Top Ten Tips for Creating Winning Characters (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

June 15, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

Top Ten Tips for Creating Winning Characters

Here is an excerpt from my book Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays!:

A WINNING SCREENPLAY: STORY = PLOT = CHARACTERS

Story generates plot; it informs what the narrative is about. The plot informs how the story unfolds. And it is your riveting characters who must inform and drive your plot forward.

CHARACTERS = PLOT

Who will live? Who will die? How will they survive?

Who will win? Who will lose? How will they win? How will they lose?

Who will succeed? Who will fail? How will they succeed? How will they fail?

Who will find love? How will they find love?

These aforementioned generic movie taglines, emphasize the significant word “who”— your characters.

To create a believable and compelling plot, your characters must be fleshed out and their distinct characterizations (motivations, behavior, attitudes, and so on), must be gripping and plausible in order to drive the plot forward. When you try to get characters to do what the plot determines, then your characters’ actions, behaviors, and motivations will not be realistic, and they will read as false and contrived.

Top Ten Tips for Creating Characters

1. EMPATHY: Film industry folks demand characters with whom they can empathize. If they don’t care about your characters, they won’t care about your script and in turn, you have increased your chances of screenplay rejection.

2. GOALS: Convey what your characters’ want and how far they will go to achieve their goals.

3. CONFLICT: Regardless of the genre you are working in and whether your characters are having an inner discord or disputes with others, their conflicts must make sense and must be interesting, in order to raise the stakes in your plot.

4. REASON TO EXIST: Each character must serve a purpose in your script and advance the narrative in some way otherwise you must say “good-bye” and cut this character.

5. UNIQUE: Characters must be unique with distinctive and/or surprising personalities. If they are interchangeable with other characters, then it’s time to rewrite your script.

6. MAKE THEM HUMAN: Unless your characters are nonhuman of course – humanize your characters by giving them identifiable appearances and idiosyncrasies.

7. MOTIVATIONS: Characters must have clear and plausible motivations that give insight into who they are and the actions they take.

8. BEHAVIOR: Whether your characters misbehave or are always on good behavior, your need to convey their specific emotional, mental, physical, and/or social behaviors and traits.

9. ATTITUDE: Characters must have specific attitudes towards each other. Show how your characters view themselves, relate to others or don’t fit in.

10. FLAWS: Characters’ flaws, such as insecurities, make them more identifiable and interesting.

Yvonne Rainer

June 14, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

Thank you, Yvonne Rainer, for an inspirational evening. at MoMA

I am so grateful to have studied with Yvonne at the Whitney Independent Study Program. Yvonne made an enormous difference in my life as a writer, filmmaker, and woman artist. I am so fortunate to have been able to tell her this once again last night.

Sir Christopher Lee

June 11, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

Remembering Sir Christopher Lee

Sir Christopher Lee honored at 2013 Locarno International Film Festival

The opening night of the Festival on August 7 dramatically began under a lightening-filled sky in the Piazza Grande, where Sir Christopher Lee received the Excellence Award Moët & Chandon. Film stills of Sir Christopher’s roles were projected on the buildings surrounding the Piazza. Accepting his award, the charismatic Sir Christopher spoke mostly in Italian, stating his mother was from Italy — and then switched to English.

Sir Christopher’s most loved line of the night, “I did it. That was me doing the sword fights with Yoda, not a stunt double.” The audience cheered!

The Satisfying Scene

June 6, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

The Satisfying Scene

by Susan Kouguell

Scenes must have a reason to exist in your screenplay. Each scene must advance the plot forward through dialogue and/or visual storytelling. Characters’ journeys drive the script’s narrative, and each scene must steer their journey forward. Although some scenes might not even contain any characters, these scenes must still provide information about your plot, as well as your characters’ lives and actions. There is no set rule as to how many lines, paragraphs, or pages constitute a scene.

In my book Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! I analyze Sleepless in Seattle (directed by Nora Ephron, screenplay by Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, and Jeff Arch). Here’s an excerpt:

In the romantic comedy, reporter Annie Reed crosses the country to meet a man she has never met after hearing his young son on a call-in radio show, seeking help to find a new wife for his widowed father.

