Making Indie Films

There is varying opinion as to which screenwriting software is the best. There is Movie Magic, Montage, Final Draft, etc.

Which one do you use?

(Personally it is a combination of Final Draft and Zhura (www.zhura.com))

If Final Draft is too expensive for you (about $200) or you are looking for something a little more…portable, Zhura is probably your thing. I use it any time I am away from the desktop that I write my screenplays on. It allows you to upload your script from Final Draft, or start your own script. From there you are able to write it, annotate it, and share it with others. The sharing works fairly well, but is really only useful if you are part of a screenwriting team, as people in our situation (poor) won’t have the need to send the script for review by the studio bosses.

Zhura is in constant development, so if its missing a feature you absolutely need, you should contact them with your proposal. Or you could just buy Final Draft, but that would take all the fun away…

Zhura

Keifer

As a filmmaker or writer it is important to make good work, but it is equally, if not more important, to get that work read or seen. If nobody reads or sees your work then the quality will go unnoticed and your skills will pass without recognition. No - I’m not saying prepare your Academy Award speech or get ready to collect a trophy at Sundance - I’m just saying do the diligence to get your work seen or read.

There are many ways to send out work or get it seen. Obviously for completed works there are the obvious festival routes and screenplay contests. However, there are also more offbeat ways to get your work noticed. Perhaps you have friends in the business or other filmmakers that you kick-around-with… Well, there is never any harm in getting them to read your script or you can perhaps even organize an impromptu screening for other filmmakers in your home or at a small local venue. The key is to generate interest and put your work out in the world. Building a website with your trailer and clips or posting on YouTube is another way to generate interest and have people looking at your stuff.

When it all comes down to it, perhaps you just have to start sending out emails to engage with people. You can send pitch letters or introductions or even the tried and trusted screenwriter query letter. The unfortunate fact is, your success will be more about your level of diligence than your level of skill. Remember - the indie film business is built on hard work and tenacity. Now repeat after me - I WILL GET MY WORK SEEN - I WILL GET MY SCREENPLAY READ! Say it 100 times. Say it until you believe it and then start sending out those emails!

Below is the trailer for 30 DAYS OF NIGHT… Not sure if it’s a Halloween winner or Halloween whiner…

I am tied-up in rewrite hell today, so this post has top be very brief. It’s one of those woods for the trees moments, so I’m just trying to cowboy up. In the meantime, I have to recommend Facebook again. It is a tremendous tool for the Indie Filmmaker. I have just managed to reconnect with so many old friends and colleagues there. On that note I need to send out a big shout to British director Q. His UK crime/gangster movie Deadmeat has been selected to play at the All Black Film Festival in Los Angeles, later this month.

Below is the deadmeat trailer…. Normal posts should resume tomorrow…

Sometimes we are told that our movie would’ve been better if we had newer or better technology. We could’ve used HDV instead of MiniDV. We could’ve used the newest version of FCP rather than the one that we have. The latest Magic Bullet filters would’ve given the thing more of a filmic look, perhaps even more atmosphere. All of the above is perhaps true, but just as equally untrue. Your movie is a complex series of choices. Still at its’ core all that matters is the script, the actors and the way you move the camera. Beyond that, technology is just a necessary evil. Keep that in mind when people make technological criticisms of you or your work.

Above is Michelle Ryan - the latest BIONIC WOMAN - proving that technology might not always be unfriendly. Below is a much more interesting vision of the future, though…

While the tabloids are buzzing about Pam Anderson and Denise Richards posing nude together for Playboy, I am nearing the end of my latest rewrite and it is becoming a hard slog. Not least because I have re-written dialogue where perhaps shifting around beats was more important. But that is sometimes just the nature of doing rewrites. You work and you work just to reach that final moment of clarity. The clarity was there all along, though. All you had to do to find it was to remove extraneous dialogue. That is what I am doing, right now, and I’ve probably got 48 hours of it ahead of me. Still, I realize that momentum is the key - almost like running a marathon. If you can keep the energy up in those last few miles, all the other twenty-something will have been worth it. So that’s what i’m telling you today - in this paragraph-less stream of conscious post. I’m just trying to keep that energy in top gear, because I know it will take me over the edge into a place where I need it to be. In the end, when good sense and logic have failed - momentum is all that you will have. Remember that. When you are in the home straight - keep the momentum up. For that exact purpose I keep listening to JOY DIVISION performing SHE’S LOST CONTROL.

Here is Anton Corbijn discussing the movie of the same name…

Myself and Margie were driving past Little Temple - a club on the edge of Silverlake, last night and the name Eddie Little came up. Eddie was a good friend of mine, at one point and I remember him taking me to that very club. Well, it was called something else, then - but still.

