Mind Melding 101

Since I can’t mind meld with you, dear reader, I will have to slam on the brakes before I’ve even begun.  For before we can enjoy debating how character determines plot or vice versa, we must first discuss the mechanics of a screenplay.  (This is where we sound our collective SIGH.)

Yet, by understanding that it is because scriptwriting is a collaborative endeavor, it should help to comprehend why formatting is so vitally important.  What it all comes down to is this:

Money.

I know, you hoped I was going to say fame and fortune.  Quick: name your favorite movie.  Tell me who starred in it.  Easy, right?  Who directed it?  Maybe that’s equally as easy.  Now tell me who wrote it.  Unless you’re like me and follow the published lives of favorite screenwriters and playwrights, you probably can’t name 50 percent of the writers for your top ten favorite flicks.

That’s how famous you can hope to be as a screenwriter.

Okay, so let’s steer back to money.  This is show BUSINESS people.  The quicker we understand that, the quicker we’ll understand why there are rules that are meant to be followed.  (Some can be broken, but that comes MUCH later…once you’ve learned them all and can break an occasional one on purpose for a specific effect.)

When correctly formatted, one screenplay page equals roughly one minute of screen time.  And in this business, even when a movie is shot on digital cameras, time is literally money.  So, when a decision maker gets your script, one of the first questions is: how many pages is it?  (Translation, roughly how much is this thing going to cost me to produce?) 

Of course other variables affect the bottom line, such as special effects.  Weather is a special effect.  Really.  But there are ways around costly weather events.  For instance, if you need rain to produce the right mood, set the scene inside and let the window show us the rain.  The SFX team can rig a hose or two above the window for much less money than it would cost to bring rain to an exterior shot.

So, here’s your primer on correctly formatting a screenplay:

Type face: Courier New

Size: 12 points

Margins: 1.5 inches left, one-inch all other margins

FADE IN: and SLUG LINES are left flush and ALL CAPPED

Transitions such as FADE OUT: or the final FADE OUT. are flush right and ALL CAPPED

Action paragraphs run the entire width of the page in upper and lower case.  Fragments are acceptable.  Ideally, paragraphs should run three lines or shorter; while an occasional four-line action graph is acceptable, any more than that slows down the reading too much.

CHARACTERS NAMES APPEAR CAPPED above their dialogue at three and a half inches from the left of the page.

Dialogue appears in upper and lower case indented on both sides at two and a half inches on the left, roughly the same to two inches on the right.  (It’s ragged right, so do your best guess if you are not using FINAL DRAFT or MOVIE MAGIC SCREENWRITER formatting software.)

Screenplays are ALWAYS in the present tense.

A slug line is: INT. LOCATION – DAY  It can be INT. (interior) or EXT. (exterior), any location you choose, one dash or two (just be consistent throughout your script), and DAY or NIGHT (since the camera only knows light or dark; if you need sunrise, mention something tangible that can depict sunrise in your action line—a ROOSTER’S CROW, an alarm clock’s BEEP, etc.).

There is a ton more to learn, but that’s a quick taste that I’ll let you savor until next week (or so).  A good, solid formatting book that I require of all my screenwriting students is Paul Argentini’s “Elements of Style for Screenwriters, First Edition,” which is available at Amazon dot com for about ten dollars or so.  Buy it if you’re interested in this field.  And read it once.  Then refer to it over and over again.

I’ll be back as soon as I can with more.  Sorry, but I have a few more pages to cut from my latest rewrite of a feature-length screenplay. J

107 stories to be told...

...and my intro scriptwriting class began by telling twenty.

Today was day two of intro scriptwriting.  We each took a turn telling a tale from our past--all of which left us laughing WITH each other, not at.  Really.  While we learned a bit about each other, we also saw how the simplest idea can lead to a short screenplay, a short story, a play, a poem, an essay, a blog....

One script that we read began with a simple "What if?" twist.  What if my father had taken that job offer with the mob boss in Cleveland upon graduating college?  What would the responsibility of such a commitment do to an honest man?  (For those of you who don't know the laws of the Mafia--had my father taken the job with the mob, since he was not already a member of the family he would have had to kill someone to both prove his loyalty and so the mob would always have control over him.  He couldn't, but when I explore what conditions could make an otherwise honest man agree to such conditions--whala!  A story is born.)

