As most of you will know the premise of Unforgiven is that a killer comes out of retirement after 11 years to do one last killing for money when he hears about a prostitute who has been disfigured by two cowboys. The story follows his journey and explores the debunking of western myths and the savagery underneath the newly civilised West.

What interests me is that there is not a word out of place. Every word has its place and use in terms of furthering the plot. There is no fluff or padding, nothing is redundant. Yet, between those words and the superb actors – Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Frances Fisher, and Richard Harris – delivering those lines, the whole world of the new west is exposed. The heroic myths of the cowboy and gunslinger are set up to be knocked down. The screenplay allows the actors to finely draw their characters through its actions and few words.

It is a slow burner. There is no rush about the action. Even the final shootout is extended longer than most western shootouts to show the grim reality of the situation. The change of Eastwood’s character from vaguely sympathetic to mean, cold blooded killer at the end is quite chilling and surprising to the other characters left alive in the town.

The only major sub plot is that of the fate of English Bob, the dandified gunslinger hired by the Railroad company to shoot absconding Chinese coolies, with his biographer who paints a romantic picture of the gunslinger for his publishers. His meeting with Little Bill Daggett, town marshall, betrays the reality of his encounters and enables us to see the ferocious interior of Daggett despite his early affable exterior.

The plot is slight and spare. It could have been an episode of a western series. But the attention to detail and the excellence of the screenplay make it a riveting film with suspense and interest in the characters throughout. If you want to look at how to blend plot, character and dialogue seamlessly to deliver a colourful and interesting story then go no further than this.

The western is as old as Hollywood and is indigenous to America but has influenced many film makers across the world and in turn has itself been influenced by other genres and non US film makers. The development of the western has lead to a genre with many familiar characteristics and stories.

How would you categorize a film as a western?

• Does it have to be set in that period of history between, say, 1800 and 1910 when the country of America was being opened up by white settlers and immigrants?
• Does it have to have cowboys on horses (and, sometimes, “injuns” or native Americans) as the dominant characters?
• Does the film have to be set in the wild and wide open spaces of the mid west prairies, or the dusty expanses of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas or the high country of Montana or Utah?
• Does it have to have recognisable characters – the lone cowboy hero, the black-hearted villain, the wise-cracking tart with the heart of gold, the bar tender, the farming sod buster etc.
• Do guns and violence have to be included in the story?

These are just a few of the things you expect in a traditional western. However, if you pare it back and generalise a little bit there are some key themes that recur in westerns and add to the composition of the genre.

Firstly, the natural world, the environment makes a big contribution to the western genre. Who can forget the iconic images of Monument Valley in the John Ford westerns? The environment is a character which can be helpful or unforgiving to the humans in the film. Big skies, stunning landscapes wild and beautiful. Westerns are about celebrating or taming the natural world of the west. One of my old teachers said it could be seen as gardening! Man’s struggle against the natural elements.

The western tends to have recognisable heroes and villains because it is on the edge of civilisation. We are in the wild west where lawlessness is common. Some people flout the law and others try to enforce it. In the absence of recognised law enforcement, the characters make their own rules. The code of the west. Horse thieves are hung and a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

The west is a man’s world. The land of the lone cowboy. The embodiment of the American dream. There are riches out there for you but you have to carve it out yourself. A land of opportunity and danger. The corporations have not got there yet. Few women are seen other than fiances coming to meet their beaus from the civilised east or prostitutes making a living above the saloon from the roving cowboys.

The probability of conflict and violence is high. Most men carry guns. It is easy to pick arguments. There are no wine bars out here, the saloon is a dangerous place. The army is tasked with surpressing the indigenous tribes. Settlers are harrassed by the locals. Sheep herders fight with cow barons. Authority is always mistrusted.

In terms of story types there are several staples. The western is a fertile ground to grow a revenge plot. Unforgiven shows the revenge plot is alive and well in westerns. The cattle drive is usually an epic journey and vehicle for redemption for one or more of the characters. Red River and Lonesome Dove spring to mind as examples. Clash of cultures between the original inhabitants and the newcomers. Dances with Wolves and Cheyenne Autumn are good examples of this. Survival is a key element in many stories about the west – survival against the natural environment or survival against the hostiles. Just watch A Man Called Horse. It is about man’s humanity being tested in harsh and uncontrolled conditions. Basic and raw emotions are on show. There are few nuances here. Only big bold issues.