In this scene example we find Annie and Barbara, having a warm mother/daughter talk in the attic.

The Scene Objective:

Annie starts reexamining her feelings about Walter.

Scene Summary:

While trying on her grandmother’s wedding dress, the newly engaged Annie tells her mother, Barbara, about how she and her fiancé, Walter, met. Mother and daughter differ when it comes to believing in destiny, signs, and magic in a relationship—Barbara is a believer while Annie is a pragmatist. The scene concludes as Annie, wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress, hugs her mother and the dress rips. Annie now believes in signs.

The Scene Arc:

In the beginning of the scene, Annie doesn’t believe in destiny and expresses her certainty about her upcoming marriage to Walter. By the end of the scene, Annie is having some subtle doubts when she realizes that she doesn’t have the same type of magic with Walter that her mother felt for her father when they met, and Annie is beginning to believe in destiny.

READ MORE HERE

About the Author

Susan Kouguell, award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, is the author of THE SAVVY SCREENWRITER and SAVVY CHARACTERS SELL SCREENPLAYS! A comprehensive guide to crafting winning characters with film analyses and screenwriting exercises (available at $1.00 with DISCOUNT CODE: G22GAZPD: https://www.createspace.com/3558862 ). Susan is a regular contributor to Indiewire/SydneysBuzz, Script Magazine and The Script Lab.

Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College, SUNY and presents international seminars. As chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a motion picture consulting company founded in 1990, Kouguell works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, executives and studios worldwide. Recipient of many grants and fellowships, including the MacDowell Colony, Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Edward Albee Foundation, Kouguell’s short films are in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection and archives, and were included in the Whitney Museum’s Biennial. Kouguell worked with director Louis Malle on his film And the Pursuit of Happiness, was a story analyst and story editor for many studios, (Paramount, Viacom, Dustin Hoffman’s Punch Productions), wrote voice-over narrations for (Harvey Weinstein) Miramax and over a dozen feature assignments for independent companies. www.su-city-pictures.com. Follow Susan at Su-City Pictures, LLC Facebook fan page and SKouguell on Twitter, and read more articles on her blog: https://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog/.

How to Please a Story Analyst (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

May 29, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

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How to Please a Story Analyst

by Susan Kouguell

Way back when, I was a story analyst for production companies and studios. Here is my story. And this is the story you should know.

Most scripts submitted to agents, production companies and/or studios will get coverage, which is a story report written by a story analyst (also called a “reader.”) Many story analysts are recent college graduates, looking to break into the film industry. Most are smart, overworked and underpaid. Many are aspiring screenwriters who are reading for a company to support their own screenwriting and are paying their dues in this job to get their foot (and their own scripts) in the door.

Story analysts are the lowest people on the film industry totem pole. They are often the lowest paid, yet they have one of the biggest tasks – to find that winning screenplay! Story analysts might get three scripts (or more) to read overnight after a full day of reading. It’s your job to grab their attention and make them want to check a READ on your script’s coverage.

Story analysts are looking for talent, not just the winning property. They may PASS on a script because it’s not the type of project their company is looking to produce at that time, but will hold onto to it as a writing sample for other projects they currently may have in development or for future assignments. Or, the production company, studio or agency might contact the writer to see his or her other work, which might lead to a writing job or a script sale.

“I’m tired of rewriting so I’m just going to submit my script now,” If you are saying this, then you’re not passionate about your script – and in turn, story analysts will share your sentiments and reject your screenplay. Story analysts read countless scripts per week. They must feel your commitment to your script. They want to like what they read.

Story Analysts’ Confessions

Years ago, when I worked as a story analyst for Miramax Films (Harvey Weinstein), Punch Productions (Dustin Hoffman), Paramount Pictures and Viacom, I befriended my fellow story analysts. Of course we commiserated (okay, complained) about our low pay and long hours, but once that kvetching session ended, we revealed what was really annoying us. Most of the scripts we were covering were weak. Okay, honestly, many were just plain bad.

