Finding the story you want to tell is the first thing you need to do to make a movie. You need a good story to start with, because whatever you do, your movie will not get better than your best script.
When Dan and Jesús met in the park that day to discuss about ideas, both had a bunch of them in their minds or notebooks. We spent lunch time having a look at all of them and then one of Jesús stories draw our attention: a simple story about one man who is able to guess numbers of the lottery in his dreams. A simple concept. We both liked it: the character was interesting, there was something mysterious and sobrenatural about it and we could use visual effects, something we wanted to try since we both worked on that industry.
One note about visual effects. Unless you have a big crew... avoid them like a plague! Having visual effects on a film is an amazing experience, you can do whatever you want... But it means a looong time to do them. We finished shooting in 3 days and had a rough edit in a few weeks. To have the visual effects done, we spent months of really hard work. So if you have an idea about a guy and a girl talking about life or whatever... don't underestimate it!
We strongly recommend a three step process to write your film:
Another key part of script writting is actually rewriting. You will need to rewrite the story many times to get it right. We had more than a dozen versions of the script. Sometimes a character was not well defined or a dialogue didn't sound right. A good thing about co-writing a story is that you get instant feedback from the other person and we can discuss things together. For instance, the character Kim is an escort in the story, so we instantly thought in the classic young, pretty girl. Then we thought "well, this Kim is actually quite something, she's been the only one to get into Jack's mind". So that meant she was wise, hence experienced. So in the end we decided to create a more mature, still very sexy but overwhelming wise version of Kim.
Regarding script formats it's good to follow standard practices. We used Celtx, a wonderful software with every option to write your script in the right format. You can even use storyboards and notes. Really cool, and it's free! You can get it from here: Celtx.
Go back.
When Dan and Jesús met in the park that day to discuss about ideas, both had a bunch of them in their minds or notebooks. We spent lunch time having a look at all of them and then one of Jesús stories draw our attention: a simple story about one man who is able to guess numbers of the lottery in his dreams. A simple concept. We both liked it: the character was interesting, there was something mysterious and sobrenatural about it and we could use visual effects, something we wanted to try since we both worked on that industry.
One note about visual effects. Unless you have a big crew... avoid them like a plague! Having visual effects on a film is an amazing experience, you can do whatever you want... But it means a looong time to do them. We finished shooting in 3 days and had a rough edit in a few weeks. To have the visual effects done, we spent months of really hard work. So if you have an idea about a guy and a girl talking about life or whatever... don't underestimate it!
We strongly recommend a three step process to write your film:
- Get the core of your idea. If you have seen Christopher Nolan's Inception, they say that, to plant an idea on someone's head, you need to get the most basic definition of that idea. It's the same here. You need a very simple concept like "a man who can guess numbers of the lottery". Try to explain your story in just one line. But go beyond that: many times this also means diferentiating between what you are telling and what you "really want to tell". In our case, what we really wanted to talk about was how you have to be brave enough to pursue your dreams. We used our winning man to explain that concept.
- Using that idea as your compass, start writing your first draft, and when you do it, put the sky (or beyond) as the limit. Go crazy, imagine everything, don't worry about budget, explosions, buildings being destroyed. Anything goes. You need to set your imagination free. In our case, Jesús started writing the first drafts and we got a very complex story with several locations, action scenes, mafia, a girl, a dream. It was so big that, of course, it didn't work. Remember also that the key to a good script is having wonderful and strong characters.
- Once you go for the sky, then it's time to get real and decide what you can actually do with the means at your disposal. Do you have a car? What about cameras? Is it Winter or Summer? Do you have money or do you have time? (you usually have only one of those). In our case, luckily, Dan came with another approach and proposed a new script that took all the ideas from the original: a guy wins the lottery, there are secrets, girls... but it was much, much simpler. He introduced a new character, Kim, an escort who unveils Jack's secrets and limited the locations to just a couple. He showed the Jack (that's the main character's name) from today and compared him to the Jack of the past. It was brilliant and really worked!
Another key part of script writting is actually rewriting. You will need to rewrite the story many times to get it right. We had more than a dozen versions of the script. Sometimes a character was not well defined or a dialogue didn't sound right. A good thing about co-writing a story is that you get instant feedback from the other person and we can discuss things together. For instance, the character Kim is an escort in the story, so we instantly thought in the classic young, pretty girl. Then we thought "well, this Kim is actually quite something, she's been the only one to get into Jack's mind". So that meant she was wise, hence experienced. So in the end we decided to create a more mature, still very sexy but overwhelming wise version of Kim.
Regarding script formats it's good to follow standard practices. We used Celtx, a wonderful software with every option to write your script in the right format. You can even use storyboards and notes. Really cool, and it's free! You can get it from here: Celtx.
Go back.