In the next post I will explore a little how the western has developed over time and its worldwide influence. I will also look at the interesting phenomenon of cross genre films.

This post just sprang to mind as I have watched a few classic films recently that serve to illustrate the point very well.

James Cameron does an incredible job with “Aliens”. We see the lifeboat craft drifting aimlessly in space with Ripley and the cat (Jonesy, I think) still in suspended animation. The door is then burnt open as they are rescued by a deep space salvage team. As Ripley recuperates on a space station near earth, Cameron uses an inventive dream sequence to wrong foot the audience. Ripley’s mind is messed up and we begin to empathise with her immediately particularly as no one seems to want to believe her about the existence of the alien monsters. It’s like a pantomime response but very effective. The rest of the cast are saying they don’t exist while Ripley and the audience are effectively shouting “They’re behind you!”. We’ve seen the previous film, we know what they can do. Even worse to come, as Ripley is “on trial” for destroying the Nostromo and she loses her pilot licence. How unfair, we say. And she finds out that she has been in hypersleep for around seventy years. Her child has grown up, lived a full life and died before she returned. How terrible for her. We are hooked! And then she finds out that the planet where the alien craft crashed is now colonised by a group of terraformers including families with children. This provides the motivation for Ripley to return to the planet as an advisor (and her need to regain her pilot’s licence).

All this is played out very skilfully through fleshing out the back story with some emotional twists to provide the setting for the rest of the film and draw the audience in for the ride. Excellent.

Another good example of a stunning first twenty minutes is a film I have mentioned before in these posts – the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” directed by Zak Snyder. All of the George Romero fans know what is about to happen but the way it is achieved is quite stunning. We see the horror unfolding through the eyes of the nurse (Sarah Polley) as she is coming to the end of her shift at the hospital.  This is inter-cut with newsreels of unrest in the world gradually expanding into anarchy. We’ve all seen news items with video of riots and conflict before. But it quickly shows us that the anarchy is due to a mysterious infection. The nurse unwittingly goes about her routine and leaves the hospital just as patients start arriving with the infection. As she leaves the hospital we see the legs of a man sticking out from an ambulance. Is he infected? Is he dead? No, he’s just resting before the next call out. Phew! The audience starts feeling for the safety of the nurse. Something bad is happening. We know but does she? We want to shout out to warn her.

Cut to suburbia and her car driving back home. Nothing yet to suggest anything abnormal although the tension has been ramped up through the unease felt earlier. She has a conversation with a little girl. But there is a tangible unease established. She is the innocent about to be threatened. She arrives home and goes to sleep with her husband. All is normal until they are woken up by a hungry zombie who just happens to be the little girl she talked to before. Her husband is bitten and turns into a zombie and in turn tries to bite her! Talk about a maiden in peril. She manages to narrowly escape out of the bathroom window and get into her car only to be confronted by a scene of utter carnage and mayhem with neighbours shooting, killing and eating each other, cars crashing and fires breaking out all over suburbia.

The scenes are so effective because that is so like our home, a comforting if boring environment to return to at the end of a hard day’s work. Yet again we are drawn into the story with great skill. In this film,  our “little castle”, our homely comfort blanket has been ripped to shreds at the beginning of the film and we are empathising with the nurse, frightened and at a loss to know what to do next. The rape and mutilation of our home life is shown graphically in the film in a series of scenes as the Sarah Polley character tries to drive out of her suburban estate. Neighbours with guns shooting at anything, homicidal zombies chase the living to taste their flesh, cars collide and crash. There is even an aerial shot (with CGI) showing the mayhem from the air. Will she survive, or won’t she? Who will save her? Or, how will she save herself from this insidious disaster? Brilliant set up for the rest of the film.

Perhaps, one of the most brilliant beginnings to a film must be “Apocalypse Now”. In the opening sequence over the credits, we are shown a patch of jungle with instrumental music from the Doors (The End) playing on the soundtrack. It evokes an oriental and exotic feeling. We hear helicopters whizzing overhead and suddenly the jungle bursts into flames. We know, without a spoken word, we are in Vietnam in the late 1960s early 1970s. Brilliantly concise use of images and sound to set the scene for the movie. If that wasn’t good enough we are treated to a second sequence where the back story is narrated by the Martin Sheen character, a burnt-out special forces assassin on the edge of sanity who, as we find later can only find normality and comfort when on a “mission”, in this case the assassination of a renegade American colonel leading a native army against the North Vietnamese. There are many questions asked in the film about who is sane in a world of insanity and this beginning sets the scene beautifully for the journey to the heart of darkness.

