I’m not a dummy but I have found learning script writing really hard. REALLY hard. It is like moving my brainspace into a different gear. It’s like melding structure and creativity and common sense and another dash of imagination and willingness to risk.

When I look at the work of others around me starting out, I see passion (more than not) but little brain. I see people pursuing some imaginative adoration but not ‘thinking’ about what audiences connect to and how structure actually aids the process of evocation and interpretation.

I also see people thinking small. I often talk to people privately and they say “well, my script isn’t meant for anything more than my state film commission”..and…I kind of cringe. If that’s the way you think then I suspect you will always produce minor and unfulfilled works.

I’ve stepped up my freelance work so I can pay for good consultancy and I am aiming high and because of that, I constantly press and push myself. Instinctively we (more often than not) know if our work is crap but half the time we fail to ‘hear’ that and respond. Don’t accept second best of yourself and you will be more likely to sense your own level of talent.

Talent I suspect is a function of that word IMAGINATION, willingness to suspend the ego and accept honest hard critique, not being precious, understanding the technical issues, understanding socio-political issues, and being able to find new edges to well known themes.

And being alert and allowing information to ‘kick in’. I read one thing on this site that led me to go back and rework a section of my current step outline. I intend to spend 4 months on a step outline before I even start on a script proper. When I move beyond basic learning I may be able to short circuit this but, for now, hard work and slog is part of the process. In early learning, perhaps this is good as ‘talent’ gets. ?? :)

How did we get to this place, where dreams are so remote and unreachable that only the chosen few with a special birthright can reach it?

Shame on anyone who would crush the hope of someone daring to dream.

I don’t think it takes anything more than courage to be an artist. Everything else you already possess — talent, imagination, whatever you want to call it.

It may be withered by atrophy, and the road ahead may be arduous. But the only thing that can stand in your way is you.

Everyone else can just shut the hell up and get out of the way.

Answer: I think so.

All the writers I know, actually I’ll rephrase that; professional artists I know have one common characteristic: A STRONG WORK ETHIC.

Some are married, some are single, some have mortgages, some live alone in rented flats, some are on the poverty line (trust me this is just as hard to write amongst as being married, kids and a full-time job, probably harder, insanity always knocking at the door)some are wealthy and live the life of Riley.

What matters is a strong work ethic and the goals that you’re trying to achieve, this combined with NATURAL TALENT and IMAGINATION, which really are two sides of the same coin and I find it weird that the Unknown Screenwriter creates a scenario whereby the two are separate entities, gimme a break!

IMAGINATION you either have it or you don’t, (Re: Tony Gilroy) likewise with TALENT, the two are married together and generally cultivated from early childhood onwards. Having a family and a mortgage is just an excuse, you either believe in your stories, your ability or you don’t. Look at the time you waste, carry a stopwatch and time how much time you waste in a month add it up and I’m sure you will be horrified. We all waste time, professional writers probably waste the most, if you cut out TV and some general socializing by fifteen percent and try and write a page a day, in a 120 days you’ll have a script, it might be a jumbled mess, but its a start, spend another month working on a page a day, slowly you will make in roads, but if the story is defunct from the onset, your just bullshitting yourself and that kind of practice is just living in a delusional bubble, sadly thats where a large percentage of wannabes languish.

all the best

My perspective is different, maybe because I’m a veteran filmmaker and can remember why shorts used to be important. When I first started writing, you could only realistically enter the market with a feature film shot on S16mm or 35mm, which meant budgets had to be in excess of $2M.

Digital at that time just couldn’t be used to a quality product. So, writer/directors used to make shorts on S16mm and 35mm in order to get a showreel, which they combined with their script, in order to get finance to make the film.

Cheap HD and Final Cut Pro blew all of that out of the water. So, now there is no financial imperative to make shorts. Shorts are like your appendix… we’ve out evolved them.

Where shorts are useful, are for wannabee directors, who are trying to put themselves though DIY film school… and if as a writer you want to take that approach, then shorts make tons of sense. The only problem is, the market doesn’t favour unknown directors in the same way it does unknown screenwriters (God, that works on so many levels! LOL)

I actually do agree with you that test shooting scenes from a feature is a good idea. However, you never really understand whether a feature script works until you see it assembled on the timeline.

So it’s stages really… everyone needs to develop in a way that suits them creatively.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-spec scripts… but I think a sensible career strategy is to play both ends of the game… but not get caught in the middle.

So, pitch $34M specs to the majors and make produce sub $7,000 movies yourself.

However, the dangerous ground is that in the middle… when you start making $25,000+ movies, because for some reason they pick up the worst of both ends with none of the advantages. The budget is too small to do the job properly, but there is enough money to pay the less competent. At the same time you end up having to tailor your script to the bargain bin direct to DVD distributors. So, massive compromise and quality restrictions.

With a micro-budget you bypass all that, remove the market pressures and at the same time get the opportunity to pull off a “Primer”… control and creative freedom. Works for me.

Producing a feature film is a daunting task and one that an insurance saleman with kids isn’t going to readily jump into. My suggestion is not to get a director or producer but a standard home video camera on the weekend. Shoot some scenes, edit them together on your mac or pc. Learn the basics then worry about climbing the mountain.

For those writers who have spent some time honing their craft I would absolutely agree with you.

Mark

Film is a visual medium. It is a business, an industry… driven by profit. Filmmakers, with imagination and natural talent (luck and financial backing) are entrepreneurs. Like so many other enterprises in the world today, it’s the independent vs the corporate.

Most aspiring scriptwriters are trying to plug into the corporate structure: writing a story — not as a blueprint for film project — but as a perfectly formatted written 110 pages for the “reader”. What does this reader have to do with making films? As screenwriters, we have hocked our wagons to the wrong star.

“I really, really want to see more screenwriters making proactive decisions to become writer/producers… to find local indie directors and to actually make films.”
This is it! This is exactly the premise, where our energies should be! We should stop pounding on the doors that will not be opened for us. A known producer inadvertently made a very enlightened statement: “It is easier to put together the funding for a project than it is to have a major studio exec read your script …”

We (supposedly) have the talent and imagination to create something from nothing. Why don’t we create a new process? Why do we continually tone-it-done so that the status quo will throw a little swag our way? Why do we have to pimp ourselves with the hope of being taken seriously?

“…as writers we can’t afford to continue seeing ourselves as employees of the studio system… that model of working are rapidly becoming obsolete, to be replaced with a more entrepreneurial approach to screen-writing…”
Amen, bro.

We should be exploring new funding procedures, pooling our resources (like what IndieVest is doing), stop wasting our time and money on the old haggard process that is making the scriptwriting “after-market” wealthy?