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Television and Film Script Writing
Ask questions about structuring stories, building characters, enhancing conflict and the creative process involved with writing a scripted story.
103 Questions
How not to write a screenplay?
You should not write a screenplay like you would write a novel, or an essay, or newspaper column or any other writing.
A screenplay follows a rigorous format and tells a story.
Peter Jackson does it all the time
A setting is used to help the storyline of the Television/script writing. Many times, it becomes essential to the story.
Another Answer
Setting can also be the most variable part of a story: Shakespeare's plays have often been set in different periods, because the story is so essential to the human condition, it doesn't really matter where or when it is set.
What is the meaning of 'beat' in a film script?
'Beat' when used within a film script denotes a short pause. It is open to interpretation by both the actor and the director.
During rewrites, a screenwriter would probably make better use of the pause, and replace 'beat' with 'sigh' or 'reflects' or 'considers': some physical or emotional addition to the scene. Some action that moves the story forward.
How do you write an outline for a screenplay?
A screenwriter starting with an outline -- always a good idea -- can employ the task of writing in more or less a free-form way to concretise the story to be told on film.
If you're writing an outline for a screenplay for others to read, you may decide to rewrite your draft outline.
If you're writing an outline as part of 'the work', you may or may not rewrite it.
You can structure your outline in a classic three-act format. A story is composed of well-developed characters, including a protagonist and at least one antagonist, who all pursue 'human journeys' in search of what each character 'wants'.
- Act One documents the current world, its resources and options
- Act Two documents the new world, its challenges and opportunities
- Act three resolves the journeys
The story, then, pits characters with opposing wants against each other -- which creates drama, and portrays situations in which characters must make 'hard' choices/ decisions/ sacrifices.
Confining your outline to these developmental steps will aid a screenwriter in settling on the essential characters/ story elements that best fit a story being told on film.
An outline can be from three to twenty -- or more -- pages -- any font, any spacing, depending on the level of detail required for the screenwriter to most fully 'believe' in the characters and their situations.
How would you write out the sound that someone makes when smoking?
You would spell it like this :
ffffffffft.
Another Answer
Depending on whether you're writing in a novel or a screenplay, you can handle this a few different ways.
In a screenplay:
- [Action] James exhales loudly.
- [Action] Anne hears James exhale loudly.
- [Action] James signals by exhaling audibly.
...and so forth. This way, you leave it to the director and the actor to use the action to move the story forward in the best way.
In a novel, depending on the mood you want to create:
- James smokes quietly in the corner, and when his smoking doesn't catch her attention, he exhales so that she is forced to acknowledge him.
...and so forth. In a novel, it's up to you to create the mood.
put in the script (acting) next to the character's name
Unless your script is a commissioned script with all rights to the music already in place, best practices dictate that you do not write songs into your script. You can write a few words that the actor sings into the script, and then leave the logistics up to the production company.
Your goal is to include the 'breaking out into song' character tag for your character in a believable way in your script.
Here is an example:
[in proper script format]
HARRY
(singing)
Some day my prince will come . . .
This genre is either a documentary or a reenactment of a true story.
Who turns the story into film?
Directors who find stories interesting ask the author for permission, then make a movie.
Another Answer
Although movies are a director's medium, films are financed by producers, who sign the check to purchase rights to a story, hire a screenwriter and director to fashion a script from the story, and then work with the director to hire actors and all the other people involved with making a movie. This process 'turns a story into a film'.
VO is script shorthand for voice over.
In a scene where you want the character's dialog to be heard, but the character is not on screen, you can write the dialog like this (using screen formatting margins):
KEVIN (V.O.)
She never understood my games.
Another Answer
You can use VO when the character is not present, as distinct from OS -- script shorthand for off-screen, which is used when the character is present in the scene but not seen by the camera.
How do you find professional co screenwriter?
When you have an idea that you want to make into a film, and choose to work with a co-screenwriter, it's a good idea to choose one with a track record of having paid work in the industry.
Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) lists screenwriters with credits.
You can hire a screenwriter, and when you do, you'll pay Writer's Guild wages. Usually, this is in the tens of thousands of dollars range, depending on how many re-writes you want.
If you find a person who can work with you outside the Writer's Guild, or who is not a member of the guild, then you can structure most any kind of 'deal' you want. You can look in screenwriting classes or other academic arenas for aspiring screenwriters.
