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Screenwriting

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: Aug 29, 2018
6 min read

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Use multiple drafts

  • Star Wars
    • The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film
      • Foreword by Peter Jackson
      • Introduction
      • The Lost Interviews
      • Chapter 1: Two Visions (1968 to August 1973)
        • Journal of the Whills
        • The Star Wars Treatment
      • Chapter 2: Fighting Words (August 1973 to January 1975)
        • Rough Draft
        • First Draft
        • Second Draft
      • Chapter 3: Boundary Busters (January 1975 to August 1975)
        • Story Synopsis and Typed Outline
        • Third Draft
      • Chapter 4: Frenzy (August 1975 to September 1975)
      • Chapter 5: Purgatory (September 1975 to December 1975)
      • Chapter 6: Rise of the Poetic State (December 1975 to March 1976)
        • Fourth Draft
        • Revised Fourth Draft
      • Chapter 7: Mindstorms in the Sand (March 1976 to April 1976)
      • Chapter 8: Faster than a Speeding Freight Train (April 1976 to May 1976)
      • Chapter 9: Vanishing Point (May 1976 to July 1976)
      • Chapter 10: Ace-People and the Wizards (July 1976 to December 1976)
      • Chapter 11: Celluloid Transfiguration (December 1976 to April 1977)
      • Chapter 12: Fairy-Tale Cinema (April 1977 to December 1977)
    • The Star Wars: Story Synopsis
      • The Star Wars: Story Synopsis, also referred to as the first treatment of Star Wars, was the first step in the creation of the script for Episode IV. George Lucas composed it in the spring of 1973, and gave it to United Artists for perusal on May 7, 1973. It was rejected on May 29, 1973, because of the projected budget of $3 million. It was then sent to Universal, which failed to make a decision in the ten days alloted. On July 13, the picture was offered to Twentieth Century Fox. They accepted, and moved forward (with an option to withdraw at any time) with Lucas now to write a screenplay. One year after the composition of the treatment, in May 1974, The Star Wars: Rough Draft was finished.
    • The Star Wars: Rough Draft
      • The Star Wars: Rough Draft was written as a full rough draft by George Lucas in May 1974. The script was begun in the winter of 1973 as an expansion of the original The Star Wars: Story Synopsis. After being somewhat revised into The Star Wars: First Draft, it was considerably rewritten into the Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode I: The Star Wars (the second draft) over the summer and winter of 1974.
    • Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode I: The Star Wars

      • The Adventures of the Starkiller, Saga I: The Star Wars was the second draft of the script to the film that would become Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. It was begun in the summer of 1974 and finished early in 1975. It was replaced in May 1975 by a new synopsis called The Adventures of Luke Starkiller (episode one) "The Star Wars".

        This version of the script shows a much closer resemblance to the finished film than any of the earlier drafts. It is particularly interesting because of Ralph McQuarrie's conceptual drawings and paintings, which were commissioned to accompany the second draft. McQuarrie began work on conceptual art almost as soon as the script was completed, working through early March 1975. As such, the second draft can be said to have first established the visual character of the Star Wars saga.

 

 

My thoughts

  • I suspect TV / films focus more than they should on dialogue, and less than they should on storytelling with visuals (e.g. physical comedy), because TV / films seem to be based primarily on scripts, and scripts seem to have a tradition(?) of focusing on dialogue rather than depictions of what characters do with their bodies, what the audience sees, etc.

Writing for TV

  • Max Landis - What Television Production Is Like
    • Main idea: TV execs have conflicting constraints / priorities and don't tell the writers all of their constraints up-front, and so the writers can end up writing a far longer / more-detailed script than the TV execs actually have time to allocate to.


