Story/Script is the king

As I journeyed through making my first feature film “Trade Offs”, I learned many lessons in filmmaking. This blog post is my attempt to pass lessons learned from my successes and my mistakes for anyone who might benefit from these. Following blog chronicles my experiences of writing my first script “Trade Offs”.

I am not a writer by birth or even wrote anything worthwhile while growing up. All I had was dream of making a feature film. After I completed my MBA, I decided to give a shot at my dream of making the film.

Being an actor in the past, I knew the importance of a compelling story. So much so that I even named my film company to be Katha Films ( http://www.katha-films.com/ ) . “Katha” is a Hindi word for a story. This was to reinforce my belief in the importance of story in storytelling.

Step 1: Getting my feet wet

First step in my journey was to identify the story for my film. I talked to many script writers but quickly came to the conclusion, that if I have to tell a compelling story then it has to come from me. I have to take the plunge in learning the craft of the scriptwriting and tell a compelling story. There are no short cuts.

As a first time script writer, the story has to come from my own surroundings. It does not have to be autobiographical, but I should write about things I know the most about. I am an Indian immigrant to US working in high-tech industry surrounded by internet stock mania at the time. My story had to come from these experiences. This gave birth to a story about a couple coming to US in late nineties. The story about their aspirations and their challenges. This evolved into my first script Trade Offs.

Step 2: Training

I am a strong believer in absorbing the skills from experienced filmmakers. Scriptwriting is a craft more than an art. In order to learn the craft, I must read as much as I can about the craft. Amazon.com became my friend. I bought dozen books on scriptwriting . The crash course in scriptwriting helped tremendously. Following books were extremely useful for me to learn the craft:

Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert Mcgee

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting; A step-by-step guide from concept to finished script by Syd Field

The Screenwriter's Workbook by Syd Field

Power Screenwriting: The 12 Stages of Story Development by Michael C Walker

The above readings gave me the courage and some basic understanding of the structure of a script.

Step 3: Writing the script

Once I had some basic knowledge about the script structure, I made my first big mistake. I chose to write the script using MS word instead of choosing any script writing software like Final Draft or Movie Magic. It may seem a trivial thing, but choosing a script writing software will pay dividends all through out the script writing process and during the production planning.

Script writing is a lonely sport. It was quite tough for me to lock myself in a room and wrestle with my story. Each writer has their own style. You can develop your script by choosing any of the different styles:

• Develop the outline extensively and start writing when you are sure about each and every plot point of the script.
• Use index cards to outline your story.
• Develop characters and start writing. Sometimes, you are surprised what can come out of this exercise

I am an impatient writer. I developed my characters as much as I can, and then started writing. I often brought two or more characters in a scene and let them interact. It was lots of fun to see how the characters reacted and thus my story started to develop. It was an amazing experience. I fell in love with scriptwriting.

I shared my work in progress to my friends and often got feedback from them. This feedback was often encouraging and useful. Occasionally, it made me doubt my script writing abilities. I kept going.

Once, I had written my first 100 pages, I had a good draft of the script;

or that’s what I thought

(to be contd...)