99% Of Screenwriters Make This Mistake When They Begin - Andy Guerdat
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ธ.ค. 2023
- Andy Guerdat has been a working writer/producer in film and television for the past 45 years, with hundreds of credits in movies, half-hour comedies, hour-long dramas, theater, and animation. He is currently a consultant at Disney TV Animation.
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Here is our full interview with Andy - th-cam.com/video/ghRoyKX3BtQ/w-d-xo.html
I have told stories in the oral tradition onstage since 1989, and this man is absolutely correct correct about what audiences want from a story. They want to feel and the best storytellers lead the audience on an emotional journey. Too many storytellers stand on stage to express their feelings, but the audience is left out of the experience.
"If the audience didn't feel it, it doesn't matter."
The core message of this video, at least for me. Thank you for putting this interview on here!
This guy gets it. More people like him in Hollywood pls.
This is the core of everything I believe about writing and storytelling. This is why I found myself at odds with so much of what I was taught about formula in my writing classes in college. So many people, especially many non-writers, see writing as a product. It is art, designed to evoke emotion. At least good writing is. If it doesn't do that, then there is no point to its existence. You can break structure and formula. You can break just about all of the rules if you find a way to effectively evoke the emotion need to in the audience.
You know it's a great interview when you're simultaneously informed and inspired through it. I have to save and rewatch this again. Thanks, Film Courage!
Wonderful!
I've never heard a wiser teacher than this man's words in this particular podcast. Never. Listen unto him. He speaks wiiiiiiiiiiiisely
Much more to come!
Clicked on this video just to say this guy is 100% correct. For all the books and dogmas on storytelling people leave out this major aspect. It's why Shakespeare works are still being told to this day.
i like that his hat moves when he raises his eyebrow
Great interview. Andy has his own TH-cam channel . It’s fairly new but his videos are the best on TH-cam imo. It’s almost like attending a university lecture.
he is absolutely right about rigid instructions. even if they may look ok, they don't produce something moving.
He gets it. Hollywood doesn’t anymore.
As a new writer, I came late to the emotion party… Now I get it 🙏
I do agree with Andrew Guerdat in that you should feel it first. However, depending on the story or where you are in your plot, that may not always be ideal. Sometimes you *do* have to just get things down on the page using logical flow.
For example, a character in my current novel made a horrible choice and is on edge that he'll soon be found out. It was easy to put myself in his situation and _feel_ it. However, in this case, that feeling turned out to be all wrong; there were numerous other factors that would color his state of mind. Case in point, while he was on edge about what he'd done, what was currently driving him was the safety and wellbeing of this girl he was charged with protecting. So, he began to feel that his wrong choice might indicate that he wasn't an ideal guardian (it's somewhat complicated). While he'd had such surety that his choice, while wrong, was the best for him, he'd now come to see how deeply flawed he was as a person.
Try as I might, there was no way for me to feel that without first plowing through it in context. Only then could I understand what the audience should be feeling; it took time for me to feel what the character felt and then to convey it, largely via subtext.
Great, a new interview! Thanks. 4
This is a great one! Excited to share more. Stay tuned!
Careful. It's one thing to avoid having to put a certain plot point on a certain page, but writing is a craft first and foremost. There is a form and a set of tools that shouldn't be ignored.
good interview
Feel it, put the passion on the page, then analyze it. ❤
Makes complete sense 👏
I realized ever since I was in high school that's what movies and stories are, people want to feel things. They want heartache, they want grief, they want love, and everything in between. That's why I write. I make goofy videos too, to hopefully bring some cheer. That's what I aim to do, and what I want to do, I want to orchestrate a range of emotions with my stories.
Good information 👍 class ❤
Thank you! Right-brain writing all the way!!
Start with passion to get it out. So true.
Then rework it for structure if you need to.
This was exactly the problem I had when starting to learn about screenwriting. A labyrinth of storytelling, no skills to develop an emotional journey. A beginner reads a bunch of books for Hollywood structured screen writing, with all the plot points, mid turn etc. The correct formula, but usually no word of feeling and the "soft" things of a story. The things that make a real movie experience. It's like a total beginner learning to make music and composing, starting first with writing the notes, without playing and really hearing the actual sounds, harmonies and melodies. Only a master composers can do this in the first sitting, but they know how it's going to sound because of decades practising, hearing music and the experience in instruments. So, write a moving / working story first, then format it to proper working script. Better yet: if possible and time, write is as a short novel, test it around with people and then adapt it to a screenplay to sell.
