I assume we’ve all heard those stories about how a young Felix Mendelssohn transcribed note for note musical scores by Johann Sebastian Bach, just to get the feel of how Bach wrote music.
And stories about how F. Scott Fitzgerald transcribed the novels of writers he admired such as Charles Dickens to get the feel of their writing.
Well, why not do that with screenplays?
If you’re struggling with any of the following:
* How to handle scene description
* How to manage transitions between scenes
* How to balance action and dialogue within scenes
* How much scene description is too much / too little
* How to write realistic dialogue
* How to use primary sluglines and secondary sluglines
* How to write series of scenes, series of shots, and montages
Sure, you can read great screenplays.
But what about typing them – word for word?
A story.
In my never-ending quest to accumulate screenplays of my favorite movies…
I commented in one of my screenwriting classes that I couldn’t find a script online for my all-time favorite movie To Kill a Mockingbird.
Some months later, I get a PDF of the script.
One of my students had purchased a hard copy of the script…
Then typed it up word for word in Final Draft…
Made a PDF of it and sent it to me.
And as I recall, she had quite positive comments about the transcription process.
Quite a learning experience!
And besides if it worked for Mendelssohn and Fitzgerald…
Don’t you think it could work for you, too?
This has been another edition of Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work.
that's a really great idea, man. I'm gonna do that this weekend. thanks
Greatest idea since sliced bread!
I have reconstructed screenplays from the DVD for several movies where I couldn't find a screenplay online. I'll get the dialog from the subtitles (or from online transcripts, where available) and make up my own scene headings and action lines.
To be honest, I'm not sure if it's a productive use of one's time. But I had one interesting case where I reconstructed the Tom Cruise WAR OF THE WORLDS and later found the original script online.
I compared the two, and my script wasn't very different. Just the one scene was way off. When the lightning first strikes, a crowd gathers around the hole it makes in the ground, and a cop tries to control the people. In the script the cop doesn't get a line, it just says something like "the cop tells them to keep clear." In my script, he says "Back off" with variations about thirteen times, because that's what's on the DVD. Not exactly riveting screenwriting!
Ciao from Italy! Sorry for my english: also if for me it's enough for to read your interesting suggestion, and now to write that your blog is really interesting… always I can learn more and more: great! Thanks…Now I take my courage and I write you but I don't know if you can, but….. please, why don't you "put" a link so we can read the transcript of To kill a mockingbird? Me too I love this movie Thanks ciao ciao Giulia