How to Make a Movie: The Complete Series

How to Make a Movie: An Overview

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Story Part 1

Story, Part II

Writing Links and Books

Screenwriting

More Screenwriting Thoughts

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Directing

Editing

Film Festivals

Building a Character In Two Easy Steps

My Favorite Movies: 1 – Edward Scissorhands

There are certain things in life that just hit you at the perfect time, in the perfect place.

That was Edward Scissorhands.

It’s an old story. Awkward kid, dealing with all the emotions and new and exciting pressures and experiences that come with puberty and high school.

Honestly, most people go through an awkward phase. It’s part of life. As a teen, it’s hard to see, but as an adult you find yourself looking at the kids in your life, and you want to tell them, “You are loved, and handsome/pretty, and you’ve got a brain in your head, and this will all suck and then it will be okay.”

But that’s a hard thing to say to a kid, and most of the time, you suspect that they won’t really hear you.

Sometimes, though? They can hear it in other places.

I heard that, to some extent, in Edward.

Here’s a guy with no parents. No understanding of the social structure of the world. He ends up living in a house with a beautiful girl, but lacks the words to tell her how he feels about her.

He just wants to make people happy, but doesn’t really understand how.

Things go well for him, and he smiles.

Things go poorly, and he lashes out.

If you’re a human, you probably went through this.

From all this, I learned:

FIND NEW WAYS TO TALK ABOUT UNIVERSAL HUMAN EXPERIENCES

There’s another lesson in Edward Scissorhands, though I think most people forget about it today.

It’s this: Tim Burton, before making Edward, made a movie called Batman. It made lots, and lots and lots of money.

And that’s why Tim got to go on and make Edward.

(Christopher Nolan did the same thing, years later, with Batman, and Inception.)

Lesson?

MAKE A BATMAN MOVIE

No, wait. Sorry.

BE WILLING TO DO THE BIG COMMERCIAL MOVIE, AND THEY’LL LET YOU MAKE YOUR ORIGINAL IDEA

Which is to say, there’s nothing wrong with what so many people call “Selling out.” Take the gig. Get the clout. Then come back and create something small and personal, if that’s what you “really” want to do.

There are probably other ideas I’ve taken away from Edward over the years. It makes sense, since I’ve seen it 19 times.

(Yes, I really did start counting. It’s also one of three movies I saw in theaters twice.)

As I finish writing up why I love my five (well, six) favorite movies, I’ve noticed a bit of a theme.

Most of the movies don’t have happy endings.

Evil Dead? Sad (well, unhappy, anyway) ending.

Dawn of the Dead? Ambiguous, trending towards bad.

When Harry Met Sally? Happy! The only one, though. And the flick is shot through with misery.

Trust? Ambiguous, trending towards sad.

Student Bodies? Unhappy ending.

And Edward Scissorhands?

The movie that kind of taught me that everything was going to be okay? That really, I would come out of things okay?

Sad ending. An ending that says we’ll walk out of terrifying situations remembering the good, and that might be the only happiness we ever get.

In the end (and skip this, if you’ve never seen the movie) Edward doesn’t learn to get along with the world, and he doesn’t get the girl.

Instead, he spends the rest of his life, locked away in a remote tower, remembering the girl he loves as she once was.

That’s a pretty solid summation of life, right there. Sometimes, all you’ve got are the memories.

And yeah, life can be sad, and ambiguous. And sometimes you do get lucky and meet the girl of your dreams.

So maybe there’s a final idea in there:

TELL THE TRUTH

Good luck.

My Favorite Movies: BONUS – Student Bodies

I’ve spent years trying to explain Student Bodies to people.

For a long time, it was pretty tough. I’d bring up the name, and people would go, “Is that a…” and they’d look around, trying not to talk too loudly.

And I’d go, “No, it’s a kind of spoof comedy. Of horror movies.”

Then came Scary Movie, and people would say, “Like Scary Movie?”

And I’d go, “No, because Student Bodies is actually funny, stars no one famous, and is mostly forgotten.”

To my surprise, the last few years have been kind to Student Bodies. At one point, it was pretty much impossible to find. Barely released in 1981 in theaters, one of the producers took an alias as their credit rather than own up to producing it, last released on video in 1987.

Impossible to find to rent. Most of the time.

But here, again, was a flick that was sort of a USA Up All Night staple. It wasn’t the 10 PM movie, though. Or the midnight movie. It was the 2 AM movie, just like The Evil Dead.

When EBay became a thing and I wasn’t living a totally broke life, I actually bought an unused copy of Student Bodies for 15 bucks. This was after DVD had arrived, but before everyone started tossing their videotapes into the trash and re-buying their favorite movie on shiny discs.

I sort of figured I was would never own a copy of Student Bodies on DVD.

Then it came out. In 2008. Crazy.

I bought it for my birthday, and sat down to see it in widescreen with actual audio mastering. I could hear the words! Words I never knew before!

I quite literally planned to watch 5 minutes. Then 10. Then the credits were running, and I went upstairs and went to bed.

It was a beautiful thing.

So what’s it about?

Tricky to say. It’s about a girl named Toby who plans on keeping her (ahem) innocence, and encourages her friends to do the same.

They don’t, and because this is a horror movie, they end up dead.

And that’s it.

There are no direct spoofs of scenes from other movies. There are no stars, though I just learned that the old woman in the movie apparently had along career on stage and screen. Which is strange, because she looked REAL old in 1981, and kept working until 2005. There’s even a documentary about her.

So what makes the movie great?

Probably just one thing:

IT’S QUOTABLE

Seriously. That’s it. The movie looks terrible, even after re-mastering. The sound is sketchy in spots.

The acting… well, there’s a reason most of these people never worked again.

Most of the cast isn’t even terribly attractive, which was usually how you sold el-cheapo movies like this to cable.

The movie kind of makes fun of this – there is no graphic person-on-person action. Most of the violence is implied. No one removes all their clothing.

To get an R rating, they literally have to pause the whole movie and let a guy drop an F-bomb.

And much of the slapstick is… a little too slappy. Too obvious, and often too overdone.

But the dialogue!

Where did you learn to speak English? A zoo?

Ms. Van Dyke: What makes your voice sound so funny?
The Breather: I'm disguising it.
Ms. Van Dyke: How?
The Breather: By talking through a rubber chicken.
Ms. Van Dyke: I thought it sounded like you were speaking through a rubber chicken.

Toby: Who could have done these murders?
Hardy: I don't know. It could have been anybody.
Toby: Well, it can't be ANYbody. It's gotta be somebody.
Hardy: Of course it's somebody, but that somebody could be anybody.
Toby: Well, look, we didn't do it, right?
Hardy: Right.
Toby: So you can't say it could be anybody. WE'RE anybody.
Hardy: True, but we're also somebody.

The Breather: [on the phone] I'm gonna kill next at the football game. Click.
Ms. Van Dyke: Did you hang up?
The Breather: No, I just said "click".

(Confession: I use the zoo line on people ALL THE TIME.)

If there’s another lesson to take away from this movie, I don’t know what it is. This flick was long-lost and forgotten, except by a chosen few, which was enough to get it released on DVD.

And then, so help me, on Blu-Ray.

The movie? On Blu? Looks awful. If they spent any time re-mastering it, it doesn’t show.

But the flick is so much fun, and even history couldn’t kill it.

So maybe that’s the lesson, here:

EVEN IF YOUR MOVIE DOESN’T FIND LOVE RIGHT AWAY – IT STILL CAN, EVEN IF IT TAKES THREE DECADES

So write a movie worth discovering three decades later.

My Favorite Movies: 2 - Trust

I once knew a guy who told me that two of his favorite movie-watching experiences were achieved by going into the video store, renting something with an interesting box, and walking back out.

I forget what the two movies were – or rather, I can’t recall one of them. The one I remember was The Boondock Saints, a movie with a cult so big it’s resulted in a documentary about the director, and a direct-to-video sequel, even thought the flick was a flop at first.

It was also hard to find. When it was first released, it was a Blockbuster exclusive. That was the only place you could rent it.

There’s something a little magical about the movie that’s hard to lay your hands on, but it’s a sword that cuts both ways. If the movie is so-so, your desperate search to find it can turn you against it.

But if the flick is good, you will pretty much oversell it to everyone.

Such is, I fear, the case with Trust, a movie I rank as my number-two favorite.

At this point in my life, I think it’s been more than a decade since I’ve seen it. And my last viewing of the film was so poorly reviewed by the person I shared it with, that to this day I’m a little afraid to go back and watch it again.