Poor Writer: "I have a great idea for a movie."
Rich Studio Exec:"OK, here's the money. Write."
Writer:"Thank you. Now, this is what I am going to write about....:
Studio Exec: "No. You will write what I want you to."
Exactly. Right brain my ass.
Get paid first, then you can start writing the film you want.
This man gets it.
music is about emotion too, but this generation forgot about that
Hell yeah. This guy gets it. Spin us a wonderful dramatic tale, we don't give a (explicit) about your personal backgrond, motivations, inner struggles and certainly not your ideology, political beliefs and ego, but just take us away on a journey for a while. If the Neanderthals managed it 125.000 BC modern day Hollywood can rediscover these skills too.
😂😂😂😂
Always put that dash of your soul in it.
This is kinda off but I'm reading a book the alphabet vs the goddess:conflict between word and image ...it talks about how writing brought on the dominance of the patriarchy left brain society vs the feminine image based right brain. Being that the film industry is male dominated like most then these formulas make sense.
I like this guy.
I use a very unique structure, one that has an emotion, a behavior, a belief, and a value at it's core. I start with this combination, an angry individual who fights because they believe it is the only way to stay safe, and then pick an ending, a generous individual who fights because they believe it is the only way to keep others safe. Then I can build out all the other characters with conflicting and connecting cores. You can then use all these characters to build out aspects of the world.
So your comment about narration, it is bad simply because every concept of the story comes from these four concepts connecting or conflicting with others. Narration has none of that. However, it also means we don't deliver emotions, but cores, just a core is represented by the emotion.
I believe we don't market emotions, we market imaginary friends that feel more real than real people. Now I am a planner all the way, however I do believe you should write everything on your mind first, and then fit it into my formula, which is far more than this. However I do push formula, because in the end of the day it is essential, it is a way to not just understand story, but to understand people. The rules of screenwriting, are essential for this reason. We don't deal in emotions, we deal in friends.
I will say this, there is a reason why structure doesn't work 100% of the time. People are hard to get. We use symbols to try to understand. My system drives a character through the need of care to find hope, the need of safety to find will, the need of belonging to find purpose, the need of esteem to find confidence, the need to understand to find loyalty, the need to see the world to find love, and the need to become your best self to find care. The need to feel safe to find will, that is the supernatural aid.
Structure is real and essential, but my hope is to get rid of the symbols to truly understand ourselves, others, and narrative.
When I was a kid I did a little science experiment at home. We dangled an ordinary string in a glass filled with a salt (or was it sugar?) solution.
Over several days crystals began to form. The crystals had observable, defined structural features.
How did that happen… process wise, we didn’t start with structure and then attempt to thread the string through the pre-existing crystals.
This is the only interview I’ve watched that treats ‘how’ you arrive at structure (organically or via an ‘overlay’ of pre-concieved structure as important).
It’s like a fight with your spouse. Sometimes you are mad enough to tell the truth by accident. Voila structure. But looking back over the whole fight there’s a few things you would unsay.
*_Exciting!_* This is like the first time someone revealed to me the importance of conflict. Without conflict, you don't have a story. *_Boring!_* And now, I'm looking for expert analysis on the *_Emotion Structure_* of a great screenplay. Now that I understand that we want to make the audience feel something (now painfully obvious), what is the sequence of feelings in the different types of stories, overlaying the other aspects of story structure?
😎♥✝🇺🇸💯
I think that's the problem with many newer movies. They forget to entertain and make people feel, and try to educate too much.
Can’t they do both?
Emotion is a BYPRODUCT of a grand house build with a strong foundation. "It's the lights of the house".
You can implement so much emotion into your film, but if you lack the basic foundations of a Protagonist and story momentum (cause and effect, arc, intentions, conflict ect...) - emotion won't help you a bit. Hollywood has a SERIOUS problem. Studios keep hiring bad screenwriters (often activists) and not storytellers and they wonder why their movies are failing. And worse yet, try to blame the audiences. When you hire bad writers - whom have not yet learned the basics of screenwriting. You only have yourself to blame.