One last and very different example is “Babel” – a recent film which weaves a story that spans a number of different countries and cultures. It intrigues the audience. It starts several seemingly unrelated stories cutting between them and as an audience we begin to feel curious about where this is going. Each story is interesting in its own right but we are not asked to empathise with the charcters involved. It is more intellectual. How are these stories connected? The director gradually unveils the connections throughout the film in very clever ways but you do not know the whole story until the end. It uses the audience’s collective curiosity to establish commitment and interest in the film.

Getting the audience involved as early as possible through emotion, curiosity or clever use of visuals and symbol can set the tone for the rest of the film.

However, his first appearance was several years earlier in a small but pivotal cameo role in the first adaptation of Red Dragon called Manhunter. It was directed by a little known director at the time who was famous for creating the US cop series Miami Vice – Michael Mann. Many years later, after the success of the Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, a big budget remake of Red Dragon was made starring Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes and Anthony Hopkins reprising his role as Dr Lecter.

But which was the better film?

Manhunter was a low key but stylish film on a relatively low budget. So no famous movie stars only good actors propelling along a spare and tense script. The audience is a key member of the film crew here as they are required to use their imagination throughout the film to fill in the gaps as you are told but not shown the grisly goings on. All the audience sees is the aftermath in all its gory detail. It is also a puzzle which engages the audience. How can they find the Tooth Fairy in time before he kills another innocent? The film is ground breaking as it introduces us to the techniques of forensic criminal investigation used by the FBI. I would go so far as to say that it is the forerunner of the CSI TV series. Heck, you’ve even got the actor who played Will Graham in Manhunter – William Petersen – as the head of the original CSI unit!

Manhunter is stylish too. Many film conventions are broken here. The scenes with Lecter are shown in his brilliant white prison cell. Glaring light and white backgrounds. Most monsters emerge from the dark. This one is shown in the light. Lecter himself is an educated, manipulative man who would not be out of place in a board room or a university. The architecture of the prison/ secure facility where Lecter is held is interesting again all white but labyrinthine. You see Graham trying to get out but seemingly going round and round. Is it a representation of Graham’s mind, is he going insane? There are lots of glossy Miami Vice-like touches in the beach house scenes as well.

But the key to this film is the script. It is maybe not the most faithful adaptation of the book out but concentrates on the key storyline to produce a gripping film. There is no scene that does not have a function, no dialogue that does not propel the story onward. A masterpiece of conciseness. The audience are willing participants in filling in the gaps. The technical forensic stuff is real and not presented for dummies. It is restless and sparks into life at the appropriate moments. The story works and the climaxes are satisfying.

So is it better than the big budget remake? My view is a resounding yes. Red Dragon boasts actors with a high pedigree and another performance by Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. But we tend to see in our mind the Lecter from the Silence of the Lambs. If you compare the performances by Hopkins and Brian Cox (Lecter in Manhunter) they are different but equally chilling in their own way. Cox is almost brash and arrogant and not very menacing until you see what he can do in the scene where he finds out Graham’s home address. Hopkins is charming and menacing but we know already what despicable things he can do from the previous films and this detracts a little from the menace. It’s almost like meeting an old friend again. We’re not frightened merely eager to see what he’s been up to! Red Dragon is possibly a film too far for Dr Hannibal Lecter.

For all its production values and good acting Red Dragon is a bit of a yawn. Red Dragon may be a a more faithful adaptation of the book but it’s too long and loses its tension several times. We are after all working in a different medium. We see the moment when Graham discovers Lecter as the serial killer and the reason why he left the FBI. The grisly scene is shown it all its technicolour glory as Graham is sliced up by Lecter but is it any scarier or better than the few terse references in Manhunter. In my view, less is more and the Red Dragon scene seems gratuitous.

In trying to spend more time looking at the Tooth Fairy’s character it drains the story of its lifeblood. Our monsters need to be unknown to make them scary. This also knocks the point of view out of whack. Which character is driving the film? Graham or the Tooth Fairy or Lecter? The script and story meander along looking for the directions to the end. For those of us who have seen Manhunter we know the story, we know the ending, we have the route map. We just shout at Red Dragon to get on with it.

