Lancelot Link: 4/21 Edition

Lancelot Link Monday! So, when Easter is on 4/20, what is the day after Easter like? Did you plow through everything in your Easter basket already? Here are this week's links to some great screenwriting and film articles, plus some fun stuff that may be of interest to you. Brought to you by that suave and sophisticated secret agent...




Here are a dozen links plus this week's car chase...


1) Weekend Box Office Estimates:
1 Captain America 2.... $26,612,000
2 Rio 2................ $22,500,000
3 Heaven Is Real....... $21,500,000
4 Transcendence........ $11,150,000
5 Haunted House 2....... $9,100,000
6 Draft Day............. $5,900,000
7 Divergent............. $5,750,000
8 Occulus............... $5,202,000
9 Noah.................. $5,000,000
10 God's Not Dead........ $4,801,000


2) Luc Besson on Strong Female Leads.

3) Gareth Edwards on working with REALLY big stars.

4) Bill Paxton on all of those AVATAR sequels.

2) Orson Welles' New Film!

2) A Stack Of MOvies That *Still* Haven't Been Released.

7) HIDEEN DRAGON CROUCHING TIGER FILMING SEQUEL.

8) Joss Whedon on How To Get Things Done.

9) Free Film Contracts And Forms!

10) 85,000 *Free* Historical Films from British Pathe.

11) How Do WGA Credits Work?

12) Donald Duck Did It First! Movies that ripped off Donald Duck comic books.

And the Car Chase Of The Week!



NOTE: The SCENES BLUE BOOK is out today!

12 New Ways To Create New Scenes... Transitions... and much, much more!

Great screenplays are made of great scenes, memorable scenes. Who can forget Cary Grant being chased through the cornfield by that crop duster? Or Gene Kelly singing in the rain? Or Indiana Jones facing that huge swordsman in the marketplace... and shooting him? Director Howard Hawks (“The Big Sleep”, “Bringing Up Baby”, “Rio Bravo”) famously said, “A film needs three great scenes and no bad ones”. But how do you create those great scenes?

This Blue Book will help you tune up those tired scenes! We’ll look at what a scene is and how many you will need. The difference between scenes and sluglines. How long should your scenes be, and what is *too long*? We will put your scenes on trial for their lives! Using examples like “Jaws” we’ll look at beats within a scene. Scene DNA. What is driving your scene? Creating set pieces and high concept scenes. We will even talk to a famous director about creating memorable scenes.

But that’s not all! There are 12 ways to create new scenes. How to create unexpected scenes. Use dramatic tension to supercharge your scenes with excitement. Using plants and payoffs in scenes. Taking your scenes to the limit. Plus transitions and buttons and the all important “flow”... and more! Over 65,000 words!

Bill