What and What not to include?

P

P.S.T.

Active member
I read several posts and I relize thet noobs tend to add things that are not needed. So, what is needed?
For example, I sometimes get real specific with angles and picture,is this wrong?
Or in action sequences I will be specific with expressions and fighting moves, is this too wrong?

Fighting,Driving,Time Progression,Angles,Music,Mood,etc.

Stuff like this is what makes me curious how you are supposed to put it on the script.
 
P.S.T. said:
I read several posts and I relize thet noobs tend to add things that are not needed. So, what is needed?
For example, I sometimes get real specific with angles and picture,is this wrong?
Or in action sequences I will be specific with expressions and fighting moves, is this too wrong?

Fighting,Driving,Time Progression,Angles,Music,Mood,etc.

Stuff like this is what makes me curious how you are supposed to put it on the script.
Click to expand...

If you're writing a spec script for eventual sale, or have been contracted by someone to write a script, do not include camera angles or directorial edits. Leave this to the shooting script and the director.

If you're writing this to shoot yourself, write it anyway you want to. After writing so many that I had to be confined to the "box", when doing my short, I broke every rule just to say I did. :)
 
Well...it's kind of a tricky question to answer. Yes, for the most part, you do not want to put in a lot of camera angles, directorial edits, character parentheticals...it tells the reader you are inexperienced because we all know that actors/directors will ignore them anyways. They want to make their movie. Fair enough. But, if it is essential to telling the story or is the only way for something to make sense, then by all means put it in. Just don't go crazy on em. Maybe 1 or 2 angles, but if you can get by without it, don't put it in.

Same thing for music. If you HAVE to have a song because it is essential to the plot of a movie, then yeah, put that bad boy in it. Otherwise, don't because your budget probably won't allow for it. A producer will change your request for that perfect beatles song so fast b/c it's ridiculously expensive and the audience will get the same point (mood or whatever) from that unsigned band his teenage daughter listens to from myspace.

What do you mean by driving or time progression? As for fighting, go ahead and choreograph that bad boy. This is an area to show off your creativity. Give us great details about what we see. We want to feel engaged. But you don't wanna write a play-by-play description (i.e. 10 jabs, 1 karate kid crane, 4 uppercuts...etc.).

It does make a difference if this is something on spec or for hire or if it's something you are writing with the intention of directing and financing yourself. However, there are certain 'rules' that are in place in order to help pace the movie, etc.

The best thing to do is to read a lot of actual scripts from a wide range of writers and see how they do it, what their tricks are. Shane Black writes very different screenplays from Charlie Kaufman who writes very different from...but they are gonna be 'correct' (partly because of their clout, but you get my meaning). Just know what the effect is of 'breakin' a particular rule. Hope this helps some.

Besties,

Mischief
 
It depends on who you're writing for; I included camera direction in my screenplay that I'm going to direct this summer. But those notes are for me. I wrote 30 pages of a spec scritp that I planned to sell (which I stopped writing because I'm in preproduction on my project) and I only included one camera direction.

It's kind of funny, when people read my aforementioned screenplay, screenwriters told me that I had too much information in the script. My novelist friends told me I didn't have enough information.
 
A novelist wouldn't think a screenplay had enough info because it' s not
written in prose.

1. Keep details to a minimum.
2. Add kick to your dialogue.
3. Keep action paragraphs to a minimum, too much black is the death of a script.

Those are a few things to keep in mind, most of all the #1 rule to screenwriting:

LESS IS MORE

Charli
 
Excellent points so far.

To me, good scripts are like poetry. Each word is important and has an impact. Like a poem there should be "white space" and the flow/pace of the story is every bit as important as what is being written.

I actually believe this so strongly that the web site for my screenwriter's group is: www.MoviePoet.com

Chris
 
Good point, Chris. I actually tend to like novels that have a lot of white space as well, though not with the same ratio as poetry or a screenplay. You know, in reading screenplays online, I’ve noticed that a lot of movies I really liked aren’t necessarily great screenplays. These are usually screenplays from writer-directors, whereas the scripts written by people who are solely dedicated to the craft of screenwriting are better screenplays, but not necessarily better movies (in my completely subject opinion, of course). Naturally, now that I’m making that statement, I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head to back this up.
 
Josh_Boelter said:
I actually tend to like novels that have a lot of white space as well, though not with the same ratio as poetry or a screenplay.
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I like my novels the same way.

I was an English major in college and always thought I would write "the great american novel", but I just never felt comfortable writing that much prose. Plays were too much dialogue.

But, when I discovered screenplays, it was like I found where I belonged.

Chris
 
Josh_Boelter said:
You know, in reading screenplays online, I’ve noticed that a lot of movies I really liked aren’t necessarily great screenplays. These are usually screenplays from writer-directors, whereas the scripts written by people who are solely dedicated to the craft of screenwriting are better screenplays, but not necessarily better movies (in my completely subject opinion, of course). Naturally, now that I’m making that statement, I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head to back this up.
Click to expand...

I was talking to a few guys who read a lot of screenplays and they were saying the same thing. We were talking about how Crash's screenplay wasn't that great, but the movie was good. Conversely, they said the screenplay to Good Will Hunting was very good, as well as the movie.
 
Just read lots and lots of screenplays. You'll soon get the gist of what to include and what not to.

Reading is the fastest way of learning IMHO, and probably something the average newbie writer doesn't bother doing.

EJ
 
Wow,thanks for the advice. I will read more to get the hang of it. What I ment by driving was ,do you include like if the shot is in the back seat or the actor turns left, stuff like that. And time progression I ment like if time passed how do you let the reader and most importantly the viewer know.... but thx for the great advice once again.
 
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