/swg/ - Screenwriting General

What are you working on?

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Working on a pilot: crime thriller in the tone of True Detective/I Saw the Devil, but I'm using natural dialogue similar to The Wire. I'm bringing in a few different main characters involved in the media, the police and the victim's family.

I'm sick of the Broadchurchy grim kind of procedurals with people staring into the distance, so I'm trying to mix in horror elements and the occasional humorous line with the dryness of something like The Sopranos "Hannibal Lecture".

My issue is that while I know the ending and where my characters are heading, it's hard to truly finish a pilot, at least for me, without having written ahead.

I took a break from the pilot (writer's block) to work on a short film I'm writing that's a throwback to 70's Spielberg, kind of like Stand By Me, but at the same time, not.

What's everyone else working on? This post has got my gears turning again.

Has anyone else sold/produced anything?

also post loglines because they're fun to discuss

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Have you written an outline for the whole season?

I have the main beats down. but beyond that, no. The devil is in the details - change a line of dialogue and I have to re-write/remove a scene. Par for the course though.

Anyway, I essentially broke it down into 6-8 episodes. I think the less the better, because then it will never sag. I know the ending. I know the twists and turns of the story, but I don't think I know enough about a few of the characters yet.

At times I think, "shit, this isn't for me", but then I look at how far I've come, the progress I've made and it keeps me going. There's a certain catharsis I experience when writing. I feel as though I have something to say too. I want the characters and their experiences to craft the narrative, not the other way around.

I'm struggling with how much 'punishment' I can dole out on the characters though. I'm not afraid to kill my darlings, but I'm wondering whether less happy endings is fair on an audience. I don't know, anyone else struggling with that?

Russian/Ukrainian mobster mystery/thriller involving a young girl trafficked into the sex industry who becomes caught up in a power struggle between two powerful mobsters only to be saved by someone from her past.

Sounds good. Where are you writing from? America? Hollywood love the Eastern European mob bosses, don't they?

Solid logline though.

I've been struggling with a character death for a while. They're the victim of a brutal murder, but it's important for it to be violent to show the character of the murderer.

Yeah, there has to be a setup and a payoff. How brutal is the murder? I was actually thinking about this the other day. I think implying and perhaps showing a bit of a murder or character fate is perhaps more powerful than showing someone being brutally murdered.

I think a lot of the violence we see on television and in the movies is bullshit. When we see something visceral like, say, Eastern Promises (I can't think of a better example), where the violence seems very real; bodies fall and react like they would, as opposed to the glorification and almost faux violence we see in mainstream films - people getting shot and being thrown across the room etc. That's why - in my opinion - when you see just pure, raw and rather nuanced violence, it's much more powerful. The only thing I can think of right now is maybe shotgun blasts in True Detective and the way violence was depicted in Sicario.

So, how are you going to show your murder?

Studying the violent scenes that have had the most effect on me, it's always the ones where the violence is implied that have the longest lasting effect.

So I plan to have the actual violence off-screen, where instead the audience sees a reaction to it happening. (Think Theon's rape moment in GoT).

I think the ear scene in resevoir dogs is a good reference to what I want it to be like, but a bit more serious.

I had a idea of a movie about a man who is abducted by aliens but when he returns he's considered a fraud and a liar so he has to prove himself
I have a small idea of the plot but I'm focusing on the ending now which I have a decent idea of what I want.

What kind of tone is your piece?

Cheers yeah It could work in Mexico or possibly South East Asia but Eastern Europe fits best imo and their women are super hot

I've been tossing around a massive twist at the end but can't quite get it right, something like:

>girls father is killed by mobsters when she's young
>raised by grandma
>tricked into working as a dancer/whore by mobsters
>hired to work at mobster meeting between US and European bosses
>blah blah blah
>US mob boss turns out to be her father, kills everyone, saves her, the end

Needs a load of work but I'm having fun trying to tie it all together

A boy falls in love with a girl.

Unable to confess, he is gifted by a deus ex machina with the girl's phone number. Never minding the strange area code, he immediately calls her, and is overjoyed to find out that she has a crush on him as well.

But, the next day, when he recounts the previous day's confessions to the girl, she only looks at him with a perplexed expression. After some investigation, he finds out that the girl he called is not the same girl he fell in love with. In fact, she doesn't exist in this universe at all. She is the girl's alternate universe counterpart, who has fallen in love with the MC's own AU self, who too is blissfully unaware of her crush.

Hijinks ensue as the two strike up a deal to give each other their darkest, most private secrets in order to equip the other with the weapons they need to conquer the heart of their other selves. While the two chase their respective loved ones, DRAMA ensues as they begin to fall in love with each other instead and question the NATURE of LOVE.

