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Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award – Final Deadline in 1 Week!

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award – Final Deadline in 1 Week!

The final deadline for the WriteMovies Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award is in just one week on May 9th! Don’t forget to enter for your chance to win great prizes – as well as getting FREE, automatic entry to our Spring Contest and the chance to win the Grand Prize of $3500!

As tomorrow is May 4th – also known as Star Wars Day! – we look to celebrate the most successful sci-fi franchise of all time (sorry Trekkies!).

Since the release of STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE in 1977, the Star Wars universe has expanded across every medium of storytelling. With games, books, TV shows, spin-offs and sequels, even the most dedicated fan struggles to keep up with the vast number of stories.

For writers, the STAR WARS universe represents the potential of your IP. The sci-fi and fantasy genres are arguably the most successful for building large franchises and extended universes, probably because of the freedom the writer has in creating the setting and sheer level of imagination involved; the lore of these worlds gives the writer extra tools to tell their story, which can itself end up captivating audiences.

However, this can also pose risks to the structure of the story. Imagine if A NEW HOPE had opened by introducing us to all the complex politics, history, and technology of a galaxy far, far away. It would a total snooze-fest, right? Instead, it uses its lore to enhance the story, focusing instead on the Hero’s Journey of Luke Skywalker and only explaining the minimum we need to know.

The key to a great sci-fi and fantasy script is creating a fascinating world for the characters to inhabit without losing focus on the story at heart.

Have you written the next STAR WARS? Have you come up with a fantastical world for audiences to fall in love with? Enter the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award by the deadline on May 9th before it’s too late!

This Week’s News – STAR WARS, Disney, and streaming services

This Week’s News – STAR WARS, Disney, and streaming services

2020 hasn’t been the year anyone expected for movie releases, and the entertainment world has changed a lot. This week’s entertainment news shows the ongoing shift towards streaming services as movie theatres continue to struggle, with huge new projects for STAR WARS and a price rise for Disney+. Here’s our pick of the news…

  • A new adaptation of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is said to be one of the biggest budget films to ever be made in Germany, and it’s already been picked up by Netflix. Streaming services are competing more and more in the biggest leagues with movie theatres shut worldwide because of the pandemic; how this will affect the future remains to be seen, but Warner Bros already announced that they plan to simultaneously release all their productions in 2021 simultaneously in cinemas and on HBO Max. – Variety
  • Subscribers to Disney+ in the United States will see a price rise in 2021, increasing by $1 to $7.99 per month. With Disney shifting a number of major films from cinema to streaming releases, and with their streaming service becoming increasingly more popular, this is unsurprising – but also demonstrates how significant streaming is now. – The Verge
  • The price rise comes as Disney lays out their plans for Marvel going forward. They announced that THE FANTASTIC FOUR will receive a new movie (hopefully better than the last one…), Chadwick Boseman’s iconic role in BLACK PANTHER will not be recast, and explained how the films and TV shows will interweave with one another from now on. – Hollywood Reporter
  • Keeping with Disney news, they’ve announced a whole lot of new STAR WARS projects for the next ten years, including new seasons of THE MANDALORIAN and new Disney+ series such as RANGERS OF THE NEW REPUBLIC and AHSOKA. The next STAR WARS feature film has also been announced: ROGUE SQUADRON is set to be directed by Patty Jenkins, best known for WONDER WOMAN. – Hollywood Reporter
  • Among other Star Wars news, the original actor for Darth Vader, Dave Prowse, sadly died this week at the age of 85. The character was voiced by James Earl Jones, but Prowse was responsible for the iconic physical performance that made him so intimidating. Darth Vader will live on though; it’s been revealed that Hayden Christensen is set to return for the role in the OBI-WAN miniseries, which will also star Ewan McGregor. – Entertainment Weekly
  • Good news for fans of Robert Eggers (like us here at WriteMovies), who directed THE VVITCH and THE LIGHTHOUSE: he’s completed production of his latest feature film, THE NORTHMAN. In a year when so many productions have been delayed and disrupted, it’s great to know that significant progress is being made by one of the most exciting directors out there right now. – IndieWire

We’re always keeping a close eye on our industry, and it’s something all screenwriters should do too. Because we pitch all our winners to industry, we need to know the lay of the land – and the landscape keeps changing rapidly at the moment!

If you want us to get your script out there, submit now to our contests. Enter our Romance and Comedy Award and you’ll also get free entry to the Winter 2021 Screenwriting Contest, with the chance to win script development, pitching to industry, and the $3500 Grand Prize!

 

Script Sales from May 2020

Script Sales from May 2020

Script Pipeline has reported on the latest Script Sales from May 2020 – a clear sign that producers and studios are still searching for great scripts through the lockdowns! Here’s our pick of the news.

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Writing Insights: The Art of Exposition Part 1 – Using Visuals

Writing Insights: The Art of Exposition Part 1 – Using Visuals

When you need to convey information in your script – about characters’ backstories, their relationships, the setting or story – it’s a natural instinct to turn straight to exposition, telling the audience what they need to know through dialogue.

