Adding more mods is pointless as long as the core group of us don't die or leave.

Deleting mods ( I'm all for since they have moved on or only come back when they need something.

BTW I veered this off topic. I'm so bad.

well see!!!

If I was a mod, I would have spanked you for that off topic comment!!!

Vee must have discipline!!!

Quoted from Old Time Wesley Adding more mods is pointless as long as the core group of us don't die or leave. Deleting mods ( I'm all for since they have moved on or only come back when they need something.

American Syco, Andrew Romance, henrik, lesleyjl21, the Goose and Rob S shouldn’t be mods in my opinion.  They never even post here and certainly never moderate.

Quoted from Grandma Bear I'm very active, but I've been told I'm too emotional to be a mod... What the fuck is that supposed to mean??  I'm as stable as any other writer on this planet and don't f^@#&#g  dare trying to tell me other wise!!

I’ve been involved in too many controversial threads to be a mod.  

At least this site has Moderators - the last writers site I was on didn't, and it's forums were a complete nightmare! So much flaming went on that it looked like a Californian hillside!

Quoted from Niles_Crane So much flaming went on that it looked like a Californian hillside!

?

I agree, though. We don't need more mods, so long as the ones who are still active are doing it and the forums are staying nice and tidy.

We just need more active Mods really.

Wow. I see the big mod clean out of 09 has happened.

http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?v-members/a-groups/group-7/



  

Quoted from Aaron We just need more active Mods really.

I think the mods here (bert, Mike, George, Wes and MC) are all pretty active.

Quoted from Aaron We just need more active Mods really.

What?  You don't get deleted enough for your liking?  We can work on that  

Yeah -- once the conversation was brought up in this thread, Don decided it was time to trim some of the inactive mods.

For those who do not recognize Rob S, he is still around from time to time.  He will sometimes post on the Poetry board -- and he doesn't need to watch that board too close.  I mean, how often do fights break out amongst the poets?

Quoted from sniper I think the mods here (bert, Mike, George, Wes and MC) are all pretty active.

Oh yeah, I mean some of the others who are never on(The ones who have
been trimmed)

Quoted from bert What?  You don't get deleted enough for your liking?  We can work on that

That's not what I meant Bert

Quoted from James McClung So I posted this a little over a year ago. Not much has changed since then and what seemed to be a phase at the time has now become standard. In fact, I think the shorts have gotten even shorter. I'm not resurrecting this thread to reiterate my original concerns. Honestly, I don't think we'll see more people writing features or even shorts on the longer end of the spectrum any time soon. I think the boards have changed somewhat since I first posted this. There's a helluva lot more people than before, many of them now regulars. It seems like the majority write primarily or even exclusively shorts yet seem pretty damn serious about screenwriting in general. So I ask. Thoughts on features? Are you trying to work yourself up to them? Not sure how to approach them? Already written one or two? Or do you just prefer shorts? Sometimes it seems like people just prefer shorts. Other times, it's a "pussy on the pedestal" situation (40 Year Old Virgin, anyone?). Personally, I prefer features. I love movies so I try to write them myself. To me, shorts are shorts. College stuff. Calling cards for writers. Whatever. They're simple. They're fun. But they've never seemed like serious business to me. I've written a bunch but most have been for the OWC and have served as exercises for me. There're a few I'm particularly proud of but it's a lot more satisfying for me to write scripts that are intricate and full of guts. Shorts can be both but generally can only go so far. There's also way more opportunities to get personal with features as they take so much time to plan and write. I'm still hoping features will pick up around here some time in the future. I've been around here a while now and they already feel like dinosaurs. Thoughts?

What's basically happening is the site has adapted to the market. People get more reads and more interest from filmmakers with shorts. Shorts are easier to read and easier to make and the vast majority of filmmakers who visit the site are not going to be at the stage where they can make a feautre.

The majority of filmmakers are looking for simple things to film, few characters, locations and contemporary and this is driving people to write that kind of script.

People do need to keep their eye on their true goal though, whatever that may be.

From my own point of view, I simply don't have the time to read features regularly. To read one and then comment in reasonable depth could take as much as 5 hours. It's simply too much of a commitment. I'll look at the premise and the first few pages then usually stop there.

There's also the fact that some of those I've read have been commented on in depth and I've agreed with earlier posters. It doesn't seem worth repeating points already made.

I disagree with the point you've made about shorts in general. I think it's important for writers to develop their feature writing skills, because you always need to have projects ready to go for when an opening develops. However shorts are still a way into the game.

A well-produced short will get you one meeting with major players and give you the opportunity to pitch your bigger stuff. Perhaps that's more from a Producers/Directors point of view, but it's still a valid point I think.

In general I would also say that most features are less serious than shorts. Most features tend to be quite generic and made just for entertainment. Short filmmakers take a lot more risks, because they are cheaper to produce.

The problem is that on here (and this isn't a criticism, I do it myself with shorts) too many shorts are written to be throw away gags and they don't deal with serious issues. You make mention of 30 minute shorts, but in all honesty a 30 minute short needs to be Oscar quality. To get into a festival it has to be better than almost any film made that year, because they could play 6 five minute ones in its place.

It's also extremely hard to make use of. Hard to get into a festival, not long enough to sell. 30 minutes strikes me as ridiculously long for a short, it suggests a story too long to really be told in short form, but one too small for a feature.

Look at a film like Spielzeugland (Toyland). This won an Oscar, made hundreds of thousands in prize money alone and deals with Nazi Germany. It's only 13 minutes long.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1280548/

What I'd like to see is people being a little bolder in the topics that they attempt to deal with. We live in a world where slavery still exists, where genocide is a daily practice etc yet the vast majority of "amateur" writers tell very small stories. Make the stories huge, with incredible imagination or incredible drama, or both so that people beg to see or read something else that you've written.

