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Finer Points on My Screenply.

Birdman

Birdman

Okay, All,

Here's the chance to get back at that obnoxious Spec Script writer asshole that thinks he's going to change Holloywood with his very first script. Have your fun!

(1) I have reduced my script from 350 pages to 145. I am fairly sure I can get it to 130 pages ...but at 120 pages shit will get confused or the overall meaning is compromised. Is 130 pages that far off? Is that so much as to raise a red flag? ...Does 129 carry the psychological advantage of keeping it in the 120's?

(2) Science Fiction Technology: I have several new hi-tech devices in my screenplay. My question is do I give them a capital letter in my action blocks? Example: Do I write; "Fred puls out his Commatron and blows away the Proteus Deflector." ...or... "Fred pulss out his commatron and blows away the proteus deflector."

(3) I have a "Biblical Quote" I want to appear at the beginning (white text over black background. I would like to see an example of how this should be handled. I have seen several different versions online, but they seem confusing at best.

(4) After the credits have rolled I want to include a quick basic scene that sneaks in showing a flower. yah, I know, I know. I have zero camera commands in my script. Do I "FADE OUT" and then "FADE IN" again? What's the best way?

(5) I have nameless alien characters (Penatrons) that have assumed the bodies of some human characters in the script. The human characters have already been introduced. Here's my problem: Let's say ROBERT gets assimilated by a Penatron. When Robert was talking previously I always just used: ROBERT

...Now that he's dead and a Penatron has assumed his body, I am forced to write him in like this:

ROBERT (AS A PENATRON) ...or... ROBERT (PENATRON).

What I'm running into is a lot of space is getting used up adding in their assimilated names into the action script. Here's an example:

Robert (as a Penatron) grabs a plasma blaster and kills Billy (as a Penatron). Rodney (as a Penatron) and Mathew (as a Penatron) grab their plasma blasters and incinerate Robert (as a Penatron).

You get the point. All this (as a Penatron) crap is eating up space. What I did was each time a character was assimilated I qualified it within the script:

A Penatron kills Robert and assumes his body - ROBERT(P). Two more Penatrons kill Rodney and Mathew and assume their bodies as well - RODNEY(P) and Mathew(P).

Is this a good idea? Is there a better way to handle this?


Thanks for the help!
-Birdman

P.S. The examples I have given are not in my script. They are just hi-tech names I'm using for example.
 
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rayw said:
Somewhere there is a healthy sense of "F#ckit. It doesn't matter. Truncate this somehow. Four characters become three. A whole planet disappears. Plot point G gets melded with plot point D. Sub-stories are ditched as casualties of screenwriting for the sake of the all mighty production budget."
Click to expand...

Recently in the film Wolf of Wall Street, 5-6 people were compressed into 1 character. The REAL person was annoyed about clumping all of those people together and writing them off as him, but unless you are making a three-hour epic depicting real controversial events, you should be fine. But the combining of those characters cut the film's runtime down significantly, and that is exactly what should be done if a script is too long. Plus, usually (not always, NOT ALWAYS, but usually) scripts flow much better when not as complicated and cluttered, esp. when written by newbie screenwriters.
 
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Something like 'The Host'?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517260/?ref_=nv_sr_1

$40,000,000
/ 125 min
= $320,000 per minute/page

Average with like films...

$320,000 The Host
$319,328 Riddick
$256,881 The World's End
$298,736 per screen minute
/ 54 lines per page
=$5,532 per line

Birdman said:
One of the scenes has my main character and her co-star ordering a burger at a fast food joint.

Another has NSA agents going through a house.

Several scenes involve the two main characters driving cross country in a vintage sports car (that doesn't get wrecked).

They stop at a gas station ...and some shit happens (no explosions, sorry).

There's a big scene where they are running around in the Navada desert.

They spend some time in a government facility.

There are some helicopters! ..Uh ohhhhh!


...I'm having trouble finding these types of scenes listed in your 8 and 9 figure Sci-Fi estimates? Should I maybe lose the burger joint scene to save a little cash?

Birdman

P.S. You know, they could have saved a lot of money in "Man of Steel" if they just cut out all that "flying around" and shit.
Click to expand...

That's about 22 lines, half a page, barely = $144,841.
 
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Birdman said:
(2) Science Fiction Technology: I have several new hi-tech devices in my screenplay. My question is do I give them a capital letter in my action blocks? Example: Do I write; "Fred puls out his Commatron and blows away the Proteus Deflector." ...or... "Fred pulss out his commatron and blows away the proteus deflector."
Click to expand...

I would like to Know too, My Script is right on 99 pages, and it has Gadgets that don't exist and some create
multiple holograms to trick the bad guys, I was thinking of putting them in Capitals, but then again i could be wrong.
 
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Will Write For Latte said:
I was thinking of putting them in Capitals, but then again i could be wrong.
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Don't.
Maybe the first time make it all caps then they become part of the screenplay universe's lexicon, thus regular nouns, not proper nouns, thus not capitalized.



ChimpPhobiaFilms said:
Recently in the film Wolf of Wall Street, 5-6 people were compressed into 1 character.
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Yep.
I've seen that happen plenty of times in other screenplays → movies.

This is an expensive business.
Big time or small taters.



Will Vincent said:
Those cost breakdowns aren't the best gauge, since that's just the 'reported' budget, which is often much higher than then real budget, and a goodly portion of those budgets go toward post production, distribution, and advertising.
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N'yaaaa... nope.
P&A budgets are in addition to these studio releases.
It's the little producers and filmmakers that mix and muddle who-knows-what into their budgets.
They'll cite only direct costs and not indirect costs or will or will not include value-of-services-rendered in their budgets.
But from the big studios - reported production budgets are separate from P&A budgets.
Usually. :)
 
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Will Write For Latte said:
I would like to Know too, My Script is right on 99 pages, and it has Gadgets that don't exist and some create
multiple holograms to trick the bad guys, I was thinking of putting them in Capitals, but then again i could be wrong.
Click to expand...

I also have holograms! They are used to trick the bad guys. ...Gimme back my script!

According to most everyone here, you and I need to get rid of the holograms, lose the characters that use these holograms and probably get rid of the bad guys the holograms are used against.... for budgeting reasons, of course. ...But just think how easily your screenplay will flow after that!

-Birdman
 
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rayw said:
Bingo.
Spec screenwriting = 1/100,000 chance to get your screenplay even optioned, let alone survive development hell and get made and distributed, limited or wide.

Writer/director = 8+/10 of getting your story made into a film.

Hmm...
That's not very tough math.
Click to expand...

Actually the correct statistics are...

About 250,000 screenplays arrive, new, in Tinseltown a year.

Of these, 650 or so are made into films.

Of these, about 200 turn in a profit to the writer.

If the total made by writers is evenly distributed to every screenplay written by anyone, it works out that each and every screenplay has a value of about $1.60, roughly about the same as its physical scrap value (the asset value of the cardboard cover, the brass (or steel if you are in the UK) brads and the paper recycled as rough paper).
 
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