There were some common threads as to why these scripts were bad. I compiled my discussions with colleagues, and included my own first-hand experience as a Screenplay Doctor and a former story analyst in my book, The Savvy Screenwriter: How to Sell Your Screenplay (and Yourself) Without Selling Out! Here is an excerpt:

Complaints & Observations

We are intelligent, but few of us have psychic abilities. If it’s not on the page, we have no way of knowing what’s in your head and what you intended.
If your first ten pages don’t grab our attention, it will be difficult if not impossible to redeem yourself later. Beware! This may result in a PASS.
Each and every character must be unique, have a distinctive personality, and serve a purpose in the story, otherwise you are truly frustrating us.
Don’t throw in the kitchen sink. We know you are not confident about your story when you include extraneous plots and characters.
We may not have gone to medical or law school, but generally we are well read. We will immediately recognize if the terminology or research in your script is weak or implausible.
Even superheroes’ actions need to be plausible! If you have action scenes, be sure that they are realistic and well executed; otherwise we will be inclined to PASS on your script.
Don’t keep us in a confusing time tunnel! If your script jumps forward in time, whether it’s several months or several years, then be sure that this is clearly indicated in your script.
Film, unlike plays or novels, is a visual medium. Endless dialogue and too much description will persuade us to PASS on your script.
In your description paragraphs, don’t telegraph what is about to be seen and/or heard in the dialogue and/or action. Enough said!
Don’t direct your script with camera angles. Using camera directions is absolutely frowned upon. We know that directors and producers do not want to be told how to shoot their movie!
A script is not a novel. Dense paragraphs of descriptions are a turn off. Each separate action should be a new paragraph. Be brief and concise. Make each word count. Since we are often tired and overworked, these paragraphs become a blur of black lines and consequently, we may overlook important details.
Avoid heavy-handed exposition at all costs. Don’t over explain information about back-story in dialogue. We know if you’re setting up a whole scene just to get exposition across.
Watch out for rambling scenes! Generally, one script page equals one minute of screen time. You must keep this in mind if your scenes run long since we are looking for a well-paced screenplay.
When we read voice-overs, we often panic. We don’t want to be spoon-fed information. We don’t want to hear the same information in voice-over that will soon be revealed in dialogue.
When we read flashbacks, our alarms start to go off! Generally, we frown upon flashbacks because we know flashbacks rarely work on film. If you really feel that you need to use them, know that we will be scrutinizing them to see if they are indeed necessary.
Incorrect format will get a quick PASS! Don’t cheat and use a smaller font or change the margins. We will catch this immediately. Respect the time of the person reading your script.
Don’t submit your script unless it looks perfect! No typos. No coffee stains. No photocopying lines. No missing or extra blank pages within the script. Believe me, you don’t want us to become irritated because we are attempting to decipher text between the spots and smudges, and trying to figure out which page belongs where.

Take your time writing and rewriting your screenplay. You do not want to cause any unnecessary stumbling blocks that will result in your screenplay getting a PASS. Always do your best work before submitting it.

READ MORE HERE

SELL YOUR SPEC SCRIPT

May 26, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

Ten Steps to Selling Your Spec Script

by Susan Kouguell

I know, I know, I know. I’ve heard it all before. “Selling a script is impossible. It just doesn’t happen. I don’t know anyone in the film business so I have no chance at all. It just isn’t fair. I’m just not a lucky person.”

Well, selling a screenplay does happen. But – (here it comes) – truth be told, selling a script is like winning the lottery. Some people do win the lottery and some writers do sell their scripts.

Keep your sanity! Remain focused! Remember that your screenplay has three potential goals:

1) to sell

2) to get optioned and/or produced

3) to serve as a writing sample for future work

So, here are ten steps to selling your spec script…

1. Write a great script. Okay, this sounds obvious, but often my Su-City Pictures’ clients and students have said to me, “If this awful movie I just saw was actually made, why should I work so hard on my script?” The answer is this: the competition and odds are indeed staggering, so put your best work out there. Your script is your calling card and it reflects your writing talent. Your script should demonstrate that you know the craft – this means it should have a strong voice, developed characters, solid structure, and follow the genre conventions. It’s nearly impossible to resubmit a rewrite of the same script to an agent and/or company once that script has been rejected.

