Any Screenwriters On The Board??
- Thread starter LeftyLuchini
- Start date
Heavy exposition makes sense both in terms of being relatively early/newer in the practice of writing in general (this is true not just for screen) but ALSO when working with legends and folklore. I know it’s a lot
Of SUPERNATURAL series fans on the board and they’ll remember “meta”-episodes calling out their writing cheats eg “just throw in an EXPLAINER…” lol
I say this to offer one last thought
Since SINNERS is being over discussed (not overrated at all imo. Just talked about AD NAUSEUM on and offline for generally good reason!) I can use it as a reference to where Coogler digested you could say all the folklore and legends into a story that was some super personal and grounded shit, not just rich in historical context but PERSONAL familial lineage context etc. He found the connections between all these inspirations; and while I know the “final draft” script (that say DP and producers etc first read) was significantly different from the Final Cut of the film we’ve now seen, all the elements where surely there in ways no one reading it - and surely Coogler himself as the storyteller - could have expected/imagined.
Writing as you know is draft after draft after draft. Like all professional storytelling. “The first draft of script is first cut of film; and not until Final Cut of film is that cut also the final draft of the script etc”
Writing and rewriting is essential.
My point I think distills down to - once you feel you’ve got a complete story/plot - beginning middle and that ending you wrote to catch up to…
Take the time to see as best you can where the folklore and legends can be reimagined not as exposition from characters but AS characters* for example. Personas etc that embody and express/convey the spirit/essence etc of the exposition in a way that propels the story fwd and takes the story if not the plot (or just some aspects of the plot) in unexpected directions. *and not just characters but set pieces and side missions/B-storylines, subplots etc
Don’t be afraid to fuck shit up. Once you’ve got that complete beginning middle end - it’s your safety net. You will always go back to it. But generally the goal for really creating stories that only YOU can… comes out of wildly experimenting on the complete body of work you initially create.
Sounds like you’re at that point or very close to it if not already in it.
Blessings as you keep knockin shit out!
Thank you, Brother. I'm really appreciative of you and Raze. Both of you have given me a wealth of advice, along with other things to consider as I write the next draft.
It's a little difficult because I'm writing and learning at the same time. But, I'm enjoying the challenge for sure.
You seem to have the joy for it
That’s what makes the difference.
I know what you mean practically as far as “learning” goes. And that does take some time and focus to get the skill/muscle memory like together.
But I try to remind all of us that really what takes focus and the right perspective and approach etc is understanding that nothing NOTHING is more valuable than Learning to Write FOR YOURSELF. Learning to write what YOU love in a way including a style that YOU love.
The discipline of writing can vary a bit, but ultimately from as early as a writer catches this “secret” until it’s just the experience they’ve built - writing for the joy and love of it and to experience in every writing session the joy and love of writing/creating/storytelling/world building etc… that is all always first and foremost an endeavor for yourself. Love it.
When I saw the convo between George RR Martin and Stephen King some years ago it was crazy how each man embodies to this day the HUGE issue you hear in writing circles — “writers love having written; they just hate writing”. I always hated that concept because it seemed so full of shit to a nigga who just enjoyed what I enjoy! I wasn’t tryna take on nobody’s pain
(I got plenty nuff pain. — This here is my OUTLET nigga!! Da fuk yall on?!?!)
King loves writing. Martin still struggles bec it seems he’s never learned to let his focus NOT be the end goal. It gets even harder when you’re a writer who maybe doesn’t love writing but def loves having written AND you’re as fuckin popular as that dude got!!! The pressure to feed the audience etc. In that interview and in many posts I’ve seen from Martin lol dude feels the pressure lmfao
I've been told that I have a gift for storytelling. But, the rub for me now is how do I go from verbally telling a story... to writing a story (showing and not telling)?You seem to have the joy for it
That’s what makes the difference.
I know what you mean practically as far as “learning” goes. And that does take some time and focus to get the skill/muscle memory like together.
But I try to remind all of us that really what takes focus and the right perspective and approach etc is understanding that nothing NOTHING is more valuable than Learning to Write FOR YOURSELF. Learning to write what YOU love in a way including a style that YOU love.
