by Jade Fisher

No story? Brother, you’ve got nothing to write… you’re left staring at the screen or shuffling through all those rough notes waiting for el Plot. Paralysed.

But what if those handful of characters and scene ideas in themselves were enough?

… At least enough to get started.

Kubrick had an idea for writing original features. Write seven solid scenes. Write them well, develop characters and situations in those moments – and link them however you like. Presto. Feature.

What about logic? What about causal links and the cumulative progression of plot points? What about structure?

In this exercise they do not feature.

You might surprise yourself. Very often an elusive plot becomes self evident, slight adjustments can reveal underlying story lines or suddenly drive the whole idea in a new direction. The story is in there, somewhere.

If you’re not writing because of an obstacle, remove the obstacle. The writer has the power to write in any direction they please. If convention is blocking you, write around it and come back. The process doesn’t have to be a straight line, even if conventional plot structure does.

Even single images can be powerful. Collect those visual scenarios that fit nowhere but won’t go away. ‘Fernando goes into the butcher and rubs himself all over the meat’. ‘The bride staggers through the ghetto streets and collapses’.

Dialogue especially can be the key that not only unlocks characters, but also informs story. If you have lines bouncing around with nowhere to live, put them up in a small scene of their own. You never know, the seed you plant there could grow into something truly worthy.

This exercise is not unlike the ‘cut up’ poetry of the Beats. Cutting up other works with scissors and rearranging the words to make new poems. It takes something that exists in one form and rearranges it until it is completely new…

Once you have your seven scenes, your characters, moments, images, sounds and scenarios — the writing fun starts. Link them. Anyway you can. Find a common ground for this straggling group and tweak until it makes ‘sense’. Sometimes six characters become two. Sometimes the lunar base and the runaway train become a farmhouse.

Spielberg said of Kubrick that he “tells a story antithetical to the way we are accustomed to receiving stories” But we listen.

The pith of the argument being: sometimes the writing process doesn’t have to be the 2nd circle of hell — take chances with convention, find use for your ideas and keep writing…

-Jade Fisher

I come to screenwriting from a poetry background with a BCA in Creative Writing. I’ve travelled, worked as a cinema projectionist, studied photography, massage therapy, anatomy and am finally learning (& making) my true love, film.

I’m currently interested in developing a linear narrative theory that combines the way story operates in heroic myth with the way it behaves in dreams — where plot structure exists without causal links.

by Jade Fisher

Set on an island off the coast of New England the story follows two ‘deeply troubled’ children who fall in love and decide to runaway together. It’s Anderson’s first period piece, set in the 1960s.

In small doses it features everyone you love doing everything you desire. Edward Norton smokes cigarettes. Frances McDormand yells at children through a bullhorn. Harvey Keiftel gets a piggyback. Bob Balaban speaks to camera. Bill Murray looks forlorn.

“Perfect”. I felt it too. What has Anderson done, or done differently?

Certainly in terms of story Moonrise Kingdom is not as ambitious as his other works, and I think perhaps this is where the answer lies.
I think that the Truth (with a capital T) that Anderson has been seeking creatively, and seemingly in such earnest, is most evident here due to an absence, not an addition.

The story is simple without being reductive. It has the effect of feeling distilled, as though only the essence made it through the process. The story is contained, the island setting is a finite structural and physical limitation – the tale must be resolved within the boundaries set up. These boundaries make the film consumable, even safe. But the fact that the story doesn’t require ‘unpacking’ is not a weakness. It shows the greatest strength in writing. (Second only to the good happy ending.)

Aside from simplicity of story, unity of form must be the co-contributing factor that arrives us at “perfect”. All filmic elements work in unison. Shot on 16mm, and highlighting that familiar Anderson colour palette, visually the piece has a warmth and a childlike quality. The almost geometric nature of the camera movements was a source of joy to me – I imagined the dolly on a rigid mathematical grid. Dolly shots and slow pans give the impression of moving through a dollhouse.

Every choice could be interpreted as representational of childhood. Simple. Wretched. Beautiful.

And hysterically funny.

I hope it plays that way in all theatres. An almost ‘one-two’ set up in the jokes. Visual and spoken alike, the kind of humour that I imagine hits harder upon each subsequent watch.

The writing is brave and anchored. It so obviously and honestly takes from life and memory that magical realism is given these sharp teeth.