Before his untimely demise - Eddie had gone from zero to hero in writing terms . He had completed several very popular novels - one of which was adapted as the indie crime caper flick, ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE and was about to work on a TV show with Wesley Strick (of Cape Fear fame.)

I suppose Eddie taught me most about writing in the sense that his enthusiasm was infectious. He put himself into his words and his stories, even when he was blending fact and fiction - still, playing that it was the absolute truth. If you were around him and writing, he gave you the sense that anything was possible. To him, success was only ever a few paragraphs or a few lines of dialogue away. I still believe that and when I think of it, it reminds me of Eddie and yet another waitress asking him: ‘are you Mickey Rourke?” They looked similar. Well, not quite.

If you are searching for inspiration for your project, or just the energy to keep writing or shooting or raising the cash to do either - remember that there are people cheering you on. We all have an Eddie Little, who for me, even from beyond the grave is making me smile and giving me energy this morning.

The trailer I found for ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE is rather cheesy, but I hink that its’ populist, straight-to-video tone might even have given Eddie a chuckle…

CLICK HERE TO PLAY TRAILER!

Even though everybody keeps on saying that the current popularity of horror movies is on the wane - it might still be a genre to consider for your next indie project, as either writer or director. Last week, while engaging with several industry folks, they all seemed to be asking me “did I have a low-budget horror script for them?” On reflection, lots of people I know remain heavily involved in the genre and are making new monster or slasher pics.

John Gulager of Project Greenlight fame has just started prep on FEAST TWO and THREE in Shreveport, Louisiana. A friend who formerly worked at Franchise is rumored to be putting together a series of horror flicks under the banner Marylin Manson Presents and let’s not forget Rob Zombie’s rather successful remake of Halloween which made bank at the box office, earlier this month. Even in IFC’s rather tawdry THE BUSINESS - the gang win an Independent Spirit Award for their picture called HOUSE OF FEAR.

Remember, like comedy, as long as your horror project creates a visceral response - there are no real rules to it. You don’t actually need much cash or even production value, just something off-beat that is loaded with chills and thrills. I am waiting for somebody to create a Mumblecore horror movie. Yes - a very ‘New Yorky’ and naturalistic look at either murder, madness or mayhem. The new HDV cameras like the Canon XH-A1 or the Sony HVR-V1U are also perfect for low light and close quarter shooting - not a bad option for the fledgeling thrill-meister.

Meanwhile - while you chew on what horror indie to write or direct, you might check out San Francisco’s SHOCK IT TO ME CLASSIC HORROR FESTIVAL which runs at the Castro Theater October 5th thru 7th. Live guests include the legendary JOE DANTE.

Even though it’s off topic, I wanted to treat you to a clip from Matt Mahurin’s terrific New York documentary about a diner/restaurant called I LIKE KILLING FLIES… I managed to catch this doc on The Sundance Channel last night. It’s a must see…

Despite the fact Britney faces random drug and alcohol testing, the real lesson today is about screenwriting - and it’s a very personal lesson.

I suppose that the biggest mistake I have been making over the last few months (in doing rewrites) is to think that dialogue is more important than structure. In truth it is ALWAYS, absolutely ALWAYS the other way around. It’s an easy trap to fall into, though - to concentrate on scenes and think by re-working them that the script as a whole will improve. Well, yes - in parts it might - but as a whole the effect will be negligible. The most important thing to remember is that screenwriting is a formula. It follows a three act structure and needs the relevant emotional peaks and troughs to hold an audiences attention. If you haven’t read THE SCREENWRITER’S MASTER CHART - study it carefully and remind yourself that no matter how unique your story, as a screenplay it will have to follow certain immutable rules. Whenever you can - focus on structure. Only when the structure is perfect will changing dialogue add the boost that you need.

Now repeat the mantra - screenwriting is a craft - it is a formula - and it is my job to write that formula flawlessly.

Below is a video of SOUL COUGHING’s ’screenwriter blues.’ It always makes me smile and realize that this business SHOULD BE FUN!

So you have finished another draft of your screenplay and you have received notes from your collaborators. This is where the real work begins. This is what separates the real writers from the rank amateurs. The re-writing process is grueling. It will takes weeks and sometimes months. You will change one scene which means you will have to change five others. You will agonize over one piece of dialogue, but realize that it doesn’t work because of the proceeding story ‘beat’ not because of the line itself.

In the following few days, I am going to try a new system myself. I am still in the process of formulating it - but sufficed to say this ’system’ is basically a series of key refinements that you might try deploying in 72 hours.

