How Professional Screenwriters Outline
Vložit
- čas přidán 30. 04. 2020
- Join our Discord server and tell me what your favorite film is: / discord
A look into how professional filmmakers and screenwriters outline and structure their stories before writing. This is motivation for all aspiring screenwriters.
Join the public Behind the Curtain discord: / discord
Filmmakers featured in order of appearance:
00:30 Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad)
00:50 Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds)
02:48 Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, The Master)
03:16 Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation)
04:22 Coen Brothers (Fargo, No Country for Old Men)
04:43 Rian Johnson (Knives Out)
05:35 Greta Gerwig (Little Women, Lady Bird)
06:03 Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)
06:36 Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)
07:23 Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3)
09:35 M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Split)
ABOUT BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Learn from real screenwriters. Learn the most without wasting time listening to long interviews with only 3 minutes of useful information. We take the best pieces of advice and insight from professional screenwriters and deliver them to you in an easily watchable format.
Do Screenwriters Outline?
• How Professional Scree...
#Screenwriting #Filmmaking #Filmschool - Krátké a kreslené filmy
Every writer seems to have their own style. There isn’t a wrong way to write a script as long as it’s good.
I agree with you!!
@@judichristopher4604 its about the passion
Agreed
So true. It's about putting on paper what you think, love, understand and cherish. It's a beautiful thing.
I think you need to put some rules in it, but it s for you, it s not a generale method, but it seems to make you work in a step by step way of thinking and not see the whole big impossible monument , ypu need to creat your own bullshit method
“It’s the fastest way to kill all my ideas” Man, this hit the nail on the head. As soon as you start trying to rationalise and logic out an exciting idea, you only see the problems and not the potential.
So true ...
This is the opposite for me. Having a creative idea, then making it logical, and rationalized makes me understand the idea.
Forest Gump is a great example of this. All the plot points that Forest goes through is seemingly impossible yet its been expertly crafted in a way that you are more than willing to suspend your disbelief because it honestly doesn’t matter.
@@bawol-official True. However I feel supension of disbelief can vary alot depending on which tone or genre the film fits into. Forrest Gump has a “heightened reality” / fabel type tone to it that makes it easier to buy intoabsolutely wild scenarios. You’d have a harder time selling those story beats to an audience in a more a social realist or straight drama/thriller film fex :)
@@BashirBillowKhalid on point
The important part of these videos is how different every approach is. I beat myself up from time to time that I'm not approaching my writing in the "right" way (especially in terms of outlining), but the important thing to remind yourself is that processes vary and as long as the end product is a finished script then there is no wrong way to make your first step toward that goal.
I used to think the advice "find what works for you" was stupid. I thought that there must be 1 right way to rule them all. I'm realizing though that it really is the truth. Whatever gets stories out for you... stick with that! Good luck, man. Thanks for watching.
It’s true that it depends on the personality type of each person. However, there really is something to letting the horse guide the cart and allowing the characters to dictate what will happen.
That’s how Tarantino writes. He’s in the audience’s shoes while writing because he himself doesn’t know what will come next. On the other hand, Rian Johnson plans everything out before, but his characters always seem to get drowned out to the plot in my opinion.
Exactly! Writing CZcams is way too binary. A lot of these teachers only promote one way. Structural or spontaneous, it’s always ova.
@@BehindtheCurtain And on top of that "find what works for you", it's also that each of these different processes produce slightly different results, each with it's own pro's and con's, and some might work better depending on the type of story or theme you're working on. So you might even decide to try a different process you've never tried before for a new story. Let's say, maybe a stricter outline, like Rian Johnson's or Michael Arndt's workflow, might be better for a "whoddunit" focused on power plays, while you'd like to keep that intuition based, slow discovering when working on a subtle, more realistic more character focused story, with something akin to "The Phantom Thread" or the sorts, when focusing on a certain attitude to life. It's a lot of fuckin fun experimenting in writing and I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for the video, was one of the best crafted summaries on the topic. much appreciated.
yeah, I'm wonky about when I throw in an outline; Greta Gerwig's was a refreshing insight for me especially, another surprised the hell outta me.
