In How to Write a Selling Screenplay, he takes writers through the entire process, from developing a story to finding the best agent. Using an annotated version of an often-optioned screenplay of his own, and citing examples from movies ranging from Casablanca and Lethal Weapon to Sling Blade and The English Patient, he discusses how to create three-dimensional characters, find a compelling story, build an airtight plot structure, fine-tune dialogue, and much more. Keane's tips on the difference between writing for film and television, as well as his advice on dealing with Hollywood movers and shakers, make this an essential companion for people writing their first--or their fortieth--screenplay.

    You get a thorough orientation to operating production development and single-purpose production companies. You'll also become familiar with the team roles needed to operate these companies, and learn how to attach and direct them. For those outside the US, also included is information on how to produce successful films without government funding.This edition has been updated to include comprehensive information on the internal greenlighting process, government financing, and determining actual cost-of-money. It includes new, simplified project evaluation tools, expediting funding and distribution.Together with its companion website (www.focalpress.com/cw/leejr-978024081... contains valuable forms and spreadsheets, tutorials, and samples-this handbook presents both instruction and worksheet support to independent producers at all levels of experience.

    D.B. Gilles explains the fundamental skills and techniques of screenwriting and making a short film arming you with the two calling cards you'll need to break into Hollywood – without having spent the tuition or a minute in a classroom.

    In the past decade, Hollywood has endured a cataclysm on a par with the end of silent film and the demise of the studio system. Stars and directors have seen their power dwindle, while writers and producers lift their best techniques from TV, comic books, and the toy biz. The future of Hollywood is being written by powerful corporate brands like Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, and Lego, as well as censors in China.Ben Fritz chronicles this dramatic shakeup with unmatched skill, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood. He dives deeply into the fruits of the Sony hack to show how the previous model, long a creative and commercial success, lost its way. And he looks ahead through interviews with dozens of key players at Disney, Marvel, Netflix, Amazon, Imax, and others to discover how they have reinvented the business. He shows us, for instance, how Marvel replaced stars with “universes,” and how Disney remade itself in Apple’s image and reaped enormous profits.But despite the destruction of the studios’ traditional playbook, Fritz argues that these seismic shifts signal the dawn of a new heyday for film. The Big Picture shows the first glimmers of this new golden age through the eyes of the creative mavericks who are defining what our movies will look like in the new era.

    This is a book about the business of managing your screenwriting career, from advice on choosing an agent to tips on juggling three deal-making breakfasts a day. Prescriptive and useful, Breakfast with Sharks is a real guide to navigating the murky waters of the Hollywood system.Unlike most of the screenwriting books available, here’s one that tells you what to do after you’ve finished your surefire-hit screenplay. Written from the perspective of Michael Lent, an in-the-trenches working screenwriter in Hollywood, this is a real-world look into the script-to-screen business as it is practiced today.Breakfast with Sharks is filled with useful advice on everything from the ins and outs of moving to Los Angeles to understanding terms like “spec,” “option,” and “assignment.” Here you’ll learn what to expect from agents and managers and who does what in the studio hierarchy. And most important, Breakfast with Sharks will help you nail your pitch so the studio exec can’t say no.Rounded out with a Q&A section and resource lists of script competitions, film festivals, trade associations, industry publications, and more, Breakfast with Sharks is chock-full of “take this and use it right now” information for screenwriters at any stage of their careers.

    In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the landscape of television began an unprecedented transformation. While the networks continued to chase the lowest common denominator, a wave of new shows, first on premium cable channels like HBO and then basic cable networks like FX and AMC, dramatically stretched television’s narrative inventiveness, emotional resonance, and artistic ambition. No longer necessarily concerned with creating always-likable characters, plots that wrapped up neatly every episode, or subjects that were deemed safe and appropriate, shows such as The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Deadwood, The Shield, and more tackled issues of life and death, love and sexuality, addiction, race, violence, and existential boredom. Just as the Big Novel had in the 1960s and the subversive films of New Hollywood had in 1970s, television shows became the place to go to see stories of the triumph and betrayals of the American Dream at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This revolution happened at the hands of a new breed of auteur: the all-powerful writer-show runner. These were men nearly as complicated, idiosyncratic, and “difficult” as the conflicted protagonists that defined the genre. Given the chance to make art in a maligned medium, they fell upon the opportunity with unchecked ambition. Combining deep reportage with cultural analysis and historical context, Brett Martin recounts the rise and inner workings of a genre that represents not only a new golden age for TV but also a cultural watershed. Difficult Men features extensive interviews with all the major players, including David Chase (The Sopranos), David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire), Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm (Mad Men), David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood), and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), in addition to dozens of other writers, directors, studio executives, actors, production assistants, makeup artists, script supervisors, and so on. Martin takes us behind the scenes of our favorite shows, delivering never-before-heard story after story and revealing how cable TV has distinguished itself dramatically from the networks, emerging from the shadow of film to become a truly significant and influential part of our culture.