The ‘Second Chance System’ as I’m calling it, is a way to give a flawed script a second chance and hopefully take it from ‘zero to hero’ over a weekend. Simply put - if you start on Friday, by Monday afternoon you will have a new working draft.

The S-C-S is a three step process. You should stick to it closely and the more brutal you are on your text - the better it should work. I say SHOULD - because, as I described earlier, this system is still in its’ beta-test phase. If it works out well, I’m sure that I’ll be basing an entire book on it. Yeah - right. Only joking. Anyway, on to the system itself.

STEP ONE - MAKE SURE THE STRUCTURE IS SOUND
Do your opening scene and end of act turning points work? By this I mean, do your opening scenes set the tone and texture of the movie? Do they make sense? Do they fit? Do we know what kind of movie this is. Sounds silly, I know - but if this is a comedy - make sure that the opening is funny. If it’s a thriller - have us be thrilled as we read. Have us hanging on the edge of our seats.

To fix the opening scenes(if they’re not working) I suggest that you simplify. Take the beat, the style, the flavor and CUT IT DOWN. You probably have a great, smart ‘bit of business’ in there and the way to fix or find it is to REMOVE all extraneous stuff. Don’t have cluttered prose. Have simplicity. Have white space.

The same is true for your end of act turning points and your ride to the climax. Think of these beats on an emotional level. Do they make people feel? That’s the question to ask. Are we feeling the difficulty that the characters are in? Are we rooting for them? Do these beats have any emotional resonance? Again to find that resonance WE MUST SIMPLIFY. What is an image or a ‘bit of business’ that will end the act most powerfully and have us desperate to find out what happens next. Well, you probably have it. It’s probably there - just obscured by too much dialogue or description. Find the power of those turning points and present them as simply and viscerally as you can. Be genuine and honest - and at that point when you connect with the text emotionally - it’s fixed. It’s working. So, move onto step two…

STEP TWO - LOSE BEATS THAT DON’T WORK (AND COMBINE OTHERS THAT ARE TOO LONG)…
When you have spent a day on fixing your structure you are ready to spend a day on the beats of your story. This part is where you have to be perhaps most brutal. In your script, there will be fun beats that don’t quite work. Usually these beats don’t work because they’re meandering or not making the story progress. Don’t try to fix these extraneous beats - simply remove them. Yes. Hit delete. Make them go away. The same is true of beats that take three scenes. Can you combine these three scenes to communicate one beat - Yes! Of course you can. So put the three scenes into one scene in the most economic way you can. As you begin to remove beats and streamline others - something miraculous will happen. The story will take on underlying resonance that you didn’t see before. The cluttered scenes now fly by. It reads much faster. Much punchier. When you have removed ALL extraneous beats that slow the flow (or make it harder to read) - move onto step three… You’ll know this point. It’ll be late at night on day two. You’ll scroll through a much shorter, tighter script and you’ll start see where dialogue cues don’t work.

STEP THREE - MAKE YOUR DIALOGUE SPARKLE…
All well written scripts look rather similar. There are short descriptive passages that separate fast, percussive dialogue. There’s lots of white space, so your eye is drawn to the middle of the page and the dialogue. This is what you want to do on day three. It has two purposes. The first is fairly obvious and it’s in the title of this step. ‘Make your dialogue sparkle.’ How do we do that? We refine and we simplify - yes - but we work it like it’s Jazz. What I mean by this, is we make the dialogue a riff on the action and the beats. The dialogue is your off-beat. It’s purposes is to inform the action - NOT TO DESCRIBE IT. To fix dialogue in a scene, I suggest that you remove the first two lines and the last two lines. What does that mean? Well, you start after the characters have entered the room and you finish before they leave. It makes a dialogue scene seem more immediate and in some cases more jarring. That’s jarring in a good way. By removing openings and endings you shorten scenes, make them play faster AND GET TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER. In the end, dialogue is all about heart and emotion. It can be as simple as the phrase: ‘Oh my God’ when a character sees something marvelous or something horrific. It can be as complex as Hamlet’s soliloquy. But regardless of which - NEVER use THREE lines when ONE will do. Brevity and economy should be your watchwords here. Now polish that dialogue. Make it crisp. Make it shine. And make it look clean.

Yes - looking clean is the last part of the S-C-S. How the script looks is almost as important as how it reads. Go for white space where-ever you can. Remove all the ‘continueds’ and ‘cut tos’ unless they are absolutely necessary. Now proof read and spell check. And in 72 hours - you should have a new workable draft. Work fast. Respond emotionally. And if you get stuck, just make a note and come back to that sticking point when you have reached the end of that particular pass. In this process momentum and honesty is everything.