The thing of it is, the movie isn’t available in the United States any more. It was released on video, but the music wasn’t cleared for DVD (because, hey, who knew?) and so it hasn’t been released, and probably won’t be.

I only saw it because my local college had a movie channel, which was run by… I dunno. Someone who had a thing for teeny-tiny movies few people had heard of.

I bumped into Trust in the listings on my TV set one night, and I sat around for a few minutes just to see what it was. Action? Drama?

It came on, and I sat there, captivated. I found out when it was playing, and I taped it the next time it showed.

Then I kept on showing it to friends. And they all liked it. Except for that last friend…

What’s the movie about?

Well... A cheerleader gets pregnant, and her boyfriend wants nothing to do with the baby. At the start of the movie, she tells her parents she’s pregnant, her father says some very unkind word, and she slaps him and walks out.

Then he dies of a heart attack.

Then we meet our other protagonist, a slightly older guy, living with his dad. Only his dad is just a mean, mean, mean dude. Which rolls down to the son, who starts the movie by quitting his job and putting his boss’s head in a vice.

Both of them attempt to get away from their situations, and then they run into each other.

What happens next? They kind of, sort of, fall into a relationship. Only he has anger issues and she’s not out of high school, and neither of them even know how to be in a relationship. Or how to hold a job. Or are ready to be responsible adults.

I won’t tell you how it ends, but there’s a grenade involved.

Trying to describe why I love this movie leaves me a little stuck, frankly. Brilliant acting?

Eh.

The writing?

Eh.

The directing?

Eh.

Here’s the issue: The movie looks, and looks often, like a stage play. The directing is rarely dynamic. The actors frequently seem to get only one or two takes, and they work so hard to get the words out just right that it feels like ACTING, instead of acting.

And then there are those words. Lovely, some of them, but they feel WRITTEN.

These are not real people talking to real people, which is what you hope for. These are ACTORS on a STAGE delivering LINES.

But some of those lines:

Maria: Can you stop watching TV for a minute?
Matthew: No.
Maria: Why?
Matthew: Because. I had a bad day at work. I had to subvert my principles and kow-tow to an idiot. Television makes these daily sacrifices possible. Deadens the inner core of my being.

And from the same scene:

Maria: Your job is making you boring and mean.
Matthew: My job is making me a respectable member of society.

Now, removed from context, I don’t know if those lines feel as beautiful as they are when spoken aloud. At that point, the boy has tried to subvert everything he is to become a husband and father.

You can feel that he just wants a family. A real family, with someone to look after. (Though he doesn’t yet realize he needs someone to watch over him, as well…)

But he can’t do it, and it’s breaking him.

This is our hero.

In the end, I think I took away these lessons from this movie:

YOUR HERO DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A HERO

When most people talk about telling a story, they claim that the “good guy” needs to be just that – a good guy.

But the boy in this story isn’t a good guy. He wants to be, but he puts people’s heads in vices, and carries a grenade around.

And you root for him.

A character doesn’t have to be a good guy for you to want to follow him. He’s just got to be interesting.

YOUR MOVIE DOESN’T NEED EXPLOSIONS TO BE EXPLOSIVE

Again, the main guy? Scary dude. You can’t really be sure what he’s going to do next, and sometimes, that’s pretty worrisome.

I keep talking about the grenade. He carries it around. It’s always in his pocket. And that’s kind of terrifying to think about.

So, only one explosion in the whole movie, but just about every minute has the potential to become an explosion.

YOU DON’T NEED THE BEST WRITING, DIRECTING, OR ACTING – YOU JUST NEED TO CONVEY YOUR STORY

In the end, Trust works, even with all its flaws, because it’s sure, and steady, and fascinating from the first slap to the final ride in the police car.

Which also leads me to this:

A STORY CAN END IN A HAPPY AND SAD WAY AT THE SAME TIME

Trust ends in a Lady or the Tiger-type way. Two people who seem to love each other are being pulled apart, and that might be for the best.

It might not.

As the credits roll, you get to decide. And that’s something more movies should try.

My Favorite Movies: 3 – When Harry Met Sally

I spent years not really seeing When Harry Met Sally.

Home from college one summer, it came on cable and I started watching, just for something to do. About an hour into it, my parents came home (yes, I lived with my parents during the summer to save money), and we got to talking and I shut the movie off.

A couple of years later, a friend of mine showed it at an in-dorm movie night… except that she’d taped it off cable, and in the last ten minutes of the movie, the tape had run out, and so she had to put in a different tape, and we had missed two minutes of the movie.

Granted, they weren’t critical minutes. Harry had just realized who he was in love with, and was running there, which is supposed to build suspence, but, well, you know.

It’s a romantic comedy. They mostly only end one way. (My Best Friend’s Wedding is one of the few exceptions.)

Through those two semi-viewings, I did come to realize that a) I liked it a lot, and b) it was a strong reflection of a relationship-that-was-not-a-relationship that I was in at the time.

Later that same year, I got a pair of pants for my birthday, and they didn’t fit. So I took them back to Target, and they offered me store credit, and instead of buying more pants I bought a copy of When Harry Met Sally.

If you’ve never seen the movie, well, here’s a warning: It’s pretty plot-less.

If you ask the folks who made the movie, they’ll tell you it’s about Harry and Sally, who become friends, but know that sleeping together would probably be a bad idea. Then they sleep together.

Mind you, that’s not the actual plot, because if it was, the movie would be about 20 minutes long, since the sleeping together thing doesn’t happen until the movie is getting pretty close to being over.

What most interests me about the movie is the fact that, aside from being plotless, it has a few other flaws that should prevent it from being the classic that it is… and those are the lessons I most remember from watching this flick.

YOU DON’T NEED REAL STARS TO MAKE A HIT

Don’t get me wrong. Billy Crystal? Meg Ryan? Nice people, as far as I know. Talented people, sure.

But at the time, neither of them was the biggest thing in the world. Billy Crystal had come off Saturday Night Live, and granted, they loved him there, but imagine in Adam Sandler had left SNL and then gone on to star in a very adult, thoughtful romantic comedy.

Didn’t happen. Adam took all his boy-ish rage and turned it into the Adam Sandler brand.

Billy went for something deeper. And he pulled it off.

Meg Ryan, sadly, filled her role a little too well, as the cute pixie-type girl. She played that role year after year, until she started to get too old, and then she kind of wrecked her poor face in an attempt to keep looking cute and pixie-like.

But she wasn't really much of a star, either. This was the woman who had been in things like Amityville 3-D.

And yet, the movie was good, so people flocked, and now it’s a classic.

Second lesson:

YOU DON’T NEED A PLOT IF THE CHARACTERS ARE FUN TO BE AROUND

Harry and Sally meet. They walk away from each other. They meet again. They walk away from each other.

They meet again.

This is not really a plot. But the little details of what happens at each of these meetings, and the dialogue, and the way… but I’ll come back to that.

Great dialogue, interesting characters. People you kind of want to hang out with. You can make a movie with that.

YOU CAN MAKE A GOOD MOVIE FOR FILTHY LUCRE

A lot of people think you can only make a good movie when you have nothing but love in your heart for its creation.

I sort of agree. When people don’t really care about the movie they’re making, you can usually tell.

Except in this case.

In her last book, Nora Ephron, the writer of When Harry Met Sally, had an essay about the time she thought she was going to come into a lot of money.

She was super-excited about this, because it meant she could quit writing the screenplay she was working on. In this case, it was When Harry Met Sally.

She was flat-out writing it for a check. And it came out just fine. More than fine, really.

Stuff you write just to make money? It can be art, too.

SHOW PEOPLE SOMETHING THEY’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE

This is the magic of When Harry Met Sally – the thing people miss.

They talk about the dialogue. The words.

But you know what makes all those words, and no plot, really work, I think?

The movie never stops moving.

They’ve got a scene in a baseball game. A scene in a mall, with karaoke, back before that was a thing.

They’ve got people having dinner parties in different places.

And they’ve got married couples, seemingly unrelated to the plot, popping up at regular intervals.

Some sequences are thirty seconds long, and take place while two characters are crossing the street.

It’s brilliant.

And you, and I, should strive for that.

I Wrote This Movie: The Paper Castle

Actually, I co-wrote it, and I don't think there's a way to embed it. So... clicky!

http://www.pocketmovies.net/get/paper-castle

I Wrote This Movie: Meaningful Touches

For those of you following my How to Make a Movie series, I thought I'd share one of my movies.

My Favorite Movies: 4 - Dawn of the Dead

After graduating from college I found myself a lot of free time and a new job located next to Family Video.

