World of Style Commando

 

Featured Reading

 

I've been writing some papers for a Masters degree class, and have included them here for amusement. Not great academic papers, but an okay sample of my entertainment writing. They're PDFs and downloadable at the links below:

George Lucas' Star Wars Episode One as groundbreaking technological advancment in cinema: Jar Jar and all!

The Work of Double Negative (UK visual effects house)

 

Style Commando Screenplays: Free Downloads of Rare Drafts!

by Writer-Producer Michael Heagle

Hey gang. There's a lot of great stuff on the web out there about screenwriting, like Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio's great site, so I won't load you up on advice. But there's no better exercise than reading scripts for films, produced and unproduced, to see what's good and what's bad about your writing. And theirs!

These are not posted as examples of great writing (they're not), but you can see a few things at work in these early drafts. If you've seen the films, you see a great divide between the page and final film. That's important to remember -- this is an evolutionary process, so keep writing and rewriting.

These are pretty good in the format department, which is so much easier now in the age of Final Draft and other great screenwriting programs. If you haven't seen Celtx yet, get over there and grab a copy (free, cross platform, collaborative...!). Remember, most companies won't even look at your screenplay if it's not in the correct format, yet I'm always surprised at how many people don't get the basic rules. Most of them are followed here, supplied to you in the magic format of Adobe Acrobat PDF to ensure an accurate layout and read. Be distrustful of scripts in HTML format, or even worse, mere transcripts of dialog from movies.

And in the end, we hope you'll laugh at the right spots, and maybe a few of the wrong ones, and get inspired to do it better than we have in these free drafts. Good luck!

 

Dario Dare: Go To Hell: Screenplay

by Michael Heagle and Raymond Whalen.. 1991 Draft. pdf format

This film was started in 1994, after a pretty big re-write. We shot the first twenty five minutes, tried shopping it around for finishing funds, and failed to find any. So we set about finishing it ourselves after another rewrite, but still keeping all the stuff we shot. The film ended up a bit schizophrenic as a result, but theres' a few leftovers floating around in the fridge from this draft. If you've seen the movie, though, this will strike you as a complete adventure unto itself. Like a sequal, or a prequel, or a bonus chapter!

Horror, Incorporated: Screenplay

by Michael Heagle and Raymond Whalen.. 1996 Draft. pdf format

Speaking of prequels to Go To Hell! Here's the real deal, with a pre-tabloid Dario Dare and his buddy Harry the Weasel having a boatload of adventures on a super-charged monster road movie. Guaranteed to bring a smile, watch out for the killer cows when you get to the middle of Wisconsin. Oh, and tell them A-Man sent you.

 

Planetfall: Screenplay

by Michael Heagle and Matt Saari. 2001 Draft. pdf format

As anyone who's watched the Special Edition DVD of Planetfall will tell you, this script has seen some revisions. However, many of the film's iconic moments made it through the shooting process. A good study piece in "before and after."

 

 

 

Terror Report : Screenplay

by Jim Barrett from a story by Michael Heagle. 2005 Draft. pdf format

This is what's known as the "Hotel" draft. Midway through the writing of this one, our location fell through, and we upgraded to a better one: the Target Center, Minneapolis' big sports and concert venue. It helped the movie immeasurably.