At the end of the day I find Red Dragon a bit redundant. Why was it made anyway? Hollywood bosses trying to build a franchise from the Thomas Harris books? For those of you who have not seen Manhunter and or Red Dragon get them from your local DVD rental and check it out for yourself.

It’s called Celtx. You can download it from www.celtx.com. It looks very useful from the screenshots and features described on the site. Has anyone used it? What did you think? Was it helpful? I will be downloading it and giving it a test drive shortly but I just thought it would be good to get other feedback as well.

That’s it for now.

We all have our own ideas about what makes a great film. Are popular films great? You would think that something that draws in audiences in their thousands and millions must be great. Not so. Look at Rush Hour 2 and Pearl Harbour. It could be just that the latest hot film star is appearing in their next movie. Bankable stars in mediocre movies. What about Harrison Ford in Sabrina and Six Days, Seven Nights. Your favourite auteur film director’s latest offering should be great based on past performance. Not necessarily. Even Spielberg slips up occasionally – look at 1942 and Amistad. Conversely, some great films have inauspicious beginnings. What film did little business at the box office but became one of the most successful DVDs of all time and in the process became re-evaluated as a great film? The Shawshank Redemption.

All I’ve tried to do is to show that there is no simple way to forecast what will make a great film. As usual it is a combination of factors that, mixed together and cooked at the right temperature with loving care, produce a great film. I believe that no one factor on its own can produce greatness. Not just the director, not just the star, not just the subject. Not just the story or script.

However, two or usually three or more factors working together can do it. Here is my list of ingredients for greatness.

• Story/ Script – This is the most important ingredient for me. You need a story that grabs the audience and takes them with it on a journey. It must affect the audience’s emotions. You need a script that does justice to the story and provides colour and originality to the action. If you don’t have a good story or script you rely too heavily on other factors and the probability of producing a great film plummets. Watch The Godfather I and II. Great stories from an average book but even better scripts. You are drawn into another world with very different codes of conduct and behaviour and morals. The Shawshank Redemption’s story is gripping even though the script came out of a short story by Steven King. Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven provides an unusual raw and downbeat view of the old west with no heroes riding off into the sunset.
• Acting – good actors telling a good story gives the basis for greatness. One example of greatness that involves just a good story and great acting is Salvador. James Woods gives a career high performance as the thoroughly unlikeable war photographer who goes to El Salvador to make money and retrieve his reputation and in the process gets caught up in the civil war. Good supporting cast performances particularly by James Belushi as his unwitting sidekick drive the film with a nervous energy that has you wincing and squirming. It could be the film that disproves my previous hypothesis where the acting alone could make this film great. A more recent example might be Forest Whittaker’s portrayal of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.
• Cinematography – By this I mean that what you see on the screen makes you go wow. Not just the CGI although that has to be taken into consideration e.g. The Lord of The Rings. But just consider David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia. Beautiful sweeping cinematography conveys the epic feel of the film, the vastness of the desert, the scale of the battles. However, you can equally be impressed by the edgy quality of the cinematography in something like Traffic or Heat. You can also marvel at the beauty, colour and technical artistry in some of the recent Chinese films such as The House of Flying Daggers and In the Mood for Love.
• Editing – Editing conveys the pace of the film and splices the narrative together. Poor editing can leave an audience confused or bored. A well edited film will enhance the story telling and adjust the pace of the story to the action. Well edited films will have an internal rhythm to them.
• Direction – You may wonder why I’ve taken so long to get to direction. The director is the ringmaster and as such needs to juggle all the above (and more such as art direction, sound, costume etc.) to come up with a great film. The great ones can coax new meanings and nuances out of formulaic stories and scripts. Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket could have been just another Vietnam war movie but he turned it into a psychological study that showed the dehumanisation of young recruits to help them face the horrors of war. They provoke exciting performances from average actors. Just watch the incredible performance of Sharon Stone coaxed out by Martin Scorcese in Casino. They can inject beauty, originality and controversy into what could have been mundane films.  Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven uses beautiful photography of the American mid west plains to reflect the ebb and flow of the story. They can tap into the issues in society today and make films relevant to the audience. Spielberg does a great job of raising discussion of crime detection and the legal system by projecting a future where crimes can be detected before they happen in Minority Report. Even historical films can touch a nerve by reflecting issues that are important in today’s society. Kurosawa’s medieval Japanese masterpiece – Rashomon – is all about deception and the search for truth played out as a whodunit in the case of an alleged rape in the woods. And directors can put their own individual stamp on films which has lead to the cult of auteurism or authorship.

