by
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
Writing/Filmmaking/Consulting
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.net
In order to write, sell, and get your screenplays produced
in Hollywood, you need to write openings that Hollywood
utilizes to attract audiences. When you watch movies
produced by studios and mainstream production companies
and producers, what do you usually see in the opening?
If you’re stumped, the first thing you usually see is
movement.
This could be movement across a body of water with the
POV of the camera aimed at a skyline of a city, or someone
walking, someone running, a moving vehicle, etc. Images of
movement help pull the audience into the movie in order to
get them into the movie, like they’re really in the movie, to
make them feel like they’re part of what is going on in the
movie.
Openings also include a metaphor that defines what
the main theme of the movie is going to be, introduces the
main character, defines the character’s main problem to solve
in the movie, of his/her goal, and the setting. And this should
all be accomplished on page one of the screenplay.
In my produced screenplay, “Born to Win”, the opening shows
a butterfly fluttering away from a headstone. A boy cleans
the headstone. He weeps. He rubs the headstone with a cloth
beyond that of cleaning it. The movement is the butterfly
moving away. It shows the defining theme of the movie, which
is “letting go.” The main character, the boy, is holding onto his
dead mother. The setting of scene, a cemetery, exacerbates the
theme of letting go. This movement also shows the metaphor
for the movie of letting go.
The boy must let go before he can move on with his life
regarding his mother’s untimely death and he does
it by driving his mother’s race car in a race to win $25,000 for
an operation to save his Gramps’ life. In the end, it’s either
let go of his Gramps, or continuing his fatal flaw of holding
onto to something that he should no longer hold onto.
When you write screenplays that you want to sell and get
produced, study openings of movies that Hollywood produces.
You will see that the most successful of these movies (box
office, DVD and rental sales, Internet streaming, etc.) contain
elements which include movement, metaphor, defining theme,
main character, and setting. Craft these elements into your
screenplays, and you’re off to a great start with writing
screenplays that you sell and get produced.
Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
Writing/Filmmaking/Consulting
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.net
A favorite Zen story in which three men are observing a flag fluttering in the breeze: One man says, The flag is moving. The second man says, The wind is moving. The third man says, You are both wrong, it is your mind that is moving.