I’m short on links today, but the Great World Of Sound trailer is certainly worth checking out.

Around this time on 9/11 I recieved a call from my father saying that he was watching the news in the UK and a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. Both myself and Margie remained incredulous. We went round to Tom Gulager’s to watch the news and later that day attached an antenna to our own TV - following the horrific events as they unfolded. Even now when I watch that news footage I still can’t quite believe what happened.

Today’s post in dedicated to those who lost their lives and the brave people of New York City…

As my producer friend, Karl Hunter is winging his way to Ocho Rios, to begin setting-up offices for I-FORCE FILMS in Jamaica - I thought today’s post could revolve around a discussion of Nollywood - Nigeria’s own brand of Hollywood or even the currently popular Bollywood. Karl came across the Nollywood phenomena during his travels in Africa. It was interesting to us both how digital technology had been adopted there to create a mass of small, local movies. These small, local movies are available in shops and from street-vendors all across Nigeria as DVDs and VCDs. An average movie will sell 50,000 copies. A popular movie may sell as many as 200,000 units. So at 250 Niara (that’s $2) a piece - producers have the possibility of ample profit - time and time again.

In thirteen years, Nollywood has grown from a tiny cottage industry to a multi-million dollar business, employing thousands of people. Nollywood features are, in some cases, issue based meledromas. They tackle topics such as AIDS, corruption, womens rights and the daily difficulties of life in Africa. They are simplistic in terms of production values and often have the texture of telenovelas - however, this hasn’t impacted their mass appeal or profitability. Different regions produce movies in local languages, such as Hausa in the north of Nigeria and Yoruba in the southeast. English language productions are also popular.

We can learn lessons from Nollywood. Here are my five Nollywood top tips…

1) ISSUE BASED MOVIES WILL ALWAYS FIND AN AUDIENCE.
You should write stories with resonance for yourself and your peers.

2) NON ACTORS CAN WORK IN DRAMA, AS LONG AS THEY REMAIN AUTHENTIC.
So - yes - you can cast your friends. But if you need to cast a grandfather - cast a real grandfather, perhaps even your own.

3) EXPLOIT THE TECHNOLOGY TO YOUR BEST ADVANTAGE.
As filmmakers, we always want the latest and greatest toys. Do we need them? No! This is a myth sold to us by manufacturers. You can still make TODAY’s movie with YESTERDAY’s incarnation of digital.

4) YOU CAN TRIUMPH REGARDLESS OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS.
Making movies in Nigeria is hard. Much harder than making movies in San Diego or South Philly. Where ever you are, regardless of surroundings, you can be a filmmaker and a successful one at that. All you have to do is apply yourself, work hard and believe it. Yes! Believe it.

5) SELF DISTRIBUTION WORKS IF YOU’RE SMART.
We all have delusions of theatrical releases and festival success. That’s great, but not always practical. However, making DVDs is cheap. Find a way to promote your movie on-line and in local stores. Try to move product and create a buzz. Okay, you might not sell 50,000 copies - but maybe, just maybe you can sell 5,000 DVDs for $5 a piece, over one year. That’s $25k - and if you made your picture for $10k, percentage-wise you’re doing much better than most of Hollywood.

Here are some NOLLYWOOD clips to get you thinking…

For the latest Nollywood releases, visit IZOGN MOVIES

Towards the beginning of the movie MISERY with James Caan and Kathy Bates, the writer character outlines how he celebrates after finishing work on his new novel. In his case, when the manuscript is done, he lights and smokes a single cigar while drinking a glass of champagne. Clearly celebration is part of his process. It’s a piece of punctuation, if you like. It indicates that we are done, it’s time to re-asses, time to move-on, time for the next stage. For some of you that might even mean flaunting it, like Bettie Page - pictured above.

In several screenwriting how-to books, the authors also suggest that celebration should be a key part of your process too. It’s perhaps a chance to let off steam, or pat yourself on the back, or a way to re-charge your creative batteries. I was never a big advocate of this until relatively recently. But yesterday, that’s exactly what I did. I finished the new draft of a screenplay and went to the movies. It felt great. It felt like a vacation. I can’t recommend it enough.

At some point this week, think about how to make celebrating part of your creative process. In the meantime, here is the trailer of the movie I went to see, yesterday. Funny stuff, indeed.

Above is Bill Murray and Sharon Stone from BROKEN FLOWERS - some excellent sparse writing…

Writers that I like, whether they be Indie writers or Studio level writers all have one thing in common. They write clean and crisp. What do I mean by this? Simple really.

The prose is easy to understand; without too many run-on sentences and too much punctuation, that actually makes it much harder to understand or follow exactly what’s going on.