You know you’ve watched too many film essays and interviews when you’ve heard most of the audio clips before and even know where some of them are from.
Crom it’s done. If the pandemic clears up anytime soon and I actually have the summer to shoot it it’ll be a completed no-budget film by the end of this year.
Haha, that's hilarious. I try my best to find some deep cuts, but sometimes there are a limited number of interviews available. Good luck on your film!
Behind the Curtain Thank you so much! Don’t worry about your selections, I’ve gone way too deep into the back catalogue of interviews and podcasts especially when it comes to Gilligan and Tarantino. Keep up the great content, it’s been a phenomenal resource.
Wow, any recommendations for good resources I maybe haven't found yet? Always looking for new sources.
Behind the Curtain I’d mostly just point you in the direction of the podcasts Tarantino has done within the last year, he did a bunch on the press tour for Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood that are great but he’s also done some other ones on some under appreciated gems of films on podcasts like The Ringers’ “Rewatchables” although those can get quite film specific.
If I could actually make a recommendation for a video topic (if that isn’t stepping out of my bounds) I think a deep dive on the idea of the “no-budget movie” would be very helpful for aspiring filmmakers. Films like Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi, Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Christopher Nolan’s Following are not only inspirational, but the techniques used to make them are still very applicable for the next generation. Without them, I really wouldn’t have known where to start and I definitely wouldn’t have developed the DIY mindset that really drove me to believe that I can actually just go out and make something.
"You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it" - Thomas Harris
I like that!!!
That's how my mind work. Like it's being revealed over time.
Said the guy who wrote Hannibal and Red Dragon. Silence of The Lambs is the only good book he wrote.
beautiful honestly
You did Tarantino dirty with the "foot fetish" part 😂😂😂
Haha I'm glad someone noticed. I'm sure that's one of his first ideas for any movie
I hadn't realized to what level other industry people were openly teasing Tarantino about his foot fetish before I heard the one Brad Pitt quote "Quentin has separated more women from their shoes than the TSA" lol like anyone who's even a moderate film fan can easily tell it's a major thing to him, but that's different than big names blatantly talking about it in the media either in front of him or where he'll definitely see it, that's cool
@@BehindtheCurtain The timing was perfect
This is great haha
When Tarantino makes a peace sign what he really means is "two feet please"
Structure is everything to me. I have ideas in my head but without a skeleton to put them on I just have a bucket of random organs
Exactly!
That's a neat metaphor
Structure is actually how I come up with my plot when I don't know what to write.
I like Tarantino's and Alex Garland's and Rian Johnson's idea's on outlining. I might actually try some of these.
Great to hear! I hope it leads to creative breakthrough
Same
Double Same
Garland has been impressing me more and more with each new thing he writes and directs, namely devs
You should try comma’s first.
Essentially: there is a method to the madness, yet being too methodical is madness.
I like Alex Garland's idea of writing out the story line by line, and then replacing each line with a scene.
I've done it before after learning that Garland does it. It works well.
A line doesn't equal a scene though, stupid!!!!
@@MrParkerman6 doesn't have to. i was generalizing. a few lines can be a scene, one line can be multiple scenes. what i was trying to say was that i liked the idea overall.
Never assume or Generalize. These are dumb things to do.
@@MrParkerman6 I disagree.
I read a book where academy award winners talked about writing. One thing I noticed is that no one did it the same way.
could you please give me the name of this book ?
@@karmasameh9351 Screen writers on screen writing by Joel Engel
@@karmasameh9351 If you are interested in other books that treat the sane kind of subject, I suggest:
The Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter part 1 and 2 by William Froug.
And his other two books Zen and the art of screenwriting part 1 and 2.
All four books regroup interviews of professional screenwriters.
I wish I could find a book just about movies from the 1930’s, my favorite decade for movies, music, clothes, cars. But not art, that’s the 1630’s. (Rembrandt)
@@C.Hawkshaw Haha it was a great decade for movies. My favourite is the Bride of Frankenstein. The only book I could recommend is the art of dramatic writing by lajos egri 1942 which was a personal recommendation to me by the producer of back to the future.