There you are. Only five factors but great films will have at least two and usually more of these factors present. Just think of films you believe are great films and assess them against these factors. It is fairly simple to do. Do they stand up?

In conclusion. Why is Citizen Kane a great film? Well, it has at least three of the above factors. The story is good although a little dated now as it is about the rise of a press baron (loosely based on the life of Randolph Hearst) and shows the arc of his life and the effect on people around him. However, it does not engage the emotions of the audience and is quite cold. Where it scores highly is in the cinematography, the editing and the direction. The cinematography and editing are ground-breaking and extremely well executed and were way ahead of their time. They actually helped to form a new grammar for films. The direction was excellent in that the telling of the story and the use of new cinematography techniques add nuances and layers to the film beyond the story and script. One could argue that the acting was first rate as well from Orson Welles as the eponymous lead and Joseph Cotton. So, 3or 4 out of 5 is pretty good. Whether it is the best film of all time………

Anyway, before I engage in too much limiting and negative self talk, I did do some interesting research on screenwriting software to ease the production of a marvelous screenplay. Word processors are all very well but they are not designed for the specific job of producing a screenplay to industry standards. And whilst outliners are useful they do not give you the tools to develop interesting and coherent stories and plots.

So I trawled the net for software that would do the job. Free software preferably. What I did find is that there is an industry (small though it may be) in software packages that purport to make it easy for you to create the next blockbuster screenplay. All slightly different with different strengths and weaknesses.

I suppose the first question to ask is why can’t a word processing package do the job for you. Packages like Microsoft Word or the open source word processing component of Open Office (free) have so many facilities inside them that surely these would be adequate? Well, yes and no. No doubt, if you are very familiar with these packages and have a good level of expertise in these packages you could design the industry standard formats and program macros that imitated some of the better screenplay software packages. But it is all a bit like hard work for a writer who is more bothered about getting on with the writing and having some help in making it easy.

Here are some of the better packages that I have come across in my research:

• Cinergy -  this is provided free and as such deserves an immense amount of respect as it makes writing and editing a draft screen play in industry standard form relatively easy. Creating scenes, dialogue, description, rearranging, editing is all made simple though the use of a few intuitive key depressions. Great for most purposes
• Final Draft – This is the package that most professionals use nowadays for developing and submitting their work to the industry. Slick and easy to use, it also goes that bit further with organization and production tools as part of the package. Costs around $230 at present or £115.
• Sophocles – worth a look at nearly half the price of Final Draft with similar features. You can try before you buy which is always good. Its PR says that it lets you concentrate on the story creation rather than on the format. $120 or £60 at the moment.
• Writer’s Cafe – This is more of a story development package rather than a screenwriting package. By that I mean that it has a number of useful features built into it that help you to research your story, save and bookmark information, to plot your storylines in an easy graphical manner and to inspire you when the going gets tough or the words dry up. A very useful complement to a screenwriting package. This software can be used for writing other than screenwriting and help you organize your work, your drafts, your rough ideas. The really neat part of this package is StoryLines – “The heart of Writer’s Café is StoryLines, a powerful but simple to use story development tool that dramatically accelerates the creation and structuring of your novel or screenplay” – a lovely visual way of plotting your stories from whatever point of view you like. At $66 or £33, it looks to be a worthwhile investment.
• There are other more expensive packages, both screenwriting and story development, that provide similar functions and features but the above list in my opinion are the ones that seem to be most writer-friendly and are understandable.

I have included links to the appropriate sites for these packages to help you assess them for yourself. Before you ask, “no” I am not promoting any of them or getting money for recommending them (what a shame – I could do with the money). I am thinking of buying Writer’s Cafe for my research and story development -  I am checking out the free trial download at the moment. And I think Cinergy will be adequate for my purposes for the time being unless I decide to market a script in Hollywood!