    If you're a line producer, production manager, production supervisor, assistant director or production coordinator--the book has everything you'll need (including all the forms, contracts, releases and checklists) to set up and run a production--from finding a production office to turning over delivery elements. Even if you know what you're doing, you will be thrilled to find everything you need in one place. If you're not already working in film production, but think you'd like to be, read the book -- and then decide. If you choose to pursue this career path, you'll know what to expect, you'll be prepared, and you'll be ten steps ahead of everyone else just starting out.New topics and information in the fourth edition include: * Low-budget independent films, including documentaries and shorts* Information specific to television production and commercials* The industry's commitment to go green and how to do it* Coverage of new travel and shipping regulations* Updated information on scheduling, budgeting, deal memos, music clearances, communications, digital production, and new forms throughout*Supplementary material and sample forms available at www.focalpress.com/9780240811505

    "I heartily recommend (this book) for beginners and pros alike."--Steven Bochco.

    Ted Hope, whose films have garnered 12 Oscar nominations, draws from his own personal experiences working on the early films of Ang Lee, Eddie Burns, Hal Hartley, Michel Gondry, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Solondz and other indie mavericks, relating those decisions that brought him success as well as the occasional failure.Whether navigating negotiations with Harvey Weinstein over final cuts or clashing with high-powered CAA agents over their clients, Hope offers behind-the-scenes stories from the wild and often heated world of low-budget cinema—where art and commerce collide. As mediator between these two opposing interests, Hope offers his unique perspective on how to make movies while keeping your integrity intact and how to create a sustainable business enterprise out of that art while staying true to yourself. Against a backdrop of seismic changes in the indie-film industry, from corporate co-option to the rise of social media, Hope for Film provides not only an entertaining and intimate ride through the ups and downs of the business of art-house movies over the last 25 years, but also hope for its future.

    Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent movement from obscurity to the Oscars, most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who with his brother, Bob, made Miramax an indie powerhouse. Candid, penetrating and controversial, DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES is a must read for anyone interested in the film world."In DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES, Biskind takes on the movie industry of the 1990s and again gets the story....Peter Biskind captures his era as John Dunne did that of the Zanucks." Frank Rich, The New York Times"Dishy, teeming, superbly reported and packed with lively inside anecdotes...[a] juicy and fascinating expose." - Entertainment Weekly

    Goldman opens his long-awaited sequel by writing about his years of exile before he found himself--again--as a valuable writer in Hollywood. Fans of the two-time Oscar-winning writer (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men) have anxiously waited for this follow-up since his career serpentined into a variety of big hits and critical bombs in the '80s and '90s. Here Goldman scoops on The Princess Bride (his own favorite), Misery, Maverick, Absolute Power, and others. Goldman's conversational style makes him easy to read for the film novice but meaty enough for the detail-oriented pro. His tendency to ramble into other subjects may be maddening (he suddenly switches from being on set with Eastwood to anecdotes about Newman and Garbo), but we can excuse him because of one fact alone: he is so darn entertaining. Like most sequels, Which Lie follows the structure of the original. Both Goldman books have three parts: stories about his movies, a deconstruction of Hollywood (here the focus is on great movie scenes), and a workshop for screenwriters. (The paperback version of the first book also comes with his full-length screenplay of Butch; his collected works are also worth checking out). This final segment is another gift--a toolbox--for the aspiring screenwriter. Goldman takes newspaper clippings and other ideas and asks the reader to diagnose their cinematic possibilities. Goldman also gives us a new screenplay he's written (The Big A), which is analyzed--with brutal honesty--by other top writers. With its juicy facts and valuable sidebars on what makes good screenwriting, this is another entertaining must-read from the man who coined what has to be the most-quoted adage about movie-business success: "Nobody knows anything." --Doug Thomas

