Mistakes That Screenwriters Make On Page 1 - Shannan E. Johnson

one of the biggest mistakes a screenwriter makes on page one ooh mistakes on page one I think one of the biggest mistakes is jumping into something that's not going to teach us anything so it doesn't matter to the story but you think it's cool right so understanding that those first few pages are about the setup right so this is this is me gathering information about the character about the world about you know I'm gonna start making assumptions about what's gonna happen I'm not looking for the inciting incident on page one but I am looking for things that are intentional and things that are gonna help me understand at least who this character is so that's why you'll see a lot of action films open with an action scene because you're teaching me the skills that this protagonist has you're teaching me that they know how to fight they're usually the good guy they're usually the winners or whatever other information that you need me to know and so now when the inciting incident does happen and they say you're gonna have to go off and save the world I believe they can do it because you've already shown me that they can so I think it's easy on page one to just like open with something that like you know we call it the opening image right and then on that opening image we're thinking okay let's do something big let's do something cool it's like but if that doesn't have anything to do with your story or if it doesn't have anything to do with helping to build who your character is that also should have something to do with the story because you can tell me all kinds of things about your character but if that doesn't matter to the story then I don't need to know you might need to know as a writer because it's gonna inform you as you're right but do I need to know as an audience so I think sometimes we get stuck in a place where we're talking about something that's cool or talking about something that is exciting but it really has nothing to do with anything and now you've lost that executive who's only given you ten pages in the first place because you've just spent the first three pages with two people at a cafe talking about something that's very interesting but then we never see that person they were just talking to ever again and whatever it is they were talking about has nothing to do with what our protagonist is about to go and you know journey go on on this journey hey Christy why do you think people do that why like we wouldn't it but it like you said it doesn't even it doesn't get back I think it just goes back to them not understanding screenplay structure I think we just watch movies and if you're only watching for entertainment which is what most people do that's why people want to go to the movies with me or watch TV with me because I'm not watching right but you know most people who are watching for entertainment are just taking in the cool stuff you know and they go oh my god wasn't it so cool when this open like that it's like yes but what does that have to do with your screenplay do you know like oh well you remember in this movie when this happened so at this point in 2020 we all grew up watching movies right so that means there are movie things that we get attached to right so we're not necessarily thinking about story we think about movie moments you know like that's just a part of like can you imagine the people who are growing up now like movie moments are gonna be their thing so a lot of the times people are writing screenplays because they're writing what they what they've seen already because they think that those are the movie moments that make the film instead of realizing that movie moment mattered because of who those characters were and what they were trying to get done it means absolutely nothing in your screenplay it means budget in your experience like you know we recently had a screenwriting teacher tell us that 99% of screenplays are rejected by the industry after the first scene so yeah again if those first 10 or 15 pages I wouldn't necessarily say it's the first scene it depends on who you're sending it to because most places will say at least to give it the 10 pages so that we can say that we did our due diligence right now you could have a scene that lasts 10 pages you know you could have only two or three scenes within those same pages so that's yeah totally it happens if you if you can't capture me if I don't care about your character within these first 10 or 15 pages if I don't again we haven't reached that inciting incident so I don't even know what this thing is about anymore so now I'm just grasping for straws I'm reading it you know there has to be something that connects me so that I can want to read the rest because people these days we'll send you a screenplay that's 200 pages long where's time for that if you can't connect me in those first 10 pages I am not about to spend my next two hours reading 200 pages it's like for what when there's a whole stack of screen plays here that might capture me within the first five or ten pages you know why do I need to why do I need to spend my time reading the 200 it's the same thing when you're thinking about television so a lot of the times people will you know have a pilot and now they're thinking of you know the next couple of episodes and they're like oh my god I'm really gonna get you at Episode five I've got to wait five episodes before I'm invested no one's gonna do that if you can't catch me at the pilot I don't mean as an audience I mean like as the executives that's the people you're pitching to the pilot is what sells the series if you're telling me that you're gonna go into this pitch meeting you're gonna say to them wait till we get to Episode five then that sounds like episode five through the pilot you know like you got to get me in here and and because it's 2020 I could be doing this I'm watching you know I can be doing all kinds of things I can have on what are these things