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.

Direct from the desk of www.FILMandMOVIEmaking.com, The FAMM nominations for 2008 are in and here they are:

Please hum along to: da da da, da da da, dah

Best film/movie:

• The Bank Job
• Body of Lies
• The Dark Knight
• Mamma Mia!
• Taken

Best screenplay:

• Barry Levy – Vantage Point
• Catherine Johnson – Mamma Mia!
• David Loughery – Lakeview Terrace
• Guy Ritchie – Rocknrolla
• William Monahan – Body Of Lies

Best actor:

• Ben Kingsley – Elegy
• Don Cheadle – Traitor
• Jason Statham – The Bank Job
• Liam Neeson – Taken
• Tom Wilkinson – Rocknrolla

Best actress:

• Charlize Theron – Hancock
• Jodie Foster – Nims Island
• Meryl Streep – Mamma Mia!
• Penélope Cruz – Elegy
• Saffron Burrows – The Bank Job

Best musical:

• Mamma Mia!
• Mamma Mia!
• Mamma Mia!
• Mamma Mia!
• Mamma Mia!

Best score/music:

• Burn After Reading – Carter Burwell
• Mamma Mia! – Abba (Mostly Benny & Bjorn)
• Rocknrolla – soundtrack
• Shine A Light –Rolling Stones
• The Dark Knight – Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard

Best director:

• D.J. Caruso – Eagle Eye
• Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
• Guy Ritchie – Rocknrolla
• Phyilda Lloyd – Mamma Mia!
• Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon

Best animation:

• Beverley Hills Chihuahua
• Bolt
• Igor
• Kung Fu Panda
• Madagascar Escape 2 Africa

Best short film:

• Gone Fishing by Chris Jones

No others nominated

Special FAMM mention 2008:

• There are no nominations for this award; it goes direct to the winner and we’ll tell you why!

If you favourites aren’t mentioned, please leave a comment to say who you think should have been included and/or who you believe should win these prestigious awards. If your faves are not here, it means we were too busy writing screenplays and missed your movie choice!

The winners will be announced on January 10th, 2009.

Your antagonist is usually a person, because it’s easier for your hero to be struggling against someone they can physically fight with, talk with and understand the differences between them. They don’t have to be human, though. They can be an alien, they can be the sea, they can be a house, but you will need to see them/it at some stage so your audience can get confirmed proof of defeat.

The level of conflict must increase as your writing continues. At each stage the task must be harder; the battle must be longer, the conflict more difficult to overcome than the previous set. Racking up the level of conflict is a screen writer’s target ensuring that it reaches a mighty crescendo at the end of your film.

There can be a number of challengers that wish to ensure the status quo is not maintained. They must always have one person/alien/tornado that is much worse than the rest. The first few can be there for training purposes so your hero learns to overcome stronger and stronger challenges.

As your protagonist manages to find a way to win small battles, the antagonist will be searching for ways to keep the hero’s goals in the distance by placing more and more obstacles in the way.

The best antagonist has a nice side to them somewhere. The audience will want to find some part of the anti hero that they can link to, to believe that the adversary could change, if shown the way, to be a thoroughly decent fellow.

When writing your conflict, you’ll need to find a large enough difference that can be maintained throughout the entire movie. So the conflict must be believable in the sense that if it doesn’t look as though it’s a big enough challenge, your reader will give up and your script won’t see the light of day any further with that person.

The hurdle must always look like one that can be beaten, but you must spend almost your entire screenplay acting as though your hero can’t find a way to beat it.

If you are able to have both lead opposite characters in scenes across your movie, the actual conflict, rather than perceived conflict will have your reader wanting to throw punches for you. If you don’t let the two be seen together, then the sense of a showdown will need to be enormous for the reader to believe you’re going against a challenge of a lifetime.

Remember, the higher the hill, the greater chance of a reader meeting you on the other side.

Need help getting your screenplay ready to show to a reader, producer, studio or agent? Check our screenplay analysis service first. No second chance to make a first impression!

Once you’ve read and taken in the section on screenplay planning, you’ll know that you should have the overall plan for your writing ready, before you write.

You can use Save The Cat software to plan those scenes for you so you know exactly what will happen in each scene before you write it. Movie Outline cuts a similar flow as does Movie Magic.

You may choose to have your 3×5 cards (one for each scene) on a pin board over your desk so you can see the whole screenplay in one image.