There exists a certain chutzpah in the one liners, a notion that we are all confidants now, we don’t pull punches in this family. This bravery extends right to the end, and end which satisfies – which saves. Anderson and Coppola were brave enough to make ‘art house’ redemptive.

For a long time I thought of Anderson’s thematic concerns as insular, repeating themselves as one under psychoanalysis recycles the same topics until they are purged. I wanted to shake the man and say “forgive your Father!” or some such and give him a push. I desired a linear progression in his creative expression. The shape I see he is making now is closer to a concentric circle. Each pass coming closer to the centre. To me it appears as though the man started out towards a single goal, and took the same path every day until it lead him to it.

I read another review that described the film as ‘poetic’. I would agree with this only to a point. Verse forms have a shape and a rhythm, unique to their textuality. If anything I would want to say that perhaps previous Anderson films were ‘poetic’ – free like blank verse, unconcerned with structural balance, serving images and moments intuitively, concerned with one emotion or outcome at a time.

Moonrise Kingdom fulfils more than this. It achieves the hardest and most concentrated form of storytelling, where every element is perfectly balanced, and every moment is an inevitability. I would say Moonrise Kingdom is not ‘poetic’, but perfectly filmic.

Moonrise Kingdom is in limited release from August 30th

-Jade Fisher

I come to screenwriting from a poetry background with a BCA in Creative Writing. I’ve travelled, worked as a cinema projectionist, studied photography, massage therapy, anatomy and am finally learning (& making) my true love, film.

I’m currently interested in developing a linear narrative theory that combines the way story operates in heroic myth with the way it behaves in dreams — where plot structure exists without causal links.

by Mark Rasmussen

Perhaps even more remarkably, I am making my way and achieving results.

And that’s great. I need that. I need to know I am on the right path as a writer and uprooting myself from a comfortable, safe life, to that of the unknown and following my heart, has been a good decision.

But it’s a path fraught with danger, rejection and loneliness.

It’s the last part that is the hardest to take. Especially for someone who despite enjoying and loving my own company, loves being social, meeting people, talking and conversing and simply mixing it up.

As humans we need this as it feeds our soul and enriches our lives.

LA’s a lonely city. Not many people walk around. As a writer, I couldn’t have chosen a more solitary pursuit but when mixed with a city that’s all but desolate of life out on the streets (except the freeways which are teeming with people), it’s a lonely city.

LA’s a lonely city. Not many people walk around.
As a writer, I couldn’t have chosen a more solitary pursuit

Thankfully for an outgoing guy like myself, I just get out there, do fun things and talk to everyone. It also helps that I have one or two really great friends who have taken me out and shown me sites and introduced me to people. Without them I would be lost.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, especially to one in particular who is just so inspiring, unique and special. You know who you are but know I am deeply grateful.

I choose not to whine or complain about loneliness, it’s simply the nature of the beast here. On the flip-side, however, things have been going great. Better than expected (if I had any expectations).

I came with the 16th annual Hollywood Pitch Festival in mind. A weekend of pitch meetings with companies and agencies – 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Disney, Henson, ICM, Paradigm – that you would never get the chance to meet let alone sit down in front of and discuss your ideas and scripts.

Despite having five ideas, I soon whittled it down to three but after discussing them with two considered friends in the industry, I decided to pursue my strongest. I’m glad I did as it paid dividends.

After much rehearsing my pitch at home, I was as ready as I was ever going to be. To say that my first ever professional pitching experience was a baptism of fire would be an understatement. But surprisingly I didn’t feel overwhelmed, nervous or afraid. I simply felt I had a very good idea and like almost all the other writers at the event, I belonged.

I went in pitching a family comedy. First company was Disney. Although initially I had wanted to get warmed up and into a routine, another writer merely pointed out that it was good to get them from the get go. They were fresh, hadn’t been swamped with tons of pitches and would be more than enthusiastic.

This is exactly how I approached it. Enthusiastically. Besides, what’s the worse that can happen? They can only say no. My life and my writing do not end on the back of one rejection.

I got such great feedback and input throughout the entire weekend (some even complimenting me on my pitching technique), and from a total of 35 companies that I sat and met with, 20 asked for my one-sheet/synopsis, while two on the day requested my script. With two more after the dust had settled, also asking for it.

