From the SoCal Film Group Mailbag - Screenwriter Seminars

Do you know of any local screenwriting workshops that are worth a hill of beans, or perhaps a hill of something even more valuable than beans, like say, designer shoes? Yes, I would like to find a workshop as appealing as Prada pumps please. Any tips?

Are you looking specifically for a workshop (like a one or two day class type thing) or for more general screenwriting resources/networking/etc?

Bill Martell teaches a good workshop every once in a while, especially if you write action/thriller genre stuff. http://www.scriptsecrets.net/ is his website; http://www.scriptsecrets.net/lecture/secretc0.htm is about his seminars.

Of course there are always the "star" screenwriting gurus - Syd Field, Robert McKee, and Linda Seger.

Syd Field apparently hasn't done a workshop since 2005 (http://www.sydfield.com/workshops.htm)

Robert McKee has one in December in Las Vegas (http://www.writersstore.com/product.php?products_id=859). Did you see Adaptation? The screenwriting workshop Nic Cage's character goes to is what a Robert McKee workshop is like.

Linda Seger's seminar calendar only shows stuff that has already happened (http://www.lindaseger.com/seminars.htm). I don't know if she's teaching any more this year.

For what it's worth, all three of these folks are pretty pricey, and I personally don't think their cookie-cutter mentality is the magic wand of screenwriting. Their books are worthwhile, but I wouldn't treat them as the compleat screenwriting education that some people (i.e. studio execs) think they are.

If you're looking for something a bit more long-term, there are a few writers' organizations you might want to look into...

The Scriptwriters Network has lots of guest speakers and can be a very good value for the money. http://scriptwritersnetwork.com/index.asp

The Screenwriters Expo is a yearly event, which is happening THIS WEEK. I've never been, but I've heard good things about it. http://www.screenwritingexpo.com/

These are general filmmakers organizations, but they have screenwriting events and seminars and networking:

Women in Film - http://www.wif.org/

Film Independent (FIND) - http://www.filmindependent.org/

American Film Institute (AFI) - http://www.afi.com/

Filmmakers Alliance - http://www.filmmakersalliance.com/

If you're primarily interested in improving your own writing skills, there's nothing better than simply reading screenplays. There are tons of them available for free online, from completely shitty to outstandingly good. Just like you wouldn't think about becoming a novelist unless you had read a lot of books, it's a good idea to read as many screenplays as you can get your hands on if you want to be a good screenwriter.

While reading a bunch of screenplays and learning what makes them work (or fail to work), write a few screenplays of your own. Your first few attempts will probably not be very good, but that's cool - screenwriting is a lot harder than it looks. The best advice I ever got about the early part of the learning curve was this: "Allow yourself to suck."

It can be really helpful to develop a group of fellow screenwriter friends who will swap scripts with you. You will then be able to learn how effectively you're communicating your ideas, and you'll sharpen your analytical skills by having to clearly articulate your thoughts about their work.

I hope all that helps. Good luck!

Steve

No Budget Film School

I just had a pleasant conversation with Mark Stolaroff, the founder of the No Budget Film School. He seems like one of the good guys, very passionate and sincere about teaching people how to make high-quality festival movies for very little money.

He's interested in helping people learn how to make the kind of movies that will launch their careers in the industry. Movies like Pi, Following, and Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, all of which were produced for less than the catering budget of a typical studio film, but which gave the filmmakers a foot in the door to make movies that actually have catering budgets.

Mark takes the SoCal Film Group philosophy ("Stop waiting for permission to make your movies") and applies it to feature filmmaking. I heartily recommend signing up for his class.

But hurry - it's this weekend!

THE LAST STALL in the Triggerstreet online film festival

SoCal Film Group and Group 101 co-production The Last Stall, a very short short directed by Steve Nichols Smith and written by Danny Grossman (and for which yours truly sat on a toilet for eight hours) is in the current online film festival at Triggerstreet.

If the film makes it to the finals, Steve could be going to Sundance!

Click here to see all the films in the festival.

Click here to go straight to The Last Stall.

THE LAST STALL and QUIET screening twice at the end of October

Hey beautiful people,

The Silver Lake Film Festival has invited us to screen two of our horror shorts (The Last Stall and Quiet) at a couple of cool events at the end of the month.

The first event is:

SILVER LAKE SHORTS

DATE: Sunday, October 22
TIME: Doors open at 8; program begins at 9:15
LOCATION: AKBAR Bar and Club, 4356 Sunset Blvd. (at Fountain Ave.), Los Angeles
PRICE: Free. But there's a full bar, so there's that.

The second event is:

THE SILVER LAKE HORROR MUSIC & PICTURE SHOW

"Silver Lake Horror Music & Picture Show" - a live-music concert benefiting Silver Lake Film Festival, a nonprofit media arts organization, PLUS a "Dress As Your Favorite Film Character Costume" AND screenings of indie horror films.