The discipline of writing can vary a bit, but ultimately from as early as a writer catches this “secret” until it’s just the experience they’ve built - writing for the joy and love of it and to experience in every writing session the joy and love of writing/creating/storytelling/world building etc… that is all always first and foremost an endeavor for yourself. Love it.
When I saw the convo between George RR Martin and Stephen King some years ago it was crazy how each man embodies to this day the HUGE issue you hear in writing circles — “writers love having written; they just hate writing”. I always hated that concept because it seemed so full of shit to a nigga who just enjoyed what I enjoy! I wasn’t tryna take on nobody’s pain
(I got plenty nuff pain. — This here is my OUTLET nigga!! Da fuk yall on?!?!)
King loves writing. Martin still struggles bec it seems he’s never learned to let his focus NOT be the end goal. It gets even harder when you’re a writer who maybe doesn’t love writing but def loves having written AND you’re as fuckin popular as that dude got!!! The pressure to feed the audience etc. In that interview and in many posts I’ve seen from Martin lol dude feels the pressure lmfao
Great question
“IP ownership; the blueprint… it’s by…
It's public domain for now, but Hollywood will try to change that in the near future. Character consistency isn't there yet.
AI video might hurt influencers and advertising folks first.
It won't be long before they all go after Google
Short form content like this is going to have a huge impact on the industry. Actors, writers, voice-over actors, VFX artists...
WHAT!?!?!?
An Ode to Stranger Than Fiction, the Best Movie About Writer’s Block.
The whole movie is a love letter to language.
'Jurassic World Rebirth' Writer David Koepp on the Screenwriting Mistake That Dooms Scripts
David Koepp discusses his return to the Jurassic franchise, his writing process, and advice for screenwriters ahead of Jurassic World: Rebirth.
blog.finaldraft.com
'Jurassic World Rebirth' Writer David Koepp on the Screenwriting Mistake That Dooms Scripts
David Koepp is a Hollywood legend. One of the most successful screenwriters of all time, Koepp is the iconic voice behind works like Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Death Becomes Her, Mission: Impossible, and many more.
Koepp is known for his versatility. He has achieved both critical and commercial success in a wide variety of genres, including thriller, science fiction, comedy, action, drama, crime, superhero, horror, adventure, and fantasy. He can write in essentially any world or tone and deliver consistent blockbusters.
Recently, he rejoined Steven Spielberg to take on dinosaurs again for Jurassic World Rebirth, the next entry in the Jurassic franchise. Set five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, in Rebirth the world’s environment has become mostly inhospitable to dinosaurs, leaving them only the tropical regions that feel like their original habitats. Directed by Gareth Edwards, the film stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali.
We were delighted to be able to speak with Koepp ahead of Jurassic World Rebirth and learn about his process on the film, as well as get his advice on structure and more.
Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Final Draft: You’ve been so important to the Jurassic franchise. What got you excited to come back to it?
David Koepp: An idea. I did the first two, and I watched the others with great interest. Occasionally I’d give some thoughts on a script if Steven asked, but I’d been off pursuing other things. And Steven called, probably about two years ago now, and said, “What do you think? Would you want to do another one of those? I might have an idea.”
And that’s how all our stuff has started, with one of us saying, “Hey, do you think it would be cool if…?” and then off we go into the idea. So he told me his idea and I said, “That’s cool.” It’s an idea which became this mosasaurus section of the plot in the movie, which is really spectacular. There’s like 20 minutes in the middle of the movie that’s really just like an oceangoing adventure, and it’s just so thrilling and so brilliantly directed. I really love it.
But he had this idea, and so the next six months we spent sending emails back and forth and saying, “What about this?” and “What about this framework?”
One thing for me was I felt like every three movies seemed like a logical time to change tone and change characters. I think they did it after the first three movies, [and] the Jurassic World three movies. Dominion seemed like it ended on a valedictory note, and that part of the story was done.
So I thought, “Do you think I could start over?” Not in the sense of denying any of the events that have already occurred in the previous movies. I hate when they do that, but where else can we look? Where else can we turn our attention? What other characters can we turn our attention to?
