What makes a good movie/script

[Blind_Lawyer]

I was with you until this. Save The Cat is good for people just starting out but its very cookie cutter-y. Most of the professional screenwriters despise this book. It's paint by numbers. Writing a screen play is part art, part science. I recommend two books by Syd Field. "Screenplay" and "Screenwriter's Workbook".

Screenplays by nature are cookie cutter-y. I think that was the point. You're right that sceenplays are part art, part science, but I thought Snyder outlined the science well. The art aspect is much harder to teach. I think that comes down to the individual.

 

[roach]

Screenplays by nature are cookie cutter-y. I think that was the point. You're right that sceenplays are part art, part science, but I thought Snyder outlined the science well. The art aspect is much harder to teach. I think that comes down to the individual.

They can be but it depends on there person...if you go to 100 people and ask them to paint a rose...you'd expect all paintings to have a stem, petals, maybe thorns and maybe the color red but no 100 paintings will be the same. What Save the Cat does is says every painting of a rose must have four red petals, three thorns and one long green stem. STC takes the creativity out of the equation. When I sit down to write...my inciting Incident could come at page 10 or page 12 or even page 15 or 20. What governs where things happen in my scripts are the needs of the story not a pre-packaged story matrix.
I used to rely heavily on STC until I became a working screenwriter in Hollywood. It is something that everyone used in the early 2000s when the book came out but it's falling out of favor with the screenwriting community.

 

[Blind_Lawyer]

They can be but it depends on there person...if you go to 100 people and ask them to paint a rose...you'd expect all paintings to have a stem, petals, maybe thorns and maybe the color red but no 100 paintings will be the same. What Save the Cat does is says every painting of a rose must have four red petals, three thorns and one long green stem. STC takes the creativity out of the equation. When I sit down to write...my inciting Incident could come at page 10 or page 12 or even page 15 or 20. What governs where things happen in my scripts are the needs of the story not a pre-packaged story matrix.
I used to rely heavily on STC until I became a working screenwriter in Hollywood. It is something that everyone used in the early 2000s when the book came out but it's falling out of favor with the screenwriting community.

To a point. He did say once you understand the rules you're allowed to break them. And I think that's a valid point. There's a lot of mavericks out there who want to do things differently than the template, but I think to do that effectively you have to know the template inside and out first. And that's what I got from Save the Cat: Here's the template, learn it, know it, live it...and then build your own identity off of it.

I didn't think Snyder was saying you have to operate within these parameters, but rather, that you have to know, understand, and respect these parameters.

That being said, I certainly didn't agree with everything in his book. But I thought his process was helpful. I've written 6,7,8 drafts of scripts before and had I organized them on a board and with a beat sheet and index cards and all that, I could have achieved the same effectiveness in 2 drafts.

 

[roach]

To a point. He did say once you understand the rules you're allowed to break them. And I think that's a valid point. There's a lot of mavericks out there who want to do things differently than the template, but I think to do that effectively you have to know the template inside and out first. And that's what I got from Save the Cat: Here's the template, learn it, know it, live it...and then build your own identity off of it.

I didn't think Snyder was saying you have to operate within these parameters, but rather, that you have to know, understand, and respect these parameters.

That being said, I certainly didn't agree with everything in his book. But I thought his process was helpful. I've written 6,7,8 drafts of scripts before and had I organized them on a board and with a beat sheet and index cards and all that, I could have achieved the same effectiveness in 2 drafts.

while Snyder has said his ideas weren't the law...a lot of execs in Hollywood and readers took it as law. I've had situations of people flipping to certain pages in a script I have written to see if the thing STC says should happen there happens there.

 

[Blind_Lawyer]

while Snyder has said his ideas weren't the law...a lot of execs in Hollywood and readers took it as law. I've had situations of people flipping to certain pages in a script I have written to see if the thing STC says should happen there happens there.

I've heard of that since before the days of Save the Cat. I've heard that at first glance, readers look at the first three pages and the last three. If that doesn't turn them on, they won't read it for real.

It's a brutal industry to break into. I'm sure there's a ton of really good movies that ended up in trash cans as screenplays, never getting off the ground.

 

[roach]

I've heard of that since before the days of Save the Cat. I've heard that at first glance, readers look at the first three pages and the last three. If that doesn't turn them on, they won't read it for real.

It's a brutal industry to break into. I'm sure there's a ton of really good movies that ended up in trash cans as screenplays, never getting off the ground.

Im not talking about looking at the first three pages and if they're hooked they buy it...I'm talking about someone turning to page 10(not reading to page 10...just straight going to it), not seeing an Inciting Incident and determining the script is terrible.

 

[TheBat812]

Books are great. But it depends what you want. Do you want to just write screenplays? Or to also direct? What kind of involvement do you want?

In any way, the key to getting insight into how your stuff is working is to see it get made, and how it translates to the screen. Start writing a few shorts. There's a reason you start with shorter works in film school, and that's because if you can't write and capture an audience in a short medium, and make them care in that small amount of time, you haven't really proven to anybody (including yourself) that you'll capture them in the longer mediums. Alot of film students/amateurs just assume people should be interested in their story and characters, but it is the writer's/director's jobs to make them interested. Tone, setting, circumstance, character, etc. These are all tools to capture the audience.

So read the books and learn structure, but remember that narrative structures are guidelines because of how they affect character/story/plot but more importantly how the audience interacts with those elements. Most importantly, just learn what you enjoy about different mediums that deal with character/plot/story, and then practice applying those things. It will take quite a few efforts before you truly find your own style and voice, but once you get there, it will have been well worth the effort and you'll thank yourself for it.

 

[Blind_Lawyer]

Im not talking about looking at the first three pages and if they're hooked they buy it...I'm talking about someone turning to page 10(not reading to page 10...just straight going to it), not seeing an Inciting Incident and determining the script is terrible.

I'm not saying that's what you were talking about; I was saying that was something I've heard, and it relates to what you were talking about, hence, why I brought it up.

 

[SuperSanchez]

When you say A-Z stories, are flashback origins ok, like in Man of Steel?

 

[MrSharigan]

Story and Emotions does it for me.