OP: youtube.com/watch?v=ycfdfinG_P8
ED1: youtube.com/watch?v=hXDNGS9V4Us
ED2: youtube.com/watch?v=m4DyTjrruVo
PV: youtube.com/watch?v=JcVGDV67L-g
EP 1: youtube.com/watch?v=o_rz1bluG_k
EP 13: youtube.com/watch?v=JLUjMWRCzic

Eastern European women are fucking gorgeous, yeah. I pretty much only watch Legalporno scenes because of them.

Anyway, twists are hard, because you're constantly trying to pull the wool over the audience's eyes. That's why I personally don't like Nolan's work, Shamalan's or even The Usual Suspects, because it's as though the narrative is built and crafted to go BAZINGA LMAO!! at the end. I guess if it's earned, it will work. But twists are often trite and if you haven't build the foundations, either obvious or underwhelming, especially if the heft of the film is built on it.

Make sure it's natural. Make sure it's not too obvious, but at the same time, obvious all along.

By the way, is this an action film like Taken? Or is it more Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?

I'd watch it.

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Yeah completely agree about how hard it is to get the twist right but I'm finding that's what I'm enjoying the most about trying to write it, it's like a brain teaser

>By the way, is this an action film like Taken? Or is it more Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?
More like Eastern Promises so not much action, maybe a couple of short, brutal fight/torture scenes and that's it

I know exactly what you mean. There's a rush when the blocks begin to fall into place. Being an ex-addict, that's probably why I love writing so much.

Wind that tension though, son. Sporadic violence I reckon is best when the audience least expect it or are sitting on the edge of your seat. I hope you're able to get it produced, man. Good luck!

kek for dead meme

why doesn't meme magic ever work for Sup Forums, but works for other boards?

does anyone use the save the cat beat sheet as a template? did you find it helped you a lot?

Bane was the definition of meme magic.

I believe in the 3 act structure, as in a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. I don't really think the save the cat works for me and shouldn't really be followed closely. Just my opinion, anyway. Straying from the formula is important.

Right now i'm trying to spit out a little dark comedy short about a 35 year old woman that falls into lust with the image of Christ

But on the grander scale i'm working on a feature length sci-fi action political thriller. It's about a fictional city on west coast US a few hundred years after most people have left our rapidly deteriorating planet for the stars
>The city rises to power on earth after the advent of a powerful, lightweight, versatile alloy
>They gain the attention of the nations that left earth
>One of them, what formerly made up America and several other countries, quickly invades the city
>They're met with a great deal of residence from the proud citizens of the city but use terror and lethal force to quell them
>They occupy it and force them to produce the alloy

The story takes place around 50 years after the invasion. It follows a young, passionate revolutionary who seeks to overthrow the oppressors, and a middle-aged man, ambassador for the city, who seeks to work with the foreign rulers.

The basic idea is to do a full 180 over the course of the story. We go from seeing the revolutionary the hero of his people and the ambassador as a greedy traitor to the revolutionary as an overzealous maniac and the ambassador as a wise old soul who had everyone's best interests in mind.

In the end, the whole city gets eaten up by the conflict.

I know it's pretty ambitious, probably won't ever get made (at least not for quite a while) but this is the first idea I've had were I've still felt good about it for so long and the ideas keep coming.

What do you guys think?

Write. Write. Write. And then re-write. Sounds cool. Science fiction political thrilller sounds like a genre I'd watch. What's your inspiration?

It's an action screenplay about a bunch of young adult girls who have their memories taken away and are trained to be assassins. The act one break is basically battle royale to figure out the best killers in the class.

Tear me to fucking shreds swg.

Sounds like a decent flick desu senpai-chan

I like the idea, but it only sounds like the first third of a film.

Who are their targets? What's the conflict?

what are some non-jewish production companies? I need to know where to send my screenplay to.

An all female version of Seven Samurai.

What's it about?

not feeding the zionist machine

Trying to escape the jew in the film/tv industry is like trying to get blood from a stone. Just swallow your pride and become part of their agenda.

Working a punk noir film where a man is chosen by a criminal organization to be an outside contractor after they witness him in action in a huge bar fight, and they need someone as reckless and violent as him. They tell him he is being hired because they need an outsider to clean out some bad eggs in the mob, but in reality they just need a stupid punk to set up as the fall guy for a murder that already happened. So the same night of the fight they send him to do a job and beat somebody up, and when he gets back he meets with the head of the mob and gets drugged, wakes up in a room with a brutally murdered girl.

Cops are beating down the door, pressure's on, etc. Not sure how he gets out but he does and starts to uncover the mystery and in the meantime dealing with a femme fatale who is at first manipulating him but eventually maybe genuinely falls for him. It's kind of a brutal action noir because while solving the mystery of who set him up he kills his way through a lot of people.

