The basics a professional screenwriter must master.

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So you want to be a screenwriter. So too do a lot of people. 1000s of screenplays are written every year, but only a few get made.

Film stories look easy. That’s why there are so many aspiring screenwriters. Nothing is further from the truth.

One of the reasons: the glamour of film and the tremendous amount of money involved. Highest paid writers in the world by word. Million dollars for 20,000 word screenplay. $50 a word. The Golden Ring is huge, for all involved, particularly at the Hollywood level.

But you will have lots of competition.My experience with cab drivers at festivals. Everybody had a story they think will make a great movie.

I hope this series of talks will help you get yours made.

The ABCs of screenwriting:

Art

Art is why I am in this business. Transformative experience: graduate student seeing Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence.

Cinema is literature. Cinema as art.

Real films show us something about the three fundamental questions: who are we, why are we here and where are we going?

Art cannot be learned. It is innate and can be revealed. It just takes a lifetime.

Business.

Now this is where a lot of people decide they never want to be a screenwriter.

Realizing whether or not a screenplay is any good only happens when it is filmed, which costs a lot of money:

A 100-page screenplay in a million dollar production costs $10,000 a page. (Show blank paper).

Your producer needs you - to pay for a vacation home, a bigger BMW or send the kids to the best university. They are business people. They have to make money or they are out of business.

You have to learn about the business according to where you live and what kind of production you envisage.

Craft

Now this is something I believe can be learned.

The medium demands a particular type and structure of story. McLuhan’s rule.

Big story, emotion or idea. Must have the entertainment or involvement for 100 minutes. Each moment must be engaging.

Hitchcock: Drama is life with the boring bits cut out.

The story must move because the images move. Even when actors are still, the story must involve the audience in what’s happening or going to happen.

Even the dreaded flashback only works when it moves the story forward.

There is only the present in cinema. What we see is happening now, even when it depicts the past or the future.

Now to the elements of craft.

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