That previous sentence is a case in point. I could have written…

Easy to understand prose. No run-on sentences. Not too much punctuation that’s hard to follow.

You see where I’m going with this? You can actually develop and deploy a writing style that is short and succint, in some cases even incomplete sentences or sentence fragments. Imagine your screenplay as an instruction manual for a very complex machine. For it to work it has to communicate on a very basic level.

Some writers will disagree with the sentence fragment approach. They will tell you that for stylistic and grammatical reason only complete sentences and ‘good’ English should be used. Whether I agree with that or not, grammatically correct sentences can also be clean and crisp. Using my sentence example above, you might have written…

Write prose that is easy to understand. You should avoid writing run-on sentences and the overt of confusing punctuation.

Same sentences. Different approach. Same result.

Here is your clean and crisp checklist to make sure that your pages are shaping up.

1) Make sure that there is plenty of air (white space) on the page. Don’t deliver cluttered pages.
2) Can I trim down my descriptions and use one word instead of three?
3) Use active, descriptive verbs. But make them simple.
4) Avoid too many dashes and elipses in dialogue.
5) Set a tone and stick to it.
6) Write either proper English or sentence fragments. If you mix the two, be wary of the effect.
7) Read. Edit. Re-read. Re-edit and proof. Polish your prose like a diamond. Make it gleam.

For my current favorite script in terms of style and proper English, you might want to read Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovitch.

I am consistently sent scripts and told by other writers and colloborators: “oh yes, this is a low budget script.” However, nine times out of ten, that clearly isn’t the case. Usually, the dead giveaway is an opening scene with 500 people set in some massive, expensive location. I raise that question and the writer concerned normally replies - “yes, but it’s only one scene.” So then I say: “but there are twenty-nine lead characters” and the response is; “well it’s an ensemble piece.”

This happens to meet quite often, which leads me to the following conclusion. Most writers and even directors think they know what makes a low budget script, but somehow they have missed the point. And just because you’re going to shoot a movie digitally doesn’t mean it’s low budget.

(FYI - The above picture of Gabrielle Reece is only there because I am writing a scene about Beach Volleyball, right now.)

There are three main factors that go into a low budget script - location, cast and scope. If you can answer yes to the THREE following questions, then you’re probably on the right track.

ARE THERE MINIMAL LOCATIONS IN YOUR SCRIPT..?
Sounds obvious, but the key to a low budget script is containment or being contained. The action should take place mainly in one or two locations. It’s best if they are interiors. Renting locations can be expensive and the minute you have to move the cast and crew it costs money, too. If by page five of your script there are more than five locations, it’s NOT going to be low budget - unless of course the other 95 pages takes place in your mom’s kitchen. Be sensible as well. The minimal location rule doesn’t fly if your one location is the top of Mount Everest or The White House.

One of the best examples I could come up with of the minimal location rule is Reservoir Dogs. I’m not totally a huge fan of this movie - however 80% of the picture takes place in an bare, empty warehouse. There’s a good lesson to be learned here and that’s the rule of access. If your uncle owns an empty warehouse - set your movie there.

ARE THERE ONLY A FEW CHARACTERS IN YOUR MOVIE?
Writing a story about a handful of characters is key to a low budget script. More than a handful of actors and it gets complicated and expensive to shoot - even if you aren’t paying them much. More actors means your food and transportation costs go up. More actors means you will need more crew to light and to wrangle them. Chances are you may know one or two actors personally. Write a movie for them. Be clever and strategic - but think small. Think Clerks or the better but lesser known Following - Christopher Nolan’s directorial debut.

Onto question three and the vaguest but perhaps most important question…

IS THE SCOPE OF YOUR FILM SMALL..?
Sometimes small movies can cover broad issues. One of my favorite examples of this is Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things. The scope of this movie is a small - a foreign man and woman have problems working in a London hotel. However the very same small movie tackles broad issues of race and immigration in the UK. So keep the scope of your script small. That means set it in a contemporary time and place and cover ground that you have easy access to. Don’t set your script in the South Of Spain in 1935 to depict the rise of General Franco -unless it’s set in one room with two or three actors and already have your props and costumes ready to go. See, even that can be done if you keep the scope small. Of course, I would steer away from period peices and stick to little, personal stories that illuminate wider issues.

On closing. this discussion of low budget writing was brought to you after a conversation with my producer friend, Mr. Karl Hunter. We agreed to agree on these matters mentioned above and hope that you find them illuminating.

Onto some reading materials for today… I’m not sure that I agree with Linda J Cowgill, but her Secrets Of Screenplay Structure is certainly worth a look.