Screenwriting : Why your screenplay is not what defines the movie by Chip Street

I'm always surprised at how often even faithful productions of great scripts that lit the town on fire turn into "meh" movies -- either through mediocre directing, acting, or just finding out that great moments on the page don't always translate to the screen.

Thanks for sharing!

A movie is a story. A good screenplay has all the story essentials. Nothing else. and then there is massive collaboration.

A screenplay is a guide to making a movie. The producer, director, actors and just about everybody else on the set will have a say in making changes to your script. And stage directions on a script should be at a minimum.

This is so true. I've been lucky enough to see my work produced a few times now, with my first feature in post production and my second filming right now, I can tell you the collaborative process of making a movie, sees many changes take place right up to the point the movie is sent to the distributors. Sometimes even afterwards! New screenwriters often expect that their script will be treated like holy text that can't be tinkered with, but the reality is that there are many, many reasons that things can and usualy will get changed. As a simple example: Last summer we had a two week shoot under way in the beautiful Oxford countryside. After quite literally dozens of revisions, my first feature film was finally being filmed and I felt great. The setting was perfect, the cast and crew were enthusiastic. It was lovely. The story had 90% of the action set as exteriors. What could go wrong? Well, half way through the first week everything had been going well, then, as is typical with a British summer, the weather turned on us. With limited availability of cast, crew and location, we had no choice but to change the rest of what needed to be shot to interiors and devise a way to make it work! That was great fun I can tell you! But thankfully we pulled it off. So you see, virtually everyone has creative input in the making of a movie, even the weather! Oh and yes, it rained pretty much every day for the rest of the shoot! But according to the production team doing the post stuff now, the movie is turning out pretty good :-)

Andy, great story and congrats on your feature. Amazing, the creativity needed to make a situation like yours work - the circumstances forced your hand, but I guess the key is staying open to re-jiggering a story in a possibly radical way. Bravo.

Thanks Jacqueline. I think you're right about the key being open to re-jiggering a story or elements of a story. I think that if we get too precious or rigid about things we're at risk of losing out in the long run, so it's best to be as flexible as possible, while doing your best to remain faithful to the original story, concept or idea. Sometimes having your hand forced helps you see things differently or if you're lucky, helps make a movie/story even better. Thankfully the shoot that's going on now is experiencing extremely hot weather... so no huge changes caused by rain on the current feature, minor glitches caused by cameras overheating and cast dropping out, but it's all good fun...All in all it's very exciting to see a project coming to fruition. It's a great privelage to work with all involved. :-)

A screenplay is only a guide to making the movie. It's not prose, like a novel. Everybody involved with the movie will eventually put their paw print on it. A writer has to realize that the screenplay is not the final word. I agree that it's just the beginning of the storytelling process in the film media.