That’s a win in any one’s language.

from a total of 35 companies that I sat and met with,
20 asked for my one-sheet/synopsis,
while two on the day requested my script.

Only thing is, I then needed to work my arse off to get a virtually nonexistent script up to scratch and completed. All inside a one-two week timeframe.

Again, no need to panic. I am a writer. I have been taught by a great mentor, guru and friend. I’ve been around other writers who have offered their thoughts and opinions and I had some help from a revered professional screenwriter and master, Blake Snyder (through his books). Sadly, Blake is no longer with us.

I structured it all out first, laid out my beats, had my spine, then created a board of 40 scenes and simply filled in the blanks.

It worked!

As yet, I do not know how well (or how badly) but my script is with four companies. That’s four more than I would have had before coming here and pitching.

My mentor had told me not to rest on my laurels, as “writing is rewriting,” he would say. It’s true. For now, I let it sit for a week as I play catch up with life.

You see, I still have to live. I need to buy food, a car, get a California drivers’ license and find another apartment once this current sublet is up. But all the time I am thinking and writing in my head.

Thinking as I shop at Ralph’s (the US’s major supermarket). Writing, as I test drive a car. Doing both as I set up a US cell phone number or traipse through yet another apartment or room.

All the time I am thinking and writing in my head.

It all helps. It gets me out of my cave and out into the real world. A world that as desolate and lonely as it might appear here in Los Angeles, is fun, enjoyable, exciting, new and real. It really is.

In the two months I have been here, I have had some great, fun conversations. From a guy who told me, “ Don’t forget to push the magic button,” as I waited at the lights, to my very frank conversation with my phone guy about how women in their 40s will want to take me out for dinner, and more.

It’s that contact with everyday people that makes me realise LA is not all that lonely a place to be. It’s like anywhere really.

What you put in, you get out.

In two months, I’ve been on two film sets, one even had the Hollywood sign in the background as we stood on a rooftop filming. That was both a very surreal moment and one of pure joy.

In two months, I have kayaked the LA river. Something only 200 people in all of LA County have ever had the lucky privilege of doing.

In two months, I have spoken with numerous writers, I have pitched to 35 companies, and banged out a script in a week.

In two months, I have smiled, laughed, rejoiced at how far I have come in such a short space of time.

Who knows what will happen in the next two months or the two months after that. One thing I can tell you for certain, this is an incredible journey and I am so grateful to have taken the leap of faith, follow my heart (and passion) and simply embrace life, LA and everyone and everything in it.

The city of Angels a lonely city? Not bloody likely.

-Mark Rasmussen

Mark Rasmussen has been a professional writer for over 15 years covering music, sport, travel, plays, web and more.
In 2011 Mark was involved in six film projects, three of which he wrote, produced or co-produced. One of his films ranked inside the Top 10 of a public vote.
Mark’s currently working on six feature scripts and two shorts and is now based in LA to chase down dreams.

by Jonathan Lim

Luke Skywalker is only able to join the rebellion when he finds that his foster parents have been killed in a droid attack. He had first decided to join the academy but was unable due in large part to the wishes of his foster parents. The catalyst is the event that sparks Luke’s motives to join the rebellion and engage with their struggle against the empire.

It is next to impossible for the inciting incident to occur in the first scene. The inciting incident,
usually 15 pages or 15 minutes into the film can clearly be defined as the first major turning
point for the protagonist.

It is hard for us to have a turning point until after we know where the
character is from what he wants and where he is going.

Most enthusiasts have the notion that the catalyst must be the most exciting scene in the movie.
In most cases it is the most stand-out scene or moment/event in the film but usually is only exciting on an emotional level. We are engaged in the character’s struggle and end up liking the hero for his endearing qualities and need for justice. It is the scene where we learn that the character has a deep desire for change.

The argument that the inciting incident has to be an event has also drawn comparisons from various movies. In the film Phone Booth , the event still begins with a phone call and a very specific line, but there is still a gunshot that informs the protagonist that the requisitioner on the other end of the line means business. The main character’s motivation then becomes to find out what the sniper wants and also how he is to survive this unholy predicament.

Using a line may also act as a specific moment when the protagonist becomes motivated to overcome his new struggle.

