Screen writing is fascinating! I don’t think I that good at it, but I am learning all the time, and I love the process. I certainly believe I have improved since I started exploring film making 10 years ago.
What makes a film, and its script, memorable, are the characters. Plots are secondary - characters are what it is all about.
There are two fundamental lessons I learned from my film making friends, and these are:
- avoid exposition ALWAYS - ie, anything that is on the nose, remove it
- characters only speak when they want something - ie, characters need to be motivated
Now, looking at the second point, this is a reflection of reality. When do we speak to other people? When we want something.
If life really does imitates art/movies, then we only ever speak to another person/character when we want something, on screen or off. And what a character says is never as important or interesting as to why they said it. What motivates a character (motive) is what makes us invest in a person and follow them. And non-exposition is what makes what they say interesting – it leaves things to the imagination.
Yeah, next year is film making time!
Posted by Ronnie Apteker
Thursday 30 December 2010
Motives
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1 comments:
Read Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author". It's better in the original Italian but I'm biased. You'll love it. Pirandello wrote in the 20's and was so ahead of his time, people actually thought he was mad. Find the time to read him. He's amazing.
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