formerly known as /fmg/ and /swg/ edition
Useful links:
>Filmmaking beginner's guide
learnaboutfilm.com
>Screenwriting software
Trelby
CeltX
Fountain
let's come around and create a sturdy OP headline with useful links/books/guides to consolidate the general
Other urls found in this thread:
international.famu.cz
theyshootpictures.com
filmmakingessays.tumblr.com
soundcloud.com
youtube.com
screencraft.org
scriptpipeline.com
scriptpipeline.com
finishlinescriptcomp.com
store.finaldraft.com
pageawards.com
tblaunchpad.com
filmfreeway.com
scriptapalooza.com
scriptapaloozatv.com
oscars.org
strawpoll.me
twitter.com
I make pretentious arty farty movies because those are the movies I like and i dont have to justify my work here
this is /blog/ now btw
This is a good start.
I suggest we add these two links:
>FAMU required viewing list
international.famu.cz
>TSPDT 1000
theyshootpictures.com
Maybe add NoFilmSchool under Useful Links/Resources.
And what about doing a strawpoll for each thread?
I also started a tumblr to repost and curate video essays and film analysis, I just haven't gotten to posting yet. There's a submit option so if you guys know/have any essays you think we should add just send it in.
bump
I'm trying to come up with a short to start my indie film career.
It seems like there's a route for directing features. Make shorts/feature and send them to festivals and get noticed after you make something good enough.
But how about for t.v. writing? TV execs don't look at scripts unless it's recommended (usually an agent) and agent's won't read a script from a nobody. So how does one break in?
Where do you live?
but sure to keep us posted
>So how does one break in?
You need to work at the station or know someone who does basically. Alternatively you can roam around festivals and try to see if there is any tv connection involved.
Anyone else from the UK who lives outside London?
I want to work on films there but it's fucking expensive.
UK
I'm undergoing a bit of a crisis.
I feel like I'm not really improving myself as much as I can every day, not researching lenses or techniques or anything like that, and I lost my subscriptions to Premiere, After Effects, and Avid because I'm not going to school this semester so I'm gonna have to leech off a friend's computer for that.
Plus I haven't made anything in months. I'm angry at myself but not doing anything to change it.
Pic related is all I've worked on so far, basically just an extended version of that Jojo's Bizarre Adventure "To Be Continued" meme. I have a vague idea of where I want this to go.
Shooting a no-budget video with some friends.
What is a good, cheap recorder I can plug a shotgun mic into?
Near a city? Shoot a 25 minute Michael Mann style thriller of this guy chasing down this mysterious young woman.
But the gag is when he finally catches up to her she's gone, she never existed, the little girl was him.
Nikon d3300 is a great investment for beginners, I've bought one for my first experiments and I'm still using it
Better yet the little girl is just a dog and it turns out he's just into fucking dogs.
I think he means an audio recorder.
The Zoom H4n is the most commonly recced one.
Two kindergarten teachers take their classes on a field trip. They haven't really talked much while at the school before, but become friends while working together during the field trip. After getting the kids back to school to be picked up by their parents, the two young women decide to hang out . They go to a bar to drink. Inside, there is a boxing match playing on a tv. It turns out the two ladies have two key mutual interests:
1. Teaching young children and setting them up for a bright future
2. Pure unadulterated fucking bloodsports
They decide to combine the two interests and start an underground fight club at the kindergarten they work at with the children as the fighters. After a while, the club has become popular among gamblers and the other employees also want to join in with their classes. There is now a serious circuit going on and certain champions arise, the most notable being probably Lily "Athena" Johnson, the only girl able to take on the boys. Meanwhile, the two teachers become closer and closer and eventually move in together.
After a few months, parents start complaining about the injuries their children have every day when they come back from school. This reaches a climax when during the final championship match of the fighting season (one month) Athena bites the nose of male favorite James "The Pounder" Clark. Athena refuses to give the nose back and starts wearing it around her neck as a trophy.
1/2
Yes
>Michael Mann style thriller
What do you mean by this?
James parents threaten to sue every single person related to the school and the two teachers flee in a van. Soon after beginning their escape they find out Athena is a stowaway on their vehicle. The three women drive around while on the run of the police, making money by having Athena compete in CCTs (Child Combat Tournaments) wherever they go.
In the end, they are caught by nine highly and lethally armed policemen. After a short attempted (and failed) escape, Athena and the teachers are being escorted away by five policemen. While almost being led into the van, Athena starts giggling. We see that she's not actually cuffed and has four adult noses in her right hand as she starts maniacally laughing and the screen fades to black.
2/2
thief, manhunter, heat, miami vice
bascially
>urban setting
>lots of stylized lighting
>shots of characters staring at water
>thematically about professional men who are really good at their job, sometimes squared off against someone on the other side of the law
You ever seen a Michael Mann film? He's asking you to do a nightcore movie, something slick and noir-ish that glorifies being in the city at night.
