How These Great Screenplays Got Written

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Have you ever watched a highly complicated historical film that spans long stretches of time, features multiple storylines, dozens of characters and feeds you exorbitant amounts of information and thought to yourself: how does someone even begin to write something like that?
Then you're in luck!
In this video essay we'll go through many outstanding screenplays to uncover the handy techniques that creative writers use to find method in this madness. Techniques such as cold opens, intercutting, dialogue hooks, rhyming scenes, montages and many more.
The screenplays most often used as examples here are:
-"Lawrence of Arabia" by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson
-"Reds" by Warren Beatty & Trevor Griffiths
-"Gandhi" by John Briley
-"The Last Emperor" by Bernardo Bertolucci and Mark Peploe
-"Malcolm X" by Spike Lee & Arnold Perl
-"Schindler's List" by Steven Zaillian
-"Nixon" by Oliver Stone & Stephen J. Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson
-"Oppenheimer" by Christopher Nolan
We also go through several films by Martins Scorsese: "Goodfellas" and "Casino" (written by Scorsese & Nicholas Pileggi), "The Wolf of Wall Street" (by Terence Winter) and "The Irishman" (by Steven Zaillian).
Also mentioned here are the films "Lincoln" (Tony Kushner), "JFK" (Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar), "Il Divo" (Paolo Sorrentino), "Carlos" (Olivier Assayas & Dan Franck), "Vice" (Adam McKay), "The Big Short" (Adam McKay and Charles Randolph) and "Viva Zapata" (John Steinbeck).
#videoessay #screenwriting #historicaldrama #filmmaking
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5 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 74

@SchoolstuffIeva 8 месяцев назад

NO WAY. I’ve been writing my (I don’t even know the count) but another draft for a historical detective feature film which is very complex as it dives into two main categories or chapters you could call them. AND NOW MY FAVOURITE YT CHANNEL MAKES A VIDEO FOR THIS? Thank you to whoever makes these videos. I love all your videos and they’ve helped me through filmschool.

@elizabethpalladino8301 8 месяцев назад

All I can say about this video is WOW!!! You condense a fascinating amount of explanation and information into a video that is shorter than 15 minutes. The final section about "Citizen Kate" is just the icing on a delicious cake.

@stephenfrost6801 8 месяцев назад

You're one of my few subscribed channels I check to see if I've missed a notification. I look forward to uploads and you never disappoint.

@kahaanvyas6988 8 месяцев назад

One great one is Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America, with Robert de Niro. It uses almost all of these techniques pretty effectively and has a mind bending flashback structure.

@Mouli820 5 месяцев назад

I’m happy that finally someone came up with how well written was the character introduction of colonel Pash.

@LittlePhizDorrit 8 месяцев назад

Another great video. I especially liked the mention that these guys always fight with their wives, it really is an overused trope. And I loved the title cards for names in "death of stalin".

@vancecunningham5032 8 месяцев назад

The absolute best is Bondarchuk's War and Peace, although not because of the screenplay

@norwoodeye2580 8 месяцев назад

Damn it, man, I love your work. Keep them coming!

@chaplin2929 8 месяцев назад

They could write one of these about my day at work, so it's a pleasant surprise to come home to a new Moviewise upload! Magnificient video!

@JamesTateWilson 8 месяцев назад

great video, keep em coming!

@robsonliz1892 8 месяцев назад

You are awesome, Moviewise! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!

@johnpaulsylvester3727 8 месяцев назад

I feel like your videos are going to be very helpful in my screenwriting class this semester.

@SS-ec2tu 8 месяцев назад

Tip: "Like" is redundant. Just say "I feel your videos..." Also use "about" or "approximately" instead of "around". I am glad I could like help you become a like better screenwriter, even though I am around like 80 years old.😇

@johnpaulsylvester3727 8 месяцев назад

@@SS-ec2tu thanks, bro. Glad we cleared that up

@Zed-fq3lj 8 месяцев назад

Another great video dude! Thank you! Made me appreciate The Last Emperor even more!

