Rane Sir attended this fest in Czech Republic and asked me to check out these shorts - trailers for the fest:
Andy Garcia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Koc639BKS80
Jiri Menzel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1RPgqBMEQA&NR=1
Harvey Keitel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5PndYncYOg&NR=1
Milos Forman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PDHhQsINOc&NR=1
John Malkovich
http://www.kviff.com/cz/aktualne/video/17-znelka-s-johnem-malkovichem-online/
Monday, July 12, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Video Talk: Michael Arndt
Excellent video - Q & A with one of the bright screenwriters - Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine & Toy Story 3)
Won Oscar for LMS and he should be on the shortlist for nomination for TS-3
Writes a draft for LMS in three days (story / characters in head for a long time)
Rewrites for a year
No one is interested in the script...for five years
The intelligence / foresight of Pixar - they pick him up for Toy Story 3 before the film (Little Miss Sunshine) was made. They read LMS and go for the guy right on. It's amazing when you think about it - a studio that has brilliant writers, they pick-up an amateur. When you see / hear Arndt, you know...he isn't a schmuck.
Taught myself screenwriting for 10 yrs
Easier to have your script read than write
Top writers have more unproduced scripts than produced
Never send a rough script; the best / complete it can be
Best case scenario: 90% failure rate - realistic way to look
Love your characters; No. 1 commitment for screenwriter
Do it for the pleasure of it
The Video
[1.04 mins]
You can jump at chapters (below the video)
Won Oscar for LMS and he should be on the shortlist for nomination for TS-3
Writes a draft for LMS in three days (story / characters in head for a long time)
Rewrites for a year
No one is interested in the script...for five years
The intelligence / foresight of Pixar - they pick him up for Toy Story 3 before the film (Little Miss Sunshine) was made. They read LMS and go for the guy right on. It's amazing when you think about it - a studio that has brilliant writers, they pick-up an amateur. When you see / hear Arndt, you know...he isn't a schmuck.
Taught myself screenwriting for 10 yrs
Easier to have your script read than write
Top writers have more unproduced scripts than produced
Never send a rough script; the best / complete it can be
Best case scenario: 90% failure rate - realistic way to look
Love your characters; No. 1 commitment for screenwriter
Do it for the pleasure of it
The Video
[1.04 mins]
You can jump at chapters (below the video)
Monday, July 5, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Viewed: Toy Story 3 (3-D)
Solid flick. Enjoyable and moving too.
As usual...super writing. And then - Pixar process at work. Try seeing it...
I haven't seen many flicks this year...been a coward like before...but this one's the best of the year.
Interesting / 'correct' things it does with respect to important aspects of story-telling (this is in the technical realm):
- Is there a clear 'want'?
- Is there an inner 'need' for the protagonist?
- Do we care for characters?
- Are there themes flowing across?
- Is the ending satisfying / fulfilling. Does it affect you emotionally?
- Is the opposition / conflict built in with clarity and in multiple dimensions - inner and outer?
- Importantly: does it make it easy for the protagonist/team to overcome obstacles?
[Personally, that's pretty tough to do; a bane of indian films - resolve things comfortably. But check this one out. Note 'Woody's' escape from the day-care center in the beginning; they can make him walk out any time and it wouldn't be much of an issue, but how they play around with that! Yeah...you wont get it unless you see it.]
As i always feel about such works, it's a pity that people don't go for such flicks. Maybe prejudice, maybe lack of promotion / hype, but...such films take you on a journey and that is very satisfying; you don't know how the time goes by since you are so engrossed by the progression of the story.
This IS tough. Not a joke. Not a kid's place. No cuteness saves a story.
As Pixar believes: takes 10 man years to do a story. Interestingly, they never ever go for a sequel unless they are sold on by a story, which I believe refers to - solid theme at play.
I wasn't too sold over by the 3-D bit; this would have worked as great, perhaps better, as 2-D; at least for me wearing those glasses for two hours can be an effort.
