Karel Segers

About Screenwriting Rules [And The 3-Act Structure]

When How To Train Your Dragon was released, some people learned to their horror that the film was written following Blake Snyder’s beat sheet. How could such a successful – and critically acclaimed – film be written by the numbers??

Creatives hate screenwriting ‘rules’. So they should. But it is also helpful to understand what rules really are, and what they do.

Observe And Study

All Blake Snyder…

Final Draft 10 Reviewed

How do you go about writing a screenplay? There are a few of us who sit down at the computer, like some modern day Dalton Trumbo at his trusty Remington, type FADE IN: and keep going until the cigarette packet is empty.

If you are one of this talented few, script formatting applications like Celtx, Movie Magic and Final Draftare great productivity tools. These take the hassle out of capitalising,…

Chariots Of Fire Revisited [Running With Synthesizers]

In Writing Screenplays that Sell, Michael Hauge singles out Chariots Of Fire (1981) as a cinematic outlier. It was an unlikely movie to generate big box office. Why? It is a biographical period piece, lacks high concept, and is set outside the US.

Chariots of Firewas hugely successful, though. It ended up making nearly $60 million at the US box office alone. It also won four Academy Awards, one…

Kung Fu Hustle [Sixty Seconds of Suspense]

Watching Kung Fu Hustle (2004) reminded me how many amazing movies are out there that we won’t get to see – unless we seek them out.

After the release of Batman vs. Superman (2016), articles appeared about Hollywood’s obsession with *moments* at the expense of *scenes*. Ironically, when I write about movie moments, mostly they are meaty dramatic scenes.

This time, I am going to show you something…

Scene Structure With Aaron And Gust

Sometimes I watch a movie and a week later I have forgotten everything except for one single scene. Do you have that, too? Invariably, this happens more often with movies that have an unusual narrative structure.

After watching Charlie Wilson’s War, I forgot everything except for a handful of masterful scenes and the ‘zen master’ ending.  To me, one scene stood out above all else. It is an…

Aaron Sorkin Master Class: Do It! [but not for the reason you think]

If I see Aaron Sorkin’s face one more time in my Facebook feed or in a newsletter, I’m going to punch my laptop.

Okay, he is among the most interesting screenwriters alive. In fact, he wrote the one scene I study the most with students in my own screenwriting classes. In exactly three minutes, that scene shows Sorkin’s genius in its dramatic construction, exposition and subtext.

Heck, I love the…

Frozen: Girlie And Great

Disney’s Frozen is one of a few movies I had to see a couple of times before I got it. I am not a fan of musicals, didn’t care for its visual look, and found it too girlie. After all, Frozen has two young heroines and lots of lilac, lavendar and periwinkle.

Given that it became the most successful animated film ever, I felt compelled to give Frozen another chance. So I watched it with the script…

Easy Rider Will Tell You Something About Subtext

Easy Rider shows how subtext is not what most teachers and guru tell you it is. Many mistake subtext with non-verbal communication. It is true that most of our communication is non-verbal, but when you can write this well, it doesn’t mean you master subtext. I believe we need to re-think the oversimplified secrets-and-lies approach to subtext.

Robert McKee went in the right direction with his…

Preminger’s Laura: In Love With A Score

As a student I lived only a 25min train trip away from the Brussels “Cinematek”, once hailed by Martin Scorsese as the world’s best cinema repository. Among the half dozen classics screened daily, Otto Preminger’s Laura would pop up at least once a year. I watched it; and I loved it.

Soon after I first watched this movie, I had the fortune of meeting with composer David Raksin. He told me an…

Scarlett Johansson Naked [Under The Skin Undressed]

It doesn’t happen often that you can write a title with pure Scarlett Johansson link bait, yet keep a clear conscience.

Unless you’ve read the original novel, you won’t know until late in the film that Under The Skinis the story of an alien in human form . Still, the filmmakers reveal in interviews: “part road movie, part science fiction, part real, it’s a film about seeing our world through…

Learn Screenwriting: Free, Fast & Fabulous! [Read The Fine Print]

A free screenwriting course? Too good to be true.

Of course it is. But hear me out.

As my boss in London told me, you can only have two out of these three: cheap, fast and good. Poor Luke Stinson wanted all, and he copped a lot of flak when he posted this on Facebook in the Screenwriting group:

“Can someone completely teach me how to write a screenplay, like guide me and step by step without money…

Writing For Film – Filmmakers Quoted

Flavorwire published 20 quotes from filmmakers on writing. So you don’t have to flick through all 20, I put the best ones on a single page for you. (I even added one for free.)

Stupid auteur theory (Billy Wilder)

“What does the director shoot—the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.”

The…

Great Characters In Movies Share One Thing: Willpower

People will say a lot of things about what it takes to create great characters: they require depth and complexity. They must be multi-dimensional, they need to transform, etc.

Until recently, if you had asked me about one thing more important than all the above, I would have replied: goals. Characters must have a clear goal, and ideally a goal that is not open-ended.

But goals are not enough.

I…