Posted on November 16, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Some of the year’s best screenplays are available for free download! If you’d like to read the scripts for “Mud,” “Rush,” “Before Midnight,” “The Armstrong Lie,” and more, check out this site.
Posted on April 21, 2012 at 3:56 pm
The Huffington Post reports on a new computer analysis of the movies’ most quotable lines of dialog.
he study’s authors compiled scripts from 1,000 movies, and identified, using IMDb, Google and Bing, the lines from those movies that are quoted and remembered the most today. They paired each memorable line with other lines of similar length, voiced by the same character in the same scene, then ran each pair through a computer program to identify linguistic trends.
“Our goal is to understand what general features of language will tell you how memorable a quote will be,” fifth-year Ph.D. student Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, one of the study’s authors, told the Huffington Post.
The features that emerged were widespread applicability, straightforward syntax and distinctive diction.
If you think this brings us a step closer to computer-generated movie scripts, you’re on the same wavelength as Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil. Not that it could make them any more formulaic than much of what is currently produced in Hollywood.
Posted on May 22, 2010 at 8:00 am
Ever watch a movie and think you could write a better one? Here’s your chance, without having to invest in pricey screenwriting software. Plotbot is a nifty web-based interface that walks you through the mechanics of screenwriting, handles all of the tricky formatting issues, and even allows you to collaborate privately or publicly. There are a lot of other great resources for writers online, including this discussion from Kurt Vonnegut about why we need drama (with charts!), Screenwriting Tips, and Scriptologist.
Give it a try, and if your film gets made, remember to thank me in your Oscar acceptance speech!