And can we change tone a little bit? Because the tone that I feel most comfortable writing is more similar to the first movie. So he said, “Yeah, let’s run with it. Let’s go where your imagination takes you.” So off we went, and it was a great chance to work on something. Of course, I was worried I’m going to try and recapture past magic and won’t find it. I guess audiences will judge for themselves if we did or not. I think we did. I certainly know that when I started writing, I was having a ball, and it was as if no time had passed since writing the first movie.
Final Draft: I know that you created “nine commandments” for writing this, and one of them was no ‘retconning’. Why is that something that’s so important to you?
David Koepp: It seems like such a cheat. I hate when I go and they say, “Oh, yes, that happened. But you weren’t looking at what you thought you were looking at. You were actually looking at her twin, and her twin is from another timeline and you never…”
I just hate that. I’m like, no, you asked me to come to your movie, and I gave you $15, and I saw it, and I have the right to believe that that really happened. It feels obvious to me and labored, and there’s always a lot of explanation for why this wasn’t what you thought it was.
I think it’s also kind of disrespectful to all the movies that come before. A lot of filmmakers worked really hard telling those stories. You can’t then deny that they occurred. That’s just a personal preference. I don’t like a retcon.
Final Draft: Is that something that’s part of your process, setting guidelines like that for every project?
David Koepp: Yes. I love boundaries, as any of the nuns who taught me in elementary school will tell you. I do better when there are limits placed on me. I love what I call “a bottle.” The whole story can only take place in 24 hours, or it’s all inside this house, or it’s only from Tom Cruise’s point of view in War of the Worlds. We said, let’s limit this movie to just what our main character sees or feels or experiences. Let’s never go to big global shots because we’ve seen that before.
I think when you have restrictions like that, you are forced into creative solutions that I actually find quite liberating. Instead of confining for [Rebirth], one of the first challenges was, how do we make dinosaurs feel special and unique again? Because when Dominion ended, they’re everywhere, and they’re out there and they’re swimming in your pool and on top of the Chrysler Building and renting apartments.
And how do we make it in a believable way? How do we advance the story to say, “Okay, that didn’t work for dinosaurs and humans. We did not coexist well. We hoped we would, but we didn’t.” And so where are they now and how can that feel special and exciting?
For that, I went back to [Michael] Crichton’s first novel, and I think you’re never in trouble when you go back to the original source and say, “What worked here?” He has a thing where Jeff Goldblum’s character is berating John Hammond, the guy who brought the dinosaurs back, and says, “You plopped them down in a world that isn’t suited to them.” Everything about this planet is different than it was 65 million years ago. The oxygen levels are different. The land itself is different. The general temperatures, the humidity, the diseases. All that was reason, to me, why they have to exist only in this narrow band of places around the equator where the environment is more similar to the Cretaceous. And we ran from there.
Final Draft: There’s a scene that you pulled from the original book for this. You didn’t have room for it in the earlier movies. What made that moment stick out as something that would work in this movie?
David Koepp: The setting. We were on a tropical island, so we wanted to be back more in the environment of the natural environment of dinosaurs than in the natural environment of humans.
And that’s more like Jurassic Park, the novel, and The Lost World, the novel. So the setting was there and it’s just a great scene. It was a wonderful scene. I can’t remember why it was cut. It was never shot. It was storyboarded for the first movie. I imagine it was budget and time like most things.
That was one of the first things Steven and I said to each other was, “Hey, we can put the raft scene back in.” So it was a scene 32 years in the making, and it really works.
Final Draft: You’ve said that you hate the second act, which many writers famously do. Do you have any tips for tackling that part of a screenplay?
David Koepp: My tips for everything are breaking into chunks. That applies to your homework, your work life, your exercise regime. If you want to get in the weeds with screenwriter shop talk, and you being Final Draft, I assume you do—there’s a lot of talk about whether the three-act structure is actually a four-act structure. It probably is, but I call it three.