If you can take out time, though it would be out of plexes pretty soon, check it out; you may end up having a nice time. Even come out wondering - boy...where are my toys?
Rating ***1/2
[Max Rating ****]
[Viewed at Fun Cinemas, Bangalore with Bhumika, 6.30 pm show. Great to see kids around who enjoy such stuff.]
As usual...super writing. And then - Pixar process at work. Try seeing it...
I haven't seen many flicks this year...been a coward like before...but this one's the best of the year.
Interesting / 'correct' things it does with respect to important aspects of story-telling (this is in the technical realm):
- Is there a clear 'want'?
- Is there an inner 'need' for the protagonist?
- Do we care for characters?
- Are there themes flowing across?
- Is the ending satisfying / fulfilling. Does it affect you emotionally?
- Is the opposition / conflict built in with clarity and in multiple dimensions - inner and outer?
- Importantly: does it make it easy for the protagonist/team to overcome obstacles?
--- the complications are rising
--- check out: how they never ever make it easy; if you stop to think of a solution, you discover that these buggers push them till the end.
[Personally, that's pretty tough to do; a bane of indian films - resolve things comfortably. But check this one out. Note 'Woody's' escape from the day-care center in the beginning; they can make him walk out any time and it wouldn't be much of an issue, but how they play around with that! Yeah...you wont get it unless you see it.]
As i always feel about such works, it's a pity that people don't go for such flicks. Maybe prejudice, maybe lack of promotion / hype, but...such films take you on a journey and that is very satisfying; you don't know how the time goes by since you are so engrossed by the progression of the story.
This IS tough. Not a joke. Not a kid's place. No cuteness saves a story.
As Pixar believes: takes 10 man years to do a story. Interestingly, they never ever go for a sequel unless they are sold on by a story, which I believe refers to - solid theme at play.
I wasn't too sold over by the 3-D bit; this would have worked as great, perhaps better, as 2-D; at least for me wearing those glasses for two hours can be an effort.
If you can take out time, though it would be out of plexes pretty soon, check it out; you may end up having a nice time. Even come out wondering - boy...where are my toys?
Rating ***1/2
[Max Rating ****]
[Viewed at Fun Cinemas, Bangalore with Bhumika, 6.30 pm show. Great to see kids around who enjoy such stuff.]
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
How They Write A Script: Alvin Sargent
Scott Myers has recently posted some terrific stuff on his excellent blog, Go Into The Story: thoughts of top screenwriters in his series: How They Write A Script.
Here's one on one of the legends: How They Write A Script: Alvin Sargent
Alvin Sargent is one of the most well-respected screenwriters in Hollywood. He's the brother of Herb Sargent who up until his death in 2005 was president of the WGA, East and is married to long-time Hwood producer Laura Ziskin. One look at his screenwriting credits -- Paper Moon (1973), Julia (1977), Ordinary People (1980), Nuts (1987), Spiderman 2 (2004), and Spiderman 3 (2007), among many more -- and you know you are dealing with a top-flight professional.When I first broke into screenwriting as a profession in 1987, I read everything I could on every screenwriter -- and to this day, some of the best advice I found during that time was from Alvin Sargent. Beyond everything else, Sargent challenges writers to leap before they look, take risks, get messy. That, he insists, is how we find the magic in our characters and stories. And so, here are some choice quotes from Alvin Sargent, gathered from books and articles over the years.
ON STRUCTURE
"I do a great deal of free-associating. Talk, for pages and pages, I don't know what's going on. Then I find something alive--I hope. I think too many people are too organized; they've got it all worked out, instead of hearing their characters first. Get the goop out first, then organize."
ON CHARACTERS
"Over a period of time, I begin to understand them, to think about them not only in terms of where they are in the story. I think about where these people are today, even when I'm not writing. Sometimes they never come back, and so sometimes I fire them."