And there’s no doubt that exposition is a necessary evil in scriptwriting. There are always going to be things that need to be established for the audience to understand what’s going on in your story!

Exposition is almost always a problem, though. Firstly, people don’t really talk in an expositional manner – stating a whole load of facts, one after the other – and they don’t tell people things they already know. So exposition often feels fake or forced, seeming to be there just for the audience’s sake.

The other problem is that it often has a negative effect on the story. An “info-dump”, as it’s often known, slows the narrative, putting the story on hold so the audience can learn things. But, overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown at them, they’ll often just switch off!

So how do you get around this problem? How do you communicate the information the audience needs without boring them, overwhelming them, or making your characters talk like aliens trying (and failing) to impersonate human beings?

Well, the first thing you can do is to fully utilize the visual medium of film, and forget about dialogue entirely…

As a screenwriter, looking at the page all day, it can be easy to get stuck in a world of words. “Surely,” you think to yourself, “if I want to get some information across, someone has to state it out loud.”

But sight is the sense that human beings use the most, and it’s possible to communicate a huge amount about all kinds of things through nothing but visuals. An actor can tell us a lot about a character’s feelings with just a glance or an expression – or even by doing nothing at all!

The famous “Married Life” segment from UP is a great example of how to use visuals well. Decades of marriage are summarised – complete with information about the characters, their relationship, their families, and the things they go through – in four short minutes, and without a single word being spoken.

The power of visuals applies to world-building, too. The famous opening shot of STAR WARS sees Princess Leia’s tiny ship being pursued by the massive Star Destroyer of Darth Vader, and the difference of scale immediately tells us a lot about the two sides. Darth Vader and the Empire are powerful and dominant, while Princess Leia and the Rebel Alliance are the underdogs.

So whenever you think you need to use exposition to get some information across, stop for just a minute and think. Maybe there’s a way to get things across without anyone having to speak a single word. Try to picture things instead. Don’t forget – fundamentally, you’re not just writing a screenplay, you’re writing a film as well!

Keep an eye out for Part 2 of this article, where we’ll be talking about those times when you can’t use visuals – and how to make exposition interesting, so that the audience won’t even notice it’s there!

Reimagining the STAR WARS Franchise as a Single Film: The Case of Topher Grace

Reimagining the STAR WARS Franchise as a Single Film: The Case of Topher Grace

Image Credit: The Source

Back when THE LAST JEDI came out, here at WriteMovies we had mixed reactions. Just like millions of STAR WARS fans, we both loved and hated different parts of the film. This is certainly not the case for STAR WARS: ALWAYS, the latest material to be inspired by the franchise. Although not officially licensed by Disney, this new trailer is quickly making the rounds online. It’s five minutes long, and the only bad thing we can say about it is that it hasn’t been turned into a full-blown feature film yet.

The trailer was obviously made with nothing but pure, unadulterated love for the franchise. In fact, STAR WARS: ALWAYS was a combined effort between pro trailer editor Jeff Yorkes and actor/long-time Star Wars fanatic, Topher Grace. In a move that would have made his nerdy THAT 70s SHOW alter ego proud, Grace used Yorkes’ long-time expertise in condensing movie plots to create a working trailer for the greatest STAR WARS movie that never was. The goal of the trailer was simple: to envision the entire Star Wars narrative as a single movie.

In order to accomplish this, Grace and Yorkes took some of the best footage from all existing STAR WARS films, including the originals, the prequels, the sequels, ROGUE ONE, and even SOLO. Collider also noticed that they even managed to work in some deleted scenes from the franchise. Needless to say, it contains everything you’ve ever wanted to see in a STAR WARS movie. STAR WARS: ALWAYS begins with Luke Skywalker receiving Anakin’s lightsaber from Obi-Wan Kenobi, followed by flashbacks to the Clone Wars, tied together by scenes from ROGUE ONE. Han Solo’s story arc provides the bridge into the new trilogy. Just as Obi-Wan faced Vader, we see Kylo Ren confronting Luke Skywalker near the end. In many ways, the five-minute trailer provided a linear and much more streamlined narrative, which the official films couldn’t accomplish for some fans.

The trailer certainly makes a case for the concept to be turned into a full-blown film. STAR WARS: ALWAYS reveals just how passionate the fans of the franchise are, and how they’re willing to go further than the films to create a lasting and meaningful connection with George Lucas’ creation. In many ways, Grace and Yorkes are no different from the person who bought Luke Skywalker’s original lightsaber from A NEW HOPE, which Lottoland reveals cost a cool $240,000 at auction. They’re just doing what true fans do – devoting their resources to their beloved intellectual property.

In fact, Grace had already proved that he can pull off making a STAR WARS film. Back in 2012, Grace was responsible for putting together STAR WARS: EPISODE III.5: THE EDITOR STRIKES BACK, an 85-minute film that efficiently condensed the three prequels with help from cuts from the original trilogy, bits of dialogue from audio book recordings, music from the animated CLONE WARS, and even his own original STAR WARS text crawl. The result was a surprisingly good singular STAR WARS movie. Who knows, as the franchise is set to keep expanding, maybe Grace will get to direct and edit his own STAR WARS film soon.

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