2. Write an attention-grabbing query letter. Research and query production companies, studios and talent (actors, directors, producers) that are a good match for your script.

3. Compose a strong synopsis. If film industry folks respond positively to your query, you may be then asked to send a one-page synopsis with or without your script.

4. Prepare a great pitch. Once an agent, manager, production company and/or studio has read and liked your script, you may be called in to meet with them at which time you will be asked to pitch. There are other opportunities to pitch such as pitch festivals.

5. Network. You’ve heard the joke: “What’s the best way to Carnegie Hall? … Practice. Practice. Practice.” What’s the best way to break into the film business? “Network. Network. Network.” Writing is solitary, but the film industry and getting your script made into a movie is all about whom you know and the people you meet. No matter where you live, find a way to make personal contacts with industry professionals. Attending script conferences, workshops, and film festivals are good ways to make connections, as well as social media.

6. Educate yourself about the film business. Being savvy about the film industry makes you more appealing to potential agents, production companies and/or studios. Keep up-to-date by reading the trades, and screenwriting and film publications. This is a good way to learn who’s looking for what in order to help you target the right people for your project.

READ MORE HERE

SCREENPLAY STRUCTURE: The Spine of the Screenplay (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

May 12, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

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The Spine of the Screenplay
by Susan Kouguell

In my more than 25 years of teaching screenwriting and screenplay consulting I continue to find one common issue — many screenwriters do not know what the inherent conflict is in their scripts. The truth is — they don’t know the dramatic spine of their story.

Many screenwriters tend to get sidetracked in set pieces, formatting, dialogue, and other basic elements; they have lost sight of the vital yet basic skill – dramatic writing. Whether you’re writing a comedy or drama, a thriller or action film, a farce or fantasy, crafting a solid conflict and resolution is critical to your script’s success.

The spine in a human’s body is what holds the body’s framework together. In a screenplay, the spine holds the script together. Without a strong spine, the body and the screenplay collapse. A crumbling screenplay results in a script that will be rejected by film industry folks.

The spine can be as simple as boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, or it can be more complicated.

Characters’ motivations prompt the choices and decisions they make, which in turn, advance the narrative.

The dramatic spine is the drive behind your protagonist’s actions. It is what propels your protagonist forward. In this example, the dramatic spine is seen through the athlete’s choices.

Example: Your protagonist is a female athlete who has always played by the rules and has won every competition. But when she discovers that her brother needs expensive medical treatment, she will do whatever it takes to save his life, including cheating at an event so she can win the prize money.

The dramatic spine can be seen when characters push towards their goals and the emotional changes they experience are punctuated.

Sign up for Susan’s webinar on wordbuilding!

Characters must have a set of both internal and external obstaclesthat challenge them. When these internal and external obstacles are tied together, your plot will have a more relatable and believable conflict.

In My Best Friend’s Wedding Julianne attempts to sabotage her best friend’s wedding to win the man she believes she should have married all along, but her emotional progression provides the twist in the narrative; she’s not the woman the audience will be rooting for due to her selfish and duplicitous actions.

In the film Juno, Juno’s pregnancy is the spine of the story; her decision to keep the baby and the way in which it impacts her relationship with the father of her baby, as well as her own family and the adoptive family, propels the narrative forward.

Tips to Discover the Dramatic Spine of Your Screenplay

Picture an actual human spinal framework and then envision what your characters hold on to both emotionally and physically, internally and externally, in order to achieve their goals. Protagonists and antagonists must have specific goals they hope to accomplish as the plot unfolds. Along the way, they must face obstacles, roadblocks, problems, and hurdles, which raise the stakes in the script.
Understand your characters’ wants and needs.
Determine what is causing the major conflicts between your characters.
Know the emotional progression of your protagonist.
Identify the overall through-line of your plot.

Don’t lose sight of your true identity: Screenwriter as Dramatist.

