Project Echo’s first draft is done. Saturday was the deadline to finish but some important life stuff came up and I had to postpone my writing until the next day. So yesterday I hunkered down and wrote for over 7 hours, whipping out 20+ pages (which was more than I had anticipated), and around 8:30 [...]
Category > Project Echo
On the Importance of Loglines
Logline: (per Wikipedia) A brief summary of a movie, often providing both a synopsis of the film’s plot and an emotional “hook” to stimulate interest.
Sounds thrilling, don’t it? Log lines, however, can be crucial when it comes to building interest in your film, raising money for it, or marketing it once it’s done. They’re simple, [...]
Location Scouting Down Route 66
Last weekend, my 2 1/2 year old daughter and I took a trip down Route 66. The purpose was two-fold: first, spend some quality time with my little girl, and second, do some preliminary location scouting for Project Echo.
Normally you would not begin location scouting when you’re only 50 pages into your first draft. However, [...]
Watching Bad Movies on Purpose
Previously I had written that when tackling a screenplay, you should absorb as many of the great films in your chosen genre as possible. But over the weekend I learned that watching bad genre examples is equally important, if not more so.
Frantic, Roman Polanski’s 1988 “dread filled thriller” (to quote the marketing blurb), is about [...]
Screenwriting Technique - Which Way is Best?
There are a lot of different screenwriting ‘rules,’ but the key idea is to write in such a way that you paint a vivid picture of the film in the reader’s mind. That doesn’t mean describing all of the camera angles verbatim (a big no-no, actually), but using enough descriptive language that the director/producer/potential investor [...]
Researching Genre - And I Need Suggestions
In writing a film, it is crucial to have an excellent grasp of the genre you’re working in. How could you hope to write an effective romantic comedy if you’ve never seen Annie Hall or You’ve Got Mail? And how weak would your supernatural horror script be if you’d never seen The Exorcist or The [...]
The 1st Draft - Halfway There
Well, not quite. Today is June 15th, the halfway point between when I set the deadline for my first draft and when it’s actually due (August 1st). I should have at least 60 of the 120 pages done. I don’t. Not quite. But i’m not discouraged, as I’ve been solving plotting issues left and right [...]
Success! (and the writing process)
Early this morning I broke the story for Project Echo. I’d been writing scenes without an outline or an endgame in place, so it’s nice to finally have a destination in sight.
For some of you it might seem crazy to write without an outline. How do you know what the story is? How do you [...]
Whiteboard = Progress
I needed a whiteboard upon which to scrawl my brilliant ideas. But, before purchasing a new one, I trawled the local thrift stores and Behold! $1.98 at the Quality Thrift Store. Before it became the pristine blank canvas you see in the picture (also: my adorable daughter, desperately reaching for the markers), it was covered [...]
Project Echo
That’s what I’ve decided to use as an operating title for my film. Now, I can refer to it as “Project Echo” instead of the more generic and abstract “My Screenplay” or “My Film” or “My Movie Thing I’m Making.” And, as with many ideas, the inspiration came from somebody else.
One of the friends I [...]
