Structure: Toy Story 1

In his book Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, Paul Gulino offers an excellent analysis of Toy Story 1, based upon the tools of anticipation.  The breakdown below follows this almost religiously, except only for some minor details. Apart from the division in 3 acts and 8 sequences, later I will also indicate how some story points … Read more

Writing Drama (6)

Yves Lavandier’s book Writing Drama currently rates as the absolute favorite of our book reviewer Jack Brislee. To give you the chance to delve into Lavandier’s amazing knowledge and insight, we publish a weekly excerpt from the book. Ineffective Conflict In some cases, forms of conflict drawn from life prove ineffective in dramatic terms. This occurs … Read more

Video: Michael Arndt

Toy Story 3 has been by far the most exquisite screenplay hitting the screens this year. Yes, it was developed over about twenty man years and yes, an army of geniuses contributed to the story. But then writer Michael Arndt stepped in and finished the job.

I haven’t seen or heard many interviews with Arndt and moving images with the man are even rarer. So I wanted to go back to a video of a few years ago in which Arndt speaks about Little Miss Sunshine, his approach to writing and other stuff you’d like to hear.

To see the whole program, you’ll have to click in the bottom right of the video screen once the clip is rolling, otherwise it stops right after the clip from Little Miss Sunshine.

(Thanks to Scott Myers who linked to this a while ago)

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Structure: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 is my favorite movie of the year and it will be hard to beat this. Usually when my expectations are high, I end up disappointed. Not here. The movie pays off on every possible level. It’s fun, emotional and has tremendous depth. I have seen it three times, each in a different … Read more