READ MORE HERE

Why Film Executives are Rejecting Your Screenplay (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

May 6, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

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Why Film Executives are

Rejecting Your Screenplay

by Susan Kouguell

MODEST SCREENWRITER
(sobbing)
Why did my script get rejected again?

It’s true. Many of you are probably modest about your screenwriting brilliance. And perhaps you are truly a brilliant writer but your screenplays continue to be rejected. Why oh why is this happening?! Why are industry folks rejecting my screenplay?

The obvious answer to these questions is that your script just isn’t that brilliant. Or the less obvious answers include the fact that your screenplay is just not a fit for the company in terms of genre or budget, or it’s not a match for what the producer or director is seeking today. Sometimes it’s just a matter of good fortune AKA luck. But sometimes, well very often, if not most of the time, it comes down to this: screenwriters are not taking the necessary time and effort to fine-tune their scripts and they are submitting their screenplays before they are truly ready to be considered for production or as a writing sample.

Here are ten universal tips from film industry executives and story analysts, with whom I have interviewed for various screenwriting and film publications, and for my book The Savvy Screenwriter: How to Sell Your Screenplay (and Yourself) Without Selling Out! This list is in no particular order but these points do share equal importance, and one in which I whole-heartedly endorse as a screenplay consultant.

Top Ten Tips to Avoid Rejection

FORMATTING: Incorrect industry screenplay formatting loudly demonstrates to the reader that the screenwriter is an amateur, and doesn’t have respect for his or her work — or for the reader’s time.
SLOPPINESS: Typos, grammatical errors, missing and blank pages indicate you are careless and not someone who takes pride in his or her work.
CAMERA ANGLES:Directors do not want to be told how to shoot their movie.
DEVICES: Overuse and/or unnecessary usage of voiceovers, dream sequences, and flashbacks often demonstrate to industry folks that the writer does not know how to craft a screenplay.
ACTION PARAGRAPHS: Dense action paragraphs that read like a novel and/or telegraphs what is about to be revealed in dialogue or through visual storytelling, underscores a poorly crafted screenplay.
GENRE/GENRES: Inconsistent or too many genres in one screenplay underscores that the screenwriter doesn’t understand genre conventions or doesn’t know what the genre really is.
CHARACTERS: Film industry folks must care about your characters — whether it’s love or hate, they must feelsomething for them. And, characters who don’t have distinct personalities and are (unintentionally) interchangeable or don’t serve a purpose in the plot are equally frustrating for readers.
DIALOGUE: Heavy-handed exposition and/or over-explaining information about the back-story shows the reader the screenwriter’s lack of understanding in solid film storytelling.
SUBPLOTS: Too many subplots that overshadow the main plot highlights the fact that the screenwriter doesn’t understand what the narrative is really about.
SCENES: Rambling and unnecessary scenes that are not advancing the plot, indicate a lack of understanding in crafting a solid structure.

READ MORE HERE

Agnès Varda Salute

April 27, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

The Actualities of Agnès Varda at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

by Susan Kouguell

Agnès Varda at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

In a salute to Agnès Varda at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Art of the Real, Documentary Redefined Series in New York City, Varda’s short films and features were included in the Actualities of Agnès Varda program, featuring the acclaimed filmmaker in person.

I had the honor of speaking with Agnès Varda at the 2014 Locarno Film Festival at two separate events, which I covered for this publication:Conversation with Varda: HERE and Highlights from the Locarno Film Summer Academy Master Class : HERE

Speaking before and after each of the following short films, Agnès Varda is ever the powerful and poignant storyteller with a provocative sense of humor.

“Black Panthers” (1968, 31 minutes)

“Black Panthers”

Centering on a “Free Huey” rally in Oakland California in 1968, Varda discussed her experience filming this short documentary.

