MetaFilter posts tagged with Film and Writing

Aspiring Animators & Game Designers, Study Your Calculus & Combinatorics

zarq — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:20:49 -0800

Every film Pixar has produced has landed in the top fifty highest-grossing animated films of all time. What's their secret? Mathematics. Oh, and 22 Rules of Storytelling. Dr. DeRose has recently been giving lectures about the Pixar formula ("story, concept art, modeling, rigging, shading and lighting") around the country. On Youtube: Movies, Math and Making. PDFs of his papers are archived at Pixar's website. Vimeo: Math in the Movies: Making It All Add Up

In fact-based films, how much fiction is OK?

The Girl Who Ate Boston — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:03:54 -0800

With the "true story" films Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty having been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, discussion has risen about storytelling accuracy: "Does the audience deserve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? Surely not, but just how much fiction is OK?"

Schmucks with Underwoods

Artw — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:17:28 -0800

Vanity fair on the rise and fall and possible rise again of the spec script.

Screenwriters on screenwriting

dobbs — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:57:20 -0800

The Q&A With Jeff Goldsmith is an irregularly released podcast where Mr. Goldsmith interviews, at length (each episode runs an hour or more), working Hollywood and foreign screenwriters. The most recent episode is a panel conversation with the year's Oscar-nominated screenwriters. You can listen to the podcasts on his site or subscribe in iTunes or on Android.

Goldsmith is also the publisher of the terrific screenwriting magazine Backstory--currently only available for the iPad but coming (eventually) to the web and Android. You can download the first issue (which is wonderful, and contains full length scripts along with the interviews and stories) for free.

"You might not have the talent you need. Success may no longer be available to you. Time will bury everything you care about."

Rustic Etruscan — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 20:54:15 -0800

Movie critic Matthew Dessem (previously) considers Edward Ford to be the greatest unproduced screenplay in Hollywood.

--o---<<|

Fizz — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 08:39:51 -0800

Happy Thomas Pynchon rumor day! [LAtimes.com] "What's that, you say? America's most reclusive author, Thomas Pynchon, appeared in the news Friday -- not once but twice? Why, yes, yes, he has, surfacing in two unconnected rumours. Conspiracy? Pynchonian? Maybe we should henceforth designate Jan. 4 as Thomas Pynchon Rumor Day." "Rumor 1: Pynchon has a new novel coming this fall titled "Bleeding Edge." Rumor 2: Pynchon "may be working" on the film adaptation of his novel "Inherent Vice" with director Paul Thomas Anderson."

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

Artw — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:59:27 -0800

How Philip K Dick transformed Hollywood, who could be Hollywood's next PKD and how PKD could change your life.

Digital Images are SomeThing to aspire to? (A reflection on Hito Steyerl's proposal)

0bvious — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:13:43 -0800

Artist and film-maker, Hito Steyerl, asks us to stand shoulder to shoulder with our digital equivalents. Digital images are Things (like you and me) - a plethora of compressed, corrupted representations pushed and pulled through increasingly policed and capitalised information networks. If 80% of all internet traffic^* is SPAM - a liberated excess withdrawn^** from accepted channels of communication - perhaps it is in The Poor Image we find our closest kin? * In her recent October Journal article (Digital Debris: Spam and Scam), Steyerl claims that "80% of today's email messages are spam" ** This piece by Finn Brunton, (Roar so wildly: Spam, technology and language), is referenced by Steyerl in the same October Journal article

It’s kind of like making children

Artw — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:10:52 -0800

David Cronenberg talks to the LA Review of Books about making movies

Inform the troops

Artw — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:56:22 -0800

The Script Lab's top10 character introductions in film

Well, sure, it's all downhill that way

codacorolla — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:05:29 -0800

"Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event." Charlie Kaufman: Why I Wrote Being John Malkovich. Kaufman recently spoke as part of a lecture series for BAFTA. The video isn't up yet, but movies.com has an overview of the speech.

