» Posts Tagged ‘story’
The Pixar storytelling rules that Emma Coats tweeted have gone viral — she even has a session at the Austin Film Festival this fall to discuss them in more detail. Perhaps to illustrate her points, Ms. Coats will use LEGOs. Because LEGOs are awesome. And visual. And guys can relate to LEGOs in ways they may have difficulty relating to Ms. Coats. Thanks to Redditor ICanLegoThat (Alex Eylar) and SlackStory, Ms. Coats has a headstart. Check out a few examples of Pixar’s storytelling rules in LEGO form. More »
Pixar’s relentless success at the box office with truly original tales has convinced screenwriters the world over that the animation studio holds the secret to amazing storytelling. In all honesty, hyperbole aside, Pixar does hold the secret to amazing storytelling, but they are more than willing to share it with the rest of us. Pixar’s Brave writer/director Mark Andrews took a moment to describe the studio’s story process in a phone interview podcast with ScreenwritingU’s Jenna Milly. More »
Director and Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats (@lawnrocket) recently tweeted out 22 tips for storytelling, one of which ends with “Endings are hard, get yours working up front.” From day one I always knew how I wanted Manchild to end — and throughout a year and a half of writing, the ending has never changed. Perhaps that’s why, while it is not the first feature I’ve written, it will be the first feature I actually make (more news on the project when I have some… soon). Here are the tips, handily compiled in list form: More »
How Sydney Pollack Learned from His Characters' Lives and Arguments in 'On Story'
Austin Film Festival recently kicked off the second season of On Story, its PBS series with directors and screenwriters curated from interviews from the festival. In the season premiere, the legendary late Sydney Pollack identifies the moments in the development of his classic films Tootsie, The Way We Were, and Jeremiah Johnson, when he discovered the keys to making his characters work in the context of the stories he was trying to tell, and how those discoveries were translated into the scripts and the final films. In this same episode, David Milch, creator of NYPD Blue and Deadwood, also describes how he created the character of Andy Sipowicz and how he channeled his frustration of not being able to tell the biblical tale of Paul into a storyline for Deadwood. You can check out the full episode here: More »
'The Quest': Spend 6 Months Being Mentored by Hollywood Screenwriter Scott Myers
Speaking of Scott Myers and the Go Into The Story blog, Scott (writer of K-9, Alaska, and Trojan War) is doing something that I’ve never really seen done before at this scale, and with no entry fee. Starting today, he’s going to give four screenwriters the chance to write a screenplay and be mentored by him for a total of 24 weeks. I’ve been following this for the past week, but Scott has been writing posts describing the foundations of screenwriting and what he expects from those who submit — and they are very important to increase your odds of being picked. So what is the contest, that Scott is calling “The Quest”? I’ll let him explain in his own words below: More »
What Hollywood Script Readers Really Think About Your Screenplay
Getting a producer to read your script can be almost as daunting a challenge as getting beyond the blank page. But before you even think about a producer reading your script, you need to get your script past the script readers. Contrary to what you may believe, script readers want your script to be good because they want to read good scripts. Recently, Scott Myers of the Go Into the Story blog on The Black List stumbled into a late night Twitter conversation with The Bitter Script Reader, Nate Winslow, and Amanda Pendolino, three Hollywood script readers, and he captured their conversation for our educational purposes. Here are some of the highlights: More »
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