Varda: “Tom Luddy told me I should come to Oakland because of these demonstrations. Every Saturday I flew from Los Angeles to be there. I had a 16mm camera. I shot a lot of it alone; and I had some help from some others. I needed to get their speeches. I needed to understand the mind body theory. So far, the theory of black men was written by white men. This was the first time they were really involved in their own history. I remember thinking about the women, and also for the first time in the sixties women were writing about their history. I was fascinated by the equivalence. It was a precise time in 1968; two years later it was almost gone. It was so important at the time; I thought and everyone thought it would change the history of black people. The documentary bore witness, the testimony of that time of the Black Panthers. The film was not shown in France; they were afraid to wake students. It was not shown in the U.S. then either.”

“I bore witness. I was discreet as much as possible. It belongs to their history. Each time there is a film about Black history, we are asked about it.”

Susan Kouguell and Agnès Varda at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

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Reenactments in Documentary Films Is There an Authentic Truth in Documentary? (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

April 17, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

Reenactments in Documentary Films: Is There an Authentic Truth in Documentary?

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By: Susan Kouguell

Replicate. Reproduce. Reveal. Is there an authentic truth in documentary?

The use of reenactment in documentary films has filmmakers, film theorists and critics divided. Some believe the use of reenactments brings historical accuracy into question while others feel it enhances history. More recently, exploitative crime television shows and docudramas that utilize reenactments are often over-the-top melodrama, thus further fueling this topic and giving it a poor name.

Documentaries are often labelled subjective or objective, but arguably a purely objective documentary does not exist. Why? Documentarians are always making choices: what, where and how to shoot, who and what to include and who and what not to include in the film, and how to structure the film — in a nonlinear or linear fashion. All these can elements subtly — or not so subtly — reveal the filmmaker’s attitude about the subject matter and in turn this influences the audience’s response.

Reenactments in documentary films have a long tradition. Stepping back for a moment in time, let’s examine a few examples.

Considered to be the first full-length documentary Nanook of the North, (1922) directed by Robert Flaherty, involved a group of Inuit, living on the Hudson Bay coast below the Arctic Circle. This silent film contains several reenacted and restaged scenes, including a walrus hunt. Ethnographic director Flaherty argued that because the recreated scenes were based on his subjects’ memories, he believed the film was truthful in spirit.

German director Harun Farocki’s anti-war documentary Inextinguishable Fire (1969, black and white, 29 minutes) explores the manufacturing and use of napalm by reenacting the inner workings of Dow Chemical Company’s Michigan headquarters during the Vietnam War, using only a small amount of actual combat footage. Taking the idea of recreation and reenactment a bold step further, director Jill Godmilow’s What Farocki Taught (1998) is a 30-minute, shot-for-shot remake of Inextinguishable Fire. Translated from German into English and filmed on color Kodachrome, the backdrops, props, script, costumes and shots are all copies of the original. Every shot is reproduced — with an occasional superimposition of Farocki’s film.

Director Errol Morris’s film The Thin Blue Line (1988) employed staged re-enactment scenes of a police officer’s murder in order to demonstrate various witnesses’ contradictory testimonies. The film argued that Randall Adams was wrongly convicted for murder by a corrupt justice system in Dallas County Texas.

In a 2014 interview for this publication, I asked writer, producer, director Allie light, winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for In The Shadow Of The Stars with her partner Irving Saraf, about the use of reenactments in her films.

LIGHT: “A good reason for doing reenactments is that the past lives of most people are not documented, so very little material exists to tell the story. Film is a medium of action. If the documentary or non-fiction filmmaker relies only on the interview, the story is stagnant and becomes merely a retelling of the past. No matter how good the story is, it will bore the viewer and viewers are then a trapped audience with nothing to look at. Our very short reenactments, usually only seconds long, we call emotional equivalents. We treat these images much like Alfred Stieglitz treated his cloud photographs–he called them ‘equivalents of his own experiences, thoughts, and emotion.’ Most of the reenactments in my film Dialogues With Madwomen are equivalents of what is being spoken at that moment.”

Do reenactments work? Will employing this device in the film that you are working on enhance or detract from your project? In the end, it is a decision only you, the documentarian can answer.

READ MORE HERE

Su-City Pictures East, LLC

Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

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Top Ten Tips for Creating Winning Characters (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)