Finding the midpoint of a story is really important to me, because then I can start to view things as the first half and the second half. And if you look at significant plot points, like the end of the first act, the end of the second act, and the midpoint as moments at which something happens that spins the action off in another direction, then it becomes manageable. Now I’m looking at, ballpark, maybe a 25-page first act, a 70-page second act, and a 20-page third act.
And I break that 70-page second act into two. So really I’m looking at part one of act two as 35 pages, and part two of the second act is roughly the same. That makes it a lot easier.
Middles are hard because momentum becomes hard to [maintain], for all the obvious reasons. The first act, everything’s new. People are new, the premise is laid out. You probably had an exciting scene in your head already, and that’s there.
And third acts tend to be quick. All the groundwork’s been laid, and now you’re just finishing your story. Middles can drag on forever. If somebody tells me they’re on page 71, I always say, “I’m so sorry.” It’s brutal. It’s going to be brutal ‘til you get to about 90, and then you’re going to smell the barn, and you’ll pick up momentum again.
Final Draft: You’ve also talked about pitching and how horrible that is. Do you have any advice for writers who might not have pitching skills?
David Koepp: I don’t think I’m very good at pitching, either, but I am good at working it out privately and then talking about it.
So I would not go into a pitch cold. I would ask them to read this 10-page outline, and if you’re still interested, let’s talk. That to me is a much more successful approach. Or make it six pages, if you feel like 10 is too much. But you can get your premise across. You can get your two main characters, so they can picture a movie star or two if they like, and you can get a complication and hint at an ending.
And that is so much better than going in and trying to tell someone a story cold. It’s awful trying to tell someone a story cold. I always picture them thinking about lunch.
I’ve had pitches where they self-consciously look at their watch. Somebody yawned in my face once. It’s just horrible. And I’m thinking, “Yeah, I don’t blame you. I’m bored. This is terrible. And by the way, I forgot to mention earlier a car was parked out front,” and then you screw it up, and the voices in your head are going crazy. So I like to give them something to read.
Final Draft: Is there one bit of advice you think all screenwriters should learn early?
David Koepp: Outline. I think most people who want to have 20 pages of a movie in them, and they could sit down and write it, and it might not be bad. And if you don’t have an outline, that’s exactly where it will die.
I’m not saying that that outline has to be in painstaking detail. In fact, it shouldn’t. You’ve got to leave yourself room, and don’t get hung up on your outline. I still think scene cards on a coffee table are the best way to do it. Things on a screen don’t register right for us. But behind me over there, there’s my coffee table. There are no scene cards on it because I’m not working at the moment. But look, here’s a stack of empty ones just waiting to be deployed.
I think if you write ideas you have for a scene—”they rob the bank.” Well, that sounds like a set piece that’s probably going to go around here. And I put it sort of in the middle. “She betrays her sister.” Oh, I don’t know why I’m writing that, but okay, she betrays her sister. Maybe they rob the bank together in here, around here. So I know these scenes I want to do, and I just start gunning them out onto the table. And then you move them around into what looks like a manageable structure.
And if you’ve noodled by writing little character bios, you know who your people are, and now you’ve moved your scenes around a little bit. Now you get to start.
Write seven pages and see how you feel. And then go back to the cards and flesh them out a little, and then write a little more, and then move things around because you realize it didn’t work.
But it all starts with a rough outline. You are a choreographer, and you have to suggest dance moves and put them up on the stage so everybody can see if they work or not. And then you change it. But if you don’t start with an outline, I think you’re doomed.
Final Draft: Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I didn’t bring up?
David Koepp: I really like the movie, Jurassic World Rebirth, coming to theaters July 2nd—but that’s probably out there already. It’s an enormous amount of fun. I felt like when I went back on this, I was worried. “Oh no, I’m trying to recapture past magic. Will that work?” And within a few days of starting writing, I felt like no time had passed. It felt as fresh and fun as the first one. I think it’s worth checking out.
'Jurassic World Rebirth' Writer David Koepp on the Screenwriting Mistake That Dooms Scripts
David Koepp discusses his return to the Jurassic franchise, his writing process, and advice for screenwriters ahead of Jurassic World: Rebirth.
