Simply choosing a male or a female name, their country of abode and finally, the country base of their name (with many global options), you’re presented with a full character profile providing a full character listing. I wish I’d had this available before I started writing ‘Chasing the Will.’ It would have made my life easier. Listing:

• Name
• Address including post code/zip code
• Telephone number
• Website
• Email address which can be turned live
• A password for online access
• The mother’s maiden name
• Date of birth and age (for those without calculators)
• Credit card number and expiry date
• Insurance number or social security number
• Occupation
• Blood type
• Weight and height in imperial and metric versions

From an author’s point of view, this presents a detailed character map that can be used throughout a novel. Often writers map out an entire character’s life story so they’re consistent throughout a novel or screenplay. You still need to add their favourite likes and dislikes, their school record and their greater family make up, but you’ve saved hours of work. Just checking whether the person is online and seeing if you can use the name carefully is another task. You don’t want to use Joe Brown or Fred Smith or Barack Obama for your character’s name, which is the beauty of this software for authors. It provides real names from all aspects of the globe. You want a Japanese name, it’s yours in seconds. If you need a Polish name for a man working in Denmark, all the necessary accurate details are provided.

The problem begins with the incorrect use of this information. Knowing the credit card number is a valid number and all the other information provided starts a team game. Registering gas or electric in the new names, the criminal starts to map out a future. Eventually he’s able to provide full information for opening a bank account and pulling stunts to gain goods and services illegally. This is then just one step away from identity theft. Our criminal can mix real knowledge with false information gained from this website to take over someone’s life.
So how do we ensure only fiction writers use this website?

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

If you look in television schedules and see what’s written about a movie, a drama or even sport, the few words describing the viewing will be its logline; telling you all you need to know before you decide if you’re going to watch it, or not.

Rather than reinvent the wheel and write exactly the same as all others should, I’ll direct you to the James Burbidge article ‘10 tips for writing loglines’ at Raindance, the people who are great at independent film making, courses and books.

If you’re a cut and paste sort of person, then you’ll need this:
http://www.raindance.org/site/10-tips-for-writing-loglines

Best Picture
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourous Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up In The Air

Best Actor In A Leading Role
Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
George Clooney – Up In The Air
Colin Firth – Single Man
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker

Best Actress In A Leading Role
Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Helen Mirren – The Last Station
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sibide – Precious
Meryl Streep – Julie and Julia

Best Actor In A Supporting Role
Matt Damon – Invictus
Woody Harrelson – The Messenger
Christopher Plummer – The Last Station
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglorious Basterds

Best Actress In A Supporting Role
Penelope Cruz – Nine
Vera Farminga – Up In Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal – Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick – Up In Air
Mo’Nique – Precious

Best Director
James Cameron – Avatar
Kathyn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino – Inglorious Basterds
Lee Daniels – Precious
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air

Foreign Language Film
Ajami
El Secreto de Sus Ojos
The Milk of Sorrow
Un Prophete
The White Ribbon

Best Original Screenplay
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The Messenger
A Serious Man
Up

Best Adapted Screenplay
District 9
An Education
In The Loop
Precious
Up In The Air

Best Animated Feature Film
Coraline
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Princess And The Frog
The Secret Of Kells
Up

Art Direction
Avatar
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria

Cinematography
Avatar
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The White Ribbon

Costume Design
Bright Star
Coco Before Chanel
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
The Young Victoria

Documentary Feature
Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc
Which Way Home

Documentary Short
China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
The Last Truck: Closing of GM Plant
Music by Prudence
Rabbit a la Berlin

Film Editing
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious

Make-up
Il Divo
Star Trek
The Young Victoria

Music (Original Score)
Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Hurt Locker
Sherlock Holmes
Up

Music (Original Song)
The Princess and the Frog
Paris 36
Nine
Crazy Heart

Sound Editing
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Up

Sound Mixing
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Visual Effects
Avatar
District 9
Star Trek

Short film (Animated)
French Roast
Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
The Lady and the Reaper
Logorama
A Matter of Loaf and Death

Short Film (Live Action)
The Door
Instead of Abracadabra
Kavi
Miracle Fish
The New Tenants

Oscar® winners to be revealed on Sunday, March 7, 2010.

Not all the best get nominated, but that’s why we can all have our own viewpoint. No doubt a large percentage of people will disagree with the winners, but that’s life as we know it.

Some trailers are completely misleading. There was a Will Smith movie, Hancock, where the official trailer gives you the impression that the movie is about one subject, yet when you get to see the finished product, it has another entirely different focus. Fortunately, the second route it took was the best part of that screenplay.

Experts will tell us that the trailer should give us enough to want to get us to the cinema. It should entice us to tell our friends to join us on a gamble none of us have ventured to yet. It most probably deals with only the first third of the screenplay so we have a lot more to see.