When Quentin Tarantino said you know the characters, they're in your blood was really touching. Great video for emerging screenwriters.
So many young filmmakers don’t follow the most basic rules of structure cause their heroes didn’t and became celebrated for it, but the truth is even they had to start with the basics of scene and movie structure before they played around with it. Love this vid.
And that’s why new movies are so hard to follow. The plot line and storyline…
@@sc9048 sure but somebody could have the potential to make something great and end up not making anything great because they never learned the rules in order to break them
Outline or not, I think the most important thing is to know you're characters. I always start with characterisations, contradiction characters with similiar goals but different methods. Then it basically writes itself.
That makes sense to me. If you know what defines a character against the other characters, the conflict and story can arise out of that naturally.
Exactly Wrong! Plot is more important than character!
How do you work on character? Lately, learned from a free online course I did from the University of East Anglia, I've found it really helpful - and very enjoyable - to kind of 'interview' mine.
@@MrParkerman6 Different strokes for different folks (which is the point of working on character!). So much of story seems to me to be character: wound, want, need, arc, conflict.
@@JohnMoseley I mostly have a wage idea of what the protagonist must accomplish in the end. So I start with answering following question. *Why does this character want to achieve this particular goal? How does this character go about achieving this goal? Where does this character come from financially/socially/intellectually/emotionally? Where does this character's moral center lie?*
If I manage to answer those questions, I get a pretty good handle on who I'm dealing with. From there I can already begin raising the stakes, by creating formidable opposing characters and/or circumstances. Then I answer these questions for the main antagonist and main allies. I also make sure to weave the protagonist's emotional progression into the film's main theme. Every main character gets their unique approach to the theme. Whoever I deem righteous succeeds in the end. Whoever acts out of touch with my ideals fails.
So I begin with the characters and build the story from there, from beginning to end.
I just love hearing how they’re all different from one another. It shows that it all really comes down to personal preference. You just gotta try out a bunch of techniques and see what ends up clicking for you
hey, I just filmed a video about the dos and dont's of screenwriting in Hollywood! I think you would enjoy it!
czcams.com/video/CFg5OloiZzM/video.html
NGL, but Alex Garland's method of writing is fucking amazing. I'll definitely be doing this...
I've done this method and really enjoy it!
I think writing a script is a hugely personal process and everyone seems to have their own methods. Hearing other people's process is always nice, especially if you're struggling to find your own.
I really appreciate these videos. There’s a lot of contradictory advice out there, and this helps to sift through the bullshit.
Exactly! And I want to get right to the source; the people that are actually producing results. Thanks for supporting the channel for as long as you have.
"Right ON"
Or is that "Write ON" LOL
Gilligan explains things really well. Simple, to the point, and useful.
Not really- or they would have gotten off the Island alot sooner!
OMG THE FOOT FETISH SHOUTOUT FOR TARANTINO!!! IM DYINGGGG!! Bravo!
I love Quentin's idea of a checklist. An outline seems far too concrete. As writers, we do not know anything about our story until we're in it.
I love how many different methods can lead to such great results, totally love this art.
Love that you highlighted different types of writers and different exercises! I'm a huge fan of what Alex Garland and Michael Arndt suggested and definitely will be trying them out.
Hats off to the whole team for compiling such a delicate area, solely for the betterment of fellow writers around the world. Really appreciate the effort. Keep up the good work!
this is the best and most informative docu-style video about other screenwriters and what they do well. some other channels just post nonsense, so this was a refreshing change. thank you
It’s midnight and I just got my eureka moment on how I should start writing. Thank you for making this.🙏
Wonderful!
Always get excited when I get a notification for a new video from your channel. Outlining is such a subjective method of writing too, some love it, some hate it. In my case, I loved it for my shorts but when I wrote my feature, I started from page one with just an act breakdown instead of outline because I had no idea what the beats were going to be.
