Screenwriting
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How To Write A Screenplay On An iPad
Husband and wife producers Joke and Biagio have a highly useful post today up on their blog. (Useful, that is, if you own an iPad and are a screenwriter.) Titled “How To Write a Screenplay on the iPad,” it is the result of a bout of insomnia that has wound up adding functionality to the iPad’s Pages application. From their blog: If you have an iPad, chances are you’re going to buy Apple’s iWork app Pages sooner or later. At $9.99 it’s not a break-the-bank piece of software, and it’s sort of a must-have for iPad owners, anyway. The full, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2010 -
CINEMA’S INVISIBLE ART
Over at the website for Cambridge’s famed literary journal Granta, Jeremy Sheldon has a remarkable post about screenwriting titled Cinema’s Invisible Art. In it he discusses the often overlooked literary qualities of screenwriting. While writing scripts is more commonly referred to as a craft than it is an art, for Mr. Sheldon deftly written descriptive scene action has literary qualities very few people give proper acknowledgement to. Despite the prevalence of accepted screenwriting truisms like “show, don’t tell” and “Film is a visual medium”, Mr. Sheldon celebrates stylish, rule breaking screenwriters from the Coen Brothers to Shane Black and indentifies […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 25, 2010 -
DAVID MAMET, SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS
Movieline has just printed a memo from David Mamet to the writers of the TV show The Unit, which he executive produced. It’s characteristically blunt and reductive, but in a good way. It’s nothing that you writers don’t know, but it is something that you writers (and, um, us producers) sometimes forget. Especially when responding to — or sometimes writing — notes of the “Do we really understand…?” variety. Here are a couple of excerpts, but read the whole thing at the link: SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE SCENE DRAMATIC. IT IS NOT THE ACTORS JOB (THE ACTORS JOB IS […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2010 -
“It’s an Intermediary Kind of Format Designed to Move Ideas, Language and Structure to the Screen”: Oren Moverman Talks Screenwriting with Ryan Gosling
The following interview appeared originally in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2007 print edition. We don’t cover enough screenwriters in Filmmaker, but that’s not entirely our fault. This magazine is devoted to independent film, and for many, the director is also the writer. Or the script has emerged from improvisation or some other nontraditional means. And while there is a new breed of independent-minded screenwriters today — Charlie Kaufman, Capote’s Dan Futterman and Juno’s Diablo Cody come immediately to mind — many of the “marquee screenwriters” still work almost exclusively in the studio world. By virtue of the unique niche that screenwriter Oren […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 1, 2007 -
HAMPTONS SCREENWRITERS LAB ANNOUNCES PROJECTS
The Hamptons International Film Festival has announced the projects chosen for its Sixth Annual Screenwriters Lab, to be held this coming weekend in East Hampton. The chosen writers will develop their scripts with mentors Warren Leight, Whit Stillman, Charles Randolph and Alison Maclean. From the press release: During the lab in the Hamptons, our emerging screenwriters will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one each day with established screenwriting mentors who will advise them on how to develop their scripts. Within this intimate environment, our screenwriters are encouraged to take risks and discover new possibilities for their projects. Participantsalso attend group […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2006 -
THE SCIENCE OF IT ALL
There are a lot of screenplay contests and development programs out there, but the Sloan/Tribeca Screenplay Program is one of the more interesting. In addition to a sizable development grant, the program provides mentorship to screenwriters and writer/producers grappling with science and technology themes in their work. An advisory panel of writers and scientists offer a year’s worth of feedback and input to, says the press release, “scripts that have a scientific or technological theme and story line or have a leading character who is a scientist, engineer, or mathematician…. Screenwriters currently participating in the program are Shawn Lawrence Otto […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 14, 2006 -
Sundance Screenwriters Lab, 2006
The Sundance Institute has just announced the 12 projects selected for the 2006 Screenwriter’s Lab, which takes place in January the week before the Sundance Film Festival at the Sundance Resort. From the press release, here are the attendees and their projects: “Kit Hui (writer/director), U.S.A./China, A BREATH AWAY: As Typhoon Ellen approaches Hong Kong, the residents of a high-rise apartment complex struggle with their individual emotional demons, not realizing they are connected by more than the increasing swarms of flies invading their homes. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Kit Hui emigrated to the United States at age 16. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 17, 2005 -
THE SHOOTING SCRIPT
My first job in film was reading scripts for New Line Cinema. When I got rid of my old Epson desktop computer, which was a couple of years after I stopped reading, I counted the coverage files and realized that I read 1,300 scripts for the company over the few years I worked for them. And though that gig was some years in the past, I constantly hear news about writers whose name I recognize from decade-old scripts. One such writer is Tom Benedek, an early script of whose I remember reading and liking. The New York Times has this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2005