Murder By Mistake, written and directed by Carolyn Hodge, is a movie doing the festival circuit at the moment waiting to be picked up for full distribution. The logline tells us

it is a story of mistaken identity when a pair of twins separated at birth are reunited 27 years later and one is murdered.

Without giving too much away, the living twin is a police detective. Already, you know where the movie may be going.

Murder By Mistake trailer from Carolyn Hodge on Vimeo.

If this trailer http://www.vimeo.com/5146878 is anything to go by, it’s got me hooked to purchase a ticket or two when it comes my way. If it doesn’t make it to the full release, I’ll certainly rent the movie.

I’m already intrigued. The trailer shows me enough to have me hooked for more, but not so much so I know what the outcome will be, although we’ll all take a guess and hope it’s got a great twist to stop it going down any obvious routes.

Here’s a selection of the different types of people involved with screenwriting: writers, consultants and teachers.

Just one hour of your time watching/listening to these videos may provide you with years of expert knowledge.

Christopher Volger

Michael Hauge

Joe Eszterhas

Julian Friedmann

Callie Khouri

Linda Seger

Blake Snyder

Could it be the high emotions you’ve experienced looking out for your hero and fighting against the antagonist?

It’s different for all of us. For some it might just be the inspiring music. Often overlooked by audiences, the music holds the movie together. It binds the different stages of the film into one continuous loop so we don’t see the edges, unless of course we’re shown the boundaries by the different layers of music.

Occasionally, one actor will stand out above all the others. We’ll tell our friends how wonderful the actor is, what a show they put on, but without direction, makeup, props, special effects and wardrobe, how good were they?

Is it the director’s style or the editor’s ability to chop and change direction or a combination of the two? You’ll know you’re in a certain director’s movie purely by the way the scenes change and float around you.

Is it the screenplay? Of course it’s the screenplay – without it there wouldn’t be a movie, but you do need all of the other elements to make up the total ‘event’ for you. Without a quality screenplay the cast and crew won’t be able to make a hit from a monster. The screenplay may have been crafted over for several months with numerous re-writes.

The craft takes time to learn. To ensure we’re engaged from the very first scene; to make certain that we’re happy to go along with the movie even when it’s unbelievable; to guarantee we’ll be there to the bitter end, whatever the surprises, whatever the ending. That all takes a skill we often criticise, without knowing better, but we know what we like and we know what we don’t like and we don’t mind being surprised. Whatever the reviews might tell us, we make up our own mind during the movie, as long as the reviews didn’t stop us buying tickets in the first place.

It’s thought that the names of script readers are kept secret by the movie studios. Is this because they’re so poorly paid or require unbiased opinions? The answer may lay somewhere in between.

Screenplay readers aren’t paid well for their work and it’s usually required on a strict turnaround timescale. Sometimes there’s only just time for the Fedex driver to get a Starbucks or two before they need to return to pick up the reader’s report.

The readers need to get through 2-3 screenplays a day to make a living. They need to write their reports at a marching pace. Whether they write pass, consider or recommend is down to a short period of time compared to how long the screenplay took to write, edit, re draft (at least) six times and market just to get the pages in front of a reader.

Readers have seconds to assess your work. Who is it from; which studio/producer/agent? How does it feel – not too many pages? How does it meet the necessary requirements; enough dialogue, enough white space, correctly formatted?

Failing in any of those criteria will have the ‘pass’ stamp approved quickly. Meeting the standards gives the screenplay a chance to be assessed in a tiried and trusted method, as instructed by the studio.

It’s rumored that script readers can’t give a ‘recommend’ grade to a screenplay for fear of the studio disagreeing and terminating the reader, so it looks like a ‘consider’ is the best you can hope for, with a glowing report.

Script reader and story analyst D.C. Mar gives an insider’s view on this screenwriting website. There are six pages to look over http://scottdistillery.googlepages.com/ascriptreaderspeaks

Time will best be spent by screenplay writers assessing what D.C. Mar has to say about presentation and content. If you’re a known writer you stand a much higher chance at getting a ‘consider’ grade. If you’re new, then DC will find that out and you may get pushed to the back of the script mountain.

As if writing the screenplay wasn’t enough work already, if this is your first screenplay you now need to learn the language of the studio/script reader process and pass with flying colors.

Breaking down a screenplay

It’s always good for a screenplay writer to break down other movies into bite sized chunks to see how they’re made; construction, scene breakdown and major points highlighted.

Two of the best people for this are Blake Snyder (Book: Save The Cat Goes to the Movies, breaking down to beat sheets Crash, MASH, Saw, Alien and 46 others) and Dr Linda Seger (Book: And The Best Screenplay goes to… breaking down in absolute minute detail Sideways, Shakespeare in Live and also Crash.)

I recently came across this comparison between Star Wars and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It shows you exactly how the story is, in fact, the same. Only minor details change.

