Spec Scripts
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Spec Scripts
A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned and unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio. Spec scripts which have gone on to win Academy Awards include ''Thelma & Louise'' (sold by Callie Khouri to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for US$500,000 in 1990), ''Good Will Hunting'' (sold by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to Miramax for US$675,000 in 1994) and '' American Beauty'' (sold by Alan Ball to DreamWorks Pictures for US$250,000 in 1998), which all won Best Original Screenplay. A spec script reads differently from a shooting script or a production script in that there is more focus on the story itself while focus on camera movements and other directing aspects should be rarely, if ever, used. Camera directions and technical directions are often added in the later drafts. The sole purpose of a spec script, also known as the ''selling ...
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Screenplay
''ScreenPlay'' is a television drama anthology series broadcast on BBC2 between 9 July 1986 and 27 October 1993. Background After single-play anthology series went off the air, the BBC introduced several showcases for made-for-television, feature length filmed dramas, including ''ScreenPlay''. Various writers and directors were utilized on the series. Writer Jimmy McGovern was hired by producer George Faber to pen a series five episode based upon the Merseyside needle exchange programme of the 1980s. The episode, directed by Gillies MacKinnon, was entitled ''Needle'' and featured Sean McKee, Emma Bird, and Pete Postlethwaite''.'' The last episode of the series was titled "Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands" and featured Robbie Coltrane as English writer Samuel Johnson, who in the autumn of 1773, visits the Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland. That episode was directed by John Byrne and co-starred John Sessions and Celia Imrie. Some scenes wer ...
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Vanity Fair (magazine)
''Vanity Fair'' is a monthly magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States. The first version of ''Vanity Fair'' was published from 1913 to 1936. The imprint was revived in 1983 and currently includes five international editions of the magazine. As of 2018, the Editor-in-Chief is Radhika Jones. Vanity Fair is most recognized for its celebrity pictures and the occasional controversy that surrounds its more risqué images. Furthermore, the publication is known for its energetic writing, in-depth reporting, and social commentary. History ''Dress and Vanity Fair'' Condé Montrose Nast began his empire by purchasing the men's fashion magazine ''Dress'' in 1913. He renamed the magazine ''Dress and Vanity Fair'' and published four issues in 1913. It continued to thrive into the 1920s. However, it became a casualty of the Great Depression and declining advertising revenues, although its circulation, at 90,000 copies, was at ...
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Shooting Script
A shooting script is the version of a screenplay used during the production of a motion picture. Shooting scripts are distinct from spec scripts in that they make use of scene numbers (along with certain other formatting conventions described below), and they follow a well-defined set of procedures specifying how script revisions should be implemented and circulated. Overview When a screenplay is approved for production, the scenes are assigned numbers which are included in the script alongside the scene headers. The numbers provide a convenient way for the various production departments to reference individual scenes. Also each individual shot within a scene is also assigned numbers. After a shooting script has been widely circulated, page numbers are locked, and any revisions are distributed on revision pages. Thus the production office might issue a revision containing new pages 3, 9, 17 and 45. This avoids having to print and distribute an entirely new draft for every set ...
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Screenwriter's Salary
A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. Terminology In the silent era, writers now considered screenwriters were denoted by terms such as photoplaywright, photoplay writer, photoplay dramatist and screen playwright.Steven Maras. ''Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice.'' Wallflower Press, 2009. pp. 82–85. Screenwriting historian Steven Maras notes that these early writers were often understood as being the authors of the films as shown and argues that they cannot be precisely equated with present-day screenwriters because they were responsible for a technical product, a brief "scenario", "treatment", or "synopsis" that is a written synopsis of what is to be filmed. Profession Screenwriting is a freelance profession. No education is required to be a professional scree ...
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Black List (survey)
The Black List is an annual survey of the "most-liked" motion picture screenplays not yet produced. It has been published every year since 2005 on the second Friday of December by Franklin Leonard, a development executive who subsequently worked at Universal Pictures and Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment. The website states that these are not necessarily "the best" screenplays, but rather "the most liked", since it is based on a survey of studio and production company executives. Of the more than 1,000 screenplays ''The Black List'' has included since 2005, 440 have been produced as theatrical films, including ''Argo'', ''American Hustle'', '' Juno'', ''The King's Speech'', ''Slumdog Millionaire'', ''Spotlight'', '' The Revenant'', ''The Descendants'', and '' Hell or High Water''. The produced films have together grossed over $30 billion, and been nominated for 241 Academy Awards and 205 Golden Globe Awards, winning 50 and 40 respectively. As of the 92nd Academy Awards, ...