ON SPONTANEITY
"Rigidity is the mother of rigidity. It's very exciting to be ridiculous. I wish I could be even more so than I am. Jump! Jumping is a lifeline, not the suicide or the predictable. It brings you to life. Take the character and put him where he least wants to be. If it's honest, it'll be worth exploring."
ON THE WRITING PROCESS
"My confidence grows or dissolves with each day's work. As I work and start to see 'it' happening and realize that I'm moving somewhere, that there's some kind of real life, then it's a good day.
"But when it doesn't seem to be working for a long time, or you just can't find the truth, then the terror sets in. You must not stop. You cannot give in to anxiety. Maintain energy. Drive. Rage. Whatever it takes to keep writing.
"Even though you can't immediately solve problems, that doesn't mean the work isn't alive. You go back. Back to the beginning. The process is to move into it, come up to it, step by step, find out where you've hit it wrong, what's dishonest. Where you've gone wrong usually involves a matter of honesty. You've been dishonest either to the character or to the structure of the piece."
ON FREEING YOURSELF TO WRITE
"You must write everyday. Free yourself. Free association. An hour alone a day. Blind writing. Write in the dark. Don't think about what it is you're writing. Just put a piece of paper in the typewriter, take your clothes off and go! No destination... pay it no attention... it's pure unconscious exercise. Pages of it. Keep it up until embarrassment disappears. Eliminate resistance. Look at it in the morning. Amazing sometimes. Most of it won't make any sense. But there'll always be a small kernel of truth that relates to what you're working on at the time. You won't even know you created it. It will appear, and it is yours. Pure gold, a product of that pure part of you that does not know how to resist."
How They Write A Script: Alvin Sargent
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Must-See: Pixar President's The Economist Interview
Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar talks about how the organization works. On feedback, self-censorship, creativity, audience, team dynamics, crisis...
Rosenbaum on Trailers & Product Plugs
Jonathan Rosenbaum opined this in 1990:
If my paranoid suspicions are correct, Hollywood has embarked on a 12-year plan regarding the public consumption of trailers. The plan, which has become fully apparent to me over the past year, will come to fruition in the year 2000, and its basic goal, as I see it, is to turn movies themselves into full-fledged commercials that people will pay money to see.
Once we start thinking about subliminal or near-subliminal messages in trailers, it's also worth considering ads for nonmovie products within movies, which are perhaps even more indicative of what's to come.
Perhaps if the multinational marketers eventually have their way, we will have feature-length trailers, packed with product placements for items that can be sold in the lobby on our way out of the theaters.
With such a system firmly in place, all the movies we'll see in theaters and on video will be separate feature-length trailers for a single blockbuster that's perpetually in production — a blockbuster that will never be completed because the economic advisers will soon realize that after years of such hoopla, no movie could possibly live up to so much buildup and hype. By then, however, it won't matter, because people will be perfectly happy with these enticing trailers.
(Unkept promises are always the sweetest.)
Full article:
Movies: The Big Shill [on trailers & product plugs]
If my paranoid suspicions are correct, Hollywood has embarked on a 12-year plan regarding the public consumption of trailers. The plan, which has become fully apparent to me over the past year, will come to fruition in the year 2000, and its basic goal, as I see it, is to turn movies themselves into full-fledged commercials that people will pay money to see.
Once we start thinking about subliminal or near-subliminal messages in trailers, it's also worth considering ads for nonmovie products within movies, which are perhaps even more indicative of what's to come.
Perhaps if the multinational marketers eventually have their way, we will have feature-length trailers, packed with product placements for items that can be sold in the lobby on our way out of the theaters.
With such a system firmly in place, all the movies we'll see in theaters and on video will be separate feature-length trailers for a single blockbuster that's perpetually in production — a blockbuster that will never be completed because the economic advisers will soon realize that after years of such hoopla, no movie could possibly live up to so much buildup and hype. By then, however, it won't matter, because people will be perfectly happy with these enticing trailers.
(Unkept promises are always the sweetest.)
Full article:
Movies: The Big Shill [on trailers & product plugs]
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