    But the time is not far off, Live Cinema and Its Techniques demonstrates, when a director or a collaborative team of filmmakers working across the internet will create "live" movies that will be sent instantly via satellite for viewing throughout the world.Yet the creative demands posed by airing live sporting contests, as impressive as the final product is, pale in contrast with the ambitions of "cinematic auteurs," who are inspired by great directors, like Serge Eisenstein, Max Ophuls, or Alfred Hitchcock, among many others. As daunting as the challenge is, the process of integrating the highest artistic standards of previous generations into the medium of "live cinema" can, Coppola explains, be achieved, thus creating an entirely new art form for the so-called "screen." Tapping into his own encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth-century film history, Coppola threads his vision of this burgeoning cinematic medium with autobiographical and historical vignettes gleaned from the past, recalling his own boyhood obsession with film and his early fascination with the "Golden Age of Television," when 1950s viewers were treated to live productions of classics, like Days of Wine and Roses and Requiem for a Heavyweight.Especially exciting is the exhilaration and drama that results from retraining actors and using a multitude of cameras to create a film that has the in-the-moment energy of a live event. Having already tried out this new medium with "proof-of-concept workshops" at Oklahoma City Community College and at UCLA, Coppola has created an invaluable guide for students and teachers alike. Filled with discussions of how to rehearse actors, how to choose scenery and location, and how to overcome theatrical, as well as technical, obstacles, Live Cinema and Its Techniques reveals how the spontaneity of this new genre can ultimately transport filmmaking into a new era of creativity still unimaginable today.Featuring chapters on:A Short History of Film and TelevisionThe Actors, Acting, and RehearsalThe Question of Style in the CinemaObstacles and Other Thoughts on Live Cinema No Matter What They May BeEquipment: Now and in the Near Future

    but the movies rarely actually get made!Whatever happened to Darren Aronofsky's Batman movie starring Clint Eastwood? Why were there so many scripts written over the years for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's fourth Indiana Jones movie? Why was Lara Croft's journey to the big screen so tortuous, and what prevented Paul Verhoeven from filming what he calls one of the greatest scripts ever written? Why did Ridley Scott's Crisis in the Hot Zone collapse days away from filming, and were the Beatles really set to star in Lord of the Rings? What does Neil Gaiman think of the attempts to adapt his comic book series The Sandman?All these lost projects, and more, are covered in this major book, which features many exclusive interviews with the writers and directors involved.

    In interviews with Hollywood screenwriters from across the board—Oscar winners and novices alike—Cohen explores what sets apart the blockbuster successes from the downright disasters.Tracing the fortunes of twenty-five films, including Troy, Erin Brockovich, Lost in Translation, and The Aviator, Cohen offers insider access to back lots and boardrooms, to studio heads, directors, and to the over-caffeinated screenwriters themselves. As the story of each film evolves from the drawing board to the big screen, Cohen proves that how a script is written, sold, developed, and filmed can be just as dramatic and intriguing as the movie itself—especially when the resulting movie is a fiasco.Covering films of all kinds—from tongue-in-cheek romps like John Waters's A Dirty Shame to Oscar winners like Monster's Ball and The Hours—Screen Plays is an anecdote-filled, often inspiring, always revealing look at the alchemy of the movie business. With Cohen as your expert guide, Screen Plays exposes how and why certain films (such as Gladiator) become "tent poles," those runaway successes every studio needs to survive, and others become train wrecks. Full of critical clues on how to sell a script—and avoid seeing it destroyed before the director calls Action!—it's the one book every aspiring screenwriter will find irresistible.

    Publishing is one of the most complex and lucrative parts of the music business. Industry expert Randall Wixen covers everything from mechanical, performing and synch rights to sub-publishing, foreign rights, copyright basics, types of publishing deals, advice on representation and more. Get a view from the top, in plain English. This updated and revised edition has been prepared in light of the ever-changing landscape of music publishing, taking into account factors like illegal downloading and recent announcements from the Copyright Royalty Board. With an added "DIY" chapter, the author demonstrates why the playing field has changed for the traditional copyright adminstrators, and how musicians just starting out can protect their own work until they hit the big time.