The world is full of good screenwriters and good stories, you need to aim for the truly extraordinary.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films I disagree with the point you've made about shorts in general. I think it's important for writers to develop their feature writing skills, because you always need to have projects ready to go for when an opening develops. However shorts are still a way into the game.

This is true. But the way you put it, "a way into the game," would suggest a way into writing features for production. I think this would be the case more often than writers working their way up to "bigger" shorts. It's all a matter of what you want to do with your stories. If you want a slew of short films produced with your name on them, that's cool. But it seems like most writers set their sights a little higher. This is what I mean by "not serious business." It's the first rung on most writers ladders, I'd expect. Besides, it seems more likely to write a feature that gets produced on a small scale than a short that gets nominated for an Oscar or whatever.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films In general I would also say that most features are less serious than shorts. Most features tend to be quite generic and made just for entertainment. Short filmmakers take a lot more risks, because they are cheaper to produce.

Absolutely true on a mass scale. But on an individual basis, I don't think so. Features, by nature, have a greater capacity for being complex than shorts do. There's just far too many writers who produce garbage for this to be true on a whole. Also, I don't judge script's merit based on whether it tackles "serious issues" or not. I won't presume to know what you meant by "serious issues" but personally, I'm way more for escapism than some bullshit social commentary/political statement by some blowhard who thinks they're important. That's not to say I don't try to explore larger issues in some of my own scripts. I do (I try, anyway). But I do it to make the writing more interesting for me and also enhance the more mundane events of the story. But when the "issues" take the lead in the script, I think that's when the stories suffer.

Then again, I could have you all wrong and either way, this all depends on what draws you to film in the first place. Seems like you prefer films of a more "relevant" nature.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films The world is full of good screenwriters and good stories, you need to aim for the truly extraordinary.

I totally agree! Set your sights high. Even if you don't completely reach your goal, you'll have something better than if you'd started with lower standards.

Quoted from James McClung This is true. But the way you put it, "a way into the game," would suggest a way into writing features for production. I think this would be the case more often than writers working their way up to "bigger" shorts. It's all a matter of what you want to do with your stories. If you want a slew of short films produced with your name on them, that's cool. But it seems like most writers set their sights a little higher. This is what I mean by "not serious business." It's the first rung on most writers ladders, I'd expect. Besides, it seems more likely to write a feature that gets produced on a small scale than a short that gets nominated for an Oscar or whatever. Absolutely true on a mass scale. But on an individual basis, I don't think so. Features, by nature, have a greater capacity for being complex than shorts do. There's just far too many writers who produce garbage for this to be true on a whole. Also, I don't judge script's merit based on whether it tackles "serious issues" or not. I won't presume to know what you meant by "serious issues" but personally, I'm way more for escapism than some bullshit social commentary/political statement by some blowhard who thinks they're important. That's not to say I don't try to explore larger issues in some of my own scripts. I do (I try, anyway). But I do it to make the writing more interesting for me and also enhance the more mundane events of the story. But when the "issues" take the lead in the script, I think that's when the stories suffer. Then again, I could have you all wrong and either way, this all depends on what draws you to film in the first place. Seems like you prefer films of a more "relevant" nature. I totally agree! Set your sights high. Even if you don't completely reach your goal, you'll have something better than if you'd started with lower standards.

Like I say, a top notch short=one meeting with the major players. At this point you pitch your feature. A top notch short can be very serious business indeed. It's common to use a short as a promo to get funding for a similar styled feature.

Hooking up with an up and coming Director is another way in. Peter Jackson is still working with the guy that helped him on Bad taste all those years ago. They first worked on a silly horror short together.

When you dismiss them as college stuff or whatever you're essentially denying yourself one of the paths to getting a feature produced.

Couple of things about shorts generally. Theoretically a feature can be more complex. In practice features tend to spoon feed the audience a lot more. The simple fact is that it costs so much to make a feature that people tend to make films that attempt to appeal to a wide audience, the wider audience you try to appeal to, the simpler the story becomes.

A complex feature will simply be too much for the average audience member to comprehend. The vast majority of features are written so that 12 year olds can understand them.

Shorts will tend to be viewed by a smaller but much more savvy audience and can therefore break more rules and do things that the mainstream can't touch.

Another thing is that a complex feature will tend to focus on numerous characters, so the time is split between the development of several people. 10 minutes spent focussed on one specific character or story line can easily be equivalent to the time spent in a 2 hour feature where there are multiple characters and subplots.

Leaving that aside and moving onto your other point: Escapism is the biggest seller at the Box office, it's what most people want. The problem is from a writers point of view is that your market for selling that kind of film is tiny, you can only really target the major studios (Independents and smaller companies won't be able to afford to make them). You're competing with the biggest trademarks in the world, like Harry Potter etc. Unless you move to LA, get an agent and really market yourself, it's going to be hard.

Not impossible, but hard.

It seems to me that a lot of the filmmakers/writers that make the escapist stuff broke in with films slightly off the beaten tracks or that deal with serious issues. Off the top of my head Ang Lee, Chris Nolan, Paul W. S Anderson, Frank Darabont. Even Spielberg made the quirky Amblin.

Go through the Top 250 on IMDb and look at the first films of the top Directors and writers they're almost universally weird little things or films that dealt with social topics.

It all depends on how you look at it, really.

I started by attempting features. The ideas are there but I never get near finishing them. Even this stupid pilot I've been working on for 3 years, isn't halfway done. So, I moved to shorts because I figured they were of a manageable length where I could finish them. And, I was right.

But, I'm not as happy writing shorts as I am trying features. It's just not as fun, but neither is failing. So, I keep working on the features, while putting out shorts and hope that eventually one will get finished.