If I don’t even care enough about your characters, why would I ever stick around long enough to experience any portion of this magical structure
@@corpsefoot758 Creating empathy and likability is part of that foundation I'm talking about my dear friend.
@@josephvanwyk2088
You named the parts of that foundation as “cause & effect, intentions” etc.
And I’m saying that unless you first give audiences a reason to even care about your characters, they won’t stick around long enough to learn about all of your plot & intentions
So Step #1 is creating enough of an emotional rapport with the audience so they even agree to sit down and watch the entire movie. Anything else is doomed, because no viewers owe us their attention; especially nowadays on the hyper-saturated internet 🤷♂️
@@corpsefoot758 I agree but you not getting my point. It doesn't help you have a "beloved" character (which is subjective btw) and your Protagonist isn't proactive who aimlessly go through scenes without any intentions or face any obstacles nor experience a well developed arc. Trust me, if you focus on emotion alone, you are building your house on sand.
The human subconscious works on many levels. Yes, emotion is important, but you gotta build in your foundations first. If you do this correctly, character emotions (empathy, sympathy and likability) will be a successful byproduct that will favour your audience. It's cause and effect 101 and not pandering to a moment to moment "get a thrill", "get a laugh" , "gotcha!" , "jump scare".
@@josephvanwyk2088
I never said emotion is the only thing that matters. But it is Priority #1
I approve of this video... mostly.
👍 👍
I love how he is true to the white male screenwriter uniform, lol.
I want to tell the story of the man who smelt it but also dealt it
It's been done: RocketMan (1997) 😂
There is only peace.
Underrated comment
I agree with his statements on emotional audience involvement. The reality is the majority of what is budgeted for production in Hollywood is preachy, judgemental themes which turn off the viewing public. Until his view squares with the studio execs, just keep rolling out box office flops.
What do you think?
Keep up the insider stuff!
Thanks! This is our first segment with Andy, much more to come!
@@filmcourage looking forward to it. as a writer--and i think this is true of all writers who make a living at it or trying to--the most interesting thing to me is where the green-light money is going and why. Merely writing well or the experience of writer's doing film is of course important, but the insights from the more cynical side where the moneymaking decisions are for me is a better lighthouse to navigate by. Sometimes that comes from the lowest rungs on the studio system totem poles like the script notes people, screeners, assistant agents, the "little people" who have big insights. They are not "name" people but are always looking for more visibility so are subsequently not hard to chase down... :-)
Very good as usual.
Very Good
Could this guy please be in charge of Hollywood?
I want to make people feel
Screenwriters are tasked with creating something that is profitable or not. Anything else is the result, not the driving factor.
The advent of screenwriting "how to" books is clearly exacerbating this problem. It's not paint by numbers
Writers in any commerce-based system have NO power outside of going on strike. Creating "emotion" is your job perhaps, but the brief that delineates a project is created well before the writer is brought in unless the writer is the showrunner and that is rare. So i mean think about Disney/Marvel, and being hired as a screenwriter to make The Marvels into something brilliant but within the parameters in the brief handed down to you by the business, marketing, analytics etc. and you begin to see my point here.
Can’t the brief be the boundaries and then you find a way to fill it creatively with meaningful emotion?
@@goldfishy of course it CAN but typically you are writing to the package the producers signed off on, even the elevator pitch like "It's Good Will Hunting but...with Superhero Lego's!" or something horrible that is laughably tough to make something artful out of. It's the "GIGO" concept--"Garbage In, Garbage Out" that builds impossible premises or log lines for a film based on the fear of failing (and by a huge margin, films do NOT make money...) and then the writer or actors get the blame when really it was the money/producer end to blame for a project that started out crippled
@@goldfishy
Idiotic boundaries lead to trash
They tried on the Marvels with showing characters family but in the end the whole project comes off contrived. ...kudos to SPOILER ALERT Binary and the X-Men!
Hollywood isn't looking for quality thanks to the marvel movies making so much money.
Don't get caught up in feelings. Think of the rollercoaster and that's it.
What I don’t get here is that he says “feel first”, but then later it’s “structure first”.
To be relatable, see it through in your emagination rather than a concept, biuld up around that to be the structure.
