H.I.S. CLASS CONTINUES

For our Alumni who completed the screenwriting class, I will be sharing some articles from the website, SCREENWRITING U (www.screenwriting.com). They’re excellent. Here’s the first one “The New 10 Commandments of Writing Screenplays” by Hal Croasmun.

(Note: For this blog entry, I’m covering the first five commandments; next week, we’ll post the last five

The New 10 Commandments of Writing Screenplays.

Writing Screenplays By Commandment

1. Entertain us…or it’s over!
Entertainment is the number one reason that people go to movies. Every producer and agent knows that. So it should be the #1 focus of your screenwriting. Become a master at making any character or situation entertaining and you’ll be a writer in demand.
To be blunt, if there is anything in your script that doesn’t entertain, fix it.
2. Make EVERYTHING more interesting.
The industry is filled with readers who are fed a gourmet diet of professional screenplays. If you want yours to stand out, it has to captivate their attention and cause them to forget that they are doing a job.
This should be an ongoing campaign of yours. Make your scenes more interesting. Make your characters more interesting. Make your dialogue more interesting. Make everything more interesting.
3. Give us a lead character we can’t stop following.
Professional screenwriters intentionally create characters we want to follow. They are unique, yet familiar. We can relate to them and want to go on the journey with that character.
In general, your protagonist should be the perfect person to lead us deep into this story and the conflict that is about to occur. Don’t settle for a good lead. Go for great.
4. Promise us something special…and deliver on it.
Somehow, you have to keep people reading until the last page. Here’s a solution.
About 15 years ago, I read a book called “A Story Is A Promise” by Bill Johnson. Since then, I’ve always looked at a script from the perspective of “What is the promise you’re making to the reader/audience and how do you keep it in a unique way?”
Essentially, you are promising some major achievement by the protagonist or some big confrontation that will happen in the 3rd Act between protag and antag. If the promise is strong enough, we’ll read every page to see what happens.
5. Show us deeper meaning.
Deeper meaning can be built into the plot, character, situations, actions, and dialogue of a script. It doesn’t have to be profound, just beneath the surface…and perceived by the audience.
Audiences and readers just don’t appreciate on-the-nose writing. Subtext gives them a chance to interact with the film. They have an internal experience of the story because they are interpreting what the dialogue and actions really mean.
Because of that, it is just as important to take care of the subtext of a story as it is to create the surface story.

Check next week for the remaining 5 Commandments of Writing Screenplays…

THE FOUNDERS


Although this entry really has nothing to do with the Ministry, I wanted to add it anyway. As I said in the last entry, we’re off for a month before starting next semester. Cyndi and I decided to take a little vacation to the Illinois and Michigan area with our son, daughter-in-law and grandson. We went Apple Picking and rented a cabin along the Lake Michigan waterfront. Great time!



Proud grandparents! It was fun and a time of much needed relaxation. The next semester will start soon…

HOLLYWOOD IMPACT STUDIOS – News & Updates


Wow, this last semester seemed to fly by. We just celebrated our 4th Graduation last week. We started with 27 student/inmates but only had 9 graduates. They all successfully completed basic editing, basic camera, basic lighting, basic Pro Tools, wrote scripts and hopefully learned a great deal about the many different careers in the television industry.


This class did experience one thing that none of our other classes have; the jail riot that happened on August 22nd. We’re very proud of this class and the many others in the MERIT Program. Because of the faith-based component in both our program and the MERIT Program, none of our inmate/students participated in the riot. They all held firm and even with the threat of personal harm to themselves they still refused to be part of it. The were all amazing men of faith! Thank God.

We are now down for a month before we start the next semester.