Failings of the 3 hour film.

Few films need to be over 2 hours. Some rare exemptions are "Titanic" and " The Lord of the Rings." When a film starts creeping over the hour and a half mark, people start looking at their watches, yawning, start thinking about what they are going to do after the film and begin wishing they hadn't had so much soda to drink.

King Kong, I couldn't finish watching but I did skip to the end, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the story of a man who ages backwards, was so long, I began to age with him. Lawrence of Arabia, considered one of the great films, is still an unwatched film by me. I have the dvd, but the movie is 216 minutes long and it is taking forever to get to the meat of the story, the action instead there are a bunch of scenes of him riding through the desert.

When a screenplay is over 90 pages, there has to be a reason for it to be longer otherwise, you end up with a lot of unnecessary filler scenes that slow the story down. But then you don't want a story to be so short, it feels as if there is no tension or drama. For example, " The Seeker: Dark is Rising" started off so slow, then when it kicked in to gear, the seeker found everything so easy, it didn't seem as if he had to work for anything at all.

The classic page length for a screenplay is 120 pages, but not many people these days want to sit two hours in an uncomfortable seat. Especially if your target audience is teenagers.

When I write, I want the story to immediately dive into the deep end of the pool, no wading slowly through back story. I find there are more interesting ways to establish backstory and characters.

Failings of the spoof genre.

Spoof movies are popular and I clearly remember Scary Movie stating there would be no sequels.

Here are my thoughts on spoofs:

Spoof movies just arent funny but instead rely heavily on slapstick comedy. An example of an excellent comedy which did not rely slapstick is "The Hangover." This movie was so well done, I can watch it multiple times and still find it funny.

Spoof movies rely on gross humor, sex and profanity. Resorting to fart jokes, sex jokes, etc is easy. It means the writer doesn't have to be original but instead can fall back on predictable jokes. Movie ticket prices are high and concession food prices are even higher, at least give the audience a film worthy enough to spend money on.

Spoof movies really can only be watched once. George Lucas is an excellent storyteller. He creates films that can stand up to repeated viewings. Spoof movies are maybe funny once but after that, they are just not worth the dvd prices.

For those greenlighting these films, take a look at past box office performances for these films, take a look at dvd sales. Do you really want to spend millions of dollars on a stupid film that will barely sale any dvds? Apparently you do because these films keep getting made.

For example, MacGruber. Wow, Hollywood is really running out of ideas if they selected an SNL skit to spend (according to Wikipedia) 10 million dollars on.

When I watch a film, I don't want to feel dumb afterwards. There are movies that can be silly yet actually good. For example, Dumb and Dumber. It's a goofy film, but it's funny and has classic lines and can be watched over and over. The same is true for Nacho Libre.

When I see a film, I usually label it as a movie that was nice to watch once but I wouldn't buy the dvd or a film that was great and I can't wait for the dvd. Spoof movies deserves none of these labels. The only label these films deserve is " Caution. Bad Film. Flee to nearest exit"

Prelude - Psychological Thriller

Prelude is one of my screenplays. The idea came when I was searching through pictures on my laptop and discovered a picture of my Mom and myself at a Soap Opera event. Behind us was a guy who would later become my coworker. I thought it was interesting that I managed to captured the image of someone I would later meet. I started thinking what if someone had taken a picture and ended up capturing something else, for example a wife and coworker in the background in an intimate embrace?

That is how the idea of "Prelude" was born. A picture would be taken and in the background a private moment between a wife and another man would be captured. I intended it at first to be a horror story, but it became a psychological thriller, so still contains elements of horror.

When I write, I like to imagine what the audience would imagine the ending to be, then write something completely different. For a story containing a love triangle, I would imagine a fight at the end with the bad guy getting killed which is the ending of MANY movies out there, so I wrote something different.

I needed characters who weren't 100 percent good or 100 percent evil because not everyone is all good or all bad. Even evil people have someone who love them, someone they show kindness to and even "good people" are capable of evil. And how does someone become evil? These were the themes I wanted to explore in "Prelude."

Below is a brief synopsis.

"Prelude" is a psychological thriller which tells the story of Sam Miller, whose life unravels after he is shown a photograph of his wife, Lola, with another man, Michael Lush. Sam's suspicions consume him and he soon realizes that Michael's plans for Lola and the world are much darker than he ever imagined.

Introduction

My name is Jennifer Wilson. After high school graduation, I went straight to college with the thought of becoming a counselor, inspired by Deanna Troi on Star Trek, but switched my major to Computer Graphic Arts with a minor in Psychology. I then obtained a Masters in Business Administration.

As a child, I was interested in writing. I wrote little stories, did skits in front of our home video camera and imagined myself writing a book. I remember seeing the TriStar Logo before films, the winged horse, and becoming excited because I knew the movie was about to begin.

I figured I would express myself in book form, but when Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Rings came out, I turned my focus on screenwriting. No film, not even the other LOTR films that followed affected me like the first LOTR film because I had never seen anything like that before, everything was different for me including the camera angles. I have read that James Cameron and Ridley Scott were both affected by the Star Wars films and I imagined that what they felt seeing Star Wars is how I felt seeing Fellowship of the Ring.

I have seen how film has inspired and excited people. When a film I want to see is coming out, I want to learn all about the movie and production before the film comes out and when it is on dvd, I throughly enjoy looking at the special features and listening to the commentary. All this I feel is a good way to gain insight into filmmaking. My goal is to create stories that will excite people and for the time they are watching my story, they forget about bills, work, problems and become part of the experience.

There are many people in the world who talk about writing, but to me there is a division between the people who WANT to write and those that NEED to write and I NEED to write. I could never be 100 percent happy if I never suceeded in becoming a screenwriter.

The obstacles are these:

1) In order to sell a screenplay, an agent is needed, which means numerous query letters sent, months are spent waiting for a reply, then the screenplay is requested, and months are spent waiting for a reply.

It is very frustrating to spend months sometimes years on one story and not even be able to try and sale it because of the difficulty in getting an agent. It's is doubly frustrating to sit in a theater and watch a preview for yet another movie that is so low and uninspired that I cannot believe it got made.

I received my M.B.A on Friday and during the graduation I thought of the end of my school career and saw my life beginning anew and that it was time to make my dream of being a screenwriter come true. I saw that I had acomplished a lot education wise, so if I could get an M.B.A then why couldn't I accomplish my goal of becoming a screenwriter.

The Challenge: To see if I can get an agent this year.

All I need is one yes to start a career......