Reading screenplays

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NoTalentAssClown

Member
Hello again. I'm a beginning screenwriter, as you know, and I'm having trouble judging and analyzing screenplays I read.

I began reading more screenplays, but I can't tell what makes the great ones so great, good ones good for that matter. I've been reading "great" screenplays of great films I have NOT seen. Is that the problem? Should I watch the film afterwards? I feel like I should be able to tell without watching the actual film.

Any advice for me as I read these things?

By the way, I'm not an inexperienced amateur. I've read the books and have taken classes so I do know the basics, structure,...blah, blah. When I was studying, being lazy, I rarely read screenplays. I actively wrote.

Do I have to get in a different "mode" when I read screenplays? Maybe I'm reading the same way I read a novel?
 
When you are reading a screenplay do you want to quit in the middle? Or does it make you want to keep reading until you have finished it? I would say the ones you want to quit reading there is something wrong. Perhaps you should try reading more amateur screenplays and not only those that have been produced, and rewritten so many times the mistakes are few and rare.
 
The problem is you wouldn't understand what a great screenplay is because you are a NoTalentAssClown! haha, j/k ;) I love your name though, god I was laughing so hard when I read that.

I get really bored by reading a script of a movie I've already seen, personally, because I don't see the point. It's like looking over the blueprints to a building you know really well. It just seems unusual, like yeah ok here's the blueprints to my condo building -- I live here, I already know what it looks like. I prefer to read screenplays for films I haven't yet seen, or ones that haven't even been made, because I can examine the structure and wonder how it'll all come together in reality, etc.

There are certain things I look for immediately, other sort of general guidelines I look to see if the writer followed, etc. Most screenplays you can tell they're bad very quickly...
 
I'm having trouble judging and analyzing screenplays I read.

I began reading more screenplays, but I can't tell what makes the great ones so great, good ones good for that matter. I've been reading "great" screenplays of great films I have NOT seen. Is that the problem? Should I watch the film afterwards?

Hi NTAClown,

It sounds like you find the process of reading screenplays laborious and that perhaps it's just a case that you struggle to enjoy reading screenplays more than others. This is no biggie, it just means you are perhaps more of a visual person. I confess to having never read a novel since Great Expectations was forced down my throat at school.

My advice is reading how-to books and other people's work will only help you so much, but you really need to write your own stuff. Don't get distracted by other people's work and "I must write it this way" etc, it will stop your creative juices flowing. Sure, later down the track it's healthy to think about things like that, but I would stay away from comparisons and things like that, at least until you've written an original idea.

As for watching films, one thing that was never taught to me was the value of enjoying theater, visual arts and other things like that, so I would look at other things too as it can only broaden your imagination.
 
odetotud asked an important question. Do you feel like quitting in the middle? Then it's not working. Do you keep turning pages to see what happens next? This is one worth analyzing.

Something that's worth a try is to read early drafts of produced screenplays. Sure, what you see on the screen has gone through many rewrites and polishing. I find it interesting AND inspiring to read 1st or early drafts to see where things came from. Here's a website that offers several drafts of the same screenplay.

The Film Analysis Series might be able to help you analyze and understand what makes a script work. Years ago, I bought two from Script City (it might have been ScriptHouse, but I'm pretty sure it was Script City) and really got a lot from them. These are not free downloads, though. You'll have to order and pay for them. I'm guessing they're probably about $15 but don't know for sure. In today's world, everyone wants a free download, but sometimes you have to pay for someone's hard work.

(btw, the two I got and studied were Body Heat and Chinatown)
 
A solid script is a page turner. Time flies, you want to keep reading, you don't get bored, you're totally engrossed in the story and have to read it until the end.

THAT'S what separates a good script from a so-so script, page turning. Do you want to turn that next page, if so, then good, if not, then not so good.
 
I remember reading the original screenplay for Bladerunner and realizing just how many changes occured in the actual movie from the screenplay, because I'd watched the movie so many times (as both the originally released version and the director's cut). I've even seen a more recent version now referred to as the "final cut".

It really drove home "the three times you make a movie" adage. (1. When you write the screenplay. 2. When you shoot it. 3. When you edit it.)
 
