The library
Learn to make a film
Short chapters, plain words, and drawings where a drawing helps. Read in any order. Each chapter ends with one habit and one thing to try in the tool.
From idea to the page
Writing
Eleven short chapters on finding the idea, building people and scenes, and putting them on the page.
The idea
A film starts as a thought you can say out loud. Find that sentence before you write a page.
The short film
A short film is not a small feature. It is one idea, told fully, with what you have.
Character
Plot is what happens. Character is why we care that it happens to this person.
Structure
Structure is the order in which you give things to the audience. It exists to hold their attention from the first image to the last.
The scene
A scene is a small story. Someone wants something, something is in the way, and by the end something has changed.
Dialogue
Film dialogue is not conversation. It is what people say while they try to get something.
Writing for the camera
A script is a plan for pictures and sound. Write only what the camera can see and the microphone can hear.
The page
Screenplay format looks strict, but every rule has a practical reason. Learn the reasons and the rules are easy to remember.
Rewriting
Writing is mostly rewriting. The first draft finds the story, and the later drafts make it work for someone else.
Writing in Indian languages
Write in the language your characters live in. The page can hold Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali or a mix, and the craft stays the same.
Sources
These are the books behind this shelf. Each one is worth reading in full, and each disagrees with the others somewhere.
Eight ways to shape a story
Frameworks
The structures writers and studios actually use, where each comes from, and films that follow it. Each is a lens, not a law.
Freytag's pyramid
Five-part dramatic arc.
Save the Cat
Fifteen beats with page numbers.
Syd Field's paradigm
Three acts with plot points.
The Hero's Journey
Twelve stages (Vogler).
The Sequence Approach
Eight sequences of 12 to 15 pages.
Dan Harmon's Story Circle
Eight steps for an episode.
Kishōtenketsu
Four parts, no villain required.
The Indian interval structure
Two halves and an interval point.
The language of shots
Shooting
Four questions describe any shot. Five more chapters cover how to capture it well on a phone or a small camera.
Shot sizes
How much of the person the frame holds, from the widest to the tightest.
Framing
Who is in the frame, and how the frame is arranged around them.
Camera angles
Where the lens sits compared with the eyes. Angle is about power.
Camera movements
When the camera moves, and the reason it needs to.
Lenses
What the lens does to the background and to a face.
Rules of the cut
Four editing rules that decide what you must shoot.
Exposure for video
Shutter, light and filters when the camera is a phone.
Light
One window, one lamp and one white sheet.
Sound for dialogue
Six habits that are most of what a sound recordist does.
Sources
The books and pages this shelf follows.
Shot sets for real scenes
Coverage
Ten starting shot sets for common kinds of scene, from two people talking to the passage of time.
Two people talking
Two characters, one place, a conversation that carries the scene.
Three people in a room
A meeting, a family table, a third person who changes the balance between two.
Walk and talk
Two people move through a corridor or a street while they speak.
Someone alone
A character works, waits, or thinks in a room with nobody else.
Someone enters
A door opens and a new person changes the scene.
A phone call
One character on a call. We may or may not see the other side.
Finding something
A character notices or finds an object, a message, a clue.
An argument
Two people who disagree, and the balance of power shifts.
A silent beat
Someone takes in news, makes a decision, or decides to lie.
Passage of time
Hours pass. Something is made, waited for, or slowly changes.
Read, then make.
Open an account to write your script and plan your shots alongside the chapters.
Start your film