by John | Nov 21, 2017 | Movie Reviews and TV Reviews, Updates, WriteMovies News
In this JUSTICE LEAGUE review, Jamie White gives his verdict on DC’s superhero team-up and why he’d be more optimistic about seeing more DCEU films in the future…
I love DC. Their characters are rich, the storylines can be tragic, entertaining and enjoyable. I hate the DC expanded universe (DCEU). It’s been dull, gloomy, just not very comic booky, and although JUSTICE LEAGUE was a step in the right direction, it still had major problems.
The big issue is the fact that this film had two directors – Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon. Both have directed comic book films before, but both have very different styles – in fact, they’re almost polar opposites. Snyder definitely appreciates the visuals of comics more, while Whedon is all about tone and style, and while you’d think that would be a great match it really, really isn’t. These two directors’ styles clash horribly throughout the film that you can pinpoint when one scene is Snyder’s and when one is Whedon, and this makes the film feel very disjointed.
The first half of the film especially. There is no focus, no thread from one scene to another. It’s all just stuff happening. Then something else happens. But there’s no connection. Or rather, it’s a building being held together with sticky tape – the connection is there, but it’s weak. The film does pick up from around the halfway mark when a certain super man comes into the fold – it feels like we finally have a proper protagonist with more character depth. The film gains direction when Superman becomes a factor in the story, which it didn’t have before.
Now, this doesn’t redeem the film entirely – it just becomes a fairly average film with a lack of tension and consequences. Still a step in the right direction, I guess. I didn’t hate the film, but I didn’t like it. A lot of the action was poorly edited, the jokes didn’t land, and the character chemistry was just not there yet (it only really existed with Clark (Henry Cavill) and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) who of course have shared the most screen time as these characters in the DCEU.)
What I will say though is this: I was not excited to see this film, BUT it has given me some of Superman’s (newfound) hope that the franchise will improve. Let’s see what you’ve got DC…
© WriteMovies 2017. Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
by John | Nov 19, 2017 | Highlights, Interviews, Updates, WriteMovies News
Taking Flight in THE SQUADRON: VFX expert Habib Zargarpour on becoming a writer-director and the getting the balance right with real VFX.
In the third of our series of interviews, our Ian Kennedy asks Habib about his transition to writing and directing, the unique eye his new film will give to WW2’s aerial warfare, and why VFX pros have to keep it real too.
IAN: So next for you is THE SQUADRON which you’ve written and are directing!
HABIB: Yes, we’re doing a lot of visual effects shots for this shoot, we’ve got a lot of actors in cockpits, we’ll have to replace the background with what’s going on in the skies. It’s very tricky to light and to put greenscreen around real authentic planes, because the light has to move to show that the plane is moving, but you don’t want something [a heavy light] that could fall and wreck the [actual] plane, so we have to be super-careful with that, there’s a lot of technical challenges to it.
IAN: I was lucky enough to be consulted by Alex Ross (THE SQUADRON producer and WriteMovies founder) about one of your very early drafts of this one, it was fascinating to see how visual your ideas were – too many writers come from the opposite direction, getting heavy with dialogue and exposition, and you’re coming from the other way round with that.
HABIB: This is interesting to hear, because I don’t know any different, from you guys’ point of view! I do know I’m getting better at it for sure, it really helps to see how things evolve once you start shooting, we also got great synergy between the actors when we shot in a warehouse in Vancouver, them playing off each other. When I wrote I had the cast in mind, and things have worked out even better than I thought – they enhance it, they also bring stuff to the table by saying things like “I think my character would be more “…” in this situation, he’d say this other thing…” – so that’s woven into it. This next shoot should come together really well because all of these elements will come together, and hopefully the continued dialogue will keep getting even better at the same time. I’m looking forward to sending you a rough cut of the trailer, see what you think!
IAN: That’ll be amazing yeah! The pictures I have in my mind from what I’ve seen in the script are a really distinctive use of that whole World War 2 setting. Sometimes we feel like we’ve seen all there is to see of that conflict, but there’s always more to explore and it felt like you’ve put a good new edge into that.
