Creating Your Independent Film Script

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

How do I start writing an ‘independent film screenplay’

Every great independent film starts on the page. You’ve got to just hit the keyboard and write an independent film, and often times movies are adapted from other source material whether it’s a book, or a graphic novel, or even an article in a magazine can be adapted into an independent film or a short story. So for filmmakers out there who want to go out and write their own screenplay, you’ve just go to go out there and do it. Pretty much every film starts as an independent film. Every film starts as an independent idea, and then it’s sold to a studio and that’s where it loses its independence. But if you’re making an independent movie, you’ve got to start with a script, and you’ve just got to hit the keyboard and write something down. You’ve got to be realistic in what you can pull off and what the resources you have and the budgets you have, and that’s why you don’t see the huge epics as indies. It’s usually smaller, character driven things. There’s a movie right now called Interview, which is with Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller, and it’s the two of them in a room with the camera. That’s the movie, it’s cheap, that’s why. It’s all character driven, it’s all dialogue. So it all starts with the writing. The writing has to be realistic in independent film, not in terms of it’s characters or what the plot is about, but realistic in the sense of executing it and turning it from an idea into a film.

What are different ‘elements’ of an independent film

There’s certain basic things that every independent film script will have on some level, with lead characters, plot development, and a first, second, and third act. That’s pretty much it. If you take a look at some of the scripts written by Charlie Kaufman, who did Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, you wouldn’t know what to think if you compare those to something like American Beauty, which is more of a conventional script. Not conventional in subject matter- but just in the set up of traditional characters in a traditional universe. Every script is different. All the elements that go into making it are what come to define it.

What happens when I’m finished with my script

Every script has lots of rewrites, edits and new ideas being put in it throughout it’s entire journey from the pane to the screen. When a writer is finished with his script, he then takes it to some filmmakers and director, and they’re going to work on it together as an independent film. The director is most likely going to want his or her influence on the material. Then when they’re actually shooting on set, the financier of the independent film, whoever they got the money from, is probably going to want to say “why don’t you put this in there?” or “Maybe there’s a role for my sister”. Everyone’s going to have their sort of two cents heard on the script. When you’re shooting in the day and an actress says “I want to try and take this line over here instead”, or “Can I try this?”, those things influence the life of the script, so it’s very rare that a script goes word-for-word from the writers first vision to what’s actually shot up on the screen. More so with studios as they’re the ones who are able to really pull at things in the script and have their influence on the script. A studio film like Kindergarten Cop had something like twenty writers on it because they would just bring on board a specialty, a romance guy to doctor it up a little, an action guy who’s going to doctor it up a little bit. But with an independent film, it is as close as possible to the original writers’ ideas, however in the actual movie-making process its going to have its twists and turns along the way.

What computer programs will help me write a screenplay

There’s one program that’s sort of the standard of screenplay writing and that’s Final Draft. You can get it on your computer and it helps you lay out what a traditional screenplay would look like and that’s sort of the industry standard for screenplay writing when making an independent film.