Film-making.....Screenwriting

[rklenseth]

So do you want to work on writing the dialogue? It doesn't have to be perfect and if you hit a dead end I'm sure the rest of us can help you. The script will go through a number rewrites and revisions before there is a final and even the final will change during filming and post-production.

[Nick]

All the characters are more or less leads. There isn't any true main character which the story centers but is rather a story that centers on a number of characters, their relationships (not meaning romantic though) toward each other, and the events that occur because of those relationships. That is what Once Upon a Time in the West is about.

You're going to need a romance in a character driven story.

[rklenseth]

All the characters are more or less leads. There isn't any true main character which the story centers but is rather a story that centers on a number of characters, their relationships (not meaning romantic though) toward each other, and the events that occur because of those relationships. That is what Once Upon a Time in the West is about.

You're going to need a romance in a character driven story.

I actually I never mentioned anything about a romantic lead yet. I'm still thinking about how that would work.

Maybe have something between the mayor and the widow and the police chief and the widow.

In Once Upon a Time in the West, Harmonica (aka the stranger/drifter), Jill McBain (aka the widow), Frank (aka the bad dude working for the rail baron and in our case our mayor), and Cheyenne (aka gang member falsely accused of a murder and in our case probably the gang leader who deals drugs for our mayor) all had a love triangle.

[rklenseth]

So anymore ideas? I'll begin to try writing the first few scenes and then post them here for discussion.

[rklenseth]

I finally thought of a premise for the movie.

The story will arc around the widow and her claim to a factory in the city. The mayor, who will be known for wearing white leather cowboy hats, is trying to take the factory from her so that he can sell to his corporate buddies and make a large buddle of cash and tribute from it. That is how the story will begin with the widow husband being murdered by gangbangers under the mayor's employ. At the same time, a mysterious stranger, who will also sport a gray (it was white at one time), weathered cowboy hat will arrive in the city and will get himself involved by helping people coming against the mayor which will include the widow and other characters of which I will mention soon. The mayor's history will be that he was once a corrupt cop that has since become mayor through bullying tactics and making alliance with organized crime, gangbangers, and placing other corrupt cops and politicians (including judges) into high places. The mayor will run everything in the town from drugs being sold on the streets by dealers to murdering anyone who tries to stop him or get in his way. On the outside things will look squeaky clean which even though people know bad things like this might be happening make the majority of the citizens happy or at least content enough not to challenge the mayor. The police chief will be once of the mayor's henchmen though unwilling one. He is blackmailed (I haven't figured out for what yet) into it and is trying to find a way out. A leader of one of the major gangs in the city is also one of the mayor's unwilling henchmen who is coming toward middle age and wants to leave his life in crime due to his first child on the way. He stays only because the mayor can have him arrested at any time for actions he has done for the mayor. Who will believe a gangbanger over the mayor? And with the courts rigged he wouldn't stand a chance. The widow at first will do anything to keep the property including becoming the mayor's unwilling lover but when it appears the mayor will take hold of the property anyways, the widow will recruit the aid of the stranger, whom I am going to call Hat. The mayor will try to have her murdered. Eventually the police chief and the gang leader come to the widows aid hoping that perhaps there is hope to take the man down. A journalist, who is trying to reveal the corruption, and learns later that the mayor also owns the papers in the town joins the group and chronicle the events and by the end of the story will print, using an old printing press from the 30's, his own paper with their story in it which will lead to the downfall of the mayor as a reelection comes up. The widow will run for mayor against the mayor at which point they will try to sling as much shit at her as they can at her. By the end of the movie the mayor would have lost his mayorship to the widow. Now that he is desperate, the mayor comes after the widow with what is left of his henchmen but runs in Hat and another man they would have recruited earlier who is a Catholic priest/ex-cop whose half side of his face is completely scarred from burns he took when he tried to save his family from a burning car wreck created by the mayor because the cop had tried to get in his way by being a good cop and doing the right thing. He took up the priesthood but is later convinced to join the widow. At the end of the movie when Hat and the mayor come down into a showdown we will learn the significance of the gray hat. Hat we will learn was made to watch as a young mayor, then a corrupt cop, murders his family. Hat's father was a former police chief in the city that was trying to get the mayor and his buddies prosecuted for corruption. At the end Hat will kill the now former mayor.

What do you all think?

Can anyone draw really well? We will need someone to do storyboard and character sketches to get an idea of how this will look like. I can't draw.

[Nick]

Catholic priest/ex-cop whose half side of his face is completely scarred from burns he took when he tried to save his family from a burning car wreck created by the mayor because the cop had tried to get in his way by being a good cop and doing the right thing. He took up the priesthood but is later convinced to join the widow

The rest sounds good, but I dunno about this. That's a little over-the-top, IMO


So the widow would be symbolising the town's disapproval of what the town has become?
She could be somewhat of a central figure, and the rest of the protagonists would have to have some sort of inspiration from her, directly or indirectly.

There should also be a location... perhaps the building that the mayor is trying to seize, or perhaps the house of the widow, that is a very protagonist location. (I'm finding this hard to explain..) The viewers should feel that this is really the heart of the "resistance".

[swymir]

I've been working on a life action animated film which is a sort of a parody off of the Merry Melody, old fashioned disnay cartoons.

Basically it's about 2 guys who walk outside to a beautiful day and they start singing about it (I still have to brush the music up, but the lyrics are done). But as they sing about it bad things happen in the background, but since they don't see any of it they continue to sing about how great the day is. It's only a 3 minute music sort of sketch and I haven't been able to put as much time into it as I want, but it's the first film that I am doing solo. I've helped out on quite a few films which have been rather successful locally. Documentaries mostly, but I've never been interested in that, feels more like work.

Every Tuesday I go to a forum where all the young filmmakers in the area discuss script ideas and give feedback on scripts that others have written. It's a good program and is what got me into film making. The guy who runs it wrote one of the Dirty Harry movies. I forget which one, but he came up with the "Go ahead make my day" line. So whatever movie that was in.