people put the like there's all kind of technology and like I could be looking in a whole nother dimension right now instead of you know watching your television show or your feature so you know if it's gonna take five episodes before I get there and I'm not saying it doesn't happen because I will watch things and go it didn't catch me until episode three right but when you're in the room and you're trying to sell it that pilot is what's gonna sell it not you saying to them because like if they're if you just pitched your pilot and the people are just kind of like you're like wait wait wait I didn't get to tell them about episode five that's why they didn't buy it no no they didn't buy it because the pilot wasn't interesting or they weren't invested in what was going on so it's the same thing is true and once they have the script in their hands because you can also come in and pitch one thing and then you get the script you're bored to tears or you're like this is not what you pitched you know you said it was one thing and I'm looking at the page and it's really this other thing sometimes that might be a good thing sometimes may be a bad thing but simply just because executives are doing a million things some of them are not just development executives but they're also current programming current programming executives which means they're running shows that are on set right now that are in production right now that are in writers rooms right now and they're taking pitch meetings and reading scripts etc so they're reading scripts from the shows that are already being done they're reading scripts from people who are coming to pitch they don't have time to read all 200 page of your screenplay there and if they do they're gonna scan it so they're still not gonna even catch on catch on to like all of the nuances and all of the everything unless they are that invested because you're you're you know grabbing them that way so that's why those first few pages have to catch them and it doesn't mean I put an explosion so it caught them you know because it's like explosion for what hey you know what I mean so it still has to make sense to your story when you were teaching you said at Florida State and you had the students watch movies and then right this was it almost like they were writing coverage on it oh no so we would be specifically talking about like analyzing how costuming and makeup may inform what you see how lighting may inform was so we were talking about cinematography we were talking about directing we talked about all of the elements of the film industry that may be informing what you're seeing on screen but not the actual screenplay not the screenplay literally just what you're seeing mm-hmm so visual yes because people will always say oh the writer did a great job it's like well you don't really know at that moment was something a that the writer put in there or if you were feeling that really because of what the light was doing what the music was doing maybe you know what the director may have asked for what the actors are giving you may have nothing to do with the writing it's like literally a separate thing so yeah we didn't study the screenplays at all in this particular class it was just watching the films and analyzing all of the different elements from production that may be informing the film what film that you used as one of the examples had the most different responses to it hmm okay so I do not remember at all I know we used to watch Annie Hall okay and we watched do the right thing okay but again going back to this whole writing thing if Y if I sat down with the students and have them explain to me what they were saying they could do it putting it in the written form was an entirely different thing so just you know again going back to everybody might have an idea but it doesn't make them a writer like being able to take what you have here and put it on the page is a skill and I think we understand that when we're school-aged because we're doing it all the time then we become adults when you say I'm a writer and it's like yeah it's hard it's hard to get stuff from here to there so a lot of their grade was really based on how well they could give me the information in the written form which is why I was would focus on thesis statements or even bibliographies I had a student come to me and say she had never heard of a bibliography and we this is an undergraduate course okay I told her this cannot be telling the truth I would rather she just said I forgot to put it in and then I would have let her go home put it in and come back and get a grade but because she said to me no one's ever told me I had to cite something before I just could not believe it I was like that's just math that cannot be true so I gave her a zero on the because I told them ahead of time if you don't cite your sources you're going to get a zero if I hadn't told them that and of course I would have done it but also I explained to them getting a zero gives you an opportunity to redo it if I give you the actual grade you might get a fifty or a forty nine or something because you have did the assignment that's you're not gonna be able to change the zero you can change that's fair you know redo it and now you get a you know a new grade on it so they would get the zero and be hurt and hurt but they didn't realize the zero is actually helping you because if I actually just graded for what it is you'd that's not the grade that you want yeah I wish more places gave zeros that we could redo [Laughter] you

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 124,458

Keywords: Screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, screenwriting for beginners, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting advice, writing a screenplay, how to write a movie, script consultant, Shannan E. Johnson, the professional pen, writing teacher, filmcourage, film courage, interview

Id: 1SC3ldnJE-c

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2020