Story. Screenplay. Sale.
THE POWER OF NOW has brought a bit of Zen to the masses. Author Tolle is touring the world to spread the word and save our spiritual lives. Zen may be the key to your well-being; it is the enemy of cinema. Get your audience into the ‘now’ and your movie is dead. Storytelling for … Read more
Keeping the audience interested throughout the ‘setup’ is a major challenge as professional readers won’t last until the Inciting Incident if the first ten or twelve pages don’t deliver. The ‘setup’ is often a complete sequence in which we see the ‘Ordinary World’, the protagonist’s ‘normal life’, an area of the story that by its … Read more
“Babies don’t come from babies”, Keith Jarrett said when he meant that great art isn’t inspired by other art but by life itself. This quote shot through my mind tonight while watching the Australian film 2:37 by Murali Thalluri. I had ordered 2:37 from Quickflix, as reference material for a feature film in post-production I … Read more
Recently I had the privilege and honour of reading a script by one of the most hyped young writers in this country, face on covers of magazines and all that. My expectations were high and yes: it delivered! I spent an amazing two hours reading it as the characters really jumped off the page and … Read more
Last year I attended Linda Aronson’s PLOT CONSTRUCTION WORKSHOP and was disappointed with her analysis of Michael Mann’s THE INSIDER. Indirectly that disappointment would lead to the creation of this blog. Rather than opening a dialogue about why THE INSIDER works for some people and not for others, Linda treated it as an example of … Read more