First Draft
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see First Draft: When Is It OK For Your Script to Use On-the-Nose Dialogue?
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, we’re publishing “First Draft,” a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Near the end of Richard Wenk’s screenplay for 16 Blocks (which...
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First Draft: Build Your Rewriting Chops With This Case Study From The Hateful Eight
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, we’re publishing “First Draft,” a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight had a notoriously difficult...
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First Draft: Learn Techniques of Story Progression From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Comparing two drafts of a script can be hugely instructive,...
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First Draft: Understand The Humility Arc To Allow Your Story’s Heroes To Succeed
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. What quality makes a hero? What single trait must a...
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First Draft: What are Plot Patterns, and Why Should You Identify Them in Movies?
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. What if I told you Star Wars and The Godfather...
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First Draft: Crafting Supervillains by Pushing Your Antagonists Over the Edge
In partnership with the blog ScreenCraft, we’re publishing “First Draft,” a series on everything to do with screenwriting. The importance of the superhero in today’s...
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First Draft: How to Develop and Nurse a Theme Throughout Your Narrative
In partnership with the blog ScreenCraft, we’re publishing “First Draft,” a series on everything to do with screenwriting. From academics in film school to producers...
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First Draft: The Most Common Mistake in Spec Scripts (And Four Ways to Avoid Making It)
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Finding the right concept to base your next work on...
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First Draft: How To Create Moments For Your Characters To Shine
In partnership with Creative Screenwriting and ScreenCraft, “First Draft” is a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Moments: They’re what the audience remembers about a great movie, what actors...
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First Draft: How Screenwriters Can Fix the Broken Hollywood System
In partnership with the blog ScreenCraft, we’re publishing “First Draft,” a series on everything to do with screenwriting. Hollywood development is broken, caught in a...
Summer 2019
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Summer 2018
Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles are just a handful...
1Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid Antarctic waters as...
Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s cancer diagnosis hidden...