Advice — syd field

How much thought do you think writers should invest in terms of tracking the broad strokes of the protagonist’s emotional journey when structuring the story?I think all screenwriters should know the emotional journey from beginning to end. If you have the character’s arc clearly in mind, you can then begin to build your story and character utilizing the emotional journey as one of the major leads into the physical journey. Action and character, those are the two things to follow during the unfolding of the script. Take a look at Avatar or The King’s Speech – it’s an emotional journey...

At this moment in time, I think we're in the middle of a screenwriting revolution, a time where screenwriters are pushing the form and craft in new directions. I firmly believe that the traditional way of "seeing things" has changed, and we're looking for new ways to match our experiences and incorporate the new technology into our stories.In terms of the contemporary screenplay, it seems like we want to get closer to the subjective reality of our characters. Take a look at Atonement, The Lookout, Babel, The Bourne Supremacy, Kill Bill I & II, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,...

Henry James, the great American novelist, in an essay entitled The Art of Fiction, asks a rhetorical question about the nature of character: "What is character," he writes, "but the determination of incident. And what is incident but the illumination of character." The key word of course, is "incident;" what the dictionary defines as "A specific occurrence or event that occurs in connection or relationship to something else." How does this affect the creation of character? Take a look at Mystic River - the entire film is based on an event that occurs when a young boy named Dave is...

Screenwriting is a craft that occasionally rises to the level of an art. An art because there are times when it taps directly into the human heart, transcending time, place, language and culture. A craft because it depends upon form, concept, character and structure. 'Magnolia' pushes the form of the screenplay to another level. Why and how were the questions I wanted to ask. How did the writer structure the film, and what were the elements that made it work? I hadn't seen 'Magnolia' when it was first released, and I hadn't seen 'Boogie Nights' or 'Hard Eight' either, so...

'La Grande Illusion' -- Jean Renoir's classic 1937 film revisited by author and teacher Syd Field partially excerpted from his new book 'Going to the Movies' My journey in film really began in the spring of 1960 at the University of California at Berkeley. It was my second semester there, and, at the time, I was acting in the production of Woyzeck. I was fortunate to be playing the lead character, and, after one performance, I was introduced the great French film director, Jean Renoir. His son, Alain, was on faculty at the University, and Renoir had just been appointed...