We also read a short excerpt from my PLAYING HOUSE script, a story based on my husband who actually tried to save a woman and her toddler...who wasn't a toddler at all, but was a DOLL.  He was nearly run over by a car for his good deed.  While his story shocked and scared me, it also yielded a poem by me, which I later turned into a dialogueless short screenplay.

So what is your story?  Don't worry about whether or not it might make a great short script, with or without that "What if?" twist--simply entertain us.

Next week: the technical parts of a screenplay--a primer in how to draft the blueprint of a film.

Cheers! 

Pop open the champagne, baby!

If only I weren't too sick to celebrate.  Still, I must sound my barbaric YAWP* over the [barn] roofs of the world, for I have hit FADE OUT again--this time in my latest revision of PLOWING UP A SNAKE.  

Thank you, thank you, thank you to each and every one of you who helped bring the October reading to life and/or who provided helpful comments afterwards.

Next step? Re-read it for continuity and typos...and re-read it again.  Then send it off to yet another producer who has requested this latest copy.  This is it: time for Merle Drown's timeless novel to finally make its way to the big screen.  Wish us luck!

(The barbaric YAWP is, of course, verse originally constructed by Walt Whitman, used here in reverence to his indomitable spirit and undeniable genius.  The photo is one of my crazy angles taken of the enormous barn on my friend Amy's family's place in Madison, NH, last autumn.)

It's coming...

...I promise.

I will soon return to the original intent of this blog: to write about the short script.  And help you through the many steps to writing that perfect and poignant poetry of motion picture writing.

First lesson: to be uploaded next week.  After I teach my first class at UNH-M.  Feel free to play along.

(Image above of a sticker on the back of my ride; I forget the name of the skateboarding company that provided it free with the purchase of my son's skateboard...but suffice it to say I liked it enough to use it both on my car and on my blog.)

Happy New Year!

Apparently 2009 is the Year of the Ox in the Chinese Zodiac.  I've been calling it the "Year of the O" as in President-elect Obama.  It could also be called the "Year of Hope."  Either way, we'll soon be in good hands.  Thanks be to the voters.  And, I have no doubt, a higher power--whatever name you may call Him (or Her).

I teach my first UNH class on Inauguration Day and plan to release my students early so we can each catch the swearing-in ceremony as it is broadcast live.  While the communal lunch and viewing of the Inauguration at my favorite independent cinema (Red River Theatres) has just sold out, the good folks there have sent along word that the Concord Monitor is sponsoring a community viewing of the historical event at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord.

So while I ponder returning home to watch it in the privacy of my living room or of joining others to experience it, I am wondering what you're planning to do for the day?  (Survey to the right, or feel free to comment here.)

A happy new year it is!  With or without today's lovely snow, ice, and freezing-rain event; captured above is evidence of the last icing.  Beautiful.  Magnificent.  And such a pain in the you-know-where.  :)

Countdown to Christmas...

I just submitted my final student's grade for the semester, and only have about a half day's paperwork left to go before I'm officially done with this fall's university chores.

Then onto a grant application that's due January first for an organization I'm volunteering with, and writing press releases for the New Hampshire Film & Television Office's Script Competition for the Stage Reading Series.

Plus, of course, plenty of my own writing to do, and reading and editing to accomplish (yes, Kyle, your latest novel revision is on my to do list; actually, it's on my "can't wait to get to it" list!).

But the presents are wrapped and beneath the tree, as I sit in my newly created living room* listening to Frank Sinatra's holiday album and watching the birds eat the seed I just scattered for them on the stairs outside the sliding glass doors. (*I love shifting furniture around; the latest change has turned my dining room into my living room and vice versa.)

Okay, back to work.  For me.  You too, if it applies.  Happy holidays!

(Photos above taken after last week's ice storm: a marble in a hanging sculpture thingy I once bought, and the gloves are my own garden sculpture design.  Yes, I am that odd.  Thank you for noticing.)

It's beginning to look a lot like brrrrrrrrr...

Can you guess where these icicles once hung?

I know: I should simply post these to my Flickr account since this is no more than a post of photos, but I'm in a hurry.  On my way to a Town Water Resources Subcommittee Meeting.  Seems ironic, eh?

A winter wonderland. Of course that's easy for me to say...now that we have power again.  Spent the first 36+ hours of the storm cooking on the wood stove and helping ourselves to plenty of gravity-fed water.  While we played Scattergories by candlelight and via built-in lights on the bills of our LL Bean baseball caps.  Made some fun memories this storm.  

Cheers!