June 2011
12 posts
4 tags
Amazon Studios Collaboration in Action: Memory
Memory is one of Amazon Studios’ most acclaimed projects, and one of the best examples of collaboration on the site. The original script was uploaded by Alex Greenfield last November (just a few days after Amazon Studios launched) and reading it inspired Christian Davis to create multiple test movies.
They’re now extending their collaboration to another script Alex wrote (with Michael K....
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From The Script Lab: Collaboration (The Truth...
By Michael Schilf The Script Lab
My wife and I have been together for over a decade; we have three beautiful children, better than average communication, and a relationship that has grown stronger because of the adversity we’ve worked hard to overcome. I consider us good partners, especially when it comes to the kids: identical twin girls with blood boiling in tween angst and a four-year-old boy...
3 tags
New Dialogue Track Contest Plus a New Way to...
Amazon Studios is pleased to announce a new and improved dialogue track experience, plus two new $5,000 Best Dialogue Track awards for July. Dialogue tracks are important building blocks of test movies, which are visual rough drafts of Amazon Studios scripts.
Previously, dialogue tracks had to be uploaded to Amazon Studios as test movies with a black screen. Now, they will go up as MP3s, and can...
5 tags
Amazon Studios Announces Its First Rewrite Contest
Amazon Studios is offering its first Script Spotlight Award: $10,000 for the best rewrite of ZvG: Zombies Vs Gladiators. Check out the story department feedback, and upload your version by Aug. 31.
“We think Zombies vs. Gladiators — with its well-drawn characters, rich setting and intense action — is strong but can get even stronger,” said Amazon Studios chief Roy Price. “We put our feedback out...
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From The Script Lab: Originality, to Be or Not to...
By Michael Schilf The Script Lab
Insist upon yourself. Be original.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
When it comes to screenwriting, you don’t necessarily need an original idea to be successful. How many times have we seen Romeo and Juliet? Hundreds? Thousands? It’s a simple story really. Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. They come from opposite sides of the tracks. Families hate each other. But despite...
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From The Script Lab: How To Write a Great Premise...
By Michael Schilf The Script Lab
So you’re a screenwriter in Hollywood trying to land your next writing gig (or first) in order to pay the rent for that ant-infested studio apartment on the south side of Korea Town. Or you’re in Dubuque, Iowa, doing your 9 to 5 at a meat packing plant while moonlighting to polish off the tenth and final draft of your latest screenplay. Or you’re in Dubai,...
3 tags
Advice from The Script Lab – Now at Amazon Studios
Longtime writing partners Derek Ruth and Michael Schilf created The Script Lab because they saw a need: “There are countless people all over the world with an idea for a movie and a dream to make it a reality, but clear, cogent, agenda-less information on how to actually write a screenplay — that really delivered and stressed the fundamentals — was severely lacking.”
Now,...
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Shane Black's Amazon Studios Interview: The...
So we’ve already shared Shane Black’s big secret of screenwriting, and the fact that he can’t talk about Iron Man 3. But there are some outtakes from his interview last month that we thought were worth sharing:
He’s surprised more people don’t ask him … “about the obsessive compulsive quality of writing, the extent to which fixation and almost mania plays into the process. Because that to me is...
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Amazon Studios So Far: $675,000 and Counting
This week, Amazon Studios sent checks to April contest winners. It’s our biggest prize month yet ($175,000) and we’re nowhere near done. We just announced another $430,000 in monthly contests, not to mention our annual awards totaling $1.2 million. Amazon Studios is serious about recognizing and rewarding great scripts — and doing the same thing for compelling visualizations of those scripts. It’s...
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What’s the Most Popular Premise at Amazon Studios?...
After 1.4 million matchups, you can now see for yourself which premises have been prevailing in the Amazon Studios Premise War. It’s story vs. story in the ultimate battle for “this should be a movie!” domination, and the leader so far is:
The Alien Diaries, Glenn J.’s Project: “While appraising old and rare books at a restored colonial plantation, a book collector stumbles across a series of...
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The Hollywood Career-O-Matic and More Tasty Sauce... →
Slate has some fun with Rotten Tomatoes data, graphing M. Night Shymalan’s career (down and to the right, alas), as well as average career trajectories for directors and actors. The story also reveals a seeming bias toward old movies, with films from the ’20s averaging 91 percent “Tomatometer” scores and films from the ’90s averaging 55 percent (out of a possible...
6 tags
Amazon Studios Announces $430,000 in New Contests
Amazon Studios today announced new contests with awards totaling $430,000 for filmmakers and writers, including a horror-specific script award and two awards for dialogue tracks, which are a key building block for test movies. The awards are:
Three $100,000 Best Test Movie Awards (July, August and September)
Two $5,000 Best Dialogue Track Awards (in June)
Five $20,000 Best Script Awards (two a...
