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Screenwriting in a Project-Based Industry: KNOW YOUR VALUE

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  What is a Project Based Industry Screenwriters work in a project-based industry.  What is a project-based industry?  It's an industry where you get paid to work on a project, and the project is over once the work is done.  This is why unions (WGA-E & WGA-W) were created to help screenwriters en masse.   As screenwriters, we work from one movie, series, or commercial to another.  We have unions, managers, and agents who lend their services to help smooth the transition from project to project. Why work in a project-based industry? This business of screenwriting is one of the most overlooked careers in the film industry.  Anyone can write a screenplay, but to be a professional screenwriter requires a certain amount of enhanced research skills, knowledge-based understanding of the screenplay language, and crazy effort to be shrewdly relentless when doing a rewrite.   Screenwriters work in this industry for various different reasons.  Here ...

Leaning Into The Hollywood Perspective

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As a screenwriting teacher, I have to share as much knowledge as I can in an organized way.  It is the only way my mind works with screenwriting.  The more jumbled it is, the more Frankenstein-ish my screenplay will come out.  After years of reading and writing screenplays, I've been trying to write with The Hollywood Perspective. WHAT IS THE HOLLYWOOD PERSPECTIVE? The Hollywood Perspective is when a screenplay is written, it is written structurally, with real emotions of the characters, visual energy in each scene, and a deep fall into the writer's imagination where the plot feels surreal.  It is the perspective in which most screenwriters watch films, then sit down at their computer and try their best to write a colorful, emotional, and moving film. Mind you, a screenwriter will seek to write films like Titanic or John Q. but never think about the thousands of people who worked on the entire project.   There were set designers, wardrobe artists, hair and make-...