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Academy Award For Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with the Oscars for 1957, the two categories were combined to honor only the screenplay. See also the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a similar award for screenplays that are adaptations of pre-existing material. Superlatives Woody Allen has the most nominations in this category with 16, and the most awards with 3 (for ''Annie Hall'', ''Hannah and Her Sisters'', and ''Midnight in Paris''). Paddy Chayefsky and Billy Wilder have also won three screenwriting Oscars: Chayefsky won two for Original Screenplay ('' The Hospital'' and ''Network'') and one for Adapted Screenplay ('' Marty''), while Wilder won one for Adapted Screenplay ('' The Lost Weekend'', shared with Charles Brackett), and two for Original Screenplay (''Sunset Boulevard'', ...
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20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disney Studios, a division of The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by 20th Century Studios and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (Buena Vista Home Entertainment) distributes the films produced by 20th Century Studios in home media under the 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment banner. For over 80 years – beginning with its founding in 1935 and ending in 2019 (when it became part of Walt Disney Studios), 20th Century Fox was one of the then "Big Six" major American film studios. It was formed in 1935 from the merger of the Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures and was originally known as the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (while owned by TCF ...
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Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' is a 1969 American Western buddy film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy ( Paul Newman), and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid" ( Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack US posse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance's lover, Etta Place (Katharine Ross), flee to Bolivia to escape the posse. In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The American Film Institute ranked ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' as the 73rd-greatest American film on its " AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)" list, and number 50 on the original list. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were ranked 20th-greatest heroes on " AFI ...
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William Goldman
William Goldman (August 12, 1931 – November 16, 2018) was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays '' Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' (1969) and ''All the President's Men'' (1976). His other well-known works include his thriller novel '' Marathon Man'' (1974) and his cult classic comedy/fantasy novel '' The Princess Bride'' (1973), both of which he also adapted for film versions. Early life Goldman was born into a Jewish family in Chicago in 1931 and grew up in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, the second son of Marion (née Weil) and Maurice Clarence Goldman. Goldman's father initially was a successful businessman, working in Chicago and in a partnership, but he suffered from alcoholism, which cost him his business. He "came home to live and he was in his pajamas for the last five years of his life," according to Gold ...
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North By Northwest
''North by Northwest'' is a 1959 American spy thriller film, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures". ''North by Northwest'' is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization trying to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle microfilm, which contains government secrets, out of the country. This is one of several Hitchcock films that feature a music score by Bernard Herrmann and an opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass, and was the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits. ''North by Northwest'' is listed among the canonical Hitchcock films of the 1950s and is often listed among the greatest films of all time. It was selected in 1995 for preservation in the United States Natio ...
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Ernest Lehman
Ernest Paul Lehman (December 8, 1915 – July 2, 2005) was an American screenwriter. He was nominated six times for Academy Awards for his screenplays during his career, but did not win. At the 73rd Academy Awards in 2001, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his achievements and his influential works for the screen. He was the first screenwriter to receive that honor. He received two Edgar Awards of the Mystery Writers of America for screenplays of suspense films he wrote for director Alfred Hitchcock: ''North by Northwest'' (1959), his only original screenplay, and ''Family Plot'' (1976), one of numerous adaptations. Early years Lehman was born in 1915 to Gertrude (Thorn) and Paul E. Lehman. Their wealthy Jewish family was based on Long Island; they had suffered major financial losses during the Great Depression. Lehman attended the College of the City of New York (The City College of New York). After graduation, he started working as a freelance wri ...
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National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception in 1988. History Through the 1980s, several prominent filmmakers and industry personalities in the United States, such as Frank Capra and Martin Scorsese, advocated for Congress to enact a film preservation bill in order to avoid commercial modifications (such as pan and scan and editing for TV) of classic films, which they saw as negative. In response to the controversy over the colorization of originally black and white films in the decade specifically, Representatives Robert J. Mrazek and Sidney R. Yates introduced the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, which established the National Film Registry, its purpose, and the criteria for selecting films for preservation. The Act was passed and the NFR's mission was subsequently r ...
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