Everything you are doing is bad. I want you to know this.

Hmmm. I thought I'd got it out of my system after my last post (for post read rant) but it seems not.

So... we're back to the "How to make films that make money in the current climate" debate, but this time it'll be skewed a little towards the role of the writer; a person, incidentally, conspicuously absent from the Insight debate that I banged on about last time. I wonder why?..

Anyway, as established, the making of a 'genre' movie is clearly frowned upon. With little to no successful film production to speak of, those who sign the cheques would not want to spend their precious finance on something that would not push the art forward. The idea is that if you spend on one or two 'critical' successes a year then while you won't actually generate much income, at least you'll have something that might win awards and get prestigious screenings at International festivals. Fair point if awards and critical acclaim are your goal, but let's not forget that it's (supposed to be) an industry just as much as it is an art. Good reviews and awards don't finance future film production, they just widen the gap of perception between film-makers and audiences. We all know that making a good film is not a guarantee of making money. In fact, they are usually exclusive of each other. A quick glance at the average ratings across at Rotten Tomatoes is enough to prove that.

So the sweet-spot when it comes to making a successful movie is, quite frankly, tiny. It exists where a good film and a commercially viable movie intersect. It is in this sweet-spot that the modern screenwriter must train themselves to work. While that may seem like a difficult ask, let's not forget that the very genesis of the idea comes from the mind of the writer.

Nothing exists until the writer creates it.

While it is true that there will be tens, perhaps even hundreds of other people's input into the finished product, if the underlying idea and structure are brilliant then they will not be overwhelmed. They will be added-to and improved-upon, creating a finished product of a quality that not even the writer could have expected. As someone important once said, "You can make a bad movie out of a good script, but you can't make a good movie out of a bad script."

How do you write a good script? I could tell you now, but then you wouldn't come back next time for:

1: The Premise.

See you then.

J.