If you've never heard of it, it's a rental chain that has probably the best rental deal ever: For a dollar, you can rent two movies for five days.

Granted, these aren't the NEW movies (those'll cost you) but most things fall to those shelves after 9 months or so.

One night after work, I wandered over to the store and discovered a magical utopia filled with things I wanted to see. That would cost me fifty cents each.

Things like Brain Dead. And Troma's War. And Escape from New York.

And Dawn of the Dead.

If you've never seen or heard of the movie, the setup is pretty simple. Three men and one woman try to wait out a zombie invasion by hiding in a mall.

Gradually, things go wrong.

Granted, that sounds like a fun film, as long as you're somewhat into zombies. But the thing that interested me about this movie was:

Critics like it.

Really, they do. Robert Ebert gave it four stars.

And among fans of the horror genre, this was considered one of the greats. So I had to see it.

Here's the amusing thing: It took me three nights to get through it.

Now, it's not a dense movie. But it is a long one. It runs over two hours, in a world where most trashy horror films run about 80 minutes, most studio horror films run about 90, and a horror film that actually cares about its characters might push you to 100.

But for various reasons (late work schedule, other obligations) I kept starting and stopping the movie, finally finishing it up one evening.

I'm not going to say that the movie knocked me out right away, but I found the movie impossible to shake off. It was a film with ideas in it, some subtle, and some not.

LESSON: MAKE A MOVIE WORTH TALKING/THINKING ABOUT.

Mostly what struck me was how many quiet moments the movie had. At one point, one of the men and a women just sit in bed next to each other, saying nothing. She's pregnant. He's the dad.

And the world around them has fallen totally apart.

You can read a lot into their faces, if you so choose. You can decide that they realize they're stuck together, and they don't like each other much. You can decide they're afraid for their baby. Or you can decide that now that they're safe, they're coming to realize that even during an Apocalypse, life can be really boring.

The point is, the movie lets you think about these things, and decide for yourself, instead of having verbal sparring to no real end.

The movie also has satirical elements, with lines like (in reference to the mall):

Francine Parker: What are they doing? Why do they come here?
Stephen: Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.

Now, you could read that as a straight line, and I'm sure people have. But it's also a pretty outstanding joke, and a sad statement about our culture.

LESSON: IT'S OKAY TO INSERT SUBTLE MOMENTS INTO BLOOD-AND-GUTS HORROR MOVIES

Time passed. The movie finally came out on DVD. I bought it, and watched it again by myself. And then again, with friends.

And I realized something. Yeah, it's a thoughtful movie, to be sure. Lots of people die, but when George Romero, who wrote and directed the movie, wants you to care, he slows right on down and makes you care about a death.

But at the same time? It's an action movie, and a fast-paced one at that. There's a little talk at the beginning, and then some soldiers try to clean out a ghetto. Some people fly off in a helicopter, and have to fight to refuel. They find a mall, then have to fight to get supplies. Then they fight to keep the mall protected from more zombies.

Action sequence after action sequence after action sequence. Even at over two hours, the movie rarely feels like it's going to pack all its story into the non-action sequence moments.

LESSON: YOU CAN WRITE AN ACTION MOVIE AND HAVE A MOVING STORY CONTAINED IN IT.

When I went to write the movie up for my upcoming book, But the Third One Was Great, I got a fourth chance to really learn about the flick. And a little research told me that the movie didn't end the way it originally did.

In the ending everyone's seen, a couple of people live. And you can view what happens to them with hope (they'll be okay!) or with dread (they aren't going to be okay!). It's up to you.

In the original version, however? Everyone dies.

Romero went to that well with the original, Night of the Living Dead, and frankly, it was haunting. But this time around, he ended in an ambiguous way.

And you know? The movie was better for it.

LESSON: IT'S POSSIBLE TO WRITE AN ENDING THAT LETS YOU HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.

Is that always possible? Probably not always. But it's something to strive for.

Five Favorite Movies: 5 - The Evil Dead

At the start of every semester, I gave my students a form to fill out. One of the questions on it was, "Name your three favorite movies."

What fascinated me about this question was how elementary it was - and yet, some of the kids didn't answer it completely. Two of them put two movies on the list, instead of three.

Of those two, both picked movies that had come out in the last year.

More interestingly, both of them wanted to make movies (in some way, shape or form) for a living.

Asking someone what their favorite movies are can get complicated, I suppose. For most people, it's an ever-evolving list, where you can revisit an old favorite and find yourself going, "Wellll... maybe this is number two instead of number one."

That I get. But most of us can at least list a few movies they really, really like.

But no.

So I offered up a list of my top five favorite movies. They are:

5. The Evil Dead
4. Dawn of the Dead
3. When Harry Met Sally...
2. Trust
1. Edward Scissorhands

And finally, a bonus movie that bounces around the top five: Student Bodies.

(In general, Student Bodies knocks one of the Dead movies off the bottom of the list.)

So. What does this say about me?

And more importantly, what did I take away from all of these movies?

Let's start with The Evil Dead.

I heard ABOUT The Evil Dead almost a year before finally seeing it. I had learned about the movie when I first discovered newsgroups (something almost no one remembers) on the early version of the World Wide Web.

There was a group called Alt.Cult.Movies, and as I started clicking around, I mostly learned that there are probably 20 cult movies that EVERYONE who know cult movies was into, to some degree or another.

(No, I can't remember the complete list. Sorry.)

At the time, Evil Dead as so popular that it even had its own newsgroup - alt.cult.movies.evil-dead.

So I hopped over there, and started reading up on the flick.

Here's the irony - The Evil Dead is actually a trilogy of films, and I had already seen the final movie: Army of Darkness.

I started reading up in this little flick, made by a bunch of friends in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere. I read about how it was unrated, how it was really brutal, and about how Stephen King was a big fan of the film.

More importantly, I read that the movie was incredibly hard to get your hands on.

Today, of course, it seems like everything is on DVD (except Trust - see the above list of my favorite movies). And if it's not on DVD, it's on Netflix. Or on On Demand. Or on Turner Classic Movies.

Or someone is putting out a bare-bones vault release of it in the future.

But this was the time of video, when if you wanted to find something, you went to every video store in town and hoped that someone hadn't stolen the only copy of a popular cult film, because it was the ONLY WAY TO GET IT.

Evil Dead had come out on video in the early 80s, and then they just stopped printing new copies. There were no more to be found. There was, as is not the case today, a finite supply.

And at the time, I couldn't get my hands on a copy.

So there's your first lesson:

MAKE YOUR PROJECT SOUND COOL

Here's the honest truth - I think that if Stephen Spielberg had made The Evil Dead, and he used the cast of Jaws, the movie just wouldn't be as awesome.

Instead, it would have been everywhere, easy to find, easy to rent, and while the few copies that existed might have looked and sounded better, and featured better acting and improved special effects...

It just doesn't sound as cool as a movie made by a bunch of friends in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

So keep that in mind. If you're making a movie, and you want people to hear about, tell them what you went through to make it. Put your best stories together, and polish them, and tell them to anyone and everyone.

Mostly the press.

Moving along, the story about how I finally came to see the movie.

About a year passed, and I found myself at home for the summer. It was a Saturday night, and I was at home because it was late at night and I wasn't on a college campus, where things sometimes actually happen late in the eventide. As always, I was having trouble sleeping, so I alternated between reading a book and seeing what was on USA Up All Night.

If you're not familiar with the show, it was... um... basically, it was cheap and/or cult and/or horror movies, with hosts. They'd show two back-to-back, one at 10 PM and one at midnight, and then they'd show a third movie, without any hosts, because if you're up at 2 AM you don't NEED a host, you need a prescription for sleeping medication.

Now, 2 AM was usually my limit. Somewhere between 2 and 3 my eyes would finally start to close of their own accord, and my body could shut down and I could rest. So I got ready to do that, and...

There it was. On my TV screen. The Evil Dead.

Now, granted, they were going to cut stuff (it was, after all, an unrated film!) but I could at least see it! Without having to hunt shelves on every video store in town!

Now, keep in mind I was TIRED. It was 2 AM, I'd be doing things all day, and I had somewhere to be in the morning.

I actually NAPPED DURING COMMERCIALS, which sounds impossible, but I did it.

And when it was over, I shut off the TV and passed out.

NEXT LESSON: MAKE A MOVIE WORTH FIGHTING OFF SLEEP FOR

I totally got why people loved the movie. It was awkward and not-very-good and brilliant all at the same time.

I say this with so much love I can't fully express it. The acting was, in several cases, so-so. The makeup seemed almost painted on (it was!). And many of the special effects were clearly stop-motion, and looked almost ridiculously cheap.

