Notes From screenwriter of Meet Joe Black, Spielberg re-writer, etc: my Art Center Professor

Had to share great notes from  my Art Center screenwriting professor: Ron has rewritten for Speilberg and many others, and is working with me on my new script… Get  him at

http://nobullshitscreenwriting.com/

“if we both choose to move forward on this – on my part in doing two things simultaneously:  trying to shape this potpourri of ideas into something coherent, but also to teach some fundamentals of screenwriting that somehow weren’t imparted at our alma mater (and trust me, you’re not the only one).

The biggest thing I would have to get you to do is to focus and simplify, just in terms of thinking of your story, characters, and the big picture.  You have too many instruments playing in this orchestra so your music is jumbled and cacophonous. There are good ideas buried in here but, trust me, they are buried and obscured by a lot of clutter around them.

After that, the next step would be to get you to think in terms of character and arc – in both treatments as well as your script, you still appear to think more in terms of event and plot to which the characters are supportive, vs. the characters and their journey being the true motor of the plot – and to either tell the story from a centralized point of view (i.e. Randall’s, which is often best), or establish early on that this will be a collective point of view (which your style leans towards but is confusing at this point because you continue fairly late into the story to introduce new characters whose p.o.v.’s are given equal weight); the latter can work fine, though, if (and here’s that word again…) you’re focused in terms of the story needs.

I would have you strip this house down to the studs and rebuild.  I would start you with the theme and really be sure you have something you can build around, that is clear and concise…then I would have you nail down the emotional underpinning to your story…i.e., to use another sci-fi film, in Cameron’s ALIENS the theme is the universality of motherhood throughout universe, the Queen Alien is just as determined to protect her offspring as Ripley is to protect Newt.  But the emotional underpinning of that story is key, which is that Ripley promised her daughter she would return for her 11^th birthday party, but because she was traveling so long in hyper-space, she outlived her daughter who died of old age…Ripley feels like she failed as a mother…so now she will do everything humanly possible to not fail Newt, her surrogate daughter.  You need to think in clearly-stated concepts like that.

Then we would define the essence of your protagonist and primary characters – what makes them tick, what they live for, what are their biggest obstacles, both internally and externally.

Then we would begin structure, first in simple paragraphs that encapsulate each act…then after you nailed that down, you would expand to a basic 2-3 page outline…then when that is clear and focused and understandable, you would start building scenes one act at a time, driven by your characters, until you have 10-15 page treatment that is a clearly laid-out road map for you write a new draft.

Then you would be on your own to execute a new draft which, when finished, I would evaluate as a new script.