Scriptwriting
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 12:12 am
I'm taking an interest in scriptwriting, because I think that a good animation movie (even a short one) starts with a good script. Even the best animators in the world can't make a good animated movie from a bad script and no movie if there is no script.
So I thought it would be worthwhile to do a little study of scriptwriting before I try to create an animated short movie project. I'm not planning to be a scriptwriter, but at least some rudimentary knowledge about scriptwriting should help me to finish an animated short that is worthwhile watching.
Here are some handy links I found so far.
Although you can write scripts with any text editor, I found a cross platform piece of free software that helps you write scripts:
http://www.celtx.com/
(available for Windows, Mac and Linux and in several languages, can also be used in collaborative projects)
Maybe some of you are interested in scripts (and transcripts) of famous animated movies:
http://www.scifiscripts.com/cartoon/
Of course, there are many more life-action movies and studying those and their scripts can't really hurt, so I found this site with useful scripts:
http://www.weeklyscript.com/
I'm sure I'm telling nothing new here for the scriptwriters among you, but novice animators (both hobbyists and with professional aspirations) should at least have some basic understanding what scriptwriting is all about and what techniques are used to create a captive story.
At the moment, I'm reading "The Tools of Screenwriting" by David Howard and Edward Mabley. It seems to be a good book and it refers to some movie classics, like E.T., Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, etc., which are available on DVD in most countries.
The book discusses the scriptwriting tools that were used to create these movies. However, you will find no scripts in this book (I guess because including the scripts would be unpracticle because of size limitations). However, as I found out, many of the scripts of classic movies are readily available on the web, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.
I would appreciate if you have any further tips regarding scriptwriting.
Update: I have done some more web searching. It seems to me that screenwriting has to be very lucrative and competitive, because the screenwriters' community is so closed. I haven't found any "open source" tutorials. There are some sites out there that seem excellent, if you pay an admission fee, that is (so effectively being "closed source"). This is very unlike animation, where sharing inside information is much more the rule than the exception.
So I thought it would be worthwhile to do a little study of scriptwriting before I try to create an animated short movie project. I'm not planning to be a scriptwriter, but at least some rudimentary knowledge about scriptwriting should help me to finish an animated short that is worthwhile watching.
Here are some handy links I found so far.
Although you can write scripts with any text editor, I found a cross platform piece of free software that helps you write scripts:
http://www.celtx.com/
(available for Windows, Mac and Linux and in several languages, can also be used in collaborative projects)
Maybe some of you are interested in scripts (and transcripts) of famous animated movies:
http://www.scifiscripts.com/cartoon/
Of course, there are many more life-action movies and studying those and their scripts can't really hurt, so I found this site with useful scripts:
http://www.weeklyscript.com/
I'm sure I'm telling nothing new here for the scriptwriters among you, but novice animators (both hobbyists and with professional aspirations) should at least have some basic understanding what scriptwriting is all about and what techniques are used to create a captive story.
At the moment, I'm reading "The Tools of Screenwriting" by David Howard and Edward Mabley. It seems to be a good book and it refers to some movie classics, like E.T., Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, etc., which are available on DVD in most countries.
The book discusses the scriptwriting tools that were used to create these movies. However, you will find no scripts in this book (I guess because including the scripts would be unpracticle because of size limitations). However, as I found out, many of the scripts of classic movies are readily available on the web, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.
I would appreciate if you have any further tips regarding scriptwriting.
Update: I have done some more web searching. It seems to me that screenwriting has to be very lucrative and competitive, because the screenwriters' community is so closed. I haven't found any "open source" tutorials. There are some sites out there that seem excellent, if you pay an admission fee, that is (so effectively being "closed source"). This is very unlike animation, where sharing inside information is much more the rule than the exception.