you what time they were going to be here?” He says, “Huh? Oh……I don’t know. I’m on the phone with my dad.” **Blank stare** My friend whispers, we should just go. I’m thinking, Lord knows I want to but REPUTATION is everything is this town. Someone will take this situation and PUT the blame on ME.

Finally I cave in and said, we will give the another HOUR since we planned on being here anyway. If they don’t come, we are out. Another 15 minutes goes by and I see them come up the driveway. THANK GOD! The director says, “Ok so where are we shooting? OMG!! They don’t even have their location down. This is the first time he’s seeing it. They open the garage. The director says, “Ok…ok….THIS WILL DO for a police station. All we need is a table. Did anyone bring a table?” (Did he just say police station?) Everyone just looks around at each other like WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TABLE?? Then one person speaks up and says, there is a HOME DEPOT down the street.

I exhaled…I had this HELL NO look on my face. No more waiting.

So I speak up, “excuse me mr. director, I don’t have that kind of time. I can give you an hour or two at the MAX. But I have another shoot to prepare for and I have to drop my friend off.

Director gets mad and pulls me aside with my friend. “J. Kristopher, I just want to let you know this is HIGHLY unprofessional. You know you should of planned on being here ALL day. But I guess we can get your scene out of the way since it is short.”

I look at my friend and he already could read my thoughts. DID THIS _______ just say I WAS UNPROFESSIONAL? ARE THEY SERIOUS? OK J, REGAIN YOUR COMPOSURE…… and I speak up….”You’re right. My apologies. I just didn’t think it I was going to be here this long considering my call time was 9AM and we are now looking at 1PM.” Director said, “well on future sets you should always plan to be there all day unless you let someone know.” I smile.

We shoot the scene WITHOUT THE TABLE and leave. Needless to say, another day in the life.

"A big mistake for a lot of writers is they’ll work on the first twenty pages of their screenplay..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:04:08 -0600

“A big mistake for a lot of writers is they’ll work on the first twenty pages of their screenplay over and over and it’ll be a great twenty pages, but then the next eighty pages is slowly getting worse and worse. It’s like if you were to focus on the hand of a sculpture you were making - the hand might be beautiful, but it would be grotesquely huge as compared to the rest of the body. Each time you do a pass you have to go all the way to the end, is a rule I’ve made”

- Darren Aronofsky on his advice to writers.

This is so true… make sure you focus on the whole thing and not just the begining it will save you time in the long run.
(via beerosie)

Why Iron Man 3 Director Shane Black Was Once Hollywood’s Hottest Screenwriter

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:01:42 -0600

Why Iron Man 3 Director Shane Black Was Once Hollywood’s Hottest Screenwriter

By Kyle Buchanan

The first two Iron Man movies were basically written on the fly, and while that jerry-rigged approach produced a gem of a first film, the hastily sewn seams showed in Iron Man 2. If there’s anything Iron Man 3 has in full over its two predecessors, then, it’s a clever, well-plotted screenplay that practically hums with luxury-car confidence; no surprise, since it was co-written and directed by one of the masters of the modern action movie screenplay, Shane Black. The 50-year-old isn’t Hollywood’s most prolific writer — he only has a handful of credits, including the first Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Last Boy Scout — but for a time, he was its most highly paid, and the $4 million he earned for the 1996 action film The Long Kiss Goodnight is still a Hollywood record for a spec script. How did Black do it? Simple: He made reading his screenplays way too much fun.

It’s an open secret in Hollywood that studio executives do very little reading themselves, instead employing script readers to do the dirty work of slogging through multiple scripts a day. Black wrote screenplays that were practically engineered to perk up a weary script reader, packing his scene descriptions with clever in-jokes, meta flourishes, and — when all else failed — flattering entreaties to the readers themselves. The most famous thing Black ever wrote isn’t even a piece of dialogue … instead, it’s this description of a setting from Lethal Weapon, structured as a muscular meta boast that practically defined the swinging-dick attitude of mid-eighties action movies:

- Lethal Weapon

It’s a self-promotional masterstroke: In his screenplays, populated with broken men who rouse themselves from hangovers and beatdowns to defeat the bad guy, it’s Black himself who emerges as the movie’s most charismatic antihero. He might be a loose cannon with unorthodox methods, but you can’t deny that the man gets the job done. That posh Beverly Hills home? You can fucking see it.