Screenwriters

Max Landis

  • This guy is pretty entertaining to watch. He very frequently has interesting insights into screenwriting, and states his opinions with flair / enthusiasm.
  • Reddit - r/MaxLandis
Scripts
Articles / videos
  • 2012.04.22 - YouTube - Max Landis talking about screen-writing and Hollywood at Dubai Comic Con
    • He says a bunch of really interesting things about screenwriting.
  • 2012.04.29 - YouTube - Max Landis talks about Chronicle and more!
    • 9:30 - He says being famous has (regrettably) changed how he can enjoy ComicCon, because now he gets upset if people don't recognize him.
    • 11:10 - His advice for success: be excited about what you're doing.
  • 2013.07.21 - YouTube - Death And Return Of Superman Pitch by Max Landis
  • 2015.04.09 - YouTube - Max Landis on What Makes A Good Script In 2 Minutes
    • This is packed with advice.
  • 2015.04.09 - YouTube - Anna Akana - Screenwriter Max Landis - Explain Things to Me
  • 2015.11.24 - YouTube - RedLetterMedia - A Conversation with Max Landis
    • They talk about his 'Ultra' movie, which didn't well in theaters.
    • Comments:
      • Mr Numbers

        It's very frustrating reading the comments here, because Max isn't being defensive, he's literally... this is honestly what it's like being a movie screenwriter on the inside these days. Spec. movie scripts don't get made anymore, they hardly ever get optioned or picked up, and that means that no one can get credited for original works, new writers don't get public or industry exposure...

        Which is why there's been such a radical shift to television.

        I'm about to do exactly what Landis did above. I'm going to rant. Now's your time to TL;DR.

        Okay, so, I'm just going to say this: I had the unique pleasure of meeting the director and producers of Iron Sky recently, that movie about moon Nazis. Supposed to be this big deal for me, I'd won some screenwriting awards and this was my chance to powernetwork with some of the biggest creative players in Australia (Which is honestly like saying the sunniest beach in Alaska). They didn't understand their movie is camp. They genuinely thought it was a brilliant idea well executed. There was no intended irony behind it.

        That's what it takes for a movie like Chronicle to be made these days.

        You have to find people that ignorant, then find people to work for them that are that talented, and then somehow trust them to handle a budget of millions of dollars. And then you hope that what comes out is the next Back to the Future and not the next Waterworld, or that you get something closer to Sharknado than Ghost Shark. And then hope that your outsourced marketing company doesn't screw you over.

        That's just it too! Waterworld. Christ. The movie for decades now mocked for its ridiculously overinflated budget. Adjusted for inflation, it's about 175 million dollars budget. Transformers: Age of Extinction cost closer to 350 million. One is a famous cautionary tale. The other is a Summer blockbuster noticable only because it came and went. Because of everything Max just said in the video above.

        Your best bet is to get serialized for Marvel, who have figured out the formula for this, somehow. Or, even better still, get picked up for television. West Wing, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, so many shows have proven that movies aren't the most pure medium anymore, and directors and writers have so much more freedom there. Where quality matters more than marketing, because it's done over a long enough time period for word of mouth to be your biggest draw.

        But you're fucked if you want to be up on the big screen.

        /End rant

        • The big thing I took away from this rant is his final comment on TV being done over a longer time period than movies. Mass-market movies are created to be shown in thousands of theaters (which is expensive to do) and only for a limited amount of time, and it seems like the "garbage" we're seeing put into theaters nowadays may be a reflection of that format. I always think about how, in very competitive games like Starcraft and CS, players eventually tend to settle on certain "dominant" strategies (to use the game theory term). It looks like releasing garbage may be something of a dominant strategy in filmmaking right now.
  • 2016 - Reddit - Max Landis script Megathread



Character traits

  • Guy repeats himself. Not just repeating a single word, though, but also repeating a few sentences over and over again. I saw this when talking with a taxi driver on the phone. He kept repeating an exchange he had with an install shop, using the same inflection in his voice every time.
  • Group of guys all use the same phrase. I saw this with taxi drivers, where they'd all say "Hello Nathan! How are you?" with the same inflection in their voice, and they'd all say "I have ALL the receipts".

 

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