I don't get one thing. If there are millions of people watching this and they are talking the really serious super deep things about writting, why is holywood writting quality so low?
While I agree wholeheartedly with nearly everything said here, I'm having a very hard time wrapping my brain around the concept of voiceover narration distancing the viewer from the story. It seems if that were true, books never would have worked. Novels never would have existed. Yet they've existed for centuries. In literature, narration is as important as dialogue or action. You need all three. And in film and literature, the only time narration seems to be distancing is if it's done too much, or too poorly.
If I try to think of good examples of voiceover narration, I can think of a ton of them. But the first two that come to mind are Dexter and Mr. Robot. The voiceover narration there seems to have had the opposite effect. It's what makes those stories work. Much of voiceover narration is internal monologue. You can't get closer to a character than inside their head. That's not distance, that's the opposite of distance.
It seems that the effect of voiceover narration in Dexter and Mr. Robot bonded the viewer to the lead character very closely. I'm not sure how that can be characterized as 'distancing'. Bonding the viewer to a serial killer seems like it must be a nearly impossible thing to do. But for eight seasons, that is exactly what Dexter did. If those stories did not have voiceover narration, I think the viewer would've been significantly more distanced from the story.
So I'm not sure what he means by that. Maybe what he means is that focusing on character distances us from the plot. Because we're just not focused on plot when we're focused on character. Regardless, we are still focused on the story.
So I would be happy to hear anyone explain that to me.
The first person I heard speaks the truth that screenwriting books' teaching formula is all wrong. There are guidelines sure, but its a feeling, not a formula.
all netflix does is try to chase trends
6:00 The hemispheres of the brain have no clear logic/emotion differentiations . That's a myth from the past. Like "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." The clearest example of this misconception.
The myth about brain hemispheres is the idea that people fall into these two categories: "right brained" creatives, and "left-brain" logically oriented. That's a myth as everyone uses their whole brain pretty regularly.
But he is correct. Our brain structures do seem to be oriented for logic in one hemisphere and creativity in the other.
Well, that’s a straight-up lie. 😂
If there was no emotion, we’d be robots. 🤖
This is why it’s a cult that eats itself. 🔥
I looked for him online. I don’t see any books or classes. If everyone is wrong, where’s your stuff to be consumed?
He answers your question in the first two minutes of this video - th-cam.com/video/K-tkispSRjw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=o871BdnRv4ltp4s7
Why isn't he giving us concrete examples? Clients had their films made? Why not name one?
Test post
Load and clear 😁
Didn't feel emotion, stopped watching.
Lol jk. Great content as usual :)
The job of the professional screenwriter will be largely replaced by AI, which is perfectly suited to recycling and updating plotlines from old movies and TV shows. This will leave visionary writer-producers and writer-directors to cater to audiences that want to see challenging work, which will be done mostly in the independent sector.
Not if we stand strong enough against it.
When the television was introduced back in the day, many experts predicted that radio broadcasting would disappear. And when radio first became available to ordinary listeners, many predicted that live music would performances couldn’t survive. Why would anyone pay to hear music in a concert, when they could hear it from a radio?
Experience have thought us that new technology and media does not replace but expand the field. AI will have it’s impact in ways we can’t predict, but it will not replace screenwriters, nor attorneys nor teachers. Hopefully AI WILL be a supplement rather than a replacement.
I’m sure that’s the way it’s heading, but AI can’t really create. AIs scrape the internet and patchwork something that amalgamates what it finds and the courts know it. That’s why they decided that works done by AI cannot be copyrighted. That’s also why the writers strike ended so quickly.
Dodgers suck!
Who's your team?
This guy is one big contradiction. Don’t satisfy your own emotions as an artist it’s about the audience but tap into your right brain. Whenever you hear a guy say “most of these screenwriting books say X, but…. “ you know you’re in trouble.
so you believe everything that's written in screenwriter books is always valid then or?
@@pep-o-butt672He's talking about sales tactics, not the products in particular.
Good art is done for oneself first, not for the audience. It’s way more genuine that way. Look at Disney and Marvel, they just do what they think will be popular, but it’s pretty bland and uninspired mostly
Typical American mercantilism mentality. Everythings a commodity. Emotion manufacture! What about emotion communication? Why the tacky commercial compartmentalisation?