New GITS Initiative: Movie Analysis
Over the weekend, Go Into The Story turned 7 years old. As that birthday approached, I thought it was a good time to step back and reflect about the blog. As part of that process, I invited your feedback here and here. The response has been great via the blog, email, and Twitter. So each day this week, I’d like to present some initiatives that have surfaced during this process. A few of them I’m just going to go ahead and take on. Some, however, I’m going to request your additional feedback.
New GITS Initiative: Movie Analysis
By now, anyone who has spent any length of time following the blog should know the mantra I came up with over 5 years ago: Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages. These three activities are critical to your growth as a screenwriter and/or TV writer.
We have the bi-weekly script analysis series which has created a great resource as well as a growing set of Scene-By-Scene Breakdowns as well, as I hope, a deeper understanding of the craft from people who have participated or tracked the series. So that speaks to Read Scripts.
We have also run series in the past to inspire people to Write Pages including the Go On Your Own Quest challenge which resulted in literally hundreds of people writing screenplays in addition to annual scene-writing and dialogue-writing challenges. [I want to try another approach to GOYOQ as well as expand our writing challenges — check back this week for more information on those initiatives.]
But what about Watch Movies? If you want to succeed as a screenwriter, you need to immerse yourself in the world of cinema. So a rather obvious idea came to mind: If we read and discuss scripts on a bi-weekly basis, why not analyze movies in the alternate weeks?
So starting tomorrow, I want to give this a try: A bi-weekly movie analysis forum. I’m not sure what form it will take and obviously a lot depends on you. If people get involved, we should be able to have some really interesting and informative discussions about current movies as they are released in theaters.
First up: Ex Machina. I know it’s a risk starting this initiative with an indie type movie presuming fewer people have seen it, but it’s a really fine movie, definitely worthy of exploration and analysis. Plus I’d like to give folks more time to see Mad Max: Fury Road, which I’d like to take on for our next movie analysis.
Okay, that’s one initiative. I have some other ‘sexier’ ones in mind, but honestly watching movies and analyzing them is so important, this one belongs at the top of the list.
And there’s this: Would you be interested in a Quest Writing Workshop?
If enough people enroll, I will conduct a three-day Quest Writing Workshop in Santa Monica, California in July. This is a chance for you to work with me on your story directly in a live setting.
Possible weekends:
Friday, July 17-Sunday, 19
Friday, July 24-Sunday, July 26
For more information, go here. If you are interested, email me.
Onward!
UPDATE: After receiving some emails, comments and tweet from folks, I’m going to push back the start of this series for 2 weeks in order to give people more time to catch up on some movies. Perhaps we should start with The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ex Machina, and Mad Max: Fury Road.
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