The Virginian is the hero. Trampas is the bad guy. Their conflict lasts for the entire book. It’s intense, epic, and a good ride.

Here are the two pages of the climax… I had to read it THREE TIMES to realize what actually happened.

It was so a non-event, I was stunned. “A wind seemed to blow his sleeve off his arm, and he replied to it…” THAT IS THE CLIMACTIC SHOOTOUT at the end of a 484 page effort? That’s IT? It is nothing, nothing, nothing. And it isn’t even clear. You go through an entire story, assuming that at the end there is going to be a marvelously satisfying conclusion… and you get a waft of air and a reply? That is not the way to tell a story.

When you set something up in your story, be sure that you pay it off at the end! Give the audience what they sat there patiently waiting for. As Blake Snyder says, give them the “promise of the premise.” Please.

virginian p 1

virginian p 2

#13 in my series with Kelley Baker, author of the superb ANGRY FILMMAKER SURVIVAL GUIDE — Sound Conversations with (Un) Sound People… this time we discuss the no-brainer (that isn’t) “Check All Of Your Equipment Before You Shoot”. Seems like such a simple thing. Beginning filmmakers are so trusting! They assume the rental house or equipment people at school have their best interest at heart! Don’t you know they all want you to fail? If your film goes down the drain because they “accidentally” left the plate off the tripod, THEIR film may get into Sundance!

How can you not know this stuff?

Listen to the podcast, and you too will understand the secrets of the Ages. Especially regarding counting scrims before you leave the rental house.

Filmmaking Deadly Sin Number 10 – Sacrifice Look for Performance!

Stop spending all of your time fretting over the equipment and the lighting and worry about the DAMN Performances! Work with your Actors, they don’t bite. If more filmmakers were as worried about their actor’s performances we might have worse looking films but they’d be better. Audiences will forgive a lot of technical problems but if the acting isn’t good then we’re all heading to the exits. Spend time working with your actors so that they can create believable characters and make them come alive. We’ll remember their performances longer than how your film looked.

Filmmaking Deadly Sin Number 11 – Scout Your Locations!

Where is the power? How easy is it to get to the location? Is it too LOUD to get good sound? Is it on a landing pattern of your local airport? What else didn’t you think about when you selected this location? We always want locations that look cool but there are a lot of other things you need to think about before you select one.

Filmmaking Deadly Sin Number 12 – Choose Interesting Locations!

Don’t shoot in your apartment! Or in your house if you can help it! Work hard to come up with interesting places to shoot. Make your locations add something to the story. Think about other films you’re seen, and where they were shot. Did the location add to the story or the mood.

It’s easier to write a good script from a good idea. Well, rearrange that to: It’s impossible to make a great film from an idea that is not great.
If your film is not great, you have wasted your time. “Good” and “Very Good” are worthless to you as a career builder.
Most (95%) student films (I started teaching 19 years ago) are based on weak ideas.

No one out there cares if you came up with the idea yourself.
They are only interested in seeing a superb movie that you made.

If you are adapting someone’s superb short story, instead of your own semi-lame idea, you will make a far better movie.
It will help you in the long run.
You will get better actors to be in your movie because your script started off at “Hoo fuckin’ ray!!” instead of “I hope we can save this.”
You will therefore make a better movie.

That’s basically it.
Adaptation vs. Original Idea From A Beginner is practical & pragmatic and realistic. It’s also cold and heartless, but so is the real world.

I push for adaptation because it delivers far, far, far better results.

Unless, of course, you’re one of the 5% who has a fantastic idea for a movie. Then have at it!

I’ve been a Tintin fan since I was 12, so they had pretty high standards to maintain. I enjoyed the heck out of it. It was different from the books, but there was plenty that was “Just like the books!” to keep me content. The story works. The characters are fine. Snowy doesn’t do any talking, but I didn’t even notice. I highly recommend it.

SHERLOCK HOLMES is a train wreck.