Didn't matter.

It also had an amazing number of shots that make you want to cry out in joy. Sometimes it was the angle choice. Sometimes it was "special" effects that were obvious, but still kind of genius (Ash reaches into a "mirror" and puts his hand through it. It's water! Obviously, it's a trick shot with a bucket of water. But before you figure that out, your brain goes, "Whoooooah...")

And though I didn't realize it at the time, the flick offered something other movies weren't. Halloween had come out a year years earlier, and Friday the 13th came out in 1980.

Men and women in masks, stalking and slashing, were the order of the day.

And here was this little movie, taking a page out of Lovecraft (pretty literally, in part II) and, yeah, killing a few teenagers. But in a way that wasn't about revealing an arbitrary villain at the end.

LESSON: BE DIFFERENT

And, yeah, the stop-motion looked pretty so-so, and yeah, the film stock was pretty grainy, and yeah...

Forget it. All those things added to the charm. In the strange way, they even improved the movie. A movie featuring a bunch of Hollywood-types, including a star, would have made you think, "Eh, it's all just a movie." But when you've got a bunch of no-names... anything can happen.

Over the years, The Evil Dead has gotten more and more under my skin. I've watched it multiple times, on VHS (bought a copy!) and DVD (bought TWO copies!). I own a copy of The Evil Dead Companion. I've watched every lost scene and interview about the movie that's reasonably commercially available.

I could give lectures on the film, I'm pretty sure. For that matter, if there was a convention and Sam Raimi (the director) or Bruce Campbell (the star) didn't show up, I could probably answer all the questions posed FOR them.

But the thing of it is, I can still turn off the lights, put on the movie, and know that I'm going to jump at LEAST once, even after examining every nook and cranny of the film.

That's good stuff.

FINAL LESSON: MAKE A MOVIE WORTH WATCHING AGAIN

How to Make a Movie: Building a Character In Two Easy Steps

Recently, I found myself paging through the scripts my students wrote, cleaning out folders now that my school year is over.

And I realized that I had shared a fun idea with my kids that I forgot to share here.

So here we go:

My first batch of students wanted to create a sitcom (of sorts) based around a school. It would be, they said, a bunch of zany characters having zany things happen to them.

As a teacher, I kind of loved this idea. It took place in a school (we were in a school!) and used students (we had students, by cracky!) and we could make the format as long or as short as we wanted.

(Eventually, we decided to create very, very short episodes, which I started referring to as webisodes.)

At that point, we started brainstorming episode ideas. Each episode needed a clear, easy-to-state idea that we could hang a five-minute story on.

We all ended up staring at each other for a few minutes.

The problem was, I realized, that we hadn't set many parameters. All we had was "The Office in a School." This is a pretty great idea, and if I could pull it off I'd totally take all my kids to Hollywood and sell the show to The N, and have them write and star in it, because they're all very funny.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The problem was, we had no characters.

A story, for better or worse, doesn't happen to itself. It happens to a person, or to people. (That story definition again: A person fights their way through more and more difficult obstacles until they get to the end of the story, and win.)

We couldn't tell a story, because we had no people in the story.

Since the kids wanted to star in the show (which worked well for us) we used their real first names.

And here's the part that can help you write.

What we did next was give each character two things:

A defining characteristic.

A goal.

In a lot of "how to write" kind of books, they'll tell you to write long back stories on your characters. I don't think that's a terrible idea, but it can take a long time, and at the end you have a bunch of writing that probably won't appear in your story.

But if you give your character a single thing to define them with, it makes them easier to track (oh, that's so-and-so - he's the angry one) and it helps you to answer the question, "What would this character do next?"

Since we had five people who were willing to act, we set them up with basic characteristics:

The Smart One Who Is Angry No One Notices They're Smart

The Dumb, Loyal One

The Girl Who Shoots Guns - and Has Anger Issues

The One That's Forgetful and Easily Freaked

The Girl Who's Mexican - And A Little Oblivious

Now, I won't argue that those are brilliant characters, but it always gave us something to work from.

Over time, some of the characters evolved a bit. The Smart Angry One also developed a bit of confusion about their orientation. Not in real life, but on the show. And we ran with it, referencing it from episode to episode.

The Girl With the Guns evolved from kind of angry into a sort of wise-cracking cruelty.

But these baseline personalities served us well, even into shooting the last episode. At one point, we realized that we had a funny line, but it wasn't something the character would say - it was too mean. So we gave it to the mean character.

At one point, there was even some discussion of taking the "dumb" character and basing an episode around the character admitting it was all an act - she was doing it so people would like her.

It would have been one of the saddest episodes of anything, ever.

Okay, so now we had characters, and we could put them into a situation.

For the pilot, the characters all had a paper due... and only one of them had it finished.

Why did only one of them finish it? Well... let's go back to personality.

The angry girl tore hers up talking about a blind date gone wrong.

The dumb girl was still writing her paper... about an improper topic.

The smart girl finished her paper, and lorded it over other people.

The girl who tends to freak out realized she forgot her paper, and ran out of the room to get it. Eventually, she was hit by a car.

And the Mexican girl's paper got chewed up... by her pet Chihuahua.

Now, I'm not going to argue that any of this is genius. As sitcom tropes go, it's all pretty standard.

But the thing is, it's all standard for a reason. "Modern Family" did an episode a few weeks ago that was, basically, about how watching people fall down is funny.

Which brings me to the second idea I shared with my students: Goals.

In each episode, every character needed a goal. Sometimes, it was the same goal. Sometimes, the goals were different. Sometimes the goals put the characters at odds, and sometimes they all just spun through their own universe.

But, everyone had a goal. And in each scene, they did something in an attempt to further (or discuss) that goal.

And honestly, those two little ideas (defined characters, strong goals) gave all of our episodes a motor to run them.

Again, I won't argue that the motors were brilliant, but I don't know how many motors really are. When you think about something like "Star Wars," what's the goal? Rescue the princess and get some blueprints to the rebels.

It's been done, is what I'm saying.

But as a writing tool, having those two things on hand always kept us on track. If someone said something funny that didn't work for character A, we'd move it to character C.

And if a scene was wandering along, not going anywhere, we'd go back and look at the character goals... and once we had a goal in mind, it made it a lot easier to send the scene in a direction.

In the end, I won't argue that we made brilliant movies worthy of dissection as great art, but our webisodes were never boring, because they were all moving forward, towards something the audience could follow.

In conclusion: Defined characters, strong goals.

And if you know someone at The N looking for the next great show, shoot me an email. I've got a couple of DVDs they should see.

How to Make a Movie: Film Festivals

Once your movie is made, and you’re happy with it, it’s time to get it out into the world.

Naturally, everyone wants to go to Sundance. Or Cannes. And maybe your movie is amazing, and it will go there.

But… probably not.

Granted, you can enter your movie, and if you really think it’s good enough, I say do it. It’ll cost you money which you might never see again, but at least you tried.

The thing of it is, there are probably five or ten really “important” film festivals in the world. They’re hard to get into.

And if you do it, then, awesome! And if you don’t, well, even if you got in, the chances of someone important seeing your movie and buying it and putting it out were always kind of small.

But film festivals, in general, can be a good thing. You can get a few awards, and sometimes that gets you into bigger festivals.

And more importantly, your movie will get seen. And that’s why you made it, right?

Right.

So here’s what you want to do:

First, find a film festival (or two or three) that’s near where you live. Why? To see it with a paying audience. So your cast and crew can see it on a screen, and invite their friends and family to see it with them.

It’s fun, man! Remember when you wanted to make a movie? Remember when you just wanted to have fun and make something cool?

So yeah. Someplace nearby.

After that, go here:

https://www.withoutabox.com/

Register. Find film festivals that interest you. And please, read the rules. If you live in New York, and the film festival is for people with New Mexico ties, then don’t enter.

Yes, people do stuff like that. All the time.

And after you enter your film in a few festivals…

Well, what comes next is up to you.

If you win some awards, see if you can turn that into distribution.

Or put the film up online, and let people buy DVD copies. You can do that through Amazon.

Or get it up on Netflix.

Or don’t do anything with it. It’s your movie.

And after that comes to next question: Do you want to make another one?

Good luck.

How to Make a Movie: Editing

Before I talk about editing, a questiont:

The Question: If you’re reading these posts, is there something you’d like me to cover that I haven’t? Or is there some detail you’d like covered more in-depth?

As a secondary question, I was thinking about putting all these posts together, expanding them a hair, taking a few old articles I’ve written on the subject of movie-writing and putting them together as an ebook.

