Comments on: The Biggest Mistakes I Encounter In Each Genre (2/2)

By: joe velikovsky

joe velikovsky — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:33:00 +0000

All good solid advice.
(Good point also about `Rocky’, and about Sports movies in general.)
Interestingly, those 2 sports movies (Bull Durham and Field of Dreams) are also hybrid-genre films…
Even Rocky, too arguably… (part: a Love Story; and a Gangster Film).
Anyway – Nice work, yet again,

JT Velikovsky
High ROI Film/Story/Screenplay Consultant
https://storyality.wordpress.com/

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:02:24 +0000

A slow paced western isn’t a bad thing. There is a misconception that young people don’t like a slower pace. I showed my students ‘Rear Window’ and they loved it. It has a slow pace compared to ‘Disturbia’.

It isn’t an issue of pace. It’s an issue of intrigue and interest. ‘Rear Window’ unfolds relatively slowly but the viewer is constantly trying to figure out the clues. They experience the film with LB Jeffries and they want to know if the man killed his wife or not. The only scene that we choked on in the film was the introduction of the insurance nurse as it was too heavy on exposition and didn’t really push the story forward.

‘Rear Window’ is not a western but the principle is the same. The audience wants to know what is going to happen next. The pace is the pace it needs to be. It’s about anticipation and you can build that quickly or, with the skill of Hitchcock, slowly.

By: The Biggest Genre-Specific Mistakes Writers Make

The Biggest Genre-Specific Mistakes Writers Make — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:02:04 +0000

[…] — The Story Department | Read The Full Article […]

By: Jennifer B. White

Jennifer B. White — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:20:51 +0000

After watching The Zookeeper this summer at the Chinese Theater in L.A., I almost stood up and said, “Really? He’s chasing the girl to the airport? Really?” And yet, there it was on the big screen. Thank you Adam Sandler, for yet another cliché. (Yack) I have hundreds of greenlit (major motion picture company I can’t divulge) scripts in almost every genre. And almost every script is riddled with mistakes. The biggest one is probably the most unbelievable—grammar and spelling errors. If you can get past them, and get past your frustration that this is a film that went through dozens of hands and no one had a problem with that—you’ll find bigger problems like pacing, gaping holes in plots, characters that drift in and out of accents, etc. And yet, some are still good stories in spite of all that. My suggestion to script writers and novelists is to have people who adore the genre in which you write to read your work. Pass it around and get feedback! Then hire an editor, if you don’t have one in your pocket, to catch the glaring grammar and spelling errors. THEN kick down the doors in Hollywood knowing you’re not going to make your character race to the airport to “get the girl.” ~ Jennifer B. White