I am currently trying my hand at screenwriting and what I'd like to know is this:
- how many redrafts do you do? It would be cool to use an example of a finished (and sold) script and explain how it was written, from the original idea to the final draft. It would make for a pretty in depth article but totally worth it.
- how much do you visualise the film in your head?
- I often hear about scenes not making the final cut of a film. So do you write a script slightly longer than you think is necessary, to give the director the option to delete some scenes, or do you write your script keeping only the scenes that you consider to be essential for the flow of the story?
- are there specific requirements for a script to be shot as a low-budget film, such as avoiding night scenes, or avoiding the need for huge crowds etc?
- how do you get to meet directors who are looking for scripts? I'm talking at a local low-budget level, I'm not expecting a ticket to Hollywood.
I'm sure I've got other questions but I can't think about them right now!
Well, it would be more than an article. Given that the average screenplay is over a hundred pages, and that it's not at all uncommon for there to be twenty-five, thirty or more *drafts* and thus sets of notes (not to mention phone calls and meetings interspersed) -- to even begin to make sense of it all would take volumes.
And that doesn't even take into account that most projects involve multiple writers, with each writer often contributing *many* drafts.
These things can and frequently do go on literally for years.
So an article, even "in depth" would barely begin to scratch the surface of this process.
If I were to collect all of the notes that I got on a single project, one which was in development for a couple years (and ultimately never got made) -- just the *notes* and my responses to them would easily run to around a hundred and fifty pages.
Regarding the visualizing of a film -- this is a fine balancing act. Screenwriters are warned "not to direct on the page" -- but to have any chance at all of selling your work you need to give the reader a vivid sense of what the final movie is going to look like. When they read the script they should see the movie. That means finding a very concise way to use language and the means and methods of prose, to convey the *sense* of seeing a movie, without getting into things (as a rule) like describing individual shots and camera angles, which tends to make the reader's eyes glaze over.
Regarding script length to final cut -- while there is a rough averaging rule of one minute to a page, that's really not true, and generally, when you shoot an entire script -- say a hundred and ten page script from cover to cover, you will end up with a first cut that is substantially longer than a hundred and ten minutes. And there will be cuts. And usually, when the time comes to make them, things that seemed really essentially when you were writing will turn out not to be, because you tend to hit certain story beats more than once on the page and when you get to the final movie you come to realize -- yeah, we get it, we understand that -- the point's been made. So we can lose that scene, cut that down -- or simply re-record a line here or there and make that point in another scene.
That happens all the time in every movie.
Plus, things always get re-written as movies develop, which sometimes make existing scenes (which may have been shot or not) superfluous.
The thing about low budget movies is that, strangely enough, you can have almost anything you want -- just not everything. You want a crowd scene? You can have a crowd scene. If it's important, you can spend your limited money and get a crowd for a day. You need a big special effect - you can spend your limited money on that. Just that.
Or you need to shoot on water. Or you need a kid. Or an animal. Or it's a period piece.
All of these things ramp up your budget. But you can have them.
But once you say, we've got to have it be period, and we need kids and dogs, and crowds, and multiple locations and a scene taking place on the high seas where a boat is attacked by a sea serpent.
-- it's just not low budget any more.
So have your effects -- but it's contemporary and only a handful of locations and a handful of actors.
Or whatever variation it may be. Just understand that you can always have *some* things -- some high ticket item, even in a low budget movie.
Shooting at sea is generally considered a high budget item -- but that movie (I think it's called) Deep Water -- the one about the couple accidentally abandoned in the middle of the ocean -- was shot almost entirely at sea, and yet was very low budget.
That's because the one high ticket item -- shooting at sea, was the *only* high ticket item. They spend virtually nothing on anything else.
Regarding your final question -- you don't meet directors who are looking to make movies.
You meet *producers* who are looking to make movies, because it's the producers who've got the money. And while it's great to meet them -- and if you know anything about networking, the standard procedures for networking are the way to go about doing that -- what's more important, is for them to meet your screenplays.
But more important still is for them to meet your screenplay when your screenplay is in a condition when it is worth buying and worth making.
Until then, all of the networking in the world isn't going to help you.
NMS
