MAN
I miss you.
The woman stiffens.
WOMAN
I told you, it's over.
The man lowers his gaze to the table.
He reaches to take her hand. She stiffens and moves her hand away.
The man's gaze lowers to the table.
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| Structure your film into 3 acts - beginning, middle and conclusion. Act 1 should be about 25% of your film, Act 2 about 50% and Act 3 should be about 25% again. Calculate how many pages you should spend on each act - if you want your film to be about 100 minutes long, make the first act 25 pages. You get the idea. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Zara's Screenwriting Tips | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Remember, 1 page of screenplay is about 1 minute of film. Use this to calculate the length of your film. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Just a few things to keep in mind when you write a script. These little rules apply to feature length or short films. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1. DON'T MAKE IT UP AS YOU GO ALONG. This sounds obvious, but it's amazing how easily you can end up digressing away from your original story as new ideas come into your head. I've had ideas turn from psychological thrillers to action to buddy movies.Try to have a starting structure you can try to stick to. This can be as simple as a simple list of bulletpoints you can tick off as you finish them. Whatever, just always keep your original intentions in mind. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 2. KEEP IT RELEVANT! Who cares if the barman serving your main character has a failed marriage? Who gives a shit what your main character has for breakfast? If something has no significance to the story, or doesn't move the plot along, then leave it out. Details are important, but only if they have a purpose. Perhaps the way your character keeps rubbing the back of his neck shows that he is neurotic. This is fine, but only if you want US, the audience, to know that he is neurotic. Where does his neuroticism lead? If it's pointless and doesn't influence the actual plot, then leave it out. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 3. FORESHADOW. If a car's brakes are going to malfunction and send a character to his death, then build up to it. Don't spring a surprise from nowhere - ''whoops, who saw that coming?', but give a sign it will happen early on. Maybe the brake fluid's dripping out as he gets into the car. Maybe we saw his arch nemesis fiddling with something under the car and sneaking away before our man gets in. This can give the audience a feeling of dread, a feeling of 'uh oh, something bad's gonna happen.' Anticipation INVOLVES the audience more and gives dramatic irony. We know something the character doesn't. Foreshadowing can be as small as a man with a slight toothache in Act 1 who then has to knock his own tooth out with an ice-skate in Act 2, as we see in Cast Away. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 4. DON'T TELL IT, SHOW IT. Talk is cheap. Film is a visual medium, don't forget. Half the fun of watching a film is being able to interpret what the images in front of us mean, be it a meaningful glance a mafia boss gives his badly behaved henchman we just know is gonna get whacked, or a massive explosion in the house of a man we just learned has the mob on his tail. We can work things out for ourselves, so don't patronise your audience. Avoid using words where images say it better. Have a look: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A young couple are sitting at a table in a small cafe. The man looks mournful. MAN I miss you. The woman stiffens. WOMAN I told you, it's over. The man lowers his gaze to the table. |
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| OR: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A young couple are sitting at a table in a small cafe. The man looks mournful. He reaches to take her hand. She stiffens and moves her hand away. The man's gaze lowers to the table. |
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| A crap example, but you get the picture. The same emotions from the first extract have been expressed in 3 lines. Probably more effectively. A picture tells a thousand words. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||