Alllllrighty then
I have 3 screenplays i'm currently working on, all at different stages of development, but I am nearing completion on the first, and am fairly confident that the other two will eventually be completed.
My question for any anons is: what do I do once they're done? I have no idea how I should go about trying to sell them. I also don't know if it's worth it to attempt to make the movie myself. I know plenty of talented actors and directors from school, but no money. Any advice/tips/anything?
Nice. I like it up. Keep it up.
starring Adam Sandler as Athena and Rob Schneider as both teachers
I like the idea but isn't it overused a little?
If you really like the script don't try to make it yourself because you'll hate it. You should really only direct the scripts that you have intentionally written for you to direct, because only then you'll be writing knowing your own limitations.
Anyway the only way you'll have anyone interested in your feature scripts is by having work done through shorts and other stuff. You need to start filming or at least find someone who can.
Local film commission is opening funding again for sep/oct. Took a break from my current script to format my old finished one into a presentable format. Hopefully my proposal goes through and I get the dosh to make this a reality, even if its barebones as fuck, I still gotta pay good people. 1 location, 1 actress, no music, no dialogue. Story told entirely through camerawork, set design and physical acting.
Let's fucking do this.
>write 16 page screenplay
>realize it's essentially Inland Empire lite
I don't know whether to embrace it or ditch it and move onto something else.
Use it and transform it into something else.
Embrace it. All practice is good practice.
Very little original ideas left, user. But HOW you tell that original idea.. that's where its at. Have faith, embrace it. Make this particular telling of the story yours.
it's not bad if you're trying to emulate styles you like (it's how everything is made), but it's important that you do have something to tell otherwise it will just be pure imitation
I unironically enjoyed this.
Interesting, I never thought of it like that. You're probably right though, I know I'm a pretty good writer but I don't know jack shit about directing.
Kind of bummed there's no easy way to just submit a script somewhere, outside of screenwriter's labs like Sundance. My current location makes it pretty impossible to collaborate with anyone I know, since they're all in LA or NYC, but I guess it's easy to grab one or two actors and make a short.
In my experience, there's never any harm in writing. You can always get better, improve yourself, or even get inspired for another idea. If you're writing with the intent to produce, then just know the only difference between paying an homage and ripping something off is the quality of your work. If it's good, you'll be praised for it, but if it's bad, you're an IP thief.
Wow, thanks guys. I'm gonna take a step back from it and see how I can give it my own spin on the idea.
Looks presentable. How important is having a script in this format with all the caps and spacing in entails? Is it just in America or global?
Anyone else have a tendency to start a project all excited and then get depressed revising it because it inevitably isn't as good as it was in your head?
I'm not sure, I always assumed screenwriting language was universal.
That's the standard. A lot of scriptwriting software pretty much does it for you. I use Celtx, it's a good free web based one.
That's what happens with everyone though, you just have to create a (well researched/thought out) draft first and when you revise it you'll know exactly what's wrong with it.
Just please don't start writing right away, pic related.
Yeah this happens to me like once a week. I get a cool idea for how to start something then never make it farther than 3-4 scenes.
This is the best possible advice for anyone attempting to write a script. Unless you're doing some Linklater aimless dialogue-fest, don't just start writing.
You have to win one of the higher ranked contests. It's pretty much guaranteed to get you representation. For example, the two winners in screencrafts recent comedy script competition are both now represented by Circle of Confusion, which was the agency with the most original spec script sales last year I believe.
Thank you. I have a script but I wrote it on Notepad as a stream-of-thought thing. Like "Ok this happens then this guy appears and say that he's gonna fuck his mum and then yada yada". I also have big chunks of descriptor paragraphs which I apparently need to break into several lines just to make them easier to read. My short film script is 4 pages long (5 if you include the title page). This is gonna add 3+ pages by itself.
This comes up a lot
Do one of the following
>enter a festival for screenwriting (more common than you think)
>convince an indie filmmaker to produce your script
>write something great without inhibitions and send it to literally everyone until you get interest and management/an agent
Also, as much as i hate reddit, you might enjoy r/producemyscript
Yeah, it's tough
The trick is starting with literally no budget and just using your mates and spending more and more each time with the knowledge of where money most needs to be spent
Keep going
Your projects should slowly start getting closer and closer to how they are in your head. And when they do, it's a feeling that's hard to describe
What's more fun, directing or writing?