As I said it is designed with film enthusiasts in mind and has a number of features that will make their (and my) life easier, such as:

• A direct link to the Films @ Dave’s Info Cafe web site! (I am developing it after all)
• Google search functionality
• Links to specialist film-related web sites and resources
• RSS feeds from film-related web sites and blogs
• Direct messaging facility
• Ticker box with access to reviews of the latest DVD releases
• Chat room restricted to other toolbar members ie film enthusiasts!
• Windows Media Player – easy access button

I addition there are several other useful features on the toolbar, such as:

• Pop Up blocker
• Email notifier – customise it so that you can access any or all of your email accounts and be notified of incoming mail
• Weather – customise this to find out what the weather is like in your part of the world (or any part of the world for that matter)
• Radio player – listen to a selection of online radio stations while you are surfing

If you are interested you can download it from the link below:

http://filmsdavesinfocafe.OurToolbar.com

I have loaded it on to my computer and have been using it for a few days. I have run the full Yahoo Spyware scan on my hard disk after I installed it and found no problems. However, I regularly scan my hard disk for spyware and suggest you do the same as a matter of routine.

This is only the start. I will be developing the toolbar over the course of the next few months. If you download it you will see any improvements that I make AUTOMATICALLY. It will change before your eyes! You will not have to uninstall and then install the latest version. Please let me have you feedback on the toolbar, particularly any more film-related links and RSS feeds. I can then add them and everyone can share the improvement. If you have any ideas for more film-related functionality I will try to take them on board (within the limitations of the software that I am using).

First and foremost, I must say that the sentiment, to try and view the same event from both sides, is highly commendable. It is easier to do it when there is a substantial time elapsed afterwards. It could not be done even handedly nearer the event because of emotions running high on both sides. I can still remember the old John Wayne war film – “The Sands of Iwo Jima” which was basically US propaganda determined to show the Japanese as evil enemies and fuel up support at home for the War. “Flags of Our Fathers” shows the US propaganda machine at work trying to extract money from the American public for the war by using the the remaining soldiers from the iconic photograph of raising the flag on Iwo Jima and parading them as heroes. “Letters from Iwo Jima” traces the last days of the doomed Japanese defenders of the island and the internal conflicts between them as well as the battle raging about them. Both films have a black and gray look taking their cue from the photograph and the barren volcanic rock that is Iwo Jima but the similarities end there. There is no real intermingling of the films.

These films act more as historical documents with the benefit of hindsight, more so “Flags of Our Fathers” which concentrates on what happens to the three remaining soldiers when they are paraded back home to help the war effort. While it is extremely interesting to see ordinary guys being branded as heroes and used by the government and the armed forces, the lack of a strong central performance causes the film to lose its way a little bit. The battle scenes are bloody and harrowing but the lack of character development at the beginning means that the emotional pull is not as strong as it should be. In the heat of battle it is difficult to know who is getting shot or blown up. The use of flashbacks rather than clarifying the story adds to the confusion in my opinion. The later attempts to take you into the later lives of these men are poorly realised.

“Letter from Iwo Jima” on the other hand is the better of the two films simply because the script (by Iris Yamashita)  is better, the characters are better developed in the first half of the film and the use of flashbacks is limited but telling in the overall feel of the film. The internal conflict between the old guard loyal to the Emperor and an honourable death and those just trying to survive is brought out clearly. There is irony and pathos in abundance. Not even the presence of sub titles could detract from the telling of the story.

It is helped by two strong central performances, one by Ken Watanabe as the commander-in-chief of the Japanese defensive force and one by Kazunari Ninomiya as one of the less than willing conscripts. The story is told through their eyes. You cannot help but get emotionally involved with the characters and as one by one they die you are left with the feeling of an awful tragedy. A strong and affecting film which deservedly received an Oscar nomination for best picture.

The two films are nevertheless an outstanding achievement by Clint Eastwood (and Steven Spielberg as producer) and together have added depth and complexity to the war film genre.

The Inner Movie Method that it explains is based upon the premise “Write from your heart. Re-write from your head”. Let your creative side have space to write what comes to your heart. Then let the analytic side of your head decide whether it is good or bad and which parts need tweaking. Along side this there is a lot of solid advice on planning, organisation and writing techniques that show you how to produce a script in 21 days.

The thing that stands out for me is the fact that it talks about all those little obstacles that are put in our way (or we put in our own way) and how to overcome them. The psychological traps.

I always come away thinking “Yeah. I can do that!” I find re-reading it quite motivational and good for demolishing writer’s block.

How do you write a 120 page script? Easy, break it down into chunks. Where should the characters  be (psychologically, philosophically and geographically) at various points in the script? Write in short quick bursts. Picture it in your head. Actions speak louder than words. Think cinematically. Re-write with your more critical head on. Produce a final script you are proud of.

This book is a great but inexpensive resource to dip into to provide you with a slightly different perspective on how to write scripts. A must for every budding screenwriter.