One of my script consulting teachers, Don Bohlinger, professor at the USC film department, taught me this: “Each scene is either a chase or an escape.” It is not only true for scenes with actual chases in action movies, but for basically every scene with more than one characters in it, and it is even true for scenes with a …
On Pitching, Part II
Shortly after I wrote my last post on pitching a story, I stumbled upon this great article on Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat blog, called “The Most Common Pitch Meeting Mistake“. Pitch consultant Stephanie Palmer writes that you should not tell the decision-makers in a pitch meeting how they should feel about your story. And I totally agree. Saying something …
On Pitching
From time to time I am giving lectures on pitching a story. I think I can stop that now, because most of the things you need to know are being said in this video. Writer and director Tony Gilroy hears a few loglines and gives his opinion on the storylines. Footnote: Please let us not forget that making a movie …
“Callback”
When I am reading a screenplay there is one tool that is frequently used by writers, but I did not know that there is a specific word for it until now. This word is “callback”: It works like this: A character has a specific line in his dialog. In the end the line is repeated, but it has a different …