Since it’d be pretty short, I’m thinking I’d sell it for 99 cents.

If you’d like that kind of thing, let me know, and I will get it done.

Anyway.

Now we’re into editing. If you know anything about editing, say, twenty years ago, it was all done by hand. Meaning someone had to log the film, then trim it using special razor blade devices, then splice it using a special kind of tape…

That would have driven me insane.

So if you’re reading these posts, and thinking that you’re going to shoot on film, and try to make your first movie look really, really professional, so you can sell it and start your film career…

Don’t do that.

It wastes time and money, and you’d be much better off paying a really good director of photography and having him shoot on HD video. You’ll save money. Lots of money.

And you’ll save conversion time, because if you can find a local place that still cuts film, I’m not sure you want to know those people, as they are clearly not all there, if you get what I’m saying.

Surprisingly, while I’m not a professional director, I am a professional editor, inasmuch as I’ve been paid to do it.

So this is my advice.

1. Get yourself a fast computer. You can use a slow computer, if you want to, but trust me, you’ll spend a lot of time feeling sad while waiting for stuff to happen.

I’m not saying you need the newest and biggest and best. But last year’s computer is going to treat you a lot better than a computer that’s more than five years old.

Do I have a preference, Mac Vs. PC? I use a PC. I’ve used a Mac, and so much of what they do seems counterintuitive to me. Because, and I say this honestly, I love my second mouse button. Love it. Use it all the time. Have no idea how people live without it.

I will say that PCs are cheaper. So if you’re on a budget (Of course you are! You’re reading this online instead of buying a book!) a PC is probably the way to go.

2. Get yourself some decent software. In all honestly, what you need depends on what you’re doing.

I know people who do really snazzy stuff with iMovie, which is free. And honestly, MS Moviemaker looks pretty decent these days, too. So if you’re just making a practice flick, or doing that test film I talked about earlier, try using something that’s on your computer already.

As for the other major software you can get. Yes, you can pick up the real software that the pros use, but it’ll run you a few thousand dollars. Then you’re looking at Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid software.

However, all three types of software I just listed also come in “Home” versions.

And here’s the only place I’ll make a recommendation that’s entirely personal:

I really like Adobe Premiere Elements.

Why? Well, it’s got what I think of as a training wheels version, where all your scenes are lined up in boxes, you mostly use a very simple drag-and-drop system, and when you try to “cut” something, you have a little scissors to do it with.

Really. It’s a graphic that looks like a pair of scissors.

Whenever I’ve worked on editing jobs, I can figure out about 95% of what I want to do without having to look at the instructions.

And the other 5%, I can find using the fairly decent search function.

Now, I will say, I’ve recently started using version 9 of Elements, and I like it less than the version I was using before. A few things have been moved, the help files aren’t as good, and it’s locked up on me for reasons I don’t understand.

However, I also got a new computer at the same time I updated, so there may be some issue there.

That said, yeah, I’d still go for Elements. The first time I opened up the program, it made sense, was easy to use, and I cut together a silly little trailer for a movie in about an hour.

The first time I tried to use Final Cut, I stumbled around for 45 minutes, and all I accomplished was putting some footage into the program. I couldn’t figure out how to get it on a timeline, how to change the sound and video… Nothing.

And when I showed it to my students, I had the same issues. I handed them a copy of Elements, and got them cutting and moving and editing in about 15 minutes.

I had a special guest come in to give an hour of editing training on Final Cut, and at the end of it, I got mostly blank stares.

The good news is, while Elements used to be a PC-only program, you can now use it on a Mac.

The better news is, if you’ve got a few months to spare, Adobe drops the price of their software constantly. You can generally get elements for about $80, and then get a $20 rebate.

Okay, so enough about software, how do you use it?

That depends…

Personally, I always start with a really basic assembly. Since most of the time, you’re shooting out of order, your footage is kind of all over the place.

In theory, this should be easy. All your footage is a big puzzle, and all you have to do now is put it together. All the pieces are there. It’s just that some pieces look better than others… (That’s pretty much it for that metaphor.)

So start by putting it in the right order. Get the lines of dialogue where they belong. Get the action where it goes.

If you were paying attention to my previous screed in directing, you should have all your shots, so that shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Right.

So get it all in the right order.

Then, start watching it.

If you’ve got 90 hours of footage, this could take a while. If you’ve got four (Robert Rodriguez said he had 4 hours of footage for his 80 minute “El Mariachi,” and I believe him) it’ll take you, you know… half a day.

Can you start cutting right away? It’s a matter of personal style. With my students, since they’re always rushed, they usually have two takes of a scene that works, and as many as ten of a scene that doesn’t. They shoot a lot of hand-held, rather than cutting back and forth between actors, so that speeds the process.

Generally, if they just choose the last take, their final cut is pretty much ready to go. So there’s no real need to watch each take, again and again, looking for the perfect cut.

But! That’s no always the case. And sometimes, you’ll realize that something needs to be moved around, and often it’s easier to do that when your “film” is in one huge chunk, instead of a bunch of little ones.

So watch it all before you start cutting, if you can.

Keep a copy of the script nearby, and refer to it as you cut. Why? Because just like when you were shooting, it’s easy to cut a line, or miss an important gesture. It’s not a big deal now, but if you cut something, and delete it, you’ll have to go footage-hunting later, and that will irritate you to no end.

But hey, at least it’s not film.

(An aside: If you’re doing a big, multi-day shooting project, try to watch the footage every day. I say this because I almost didn’t once, on a three day project, and then at the last minute I thought I should check the footage. In one shot, nothing was white-balanced, and EVERYTHING was blue. Luckily, we had a day left to reshoot. So we did.)

Once your movie is cut, walk away from it for a couple of days, then go back and rewatch the whole thing away from the computer, if you can. Drop it to DVD, go somewhere else, and see what you think of it.

Take notes.

Then take an axe to it, and pull out all the little bits that don’t need to be there. Cut away. Take out the lines that you don’t need, and the long pauses that seemed meaningful the first time.

Then show it to some people. Talk to them. Take notes.

Then take an axe to it again.

Then show it to some more people.

When you’ve got it to the point that the movie more-or-less works…

Then fix stuff.

Add or replace the music that needs replacing. Don’t use famous music unless you’re rich, or you never want to show the movie to anyone, ever, in a public space.

Fix the sound editing. Add in all the little sounds you think are missing. If you want, get a sound designer. But yeah. Fix it. Just wait until you reach this point to do it, of you’ll end up moving a bunch of sound effects around over, and over, and over again until the movie is done.

And when you’ve done everything you can to make the movie as good as you can… slap on some credits.

Credit everyone who helped. Thank them profusely, if you can. Why? Because you want them around to help you make another movie. Plus, it costs you nothing. It’s just words on a screen, and the people who want to turn off the movie can totally do that.

Just remember, though – if you’re making a short, little or no credits at the beginning. And make your credit crawl quick at the end, so it can be programmed easily at film festivals.

And are you done?

Eh. I’d show it to one more small group before you shove your baby out into the world at large. And if there’s a big problem?

Fix it.

By now, you’re probably pretty sick of your movie, and never want to watch it again. But if something is wrong – and I mean really wrong – you want to fix it now, before you start showing it off to the world and spending money to have people tell you where you screwed up.

And that’s editing.

How to Make a Movie: Directing

Yikes.

Okay, here’s the deal. I say this all the time, and here I’m going to say it again.

I’m a writer.

I have been paid to write, in multiple mediums.

When I’ve directed, it’s been on an amateur basis.

So all my advice is either stolen, or things that I’ve worked out while working with high school students.

So let me start with two books:

David Mamet: On Directing Film

http://www.amazon.com/Directing-Film-David-Mamet/dp/0140127224

Robert Rodriguez: Rebel Without a Crew

http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-without-Crew-23-Year-Old-Filmmaker/dp/0452271878/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305232809&sr=1-1

Why recommend those two books?

Mamet is, by most accounts, not a great director. But he brings his movies in on time and on-budget, and that’s worth something. Plus, unlike the big-name directors, he usually doesn’t have that much money to spend.

He knows how to get it done.

And the way he gets it done is pretty basic. He figures out what’s supposed to happen in a sequence, he breaks it down into a series of shots, and he gets those shots.

The actors, the sets, whatever else, are all window dressing. As near as I can tell, the man is not looking for great acting (though he hires great actors, so maybe that’s moot) or great sets, or whatever else.

He just wants a place to shoot, so he can get his shots. Then he makes everyone create the shots he needs.