Spoilers, the web and writing movies

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:48:46 -0800

"What I'm asking is this: Are screenwriters now affected by "spoiler culture" before they even begin the writing process? If you know a twist will be unavoidably revealed before the majority of people see the work itself, and if you concede that selling and marketing a film with a major secret will be more complicated for everyone involved … would you even try? Would you essentially stop yourself from trying to write a movie that's structured like The Sixth Sense?" Are Spoilers Flipping the Script?

Adventures in the Screentrade

Artw — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:50:29 -0800

John Cleese interviews William Goldman - part 1, part 2, part 3. (audio only youtube)

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Artw — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:45:13 -0800

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown - A 90 minute documentary on HP Lovecraft with contributions by Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter and Guillermo Del Toro.

Writemare at 20,000 feet

Artw — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 18:30:35 -0800

Richard Matheson—Storyteller - To mark the publication of a book of tribute stories writer and editor Richard Bradley has been blogging about the author's 60 year writing career- covering I Am Legend, Duel, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, not to mention Somewhere in Time (full index here). Of course Matheson is probably most famous for his contributions to the Twilight Zone, being one of it's three major writers and scripting Nightmare at 20,000 feet. Twice.

"If you're not operating on an instinctive level, you're not an artist."

Artw — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:00:44 -0800

Guillermo del Toro talks about vampires, movies, Lovecraft, adaptations, fairytales and art.

You know, that thing where...

Artw — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:05:12 -0800

The secret origin of TV Tropes (Previously)

When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be.

anazgnos — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:09:59 -0800

Roger Ebert, his writing, and his battle with cancer are hardly foreign topics here, but this in-depth interview/profile from Esquire about Ebert's illness, loss of speech, and late career burst of creativity is worth a read.

This is not the time to send out a signal like this in some personal fucking sodcast

Artw — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:51:12 -0800

For quite some time, I’d wanted to make a screwball comedy. A fast-talking, wildly acclerating ensemble comedy that gets stupider and stupider. I never imagined it would be about a war, and inspired by a very recent war at that. But Simon, Jesse, Tony and I all felt that the more we found out about the dysfunction in Washington and the naivety in London leading up to the Iraq invasion, the more obvious it was that the only way to deal accurately and fairly with this topic was as a screwball comedy. - The Oscar nominated script for In The Loop, with an introduction by writer Armando Iannucci.

I shared my flesh with thinking cancer

Artw — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:27:56 -0800

The Things - The Thing from the point of view of the thing, by Peter Watts (previously, previously, previously)

Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E!

Artw — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:26:43 -0800

Robert McKee’s Unconvincing Story

The Lurking Fear

Artw — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:13:44 -0800

Lovecraft 101: Get To Know The Master of Scifi-Horror. For more detailed insights into each of Lovecraft's tales in publication order you might want to follow the H.P.Lovecraft Literary Podcast. For another story-by-story guide to Lovecraft you might want to check out Kenneth Hite's Tour De Lovecraft (also available in expanded form as a book). China Mieville on Lovecraft and racism and a lecture at Treadwells by Archaeologist James Holloway which delves deep into Lovecraft and identity. The making of the Call of Cthulhu RPG. The making of Cthulhu (Hipsters! Ego! Madness!). Happy Halloween with H.P. Lovecraft!

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid

Artw — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:57:14 -0800

Is mysticism overtaking science in sci-fi? Does Every SF Show Need Jesus Now?

Why he will not read your fucking script

Artw — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:46:32 -0800

"I will not read your fucking script."

Watch the skies!

Artw — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:02:30 -0800

Who Goes There - the John W. Campbell short story which inspired the movies The Thing from Another World and, closer to the original, The Thing (which, apparently, was horribly critically mauled upon release but has since become as much as a classic as the 50s film). The story is now being reprinted alongside a treatment by Logan's Run author William F. Nolan for an unmade 1978 screen version.