[Video]: Hollywood’s Black List Sets The Standard for Screenplays

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BLACKLIST founder Franklin Leonard offers a surprisingly unique perspective on Hollywood’s reality: sleepless script execs slaving through piles of bad scripts, all asking each other the same question: ‘read anything good lately?’ This is the riveting origin story of www.blcklst.com If you liked this, check out more videos about screenwriting or filmmaking. And if you … Read more

Best of the Web 21 Oct

Story & Structure :: How to Create a Great Villain :: Tell a Story to Help You Write One :: Moon – Script Review :: Flashbacks and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Script Perfection :: Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Be a Natural Observer :: Five Things to do After ‘Finishing’ a Draft :: What Screenwriting Style or … Read more

Logline it! – Week 14

Writing loglines is an essential skill for screenwriters, from early development through to the pitch. In this section, every week our panel reviews a few loglines posted to www.loglineit.com. Learn from the feedback and perfect your own loglining skills. by The Judges Model Behaviour “Jordan Rhodes is an honest detective investigating the heinous murder of a … Read more

[Video]: Alex Garland on subverting Judge Dredd

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Alex Garland (writer of the iconic 28 Days Later) talks about why writing a fascist cop protagonist contains the seeds of its own subversion, how to make him a functional anti-hero, and the relationship between comic books and film. If you liked this, check out more videos about screenwriting or filmmaking. And if you know … Read more

Why Protagonists Must Have Some Virtues

In my past essays I have explained how Australian feature film stories could be improved by paying attention to originality, substance, and universal themes.  Today I will focus on another consistent weakness I see in Australian features:  Central characters who are unimpressive, unheroic, and quite often dubious. by Steven Fernandez Some writers may try to … Read more