'Jurassic World Rebirth' Writer David Koepp on the Screenwriting Mistake That Dooms Scripts
David Koepp is a Hollywood legend. One of the most successful screenwriters of all time, Koepp is the iconic voice behind works like Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Death Becomes Her, Mission: Impossible, and many more.
Koepp is known for his versatility. He has achieved both critical and commercial success in a wide variety of genres, including thriller, science fiction, comedy, action, drama, crime, superhero, horror, adventure, and fantasy. He can write in essentially any world or tone and deliver consistent blockbusters.
Recently, he rejoined Steven Spielberg to take on dinosaurs again for Jurassic World Rebirth, the next entry in the Jurassic franchise. Set five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, in Rebirth the world’s environment has become mostly inhospitable to dinosaurs, leaving them only the tropical regions that feel like their original habitats. Directed by Gareth Edwards, the film stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali.
We were delighted to be able to speak with Koepp ahead of Jurassic World Rebirth and learn about his process on the film, as well as get his advice on structure and more.
Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Final Draft: You’ve been so important to the Jurassic franchise. What got you excited to come back to it?
David Koepp: An idea. I did the first two, and I watched the others with great interest. Occasionally I’d give some thoughts on a script if Steven asked, but I’d been off pursuing other things. And Steven called, probably about two years ago now, and said, “What do you think? Would you want to do another one of those? I might have an idea.”
And that’s how all our stuff has started, with one of us saying, “Hey, do you think it would be cool if…?” and then off we go into the idea. So he told me his idea and I said, “That’s cool.” It’s an idea which became this mosasaurus section of the plot in the movie, which is really spectacular. There’s like 20 minutes in the middle of the movie that’s really just like an oceangoing adventure, and it’s just so thrilling and so brilliantly directed. I really love it.
But he had this idea, and so the next six months we spent sending emails back and forth and saying, “What about this?” and “What about this framework?”
One thing for me was I felt like every three movies seemed like a logical time to change tone and change characters. I think they did it after the first three movies, [and] the Jurassic World three movies. Dominion seemed like it ended on a valedictory note, and that part of the story was done.
So I thought, “Do you think I could start over?” Not in the sense of denying any of the events that have already occurred in the previous movies. I hate when they do that, but where else can we look? Where else can we turn our attention? What other characters can we turn our attention to?
And can we change tone a little bit? Because the tone that I feel most comfortable writing is more similar to the first movie. So he said, “Yeah, let’s run with it. Let’s go where your imagination takes you.” So off we went, and it was a great chance to work on something. Of course, I was worried I’m going to try and recapture past magic and won’t find it. I guess audiences will judge for themselves if we did or not. I think we did. I certainly know that when I started writing, I was having a ball, and it was as if no time had passed since writing the first movie.
Final Draft: I know that you created “nine commandments” for writing this, and one of them was no ‘retconning’. Why is that something that’s so important to you?
David Koepp: It seems like such a cheat. I hate when I go and they say, “Oh, yes, that happened. But you weren’t looking at what you thought you were looking at. You were actually looking at her twin, and her twin is from another timeline and you never…”
I just hate that. I’m like, no, you asked me to come to your movie, and I gave you $15, and I saw it, and I have the right to believe that that really happened. It feels obvious to me and labored, and there’s always a lot of explanation for why this wasn’t what you thought it was.
I think it’s also kind of disrespectful to all the movies that come before. A lot of filmmakers worked really hard telling those stories. You can’t then deny that they occurred. That’s just a personal preference. I don’t like a retcon.
Final Draft: Is that something that’s part of your process, setting guidelines like that for every project?
David Koepp: Yes. I love boundaries, as any of the nuns who taught me in elementary school will tell you. I do better when there are limits placed on me. I love what I call “a bottle.” The whole story can only take place in 24 hours, or it’s all inside this house, or it’s only from Tom Cruise’s point of view in War of the Worlds. We said, let’s limit this movie to just what our main character sees or feels or experiences. Let’s never go to big global shots because we’ve seen that before.
I think when you have restrictions like that, you are forced into creative solutions that I actually find quite liberating. Instead of confining for [Rebirth], one of the first challenges was, how do we make dinosaurs feel special and unique again? Because when Dominion ended, they’re everywhere, and they’re out there and they’re swimming in your pool and on top of the Chrysler Building and renting apartments.
