Paul Peditto is an award-winning screenwriter and director. His low-budget film Jane Doe starring Calista Flockhart won Best Feature at the New York Independent Film & Video Festival. Six of his screenplays have been optioned including Crossroaders to Haft Entertainment (Emma, Dead Poets Society). He recently wrote and produced the micro-budget feature Chat, currently distributed on iTunes, VUDU, YouTube, and Dish Network by Gravitas Ventures. . . . more
A bit of a screenwriting hodge-podge today. Here we go: REPURPOSING MATERIAL You never know where you can use previous material in terms of projects you’ll work on in the future. That means re-using your stuff. God knows how many plays I’ve written whose only purpose was to become a doorstop. Along with a closet […]
When you go to the great article from Buzzfeed from 2015 called “the 129 most beautiful images in movie history.”–what you get are a bunch of notices saying “the image is no longer available”… I decided to find the script portion and match it to the image and saved them five years ago. So check […]
Greetings and Felicitations! Today’s special, some spicy hot TV links, just for you, Good Reader. This set comes post- Strikes, post-Peak TV and pre-AI full takeover. It’s tough out there! We got that news early… https://deadline.com/2023/04/potential-strike-impact-on-business-in-hollywood-1235329823/ And certainly post-Strikes. Grinding productions to a halt and lots of folks out of work… https://deadline.com/2023/09/tv-business-changes-writers-strike-impact-1235553886/ But fear not, […]
SHOW US THE MOVIE IN YOUR MIND Dump the screenwriting lingo, if possible. Fight to not write BACK TO SCENE, or SMASH CUT TO, or INSERT, or POV. Return to the character name in description. For instance, instead of this: INT. CAR- SUNDAY MORNING Traffic is at a standstill in the shadow of Soldier Field. Professor Pauly […]
Good Reader… Hopefully you are already hip to the SCREENPLAYED. This idea of “clips and scripts” isn’t new. Sit down with a favorite movie, pull up the screenplay, and let ‘er roll. You can see –maybe like you’ve never seen before–all sorts of unknown detail about the movie at script level. What was added? What […]
This week we’re going to look at the A to Z making of my second web series, Devolve. Hopefully you can learn from each stage of pre-production, production, and post. Vamos! CASE STUDY: DEVOLVE I got involved with Devolve in the summer of 2014 and helped produce it in late January, 2015. But let’s start […]
Good Reader… This week just some big juicy screenwriting links for you! Bring ’em on… SCREENWRITING SOFTWARE https://store.finaldraft.com/final-draft-11.html https://www.celtx.com/index.html https://nofilmschool.com/writersolo-screenwriting-software http://www.fadeinpro.com/ Writer’s Duet https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/screenwriting-software/ https://nofilmschool.com/Free-Script-Writing-Software THE TRADES http://variety.com/ http://deadline.com/ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ BEST SCREENPLAY WEBSITES http://www.imsdb.com/ http://www.simplyscripts.com/oscar_winners.html http://www.script-o-rama.com/table.shtml MasterClass PODCASTS https://johnaugust.com/scriptnotes –JOHN AUGUST SCRIPTNOTES PODCAST http://scriptchat.blogspot.co.il/ -SCRIPT CHAT- PODCAST https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/broken-projector-movie-podcast/id592995322?mt=2 http://www.wga.org/writers-room/features-columns/3rd-fairfax-podcast http://davebullispodcast.podbean.com/ BEST SCREENWRITING BLOGS & WEBSITES […]
Hello Good Reader… Let us continue on with our impossible mission of making the dullest topic on earth– screenwriting format– somehow, some way, sexy. Soldiering on! ACTION LINES Keep it tight! Don’t overwrite! It’s all well and good to tell you this, but how many action lines is too many? Are there rules? Not really. […]
Every scene exists for a reason. When you outline, what you’re doing is writing out the scenes that are essential to telling your story. Presumably, when you finish your outline, every scene exists for a purpose. You’re ready to write the movie. Approach each new scene in this matter: What am I trying to accomplish in […]