Don’t number your scene headings; they won’t be needed until your movie goes into pre-production.

Each scene heading (called a slug line) gives you information about when and where the scene exists. It has three parts:

1. INT. or EXT. – either an interior or an exterior shot
2. Where – the tangible location where the action takes place
3. The time of day – day or night.

Examples could be:

EXT. HEATHROW AIRPORT – DAY
INT. TOM’S DINER – NIGHT

If you move from an INT shot to an EXT shot, use a new slug line. Keep the reader informed.

Scene locations must be unambiguous and descriptive. If it doesn’t matter what type of train station you’re in, then no name is necessary, but if it must be Grand Central, then say so. It tells the reader where you are. They can picture it, the people and the structure. Once you use a location, always call it the same throughout your script otherwise confusion may arise.

You may have wasted an opportunity to show the reader a ‘picture’ of the location if you don’t name it, but naming Don’s book shop in Manchester when it doesn’t mean anything to anyone (sorry Don) won’t help.

Your scene must contain sufficient emotional content to move your lead characters on. There must be conflict to ensure the movie moves forward.

Don’t bore the reader. Make them want to read to the next scene as soon as possible. Make them want to turn the page.

Make your characters different from each other. Make them stand out. William M Akers has a great line that goes ‘get into the scene as late as possible and get out as early as possible.’ You don’t want to have your characters doing things that aren’t necessary. When someone walks into a house, unless it’s for dramatic effect, we don’t need to see him or her get their keys out, put them in the lock, open the door and walk in. Cut to the chase.

Your action and dialogue must be worth every word you write. Show and not tell is better than telling the reader everything. Let them use their mind to see what you’re after.

Don’t direct either actors or the cameraman through scene instructions. They’re the experts and with the director, they’ll work out what to do.

After you’ve written a scene, cut out all the loose writing. The extra words you don’t need.

Finally, make every scene memorable. If it’s not, change it around until it is, or cut it out.

Need help getting your screenplay ready to show to a reader, producer, studio or agent? Check our screenplay analysis service first. No second chance to make a first impression!

What type of movie do you want to go and see; a dull one or a great one? While the question may appear a little (or a lot) on the brainless side, it’s a standard more screenplay writers need to apply.

Often they have a great idea, but really only fifty pages of real story. The other 40+ pages are just filler. The words amble along without any real purpose other than to get to the better part of the story. Those 40+ pages give the human race something to moan about. We all like to complain about something. Why chance them talking ‘down’ your 40+ pages when you have 50 great pages?

Now if you’d given them 90 pages of great story they could only talk you ‘up’.

When you want to go out on a hot date, you don’t wear your twenty year old t-shirt with food stains down the front. You prepare, you dress up, you groom. It’s the same for your screenplay.

• Prepare properly; be organised
• Dress up each word until it’s the best
• Groom your presentation to perfection

How often have you watched a film where it has such highs and lows you only remember the highs and there weren’t enough of them. You can’t really say what happened during the lows, but you do know they went on for a long time, far too long. Sometimes a movie has three great special effects or car chases, but happened in between?

Having a few ideas for a script gets you on the road to the average script. It’s only when you can maintain that flow throughout the whole 90+ pages that you’ll know you’re on to a winner.

If you don’t know by now the hot script comes from the re-writes, not your first draft. There might be several re-writes before you send it off to your friends and family, on spec to a producer or to your agent.

It’s during those re-writes that the professional screenplay writer will ‘out’ every word that doesn’t fit, every word that doesn’t move the story along to the next scene. They’ll not be prepared to accept anything that doesn’t keep the reader hooked and wanting to read each part of every page.

The reader will give up reading your average script by page ten, if you’re lucky they got that far.

To get yourself from the average screenplay to the hot one:

• What words can you take out?
• What makes the writing sharper?
• What dull writing can you exclude?
• What new scenes can you insert to up the tempo?
• What action have you over-written?
• Which characters change their personality too much?
• Have you cut out all the ‘thes’ and ‘thats’ as you can?
• How can you get more white space on the page?

They’re just a few of the key stages to go through to help you go from ‘average’ to ‘hot’.

When you need help with getting your screenplay ready to show to a reader, producer, studio or agent, check out our screenplay analysis services first.

Go re-write now.