HABIB: I had a lot of fun preparing for it, even though the timeframe was very tight, I only had 4 weeks to get all that in mind, finishing the script, getting the props, getting wardrobe, all the logistics for the travel and permits and things like that. One of the more fun things was to design and 3D print and build the props that I couldn’t find, and others that I wanted to custom design, taking advantage of my ArtCenter experience, building models of products that look authentic. I was able to apply those and use the latest technology – I have a 3D printer that I use, that gets the models and then we do the finishing and polish on them. The other things are all authentic that I was able to gather over a long time, by going to air races and going online on eBay, there were these authentic goggles and flight caps. A lot of things needed adjusting for size because people were smaller then, which was interesting!
IAN: CGI has really taken over so much of VFX in recent decades. Have you missed working with physical materials and objects, like the models you’ve brought back into THE SQUADRON?
HABIB: [You should use] whatever can be done the most easily that makes the most sense and most helps the actors – you’d want to do something practical, if it’s something they’re wearing or touching. I myself had to do a lot of CGI for some of the very complex aerial combat scenes. That’s always a question of how much of the real you can bring in. Theoretically you could shoot someone against a greenscreen and put the whole airplane around them, as opposed to filming them in a real cockpit around them, each of those brings different challenges and pros and cons to it. Usually, the more you can get the real stuff in it, the easier it’s gonna be to get the right look.
IAN: And there’s been an audience backlash against overdone excessive CGI and unreal characters, so it’s important to keep that balance.
HABIB: Yes, and I recently saw Dunkirk, and I know Christopher Nolan’s a massive fan of ‘as much practical as possible’. I’ll send you my trailer rough cut soon too…
IAN: Definitely. And we’d love to talk about your work as a lead designer in famous computer games too!
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by John | Nov 17, 2017 | Highlights, Our Winners, Updates, WriteMovies News
David made the top 3 of our Summer 2017 Writing Contest with a well-written, funny, and tense action-comedy. A real CHARMER. For coming in third David receives a year of free script development, guaranteed pitching from industry and exclusive prizes from InkTip.
Here’s a little background on David:
I retired to Northern California from Massachusetts several years ago and took up writing screenplays – not golf. I’m a “gen Boomer” devotee of 1930s to 1950s movies that feature dialogue, romance, and humor. I naturally tend to write contemporary takes in those genres that might appeal to younger audiences as well as all age groups.
My writing education has been limited to basic composition at college, a creative writing class with a Tufts University professor and a beginner’s screenwriting course at Santa Rosa Junior College. CHARMER is my first “completed” script.
An here’s his logline for CHARMER:
A burned-out middle-aged accountant and a young daredevil woman put their polar opposite lifestyles aside when they team up on dangerous hostage-rescue mission.
You can head over to follow in David’s footsteps in our latest contest…
by John | Nov 12, 2017 | Interviews, Updates, WriteMovies News
The eye of the storm: in the second of our series of VFX interviews, VFX expert Habib Zargarpour reveals how his teams achieved such awesome effects in A PERFECT STORM, TWISTER, STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, STAR WARS EPISODE I (THE PHANTOM MENACE) and many other films.
In the second of our series of VFX interviews, Habib tells our Ian Kennedy how to achieve natural disasters and why yogurt holds the key to VFX. His credits include two STAR TREK movies, STAR WARS EPISODE 1 (THE PHANTOM MENACE), THE BOURNE IDENTITY, JUMANJI, THE MASK, SPAWN and lots more so he must be onto something!