And how do we make it in a believable way? How do we advance the story to say, “Okay, that didn’t work for dinosaurs and humans. We did not coexist well. We hoped we would, but we didn’t.” And so where are they now and how can that feel special and exciting?
For that, I went back to [Michael] Crichton’s first novel, and I think you’re never in trouble when you go back to the original source and say, “What worked here?” He has a thing where Jeff Goldblum’s character is berating John Hammond, the guy who brought the dinosaurs back, and says, “You plopped them down in a world that isn’t suited to them.” Everything about this planet is different than it was 65 million years ago. The oxygen levels are different. The land itself is different. The general temperatures, the humidity, the diseases. All that was reason, to me, why they have to exist only in this narrow band of places around the equator where the environment is more similar to the Cretaceous. And we ran from there.
Final Draft: There’s a scene that you pulled from the original book for this. You didn’t have room for it in the earlier movies. What made that moment stick out as something that would work in this movie?
David Koepp: The setting. We were on a tropical island, so we wanted to be back more in the environment of the natural environment of dinosaurs than in the natural environment of humans.
And that’s more like Jurassic Park, the novel, and The Lost World, the novel. So the setting was there and it’s just a great scene. It was a wonderful scene. I can’t remember why it was cut. It was never shot. It was storyboarded for the first movie. I imagine it was budget and time like most things.
That was one of the first things Steven and I said to each other was, “Hey, we can put the raft scene back in.” So it was a scene 32 years in the making, and it really works.
Final Draft: You’ve said that you hate the second act, which many writers famously do. Do you have any tips for tackling that part of a screenplay?
David Koepp: My tips for everything are breaking into chunks. That applies to your homework, your work life, your exercise regime. If you want to get in the weeds with screenwriter shop talk, and you being Final Draft, I assume you do—there’s a lot of talk about whether the three-act structure is actually a four-act structure. It probably is, but I call it three.
Finding the midpoint of a story is really important to me, because then I can start to view things as the first half and the second half. And if you look at significant plot points, like the end of the first act, the end of the second act, and the midpoint as moments at which something happens that spins the action off in another direction, then it becomes manageable. Now I’m looking at, ballpark, maybe a 25-page first act, a 70-page second act, and a 20-page third act.
And I break that 70-page second act into two. So really I’m looking at part one of act two as 35 pages, and part two of the second act is roughly the same. That makes it a lot easier.
Middles are hard because momentum becomes hard to [maintain], for all the obvious reasons. The first act, everything’s new. People are new, the premise is laid out. You probably had an exciting scene in your head already, and that’s there.
And third acts tend to be quick. All the groundwork’s been laid, and now you’re just finishing your story. Middles can drag on forever. If somebody tells me they’re on page 71, I always say, “I’m so sorry.” It’s brutal. It’s going to be brutal ‘til you get to about 90, and then you’re going to smell the barn, and you’ll pick up momentum again.
Final Draft: You’ve also talked about pitching and how horrible that is. Do you have any advice for writers who might not have pitching skills?
David Koepp: I don’t think I’m very good at pitching, either, but I am good at working it out privately and then talking about it.
So I would not go into a pitch cold. I would ask them to read this 10-page outline, and if you’re still interested, let’s talk. That to me is a much more successful approach. Or make it six pages, if you feel like 10 is too much. But you can get your premise across. You can get your two main characters, so they can picture a movie star or two if they like, and you can get a complication and hint at an ending.
And that is so much better than going in and trying to tell someone a story cold. It’s awful trying to tell someone a story cold. I always picture them thinking about lunch.
I’ve had pitches where they self-consciously look at their watch. Somebody yawned in my face once. It’s just horrible. And I’m thinking, “Yeah, I don’t blame you. I’m bored. This is terrible. And by the way, I forgot to mention earlier a car was parked out front,” and then you screw it up, and the voices in your head are going crazy. So I like to give them something to read.
Final Draft: Is there one bit of advice you think all screenwriters should learn early?
