Film!



History and Criticism
Internet Movie Database Incredible resource.
New York Times Movies Section Serious reporting. Free registration required. Includes . . .
"Watching Movies," a series of interviews with famous filmmakers about their favorite films.
Archived interviews with filmmakers from the UK's National Film Theatre
Additional interviews from The Guardian
Roger Ebert's perspectives on "The Great Movies"
FilmSound.org "dedicated to the art and analyses of film sound"


Scriptwriting Template
Microsoft offers a template (readymade document) for writing screenplays; I've tweaked it a little bit in order to bring the formatting up to industry standards.  It's called "screenplay.dot."

This template has all the correct formatting of a screenplay:  The dialogue, directions, page numbers, etc., are all ready for your text.  (Template file names, like this one, end in .dot; document file names end in .doc.)

To download screenplay.dot, first right-click here and "Save file as . . . ."  If you're able to save the file directly to the computer you'll be writing your script on, you can try saving it to the Templates folder that's inside your Microsoft Office folder (usually in Program Files or Programs on your hard drive).  If that's not possible, save the file to someplace convenient—like the Desktop, or a floppy disk.

Then you need to open the file; you can use Windows Explorer to find it.  Once you've found it on your computer or diskette, double-click on the screenplay.dot icon to open it.

If you're able to save the template to Templates, just open Microsoft Word when you want to start writing.  Then go to File > New, and you should have a choice of templates there, one of which should be screenplay.dot.  Double-click on the screenplay.dot icon to open it.  To type in your own text, just highlight the text that's on the screen and start typing.

It's very important that the file you download end with .dot. Sometimes, your browser might try to save the file as a webpage (.html), which will keep the file from working correctly.  So remember:  The template file name has to end with .dot, and you have to open it with Microsoft Word.

Once you open up a new document using this template, save that document (your new script) under a new name as a plain Microsoft Word file (ending in .doc).  You should then be able to reopen your script on any computer and still have the correct formatting.

Questions?  Problems?  Suggestions?  Let me know.



Scriptwriting Help
Cyber Film School  Excellent resource.


Screenplay Archives
Movie Scripts
Screenplay 451
Drew's Script-O-Rama
Classic Movie Scripts  Pre-1970
JoBlo's Movie Scripts
Simply Scripts
Arts > Movies > Scripts > Downloadable from the Open Directory


Citizen Kane

A Viewer's Companion to Citizen Kane by Roger Ebert.
Ebert's review of CK.
The Battle over Citizen Kane, a documentary about the making of CK from The American Experience, a US television series.  Includes background information and a show transcript.
Some interesting articles from Virginia Tech, including early reviews and Welles' own comments on CK.
The Citizen Kane Shooting Script (in pdf format; you'll need Adobe Acrobat to read it)
Pages 1-50

Pages 51-100

Pages 101-150

Pages 151-189

The Whole Script, pages 1-189



James Cameron's Advice to Filmmakers
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?

A: Well, at least I have a smart-ass answer, which is that if you have to ask that question, you're not going to make it. But that's not really fair. The point is that everybody's going to have to find their own path. And any advice that I would give you would apply to what it was like when I was breaking in back in 1981 and probably wouldn't apply now. I think the most important thing if you're an aspiring filmmaker is to get rid of the "aspiring." How do you do that? You make a film. I don't care if it's two minutes long and shot in Super 8 or DV or whatever. You shoot it, you put your name on it, you're a filmmaker. Everything after that, you're just negotiating your budget.

[Read more of this interview here.]

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