I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but the book didn’t tell me what that was. So let’s pretend that’s all there is to it.

“Rebel Without a Crew” says pretty much the same thing, by the way, but it emphasizes that you should try to make your movie look awesome.

Mamet, generally, makes movies that could be stage plays, and generates excitement through drama. Rodriguez gets in his emotional licks here and there, but really, he’s an action director who seems to love finding new and entertaining ways to blow stuff up.

As a teacher, this is what I emphasize:

Get your shots.

My favorite editing advice came via a friend who asked Tim Minear (Angel, Firefly) for tips on directing. Tim said (more-or-less) go watch an editor try to put a movie together, and ask them what’s missing that they could really use.

Taking the reverse of that, the question is always: What’s missing?

So, make sure nothing is missing.

Make sure your script is on-set, even if you’re just there with a couple of friends stealing shots for your indie movie. Bring a highlighter. As you get your shots highlight them. Make sure none of your shots are missing.

When you’ve got your shots, you’re done. Not before that.

You might think, “Oh, I probably don’t need this shot.”

Well, if you thought it was important enough to put in the script, then you need to shoot it. Because a week later, when you realize that you just need, like, an insert shot… the weather will be different. Or a table will be missing.

Or, in the case of my students, the classroom they were shooting in got all-new desks.

Or, in the case of another class I was running, we got moved to a totally different building on our shooting day, and one actor-person was there the first half of the day, and a second actor-person was only there the second half.

Did we make it work? Yep. Because you have to. But with all the things that might go wrong, why shoot yourself in the foot?

Bring your script, shoot what’s in the script. Leave only when you’ve got everything.

I hear a voice crying in the wilderness, asking how to deal with actors.

Well, okay. Remember that script you’ve got? You do? Good.

What you do is, you bring a bunch of people in, and you have them read the script, and if they read it a way that you like, you cast that person.

Then you make sure the person is responsible enough to show up on the days and times you need them.

And if you do your casting right, then you shouldn’t need to do a lot of “directing” your actors. Because they already read the script the way you want them to.

I realize this sounds kind of bland, and the truth is, if you’re a big-name director, or making a movie for a big studio, you’ll probably be able to pick and choose a little more.

But in the small-time world, the smartest thing you can do is cast actors who are doing what you want them to do. Then make sure they do it again on set.

And get your shots.

Finally, a couple of thoughts on how to go about choosing your shots.

If you want some terminology, go here:

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/

When it comes time to break down your script, you can do it using storyboards, or you can do it with a shot list.

Use whatever works for you. I had my kids do storyboards, and then we never used them because we had so many issues to juggle.

But we kept the script in front of us, and highlighted things as we got them done…

And we got our shots.

Get your shots.

Will doing any of stuff I’m recommending you do make you a great director? I’m going to say no. But at the end of your time shooting, you’ll have all your shots, and you’ll be able to cut them together into a movie.

And that’s a win.

How to Make a Movie: Tech Stuff

I'll be honest - if you're coming to me for tech advice, you're already in trouble.

When it comes to technical stuff, my thoughts are pretty brood, but they relate to how I feel about actors:

Hire good people, and this will take care of itself.

Or do it yourself, and expect to screw up a lot. Sometimes, you can work around your screw-ups. Sometimes, you can't.

If you're going to tackle making a movie yourself, try shooting a short film, or a scene, and then edit it and look at it and see what mistakes you made and then correct them in future projects.

In my case, I had my students shoot the same movie twice, once with a really cheap, off-the-shelf camera, and once with a prosumer camera. They made a ton of mistakes the first time.

And you know what? They learned a ton.

So, yeah. If DIY, then try. On the cheap. In a way that no one can see your mistakes. So you can do better next time.

I spent the better part of four months reading up on equipment, secure in the knowledge that I would have to work as cheaply as possible. It makes sense. I teach a high school class.

But! I think our movies came out looking pretty good, and most importantly, you can hear what everyone is saying.

If you're making an indie movie, that's the most important stuff right there: You should be able to see and hear everyone clearly.

So, if you're going to tackle shooting on your own, here's what worked for me:

Go here and check out their video on the $25 light kit. Also, buy a copy of El Mariachi on DVD or Blu-Ray and watch the 10 Minute Film School on there. 95% of my lighting tricks came from those two videos.

The information you find might seem aggressively simple, but... One of my students used it to light a for-pay industrial video right after taking my class. Trust me, check those out.

One key thing - if you're shooting on video, chances are you need to worry a lot less about your lighting, and more about how your camera reacts to it. Check out your white balance options, and make sure that you're white-balanced for the light you're in.

Next, sound. This video covers most of the things you need to know. (Please be warned, there is some spicy language in it. But it tells you what you need to know.)

My only real thought here is, use a microphone, and make sure it's a good one. My students used a shotgun mic because that's what we had to use. It was great, and 98% of the time only picked up what we were pointing it at.

Imperfect solutions, yes, but we could hear and see everyone. And that's a win, in my book.

And that's everything I know, more or less. Tomorrow: Directing!

How to Make a Movie: More Screenwriting Thoughts

As I've been writing up my class notes as blog posts, I've been a little uncertain where to insert certain thoughts.

Screenwriting is, after all, a very broad topic, and trying to fit every little idea into one post seems a little haphazard.

Unfortunately, putting them in this second post still seems haphazard. I guess I could create a numbered list, but that just seems so official.

So, here are a few random things I've learned about screenwriting over the last 12 years.

(Yes, that's how long I've been writing screenplays.)

First, make sure that the movie you're writing is going to be interesting.

Most people, when they go to write their first script, forget that there needs to be a story. While I love Tarantino, and people love to debate whether his dialogue is really great, or merely very good, most people take the wrong lesson from his work.

They figure, "Oh, I have interesting conversations. I'll just transcribe those, and that'll be what the characters say, and later there will be scenes with guns. It'll be awesome."

Don't do that.

In every scene, something needs to be happening. Your characters shouldn't just sit down and have a friendly chat. It has to be a chat with a purpose.

It has to further the story. It has to tell the audience something about the character speaking.

So remember how I made you write out that beat sheet? The two or three pages that tells your entire story. Make sure you go back to it, all the time, and follow it.

This brings me to another thought: Don't say, "I'll fix it when I'm making it."

The other day, one of my students asked if, since they had made movies already first semester, if they could just improvise their dialogue second semester.

I told the student no.

When they asked why (sorry for the odd pronouns, but I refuse to tell you anything about my students... I think they're awesome, but who they are is none of your business) I explained that when you show up to shoot a movie, you need to have something to shoot.

A lot of actors like to brag that they improvised their dialogue, or made changes on the set. And that sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it?

Except at the end, when you have to cut the movie together, and suddenly the movie doesn't make any sense any more.

Don't get me wrong, there ARE actors who can improvise their words from the first scene to the last, and make it work. They get hired by Christopher Guest. If your actors aren't in his movies, chances are good the stuff they come up with on the day isn't going to be all that funny.

Don't get me wrong, your cast and crew will probably laugh. But when you start editing, and see what you actually shot, you'll realize your story wanders, your scenes go on forever, and you can't cut anything out because everyone talks over each other and you can't cut from shot to shot.

If you want to improvise on the set, go ahead. If you want to make changes to the dialogue on the set, go ahead. But before you decide to wing it, write great dialogue, shoot that dialogue, and then do a few takes where your actors play around.

Just trust me.

While I'm at it:

Don't write your script as a platform for your political beliefs. If you can slip some ideas in while telling a great story, give it a shot. But I promise you, they'll stick out like a sort thumb.

And by the way, don't do this even if you're going to shoot the movie yourself. A boring political screed is just as dull on the screen as it is on the page.

Same goes for your "poor tortured artist" story. Don't write that one either, because the story is, of course, loosely based on your life. No one wants to read it. Trust me. And if you make it yourself, no one will want to watch it.

If you're thinking about making an indie film, don't do a coming of age story. And it would probably be wise to avoid writing a drama of any kind. A good drama is awesome, but a bad drama is just painful to deal with. And even if you have a great scene in there somewhere, chances are no one will remember it, because they'll fall asleep in the first 20 minutes or so.

The two best (not easiest, but best) genres to tackle when writing a script are horror or comedy.

Why?

Because both of them can get to the screen mistake-and-weakness filled, and still be considered entertaining.

To my mind the two classic examples here are "Clerks" and "Phantasm."

"Phantasm" looks cheap in a lot of places. The acting is so-so. There are a ton of dream sequences that are freaky, but don't really lead up to anything. And the ending is a gotcha out of nowhere.

