Commercial Art
Sunday shaped up to be a dreary day - it was pouring down the whole day and I caught a cold (possibly from yesterday's running around in rain doing lighting tweaks) and was sneezing the whole day. I did get most of the stuff cleaned up in my room as well as in the drawing room - I am currently testing and keeping/discarding the innumberable CDs/DVDs that I seem to have accumulated.I did find an Indian takeaway place which has some really nice indian dishes. On Sunday, I tried Chicken Saagwala - which is Chicken cooked with spinach and onions and it was really yummy...and yesterday evening I tried Butter Chicken, which turned out to be one of the better butter chicken i have eaten in NZ. So I was thinking of trying a few more dishes over this week to authenticate that it truly is a good indian eating joint.(:-)
I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the points from the workshop I attended, incase it helps anyone in their moviemaking endeavors. I misplaced the notes I made on that day and I am basically writing this off my memory - so please feel free to ignore bits and pieces that don't seem right to you and yeah it also means I am putting in my interpretation of the workshop, so don't start taking it as a word of law.
The basic things which were covered during the day (besides the one on one workshops with the scripts) were - Working with story/treatments: how long and short documents can help analyse your story and how to use treatments as part of a structured approach to building or rebuilding a script.
Development Strategy: How producers work best with writers and script editors during the development process? When to listen and when to demand. The producer's rights and the writer's responsibilities. A structural approach to writing useful and constructive script notes.
One of the things that usually happens is that the writers and producers are so much on different planets that it is virtually impossible to make a movie. A producer is looking for a product, which they can market and sell to make money while the writer is only looking to create a story which seems true to them. In such a scenario making a movie without understanding each other's point of views is hard. Different markets have different working relationship between writers and producers. America has a more hardlined and tested approach(remeber there are always exception to the rules) where the writer is writing for the producers and makes whatever changes are asked for by the producer with only a limited say in those decision making processes. There is already an industry in place where there is money to make movies and they can afford to spend money on spec scripts and develop one of those into a movie which they think would get audiences into the theatre and make them money.
While smaller film markets like NZ, UK - where there are limited number of movies being made because of the limited finances available - go through a different process where the script is originated mostly at the writer level and evolves over a period of time with the producers working closely with the writer to find a movie which could be marketable. In such a reality it becomes essential to make sure that the writer is given creative freedom to explore ideas and also as a producer not to start dictating what the script should be from the point of view of marketing.
With each draft and revision - the temptation is always to give a huge set of notes to the writer and expect them to make the changes. Instead of doing that it is good to discuss things with the writer and then follow it up with suggesting 3-4 key story points you both have agreed needs changing. Then let the writer work out how they are going to make those key changes and not interfere in the actual creative processes.
As a writer - don't spend too much time setting things up and engage the audience by keeping them guessing the story. It is good to make a 90 minute movie - as it is more commercial and for that the script would be in the vicinity of 80-90 pages depending on what kind of story it is. While constructing a story the idea is to first have the story structure sorted and write the dialogue afterwards - as story structure is more important than dialogue when you are trying to create a good script. Identify your target market early on and write with them at the back of your mind - there is no point in writing a script which makes sense only to you and can not be realized onto the big screen. Drama is a genre which is the hardest to sell or make, so a script just can't be drama - it would need to have other elements in place - which play an equally important role in the story. Also when you start writing a story the internal logic within the script needs to be rock solid and the environment has to have some kind of an impact on the story. Anyway I think that is quite enough because my sense of that day has just got mixed up and even if you find atleast 1 good thing in all the stuff I have written about the workshop - the effort gone into this post is worth it.
I will take leave for now...btw - do check out the trailer for BORAT - which is absolutely hilarious.
Till later,
Amit
posted by Amit @ 4:40 PM
2 Comments:
Thanks for that. There's a lot of sensible advice there, although I'm surprised to hear them say that drama is the hardest to make - I would have expected comedy to be harder, from what I've seen. (I'm not surprised it's the hardest to sell, though.)
It's also funny to hear the 80-90 page script rule when NZFC demanded 90-100 page scripts for 1st Writers' Initiative. I had to go through my 87 page script and magic out three pages (usually by adding a word to sentences that ended at the end of a line).
drama is the hardest to make because studios find themselves reluctant to put any money into them as there is low chance of return...case in the point being 'Leaving Las Vegas' which spent eons jumping hands before someone decided to put their money into it and it shaped up to be a huge success. but cases like those are rare.
tom strudwick is an independent script consultant and he was not speaking on behalf of NZFC even though they were the ones paying him for the workshops. He was giving an overall view of the script development process here as well as abroad. So I guess the idea was to write a script for making a 90 minute movie which shapes out to be between 80-90 pages. While I believe that the 1st Writer's Initiative is looking for good stories but not strictly for scripts which tie into a 90 minute movie.
Another main point that Tom brought up during the workshop was that anything you write should be worth it. If a particular scene can be taken out without creating a major impact on the story then you have to question it's relevance in the first place.
Post a Comment
<< Home