When you have a good idea on how you want your script to look, things may be easy, but having a good idea may not be enough. You can learn to sing by yourself, but that will not assure you a job at the opera. Same thing with scriptwriting. You have to know at least the basics rules in scriptwriting to make sure that at least the producer will take his time to read your script. For starters, I will tell you about how a producer reads what you might have writen.

FIrst, if it is not written in courier new, size 12, they don't even botther. It's crazy, but that's how things work. Plus, that helps you evaluate how much time the movie will take. One page written in that way means a minute of movie on screen.

Than, they will probably just read the synopsis (that is the subject of the whole movie in just one page). If they like it, they will proceed with reading the first 5 pages, and they expect finding out who the main character is, where the action happens and what is the conflict.

At page 40 they should find the battle betwen good and evil, and in the last two pages the reestablishment of the natural equilibrium. Only if they like it, they will read the whole script and perhaps finance your movie.But at first that's what they do: read the pages from 1 to 5, 40-45 and the last 2.

So, it is a lot of work. It has a lot in common with mathematics.

Since half of the people I know tell me their life is a genuine movie that they would like to make sometime, I will give a few advices on how to make a script

TECHNICAL ADVICES

-never use another tense than present tense in your script. In a movie, you cannot see that someone WENT to a shop. On the screen, the character is a the shop right now.

-you can only use active verbs. That means you cannot show someone thinks of something unless you write on his forehead or something. Cannot say the character wants something. You can only say he/she is doing something.

-try not to write the lines two long. This works perfectly in theatre dramas, but in a movie it might be aquard to have a character that speaks to much. Think about presenting what a character wants to say in an image. For exemple, the character could say hello, but he could also knod his head as a hello. Or he could say: I am angry. And that would sound stupid. Instead he could do something to show he is angry.

-never be ambiguous. If you write "she is crying her heart out" you might have the surprise of having a director crazy enough to make the actress literaly cry her heart out. And you probably wouldn't like that. Think about how laws are made. Hard to interpret and twist.

-Billy Wilder said this: if someone is talking about fried eggs it's not interesting. But if someone is talking about fried eggs and there is a bomb about to explode under the table, the conversation starts to be interesting.

-there is only one main character in any movie. And that is the character that takes attitude. We are in a room and we hear an explosion. The one that goes check is the main character. If more people go check, the one that takes the decision to solve the problem is the main character. If more people take the decision...so on. You probably got the idea.

-sometimes real situations may seem unreal, so it might not be the best thing to do using them. For example if I tell you I found out my boyfriend is actualy my step-brother from my father's affair, you will probably say "Gee, what were the odds". If you feel that "what were the odds" too many times in the same script than you won't believe a thing I say. And that is not good for a movie. So a script doesn't have to necessarly be real, but realistic.

-use the main structure for the script: everything works ok. The situation is in perfect balance. Something happens and ruins the balance. The main character takes the decision of making things right again. He battles the evil and reestablish the balance. Evil could mean there is another character that oposes to the protagonist (like in alien) or a problem (for example in Ikiru, the disease of the main character).

Well, of course these are just a few rules to be broken. For more, you could read Syd Field's Scriptwriting. He makes things clear for beginners.

There are seven arts and many other aspiring to the title of 8th, 9th, 10th .... art. Cooking art, art of conversation, the art of being human and many others.

Ever since movie got the 7th art title, every domain actually wants a piece of the word art.

But what I think will be a succes in the artistic field is the game industry. It may sound far-fetched. But think about it. It might be considered the newest branch of cinema, just waiting to be recognized. They look more and more like interactive movies than everything else.

I’m not sure if you have played the newest computer games (and I don’t mean pacman and snake), but nowodays they employ scriptwriters, directors, designers and all kinds of documentarists to make the story more interesting.

They are making the new urban mythology.

BioShock is based on a novel by Ayn Rand, and it has a complex philosophy as a motivation.

For Assasin’s Creed they had as documentarists a few of the best historians at the National Museum, and they „reconstructed” the old Damasc as it used to be.

Oblivion’s environment was conceived by geologs.

The concept artists are obviously tallented painters, and there is a big team of artists behind the games industry.

BROKEN FLOWERS - JIM JARMUSCH

Don Johnston is a well-behaved bachelor, an ex-Don Juan still loved by women. An old business related to computers got him a lot of money, so he doesn’t need to work anymore. He has that nice, quiet life any American would dream of. Yet, Don is a very faithful version of long-face Droopy. Dominated by this probably metaphysical sadness (because the director Jarmusch does not give any physical explanation for the depression), almost caricatural, Don is just watching his plasma TV, all vegetative, or listening to classical music, while life is passing him by.

His beautiful, stary-eyes girlfriend, Sherry, all dressed in pink and optimistic, lefts him. He doesn’t seem to mind. But at the same time he gets a strange note, on pink paper, written on a typewriter. He learns that he has a son. A 20 years old son from an old affair. And that son of his left to search him. The note is not signed. So the setting is made. Don is a tired man, lacks any kind of obligation and with enough enough money to allow it to go in search of the woman who sent the letter. And yet, what was already expected taking into account the general attitude of the character, there was need for another impetus to force him to leave. It comes from his friend, Winston, who organizes absolutely all the details, starting with the plane tickets, addresses of the five potential mothers, to the reservation to the hotel.
The road-movie is typical for films of Jarmusch, an initiative trip through America, in which Don tries to rediscover himself. Each of the former girlfriends describes a stage in his life, and we get to discover the hippie, joyful, interesting man he used to be. He has the sense of humor, charm, even beyond the minimalist interpretation of Bill Murray.
The life of these women comes in contrast to the his life What captures perhaps the most attention is that the public has the opportunity to engage in detective work alongside the character, make predicting and gambling hall on the outcome of the investigation. Yet, probably to many’s disapontment, he doesn’t get to find who the mother is.

The end can be disappointing for those who are not used to the kind of conclusion usually addressed by Jarmusch. We can invision the tormented future of Don, who didn’t get to meet his son, and who will always look twice at all the 19 years boys, thinking one of them could be his. It is the kind of kick he needed to get off the couch and change his life.

My name is Madline. 22 years and 9 months ago my parents were hoping for a Michael, but I guess they realised by now that I won't be the famous football player-son they were hoping for. Instead I participate to the world well-being by watching movies and writing scripts. It's a good job, especialy since I learned how to watch movies. It's harder than it looks.

I am a student at The National University of Film and Theatre in Romania, and things got tough this year. Working hard on my graduation script and watching weirder and weirder movies that i wish I had made, takes half of the time I used to take for granted. But I can't wait to see the THE END phrase at the bottom of the last page of my script. There's nothing like that feeling of seeing your baby-script all grown-up and ready to take life in his own hands.

This blog will be about how to watch movies and how to write for movies. Not as easy as it seems and not as hard as it should be.