FILM SCHOOLS FROM HELL

The best film schools straddle the divide between imparting technical information and practical knowledge, and allowing the students the freedom to explore story and character according to their own imaginative faculties. Their fundamental orientation, however, is towards the production of specialists and the provision of ambitions, goals, and identities. The assumption of a “correct” identity — director, producer, editor, etc — is a prerequisite for entering “the market”, and the less wary are seduced and fattened up for the marketplace unaware of what they might be sacrificing in the act of defining themselves. “Who” you are becomes more important than “What” you are, and the sharp distinctions that are drawn, that compartmentalize the storytelling process so grievously, become like straightjackets that make escape and creative innovation progressively more difficult.

A dramatic story is an environment in which characters meet. By 'characters', I mean not only the characters in the script, but also those characters that are identifiable as 'the audience', 'the writer' and the writer's 'tribe' or 'tribes'. Story is the common ground - the common space and common time - that allows them to co-exist and become emotionally present to one another. However, for a story world to create the sort of attraction that draws ALL the characters in to what is happening emotionally within that time and space, I - as the writer/character - must acknowledge that the thoughts and passions of the other characters are not automatically provided and present like my own thoughts and passions are present to me, and that their freedom to choose and act must not be clouded or manipulated by my own needs and prejudices. They must have the integrity of a personal externality, or Otherness, that is distinguishable from my own private agendas. Story provides that neutral something that has no horse in the race, but which is the race itself - a place where ALL the characters are free to manipulate and sign pursuant to their own goals. It is an environment that allows them the freedom to choose, including the freedom to choose not to be free, without which freedom would be meaningless. A story is a place that enables a character - every character - to have both an “outside” and an “inside,” where words and actions may be a show of generosity for one character, and the darkest acts of treachery for another.

THE DRAMA IS IN THE RELATIONSHIPS … AND THE FRUSTRATED DESIRES. Join the official Where’s the Drama? website at http://www.wheresthedrama.com/apps/members/

 

Plots flow out of personalities. Basic characters beget basic plots. The more interesting the character, the more interesting your plot choices become.  FIND OUT MORE

 

MORE PHOTOS LIKE THIS ONE 

 

STORY IDEAS 

In light of  the fact that there are any number of great ideas begging for imaginative writers and filmmakers to breathe some dramatic life into them,  WHERE'S THE DRAMA? is happy and generous enough to offer a new service to screen storytellers that are wishing to broaden their story horizons.
The film "ideas" contained here will be written by some one, some time; and most of them will probably be made; the only question is when and by whom?  

Each of these story "triggers" offers a compelling starting point for dramatic action; each is grounded in both the "real world" and in genre, with the potential for character and situation that most audiences will find intriguing. What you find on these pages won't tell you HOW to write the script, but if your looking for starting points or something to inspire your imagination, then you've come to the right place.

STORY IDEAS HERE

 

ENTER THE DRAMA

 

ENTER THE DRAMA

FAIRY TALE

whatever it was that

was done to you,

it is the Nothing

that makes you

what you are:

the lover whose hair

you can’t quite remember,

the touch that disappears

from your skin in the cab

on the way home.

the heart is a flood

full of emptiness

no tea time can claim.

we exchange masks

like fruitless children,

hugging dolls with blind eyes,

riddles with no answers,

mastering the language of

snakes in silence,

keeping company with monsters.

Life is some times a fairy tale

with bad teeth.

Don’t tell me you didn’t know.