Love hearing experts and professionals talk about their craft.
Amazing! Great collection from master storytellers! Thank you for your hard work!
Wow Alex Garland’s approach really resonated with me as well as Michael Arndt. Thank you for putting this video together.
This is wonderful, Nehemiah. Thanks for such a compelling video for screenwriters!
This was a huge help! In screenwriting university we were taught to keep action lines to four consecutively, but I always think In beats, not shorthand so several of these methods have been a huge help in showing through my action sections! Thank you!
I just wanna say, THANK YOU. Your channel is amazing man. Northing but goood things to say from me. Keep up the great work. Industry needs people like you informing and inspiring people like me.
LOVE THIS CHANNEL. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE HARD WORK
Thanks, Jimmy! I appreciate you supporting the channel for as long as you have.
This is really helpful and encouraging. I gleaned from several of these directors. Thank you. Will join the Behind the Curtain club when it's up.
Perfect. I look forward to talking with you then!
You have put this together in such a stunning way, it is a whole learning tip/tutorial for people to adapt for themselves, thanks for all the work you put into this, love it👊
Thanks for watching!
I don’t say this often, that was one of the most helpful storytelling/novel/screenplay advice videos I’ve ever seen. Thank you
Really needed this today. Thank you!
Would love to see tips on 2 vids: Writing Character Backstory (as some writers don’t), and dialogue
This is exactly what I needed to hear this morning. Very inspiring!
This was awesome, thank you!!
I just gotta say... this was a great video! Keep up the great work 😊
Before this video I was trying to complete a story and I blueprinted the starting and endings in my mind but I was stuck in the middle and I can confidently say this video helps me out.
Great to hear! Message me on Twitter if your need more advice about your outline
@@BehindtheCurtain tq 👍
I like how you showed many different approaches for different writers, some of which are contradictory - giving the viewer the opportunity to decide what might work best for their own writing based on the evidence than insisting that there is one way for everyone.
Wise words. And liberating.
Great video! I've been brainstorming my next script idea, so this is right on time.
Fantastic! Glad it helped you.
Any time I've been told to outline first, it's come from people who went to film school, where they got taught all kinds of rules. I never went to film school, but I've watched a ton of movies since childhood. So far I have written 5 feature film screenplays in the last 7 years. One of which was optioned by a production company. My friends who went to film school have been in the "business" 10 years longer than me and between them have written 2 feature film screenplays, neither have been optioned.
So yeah, it took a long time but I finally started trusting my own personal methods instead of theirs. Even though their ideas might lead to something it seems like they're forever stuck in outline and treatment hell, spending years on a script.
I never outline in the classic sense with "acts", "structure". At most I write out a simple form of a beat sheet combined with a series of loose notes, and then I start on the screenplay itself. The only part of structure I like to make clear beforehand is a good midpoint, because a solid midpoint can really infuse a ton of new energy to your story (ex. the dinosaurs break out in Jurassic Park, Chief Brody goes to sea to hunt the shark in Jaws, the chestburster shows its ugly face in Alien etc). Most I've spent on a first draft of a feature screenplay was about 2 months, the fastest was 4 days (don't ask me how I managed that last one, I barely know myself).
As a writer myself with 1 book and a few short stories completed I loved this video. Great compilation, nice variety in ideas. When i started writing i had always sort of categorized writers into either outliners or pantsters. But the more i wrote the more i realized im a bit of both. after watching this it sounds like even though writers may tend towards one extreme or the other they are always a bit of both as well. Can totally relate to the outline changing multiple times
Great and informative video. Love how this channel is expanding, excited to see what comes next!
Thank you! There's a lot more to come.
0:00 Vince Gilligan
0:20 Quentin Tarantino
2:18 Paul Thomas Anderson
2:47 Alex Garland
3:53 Coen Brothers
4:14 Rian Johnson
5:06 Greta Gerwig
5:34 Aaron Sorkin
6:07 Kenneth Lonergan
6:54 Michael Arndt
9:06 M. Night Shyamalan
9:34 Vince Gilligan & Breaking Bad Writing Team
Absolutely Amazing Video... OMG... This Video Is GREAT!!