@JohnMoseley 8 месяцев назад

Made me want to watch The Last Emperor.

@vince-1337 8 месяцев назад

Dude, your channel blow up since I discovered you with the aspect ratio video. So happy for you, keep it up :D !

@Cinephileofmany 8 месяцев назад

Brilliant as always.

@horatius2006 8 месяцев назад

Every time there's so much to look forward to and learn from your vids. Please keep up your stupendous work! (for "classics", how about a movie from Vincente Minelli?)

@tollertyp7230 8 месяцев назад

One of your best videos. Go! Go! Go! 🎉🎉🎉

@BernardFreeman-r4s 8 месяцев назад

Hey man love your videos and you are BY FAR my favourite youtuber on the site. My question is how long do you do research for your videos or is most of the stuff you say stuff that you just know and then you just think of good examples for it. Hope you understood.

@Moviewise 8 месяцев назад

It depends on the subject. For a video like this one, that’s about many films, it takes longer. I’ll spend some weeks or even months rewatching some of the movies I might cover and taking notes.

@benjaminl429 8 месяцев назад

Yet another quality analysis. Thank you vaguely foreign man.

@biffstrong1079 7 месяцев назад

I am called Walker. Let me take your rotten bloody picture for the rotten bloody newspapers. Always Gives me chills.

@goblinslayer7096 8 месяцев назад

you're the best.

@juantomas7971 8 месяцев назад

Another point that I find interesting about this type of script is that most good films don't try to condense the hole person's life - from birth to death - in a tight space of three hours. Most screenwriters focus on one event or the build-up to events that made that person famous. Lawrence of Arabia portrays the story of T.E. Lawrence during his historic and decisive campaign in the First World War; Goodfellas portrays the entire period of Henry Hill's life when he was in the mafia and, even though it addresses family aspects of his person, it still does so with the purpose of giving more weight to the themes of the plot. Even Citizen Kane, which is a film that emphasizes the main character's backstory, focuses especially on what matters, which is the character's rise to power. Even if it brings interesting results, exploring a person's entire life is almost a shot in the foot for a script. I believe that one of the few good examples I saw was Malcolm X. In most cases where the film sets out to be an autobiography, it ends up exploring themes and other situations that are not even the focus of the narrative and deviates. The film Elvis is an example of this, as it talks about several issues that concern the singer's life, but in fact it gets lost in what it really wants to tell, which would be the love he had for his audience and that he gave so much of himself for this love that ended up suffering because of it. In the end, I think biographical films should follow the character from a point where we can identify who he was or what he did, and, if necessary, go back in time to reveal information that matters to the plot.

@Zed-fq3lj 8 месяцев назад

The Last Emperor pulled it successfully (the whole life)...and Chaplin 1992 (not mentioned in the video9 but it was a brilliant whole life biography. But it is a more difficult approach indeed.

@Kevin_Street 8 месяцев назад

I think those are cases where you can make an argument that the childhood affected the adult in a way that's significant to the story, or a way that can be memorably visualized on film. With most people like Lawrence of Arabia or Elvis, we're interested in them for a specific reason, and that provides a natural focus for the story.

@N_Loco_Parenthesis 8 месяцев назад

Hole person?

@BernardFreeman-r4s 8 месяцев назад

Perfectly said, the movies do work best when they portray only as much as is needed for what the movie intends to show. Boogie nights would also be an example of this, it shows the lead up to his fame and eventually the downfall and (not rise but betterment) again. It doesn't need to give you a whole backstory or show you his life until death because the movie is meant to illustrate the rise and fall of the lives of the people in the adult movie industry.

