What I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker

by Jeremy Brock | Published February 3, 2007

Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup

Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup in Charlotte Gray

Listen to your critics

I think a major sin in screenwriting is not listening to your critics. However dumb they may seem to you, however brutal their criticism, remember that you are in a room with five people, and if you don't get it right there, you're going to end up out in the world with thousands of people and it doesn't get any better. So listen because they are trying to make it better, however wrong-headed their decisions may be. I think that young writers find criticism is hard because it's very personal, but it's crucial. It's called collaboration; it comes in the form of notes and sometime they're hard. Experience teaches you to take it less personally.

Do the research

Do the research and structure your picture so that you don't sit down without some idea of what your structure is. Don't kid yourself that you'll be able to write 120 pages without some idea of what your three, four or five acts are. There's always the example-you know, so and so wrote this in five days-but it's bullshit. If a screenwriter wants to live this life, then he or she needs to realize that it's not a dalliance, that you are grinding away for a period of time to 'apparently' suddenly burst through; but you secretly know that it took 17 drafts and that you've been doing it for 10 years.

On overcooking descriptions

I have read-and written-scenes where I have literally had to wade through three paragraphs of the most florid, the most purple description of a costume, of the sky, of a leaf, until I finally got to what the camera was going to first hit on. We all need to be drawn into a moment, but we do not need to know the color of the wallpaper.

Warm up

Writers sometimes need to learn to accept that sometimes they are writing themselves into something and that what they've written is not the scene but the way into the scene. It's okay to write something that's a bit off until you reach a point where you write a good scene. I often find that if you look at a scene you've written between two characters, and you take the first three speeches and you cut them and read the scene again, often you'll find that the scene plays very well without them.

Write visually

You learn to look for the visual equivalent of dialogue or you look for ways of storytelling that are visual.

On dealing with insecurity

I don't know if the insecurity ever goes. I suspect it doesn't. In fact I'm sure it doesn't. And I suspect that if it does, you're in trouble. I still wake up in the night, worrying about the strangest things, because I'm just aware that there are so many choices that you are making every moment and those choices will have consequences.

Film vs. Television

I came to realize quite quickly that development in film is a slower process. That was quite hard to get used to because television has a quicker turnover; it's either gonna happen or it's not, but you know quite fast. Film is much more graduated.

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