... and don't get me even started on the video and editing... Fantastic editing... I love all the graphics... "Amazing"
This is one of the most enjoyable videos I have ever seen... Seriously... I feel like a kid in a candy story... I was hanging on every word.
Thank you so much for sharing this video. This video shows how much time and work was put into it... every detail.
"Bravo Darling"... "Bravo"
God... I love "Behind the Curtain"... so enjoyable.. so entertain... so educational ... Love you guys!
i think every writer has his own way of building a script. btw video is very help full. thankyou❤
This is truly informative. Thank you
Really helpful... thanks for posting this.
Is like the algorithm is inside my head! I was just saying I needed some motivation today to sit down and write my film and this video showed up on my feed!
Thank you so much for these videos, so helpful and inspirational
Glad you like them!
I always hated it when in school they would tell you "the way" to write. Everyone is different and develop their own methods.
Really great editing, I really like the visuals
Thanks, man!
A great channel. Getting first-hand advice from the greats! :)
8:18 this is the best method of organizing i have ever heard of! i can't wait to try this with my own scripts.
Great animations with amazing interviews! Great job! Liked and Subscribed
Thanks, Bruno. I've got a lot more coming.
I do so much Pre-Work on my scripts. I have 56 Notecards, separated into 3 piles (Act 1, 2, 3), then the notecards are expanded into an outline format (generally 50-60 pages). this way i've basically written the script and just fill in with dialogue. Since I typically try to write dense story with a lot of interaction, this helps me keep motivations and snippets organized in such a way that I don't lose my favorite parts. I agree, you really need to know where the story is going. Loved this video.
This was fantastic thank you
It’s great to hear how each one of them uses their own technique!
This is great! A lot of helpful tips. I am currently working on a rewrite of my script and I will apply these.
That's good to hear! Good luck with your rewrite!
When Tarantino said “ the part when the characters are exciting me” that instantly hit.
Love this. Even more so with how everything is animated and designed. Nice work.
Could take a cue from you as a video editor with okay motion graphic skill.
The key to any writing is just to write: plan, outline or no. Whatever works, get it on the page. Alex Garland was spot-on - getting something to work with and shape and refine further is the most important first step. If you need an outline to do that, go crazy, but remember, letting the story speak to you rather than seeing yourself as the 'author' of the tale is also very helpful in creating the most organic, free-flowing and sound story. In other words, don't think about your story or characters, feel your way through them. This is how Hayao Miyazaki tends to work and his characters and stories are some of the best in movies period. Learn from the best I say!
Awesome compilation. Thanks! :)
Thanks!
Well made video, loved it!
HAHA the Tarantino checklist!! I love it.
I find it astonishing how all this great writers have incredibly different methods,which proves that only you can teach yourself how to write your own movie and develop your own method.
hey, I just filmed a video about the dos and dont's of screenwriting in Hollywood! I think you would enjoy it!
czcams.com/video/CFg5OloiZzM/video.html
That day/night method is actually brilliant, especially when you're finding the structuring goes well and want to ensure you're flowing things. Imagining "oh this scene I already planned is now at night" can change the whole story and feel more connected.
2:47 Paul Thomas Anderson sounds like text-to-speech Microsoft Sam.
I’ve been watching your videos for awhile and they’re AMAZING! How do you not have a million subscribers yet, somethings not adding up.
Haha, thanks man. I appreciate the support.
Behind the Curtain No problem man, you deserve praise for putting these videos together. Also random question. What’s your opinion on film school?
Film schools can provide an environment to develop your craft in as well as make connections with other aspiring filmmakers. I went to film school and then dropped out, because there was a lack of focus on story and screenwriting; however, I met some of my strongest friends in the film school. That's a HUGE reason why I made this channel and the Behind the Curtain Membership. I'm creating a community of passionate filmmakers that can build each other up and learn from those that are actually doing what we want to do. I haven't talked about it much yet on the channel, but in addition to the exclusive interviews for the Membership, I'm also going to be doing Zoom call discussions with members, picking a screenplay to discuss each livestream. I want to be able to talk with others about the craft and we can help each other. Thanks again for supporting the channel, Jackson.
