How to write a script - getting started
DEVELOP THE TITLE
A name for the project = a launching to develop further ideas
You've got to like the title.
DEVELOP THE THEME
Theme is the moral of your story. What's you want your audience to get after they're finished watching your film.
"True love can never be broken regardless how much hardship is thrown at it".
"The fact that the wealth and riches does not make a man truly happy".
"True love transcends all racial boundaries"
Once you develop the theme of your story that theme needs to resonate throughout every scene of your movie.
I print out my theme and I tape it to the top of my computer monitor so if I ever have a problem or if I ever had writer's block and don't know where to go in the story I simply refer to the theme.
The next step is to flash your theme into a log line.
DEVELOP A LOG LINE
often called a one-liner is your story condensed to somewhere between one and three sentences.
But it could be three lines, but it's called a one liner. For example:
A rich girl and a poor boy fall in love on a doomed luxury liner. (TITANIC).
A teenage boy goes into the past and accidentally prevents his parents from falling love. If he doesn't get them together, he'll never been born. (BACK TO THE FUTURE).
A log line is not only critical to help the writer to develop and flash your idea out but it's also critical in helping you when you pitch your idea to other producers.
There's actually several reasons for that, to realize that however many producers you have to get your screenplay to or representative agents, managers, whoever finally finds that screenplay goes "WOW, I wanna produce it", that person has to reach two to five times as many people as you do, and there they have to be able to pitch it. So if the writer can communicate the basic of his story within that five words to sixty words, the agent/manager/produces has no way to able to pitch it themselves because they have to get financing, they have to get actors attached, they have to get distribution, they've get other producers hooked on to it, they literally have to contact probably on average between four and seven times as many people as you do.
If I didn't know anybody in Hollywood and I'd written a script and I'd get companies to read them by calling up "would you read an unsolicited manuscript (that's actually a term used in Hollywood), and unsolicited manuscript means a script not sent in by an agent or a lawyer, so who I would call is not the vice president, but the middle-level people "would you take a look at an unsolicited manuscript if it had a great hook, now what are they going to do?" they're gonna say "uh, what's the hook?" because they're looking for a great hook, they're all looking for those high concept ideas. Now I have 30 seconds to tell them. "This is about a guy who looks just like the president of united states, and the president gets injured..." and now they may go "hey, that's funny but let me see".
So a log line is probably one of the most important tools .
A name for the project = a launching to develop further ideas
You've got to like the title.
DEVELOP THE THEME
Theme is the moral of your story. What's you want your audience to get after they're finished watching your film.
"True love can never be broken regardless how much hardship is thrown at it".
"The fact that the wealth and riches does not make a man truly happy".
"True love transcends all racial boundaries"
Once you develop the theme of your story that theme needs to resonate throughout every scene of your movie.
I print out my theme and I tape it to the top of my computer monitor so if I ever have a problem or if I ever had writer's block and don't know where to go in the story I simply refer to the theme.
The next step is to flash your theme into a log line.
DEVELOP A LOG LINE
often called a one-liner is your story condensed to somewhere between one and three sentences.
But it could be three lines, but it's called a one liner. For example:
A rich girl and a poor boy fall in love on a doomed luxury liner. (TITANIC).
A teenage boy goes into the past and accidentally prevents his parents from falling love. If he doesn't get them together, he'll never been born. (BACK TO THE FUTURE).
A log line is not only critical to help the writer to develop and flash your idea out but it's also critical in helping you when you pitch your idea to other producers.
There's actually several reasons for that, to realize that however many producers you have to get your screenplay to or representative agents, managers, whoever finally finds that screenplay goes "WOW, I wanna produce it", that person has to reach two to five times as many people as you do, and there they have to be able to pitch it. So if the writer can communicate the basic of his story within that five words to sixty words, the agent/manager/produces has no way to able to pitch it themselves because they have to get financing, they have to get actors attached, they have to get distribution, they've get other producers hooked on to it, they literally have to contact probably on average between four and seven times as many people as you do.
If I didn't know anybody in Hollywood and I'd written a script and I'd get companies to read them by calling up "would you read an unsolicited manuscript (that's actually a term used in Hollywood), and unsolicited manuscript means a script not sent in by an agent or a lawyer, so who I would call is not the vice president, but the middle-level people "would you take a look at an unsolicited manuscript if it had a great hook, now what are they going to do?" they're gonna say "uh, what's the hook?" because they're looking for a great hook, they're all looking for those high concept ideas. Now I have 30 seconds to tell them. "This is about a guy who looks just like the president of united states, and the president gets injured..." and now they may go "hey, that's funny but let me see".
So a log line is probably one of the most important tools .
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