It’s a silly mess from the get-go. The plot never makes sense. The dialogue is too “witty and rapid paced” to mean anything. It’s just people yakking at each other for no real reason other than that the writer never quite got around to making it coherent. It seems that the filmmakers thought that if stuff happened fast enough with enough bon mots, that the poor viewer wouldn’t notice it all basically sucked.

I loved Mycroft. He seemed like he knew what movie he was in. Everyone else, with the exception of Mad Men’s Moriarty, was kinda lost and confused.

I came out of there thinking I’d watched a big mish mash of nothing. Nothing hung together. Nothing made sense. It is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Yet, some of the people I went with, loved it.
I guess I need a better class of friends.

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What is her problem?
What is her desire / what does she want MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE?
What is her need, that she’s not aware of?
What is she afraid of… desperately afraid of… a fear that keeps her from taking action…
How does she conquer that fear and get what she needs?

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I enjoyed reading this book a while back and, for a test and a bit of light relief have used a couple of chapters to go through my script with.

I used the Tarantino “cut the last two dialogue lines from every scene” rule and – for a few scenes, I have to say it worked really well.

What astonished me though, was the searching and elimination of extraneous “the” s . Now, I’m not the poorest writer that’s been seen but nor am I the best. I expected to find a handful.

I removed 76 extraneous uses of the word “the.”

Bloody hell.

I may do a couple of other run throughs now.

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Do your homework. No matter how much you think you suck at it, or how terrible your writing is, turn something in.

Don’t wait until the last minute.This is one class where typical college procrastination will not cut it.

Try to get in the habit of writing every day. The act of writing will help with any writer’s block you might get.

Know your characters. Know your story. Know the details. Don’t just have a vague idea like, “girl gets kidnapped while on vacation and must fight for her life.” That could go a million different ways. Who is the girl? Why is she being kidnapped? etc.

Lastly, you will most likely suck and your script will be crap, but the only way to get better at writing, is to write.

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Print your drafts to proofread. It’s annoying and wastes paper and ink, but it’s extremely helpful and the only way to effectively proofread your paper.

Don’t be afraid to write or be creative. Your ideas are never as bad as you think, and no one will judge you for what you write.

***

The next to last one fascinates me, probably because I’m vastly older than they are. When I started writing, of course, you automatically had something to proofread you could hold in your hand because it was on a piece of typing paper. Now, students are very environmentally conscious and want to save trees.

It is a massive struggle to get students to print their work to proofread it. Even at the end of the semester, some of them weren’t doing it. Going Green is a great idea, but if you don’t have a hard copy to hold in your hand when you proofread, you may later wish you’d felled a few Redwoods instead.

Here is an email I just sent to one of my students.

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Dear Alice,

Going over your homework.
Way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way too much detail, too much stuff that’s obvious.

He holds the phone in his hand.

Too many places I want to write “Duuuh!”

Not from your homework, but you do this, sorta:

He looks out the clear glass see-through window that is totally, completely transparent.

Remember, I hate to work and do not want to read one word I do not have to.

Next scene you write, I want you to write the first draft with a pencil, not a pen and NOT typing it.
See if the agony of pushing the pencil across the page will help you write less. It’s physically more difficult so in theory you will not be so tempted to heap words on the page.

*

I’m dying to see if that will help her. I wrote one entire screenplay in pencil, typing the scenes into the computer AFTER they’d first been scribbled on paper. A pencil is hard to write with and AUTOMATICALLY causes words to drop out of your prose.

Do not make the reader read stuff they do not have to. A pencil will help. So will reading aloud.

So will sweating blood to get it to an agent and watching them throw it in the trash before they finish page 1.

It’s been around a while, but I’d not seen it lately. I lurve it.

Pay a social call to, on the right margin:

Your friend, Conan
Okay, you lazy bitch
My outstanding experience
Idiot of the 33rd degree

A hell of a little timewaster.
Like children.