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 AN ARTICLE BY: MATHEW TSCHIRGI Mathew Tschirgi's Online Film School
All movies start with a screenplay. If you want to film a short film with your friends to enter in a competition, you need to have a screenplay first. True, most of the time the screenplay will not resemble the finished film… A screenplay is important because it is a written plan, an outline, of what the finished film is. The way I start with a screenplay is a bit different than some people come up with ideas… It works for me and if it works for you, great. If it doesn’t, be sure to e-mail me to complain about it. First think of a title. Any title. For this example, I’ll use “The Monkey From Hell.” I write the title on the top of the page. The next thing I think of is the “log-line”—what appears on a poster. How about, The Monkey From Hell—He’s got the Bananas of Beelzebub. OK, now I sketch out a crappy poster on paper based on the poster and the log-line. Since I can’t draw that well, here is a drawing I did for the poster:  Great, I’ve got a crappy looking sketch of a poster, a title, and a log-line. From here, I go with a one-sentence description of the plot. For “The Monkey From Hell,” I’ll say—‘It’s about a Monkey who dies and gets sent to Hell, but manages to escape to Earth with the Devil’s Explosive Bananas to wreak havoc.’ From here, I do a brief description of the characters. Here goes nothing: MONKEY: A monkey in a zoo exhibit who gets killed from eating a Frozen Yummy-Yums Banana Treat. DEVIL: AKA Satan, Beelzebub, Prince of Darkness, he has great faith in raising the monkey as his accomplice in Hell, but the Monkey has other plans. RICKY: The little kid that feeds the Frozen Banana dessert to the Monkey, causing him to get killed. STAN: A preacher who is the father of Ricky—he’s currently studying some cult theory about a monkey that comes back from hell to kill all of humanity. SAMANTHA: A woman who is head of the zoo and is very disappointed that her favorite monkey is dead. JULIE: A female FBI agent who is the head of the newly formed “Monkey Extermination Division”
That’s all I start with to write a screenplay. Yes, this gets me into trouble sometimes. But, that’s another story… Onto Screenwriting Format! Screenwriting Format isn’t really hard, it’s just a pain in the ass. The best thing to do is to buy some screenwriting software (I recommend Sophocles or MovieMagic Screenwriter 2000. Or, if you want to save money, you can do it the way I did for most of my earlier screenplays (such classics as Night at the Vacation Inn, Zaft, and Checkmate!): the 4 TABS, 2 TABS rule. Let me start with a page or so of “The Monkey From Hell” idea… My comments are to the side in parentheses. EXT. MONKEY EXHIBIT – DAY (this is called a slug-line. It’s self-explanatory: EXT means exterior [the scene is outside]) A lonely MONKEY sits by himself in a cage. RICKY, a young kid eating a Frozen Yummy-Yums Banana Treat, looks at the Monkey and laughs.
RICKY (This is 4 TABS for a character’s name)) Monkeys are funny! (2 TABS for dialogue) The Monkey looks sad and grunts. (The second time you introduce a character in descriptions, don’t capitalize its name) MONKEY Oooh, Eeek! Ricky waves the Frozen Banana in front of the Monkey. RICKY Monkey wants a banana? The Monkey jumps up and down. MONKEY Eeeek, oook! Ricky throws the Frozen Banana Treat into the cage. The Monkey eats it up and smiles. MONKEY Oook, Eeek, Oo-oo-ook. The Monkey grabs its throat and starts to cough. RICKY You OK, little Monkey? The Monkey shakes his head. The Monkey falls over, dead.
-- Well, that’s it! Any comments, be sure to e-mail me at magus@mindspring.com!
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