Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Slowly focusing on the story

Blogger "Mystery Man" has a good one: a 125-page transcript of a Raiders of the Lost Ark story conference between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan.
Man-oh-man, Spielberg and Lucas were idea machines. They could’ve sat there coming up with Indiana Smith ideas forever. There were enough ideas generated in these meetings for two films, which they actually used for two films. I must say, it’s rather unusual to have meetings with a producer and a director and be given so many ideas. Not that meetings with producers and directors wouldn’t have a lot of ideas but I’m not sure you would encounter such a volume as this. For screenwriters, it’s a goldmine. If you try to forget the finished film and put yourself into Kasdan’s shoes and you have all these ideas thrown at you, it can be a daunting task. What do you keep? What do you throw away? How do you make all this work?

In any case, there were about 10 Screenwriting Lessons I took away from this experience and thought they might be worth sharing.
Prospective film school students: Read this, buy a few other books, spend the money you would be spending on tuition on equipment, and get out there and make something. Don't waste your time sitting in classrooms. Trust me on this.

If you can't get the PDF download link to work (I couldn't), go here for an HTML version.

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