The Audience and You: A guide to writing screenplays with emotional impact by Schildberger Tim

Author:Schildberger, Tim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Write LA Publishing
Published: 2024-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Why should you embrace your divine power over this script? Because it’s the first step toward owning everything in the script. And it’s the first step to understanding you are not only solely and completely responsible for every single word, you are also solely and completely responsible for something arguably even bigger – the audience and their emotional state.

You, my friend, have all the power. All of it. Oh sure, some director will come along at some point and make it look like they are the reason your movie works. But here’s a secret Hollywood doesn’t want you to know. Are you ready? The biggest secret in this book, buried in chapter five, because that’s how I roll.

It is almost impossible for a director to make a bad script into a good movie. And it is almost impossible for a director to make a bad movie out of a great script. I will fight anyone over this, although I will consider a stupid director can do a lot of damage to a great script, but still never entirely ruin it.

Read what I just wrote a second time. You want proof? I present to you Gwyneth Paltrow winning an Academy Award for Best Actress in Shakespeare in Love. Let’s be fair – Ms. Paltrow is an entirely serviceable actress. Genuinely fine. Not awful. But no one would ever accuse her of being Meryl Streep. Yet she has an Oscar. For Best Actress. How did that happen? She got to be in a movie with a bulletproof script. And she had a director who could not have screwed it up, no matter how many times he cast Ben Affleck and told him to have a crack at an English accent some of the time.

Anyone in that role would’ve won the Academy Award. Literally anyone. As proven by Ms. Paltrow grabbing the trophy.

My point in all this is that you have tremendous power, even if the industry won’t acknowledge it. You can whine about that, or you can focus on trying to write bulletproof scripts. And that process starts with you owning the fact you are GOD of your script. You are responsible for every single word. Not most of them. All of them.

I know what I’m saying may sound obvious. Of course you are responsible for every word, you’re typing them, right? But in reality, we both know there are scenes in your script, and lines of dialogue, and scene description, that you have trouble justifying. But you know the following scene is awesome, so hopefully readers won’t notice the soft spots. Spoiler alert…we always notice.

I recently directed my first play from a screenplay of mine that I modified to work better on the stage. I’ve never directed a play before, and I was lucky to have three incredible and very professional actors on board. From day one of rehearsal, I was peppered with questions by the three of them. It was constant, it was incredibly detail oriented, it was relentless, and it was exhausting.

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