Trapped inside a bank, armed men use the people inside as hostages.
One of the bank robbers may point a gun at a woman and say that if she doesn’t keep quiet a
hostage will die. This might “incite” the protagonist’s new agenda. My personal opinion is that if
the plot does not thicken on account of an actual event, then audiences may miss the very crucial
moment where the hero begins his journey. They lose the plot, from there.

Every good story has an inciting incident that occurs somewhere in the first 15 minutes of
the film.

It is this incident that moves us from the opening sequence toward another set of
occurrences. Usually, it is something that is outside the protagonist’s control and he must
respond in some way. He considers the problem and then he chooses to take action.

– Jonathan Lim

Jonathan aka Jay Lim has been writing since 2002, when he first picked up the craft at film school, in the United Kingdom. 

The name Lim is part of the Ang Kui Province in China where his ancestors were shipped from old Colonial China to Colonial Malaya in the early 1900’s.
Datuk Lim Kim Hong, his grandfather, was later knighted for his contribution to the Steel and Scrap Metal Industry in a newly formed Malaysia, 1974.

By Pauline Findlay

You try your luck at Sundance, they only received 7,000 submissions this year! You send off anyway telling yourself your genius will be seen amongst 7,000 cream floats.

Then a few months later you get the email; “We appreciate your genius but can’t programme your film this year.” They mustn’t have seen it!

Well I met the Sundance programmer and she assured us they watch every submission – even the one shot on a cat purring! You return to your festival spreadsheet. Where next?

Palm Springs should be at the top of your festival strategy.

Why you ask? It will teach you more in a week than film school does in years about the business. The industry panels alone are worth the entry and the expensive flight.

It will teach you more in a week than
film school does in years about the business.

Palm Springs ShortFest is a weeklong festival of short films. Yes shorts! I know, no feature films, movies stars or hot directors to dim your light. Just a bunch of emerging filmmakers, wanting to network their little hearts out and melt in 43C heat. Over 320 films were programmed this year. This makes your odds pretty good and let’s face it you need the odds in your favour. It is also incredibly well respected in the USA.

Industry people take it seriously and see it as a place to find new talent, (you!). This is hard to believe since Screen Australia recently took it off the list of credible festivals that are worthy of travel funding. I know they can’t cover every festival but Palm Springs also has a Film Market attached and this should be enough reason to have it on the list.

Industry people take it seriously and
see it as a place to find new talent, (you!).

Distribution for short films is becoming more viable with our insatiable appetite for all things short to view on our mobile devices. So getting some cash for your short allows you to make your next short film and not need to ask them for funding. Leaving space for the next up and coming short filmmakers.

Palm Springs is hands down the best experience of my film career to date. The festival is buzzing with filmmakers from all over the world dying to see their peers’ work. I’m quite sure if Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were making short films today Palm Springs would be where they would meet.

Palm Springs is hands down the best experience of my film career to date.

Oh, and if you think your film is a ‘thinking person’s’ film then you have the community of Palm Springs that are very well educated in all things film. Most are retired industry types from LA so you just might find a backer for your first feature. Throughout the Q&A’s (yes they want to know about your short) they ask questions you might expect from your filmmaking buddies, not the local punter.

Kathleen McInnis is the Queen Bee of the festival and she loves filmmakers, especially new filmmakers. Your genius has been discovered. Kathleen is a publicist for feature directors most of the year and knows how to program a diverse festival.

Most are retired industry types from LA so
you just might find a backer for your first feature.

Oh and she has friends in high places – the roll call looked something like this on the panels: journalists from Variety, Hollywood Reporter, LATimes, NYTimes; festival programmers from Sundance, Tribeca, Cleveland and Seattle. If I still haven’t convinced you that Palm Springs is where you should be then let me tell you what the Australian Consul-General in LA do for you. They throw a party and invite industry people, well-established directors and studio types to talk and mingle with you; you get the ins and outs of working in Australia and LA.

Journalists from Variety, Hollywood Reporter, LATimes, NYTimes; festival programmers from Sundance, Tribeca, Cleveland and Seattle.

It gets better: they create a DVD complication of all the Australian films. Why do they do with this I hear you ask? Well they only give a copy to the invited press and anyone they have connections with in the LA studios! We were the envy of every filmmaker at the festival.

