John August

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Sundance Screenwriters Lab announces projects

News

For the past four years, I’ve been one of the creative advisors to the twice-yearly Sundance Screenwriters Lab, a program which connects working screenwriters with emerging independent filmmakers. Because of work commitments, I’ve actually missed the past three labs, so I’m happy to be going back again this June.

The [Sundance Institute](http://institute.sundance.org) recently [announced](http://institute.sundance.org/jsps/pag_ex_news.jsp?resource=pag_ex_news_press_release&sk=hL8h0ak409oAKgVv&mbr=pr_prl_Feature_Film_Program_32) the list of projects and filmmakers for this session. I thought it would be interesting for readers to see how far from “obviously commercial” these projects tend to be.

Taika Waititi (writer/director), A LITTLE LIKE LOVE, New Zealand: For two awkward misfits, life is the question, and love is the answer. Taika Waititi is of Te Whanau-A-Apanui descent, from the east coast of New Zealand and directed the Academy-Award nominated short TWO CARS ONE NIGHT.

Cruz Angeles (co-writer/director) and Maria Topete (co-writer), DON’T LET ME DROWN: In a post-September 11th world overflowing with fear and hate, two Latino teens discover that sometimes the only thing that can keep them from drowning is love. Born in Mexico City and raised in Los Angeles, Cruz Angeles is an award-winning student filmmaker from the graduate film program at NYU. A Bay Area native, Maria Topete began her film career while studying at U.C. Berkeley, and has collaborated as co-writer and producer on several award-winning short films.

Dante Harper (writer/director), DREAMLAND: An unflinching portrayal of the origins of domestic terrorism, DREAMLAND is the tragic story of Tim McVeigh, from his boyhood dreams of being a soldier to his life as a man at war with his own country. Dante Harper is an independent filmmaker, video artist and co-founder of CLC Films and director of the independent film THE DELICATE ART OF THE RIFLE.
[Read more…] about Sundance Screenwriters Lab announces projects

Character depth in a short film

QandA, Words on the page

I’m in the midst of rewriting a short drama that is to be shot in about two months. I’m having trouble injecting character depth into it and I don’t know how to fix it. Everytime I try to make it more about the character it gets longer and longer, and it must be around 10 minutes (for university assessment).

— Eva Fitzroy

Character depth may be a false goal. With only ten minutes, you’re not going to be able to make [CHINATOWN](http://imdb.com/title/tt0071315/). Nor should you try.

Rather than cramming in extraneous character information, strive for economy. Is your protagonist a one-armed professional accordion player nervous about meeting his birth father? Fine. Show us that information in the very first scene. If you can’t work in all those details, ask yourself what’s really important: that he plays accordion, that he has one arm, or that he’s nervous about meeting his biological dad.

You may find you have to omit or alter some aspects of the character for sake of getting the plot started. So be it. Think of it like writing poetry: you may have really wanted line two to end with “orange,” but if you’re setting up for a rhyme, that’s just not going to work.

Good short films tend to be about a Character facing a Situation who takes an Action and has an Outcome. Yes, that’s sort of a generic template, but my point is that most successful shorts don’t spend much of their time filling in the details about their characters. What you see is what you get. So make sure those first details we see about the characters are enough to sustain our interest for ten minutes.

Tyger Williams on How I Write

First Person, Writing Process

first personThe process of finding my way into a story is different each time. It depends on the subject matter, how innate the material is to me and my sensibilities, or just depending on where I am in my own headspace at the time. I usually try to find my way into the character, or whatever cool set pieces or beats are going to make me really excited and make it fun to write. Some projects require more research, some less. But all of them require a great deal of procrastination.

I generally start with a beat sheet, which I develop into a short outline. It’s all very sketchy at the start. I use a program that allows me to lay my entire story out in blocks (sort of like index cards) so that I can see what it looks like from beginning to end. It also allows me to color the blocks separately so that I can track the protagonist beats, action beats, sub-plot beats, etc. Once I have the outline I make a list of the scenes that I want to write each day. (sort of like a director’s shot list) Sometimes I write in sequence, sometimes not. Often I’ll do dialogue on a tape recorder, just to hear how it sounds and then rewrite it later.

A typical day at he office varies for me depending on whether I’m developing ideas or writing a draft of a script. When I’m drafting I approach it pretty systematically. I budget out my days. Six pages a day, five days a week. Four weeks to a first draft. I usually get in the office around 10:00 a.m. and will write until 1:00 p.m., or at least until I have four pages done before lunch. Then I’ll write again from 2:00 to 6:00. During this time I will write another two pages and loosely revise the day’s work, in addition to returning the necessary phone calls. Now this is all ideally speaking. There are times when I spend the whole day in the office trying to figure out what I’m supposed to write and won’t get it done until I get home and the family’s asleep. Either way, I try to make the day’s pages or I know I’ll have to play catch up later. I only put myself through these paces in order to get a first draft done, and the rewriting/editing phase is considerably more flexible.
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Tyger Williams, a product of southern California, attended the University of Utah and Long Beach State University, where he studied Film, Television, and Marketing. After interning as a story analyst, he tried his hand at screenwriting. The immediate results were an unintended comedy, the semi-autobiographical film everyone writes, and his first produced film, MENACE II SOCIETY. Williams has most recently worked on NIGHT TRAIN: THE SONNY LISTON STORY, as well as a remake of the 1970′s blaxploitation film FOXY BROWN, and GRIDIRON GIRLS, a dramedy about life in the world of women’s professional football. He has also developed various television pilots and is currently adapting the Marvel comic character Brother Voodoo into a series for the Sci-Fi channel.