Hey guys, I just got the feedback cards from the exec at Original Films (FAST AND FURIOUS franchise, I AM LEGEND, 22 JUMPSTREET) and he had some great advice he wanted to pass on to writers in regards to their written pitches: "If helpful, here is some advice to your writers, which were two of the most universal problems I noticed in these pitches: 1) Keeping the story focused. So many of these pitches went off in random or unexplained directions, or tried to include multiple big ideas that bogged down the story and made the pitch read very convoluted. Simplicity is key. Very key. You can have a high concept that is also simple. And characters should ALWAYS be more important than plot. That's why I gravitated toward one of the pitches that was positioned as another Superbad/Dope. It felt like a genuinely interesting story with compelling characters, yet just wasn't something our company would produce as it's a smaller scale, more independent type film. 2) Originality. It's difficult to be wholly original these days, but 90% of the pitches either felt too cliche, derivative, predictable, and/or contributed nothing new to their genre. That is a problem and will lead to formulaic stories. Alien invasion films are nothing new, but look what DISTRICT 9 did for the genre by flipping it on its head. Time travel, same deal, but LOOPER added a fresh concept and perspective. These are the concepts and scripts that will stand out, and there's a reason they are so few and far between. "
Screenwriting : Pitching Advice from Original Films! by Erik Grossman
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Please, please, keep this feedback coming. I am a dry sponge, moisten me. (Ewww)
Great feedback, thanks. I may even pitch something someday.
Thank you for the information. I am hoping to pitch my work soon, so this in invaluable information I can use. I appreciate it.
Thanks for the post. It always helps to see what works and does't work.
Thanks for sharing! I hope I can pitch my work soon and this is valuable info! :)
I am working on a written pitch at the moment. I would love to see a successful written pitch in it's entirety.
Hello everyone - I am working with a new studio that is always looking for new content and they also have the funding - if they like the, show, etc if you are interested in submitting - please inbox me your information
Character and Theme vs Plot and genre.. Character and theme are always the winner.
If we look at the two examples.
Looper is “would you sacrifice yourself for a brighter future for all”.
District 9 is a extreme right wing approach to migration told through the eyes of Aliens.
You cannot change a zombie and keep it a zombie. But you can tell an interesting story of people caught in an zombie outbreak.
Any producer who thinks that Characters are far more interesting than plot shouldn't be in the business
I have four 5 star rated scripts in "Browse-Loglines". But with the feedback cards given to Erik Grossman from the exec at Original Films, I'm glad I've never pitched any of my work. My stuff is defenetly plot/theme based rather than character based. IMHO I would have thought that the dialogue running along with the plot and theme would define the way the director and actors perceive the characters.
Robert Negron really? Pick a film any film and change the character it becomes a different film.
John Wick wouldn’t be the same films if it wasn’t about his life. Any film is about the people in it. If you can take out a character and put a completely different character in without changing the film, you have a passive character. This is the worst thing for a story.
What do you mean really?! It's the the plot that makes the movie, not the other way around...you seem like you've been in the business for some time...I shouldn't have to be telling you this. Craig
if a movie works solely because of what the character brings to the role, then it's not a very good movie
Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther had identical plots (fledgling monarch struggling to assert his identity and oppose a usurper. You know, Hamlet with super powers), but viewers would be hard-pressed to call them the same movie because the characters were very different. Even though the protagonists were faced with the same challenges, they interpreted these struggles differently and this led to two very different movies. Plot is maybe the third-most important element behind character and style, because in all of literature there are probably less than a dozen unique plots, and all stories are some permutation thereof. If by “plot” you mean the minutiae of everything happening in the movie second-by-second, that’s not plot. That’s narrative, which is the culmination of all story elements including plot.
Robert Negron a plot is an outcome of a character, their wants and what they are doing to obtain the goals.
A plot is a shopping list of actions. These shopping lists are repeated in many films.
You should try thinking about story from a character POV. It may help your writing.
if that's what you really think, Craig, then it's no wonder that movies today are sucking more and more....alright, you asked to name any movie...alright, let's talk about one that just opened Once upon a time in Hollywood...you got all these characters there, so why does the movie drag on the way it does? I'll tell you why because there was no story there, that's why. and the same goes for television...why was the second season of big little lies only 7 episodes? Because they didn't have much to go on...they didn't have much of story...plenty of characters, but no story...plot is everything...nothing you could tell me is gonna change that
I would say there was no story because the characters were not fleshed out so there was nothing to write about.
Based on your theory it would be an easy fix. Just throw plot at them. Just get them to do things. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with characters.
Think of the phrase “that’s out of character”. Character drives all aspect of story. Sorry you can’t see that.
Go listen to this. This is not a sledge (Aussie expression for a put down). You will really enjoy it and I think it contains gold for you. https://johnaugust.com/2019/how-to-write-a-movie
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I actually think that Tarantino's greatest strength, particularly with this film, is his mastery of subtle but subversive social satire. - i.e. He makes Charles Manson's followers look like mindless morons, where other filmmakers might have inadvertently glamorized their paradoxical counter-culture narcissism. Tarantino also farcically contrasted a socially adorable cold-blooded killer, Cliff Booth, with the monstrous variety that society shuns. - Holding up a mirror to the often morally relative and twisted standards of our celeb crazed world. And, of course, he also brilliantly spoofed, but ultimately showed compassion for, the insecure actor archetype (via DiCaprio's Rick Dalton character). Finally, if there was a point to be made by the film, to me at least, it was that perhaps if people were not so fearful of any and all type of confrontation, those prone to abusing others and becoming megalomaniacs would get their asses handed to them at some point in life - forcing them to face actual consequences...and possibly changing the course of history.
BTW - For those in LA, you can see a 35MM print of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD at ArcLight in Culver City. Which the hubby and I were fortunate to be able to do last week.
(Neither of us are pro-violence, but we took it for the farce that it was.)
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It's a false argument for writers who are trying to sell scripts - this whole "character versus plot" debate. It's both of those, of course, and a whole lot of other elements, too, that comprise "the story" - like premise, setting, pacing, story relevance, theme, rising action, imagery, subtext, metaphor, transformation/no transformation, irony, unpredictability, etc. - and that ultimately make "the story" what it is.
Regardless that some great films have less character development than others, and some great films are more plot-heavy than others, and that some protagonists greatly change, and some don't change at all....if you are seriously trying to break in as a writer, you probably need to be very proficient in all of the elements of screenwriting. Or maybe not. As recently-retired UCLA screenwriting Professor Richard Walter says, "it's about story. It's all about story."
Kudos to Craig Griffith for citing Hegel's concepts that Craig Mazin discusses, and that are similar (but different) to the concepts of the classical Greek theorists. I admire all of the different approaches to storytelling and filmmaking, and also recognize that there are a lot of great films that don't utilize those types of transformations, and that may or may not relate to theme. I guess that just really emphasizes what Professor Walter says. It's all about "the story."
Hey Bill,
I am not talking character development. My characters don’t change that much, in most cases. I believe people don’t change much, we are who we are.
I am saying the character is the reason for the plot, not the other way around.
Swap the protagonist and antagonist in Shindler’s List. Completely different movie. It is the character that drives their actions. Otherwise your characters are two dimensional cut outs.
The difference between Batman and every other revenge action character is Batman the character. To say movies should be plot driven rather than having characters create the plot is (can’t think of a polite way of saying this) wrong.
whatever you say, Craig, whatever you say