Here’s the full playlist of National Histories event, a series of conversations with key people from the National Theatre’s 50 years reflecting on their experiences. A personal favourite is Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton, who first met at the National in 1982 whilst working on Guys and Dolls.
It can’t be a revolutionary idea, but I’ve never read it in a book or been taught it specifically by any of my outstanding teachers, so I’ll just say it here.
Write your spec script to entertain your reader, not as the draft you’re going to shoot.
Consider how you read a novel, and how you direct your own head movie while you’re reading it. It’s exactly the same. The more room you leave for a reader to richly imagine how your story looks, the better off you are.
Your story sells your story in ways that using your words to direct, DP, cast and decorate the sets cannot.
Knock yourself out in your action lines, use your writer’s voice.
For example, everyone has a picture in their head of a seedy bar, it lives in the collective imagination. It’s a waste of words to discuss the dusty bottles on the shelves, the mismatched furniture and dirty windows. That’s a given.
If you want to make it into a thing beyond calling it “the worst bar in town”, which is acceptable, BTW, go at it from a crazy new direction that adds something interesting, like…the bartender traps a roach on the bar with a shot glass and leaves it there.
Now that is a seedy bar.
Passive voice, generic tracking shots, descriptions of things that the reader will do all the heavy lifting to imagine for themselves, those go under the heading of “it took me out of the read”, which loosely translated means, “It kept me from directing it in my head.”
This is not to say that your action lines should fill with flowing, novel-like prose. That is bad. Think in images, but summarize them in your own voice.
Happy Fiction Friday everyone!! Today, I wanted to talk about the show I am currently working on! I am directing School House Rock Live! Jr. at an elementary school near where I live, I am beyond thrilled to get to direct again and I thought I would share some thoughts on it as we are in our second week of rehearsal! I have about 32 kiddos in my class (they are fifth and sixth graders) and they…
Thank you so much to everyone who supported our Seed & Spark crowdfunding campaign. We are still in the process of creating and posting all of our social media shout-outs. Here is a fresh batch of very special thank yous to some of our wonderful supporters!
J.J. Abrams discusses his addiction to lens flares.
“I know I get a lot of grief for that. But I’ll tell you, there are times when I’m working on a shot, I think, ‘Oh this would be really cool… with a lens flare.’ But I know it’s too much, and I apologize. I’m so aware of it now. I was showing my wife an early cut of Star Trek Into Darkness and there was this one scene where she was literally like, ‘I just can’t see what’s going on. I don’t understand what that is.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I went too nuts on this.’
This is how stupid it was,. I actually had to use ILM [Industrial Light & Magic] to remove lens flare in a couple of shots, which is, I know, moronic. But I think admitting you’re an addict is the first step towards recovery.”
WE DID IT! Thank you so much to everyone who supported us throughout our campaign. It was a challenging but exciting journey and we can’t wait to share this project with you.
Our campaign ended on Thursday, August 16 at an exciting 101% which totaled $35,557! We honestly couldn’t be more shocked and happy at the results. We will continue posting updates on our Seed & Spark page and on social media as we finish up pre-production, and start shooting the final 2 days on our pilot episode in October.
Thank you to everyone who contributed this past weekend to make our Dollar4Dollar Rush a HUGE SUCCESS! We received 63 new pledges totaling $2,056.00 in 3 days. And our generous anonymous donor has promised to matched that amount before the campaign is over.
We are nearing the end. We are approaching the FINAL 72 HOURS. Our campaign MUST end on Thursday, August 16, at 10:00 AM PST. And here’s what needs to happen (at the time of writing this update):
We need $7,624 to be Greenlit. Seed & Spark requires us to reach at least 80% of our goal or else we receive zero funding.
We need $14,624 to be fully funded. Although we are fully prepared to finish shooting our pilot episode in the event that we only make 80% of our goal, this is the ideal amount to cover our production budget and the campaign costs.
We need 64 more followers in order to unlock the next level of filmmaker perks, which include equipment rental discounts and professional consultations.
SWEENEY TODD (2007) FIGHT CLUB (1999) DARK SHADOWS (2012) ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010) THE KINGS SPEECH (2010) CORPSE BRIDE (2005) THE CROWN (2020) CINDERELLA (2015) PLANET OF THE APES (2001) HARRY POTTER (2007-2011)
