Film Strategy

Cuz screenwriters can relate to this on the one hand... Captain's Log. Star Date - 9.2.13 Today is Labor Day and what better way to spend the day off then to spend it working on your script.  'Nuff said. What would Oscar-winning producer, Edward Saxon, advise his 18 year-old self ? How many feature length scripts should you write before you're 'ready' for Hollywood? What are 10 rules for writing the screenplay ? What are 7 rules for writing shorts ? How do you make a TV drama in the Twitter age ? What are some screenwriting tips from Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost ? Who are some female screenwriters and screenwriters of color to inspire you? And why you shouldn't let rejection of your script/work/project get you down ? Bonus: Two podcasts for screenwriters and filmmakers: OnStory and ScriptNotes ...but also relate to this on the other hand.

Stray Dog | Akira Kurosawa | 1949 | Japan | Format: 35mm | 122 min   Stray Dog ( 野良犬 Nora inu ) is a 1949 Japanese police procedural film noir directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura . The film is considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy cop film genres.   Inspired by Jules Dassin’s The Naked City and the works of Georges Simenon, Kurosawa wrote the script with Ryuzo Kikushima, a writer who had never written a script before. ~~Wikipedia Excerpts from Akira Kurosawa's Something Like An Autobiography give you a glimpse into what it was like for Kurosawa and his crew to shoot Stray Dog during the summer of 1949.   IF THE FILM IS TRUE... "I don't really like talking about my films. Everything I want to say is in the film iself; for me to say anything more is, as the proverb goes, like "drawing legs on a picture of a snake."   But from time to time an idea I thought I had convey

Captain's Log. Star date: 8.28.13 Ready to jump right in and answer some good questions but first a moment of silence because 26 year ago today in 1987, "one of the great directors of all time, John Huston , died from emphysema in Middletown, Rhode Island. Like another Hollywood titan, Alfred Hitchcock (whose last movie was called Family Plot ), Huston’s final production was a harbinger of his mortality: an adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead . The film was a nod to Huston’s Irish roots, and he very much conformed to the stereotype of a hard-living Irishman: Huston was a man’s man – the Hemingway of the cinema, if you like – a heavy drinker and shameless womanizer (he was married five times) who supposedly only took on The African Queen so he could go shoot an elephant (if White Hunter, Black Heart is to be believed, anyway). Bedridden for several years as a child, when Huston recovered his health he took on life with an insatiable hunger: he followed his fat

World War Z | Marc Forster | 2013 | USA, Malta | Format: 35mm | 116 min     Within the overall filmmaking strategy that takes a project from development to distribution, producers need mini-strategies (like Matryoshka dolls ) to complete certain complex parts of the film.  One of those mini-strategies involves how best to create effective and convincing special visual effects (VFX).  Digital Arts Staff and Wired had behind-the-scenes access to the making of World War Z which gives us an idea of how the producers and director planned and prioritized their effects (granted their budget was ridiculous but still, resourceful and inventive filmmakers can still take notes and learn how to make amazing VFX even if they don't have the money... like this guy ). For the honors, MPC was tapped to provide the VFX using their in-house crowd simulation software, ALICE.    Led by MPC's VFX supervisor Jessica Norman, the house completed more than 450 shots for World War Z.

Captain's Log. Star date: 08.26.13 August 26, 1948 - Hitchcock's Rope released By 1948, Hitchcock was considered one of Hollywood’s most distinctive, if not finest, filmmakers. And Rope , being his first film from his own production company Transatlantic Pictures, was going to show audiences just what he could do free from studios and producers, like David O. Selznick. Hitchcock settled on dark (even for him) material. The film’s story is a loose retelling of the infamous 1924 Loeb and Leopold murder case in which two very bright, gay students murder a child to prove they can. Patrick Hamilton wrote the play which was adapted by actor Hume Cronyn and playwright  Arthur Laurents. The film ditched all the details of the original crime except the homosexuality and the homicide. In the film, the central couple (played by John Dall and Farley Granger) are two brilliant men who live together and, for all to surmise, are lovers. While the

Captain's Log. Stardate: 8.21.13 August 21 was a good day for rebels and innovators.  Today in 1932, Melvin Van Peebles, director of the politically and artistically radical film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), was born.  Also, today in 1939, Orson Welles signed a 63-page contract with RKO Pictures that allowed him to write, direct, produce and act in two movies for the studio with an unprecedented offer: complete creative control .  This led to the production of RKO 281 better known as the innovative and artistically daring film, Citizen Kane (1941). Now that your artistic appetite has been whetted, consider this: What are some sci-fi storytelling script tips ?  What lessons can networks (and aspiring producers pitching episodic concepts) learn from Breaking Bad ? What lessons can aspiring producers learn from David Simon's pitch for The Wire ? How do you light dark skin ?  Do you want an introduction to After Effects? Then here it is. What are th

He just had your lunch... dinner is next. Captain's Log. Star date: 8.19.13 Forty years ago today, on.. 19 August 1973 - The Dragon Released The opening night of the kung-fu action film Enter The Dragon was a bittersweet celebration. It was the first martial arts film to be made by a Hollywood studio. Unfortunately Bruce Lee, the brains and brawn behind the project, had died less than a month before the film’s release. Lee, who’d carved out a career as both kung fu master and movie star, turned to Hong Kong after Hollywood shut the door on him in the late 60s. Although he’d had moderate fame playing Kato in the TV series The Green Hornet , Lee felt he was brushed aside for the lead in the Warner Brothers show Kung Fu . In China, Lee’s career exploded with a series of wildly popular kung-fu films that culminated in Enter The Dragon , a co-production between Warner Brothers and the Hong Kong-based production company Golden Harvest. For Lee, this film would