The irony is that when Black is scripting an action scene, he rarely writes down what you’ll actually see. Instead, he’d rather find the perfect metaphor for all those punches, kicks, and gunshots, as in these excerpts from Lethal Weapon:

- Lethal Weapon

And these two bits from The Long Kiss Goodnight:

- The Long Kiss Goodnight

Though his wink-wink, tell-don’t-show sensibility was never more notorious than when he scripted this sex scene for The Last Boy Scout:

- The Last Boy Scout

Black was a master of setup and payoff, telling the Guardian, “Audiences love those moments when something from much earlier in the film comes back and makes them slap their foreheads and say to themselves, ‘Of course!’” That said, he wasn’t above winking at the idea …

- The Last Boy Scout

- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

… or just winking in general. Black peppers his scripts with jokes and asides that won’t be seen on the screen, but still manage to capture the sense of humor his films ought to have:

- The Long Kiss Goodnight.

- The Long Kiss Goodnight

- Lethal Weapon

- The Long Kiss Goodnight

And the man sure knew how to set up an establishing shot.

- The Last Boy Scout

- The Long Kiss Goodnight

- The Last Boy Scout

Still, though his scripts are practically soaked in ironic distance, Black knew when to snap to attention and surprise the reader (and the audience) with something authentic. Suddenly, he’d become his own hype man, going from devil-may-care insouciance to holy-shit-this-is-big-folks bravado, like a weary action hero who finally, finally learns to give a damn.

- Lethal Weapon

- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

- Last Action Hero

- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

And after all that setup, he delivers those hero scenes in full, as in this climactic moment from Lethal Weapon:

- Lethal Weapon

After reading that, is it any wonder that Shane Black is in charge of a superhero?

http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/why-iron-man-3s-director-ruled-hollywood.html

66 Behind the Scenes Pics from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - Imgur

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:44:22 -0600

66 Behind the Scenes Pics from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - Imgur:

Got to love some Behind the scenes stuff!

IWNLA

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:06:00 -0600

IWNLA:

I Will Not Look Away - is a documentary I was able to to help create. Its about the mission field in India.

From Rian Johnson’s vimeo page: This is a strange...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:36:18 -0600

From Rian Johnson’s vimeo page:

This is a strange curiosity I thought might be interesting - just after I finished the script for Looper but before we began preproduction I asked Joe to record some voice-over, and with help from my friend Ronen Verbit constructed this “fake trailer” using clips from other movies. This is a fairly common thing to do when you’re trying to get a movie off the ground, but it was the first time I tried it. It was meant to show more some of the film’s tone, and to show how the odd concept could be presented in a clear and compelling way in the marketing. Zach Johnson did the sketches. Note that we hadn’t begun the casting process yet, and the clips were chosen just based on their visuals and not by who is in them.

Video

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:58:15 -0600

Star Trek Official Trailer #3

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:28:19 -0600

Star Trek Official Trailer #3

Meeting the Producer

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:33:34 -0600

As told by an actor friend…

“So I am at a networking function and I time it to where I run into a producer in the restroom. I wash my hands and he crosses behind me without washing his. I stop him in the hallway as we are headed out. I give him a business card to check out my stuff. After we were done conversing, he extends his elbow (because he knew I saw him not wash his hands). He starts laughing. I touch elbows with him and he said, “you already know.” I saw him shaking hands and hugging people as the night went on.”

—Awesome

A recent email to my friend and producing partner...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 12:26:00 -0600

So bro…

Writing to put my thoughts out there to someone who cares – hang with me… it’s my time to process.

Here’s the deal. The internet is a game changer for us regarding distribution. We have all the equipment we need to make a product that only a studio could do even just seven to ten years ago. We can edit and do special effects… all of it can be done.

Let me back up. How cool would it be to work in the studio system? I mean to get to write/direct/produce a film like unto the Avengers would be amazing. But why? And who really cares? Not saying I would deny it on any level, nor do I scoff at it. But the system itself is cumbersome… a massive machine that is hard to turn and frankly, next to impossible to actually work in let alone make a difference in. I would love to work on a studio film which is still a large and major goal of mine, yet it’s not the heart of why I do what I do.