HABIB: I’ve had the chance to work on a lot of disaster films, especially natural disasters. For those we would work with storyboards but also with tons of real-world reference, which was difficult. People have seen on TV what tornados look like, stormy seas look like, how water looks, what fire looks like, things that we had very difficult but precise things to match to. There were other projects where we had much more creative freedom in the effect, for example on Star Trek, there would be maybe one concept art of the energy ribbon nexus effect in STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, then we would come up with what that would look like in 3 dimensions, how that would move, and what the colours would be, so that there’s a nice range there. Other times we would take, let’s say the tornado effect in Twister, turn it upside down, turn it around and that would be the rocket flow, you know? I equate it to making yogurt – you always need a little bit of [older] yogurt that helps to get the new one going, it saves you a bit of time, you know? And so for example, for A PERFECT STORM we had to do sprays and splashes of water, but we already had a particle system from TWISTER and we were able to do different things with it. How to we take things that are meant to simulate a dust storm and something that looks dusty and thick, and make it look like water vapor, make it look like a splash. There’s the physics of how all that moves, but when it comes to the look of it, there’s actually a lot of similarities between dust in the air and spray and water mist in the air, you study the difference. We added in light penetrating deeper which was able to scatter more, and that gives you the water splash. We had real water splashes to match to on set, and references of stormy seas – that kind of stuff’s really tough.
A still from one of Habib’s films, A PERFECT STORM.
Things have come a long way in 17 years since A PERFECT STORM. Software is able to simulate all the different components of water, it still takes a huge amount of time to run those things, but at least some of it’s more achievable all in one place, whereas back then we had to divide things up into elements separately so the machines could deal with it, and the artists, actually. We learned a lot from meteorologists and people who study oceans and storms, I don’t know whether they gained anything from us other than enjoying it visually. It’s amazing watching on TV these days, it’s a strange combination of things going on at the same time, like earthquakes and watching these hurricanes going on through all the time. At the time I was working on TWISTER I had trouble driving, because I would get distracted by cloud formations in the skies, sometimes I’d have to pull over and take pictures of it. That could be dangerous!
IAN: I bet! So – if all the directors and DPs and VFX people you’d worked with all separately asked you to work on their different projects at exactly the same time, who would you choose?
HABIB: Oh God! (laughs) That’s a really tough question. I think it’d be a tie between Denis [Villeneuve] and John Nelson. Denis is a really great visionary director, and I know whatever John Nelson does next is gonna be maybe perfect!
© WriteMovies 2017. Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
by John | Nov 9, 2017 | Highlights, Our Winners, Results, Updates, WMC, WMC-Archive, WriteMovies News
Meet our Summer 2017 Screenwriting Contest Special TV Script Award Winner – INSURRECTION by Simon Bowler.
Learn all about our very first winner of the brand new “Best Teleplay or Pilot Award” Simon Bowler, and his script INSURRECTION. Simon is the first winner of the award we introduced to the Summer 2017 Contest and here’s your chance to learn more about him and why his script won him this accolade.
The fact we created these awards tells you something about the quality of the submissions we’ve been receiving in those categories lately – and now you can learn more about our TV winner Simon and his script… For winning Simon recevies free Development Notes, as well as a free re-entry to our Winter 2018 Contest.
Here’s some background on Simon:
“Originally from London, where he produced documentary films for the BBC and Channel 4, Simon has spent over twenty years in Los Angeles producing, writing and directing television docs and reality shows. Simon recently switched to drama and besides the multiple award-winning “Insurrection” mini-series (of which he’s written three episodes), he has written two award-winning plays (both at this year’s Austin Film Fest), a feature film, and is developing a classic horror anthology TV series.”
And here is a short introduction to the script:
INSURRECTION tells the interwoven stories of three men[ – a farmer, a slave and a senator – ]whose dangerous battles against slavery led to the American Civil War. [: farmer John Brown, slave Frederick Douglass, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas].
Follow in Simon’s footsteps and enter in our current main international contest. We’ll have even more winner bios from our Summer Contest coming shortly…
by John | Nov 2, 2017 | Movie Reviews and TV Reviews, WriteMovies News, Writing Insights
Disney. Marvel. Superheroes. Every time I feel like I’m done with the genre, Marvel seems to release a film that draws me back in… well, a little bit. This year that film was not THOR: RAGNAROK, it was SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING. But without Spidey’s refreshing re-introduction I wouldn’t have even thought about watching the third THOR installment.
Before the SPIDERMAN reboot, my interest in the MCU had fallen so low.
