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| Buster Keaton, Sherlock Jr. |
I recently heard a comedian say that the people who use the word "films" were more pretentious than the people who use the word "movies." Then he added, "The people who say pictures were the most pretentious of all."
I disagree.
In normal conversations, I suppose I say movies most of the time. However, when I talk to people about screenwriting, I always try to use the word pictures.
To be honest, I guess I started saying pictures out of pretentiousness. It seemed like the cool, insider thing to do. Whenever I saw a movie about filmmaking or set at a movie studio, the people always referred to movies as pictures. Now, I say it for a different reason -- especially with emerging screenwriters.
More and more people seek fame and fortune through screenwriting, and quite a niche industry has sprung up to feed and exploit them. There is no shortage of readers, advisors and consultants. There are endless books and webpages (including mine, I suppose). And let's not forget the contests. How many screenwriting competitions are there today? Don't bother trying to count them. By the time you finish, new ones have already sprung up.
I have a lot of problems with certain consultants, books and contests. Not just because I think they are exploitative. I have a deeper more fundamental problem with them: They look at the screenplay itself as the end product. It is not. The end product is a motion picture. A script can be exciting, emotionally compelling, grammatically correct and win every imaginable contest, but it isn't truly finished until it is made into a motion picture or television show.
I'm O-G, so let me jump back to the days of film. During the sound era, 24 frames of film passed through the projector every second. That's 1,440 images a minute. A two hour movie consisted of 172,000 images. Or, dare I say, pictures. Our job is to help create those pictures.
We're in the picture business. Not the paper business. Not the .pdf business. And not the word business.
We're in the picture business.
Too many emerging screenwriters forget that. They think it's about the words. The words are important, but only if they create pictures.
Because I straddle the world of books and movies, I talk to a lot of novelists. Many of them want to become screenwriters simply because they think writing a screenplay is easier than writing a novel. They think all you do is write a scene heading, a brief description of the setting, then get on with the dialogue.
They're doomed -- unless they set that dialogue in the context of pictures.
If you keep reminding yourself that you are in the picture business, it will change the way you write for the better. It will force you to consider what you want your audience (the reader) to see in every scene. That's cinema.
When you start doing that, you're finally in the picture business.
I wish I learned that lesson earlier!
Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother
Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru
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