But it's given people nightmares for years, and spawned three sequels. Why? It might have been cheap, but it's got a lot of little things that stick with you, and creep you out.

And then there's "Clerks." Made for less than fifty grand. Shot at night, because they could get the place for free. Long takes because Kevin Smith wasn't much of a director. Really long scenes that take a while to get anywhere. Iffy editing.

But the movie is memorable, and launched a career. Why? It's funny, it's quotable, and people remember it.

People let the flaws go because the films are entertaining. Chances are, if Kevin Smith had made a drama, we would never have heard from him again.

This post has gotten long and wandered around a bit, so a couple more thoughts and then I'll call it finished.

If you're writing a movie to make on your own, you need to both think big and ask yourself, "What can I really accomplish?"

If you work at a University, and can get access to a marching band, go for it. Use what you've got to make the biggest movie you can.

But if you live in the middle of a farming community, and the nearest large school is 100 miles away... hold the band. Come up with an awesome scene in a grain silo instead.

If you're writing the movie for Hollywood, on the other hand... think really big. The bigger the better. Don't just write a little drama about two brothers who can't get along. Write a story about two brothers, one that's a pirate, and one that's a ninja.

Give them a dragon for a dad. Think really, really, really, really big.

Make a splash in whatever way you can.

Most importantly, have fun. Because if you didn't have fun writing, people aren't going to have fun reading and shooting.

How to Make a Movie: Screenwriting

Hoo boy.

Okay, here's the truth. There are WHOLE BOOKS that tell you how to write a screenplay.

Does it take an entire book? No.

I think what it takes is a screenplay.

The problem is, this doesn't work great in handout/blog format.

What I usually do in class is, I show my students my short film, Meaningful Touches. It's about seven minutes long, and the script is about 7 pages.

They watch the movie, and read the script, and in the end, they know how to write a screenplay. In theory.

In practice, they make mistakes. Which is understandable, because, as I said, there are whole books devoted to the subject. Format errors happen, and they happen all the time.

At a university level, professors will spend a whole semester teaching their students how to write a script.

When I teach, I don't have that kind of time. I have a week. Maybe two. And at the end, my students need to have a working functional screenplay to shoot.

So what I do is, I throw them in the water, hope for the best, and then show them where they're making errors, and when we're done they're writing screenplays almost completely correctly.

But how to teach this online?

Like so:

First, check out this article on the subject of screenwriting style.

Read that article twice, then print it out and keep it on the desk next to you while you write. If you're not sure of something, format-wise, check the article.

Second, read a few screenplays while watching the movies they turned into. You can probably Google the name of your favorite movie and the word screenplay and find one you'd be interested in reading. For that matter, a lot of production houses make their award-nominated scripts available online, for free.

But if you need to find something that sparks your interest, I recommend checking out The Weekly Script. Why them in particular? Lots of scripts, lots of genres, lots of good movie choices.

And most importantly, they seem to be pretty strict about making sure they're using the correct/original formatting. Trust me, this is important.

If I were you, I'd print a script or two out. Just for reference. It'll be much easier to look at it that way, and when you first start writing scripts, you'll do that a lot.

At this point, I usually create a sample script on the blackboard and use it to show my students about 95% of the stuff they'll use when writing. The only problem is, screenplays don't usually show up correctly on blog sites.

Oh, there are ways to make it work, but it's a serious pain, and I could spend a whole day trying to get it right to give you a bad example of what a script should look like.

So read a script or two. And read the article I linked. And then remember this:

Sluglines look like so:

INT. BOB'S LIVING ROOM - DAY

That tells you where you are and what time of day it is.

Action looks like so:

BOB, a fat dude in small pants, picks up his remote.

TED walks into the room, holding a gun. Ted is just as fat as Bob.

(Did you see that? The name is only capped the first time it appears in a screenplay.)

TED
Say adios!
BOB
(whatever)
No.

That's dialogue. It should be short and to the point. If you really, really, really (and I mean really) need to explain how dialogue should be said, you use a parenthetical, like you see under Bob's name, but over his line.

And that's most of what you need to know. Now it's all just practice.

For what it's worth, you can get free screenwriting software here: CeltX

That'll make it a LOT easier to do your formatting, trust me.

So practice. Write your script. Then read a script or two (while watching a movie!) and re-read the article I linked, and go over your script and correct all those formatting errors you made.

There will be plenty.

And then you're on your way!

How to Make a Movie: Writing Links and Books

I give this handout to my students when I get into screenplay writing. It's a quick list of books and links I think are worth knowing about, though not always reading about.

You'll see what I mean:

Writing Links

http://www.wordplayer.com/

This website is run by Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the two guys who wrote all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. They have a bunch of articles up about the screenwriting process, all of which are pretty great. They also have a message board, where they (and others) talking movie-writing.

http://johnaugust.com/

This guy writes a LOT of movies, including a bunch for Tim Burton (Corpse Bride, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). He also wrote and directed a very trippy movie called The Nines, which he financed himself.

http://www.scriptsecrets.net

William Martell writes cheap (VERY cheap) action movies for cable and video. He’s not very famous, but he has 19 movie credits to his name.

Writing Books

Screenplay: Syd Field

Written by a guy with almost no actual writing credits to his name, this did not prevent him from being the guy everyone used to read, years ago. His book is terrible, avoid it.

Story: Robert McKee

The “it” guy for writing in Hollywood. I’ve never read his book. His most recent “writing” job was consulting on some animated Barbie movies (really!).

Screenwriting 434: Lew Hunter

In 1998, most of the top ten movies that came out that year were taught by this guy. And he really does know his stuff. I don’t agree with everything he says, but if you follow his methods, you will end up with a pile of paper resembling a screenplay.

Crafty Screenwriting: Alex Epstein

More of a TV writer than a movie writer, but he still knows what he’s talking about. As a bonus, he has a web site and blog, both of which are worth a look:

http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com/

How to Make a Movie: Story, Part II

'Kay-so, yesterday's post was that a good story needs:

An interesting character who comes up against a series of obstacles until they win.

I should mention that the obstacles should get harder and harder. Maybe that's obvious, but I've seen people forget.

So, let's assume you've got a character, and a general idea of what your story is. Are you ready to write?

I'd say no.

Here's why:

Writing a screenplay takes time. I know people who do it in a week, or two weeks, or a month (and I know one guy who wrote one in a day, which is crazy) but generally, it's going to take some time to write 110 or 120 pages of script.

I tell my students that they need SOME kind of outline. That bit is pretty firm. You might be able to write a movie, start to finish, without one, but you'll probably stumble a lot more often, and cut more stuff, and if you get to the end you'll have to do a lot more editing.

Plus, if you get to the middle, and you don't know what comes next... then you're out of luck. Because it's your story, my friend. If you don't know what comes next, who can bail you out?

So, okay, you need an outline. What kind of outline?

That part, I leave to you.

A lot of folks use note cards. They write down a line or two that describes a scene, and they put it on the floor, and then they add another card, and put it on the floor, and then they keep moving cards around, adding some to fill in gaps, pulling some out, etc.

That works for some people.

Some folks write a synopsis type thing, where they type out the whole story in 10-12 pages. Usually, this is called a treatment, and sometimes Hollywood asks for them. But when you're nobody, they usually just want your script.

As for myself, I generally do some version of a treatment. But what I teach my students is how to make a beat sheet.

Lew Hunter uses the term "Two-Minute Movie" to describe a beat sheet. It is, essentially, every scene in your movie in one or two lines of text. Lew thinks that the write-up shouldn't be more than two pages, because ANYONE will read two pages if you stick it in front of them.

Then they can ask questions, or say it's good, or bad, or offer up suggestions.

Once your beat sheet, or synopsis, or whatever you want to make is done, it's just a matter of writing up what happens in a more complete fashion.

It's like a grocery list, in a sense. You look at what you've written, put it into screenplay format, and once one scene is done, you go on to the next.

And if you get stuck in the middle of the story, or realize halfway through writing your beat sheet that the movie idea is a stupid one, you can abandon it without having done quite so much work.

After this lecture, I give my students a copy of a beat sheet I put together from "Finding Nemo." Why? Because I had to watch the movie two-dozen times with my toddler. So I knew it pretty well. And most of them had seen the movie.

Is it two pages? At normal font type, it edges into three, but I generally shrink it down, because why waste paper? But this should give you a general idea of what one looks like.

Remember to watch for the rising action, the escalating challenges, and the character of Marlin - who goes from being an overprotective parent (which makes sense) to a dude who learns to calm down a little and stop being such a jerk to people:

Finding Nemo

Meet Marlin and his family.