I am currently working on two different Body Snatchers type scripts and I'm worried they are too similar. One is set in a town called Wishington Welles and the only thing the town has to be proud of is a really old wishing well. The football team is called the Well Wishers, they have an annual fair and parade, etc. It's the only real draw the town has. One day, an alien entity lands in the woods nearby and drags itself into the wishing well. A nerdy kid goes to make a wish that his bullies would leave him alone but a tentacle shoots up, rips his head off, smells his brain, puts a parasite inside him, and whips the body thousands of feet through the air to the town. It splats and what remains crawls around the high school and corners a bully/Chad. Basically this entity is trying to take over the minds of high value organisms so it can have lots of influence and power. Low value people it simply uses as zombie/Thing-esque cannon fodder when deception won't work. I don't know the heroes or much of the story here yet but basically it's supposed to be an 80s splatter film style body horror.
will continue
Directing something you wrote. C'mon.
>writing for t.v.
This thread should only be for people making art (features, shorts) and not shitty soap opera mediums.
I find directing is more cathartic but it's also very stressful
Writing can be cool to get your ideas on paper, but for me it's frustrating cause the entire story already exists in my head and it takes so long to transfer it to paper
For me it's directing. Because it means you're actually making something, and it's coming into fruition. With writing there's a lot of unknowns on whether or not it will turn out good.
This thread is for everything until we get /film/ (ie never)
Everyone here is in a similar boat of attempting to break into the industry. Leave your pretensions at the door
Directing what you wrote. Writing by itself is like making amazing food but you don't get to eat it. Directing something you didn't write is enjoying a really good meal that you didn't cook. Both amazing experiences in and of themselves, to be sure... but true nirvana is when you get to enjoy both and present something to the world that came from your mind and heart from start to finish.
Is it better to crank out a project and move onto the next one or spend a lot of time revising one project? Particularly for picture editing.
The other one is about a shitty small town punk band that thinks they witness a Satanic ritual in the woods. They investigate this while realizing that people around their town are acting weird, dressing the same, cleaning up, getting boring. Even their most punk friends get jobs and haircuts and stuff. The town committee and police devote themselves to cleaning up the community and turning the town into a nice, boring, safe place to live. Eventually they discover it was not a Satanic ritual, but some sort of alien technology. The town (and world) is being taken over by aliens that are all about efficiency and productivity. The punk band sets out to fight them but eventually all but two end up getting turned. The singer and drummer remain. Struggling to survive and hide, the drummer decides it's time to give up and join them, it can't be that bad and maybe it'll even be better. The singer can't face this and decides to die as punk as possible. He sees nothing but futility and living aimlessly in the alien lifestyle and would rather be dead, so he decides to march into the town police station and kill as many aliens as he can. They've learned that being taken over by the aliens turns humans into much softer, more breakable beings, basically huge pussies. So through an incredibly violent finale with a massive body count the singer manages to kill all the cops and then some, but is badly wounded and sits on the ground smoking a cigarette. The drummer (now turned) and a large group of aliens approaches him and the drummer talks to him a bit. The singer says "You know what I hate more than cops? ... Posers." and it cuts to black. This one is meant to be more of a punk infused anti-society message, with more action oriented violence than horror.
Can I get some thoughts on whether or not they are too similar and how I could differentiate them? Also opinions on the ideas in general are much appreciated.
Cranking out shit is what most people do and that's why there's a huge mountain range of pure shit for every golden nugget.
Balance the two, nigga. Put some heart and fucking soul into it, but don't get so attached to something you act like Gollum with the Ring. One makes shit, the other makes overwrought shit if it makes it at all.
For all you struggling writers, I just saw this on r/producemyscript
r/ProduceMyScript/comments/4xdn90/seeking_unique_microbudget_feature_to_bring_to/
They want a script 80-100 pages and will fund it between ten and fifty grand
Could be a doorway in
I'm working on a couple of comedy shorts, for practice. They're not all I have, but comedy seems to drum up the most interest. I hope that, within a year, I'll be good enough to actually submit my shit anywhere and either do a few competition runs, or get indie production interest.
pic related, one of the first things I ever wrote and it was sitting in the recycle bin waiting to be deleted.
The second one seems very similar to World's End (Edgar Wright). They both have a weird, suburban horror feel to them, like a Carpenter film. My main critique is that they both feel way too over the top, but if it's that you're going for I'd say keep working on a script both and see how they turn out.
What are your favourite filmmaking documentaries?
>80-100 pages
>i can never write a script past 5
Oh fuck, I forgot World's End was a thing, shit, that is kind of similar if I recall because Pegg's an edgy cunt in that isn't he? Damn damn damn. They are meant to be mildly over the top I guess, I'm not sure I follow. I just like appalling violence.
Oh fuck, the other one's just Slither, goddammit. offing myself tonight
How important is it to write CUT TO: between every scene? Does it get redundant reading it when you have lots of small scenes like say a bunch of scenes that are essentially one or 2 lines of text in the script?
Or is it mandatory just so the reader can visualize?
That was for a feature with people who can write, but can't break in
If you can't write past 5, is it because your stories are finished within 5 or because you can't motivate yourself?
