yes, I tend ask questions and then answer them myself.  I figured I've hit a few posts now, at least 20 something so I might want to let those know who I am.  

name is Matt, born and raised in the mysterious land that is the techie bay area. I have lived in Kentucky, Delaware and now in Southern California.  

i've been writing screenplays for about ten years.  I got interested in films my first year in high school - instead of discussing with family and friends what I thought about the story or film, I'd ponder "how did they do that shot, or did he break character?, wait, was the boom in the shot? Is that normal?"

My friends would go to a movie every weekend, usually every Friday night, and I finally asked myself one day in high school during my senior year "how do they determine what the actor says? My mom said, well someone writes them"...I of course already knew this ands was thinking aloud, but it matters not.

in 2007, I went to writer's group and we talked about genres and the stereotypes writers get labeled with - like so and so is a fantasy writer, or western writer, etc. The instructor had us write things we thought might prevent writers from being pigeonholed. Then we went around the room and said what genre we dislike and why. My genre was coming-of-age romantics comedy types and the reason were for the overly sappy and cheesy scenes.  

Our assignment that week were challenged to come up with and write a one paragraph synopsis for a film in the genre we didn't like.  Mine was called Small Romantics. About a boy in San Francisco who meets his next door neighbor. The basis of that on the advice of a family friend when I told her I was stuck on what to write for my next spec feature, was to tweak that story and see if writing what I knew helped.  The end product is Sunset Summer. Now that SS is completed, I've told myself I wouldn't do it, but I am -contemplating a sequel.  Surprisingly Sunset Summer has gained interest with a lot of indie producers or so i've been told.  I've quite a few contact me about it. Nothing panned out, but I have a producer who wants to get the ball rolling finally!  


Here I am now, ten years into it and I'm still learning different tidbits and how to improve on writing screenplays.  

After seeing True Grit, I went home and started getting a fix for westerns and started browsing youtube - somehow ended up watching videos on the video game Oregon Trail and hearing about dysentery. So I decided to brainstorm ideas on writing a real movie based on the video game. After a week of a few ideas here and there, but nothing concrete, I had a voice in my head telling my to just forgo the video game aspect entirely and write a western.  A few days later the idea was pieced together.  The result:

Midnight Moon: Bandits of the Oregon Trail.

Still contemplating a logline.  Tonight I got the first ten pages have been completed and I really like it so far.  it's probably the best script I've written - which is good, I'd hate to think I hadn't learned anything in the ten years.

Oh and if you haven't notice I tend to ramble on and talk about myself a lot, feel free toy call me on it when it becomes too much.  I'm the harshest critic of my work - been working on Dreams of Reality for a good 7-10 years and I've completed maybe seven different version, a few of which have been tossed and some kept, but I will not hesitate to start a script over if I feel it doesn't work.

I'm also an actor, so I don't get offended easily... unless it's my parents tell me I'm worthless child who doesn't deserve to live... then yeah, I might be slightly offended.  

I have tried to read more scripts consistently, and provide relevant feedback.  


Thanks for reading - if you made past "That's Good."

Would you write from the perspective of the bandits? I think you could do a lot of interesting stuff with that. Maybe a bandit could be the bastard of a lawman, drawn to crime out of resentment. He could have other qualities that eventually shine through.

Quoted from leitskev Would you write from the perspective of the bandits? I think you could do a lot of interesting stuff with that. Maybe a bandit could be the bastard of a lawman, drawn to crime out of resentment. He could have other qualities that eventually shine through.

It's interesting you ask that - I enjoy stories where villains are more than just a name to be feared.  Sure they may bark loud, but they always bite with no real depth.  I prefer that the villain be given ample screen time, so we can find out why the villain is evil, twisted or both, etc.

I have a backstory of the bandit/villain and I definitely want him to have some (corelance? That's not the word I'm looking for - drawing a blank) with the story.  

Basically my idea was: A eighteen year old girl becomes sheriff in 1848 Missouri and tracks down the outlaw for bounty money, whom also kidnapped her parents two years ago after burning half the town of Jefferson City, Missouri.  They follow the bandits... at the moment called the Rawhide Riders and leader William "Wild Bill" Carver, up the Oregon Trail.  I've written ten pages so far, and contemplating better, more original names except the main charcacter:

Callie "Renegade" Riley.

The story right now is in the perspective of the Callie, the young female sheriff.  Obviously historically inaccurate b/c the first female sheriff of Missouri wasn't until much later, but I think it works for the story, even if it's a bit out there as some of my friends have told me and from what I've been told through researching this story.

Lately, I've become obsessed with this site:

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/

For one who wishes to write a western or just sift through American history, it's a pretty good site.

Hey there.  Realized I don't think I've posted anything since June of last year.  So I figure I'd give a quick update. I've had to visit family in the midwest under kind heavy-hearted circumstances.  One of my Uncles passed away last April, then I moved up North at the end of April/May.

I'm now back up in Northern California, and had kind of gotten into TV shows for a while, but they're are now in hiatus so, I returned to working on a few writing projects.  

-The Western I'm still working on, though it's changed a bit since the above synopsis.
- I'm also working on my fantasy-adventure novel

and the interest with Sunset Summer has simmered for the time being which has given me some time and thought to tweak it - always can make it better!

I hope to start reading some of the new scripts on this site, I'm sure I have some catching up to do.  

-Matt

Matt....

Something a friend of mine has beat into my thick skull and a good piece of advice BEFORE  you embark on writing more pages.....FIRST...

"WRITE A LOGLINE"

This is helping me out tremendously. I'm a beginner though since October, but still I write like a tornado, fast and messy. If you get done and you cant' figure out a logline, then more than likely, your structure, pace and most of all story has lost it's premise and theme....just saying...TRY to write a logline first. It will help keep you focused through the writing process.

Hope to read some of your work soon! Welcome back BTW.

dena