General: Do copywriters make good movie directors?

Dien,

I'll send you the first 20 pages of a script I wrote called SUBMARINE LADY, it is the story of the first woman officer to serve on a nuclear submarine...

I accepted an "option" on this of very little money way back when, and it sat on a so-called producer's desk for 2 years, until the option ran out and I took the work back, a wiser man...

My second script was called HARBOR KNIGHTS, and it was a story of an ex-Navy nurse, that had served in Vietnam, and had set up a "hospital" for the prostitutes of Subic Bay...

It was loosely based upon real people...

I have about 3 others written on "spec", that someday I may get around to...

In a screenplay, there is a standard format, 3 acts, each with certain elements...

In a TV screenplay for an hour show, there are 7 acts.

You want to become a better copywriter, read Lajos Egri's ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING...

Or you can read the rest of REMOTE HYPNOSIS too...HA!

A good movie allows you to suspend belief, enter into an altered state of mind, the very definition of Hypnosis...

It does that by using the primary senses of Sight and Sound. We have been trained for a suspenseful climax when the minor key music begins.

Most scriptwriters are taught that the climax of act one falls on about page 18 or roughly 18-20 minutes into the movie.

Watch a movie with a stop watch, and see for yourself...by that time you know the characters adn the main element of CONFLICT...

If they have done a good job.

Yes, a well done movie, and one that wins at the box office achieves the same effect as a well written piece of copy...

But don't get me started on that, I'm still smarting from my first "Hollywood" expereince, I'm too much of a rube to go there...so, in about 4 or 5 years, I'll settle into a quiet life of a playwright, and turn out little esoteric plays loaded with CONFLICT...

Suspense,
Mystery,
SEX,
Back stabbing,
Cheating
Lying,

In other words, the drama of marketing, HA!

Gordon (Wannabee member of a guild) Alexander