@Kevin_Street 8 месяцев назад

Thank you for another wonderful video! I don't think I've watched enough of these kind of movies. With the exception of Lawrence of Arabia, I tend to watch historical epics once in the theater, then forget about them over time. Not sure why, but it could be because the stories are real, and real life is complicated and doesn't fit easily into the structure of fiction.

@shoshone3741 8 месяцев назад

Liked the video, now let's watch it

@LycanVisuals 8 месяцев назад

If I was a GREAT screenwriter not good, I would want to write a script on the Lusitania sinking. I recently got the Dead Wake book which has very good reviews.

@MattBellzminion 8 месяцев назад

Mike Nichols' "Charlie Wilson's War" uses a montage sequence of grainy 1980s Afghan War footage with superimposed graphics to efficiently convey the rapidly mounting toll that US-supplied Stinger AA missiles had on the Soviet Air Force in their decade-long war in Afghanistan. After a brisk scene dramatizing the Stinger's capability with two "Muj" fighters using that weapon for the first time, bringing down two Hind gunships, Nichols transitions to a montage sequence illustrating the entire war, albeit limited to the Stinger-vs.-Soviet-aircraft angle. Scored with jubilant Middle Eastern music, we see a dozen or so brief shots in quick succession of Hind helicopters and Sukhoi and MiG fighters and bombers being intercepted, crashing, and burning, as pop-up infographics enumerate the mounting toll on lost aircraft and crews, season by season, year by year. Having shown us how the Soviets were mowed down in what became for them a hopeless quagmire, Nichols then cuts to a CBS Evening News segment on the Soviet Union's throwing in the towel and bugging out of Afghanistan.

@CreationBrosZone-km5be 8 месяцев назад

Dis ees great.

@tyson7417 7 месяцев назад

I am curious about your thoughts on Death of Stalin. It spans a decent amount time pretty much straight ahead. And from all my understanding seems shockingly accurate to the real events.

@ianlarsen 8 месяцев назад

One nice thing about these movies is that, as far as I'm aware, none of them end with a series of photos or clips of the real people in an attempt to convince you that what you've just watched is really authentic. That was a really effective and shocking technique in City of God, where most people were probably watching the movie thinking, This can't be real, they must be exaggerating it. Then jt ended with one clip of Knockout Ned repeating comments that you'd heard dramatised earlier. Nowadays, 95% of historical films do this, and they all have the same tone, pace and style. Especially the British ones.

@daphaxandra 8 месяцев назад

Please please somehow make this your full-time job. Movies aren't going anywhere, but wisdom sure seems to be -- hold the fort!

@hammerbeam 8 месяцев назад

Moviewise can you give your thoughts on Spy Kids 2?

@jlovebirch 7 месяцев назад

I subscribe, and the notification system does NOT work for new videos. I have to constantly check my subs for new material.

@treasonouspigeonpeckers957 8 месяцев назад

I'm tempted to make one that is not based on a historical event/person

@HellHappens 8 месяцев назад

Have you ever seen "My way (2011)" It's one of the best unknown WWII movies

@recetasfaciles2816 8 месяцев назад

Will You make a video analyzing the movies of this Oscar?

@madameversiera 8 месяцев назад

You just forgot to mention the last method: not have respect for history in your film and tell historians to "get a life".

@Moviewise 8 месяцев назад

Oh, please don’t include Scott’s horrid Napoleon with these great movies!

@BrandonFishback 8 месяцев назад

I don't think I've heard you give praise to a Nolan movie before.

@JohnMoseley 8 месяцев назад

Great analysis as usual, but I doubt it'll be enough to make me want to watch many more of these. For some reason - but at least in the idea of unity of time and place I seem to have backing from Aristotle - I've never much liked these kinds of movies, even when I can respect their craft. All this bitty, hugely accelerated flipping through history. It feels very distancing and impersonal, and lacking in strong narrative purpose. When they're supposed to be true stories it's worse because it so often feels simultaneously leaden and phoney. Cane, your ur-example, stands apart thanks to Rosebud, taking it into the realms of mystery, irony and metaphor.