Marlin’s entire family is killed – except for one egg. Nemo.

Marlin takes Nemo to school, demonstrating that he’s a smothering parent.

Nemo leaves with his school. Marlin follows.

Marlin makes Nemo angry because he says Nemo is “not being safe.” Nemo swims away and touches a boat against Marlin’s wishes.

Nemo is taken by the people on the boat.

Marlin pursues to boat, but it gets away from him.

Marlin meets Dory. Dory tries to take Marlin to the boat, but she has a memory problem and can’t remember which way the boat is going.

Marlin and Dory run into the sharks.

Dory and Marlin participate the shark meeting – Dory gets a bloody nose, and the sharks come after them. Marlin also finds and grabs the goggles that belonged to the person who took Nemo.

While trying to escape the sharks, the fish run into a bunch of land mines, and just barely escape with their lives.

Nemo wakes up in a fish tank, and learns to trust his new friends.

Marlin and Dory examine the diver goggles. Marlin can’t read. Dory can. Also, they’re being pursued by a fish with a light on its head. The only way to read the goggles is with the light, but the fish wants to eat them.

They manage to read the address on the goggles and escape the fish.

Nemo joins the brotherhood of the fish tank by swimming through the ring of fire.

Dory and Marlin don’t know where Sydney is. They ask a passing school of fish, but they don’t like Marlin. Dory intervenes, and they get directions.

Dory and Marlin swim through the jellyfish, because Marlin doesn’t trust Dory about not swimming through the trench.

Nemo attempts to clog the tank filter, and nearly gets killed. It looks like there’s no way for him to escape.

Marlin and Dory ride the East Australian current with the turtles. Marlin tells the turtles the story of everything that has happened to far. The story spreads far and wide.

Nemo learns that his dad is coming to get him. He decides to clog the filter.

Marlin and Dory attempt to find Sydney, but have to ask for directions. A whale swallows them.

The dentists decides to clean the tank. Escape is imminent.

The whale drops Dory and Marlin off in Sydney.

Everyone in the tank wakes up and discovers the tank is clean. Nemo gets scooped out.

Marlin and Dory are almost swallowed by one bird, but they fight back, landing on a dock. They are about to be eaten by seagulls, but another pelican, who knows where Nemo is, rescues Dory and Marlin.

Darla comes, and the dentist gets ready to give Nemo to her. Nemo plays dead, assuming he’s going to get flushed down the toilet (all water leads to the ocean). Marlin arrives, just as Nemo is about to be tossed in the trash.

Marlin is thrown out of the dentist’s office.

Nemo is dropped, but he manages to make it down a drain thanks to some help from his tank friends.

Marlin and Dory separate, and Marlin heads home.

Dory and Nemo run into each other in the ocean. At first, Dory doesn’t know who Nemo is. Then she remembers when she sees the word Sydney.

Nemo and Dory attempt to find Marlin. Dory has to threaten a crab with death by seagull to get directions.

Nemo and Dory find Marlin. Dory is immediately captured in a fishing net.

Nemo swims into the fishing net and tells all the fish to swim down. The fish do, the net breaks, and everyone is free! It looks like Nemo might be injured – but he’s all right.

Everyone heads home. (The movie is effectively over.)

Nemo goes back to school, and the movie revisits several of the characters we met along the way (the sharks, the turtles).

All the members of the tank also escape.

How to Make a Movie: Story Part 1

Before I get started, I want to dedicate this post to Victorine E. Lieske. Much like the super-awesome Karen McQuestion, she's been sharing a lot of publishing information on her blog, and it's frequently fascinating. Read her stuff.

(Seriously. Here's her write-up on how to create a press release. So useful.)

Okay, story.

Here's the first thing I always ask my students: What makes a good story?

Usually, at this point I have to qualify what I mean a little bit. When I talk about the story in a movie, I'm not talking about, say, a movie that puts together a thoughtful dialogue on the human condition.

I am, for better or worse, talking about a general-audience popular movie, like "Star Wars," or "Toy Story," or "Terminator." They all have philosophical points, yes, but for the most part, they are good stories well-told.

I'm going to semi-steal the idea of good story from a speaker I saw, whose name escapes me. If I remember it, I'll cite it here later.

And to be fair to him (and me) I've modified his definition a touch:

A good story follows a character you find interesting through a series of greater and great obstacles, until your character wins.

Now, if you're writing a story with a sad ending, well, then your character doesn't win. But most of the time, if you want a lot of people to see your movie, your character has to win.

Sometimes, you can make your character both lose and win. Indiana Jones, for example, finds the Ark, but then it's tucked away where no one will ever look at it again.

You should also note that I don't say you have to like the character in question. I can't say that I really "like" any of the characters in "Pulp Fiction," or "Fight Club." But I find them interesting enough to follow them around.

There are other aspects to a good story, as well. If a character can learn something about themselves, or the world at large, that's awesome, especially if it can make the audience think in new ways.

But James Bond has cycled through a lot of movies and learned pretty much nothing. He is just an interesting person who overcomes obstacles.

Okay, so now that we know what a story is (for certain versions of the word story), the next question is, how do you assemble a story?

Here's where I have to get into something that annoys me: The Three-Act Structure.

TAS, as I'm going to call it, because I don't like typing it over and over, is one of those things that just about every screenwriting book emphasizes, because they have to tell you SOMETHING.

It's not really a new idea, as from everything I've read, it goes all the way back to the Greeks. Essentially, it breaks the story down like so:

1st Act: Chase Character Up a Tree

2nd Act: Throw Rocks at Character

3rd Act: Character Knocks Tree Over on Top of Villain

The biggest advocate for this was a guy named Syd Field, who for a long time was THE reference point in Hollywood. (These days I think the book Story, by Robert McKee, has eclipsed it.)

I have no real feelings on McKee, as I haven't read his book. I have read Field's book, and I thought most of the ideas in it were obvious at best and questionable at worst.

If you really want to read a book on screenwriting that talks about three act structure, I prefer Lew Hunter's book, "Screenwriting 434." Why? Lew has actual writing and producing credits, something Field lacks.

The thing is, I don't think that the structure is wrong, per se. But I think it does make people new to writing attempt to conform to a template that doesn't always fit what they're trying to do.

Instead, I tell my students (and anyone else who asks) that as long as their character is always facing a new and difficult challenge, their story will always be interesting and have a clear thread the audience can follow.

You want that.

More in Part II, tomorrow.

How to Make a Movie: Loglines

This handout deals with loglines.

Here's what a logline is for: At some point, you're going to have to describe the movie you're making (or want to make) to another person.

A logline is your story in one snappy sentence.

The problem is, when most people try to describe a movie or book, they get lost.

Imagine trying to describe your favorite movie to another person. They want to know the premise, and you start off okay (a character, a situation) and then you start wandering around, describing everything that happens in the movie.

If you try to tell people what your movie is about, and you get wandery, it will stop making sense and the person you're talking to will glaze over.

A logline is also a good focus tool, which is why I teach it in my second class. Once you have a premise, if gives you a target to aim for. You can look at it, and say, "This is the story I'm telling."

If you change your mind, you can always change your logline. But if you started off writing a screenplay about how Bob has to save his wife from ninjas, and halfway through the script Bob has taken a job at a fish market, you've lost the thread a bit, and should look at the ninja thing again.

One other thing: A logline is not a poster line. You know what I'm saying? A poster line is one of those things like, "He came, he saw, he conquered." And then in the background there's your star, doing something star-like.

That's not a logline. A logline just lays out your story in one line.

You can do this pretty much any way you choose, but I like to put on training wheels and give my students an easy way to do it.

In this instance, I've taken the logline formats straight from Max Adams. Click her name to see the book that I took it from.

Apparently, the book is getting a new edition this year, which is great because it's ten years old. So watch for that. It's a great book and you should buy it.

And now, logline formats.

Format 1: (Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who must (objective) or else (dire thing that will happen if the protagonist fails).

I always do the Harry Potter series with this one:

The Harry Potter series is a fantasy about Harry Potter, who must stop the evil wizard Voldemort or else Voldemort will take over the world and enslave everyone.

That's really rough, but it works.

If your movie is less plot-driven, try number two:

Format 2: (Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who (inciting incident that creates the situation the story revolves around).

One of my kids used The Hangover, so let's try that:

The Hangover is a comedy about a group of guys who go on a bender and lose their friend, who they must find before tomorrow, when his wedding commences.

Again, that's very rough, and you'll want to play with getting your wording just right. But once you've got it set, you can memorize it, and much more easily answer the question: So, what's your movie ABOUT?