Then you balance that against the actual top commissions paid out which include:

$4 million for Shane Black’s The Long Kiss Goodnight (or $4.5 million)
$3 million for Joe Eszterhas’s Basic Instinct
$3 million for Tom Schulman’s Medicine Man
$3 million for The Ugly Americans (Eurotrip) by Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer
$3 million for David Keopp’s Panic Room

Further, you check commissions paid for movies not yet produced that include:

$3 million for Bad Dog by Dale Launer
$3 million for Married in the Morning by Harry Elfort and Deborah Kaplan
$2 million for Joe Eszterhas’s Sacred Cows and also for his Reliable Sources

The figures are from Wikipedia. They’ve completed a good job of bringing together the highest paid amounts for screenplays that have been produced and released, while some have not even made it into production – and the writer still got paid!

Now come back down to the land we call Earth.

What you might sell first is just the ‘option’ for a producer to take temporary ownership of your screenplay. He’ll then try to find the finance to make the movie. That might be from a known studio in Hollywood or it might be from one of the other million sources around the globe, including people’s very own credit cards.

How much is he going to pay you for that ‘option?’ You might get $1,000 or it might just be a hundred bucks. When the option period runs out you can either have your screenplay back to offer to someone else, or the same producer might take it from you for another ‘option’ fee.

You have to consider if you’re going to take what you can get:
a) to keep living
b) to eat food
c) to push your career forward
d) to attach your name to a completed project

We can all quote WGA rates or more if we’re asked to complete a screenplay on request, but if your screenplay is with you and looking for a home, realistic life sources remind you of what deal to make. Early on, making the deal is important. Later, the type of deal becomes more significant. As you progress those union rates should be your minimum.

What stage are you at?

Go look over Wikipedia’s page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenwriter%27s_salary
Those WGA rates are at http://www.wga.org/subpage_writersresources.aspx?id=68

I have to add that Basic Instinct still remains one of the best screenplays of all time. You’re worth every penny, Joe.

I’ve reproduced this article with permisison.

Screenwriting – 12 Rules to Get Your Screenplay Rejected Right Away
By Ugur Akinci

There is an art to getting your screenplays rejected right away. Do the following if you’d like to see your months and perhaps years worth of efforts go to the trash bin within 15 seconds or less.

1) Write a “feature-length” screenplay that is 30 pages long.

2) Write a “feature-length” screenplay that is 300 pages long.

3) Use a great day-glo orange cover to get noticed.

4) Paste photos generously to illustrate your scenes. Your smiling photo with your favorite pet next to you and typing away on your laptop would really enhance the aesthetic value of the front cover.

5) Provide frequent detailed camera and directorial instruction like “WIDE-ANGLE SHOT, the actors should imagine they are at a FUNERAL,” etc.

6) Use crazy font on the cover and inside the script in order to grab the attention of the studio Reader. Never use Courier.

7) Include sidebar notes for the Reader like “Dear Reader, please pay attention to the the plot reversal in this scene!”

Use character names that all start with the same letter and are very similar to one another like Jane, Joe, Jim, Jake, Jimmy, June, Jess, Jessie, Jesse, Jo, Jon, and Jil.

9) Make sure nothing is happening within the first 5 pages. For example, you can describe the gorgeous scenery as your protagonist takes a train ride from New York to Boston.

10) Do not use the universally-accepted paragraph style formatting for screenplays. Be original. Make all text RIGHT adjusted.

11) There are only very few themes under the sun and it’s smart to imitate success. Take CASABLANCA. Change the names to Bob and Shamita. Change the city to Austin, Texas, And bingo! You’ve got yourself a 100% unacceptable script.

12) “Dramatic Structure” is for the pigeons. Create a Protagonist with no desire for anything in the world. After all, isn’t he a Buddhist Monk?

Ugur Akinci, Ph.D. is a Creative Copywriter, Editor, an experienced and award-winning Technical Communicator specializing in fundraising packages, direct sales copy, web content, press releases, movie reviews and hi-tech documentation. He has worked as a Technical Writer for Fortune 100 companies for the last 7 years.

In addition to being an Ezine Articles Expert Author, he is also a Senior Member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), and a Member of American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI).
You can reach him at writer111@gmail.com for a FREE consultation on all your copywriting needs.
You are most welcomed to visit his official web site http://www.writer111.com for more information on his multidisciplinary background, writing career, and client testimonials. While at it, you might also want to check the latest book he has edited: http://www.lulu.com/content/263630
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ugur_Akinci