When I read the title to the script I was expecting a story that was going to ram religion down my throat. I was wrong. It was a very good action movie, or at least it will be when it's made, that is faith based.
It had some very good action sequences in it as well as moments when you didn't know a character was going to die, but did.
The only weak point is that the hero, David, starts out as a reluctant hero. He doesn't want the responsibility, he just wants his easy life of being a shepherd. This has been done before along with the people who convince him to join the fight to save Jerusalem
There was good imagery in it too. For example it mentions that an area of Jerusalem is a slum that makes Jakarta look like a five start hotel. Gets the image of the horrible living conditions these people are living in. They're the lowest of the low, the dregs of the society.
What I learned from reading the script is how to finally write a chase scene. For example (not from the movie):
JANE
She runs down the alley and sees that she's got at a dead end. She looks around and sees three dumpsters on each side. A place to hide to postpone or cancel her impending death. She climbs in to the middle one on her right hoping that her pursuer will choose the opposite side.
As she quietly closes the lid she hears footsteps running towards her.
MIKE
Mike enters the alley and sees Jane's nowhere to be found. Could he have guessed the wrong alley? he scans around and sees the dumpsters.
That's one example of how to do it. The basic point to doing a chase scene is that you have to show each character's point of view in it not just one.
I hope you enjoyed today's review and lesson.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Update on September goals.
Hello everyone and welcome back.
Today I completed one of my September goals and that was to finish the board for the 7th draft of the story I'm working on.
Later today I will start working on the actual draft for it as well.
One important thing to remember when setting goals and accomplishing them is to reward yourself. My reward will be to buy a DVD movie.
Today I completed one of my September goals and that was to finish the board for the 7th draft of the story I'm working on.
Later today I will start working on the actual draft for it as well.
One important thing to remember when setting goals and accomplishing them is to reward yourself. My reward will be to buy a DVD movie.
Overcoming Obstacles
Hello everyone and welcome back.
Today I'll talk about overcoming obstacles to our writing. I had a minor one this week and that was the hard drive on my main computer crashed. A relatively minor one since I have a lap top as well as a desk top computer. But what to do in this situation if you don't have a back up computer and can't afford to buy one?
Lots of things:
Some other obstacles you might face are a perceived lack of time. I say perceived as we all have the same twenty four hours a day in which to find time to do our writing. You may think you don't have time but I would challenge you otherwise.
One of my main inspirations for this is Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden. Here's the things he does:
Here's the stuff I am doing:
If it means not watching football or other sports so be it. What has the potential to make you financially successful sports or writing? Unless you're an elite athlete it ain't sports.
Look at J.K. Rowling. She set aside the time for writing and has now become one of the most successful writers ever with the Harry Potter series of books and movies. While you may not get to that level wouldn't it be better to find out for sure one way or the other?
Keep those thoughts with you as you're writing or doing something else.
Bye for now.
Today I'll talk about overcoming obstacles to our writing. I had a minor one this week and that was the hard drive on my main computer crashed. A relatively minor one since I have a lap top as well as a desk top computer. But what to do in this situation if you don't have a back up computer and can't afford to buy one?
Lots of things:
- Work on a scene hand writing it out on paper.
- Work on log lines for other stories
- Work on the development of another story. You should always have other stories on the back burner.
- Work on five lines for stories.
- Work on a beat sheet found in Blake Snyder's "Save The Cat"
Some other obstacles you might face are a perceived lack of time. I say perceived as we all have the same twenty four hours a day in which to find time to do our writing. You may think you don't have time but I would challenge you otherwise.
One of my main inspirations for this is Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden. Here's the things he does:
- Lead singer for a hugely successful heavy metal band.
- Commercial airline pilot.
- Published novelist
- Produced screenwriter for Crowley.
- Plus probably the most important thing is he has a family as well.
Here's the stuff I am doing:
- Full time security officer at a local university where I do a 3 on 3 off shift rotation.
- Part time security guard for a private guard company on my days off.
- Working on building a network marketing business.
- Working on building an affiliate marketing business.
- Working on writing screenplays.
If it means not watching football or other sports so be it. What has the potential to make you financially successful sports or writing? Unless you're an elite athlete it ain't sports.
Look at J.K. Rowling. She set aside the time for writing and has now become one of the most successful writers ever with the Harry Potter series of books and movies. While you may not get to that level wouldn't it be better to find out for sure one way or the other?
