In any given year, I read so many screenplays as a professional “reader” that you could pave the Yellow Brick Road with them and still have enough left over to start a recycling program in the Emerald City. Okay, so most of the scripts I read are in digital form and aren’t on paper. But [...]
Screenwriting is unlike any other professional endeavor. To survive its unique pressures and peculiarities and have a career, you’ll have to master a few fundamental disciplines.
Justin D.M. Palmer & Nathan Adloff’s first feature film, Nate & Margaret, was recently acquired for worldwide distribution by Breaking Glass Pictures, after garnering interest from several indie distribution companies — a rare feat for any film prior to a single film festival screening! We asked the duo to tell us about their process …
In most cases, the road to the Sundance Film Festival starts with crowdfunding, a group of artists, and a film in the can, screaming with independent-filmmaker pride. Or you could be a journalist with a dream.
Just because you finished a screenplay doesn’t mean it’s actually done. The script will need to be rewritten again … and again … and again.
Dave Trottier, author of The Screenwriter’s Bible, tackles the types of script-formatting questions that writers need answered when penning their screenplay.
A good screenplay is a wonderful thing, but no matter how impressive a script may be, its potential will remain forever unfulfilled unless it is actually made into a movie. There are a lot of factors that influence whether or not a screenplay gets produced, but in today’s film industry, the most crucial of these [...]
Some writers have all the luck. They have a gift for writing high-concept comedies, thrillers, horror, or action movies, or other kinds of scripts in “commercial” genres. Their scripts make most agents and producers swoon like tweens at a Justin Bieber concert. And then there’s the rest of us. We love to write intimate dramas, [...]
There’s more opportunity out there for new scribes than just the fabled spec sale. In fact, writing assignments represent a more reliable path to a genuine livelihood. When most aspiring screenwriters imagine their successful against-all-odds assault on Hollywood, they think in terms of a big spec sale that changes their lives overnight. But there is [...]
