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Well there is a thread here, but it's more or less dead because the OP abandoned it. I wouldn't mind seeing a new one going but there may or may not be any actual interest. I'm currently finishing up a polish draft of a webseries that I'll be shooting next summer and I'd love to put it up for critique, so hopefully there is still some interest.
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Oct 12, 2010 17:00
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 08:49 |
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onthepage.tv has a podcast that I used to listen to a lot when I was a baby screenwriter (and I still am, really, no point trying to fool anyone). It can get kind of (read: very) annoying sometimes, but it also has a lot of useful info. Apparently they just switched to a system where you can get the first 20 minutes for free, but you have to buy a subscription for the full episodes. However I'm pretty sure the first 150 episodes or so are still full length and free. What magazines do you guys read? I've been really enjoying Creative Screenwriting as a resource, and they have a podcast as well that can be pretty informative as it's all interviews with produced writers from mostly big projects. Anyway, I guess I'll be the first person to throw something down here. This is a webseries I've been working on for a while now. Feel like I'm getting pretty close to a final draft, the next step I'm going to take is get some actors off of craigslist to do a table read and work out the kinks. I'm going to be directing this myself so there might some format stuff that is a no-no in general, but it doesn't matter for this particular project. Feel free to point those parts out if you want to though. Other than that, I'll take the heaviest criticism you can muster as long as it's constructive. I want this thing to be good. http://www.mediafire.com/?4i87g1veziibb1h
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Oct 19, 2010 22:42
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Well, that's certainly pretty harsh, but I'm glad I'm getting it now instead of after sinking a lot of money and time in to shooting. Admittedly I should have done a couple more passes before putting it up here, some of those really bad lines are new ones that I just dropped in. The critique that I got from a couple people earlier on was that the beats were solid but the characters were really lacking, so I've been trying to develop them more, apparently with very poor results. I was originally going to work that stuff out with the actors once I did casting. In retrospect that was a bad idea. The cliches thing stung a little, since I was specifically trying to avoid that. I guess I bit off more than I could chew with a crime script since it's a done to death genre that's very easy to miss-step and turn in to a pile of poo poo. Regarding the action scenes, I left those sparse just because I don't know what locations I'll be using yet and it didn't really make sense to me to do all this blocking and detail work there, it never occurred to me that other people reading it wouldn't know what the gently caress is going on. Also yeah, Moody is supposed to be a really tall musclebound dude. I wrote him with an actor I've worked with before in mind. I need better character descriptions. So, back to the drawing board.
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Oct 23, 2010 15:39
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Make the audience bond with Lars or it's all for naught. Thanks, that's what I needed. I've got a couple of ideas that I think will work well. Though some of that dialogue really is atrocious and I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it, or let it see the light of day.
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Oct 24, 2010 01:36
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Argyle posted:TV writer checking in. Well... aspiring TV writer. I hate the word "aspiring" but what else can I call myself if I'm not getting paid to write? You're a writer who writes television scripts. Whether or not you've been paid for them is inconsequential to that.
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Nov 5, 2010 07:18
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In addition to registering with the writer's guild, its usually suggested that you register with the Library of Congress, which gives you a copyright. You have to make sure it's a final draft though (at least for as far as you're going to take it) because subsequent drafts require re-submission to be legally copywritten. And that poo poo costs money. Been doing rewrites on my series based on the feedback I've been getting, and I set this weekend as my deadline for having a new draft done. I've also been beating out a treatment for a short that I'm very excited to start working on. Hopefully it won't take me more than a month to write. I've been really good about actually getting writing done this week. Waking up early, going to a coffee shop and working on notes for an hour or two puts me in the mood. Even when I don't have time to sit down and commit anything to Celtx/Final Draft, it'll get me thinking about the script for the rest of the day. Note cards and white boards are the best investments I've made so far.
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Nov 17, 2010 20:57
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My very first screenplay was a godawful teen drama about drugs written by hand. It took me forever, and it was an amazing learning experience. Some day I'll come back to that original screenplay and try to rework it, but right now I'm on a track of writing a new feature every year. I want to be able to bump it up to 2 a year. That's the only way to get good at it. Know that your first screenplay will be bad, but you CAN come back to it later when you know more of what you're doing. My problem is with focusing on one story for too long when I have so many that I want to write, but a lot of times it's good to just let ideas gestate while editing my current work. Office supplies help me immensely.
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Nov 22, 2010 23:03
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Ok, got a new draft of the webseries up. Reworked based on feedback I've received from different sources and I think it's much stronger now. I'll send it by email rather than hosting it this time. Title: Badfellas Genre: Crime/Action Synopsis: A thwarted heist leads a group of thieves on a hunt to regain their stolen goods, but a rival gang has something much more sinister in mind.
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Nov 24, 2010 20:24
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bartlebee posted:A critique of the synopsis (logline) here is that it doesn't offer anything new or explain how this is different from any other heist movie. "Much more sinister" is vague. What separates this from other offerings in the genre? Noted. Loglines are something I've always had trouble with.
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Nov 29, 2010 18:48
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Golden Bee posted:To be fair, the logline he gave was pretty accurate; it's an interesting but not very original take on the "our gang vs. their gang" story. I think the idea here is to find what angle I want to take that will make it unique, and really focus on that. If this is the kind of summary I'm getting I clearly need to keep working on it until I can figure that out. I'm considering bringing another writer in to take a stab at it. It's a hit to my pride that I feel the need to do that, but I think it's more important to have a really tight, solid script so that when I do direct it I don't end up wasting a bunch of time and money on something that wasn't really worth it. Problem is, I only know a small handful of people who actually write, and they're pretty busy with their own projects. I may "hire" somebody through craigslist or something, but it seems kinda sketchy. Anyone have any experience with this?
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Nov 30, 2010 21:15
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Well I've been re-working and re-working. I'm trying to do at least 2 new drafts a week but it's ending up more difficult than I expected to juggle that with work and a social life. That's the game I guess. I'd really like to get a few actors together to do a table read, ideally they'd be the same actors who end up playing parts so I can workshop characters with them. What else are people working on? Let's keep this thread afloat.
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Dec 4, 2010 19:18
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But then you'll have your heart set on those actors, and their replacements won't likely be as good in your mind.
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Dec 7, 2010 18:14
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Yeah, notecards will save your life. It's so much easier to just throw those out or ignore them than it is to delete pages.
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Dec 8, 2010 21:54
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 08:49 |
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Here's a script I've written that we may be shooting pretty soon: The ending took me by surprise. I liked it, but I agree that the present scene needs polish. Have Paul be more aggressive about defending himself, or do something as a counter-point to the flashbacks. As it stands it's just Amy listing his indiscretions. He seems pretty calm about the whole thing until the very end, which does help the surprise but doesn't feel very real.
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Mar 19, 2011 03:09
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