Keep those thoughts with you as you're writing or doing something else.
Bye for now.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Fright Night Script Review
Hello and welcome back to My Screenwriting Journey.
I've almost finished the board for the 7th draft of the story I'm working on. And this will be the first script review of the month.
In traditional Hollywood fashion they're doing a remake. This one is of Fright Night. Somewhat updated for the time, people are missing in a neighborhood. The belief is that they have up and left their homes as they haven't been able to make their mortgage payments from the economic downturn. The main character's former best friend believes it's a vampire that's taking people away.
They also have a sort of Disturbia inspired bit with the main character spying on the neighbor and breaking into his house.
There is also the required horror movie script part where it starts off showing people getting massacred as a "what's to come" for the people of this town.
While I enjoyed reading the script and felt it flowed smoothly with good pace I would say I've pretty much had my fill of all the vampire movies. Hopefully though it'll be a good movie to watch when it comes out.
I've almost finished the board for the 7th draft of the story I'm working on. And this will be the first script review of the month.
In traditional Hollywood fashion they're doing a remake. This one is of Fright Night. Somewhat updated for the time, people are missing in a neighborhood. The belief is that they have up and left their homes as they haven't been able to make their mortgage payments from the economic downturn. The main character's former best friend believes it's a vampire that's taking people away.
They also have a sort of Disturbia inspired bit with the main character spying on the neighbor and breaking into his house.
There is also the required horror movie script part where it starts off showing people getting massacred as a "what's to come" for the people of this town.
While I enjoyed reading the script and felt it flowed smoothly with good pace I would say I've pretty much had my fill of all the vampire movies. Hopefully though it'll be a good movie to watch when it comes out.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
September Goals
Hello Everyone and welcome back.
Last month I was able to achieve my goal of finishing the sixth draft of the screenplay I was working on. However I was unbale to cahcive the goal of reading fifteen screenplays and reviewing them.
This month however I will make that as part of my goal to read fifteen scripts and review them. Also I will be doing my best to complete "The Board" for the seventh draft of the story.
For those of you who don't know what I mean by "The Boar" buy Save The Cat by Blake Snyder to get an indepth description of it.
But to give you the simplified version of it: The Board is basically a spot on the wall, bulletin board or anything you can think of that will enable you to post index cards or stick it notes on it. It's sectioned off for Act One, Two and Three - the most normal structure for Hollywood Screenplays. You use the index cards to denote a scene, what happens in it, the conflict and the emotional change to it.
Remember every scene has a beginning, middle and end to it. A feature can be seen almost like a whole bunch of short films all rolled into a big massive feature. I say almost as they all have to tie in together to create payoffs later on in the story.
Last month I was able to achieve my goal of finishing the sixth draft of the screenplay I was working on. However I was unbale to cahcive the goal of reading fifteen screenplays and reviewing them.
This month however I will make that as part of my goal to read fifteen scripts and review them. Also I will be doing my best to complete "The Board" for the seventh draft of the story.
For those of you who don't know what I mean by "The Boar" buy Save The Cat by Blake Snyder to get an indepth description of it.
But to give you the simplified version of it: The Board is basically a spot on the wall, bulletin board or anything you can think of that will enable you to post index cards or stick it notes on it. It's sectioned off for Act One, Two and Three - the most normal structure for Hollywood Screenplays. You use the index cards to denote a scene, what happens in it, the conflict and the emotional change to it.
Remember every scene has a beginning, middle and end to it. A feature can be seen almost like a whole bunch of short films all rolled into a big massive feature. I say almost as they all have to tie in together to create payoffs later on in the story.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
One August Goal Achieved
Hello,
To announce I have achieved one of my August goals and that was to get the 6th draft of a script completed.
The other goal to read and review 15 scripts - so far I've done 2, only thirteen more to go. I'll be doing my best to get 13 done in the next five days. Currently writing this at 11pm. This week I had family down to deal with the last job involving my mother's death and that was to spread her ashes over the Atlantic.
But the main thing is I got my most important goal for screenwriting and that was to fininish the 6th draft. I will be reading that script and then the 7th draft of the script will be morphing into a 1st draft of a different way to tell the story.
To announce I have achieved one of my August goals and that was to get the 6th draft of a script completed.
