This page contains .pdf versions of various projects I’ve written over the years. The best way to learn screenwriting is to read a bunch of scripts, so these are intended for educational purposes only. Obviously, don’t try to sell/stage/pilfer any of the material you find here, or the studios involved will send scary lawyer types after you. It’s not pleasant for anyone. Important: If you want to link to any of the scripts here, please link to this page. Everything else you see here will inevitably move, and broken links suck. Produced projects: Unproduced: Things I’m hosting for others: Here I’m including the production draft (white), along with the blue and pink revisions so you can see how they fit into the white draft. (Rather than release entirely new scripts, only the revised pages are printed and sent to departments, who can then insert them into their scripts.) The final shooting script incorporates the blue and pink revisions. This is the web pilot I shot in February 2008. You can find it here. This is the short film I made in 1998, a prequel to The Nines. You can find it here. In order to save money, the WB asked all its drama pilots to shoot a 30-minute “pilot presentation” of the show, rather than the whole hour. To do this, I had to omit a bunch of scenes, and rewrite some others so that it would all make sense. Yes, if I had written Episode 4, it was supposed to titled, “The American Way.” Note that this is not the script for the 2006 movie. It predates it by almost a decade. You can read more about the backstory here. Casting sides: More information about The Circle is here. There are three versions of the pilot. The first is set in Afghanistan and Venezuela. The second, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The third, in Brazil and Uzbekistan. Since the first two pilots were both called “Blood and Oil,” they’ve been labeled here as “Venezuela,” “Iraq,” and “Uzbekistan.” On Scriptnotes 553, Station Eleven showrunner Patrick Somerville joins us to talk through the writing of the 10-episode limited series. We discuss the script of the first episode, but Somerville agreed to share the entire series’ scripts for reference. The acclaimed HBO/Sky miniseries written, created and produced by Scriptnotes co-host Craig Mazin debuted May 6, 2019. As promised, here are Craig’s scripts for the five episodes. You should also listen to the excellent companion podcast co-hosted by Peter Sagal. I am going to be a writer/director. I have done neither professionally before, but I have previsualized the movie with my script. My question is what’s the next step? Can I just call the studio for a appointment to show them the pre-viz, or do I buy the Hollywood Creative Directory of Agents and Producers and send it to each one of them and maybe they will be impressed enough to show it around to get a deal? –Geoff B For readers who are unfamiliar with the term, a pre-visualization consists of artwork — often animated — which demonstrates the look and style of a film before it’s shot. It’s a technique often used for movies that involve elaborate set pieces (such as battle scenes) to help all the departments plan and budget for the work ahead. For instance, when prepping for CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE, the helicopter stunt at the opening was extensively animated before a frame of film was shot. That way, the director could focus on getting exactly the pieces he needed, replacing the roughly-animated polygonal figures with real angels. But that’s an expensive Hollywood movie. Why would Geoff want or need pre-visualization? Well, if he’s trying to do a movie that has a very different visual style, it might help. For instance, the upcoming SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW has an incredibly stylized, retro-futuristic look, achieved by computer animation and actors shot against green screen. The only way the director could convince a studio (in this case, Paramount) to gamble on the project was to shoot an extensive pre-visualization that explained his vision. If Geoff’s movie is a simple romantic comedy, or a cop drama, then pre-visualization isn’t necessary, and probably won’t help him get a deal. But if his movie is more unusual or elaborate, it just might. Since it sounds like Geoff is starting out from scratch, without any contacts, his “shotgun” approach of going through the Hollywood Creative Directory might make sense. Whatever he sends out — a videotape, storyboards, artwork — should be absolutely professional, concise, and well-edited. I wouldn’t send out the script until people respond. I am a film school student in southern CA, and I just saw –Anonymous Well, clearly you’re a film student because you used the term "mis-en-scene." In general, a writer doesn’t have a lot of direct input on the art direction That said, remember that it is the screenwriter’s job to evoke the experience How much description is too much? The first time your script visits a location, has a long-ish article about [Corpse Bride](http://imdb.com/title/tt0121164/maindetails), interviewing both [Pamela Pettler](http://imdb.com/name/nm1017135/maindetails) and yours truly about the story and process. Pamela, [Caroline Thompson](http://imdb.com/name/nm0003031/) and I share writing credit on the movie, but I was never really clear who wrote what and when. From the article, it appears that Caroline wrote a detailed outline, while Pamela wrote the first real script. I was the in-production guy, who did tweaks and fixes, smoothing out rough spots and writing lyrics for a few new songs.</p>