Dialogue takes up a lot of space when characters have proper conversations
Keep at it, the first time you write a feature script you'll be so fucking proud of yourself
>2-16 has two and sixteenth. Inches, that is!
>SHUT THE FUCK UP!
That's actually pretty funny
youtube.com
This guy's youtube channel is great if you're looking into what camera you should buy. He always list's the equipment he used, so you can compare the look to what you want to achieve.
Realizing you essentially wrote something else is one of the worst feelings. This guy knows too I wrote a script about one guy's mistake/crime trickling down and effecting the people around him, switching off main characters and eventually bring it full circle in the end.
Then I watched A Place Beyond the Pines and was in utter shock. Nothing quite stings as much.
Ripping off another film isn't the worst thing in the world
It's one thing to build a career off it *cough* Tarantino *cough*
But in terms of practice, it's almost expected
The first short film I wrote and directed was consciously a streamlined rip-off of Only God Forgives. Some parts worked, others didn't, and then I moved on
tldr; write it anyway for practice and fun
In screenwriting classes I've been told that it's an older style that isn't used anymore. No one will be turned off if you don't use it.
Don't do it, unless absolutely necessary (for emphasis on the transition, etc.). If it's a regular scene transition, your scene headers do that job for you and writing CUT TO: excessively will get your script thrown out.
Do you think if I maybe combined the two it would be less World's End-y? Like I think it might be easy enough if I just change the structure around and maybe make the aliens work a little differently
I mean, I feel like this is semantics. The planning, outlining, drafting, all of those steps are usually considered part of the writing process. When someone says "just start writing", they're really saying "stop talking about working on your project and actually start working on it." By doing the research and drafting out your story, you are engaging in the writing process.
Thank you very much, Anons. I plan on directing this too, so I'll just make a set of notes for myself then.
How do you guys _get_ ideas? Do you just let something strike you? Do you poke around for inspiration? I feel like I'm a strong writer but not really an "ideas" guy.
>Writing story about man on trial for bombing a building
>Researching terrorist attacks in the US.
Am I going to get vanned?
depends
there's a difference between googling how to do something vs instances when something has happened
If you're really in doubt, use the library, but college students write essays on terrorist attacks all the time without getting arrested
We should keep a list of competitions for scripts and short films updated in the OP.
>only 5
How is this possible?
You always have to be looking. Any time you find your interest caught by something just think: can I make a story out of this? The smallest thing can give you an idea.
And always write an idea, no matter how small, down. Over the past year I've come up with nearly 40 ideas for fairly unique stories, and about 5 of them are actually good.
Depends how you approach it, take a neutral side and you're probably ok
inspiration is tricky because there's no right answer. You never know when you'll think of an idea, or when something will strike a chord with you. The only advice to really be given is to be observant and keep an open mind, and always have something to record any ideas you get.
Example, I've "sat down to write" many times before with the intention of getting a project started, but nothing was coming to me. However, for each of the three projects I'm currently working on, I was inspired while out just doing random things. One was at work, the other was at the gym, and the third was in the middle of a conversation I was having with one of my friends about a different movie.
I've also heard from people that reading the local news helps, because you come across these weird and unique circumstances and situations and get ideas for characters, or smaller character driven stories.
Thanks, these are all great ideas.
I write a stream of conscious every day at the end of the day. Sometimes it's a diary entry, sometimes just random things I'm thinking that's popping into my head at the moment. That's where a lot of my ideas come from.
where do i find indie filmmakers irl? where do they like to hang? i want to make music for films.
My time to shine:
>screencraft.org
>scriptpipeline.com
>scriptpipeline.com
>finishlinescriptcomp.com
>store.finaldraft.com
>pageawards.com
>tblaunchpad.com
>filmfreeway.com
>scriptapalooza.com
>scriptapaloozatv.com
And for you eventual Oscar hopefuls:
>oscars.org
Someone else can organize them. Some of them are done for the year already, but that just gives you more time to prepare for next year.
What's the best way to get feedback here? Post a couple of pages as a PDF?
Over the past four or five months I've put together a 118 page script (first draft was 183 pages). I'm hoping to get it prettied up, register it with the LoC/WGA, and hopefully send it to some competitions and hope for the best.
film schools, reddit, and craigslist
I want to make music for films too. There's a subreddit for movie makers looking for help. Sometimes people post asking for a sound track. Start there maybe?
Does anyone use Talentville?
1. Put music on soundcloud/whatever
2. Go to local film festival
3. Meet and greet.
attach a page as an image and someone might read it
sum up your script in a paragraph or two and you'll get more of a response though
In my experience, most just link the PDF on google docs. Congrats of finishing a draft there, man.
Mann is shit
alright here we go:
not if done right
nice edge m8
don't run with it though