NeoBlackCinema

By La Rivers

We are living in the most exciting era of vision execution!  We are old enough to appreciate the strength and struggle of our past, but young enough to see how this has lead us toward a wondrous evolution into our future… especially creatively.  With the modern application of technology made available to all of us, we can all be visionaries without hesitation and we can express our creativity very effectively, especially with proper organization and structure.

Those of us who are filmmakers (actors, writers, producers, directors) take a special interest in the screenplay.  There’s nothing like well structured and organized text to make a story feel like a modern day experience to the reader.  Many of us, including myself, have amazing ideas and great stories to tell and we want to get them told in the most effective way possible.  The key to a great film begins with a great foundation. This foundation is your screenplay.  A story idea is only and idea, without proper execution.  In order to make your screenplay come alive, and get it sold (for those who are interested in going beyond telling a good bedtime story) you need structure.

One of my writing partners and mentors introduced me to a wonderful DVD learning series called Syd Field’s Screenwriting Workshop. Personally, I’m more of a novelist, always telling my stories from my Leo perspective. What I had to learn was that a screenplay is not a novel because the action takes place inside the characters head (obviously)… and in order to produce a good film, I needed to turn my novel into a screenplay.

This DVD series and Field’s subsequent workshops/books were really instrumental in helping me to understand the structure that keeps a reader and/or an  audience interested, affected and yearning for more.

Field’s screenwriting DVD learning series is a wonderful tool for use with the screenwriting software program, Final Draft.  For those who are familiar, he has also been included in the Final Draft program under the section, “Ask The Expert,” where he gives help on writing screenplays.  In the DVD learning series, Field will walk you through getting started on your screenplay, creating your character, writing the screenplay and even rewriting your screenplay (which good screenwriters do over and over again moving toward screenwriting perfection).

You certainly don’t have to be an expert.  You can even be a novice, a first-timer.  All you have to have is an idea, and the passion for making the idea come to life in an incredible movie. He has taught some of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood this very same workshop. In the introduction, the purpose is to guide you through the process from the inception of the idea to actual completion of the finished script.  He teaches you to write the screenplay you want to write, working within the context of your screenplay.  He will often say, “Writing a screenplay is a process, what you write today is going to be out of date tomorrow…don’t be too attached.” Within the context of your story, “…if it works, use it and if it doesn’t, don’t”.  He speaks about discipline, and organizing your time to write a your screenplay and the whole experience being a process.  There are also exercises and assignments for you to complete.

In the Getting Started section, you’ll begin with an idea and then break it down into an action & character, and then you’ll structure it into a complete dramatic entity with a beginning, middle and end. Then you’ll write a 4 page narrative treatment of the story focusing on the elements of dramatic structure. By the time you’re done with this section you’ll have written a full treatment!!!

In Part 2, you’ll create the characters, define their dramatic needs, plot their course of action, their emotional arc, and discuss the nature and function of dialogue. In Part 3, you will actually write your screenplay. You will prepare, structure and write Acts 1, 2 and 3, beginning, middle and end. In Part 4, you will rewrite your screenplay (tightening and polishing the first draft). When you finish the course you will have a written a professional screenplay ready to submit to Hollywood or investors for funding.

Field uses films like “Shawshank Redemption” and “Titanic” to illustrate good examples of screenplay writing, but please don’t be intimidated – they are simple stories and the brilliance is in the structure and simplicity.  His most important contribution has been in his articulation of the ideal paradigm “Three Act Structure.”  In this structure, the film should be set up within the first 20 minutes or so before the main character experiences a “plot point” that gives him/her a goal to achieve in the story.  You will notice that films that have not done this are initially difficult to follow and/or become a bit uninteresting 20-30 minutes into the film.

Field currently teaches screenwriting at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California and travels around the world giving seminars and workshops to film professionals.  He also has several other published books on the topic of screenwriting.  Check out SydField.com… you can check me, La Rivers, out on Facebook.com/larivers… Happy writing!

The Screenwriter’s Workbook

We are living in the most exciting era of vision execution!  We are old enough to appreciate the strength and struggle of our past, but young enough to see how this has lead us toward a wondrous evolution into our future… especially creatively.  With the modern application of technology made available to all of us, we can all be visionaries without hesitation and we can express our creativity very effectively, especially with proper organization and structure.

Those of us who are filmmakers (actors, writers, producers, directors) take a special interest in the screenplay.  There’s nothing like well structured and organized text to make a story feel like a modern day experience to the reader.  Many of us, including myself, have amazing ideas and great stories to tell and we want to get them told in the most effective way possible.  The key to a great film begins with a great foundation. This foundation is your screenplay.  A story idea is only and idea, without proper execution.  In order to make your screenplay come alive, and get it sold (for those who are interested in going beyond telling a good bedtime story) you need structure.