<p>Since it wasn’t a WGA-covered movie — animation often isn’t, [much to the WGA’s chagrin](http://wga.org.master.com/texis/master/redir/?u=http%3A//www.wga.org/negotiations/juris04_1.html) — there wasn’t a normal arbitration process to figure out who got what writing credit for the movie. Fortunately, the final credits as determined by the studio seem right to me. Again, since it’s not WGA, none of us will get residuals. Which blows. But we knew that going in. </p>
<p>The movie, incidentally, is great. </p>
<p>One of the cool/weird things about working on an animated movie (this is my second, after [Titan A.E.](http://imdb.com/title/tt0120913/maindetails)), is that you get to see the entire movie a lot while it’s in production. Every couple of weeks, I’d get a new tape via FedEx from London, showing the newly animated scenes and the pencil storyboards for what was about to shoot, with a mixture of real and temp voices for all the characters. In all, I’ve probably seen the entire film 20 times in various incarnations.</p>
<p>About a month ago, I finally got to see the finished product at a test screening in the Valley. The movie is flat-out gorgeous on the big screen, with the stop-motion animation having a realer-than-real quality. It’s so sharp that it looks 3D.</p>
<p>But what really surprised me is that all the story tweaking we did along the way feels so seamless. You wouldn’t know that characters got added and dropped along the way, or that significant points of backstory were still in discussion midway through shooting. Or that it wasn’t always so musical.</p>
<p>All films, including live-action, go through major changes during editing, but with this kind of animation, there really is no distinction between production and post-production. Once you shoot a frame, it’s finished, forever. So it’s heartening to see that the nail-biting decisions paid off. It feels like it was shot from a locked, finished script. It wasn’t.</p>
<p>The other great lesson you learn from writing animation is surrendering your monopolistic control over every little word, the cinematic [“Not Invented Here”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here) syndrome. Moving from the page to the (miniature) soundstage means going through the storyboard artists, who often find new ways of playing a beat that you never considered. During production, a lot of my job was tweaking dialogue to match new bits of business that the artists had invented. While actors in a live-action movie will improvise, that kind of multiple-voices collaboration doesn’t happen as often. In the case of Corpse Bride, it really helped.</a> </p>
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Library
Table of Contents
Big Fish
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Frankenweenie
The Nines
The Remnants
God
D.C.
How to Eat Fried Worms
The Circle (a.k.a. Alaska)
Ops
Station Eleven
Chernobyl
Getting a job from a pre-visualization
Nova Scotia, CanadaWriters on art direction and cinematography
a preview for CHARLIE’S ANGELS. I was very intrigued with the mis-en-scene
of the picture and I wonder: How much influence does the writer (in this case)
have
over the
art direction
and style of photography?
In the case of CHARLIE’S ANGELS, I was more involved than usual during pre-production because of the overall coolness of the director, McG, and production issues
that would end up affecting the script. So I saw storyboards and got to know
Russell Carpenter, the director of photography. But that’s the exception, rather
than the rule.
or photographic style of the movie. Unless it’s important, you don’t mention
the color of the walls or whether the light is incandescent or fluorescent.
Not only would all these details piss off the people whose job it is to make
these decisions, they would make your screenplay unreadable.
of watching the movie through words. Somehow, you have to give a sense of the
visual style of the movie without mentioning it all the time. For instance,
CHARLIE’S ANGELS tweaks a lot of the conventions of the original TV show, with
triptychs and wipes, so when appropriate I included those in the movie. And
the plot itself lent a lot to the visual style, setting it entirely in Southern
California and featuring three beautiful women who go undercover in all sort
of disguises.
you can give a sentence or two to describe it. More if you really have to.
And if a character is wearing something important to the plot, you absolutely
need to describe it.