It's a good idea to look at work the co-screenwriter candidate has written, verify the educational or schooling credentials claimed on the resume, and meet with this person face-to-face, to insure that you can work with that person. (Collaborating on a screenplay is like a job: 9-5 or longer, five or more days a week for 12 weeks means you can write 120 pages -- 10 great pages each week, which is the maximum length for a screenplay.)
Once you've found the person you want to work with, hire a lawyer to help you document your agreement, sign it, and expect to abide by it. In the contract, you can determine how much each of you will earn from proceeds of the sale of your screenplay, how you split expenses, how the script will be marketed, and so forth.
What challenges do script writers face in making soap opera scripts realistic?
Usually soap operas are written by teams of writers in a 'writers' room' situation. This means that the story development and story progress is collaborative, with writers playing off each other's imaginations.
Making these scripts realistic has become vastly easier since the Internet has presented so much 'real life' to us, and reality television affords us all a deeper understanding of what's possible in human behaviour.
The challenges, then, may be in fitting what's possible into the lives of the established characters and their character development.
What is the intention of a script writer?
Often a script writer is motivated to tell a story using film as a medium.
Since each page of screenplay equals about one minute of film time, and since the format for a script is so precise, another intention is to provide all the people who work together to tell the story on film all the details necessary.
(Next time you watch a movie, stick around and read the credits. A script writer's intention is to supply all the people listed with the details each needs to perform their individual jobs.)
How do you show emphasis in character dialogue in a screenplay?
Emphasis in dialog is best left to the director and the actor.
However, if you choose to emphasize a piece of dialog early on in the film script as a clue, or as a character tag, or as a red herring, or in a V.O. or O.S. line, type the word in caps. Use only one or two of these in an entire script, otherwise your script could be considered 'amateurish'. .
Where can you find a reality writer?
Reality television was born because writers were not available: they were on strike.
Reality television is 'created' by 'producers' who find strong personalities with no formal storytelling skills who can act out emotions, and put these people into strained situations then film them. The producers turn the footage over to great footage editors, and voila -- reality television.
you shouldn't, keep action clear of dialogue
How do you submit a screenplay to hallmark movies?
Usually, producers acquire screenplays, although some directors and actors also bring scripts to projects.
In order to find a producer interested in your screenplay, you need to find one who has produced a movie in the same genre as the one you're selling.
In the link, below, you can find a list of Hallmark Movies. Explore the links and locate the movie most like yours, then find the name of the producer of that film.
Your agent can approach that producer with your material.
What is a shot to shot relationship in film?
You can think of this as a way to transition between scenes, or among characters/ objects/ elements in storytelling. Because film is a director's medium, choices like these are generally made by the director, and not by the screenwriter.
But the screenwriter might suggest these examples:
- Barry and Ruth ride in his truck toward the library. Zoom in: the exterior door handle. Pause. Zoom out. Barry and Ruth discuss the books they picked up from the library. (A scene in the library selecting books is unnecessary.)
- Establishing shot: Grace Cathedral. A funeral. Close on: an urn containing Jacob's ashes. Pull back to reveal: the urn sitting on the mantle as Jacob's children discuss their father's mysterious death.
- The Elder, Winter Bear, dressed in his best clothing, settles himself beside a tree in the dark, winter cold. Seated, he closes his eyes. We become aware of the weathered skin on his face. Dissolve to: Winter Bear's weathered skin dusted with frost in early dawn light. Snow on his hair and eyelashes. Inanimate now, Winter Bear's found a way out of his life.
What is a smash cut when writing a script?
'Smash cut' is a choice that a film editor might make, as a way to adjust the pace of a film.
A screenwriter can juxtapose this jarring effect by simply ending one scene and beginning another.
You can read more about smash cut, below.
Generally, post-'anything' means that whatever 'anything' might be is added after principal photography is complete and the film is being edited.
Scoring has to do with music.
If a studio has rights to a movie can anyone write a script for it?
Yes. But good luck getting anyone at the studio to read it-- and not for the reasons you may think.
Studios are paranoid about law suits re. creative material. By accepting your unsolicited script, the studio officially acknowledges that your script exists. And if anything in their commissioned script is similar to what you've written, the studio has opened itself up to you, the writer, suing them for using some element of your script in their film and not paying you. So the bottom line is they always have to send back unsolicited scripts unopened.