@manikn4585 8 месяцев назад

The newer one do need to reduce the sheer amount of exposition they have. Also there's not much character or their ideals. It's just their work and life. I.e they have to do this because of external situations not because they developed a complex intrinsically.

@tom-vj9lz 8 месяцев назад

I spent all of last week learning the to be or not to be soliloquy. Don't know how I can prove it to you so you'll have to take my word for it. Just thought I'd mention. Amen

@JohnMoseley 8 месяцев назад

But can you do the Danish accent?

@tom-vj9lz 7 месяцев назад

@@JohnMoseley Ay... There's the rub

@brycekhilton 2 месяца назад

William Aker speaks differently if you were wondering , fellow watcher

@robs9237 8 месяцев назад

Hot take.... Goodfellas is the best historical epic since 1990

@JunebugPresents 8 месяцев назад

When will you rank the best director nominees for the 2024 Academy Awards?

@Moviewise 8 месяцев назад

Two weeks from now!

@ConradSpoke 8 месяцев назад

My least favorite historical films are those crippled by one bad writing decision: make it a love story. Gone With the Wind; Doctor Zhivago; Reds Sure, these were huge hits and won lots of prizes. But today they seem pretty dreadful when "Ah, love!" keeps popping up. It just seems like a cheap strategy to appeal to women. I realize that these three films have literary sources, and they all may have emphasized a love story as a through line. But these films have all been sold as stories of actual wars and actual political upheavals. Having a love story woven into such a film is just ridiculous, and (I hope) increasingly anachronistic.

@N_Loco_Parenthesis 8 месяцев назад

Was Schindler's List a complicated historical film? It seemed pretty straightforward to me. Schindler, the entrepreneur, makes himself rich off the back of his workers, and then makes himself a poor refugee by saving their lives and sabotaging the war effort. The wheel of fortune turning. It's not like we follow his whole life trajectory.

@Moviewise 8 месяцев назад

It does feature more detail than it’s usually given credit for, I believe. It includes scenes that deal with nazi laws, the workings of the black market, parties and bribes, life in the camp and their endless survival strategies.

@A_few_words 8 месяцев назад

Very few men in eyeglasses...

@sotirismitzolis5171 8 месяцев назад

l am gonna get right to the point.Are you Dovahhatty ?

@moritzbraun1409 8 месяцев назад

So many strong women;)

@adowaaat3983 4 месяца назад

Viva Zapata is a movie in english made by gringoes????? God damn it

@fiox3167 8 месяцев назад

Am I the first comment? What an honor!

@N_Loco_Parenthesis 8 месяцев назад

Pathetic. There, I was the first to comment upon the first to comment. Huzzah!

@barttheraven 8 месяцев назад

I'm not really too much of a fan of most of these films because they always change things, even minor things when they dont need to, usually to push a political agenda.

@MikeTooleK9S 8 месяцев назад

thats a recommendation coming from an american flag profile. You fail to understand the class consciousness of the Pledge of Allegiance we were made to take to that flag. it was about seeing beyond stupid little rituals and just being a member of the class. Sometimes they make you stupid things. Don't be a freaking Nazi well yourself in the third wave failed kindergarten, and now the millennials will teach the world a thing or two. Cry about it

@stellviahohenheim 8 месяцев назад

If you want to work in Hollywood you better keep in line.

@josephm.benoit9202 8 месяцев назад

@@stellviahohenheimNah... by now it's: "Hey Hollywood, the line is over here!" Hahaha. The "powerful" often end up making themselves irrelevant.

@sheets75 8 месяцев назад

I remember watching JFK one afternoon while visiting my dad. My dad came in the room, saw Kevin Costner making some impassioned speech, and said, "Jim Garrison! I used to know that guy" (Dad was a journalist). I asked what he was like and my dad said he was the most deranged human he'd ever met in his life, which was saying something.