WHO:
Leading alt rock bands Gravy Train, Mika Miko and The Red Hearts!!!
AND emcee Johnny Angel of Air America PLUS Cool Guest Celebrities!

WHERE:
Ukrainian Cultural Center
4315 Melrose Avenue
(at Heliotrope, 2 blocks west of Vermont Ave.)
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 665-3703

WHEN:
Halloween Night, Tuesday, Oct. 31st
8 pm ‘til 1 am
DETAILS:

Join Silver Lake denizens of the dark in Halloween’s hippest celebration, featuring three of L.A./S.F’s coolest alternative bands:
• Gravy Train: Kill Rock Star recording artists that fuse old school rap, queercore, and theatrical new wave - straight outta Frisco, baby!
• Mika Miko; Killl Rock Stars recording artists and proto-punk "pony thrash" riot grrrrls band that’s taken L.A. by storm.
• The Red Hearts: Meanbuzz recording artists have their roots in The Brian Jonestown Massacre and mid-70s power punk.

TICKETS:
$15 at the door. Advance tickets available at: https://tix.extremetix.com/tix/SilverStream/Pages/pgIndex.html?siteID=1268

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The hyperbole is courtesy of their website. :-)

Marshall McAuley and I are planning on going to the event at Akbar, and may be going to the Halloween event.

See you there!

Steve

From the SoCal Film Group Mailbag - Call Times

"I have questions about shooting days. How long do you normally expect the crew to hang around for? I saw a post on WP about having a 5.am start. I assume this is unusual and has to be negotiated. I'm just wondering how long it's reasonable to expect people to work on their weekends. Also there are travel issues. Do people end up having to cross from one side of the city to the other to get to shoots or do you try to shoot centrally?"

Our typical shooting day is 8-10 hours, but we've gone as long as 14 hours when necessary. There's a trade-off involved -- you don't want to have long grueling days, but you also want to shoot the whole project in as few days as possible.

A lot of the crew's attitude about the length of a shooting day depends on hard-to-quantify factors, like:

-- how good the script is (and by extrapolation how good the crew thinks the short is going to be),

-- how hospitable the set is (comfortable temperature, places to sit when not working, good food, easily-available restrooms, etc.),

-- how fun it is to be there (which is largely a factor of the director's and 1st AD's attitudes on set, while also being influenced by the demeanors of the actors (luckily, we haven't had to deal with a lot of divas)).

But, above all else, you have to schedule enough time to get the job done. If a director tries to shorten the day just because he's worried he'll make the crew upset, he'll end up being harried and abrupt all day. Not only will this create a less-hospitable set, it will probably adversely impact the quality of the movie itself, which should be the first priority.

We sometimes schedule extra time into a day, just so the cross-trainers will have the freedom to receive in-depth instruction on the work they're doing. I've talked about the balancing act that the group does between being a film school and a production company - the amount of setups you try to fit into a day is one of those decisions that will be strongly influenced depending on if you want to staff your crew with people who want to learn new things, or if you want to crew up with the experienced people and bust out as many setups as possible. That's a decision we leave up to the ExecProd of each given project.

Our members are spread all over the place, with some of us living in the San Fernando Valley, some living in the Hollywood area, and some living over an hour away to the south (Orange County). With that being the state of things, we've all pretty much accepted the fact that we have to drive a while to get to almost any location. When we shot "Steve and Danny Fuck Up" and "Dust Devil" in desert locations, we had to drive a couple of hours each way. The crew gave the directors and ExecProds plenty of grief for that (we still say "EXT. DESERT - DAY" as shorthand for "That is an astoundingly bad idea"), but they still showed up every day and did their jobs to the best of their abilities. Having an appropriate location for your movie is more important than the commute time of your crew - and the crew understands that.

A typical call time will be 8:00 AM for the crew, 9:00 for the cast. Sometimes we'll start at 7:00 AM, with only a little bitching from the crew. If an ExecProd wants to start before 7:00, he'd better have a damn good reason. This is especially true if the location is far away - one of our members who lives in Huntington Beach (which is more than an hour's drive south of Los Angeles) regularly has to wake up at 4:00 AM to get to a set on time.

Obviously, there are always going to be individual interpersonal issues when dealing with a volunteer organization. This issue goes back to the "mutual obligation" basis on which the group operates - if I'm running a shoot that requires the crew to arrive very early and leave very late, I'll make doubly sure that they eat well and have a good time ... and I'll volunteer to help with every project they initiate for a very long time.

QUIET reviewed in Film Threat

"What sets this movie apart from the conventional stalk-n-slash short is the sound mix. We hear what Lindsey hears, or rather, doesn’t hear. When people talk to Lindsey, all we can hear are their muffled voices, and we watch lips closely. When her ears ring, our ears ring.

And when she’s trapped in a bathroom, unsure which door her attacker is behind, unsure if the attacker is even in the house any more – well, it’s adrenaline-shot intense."

Click here to read the full review!