There are only THREE important aspects to writing a Good Film. 1- A Beginning
2- An Ending
3- And Most Importantly, GOOD CHARACTERS. If one studies their characters and literally builds and molds them, the “in betweens” of the beginning and ending will come. I come from the Syd Field School of Scriptwriting. Even after taking his class years ago, I still didn’t believe in some of his methods. He taught you to literally write hours and hours of backstory for all of your characters even if one of them only showed up for one scene. When I say backstory, he would have us write if they were born from Natural Childbirth or not to what their favorite food was even if they never ate in the story. I had thought it to be very extraneous UNTIL I decided to practice the full discipline to write Meter. And just like he promised, the practice added so many more dimensions to my characters. I decided after Meter to take the time to do this practice even if I had a character who was deceased but talked about. I’ve only written two scripts since surrendering to Mr. Field’s disciplines and both scripts ended up basically writing themselves because of the heavy character development. In fact, the Plot Points kind of just fell into place without even having to think about them because, I knew the characters so much. When I was approached about writing a “faith based film,” I thought, “well all those films are so one dimensional.” I being new to faith again, thought that this job would be an undertaking. BUT it would help me grow in my faith and help me really stretch my writing wings because if you have seen my films, then you know what kind of style I have. Of course the practice, will be tough because I will have to find a way to avoid “beating the film goers’ over the head with the theme” and writing characters that are so “thick” even the worst of actors could really make them believable. I also have to do this without a hint of grit, darkness, or vulnerability my main characters normally have. I have spent a month working on characters already and I can’t help but delve too deep. This is going to be a lot tougher than I think.
2- An Ending
3- And Most Importantly, GOOD CHARACTERS. If one studies their characters and literally builds and molds them, the “in betweens” of the beginning and ending will come. I come from the Syd Field School of Scriptwriting. Even after taking his class years ago, I still didn’t believe in some of his methods. He taught you to literally write hours and hours of backstory for all of your characters even if one of them only showed up for one scene. When I say backstory, he would have us write if they were born from Natural Childbirth or not to what their favorite food was even if they never ate in the story. I had thought it to be very extraneous UNTIL I decided to practice the full discipline to write Meter. And just like he promised, the practice added so many more dimensions to my characters. I decided after Meter to take the time to do this practice even if I had a character who was deceased but talked about. I’ve only written two scripts since surrendering to Mr. Field’s disciplines and both scripts ended up basically writing themselves because of the heavy character development. In fact, the Plot Points kind of just fell into place without even having to think about them because, I knew the characters so much. When I was approached about writing a “faith based film,” I thought, “well all those films are so one dimensional.” I being new to faith again, thought that this job would be an undertaking. BUT it would help me grow in my faith and help me really stretch my writing wings because if you have seen my films, then you know what kind of style I have. Of course the practice, will be tough because I will have to find a way to avoid “beating the film goers’ over the head with the theme” and writing characters that are so “thick” even the worst of actors could really make them believable. I also have to do this without a hint of grit, darkness, or vulnerability my main characters normally have. I have spent a month working on characters already and I can’t help but delve too deep. This is going to be a lot tougher than I think.
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