So is Palm Springs now at the top of your list?

by Pauline Findlay

Pauline Findlay has written, directed and produced short films, documentaries, theatre plays and online web series. Trained as an actor in London, Pauline’s debut play Girls Talk played at the Soho Theatre in Covent Garden. In 2007 Pauline directed the first online documentary for the ‘Tropfest Super Short Series’. Pauline is a graduate of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in Screenwriting and Producing and was nominated for a Monte Miller award by the Australian Writers Guild (AWG) for her short film ‘Liv’ in 2011 and for her feature script ‘Lola’ in 2012 Pauline. Pauline also tweets and blogs.

by Jade Fisher

We, tough Gen Y’ers, raised on the meat of sleepover gore fests, burnt out on Torture Porn, gonzo, extremo, Slasher and the more mainstream Splat Pack. Felt the tingling chill of real fear we had forgotten… and wondered.

“Good horror creates a recognisable human world where
people are morally tested in the extreme.”-John Truby

Perhaps the space for our consumption of ‘shock‘ as a mainstream cinematic device is dwindling. Increasingly, good story makes room for a few more reels of razor wire. But the nature of the medium prevents horror movies from competing with the experience of the extreme online. Once we’ve sat through ‘3 guys, 1 hammer’ — nothing that happens in Saw IX can touch us.

The genre pushes boundaries as it evolves, from Slasher’s birth (arguably 1974) to Wan and Whannell, we say “Show me”, then one day, we’ve seen it all. And we’re not frightened in the cinema anymore.

So where do we go from here?

Where does genre storytelling go when we might have collectively reached the end point of an approach?

The answer to writing for a post- Spacedicks generation of Horror seekers must lie in the genre’s definitive core.

Define “Horror” — every definition uses the verb to feel. To feel pain, repugnance, shock, fear. Feel. The escalation of stylistic extreme violence has pushed us away from this core.

All good horror genre advisors tell us to write ‘real’. The first lesson in inciting emotion in our audiences has always been to have them identify with the characters. But who among us can identify with the sensation of cutting off an arm? Being stabbed or sliced or mashed? This spectacle-centric writing is confused in that it elicits  sympathy for the character suffering, but not empathy. It creates a purely observational screen experience. Like watching the stars in the night sky, it’s too far away.

But who among us can identify with
the sensation of cutting off an arm?

Feeling fear comes through connection, and connection is created through character development. If we bring this idea down to its elementary form, we first think about creating empathy for sensations felt by our characters. No, I can’t even imagine cutting off an arm. But tearing off a fingernail…

… might be a jumping off point. I am reminded of certain self-harming scenes from Black Swan. Certainly I was more horrified by moments in that film that by anything in Cannibal Holocaust.

Think small about the violent act.

Violence in the new Horror might surprise our numbed sensitivity with its stark simplicity, its Truth: the detail and intimacy of a violent act, something small or organic, corporeal, damaging, lasting. The unexpected nature of a violent act — instead of telegraphing ‘the stabbing’ with traditional convention, an unsettling use of misdirection. The suddenness in itself could be the element that creates a psychological disconnect, and truly frightens. The identification with a violent act, something so close to home that the ‘suspension of our disbelief’ becomes so thin that lines being to blur…

We might start anew by thinking small like this. Remember that particular childhood terror. The ineffable, unconscious fear – paralysed, and overheating under the covers – unable to breathe. That vivid, disturbing quality of our nightmares …

Remember that particular childhood terror.
The ineffable, unconscious fear

These ideas do not intend to remove the fantastic from horror stories. If anything, a new approach might free genre writers from the tired tropes and plot devices that keep us writing in circles. Preventing what is actually frightening to us, the dark truths revealed in our nightmares, from finding their place on the screen.

Nor does this represent an idea that Horror should move away from violence, perish the thought!

Even Tennessee Williams said of his own work

“If there is any truth in the Aristotelian idea that violence is purged by its poetic representation, […] then it may be that my cycle of violent plays has had a moral justification after all.”

The Post – Torture Porn writer must be seeking new strategies for creating truisms in Horror. Given the long history and prolific life of the genre, it’s a hard starting place, the writer must be honest, introspective, brutal, and above all – good.

-Jade Fisher

I come to screenwriting from a poetry background with a BCA in Creative Writing. I’ve travelled, worked as a cinema projectionist, studied photography, massage therapy, anatomy and am finally learning (& making) my true love, film.

I’m currently interested in developing a linear narrative theory that combines the way story operates in heroic myth with the way it behaves in dreams — where plot structure exists without causal links.