Incredible! Greetings for everyone behind the curtain!
I feel like it's incredibly relieving to hear all these acclaimed writers talk about how they don't know everything from the beginning. One of my biggest anxieties was trying to figure out how to organize my ideas and get coherent sequences on paper but to know they're just kind of trying their best too and figuring out what works for them is pretty freeing.
7:30 seems like a good way to do it. Having the acts/arc summarized over 4 pages looks manageable.
Ok... It took me one video to sub to your channel. This Video was awesome and I can't wait to watch more. Thank you.
thank you for this long video of writers contradicting each other and ultimately giving very little advice since everybody's creative mind works in a very different way.
real useful content
that's the whole point. it's a trove of advice not only offering you many approaches to try but also overall telling you that there is no exact formula you can use, so you shouldn't feel you're using a wrong approach. you seeing it as "little advice" is only because you were looking for some cheap and easy way to the top of a creative skill, which was never a possibility. it is your own failure to gain from this, not the video author and not the original creatives. hell it even gives you insight you can correlate between a directors style and their process; you could compare it to what you want to do, but you're too busy complaining to see that.
You have such an eye for minimalist aesthetic... the visuals were stunning.
hey, I just filmed a video about the dos and dont's of screenwriting in Hollywood! I think you would enjoy it!
czcams.com/video/CFg5OloiZzM/video.html
This is gold. Pure GOLD
Michael Arndt & Vince Gilligan’s advice was pure gold!
This video is really great. Thanks a lot!
Thank you!
Man I wish I had Garland's mind. His outlining sounds so clean and not tedious at all.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Vince Gilligan's all-hands-on-deck style payed off big time. It was awesome.
I just love hearing Vince Gilligan. Such a genius!
Brother, you are KILLIN' it with these videos lately. Well done. Great resource. I'm in the "outline first" camp.
Worked on a pilot with a partner who was a free-writer and, holy hell, did that suck. 😂 Never again. 😑
I appreciate your comment. I'm in that camp as well. I am realizing, however, that while writing, a more unconscious approach is beneficial. Rather than clinically following my left-brain outline, allowing myself to take different routes while writing (if the story leads that way) has produced good results. There balance of the conscious (outline) and unconscious (writing) has improved my stories a lot.
@@BehindtheCurtain Agreed. You say "unconscious," I say the characters themselves will guide the story. It took me a long time to get to this point, where the characters dictate the direction of the story instead of me wrestling them into submission. All I gotta do is complicate things for them just enough that they change for the better. 🙏 Love your work. Keep it up.
Fucking awesome! This is so helpful.There are so many ways here. You can try them all and see which fits you.Or you will be able to create your own method of working ,your own style of structure. This is awesome!!! Thanks. Already subscribed. :)
As someone who finds it nearly impossible to outline before a completed rough draft, this video feels like vindication. Thank you!
You made a video on how people put their minds to work, it was very helpful for me, i hope you fo great!
Glad it was helpful!
Absolute gem of a video
Aaron Sorkin always has the best analogies to explain what he is saying
Great advice, and stuff to try if you haven't. I've used every one of these techniques over the course of my adventures writing for the movies.
Thanks for watching!
Absolutely important channel.
Bosses. Thanks for posting, very helpful.
Outlining, over the years I have honestly gotten to the point where I have a story and I know where it starts, where it will go and how it ends. Planning everything out. But in the process of making it many of the thing I made and plan are just going to the chopping board, I know the beginning and the ending but the way getting there keep change everytime I write a line (also How They Wrote House M.D)
I'm someone who is very detailed in the way I outline, but I've found that sometimes that can box me in. I think the sweet spot for me is having a strong understanding of the story before I write, but being okay with going off track while I write if the story leads me there.
THIS IS SO GREAT
What an amazing freaking video. Thnak you!
Thanks for watching!