In a recent TEDx talk, I quoted the silly joke about British films having a beginning, a muddle and an end, and I got a laugh from the audience. The…
As I write, I am preparing for the Berlinale which, for some, will be followed by MIP and the Cannes Film Festival. Many European producers will attend these events, looking for the same elusive thing:…
Since the easy money dried up a couple of years ago with the demise of badly drafted tax breaks, finding production funding has become far harder. Gone, thankfully, are the plethora of middlemen who could…
When all the bravado and puff of Hollywood is cleared away, and one sees how reliant the industry is on adaptations, it is not surprising that remakes of foreign films feature strongly in the annual…
Can scriptwriting be taught? Judging by the proliferation of courses offering to teach this dark art, there are clearly many who believe that it is possible.…
As a writers’ agent, I am used to the old jokes about how the poor writer is at the bottom of the food chain, pecking order, totem pole and so on. Like the one about…
Scriptwriters and cinematographers don’t seem obvious bedfellows; after all, writers write then directors take over and visualise the ideas that the writer has committed to paper.…
** This article first appeared in movieScope, issue 18 ** Many writers feel a chill at the words ‘don’t worry the director will fix it in the shoot’. And directors probably don’t like to hear…
Julian Friedmann examines why writers and their agents should consider a different route when optioning work…