Why do I write? Why do I make films? Because I love it… simple. Someone once told me that “passion” is an educated life changing decision that something is worth everything. I’m passionate about making films. I love starting with an idea, the offspring of my imagination, opening my laptop and staring at the blank page. I love to hate the process and frustration when something in the story is not working. I love shooting and seeing the idea come to life.

This my friend is what we CAN do… this my friend is what we ALREADY do.

I had a conversation this weekend with another screenwriter, not unlike ourselves, just getting started in the game. He was telling me about a screenplay he is busy shopping around and it’s getting some interest. I wish him the best and honestly and truly hope he sells it. But then what? Development hell. The off chance that it actually gets a budget and gets made… these chances are few. At least he collects the check of the initial sell. During the entire conversation all I could think of was, “we can make that happen, we can make that movie.”

This isn’t really news to you nor a new revelation, it’s not even that the light bulb has finally come on. We have talked about this a thousand times, yet the vision and reality of what can be done seems to become more and more clear each day. Things like crowd funding for studio projects popping up (Veronica Mars) as well as the independent projects… Netflix, Hulu and YouTube developing original series/content just for their site. These companies are catching on. Vimeo and Youtube still being an amazing place to launch our films yet we still could make a difference launching on our own website just with a slick landing page for a digital download.

We my friend… have the world available to us. We have all the resources available to us to get done what we need to get done.

Yes, money is an issue… yet I think money is only an issue when it’s actually an issue. Meaning, we make it this enormous road block in our minds before we even get started (at least it’s what I do). We need to be doing everything we can to produce “x” project until we simply cannot move forward anymore until we have said amount of money. There is always a way to shoot something, we already have what we need. I think the project we are working on right now is a great example. Look at what has been accomplished and we haven’t even spent one cent…yet.

Here’s the point. Nike was right… Just do it.

Pixar story rules (one version)

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 07:44:36 -0600

Pixar story rules (one version)

https://twitter.com/lawnrocket

Pixar story artist Emma Coats has tweeted a series of “story basics” over the past month and a half — guidelines that she learned from her more senior colleagues on how to create appealing stories:

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Presumably she’ll have more to come. Also, watch for her personal side project, a science-fiction short called Horizon, to come to a festival near you.

It’s a must to download the new magazine now in its fourth issue, Backstory. This along...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:46:00 -0600

It’s a must to download the new magazine now in its fourth issue, Backstory. This along with Jeff Goldsmith’s podcast the Q&A has been one of the biggest resources I have had at getting an inside look into the process of writing and making a film.

Backstory

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/backstory/id521967972?mt=8

Podcast

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-q-a-with-jeff-goldsmith/id426840843?mt=2

From johnaugust.com Highland ships Highland, our long-in-beta...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:31:03 -0600

From johnaugust.com

Highland ships

Highland, our long-in-beta screenplay editor, is finally available in the Mac App Store today.

It’s regularly priced at $19.99, but through the end of the month, it’s half-off at $9.99.

In addition to letting you write scripts in plain text, Highland converts files between PDF, Final Draft (.fdx) and Fountain formats. It works in all directions.

Yes, all directions — you can give it a PDF of a screenplay and it will melt it down to an editable file. That seems like magic, but it’s actually just a lot of hard work, and a year’s worth of report cards submitted by beta testers.

Melting PDFs is a feat that no other screenwriting app even attempts, so we made alittle video about it:

Behind the Scenes Video - Oblivion www.oblivionmovie.com

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:10:24 -0600

Behind the Scenes Video - Oblivion

www.oblivionmovie.com

to get started, here is the first of the behind the scenes spots...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:27:00 -0600

to get started, here is the first of the behind the scenes spots of the biggest blockbuster of 2012 - The Avengers. of course you can go to their youtube page and watch the rest.

Until I can gather some content for the “projects”...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:22:00 -0600

Until I can gather some content for the “projects” page, feast your eyes on this little treat I cooked up.

How to write a scene

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:17:00 -0600

If you have not already, head over to www.johnaugust.com - great podcast and website built for the screenwriter.