The other goal to read and review 15 scripts - so far I've done 2, only thirteen more to go. I'll be doing my best to get 13 done in the next five days. Currently writing this at 11pm. This week I had family down to deal with the last job involving my mother's death and that was to spread her ashes over the Atlantic.
But the main thing is I got my most important goal for screenwriting and that was to fininish the 6th draft. I will be reading that script and then the 7th draft of the script will be morphing into a 1st draft of a different way to tell the story.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Sunday Script Review
Hello,
This week my Sunday Script review is for the scripts Die In A Gun Fight and Contagion.
Die In A Gun Fight - writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari.
The two writers sold this script while still in NYU film school. An impressive start to what is hopefully to be a long and profitable career.
What it is about is two young people from rival families fall in love. The two kids, Ben Gibbons and Mary Rathcart, from well to do families never seemed to grow out of their rebellious youth stage which leads to conflict with their families. Conflict is something that every script needs.
It had good pace to the script and the dialogue was good. The only weakness to it at this stage was that the main characters did not yet have (at this stage in the script's development) clearly defined goals.
One of the fathers seemed to. Ben's father is in a lawsuit against a corporation that developed a teletransport device. The reason is simply that a man went through the device ended up committing a murder and then claimed that the device destroyed his soul which caused him to commit murder.
So Ben's father is trying to prove the existence of the human soul. I won't spoil the ending for those who haven't read the script in case it doesn't change much when it reaches the theater.
But the only weakness, which can be fixed, is that a script needs to have characters that have goals and flaws which are challenged by the story. That's the lesson learned there as throughout I didn't seem to care much about the characters.
CONTAGION
Contagion written by Scott Z. Burns is another script/movie about a virus that gets unleashed onto people and the race against time to prevent a catastrophe ensues.
The difference here is that with most of the movies of this type they only show that one part of a city or country (usually the USA) is effected and it must be contained quickly.
Here it's a little more realistic in that there are places all over the world, China, USA the main ones that get hit with a deadly disease. The reality here is that this is what would most likely happen today with our high speed travel there will be a high death toll before people realize that something's amiss.
That and the fact that the corporations trying to find a cure will undoubtedly be trying to figure out who gets what percentage of the profits before while people die.
The only flaw is that with this script there doesn't seem to be any main characters who have flaws and have conflict with each other. It could potentially use something similar to The African Queen in which the characters played by Bogart and Hepburn started out as rivals and were brought together by fighting the Germans. This could potentially strengthen the script.
This week my Sunday Script review is for the scripts Die In A Gun Fight and Contagion.
Die In A Gun Fight - writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari.
The two writers sold this script while still in NYU film school. An impressive start to what is hopefully to be a long and profitable career.
What it is about is two young people from rival families fall in love. The two kids, Ben Gibbons and Mary Rathcart, from well to do families never seemed to grow out of their rebellious youth stage which leads to conflict with their families. Conflict is something that every script needs.
It had good pace to the script and the dialogue was good. The only weakness to it at this stage was that the main characters did not yet have (at this stage in the script's development) clearly defined goals.
One of the fathers seemed to. Ben's father is in a lawsuit against a corporation that developed a teletransport device. The reason is simply that a man went through the device ended up committing a murder and then claimed that the device destroyed his soul which caused him to commit murder.
So Ben's father is trying to prove the existence of the human soul. I won't spoil the ending for those who haven't read the script in case it doesn't change much when it reaches the theater.
But the only weakness, which can be fixed, is that a script needs to have characters that have goals and flaws which are challenged by the story. That's the lesson learned there as throughout I didn't seem to care much about the characters.
CONTAGION
Contagion written by Scott Z. Burns is another script/movie about a virus that gets unleashed onto people and the race against time to prevent a catastrophe ensues.
The difference here is that with most of the movies of this type they only show that one part of a city or country (usually the USA) is effected and it must be contained quickly.
Here it's a little more realistic in that there are places all over the world, China, USA the main ones that get hit with a deadly disease. The reality here is that this is what would most likely happen today with our high speed travel there will be a high death toll before people realize that something's amiss.
That and the fact that the corporations trying to find a cure will undoubtedly be trying to figure out who gets what percentage of the profits before while people die.
The only flaw is that with this script there doesn't seem to be any main characters who have flaws and have conflict with each other. It could potentially use something similar to The African Queen in which the characters played by Bogart and Hepburn started out as rivals and were brought together by fighting the Germans. This could potentially strengthen the script.
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