David Koepp: Outline. I think most people who want to have 20 pages of a movie in them, and they could sit down and write it, and it might not be bad. And if you don’t have an outline, that’s exactly where it will die.
I’m not saying that that outline has to be in painstaking detail. In fact, it shouldn’t. You’ve got to leave yourself room, and don’t get hung up on your outline. I still think scene cards on a coffee table are the best way to do it. Things on a screen don’t register right for us. But behind me over there, there’s my coffee table. There are no scene cards on it because I’m not working at the moment. But look, here’s a stack of empty ones just waiting to be deployed.
I think if you write ideas you have for a scene—”they rob the bank.” Well, that sounds like a set piece that’s probably going to go around here. And I put it sort of in the middle. “She betrays her sister.” Oh, I don’t know why I’m writing that, but okay, she betrays her sister. Maybe they rob the bank together in here, around here. So I know these scenes I want to do, and I just start gunning them out onto the table. And then you move them around into what looks like a manageable structure.
And if you’ve noodled by writing little character bios, you know who your people are, and now you’ve moved your scenes around a little bit. Now you get to start.
Write seven pages and see how you feel. And then go back to the cards and flesh them out a little, and then write a little more, and then move things around because you realize it didn’t work.
But it all starts with a rough outline. You are a choreographer, and you have to suggest dance moves and put them up on the stage so everybody can see if they work or not. And then you change it. But if you don’t start with an outline, I think you’re doomed.
Final Draft: Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I didn’t bring up?
David Koepp: I really like the movie, Jurassic World Rebirth, coming to theaters July 2nd—but that’s probably out there already. It’s an enormous amount of fun. I felt like when I went back on this, I was worried. “Oh no, I’m trying to recapture past magic. Will that work?” And within a few days of starting writing, I felt like no time had passed. It felt as fresh and fun as the first one. I think it’s worth checking out.
Raze, you're the shit, homie. You stay dropping gems.
I've gone from a more narration based storytelling style with Trashterpiece to creating more dialogue based, character driven stories in my shorts (how I envisioned the fleshed out 22min versions to be, but why wait?) using this advice from the writers of South Park. It's shifted everything.
Any one here pitched their work (TV/Feature/documentary) to producers? Did you pitch your pilot to one or multiple producers? did you pitch just one or many ideas? Did you do a one page pitch or several pages? please share your experience. Thank you
I've done full pitches to production companies and buyers/networks. No bites yet, unfortunately, but got good feedback. Really bad timing since my show is male-centered and "edgy" and that wasn't the mandate at the time I was pitching (MeToo era).
My pitch was like ten minutes.
It's best to go into a pitch with multiple things to pitch. Complete fail on my part.
All of them were over zoom so it's difficult to read the room, which I'm great at in person.
I didn't pitch a pilot, I pitched my overall show, which was a bit different since I already had proof of concept.
There were typically anywhere from 2 to 5 people on the calls.
If you have any specific questions I can answer from my experience.
Thank you. I'm trying to break into this. but for now, I'm just writing and polishing my work. I want to present two to three different Pilots. I hear in- person pitching can be intimidating...
Did you go through an agent to to secure your pitching?
My shit was a little different becasue I had a few viral videos. I uploaded my shorts to IG and had some celebs and producers in my DM. Ended up rocking out with this sista who was connected, and she set the pitches up for me. That's kinda the game today and it's weird. The first thing the production companies wanted to know was who we had attached to the project, and I didn't have anyone. But the talent wants to know who's producing your show before they sign on to the project. The shit was crazy.
Crazy indeed. I'm completely new to this and has zero connections but I have stories to tell and I feel like they're good stories. I hear Amazon is better than Netflix at accepting new shows.
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I pitched Amazon and Netflix. They both passed. Both were looking for something more like Rick and Morty (the mandate at the time). Surprisingly, the best feedback I got was from HBOMax. They gave me a preliminary yes but said they had to take it to the larger group. Didn't hear from them in 2 weeks. When my producer called, that entire department had been let go. This game is crazy. You go it though! I went in flying blind so if I can help you with questions about the process (or anyone), let me know
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