One of my writing partners and mentors introduced me to a wonderful DVD learning series called Syd Field’s Screenwriting Workshop. Personally, I’m more of a novelist, always telling my stories from my Leo perspective. What I had to learn was that a screenplay is not a novel because the action takes place inside the characters head (obviously)… and in order to produce a good film, I needed to turn my novel into a screenplay.

This DVD series and Field’s subsequent workshops/books were really instrumental in helping me to understand the structure that keeps a reader and/or an  audience interested, affected and yearning for more.

Field’s screenwriting DVD learning series is a wonderful tool for use with the screenwriting software program, Final Draft.  For those who are familiar, he has also been included in the Final Draft program under the section, “Ask The Expert,” where he gives help on writing screenplays.  In the DVD learning series, Field will walk you through getting started on your screenplay, creating your character, writing the screenplay and even rewriting your screenplay (which good screenwriters do over and over again moving toward screenwriting perfection).

You certainly don’t have to be an expert.  You can even be a novice, a first-timer.  All you have to have is an idea, and the passion for making the idea come to life in an incredible movie. He has taught some of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood this very same workshop. In the introduction, the purpose is to guide you through the process from the inception of the idea to actual completion of the finished script.  He teaches you to write the screenplay you want to write, working within the context of your screenplay.  He will often say, “Writing a screenplay is a process, what you write today is going to be out of date tomorrow…don’t be too attached.” Within the context of your story, “…if it works, use it and if it doesn’t, don’t”.  He speaks about discipline, and organizing your time to write a your screenplay and the whole experience being a process.  There are also exercises and assignments for you to complete.

In the Getting Started section, you’ll begin with an idea and then break it down into an action & character, and then you’ll structure it into a complete dramatic entity with a beginning, middle and end. Then you’ll write a 4 page narrative treatment of the story focusing on the elements of dramatic structure. By the time you’re done with this section you’ll have written a full treatment!!!

In Part 2, you’ll create the characters, define their dramatic needs, plot their course of action, their emotional arc, and discuss the nature and function of dialogue. In Part 3, you will actually write your screenplay. You will prepare, structure and write Acts 1, 2 and 3, beginning, middle and end. In Part 4, you will rewrite your screenplay (tightening and polishing the first draft). When you finish the course you will have a written a professional screenplay ready to submit to Hollywood or investors for funding.

Field uses films like “Shawshank Redemption” and “Titanic” to illustrate good examples of screenplay writing, but please don’t be intimidated – they are simple stories and the brilliance is in the structure and simplicity.  His most important contribution has been in his articulation of the ideal paradigm “Three Act Structure.”  In this structure, the film should be set up within the first 20 minutes or so before the main character experiences a “plot point” that gives him/her a goal to achieve in the story.  You will notice that films that have not done this are initially difficult to follow and/or become a bit uninteresting 20-30 minutes into the film.

Field currently teaches screenwriting at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California and travels around the world giving seminars and workshops to film professionals.  He also has several other published books on the topic of screenwriting.  Check out SydField.com… you can check me, La Rivers, out on Facebook.com/larivers… Happy writing!

La Rivers

In “Baad Bitches” & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films, Stephanie Dunn attacks  race, gender, heroism, politically correctness and consciousness all in one. She explores the idea of what it really means to be a strong black woman and how the roles in cinema reflect those images.

Dunn expresses her thoughts on images during the Blaxpoitation Era by reaching back into the 70s, exploring films like Cleopatra Jones, Foxy Brown and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and bringing us up to date where the images of black woman in music and film collide.

She questions what really makes these women heroes: Is it their sexuality, their power, their self-assuredness? And why do those heroines have the ability to transfer those images onto young black women seeking their sense self purpose. The breakthrough of an entire race rests so heavily on images that pose internal conflicts and conjure subtle cheers just for recognition, with a hint of guilt that co-exists, tracing back to the double consciousness of being black in America.

Chapters touch on the Black Movie Going Experience, Sex as a Means of Film Production, Aesthetic Strategy, and Maculating/Emasculating “The Man.” Dunn doesn’t look at films in the scope of what films and images are going to make money, she examines films from the perspective a woman who wants to tell her story the way it should be told, through the eyes of a Black woman. She questions the creation of Black action figures by questioning the creators, and points out that the creations are reflection of how the creators see Black life, and the creators are more than often, not Black. She challenges the filmmaker to create moving image “not as it is, but as it should be.”

With the hope that black woman can make their way in this world, not as just sex symbols, but as multidimensional creatures who handle business beyond the bedroom — she charges for filmmakers who have the power to change those images to use it.

-Crystyn C. Wright