Hey, how ya doin'? First post, etc, etc...
I find myself, more and more lately, critiquing my work heavily, re-reading it tens of times to make sure there's no grammatical errors, and most importantly that the plot, as well as the dialog, flows together well, a nice smooth transition from one inter-dialog set to the next. I've been told all my writing life that this is our goal, as writers and screen writers. Dialog should be natural, not forced, or overtly leading. It seems to me that this concept is being driven into us hopefuls and independent artists, while quite a few of the Big-Hitter Hollywood hired writers are given a free pass. My work schedule of late ha snot allowed me to watch as many movies as I've liked, but last night my friend dragged me off to the Twilight New Moon showing in our next town over's small cinema. Trying to avoid prerequisite thoughts fueled by the internet's abhorrent hatred of this fad, I figured "Let's look at it from a blind eye, and take in what I can." The only thing I really walked away from it with was; 1) The Dialog "flowed" very awkwardly, very bare bones basic conversations that I feel left a lot of questions, and a lot of unnecessary answers as well. At this point I'm standing firm that the bad acting at such points did not help the poor transposed dialog. The tragedy to me is as a free-lancer, Indie, however you wish to call it, I slave myself over my scripts and short stories to make them "perfect" before I even decide if I want to attempt the project, when its perfectly acceptable for these writers/the writer to have such dry and unnatural dialog, when they barely have to be creative in the first place. 2) The plot was very predictable. Twenty minutes in I was able to discern the major plot points, and the order in which they would happen, which to be fair I can do with a lot of things I see on TV and cinema, however, the filler in between was dis-interesting and rather predictable as well.
I know, I know, I lack ovaries so some how that leaves me inept to see the true genius of the work, however note I'm not mocking the concept or the obsessive-fangirl following, truth be told the concept intrigues me, and I'm thankful that there's another book on the shelves that is succeeding in getting the younger folk interested in the concept of reading. My only complaint at this moment is the shoddy workmanship displayed, whoever is at fault, so be it, I'm simply disappointed that dialog this unnatural is acceptable. I do not fear the industry as a whole at this point, I'm somewhat nervous about the future, however. Earlier this year I did work as an extra in Tony Scott's "Unstoppable" and from the scenes I was involved in the attention to detail was astounding, unmatched by anything I've seen so far. True, its unfair to compare the work of Tony Scott to whoever did the Twilight movie, but that's more of my statement of the industry as a whole, I've witnessed something I felt was a great OCD-like attention to detail (I'll reserve final judgment til next year when the film actually hits...) and I've witnessed a slipshod feeling production. It seems almost like the writer/writers of the script were sitting around and decided "Well, we KNOW this is going to make multimillions regardless, let's get hammered!" and at one point must've sobered up, at one point towards the middle the dialog suddenly became golden. It flowed extremely naturally and well, there were a few good one liners and borderline epic sayings, but just when I was getting some hope for the rest of it, it fell apart, back to the shambles the original dialog style sauntered in using, tripping over it own feet like that awkward kid that was always picked last for everything.
Now, I know, mistakes make the world go 'round, if not for a few late-night mistakes half of us wouldn't be here, and there certainly have been more than a fair share of sucky movies over the decades. My fear, however, is that with everyone defending this to its purposed demise we may begin to see a slacking in the movie industry. "Hell they made umpteen million with this, let's push our luck!" and then society's cinematic art form begins to fall, plot lines and dialog we pay $8 dollars to see in a cinematic theater will resemble the ramblings of an inexperienced flop film, "kids with guns" concept ,if you will. It'll be like watching YouTube on a larger projected screen...
Please, tell me I'm not the only one to feel the dialog and plot were so forced.
Edit: Posted in Screenwriting because its supposed to more of an introspective look at our own writing and the future of screenwriting, rather than a bitch about Twilight, which I admit, it looks like....
I find myself, more and more lately, critiquing my work heavily, re-reading it tens of times to make sure there's no grammatical errors, and most importantly that the plot, as well as the dialog, flows together well, a nice smooth transition from one inter-dialog set to the next. I've been told all my writing life that this is our goal, as writers and screen writers. Dialog should be natural, not forced, or overtly leading. It seems to me that this concept is being driven into us hopefuls and independent artists, while quite a few of the Big-Hitter Hollywood hired writers are given a free pass. My work schedule of late ha snot allowed me to watch as many movies as I've liked, but last night my friend dragged me off to the Twilight New Moon showing in our next town over's small cinema. Trying to avoid prerequisite thoughts fueled by the internet's abhorrent hatred of this fad, I figured "Let's look at it from a blind eye, and take in what I can." The only thing I really walked away from it with was; 1) The Dialog "flowed" very awkwardly, very bare bones basic conversations that I feel left a lot of questions, and a lot of unnecessary answers as well. At this point I'm standing firm that the bad acting at such points did not help the poor transposed dialog. The tragedy to me is as a free-lancer, Indie, however you wish to call it, I slave myself over my scripts and short stories to make them "perfect" before I even decide if I want to attempt the project, when its perfectly acceptable for these writers/the writer to have such dry and unnatural dialog, when they barely have to be creative in the first place. 2) The plot was very predictable. Twenty minutes in I was able to discern the major plot points, and the order in which they would happen, which to be fair I can do with a lot of things I see on TV and cinema, however, the filler in between was dis-interesting and rather predictable as well.
I know, I know, I lack ovaries so some how that leaves me inept to see the true genius of the work, however note I'm not mocking the concept or the obsessive-fangirl following, truth be told the concept intrigues me, and I'm thankful that there's another book on the shelves that is succeeding in getting the younger folk interested in the concept of reading. My only complaint at this moment is the shoddy workmanship displayed, whoever is at fault, so be it, I'm simply disappointed that dialog this unnatural is acceptable. I do not fear the industry as a whole at this point, I'm somewhat nervous about the future, however. Earlier this year I did work as an extra in Tony Scott's "Unstoppable" and from the scenes I was involved in the attention to detail was astounding, unmatched by anything I've seen so far. True, its unfair to compare the work of Tony Scott to whoever did the Twilight movie, but that's more of my statement of the industry as a whole, I've witnessed something I felt was a great OCD-like attention to detail (I'll reserve final judgment til next year when the film actually hits...) and I've witnessed a slipshod feeling production. It seems almost like the writer/writers of the script were sitting around and decided "Well, we KNOW this is going to make multimillions regardless, let's get hammered!" and at one point must've sobered up, at one point towards the middle the dialog suddenly became golden. It flowed extremely naturally and well, there were a few good one liners and borderline epic sayings, but just when I was getting some hope for the rest of it, it fell apart, back to the shambles the original dialog style sauntered in using, tripping over it own feet like that awkward kid that was always picked last for everything.
Now, I know, mistakes make the world go 'round, if not for a few late-night mistakes half of us wouldn't be here, and there certainly have been more than a fair share of sucky movies over the decades. My fear, however, is that with everyone defending this to its purposed demise we may begin to see a slacking in the movie industry. "Hell they made umpteen million with this, let's push our luck!" and then society's cinematic art form begins to fall, plot lines and dialog we pay $8 dollars to see in a cinematic theater will resemble the ramblings of an inexperienced flop film, "kids with guns" concept ,if you will. It'll be like watching YouTube on a larger projected screen...
Please, tell me I'm not the only one to feel the dialog and plot were so forced.
Edit: Posted in Screenwriting because its supposed to more of an introspective look at our own writing and the future of screenwriting, rather than a bitch about Twilight, which I admit, it looks like....
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