It ends with a reversal of Out of the Past, when the chick tries to force him to go away with her he just stomps her to death, swaps clothes with the dead guy and writes a suicide not/confession to all the murders from the dead guy's POV then escapes

Been working on a pilot for the past 4 months that I'm now submitting to competitions. It's done for the most part but there are still a few structural things I think need accounting for which may mean revisions. I also still need an outline for the season.

I don't wanna give a logline because I'm paranoid even though I've registered it with the WGA.

>At times I think, "shit, this isn't for me", but then I look at how far I've come, the progress I've made and it keeps me going.
Same, man. Keep on trucking. This is a craft and industry that demands endurance.

My render is 96% completed 15 hours later
Combination of weak laptop, not pre-rendering and using a lot of visual effects to achieve the right colour balance

I'm always cautious about my expectations because this is my 3rd proper short film
My 1st was unfinished and riddled with production issues, but set a nice benchmark
My 2nd I initially thought was good and my friends all told me it was, then I realised what was wrong and got non-yes-men to break it down for me

So far, I'm struggling not to call my 3rd great because it's hitting everything I want it to so far. But I haven't even seen it all together yet so I'm almost definitely jumping the gun. It's really annoying, trying to contain my excitement while also preparing for crushing disappointment

that actually sounds pretty cool, if cliched though

How do you get into screenwriting? I have a bunch of story outlines but I can't into dialogue. I just know key things I want to happen.

write shitty place-holder dialogue
fix it when the rest of the script's finished

Yeah, I need to flesh it out a lot more to defeat a lot of the standards of noir/mystery stuff. It's supposed to be about the bad guys underestimating him because they think he's just a dumb punk but the raw energy and violence he carries himself with push him through and allow him to completely destroy them. Same with the femme fatale type, she literally can't understand why her charms and tricks aren't working because he just isn't interested in human relationships. It's going to be interesting setting a mystery to such a frenetic, punk rock type of pace that I want

is it realistic to believe that your script has a chance of being optioned or bought if youre an outsider? serious question im not making fun of you guys, I write too

Make outlines, write shit down whenever you can, develop existing ideas, keep fucking writing shit down no matter how small or insignificant. It's better to have an overdeveloped idea than an underdeveloped story.

Going along with that don't expect to have anything decent until after at least three re-writes, MAYBE.

Stop posting that because it's already a thing.

fictionpress.com/s/3206139/1/

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I'm thinking about writing a psychological horror/thriller in the vein of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but I'm stuck in my outline about the very end. Don't know whether to kill the protag, give her a happy ending, or to make it ambiguous.

How would you guys make a logline for a CIA-script?

>Enter Bill, the average joe who somehow found himself playing in the big league. He's an CIA-agent who's about to find out, that being an agent is harder than it seems to be, once one finds out whom grabbed Dr. Pavel...

????

>It's fatal attraction meets Good Luck Chuck

I'm writing my first screenplay ever currently. It's not very original, just a mish-mash of horror ideas. 5 young people, 2 girls, 3 guys. Get into a car crash and wake up in the cellar of an incestuous, cannibalistic family. It's one of those, "how do we get out of this movies." I don't think it's looking to great so far but whatever...

This is what I do.

too great*

Fuck me.

I know most of you are more into features but does anyone have an idea on how to break into t.v. writing? Everything I've seen seems to fall under:

1. Know someone
2. Get a job in LA as a PA, then writer's PA, then Writer's Assistant, then staff writer
3. Write a novel (or comic book or make something) that gets traction and gets you noticed

I would most likely have to do number 2, starting as a PA. But I've read stories that it can be a crap shoot. Guys stay as PA's for years. Or you get to writer's assistant but don't get staffed.

Any ideas?

As for writing - well, I'm mostly writing spec scripts of old shows I love. Was originally only writing original pilots but it's a nice change of pace to try and match the tone of another show.

Some by-the-numbers slacker film because I'm a novice trying to learn the craft.

Two housemates; one trying to write his novel in between working menial jobs to pay rent, the other unemployed living off the support of his wealthy parents and spending his time lusting after the girl living downstairs but too afraid to approach her.

I'm not sure where I'm going with it, I've got 57 pages so far but each scene just feels like I'm rewriting the beginning to the story.

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Doesn't sound like there's adequate conflict. Conflict is the fuel that keeps shit going unless you've got the skill to make it interesting without a whole lot of conflict.

since you asked;

The whole film takes place following the transformation of these girls into killers. Their targets are each other.

There is exposition for who they would be targeting if they survived. The key conflict is essentially, they're losing a war and are about to be occupied.

>write a pilot
>raise some money, call in some favours
>produce said pilot
>pitch it to executives