I have no strong feelings, one way or the other about these films. I didn’t care for CIVIL WAR, which I still haven’t watched, and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve missed anything from it. But there is no doubt that Marvel still produce some solid and entertaining films, even if they have no massive impact on my life.
THOR was a very nice mix of superhero, steampunk sci-fi, and comedy – a real good dose of comedy. I was impressed with how the film and director, Taika Waititi, balanced the odd blend of tone and genre. The comedy certainly had the New Zealand subtle, monotone style which Waititi employed brilliantly in one of his previous films, EAGLE VS SHARK. The comedy came naturally within the story and characters and hit all the right beats. Hell, this film might be the confirmation that Chris Hemsworth is more of a comic actor.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD… The story had a solid premise – with the death of Odin, Thor’s evil and power-hungry sister (Cate Blanchett, who is her usual brilliant self) was released from an other-worldly prison, and she was set on taking her throne back. The film takes Thor to unique and interesting places, but as with most superhero films, you don’t ever feel he’s in any danger.
THOR: RAGNAROK represents my biggest issue with the Marvel films, though. Yes, it’s solid, it’s funny, it has decent action, it keeps your attention but… it doesn’t do anything else. This is the type of movie you put on TV if there’s nothing else to watch – you don’t hate that you’re gonna watch it, but there’s better things out there. For me, that is every single Marvel film. There is no film in the entire roster, from IRON MAN to THOR: RAGNAROK where I would go “Oh man, I gotta watch this again!”
These Marvel films just don’t do anything spectacular – not really. They aim to grab and maintain the attention of most of its main demographic, and hey, they do that super well, but at some point, we (and by we, I mean me) need something a bit more different. There was some variety here, in HOMECOMING and even in ANT-MAN, but each of these felt like there were two hands on the wheel – the director and Marvel. As much as I could see Waititi’s style on THOR, or Edgar Wright’s on ANT-MAN, I could feel Marvel’s influence just as much.
THOR: RAGNAROK was a fine film, I enjoyed it, but that’s it. Each Marvel film is a solid 7 out of 10 now – they’ve got their formula and it works. But there’s no WOW factor. Sooner or later there needs to be some change, some variation in these films and the genre as a whole… otherwise, I might think about watching some DC films… OK maybe not, but you get my point!
What did you think of THOR: RAGNAROK? Was it another home run for Marvel, or just another superhero flick? Let us know on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
© WriteMovies 2017. Exclusive to WriteMovies – To syndicate this content for your own publication, contact ian (at) writemovies dot-com.
by John | Oct 23, 2017 | Highlights, WMC, WriteMovies News
Welcome everybody to the latest WriteMovies main contest – the Winter 2018 Screenwriting Competition!
We’re really enjoying the progress of our contests and winners, and all you writers out there, so it brings us great joy whenever a new contest starts!
After a satisfying response to the Summer Contest we decided to keep on our new special awards – the “Book with the Best Screen Potential” and “Best teleplay or Pilot” will remain a part of the Winter contest! (By the way, the Summer winners of these cool prizes will be announced this Friday. Exciting times!)
You might be familiar with our fabulous prizes: $2000 in cash for our grand prize winner, one free year of script development for our top three winners as well as guaranteed pitching to industry, and exclusive script and logline listings in InkTip’s script Directory and in their very popular magazine (sent to 1000s of producers and executives!).
Get involved with one of the few screenwriting contests that gets writers produced! And give yourself the best chance of success by checking our Writing Tips and Submissions Tips (CLICK HERE) before you submit…
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The big issue is the fact that this film had two directors – Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon. Both have directed comic book films before, but both have very different styles – in fact, they’re almost polar opposites. Snyder definitely appreciates the visuals of comics more, while Whedon is all about tone and style, and while you’d think that would be a great match it really, really isn’t. These two directors’ styles clash horribly throughout the film that you can pinpoint when one scene is Snyder’s and when one is Whedon, and this makes the film feel very disjointed.
I have no strong feelings, one way or the other about these films. I didn’t care for CIVIL WAR, which I still haven’t watched, and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve missed anything from it. But there is no doubt that Marvel still produce some solid and entertaining films, even if they have no massive impact on my life.
