Last night my screenwriter friend Susanne Freund told me that she had been member of the jury of Max Ophüls Festival in Saarbrücken many years ago. There she saw a short film called DOBERMANN. Many years later she saw the movie THE LIVES OF OTHERS, and the name of the director sounded familiar to her. It was Florian Henckel von …
Filmmaking Masterclass
There are so many things happening in my life right now, I hardly have time on my hands for writing blog posts and such. But now I caught a cold, it is Sunday and it is raining outside. So I can tell you a little bit about what happened in the last weeks. (This is gonna take a while, so …
Weekend Links
From Tuesday on I will be gone for a week, so there will be no updates on my blog. But I am posting a few links here now, so you have some stuff to dig through in the meantime. Billy Wilder would have been 106 years on June 22nd. The website Cinephilia & Beyond (which I strongly recommend!) has found …
“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 …
Intermission
First, there is a massive heat wave in Vienna, second there are a lot of screenplays on my desk to be read, and third I am preparing the lectures for the Filmmaking Masterclass in Majorca. I hope you excuse my absence in this blog. To entertain you in this short intermission I recommend for all who have seen MOONRISE KINGDOM …
Weekend Videos
From today until Monday I will be gone. It is my last trip to Salzburg and St.Pölten where I am teaching script development this term. But it will not get boring here, I promise, because here are links to some very interesting videos about tv series. First there is a one hour video where showrunners and writers from the most …
Pre-production THE SILENT MOUNTAIN
Director Ernst Gossner started pre-production on the period piece THE SILENT MOUNTAIN (script: Clemens Aufderklamm, script consulting: Scriptalicious). The locations are stunning, and I am not only talking about the breathtaking views from the mountains. Here you can see the hotel where the whole story starts in 1915. You can find more photos and informations on the Facebook page of …
Trailerwatch: DJANGO UNCHAINED
“Gentlemen, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.” The trailer for the new Quentin Tarantino film has arrived. DJANGO UNCHAINED is released in the US on December 25, 2012. In Austria we unfortunately have to wait until February 1, 2013. Update: I just found a different version of the trailer that I like even more: International Trailer.
Character development – with a twist
I have subscribed THE NEW YORKER for several years now. Often I only find time to skim through the contents, but when I am sitting down for a few hours to read one of the long articles it is always a great experience. Not only because the dramaturgy of the articles is great, and also the writing, but I always …
Trailerwatch: WRECK-IT RALPH
If someone asks me how I would define the term “high concept movie” I will from now on point them to this trailer: Looks like really good entertainment. Release date for WRECK-IT RALPH in the US is beginning of November, in Austria it starts on December 6. (p.s.: Here you can find the definition of “high concept” on Wikipedia.)