Craig, that's so true! That really is exactly how it works. I find there is even a fourth, but most people don't care about that I suppose.

I happened to be reviewing my outline for my feature film script the other day, because my sister was asking how I go about outlining a project (she wants to be a writer, or is a writer but wants to be a better one, whatever), so I showed her the outline for this script. It was interesting to note how many paragraphs (each paragraph being a scene) pretty much exactly followed from outline --> script --> shooting --> editing, but then there are significant variations at other times where things diverge somewhere in the middle.

Sometimes, a scene that was never outlined made it into the script on one of the middle or later drafts. Other times, a scene changed significantly between outline and screenplay even on the first draft. Many other times, a scene changed from script to shooting because of locations, time, budget, etc. For instance, little things like the placement of characters or the location of the scene. Maybe something was moved from the kitchen to the couch because we were already lit for the living room and we didn't have the time to go re-light another room and shoot there for a scene that story-wise could take place anywhere in the house with no difference to the end result. I would say for us that was the biggest point of change, from script to what we actually shot.

But then as you noted, editing is another big point. I think scene 20 now precedes scene 19, so it goes 20, 19, 21. Another scene I can think of was cut in half as far as dialogue and now has no reference to two of the three things discussed in the scene, so it is now focused just on one thing that was in the script. We shot everything, but we decided it flowed better and played faster without so much verbiage. There are quite a few other examples of tightening like that as well, where we have all of the lines in the script shot, but in editing we lopped off some of the words or lines to make it tighter.

It's definitely interesting to watch the process and note how different movies are on the page, the script, versus in the final cut.
 
THANKS everybody! Very helpful input from each and everyone! Question though...

So one of the stonger points was that a great script is a page turner. What are your thoughts on a script like The Deerhunter? That movie is GREAT (in my opinion), but when I read the screenplay, the pages were NOT turning. I almost quit twice.

Obviously, in art everything isn't black and white. But, let's say I were to write a GREAT script that broke the rules and wasn't your standard 3-act screenplay, would these industry people/producers be able to see the "greatness"?
 
NoTalentAssClown said:
THANKS everybody! Very helpful input from each and everyone! Question though...

So one of the stonger points was that a great script is a page turner. What are your thoughts on a script like The Deerhunter? That movie is GREAT (in my opinion), but when I read the screenplay, the pages were NOT turning. I almost quit twice.

Obviously, in art everything isn't black and white. But, let's say I were to write a GREAT script that broke the rules and wasn't your standard 3-act screenplay, would these industry people/producers be able to see the "greatness"?
Click to expand...

No script is an actual movie. Does that make sense?

The Deerhunter probably couldn't exist solely in its script format: it would have to be a novel or a movie, where the combination of all assets that define what Modern Motion Picture bring to the table to complete it.

I don't think a great script is automatically considered a page turner; that sounds more like the definition of a well written script. We've all seen well-written scripts turn to crap in the visual medium.

You must also consider that personal preference (we call this: demographic) as a factor. What may be fascinating to you in the visual format, will not be the same in text. Vice Versa in many situations, if you ask the fans of the Harry Potter Books what they think of the movies.

What a good, aka one that will get produced, does have are great ideas. On a whole, within a topic or genre, a script is simply a series of ideas that serve the whole.

Sometimes, the basic idea is good enough to be purchased, and then you give it to someone--another writer--with MORE ideas to fill in the basic idea.

One of my favorite scripts to read, and analyze on all fronts, is THE MATRIX. It's kind of cheesy to say that, but, that's the kind of material that spoke to me when I began this hellish journey. It made me want to read it again and again and again, and even had I not seen the movie already, it was CLEARLY spelled out for me on the page. It wasn't just one great idea, The Matrix Has you, it was a fountain of great freaking ideas that held it up in every single scene.

So, there's a bit of preference play going on. But, you can count on a great script being filled with great ideas that serve the whole. Whether the basic idea interests you or not, that's the question. Someone was interested in The Deerhunter, so it got made and the vision of those great ideas translated to screen.

So the Matrix.

So one of my favorites The Shawshank Redemption

And my all-time favorite GHOSTBUSTERS! (You can go to hell if you think I'm fifteen for loving GB! Hehehehehe)
 
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