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Celebrity
Guest Excerpts From The Moviemaking Medley:
Los Angeles, CA - April 14th, 2000
The Moviemaking
Medley was held earlier this month at the University of Southern California.
The event consisted of demonstrations of Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000 and
Dramatica Pro, prize drawings, and a celebrity panel discussion about "Moviemaking in
the New Millennium." This event was made possible by Screenplay Systems and
the USC School of Cinema-TV. The panelists included established producers and
top-notch screenwriters of Hollywood.
Here are some of
the presented questions and insightful answers:
How did you
get started in the business?
"I got started
in the era, when i was 13 years old, in the late 50s, when i got an 8mm movie
camera from my uncle. Now today, there are video cameras so everybody can
go out and make movies. We made this little movie, my cousin and I, showed
it in our backyard to sell popcorn and candy, charged admission to make some
money. A neighbor that came over was an executive of CBS thought that this
movie that was made was great, this little war movie, and bought it for $5000
and aired it on CBS."
-Michael Berk,
Producer: Baywatch, The Consultants
Do you have
any ideas about screenwriters going through the independent circuit as opposed
to going through the studio system?
"Whatever works.
It probably is good for anybody to have the access that sometimes independent
production affords you. There is no one path. I have not been lucky enough
to be involved in the independent world, but I know I like independent movies
and a lot of times, those are fresher, newer ideas."
-Laurie Craig,
Screenwriter: Paulie
Has the internet
changed the way you've done your job or approached moviemaking?
"I'm planning a
movie right now, a movie about World War II submarines. What did World War
II submarines look like? Who had floor plans? Where are any remnants still?
All of the various questions you have. I just called Frederick (Levy) and
said 'let's have the Internet start looking it up. In the course of two or
three days, I had this much information, more than I wanted, but I had the
right information. So it has changed my ability to produce movies dramatically
and I know it has changed companies like the Walt Disney studios as well.
Many tiered communication companies are interfacing with one another much
better now because of the Internet."
-Marty Katz, Producer:
Impostor, Reindeer Games, Man of the House, Consulting Producer: Titanic
"The usefulness
of the Internet is tremendous. But I have to say that my best advice to people
would be to focus on quality, technique, and the ideas. Right now what you're
seeing is that there is a floodgate of distribution outlets that never existed.
There is also this plethora of junk out there that's just not necessarily
great and there's a lot of noise on the Internet. So how do you raise yourself
above that noise level? Technology is a great thing, but it doesn't replace
creativity."
-Stephen Greenfield,
Screenwriter: Little Spies, The Return of Swiss Family Robinson
How do you constantly
come up with the newest and freshest ideas?
"I find that caffeine
often helps."
-Laurie Craig,
Screenwriter: Paulie
What particular
advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers/screenwriters that want to raise
funds?
"One thing that
I wanna say to everybody that's a first-time writer is to put these four letters
on the top of your computer screen: K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid. If you
make something complicated like the War in Morocco or something like that,
it's gonna be a lot harder to sell something that's gonna be very expensive.
But if you can make a simple story that's very integrated where every single
scene, everything, leads to the big payoff. Integrate your script. Make it
simple. If you have a good enough idea that can do that, you can get the
funding for a one or two-million dollar movie if you have a good idea and
it's very simple, but direct."
-Ernie Cabral,
Screenwriter: Windfall
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