I am grateful to Kal Bashir of www.clickok.co.uk for allowing the use of his movie comparison image here. Please go to the website http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html and see their information about the hundreds of deconstructed movies available.

Here’s their PR blurb:

Virtual Production Studio Adds New Script Formats and Enables Direct Access to Intellectual Property Registration Web Site

A pioneering force in digital-media production, FiveSprockets™ today unveiled several enhancements to its virtual production studio, including a new suite of script formats, improved profile features and direct access for users to ProtectRite®, an online service for time sealed intellectual-property registration.

“The latest enhancements to FiveSprockets help us meet the needs of a wider group of media creators,” said Randy Ullrich founder, president, and CEO of FiveSprockets. “These are the first in a series of upgrades planned to enable producers of all skill levels, from professional and aspiring filmmakers to video enthusiasts to advertising agencies, to collaborate with others to develop, produce, and promote their work.”

The new script formats include television sitcom/drama, stage play, radio play and comic book. Profile enhancements include rich project pages where users can showcase their work. The company’s partnership with ProtectRite enables FiveSprockets users to access the ProtectRite service directly from vScripter, FiveSprockets online story development and scriptwriting software.

“We chose to partner with ProtectRite because they are the pioneer of online intellectual-property registration. Their established history and industry-leading vaulting process was a perfect for FiveSprockets,” said Ullrich.

FiveSprockets, which launched in September, is an online collaboration platform offering essential resources and on-demand software to enable its users to make better media, more efficiently and profitably, from any location. The site serves as a virtual one-stop shop, providing innovative tools to support the five phases, or “sprockets,” of media production: (1) story development and scriptwriting, (2) pre-production, (3) production, (4) post-production, and (5) marketing and distribution.

Always evolving with new features, the current platform includes:
• vScripter – collaborative story development and scriptwriting software
• vProductionOffice – collaborative production-management software
• Job Boards – helping producers find the perfect cast and crew
• Social/Professional Networking – rich user profiles, project showcasing, and the ability to connect with friends and colleagues
• Resources – a host of dynamic conversational and educational content and resources across all five phases of production

FiveSprockets offers functionality for a variety of media projects, including feature films, documentaries, television serials, advertising, Webisodes, Mobisodes, comics and more. For more information, please visit www.FiveSprockets.com

Naming a fictional character can often be a challenge. For many writers, and I include myself in this group, your character really doesn’t come alive for you until he or she has a name. But you can also waste a great deal of time worrying about finding the perfect fictional character name.

Stephen King named the main character of his novel, The Dead Zone, John Smith. One of the most common names in the English language, it truly represents the common man. However, John Smith was anything but a common man. Perhaps that’s why King chose the name … as a counterweight to the extraordinary circumstances surrounding John Smith’s life.

How about you? What is it that you look for in a fictional character’s name?

For me, I like to find a name that reflects either the primary role of the character or the core of the character’s personality. A strong name for a strong character. An evil name for an evil character. A deceitful name for a deceitful character (think Benedict Arnold). A cool name for a cool character. Though you don’t want to go too far over the top in most cases. Snidely Whiplash is great as a cartoon character, I’m not sure you want your adventure novel villain to carry a name quite so outlandish.

In the planning stages of your story, it’s often easier to use a generic name, something like John or Mary, until you have a clearer picture of the story and the role your character will play. But the earlier you can put a name to your fictional character, the easier the writing will be. I’ve often struggled with a story, every word fighting me, until I realized the name of my main character simply didn’t ring true. When the name feels false, your character will feel false.

The process of finding the right character name can be a bit tedious at times. It’s often a matter of trial and error.

There are some character name generators that will randomly select names for you. I’ve toyed around with one or two in the past before I became restless with them and moved on. They were a bit like playing a slot machine. The odds of finding a character name that suited your needs were extremely slim.

More often, I use the combination of a baby name book and the phone book. As I mentioned, it’s usually a process of trial and error. I’ll find a good first name, then pair it up with last names until something finally clicks. Or I’ll go through the same process in reverse.

How do I know when a name clicks?

If it sounds right, I’ll give it a try. Once I start writing, it won’t be long before I’ll know for certain if the name fits the character or not. It’s similar to meeting someone for the first time who seems familiar. Immediately, you can’t help but put a name to the face. Let’s say you imagine him as a William. Not a Bill, but a William. Whether or not it’s his real name, doesn’t matter, because in your mind he’ll always be a William. That’s what brings him to life for you.

And that’s how you know when you’ve found the right name for your fictional character … suddenly your character is brought to life. He has a lifetime of memories and experiences behind him, a personality uniquely his own, and you feel as if you’ve known him for a good long time.

Article Source: http://www.affsphere.com/Writing/Novels-Short-Stories/A-Name-Is-Just-A-Name-Finding-The-Right-Fictional-Character-Name.html