#marty lang

[filmcourage]

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

How Making The Second Feature Film Is Different Than The First by Marty Lang via FilmCourage.com.

Film Courage: What movie are you making…actually…right after this interview?

Marty Lang, Screenwriter/Director and Assistant Professor of Film at the University of Central Arkansas/Director: Once we are finished I am going to be driving to Agoura Hills [California] where I will be directing my second feature film. It’s a film called STAY WITH ME. It’s a drama and a story about a woman who is suffering from mental illness and it’s about her best friend and her boyfriend and how they deal with the lead-up to and the aftermath of her suicide. So it’s a heavy subject matter. It’s not a heavy film, although there are certainly some emotional moments in it.

I met the co-writer of the film who was an intern of mine when I worked at Cal State Northridge. He was just dead set on making an independent film once he graduated. He bugged me for about six months and eventually I joined him on the journey and he said we can shoot at my parent’s house. I can get equipment for free. We can work with students who are graduating from CSUN Film Program and eventually I came around on it and we decided to put the team together and I hired a group of actors…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

Want more Film Courage videos? Check out new videos 5:00 p.m. daily — subscribe at the main Film Courage Youtube channel. Subscribe to the second Film Courage Youtube channel here…

[filmcourage]

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

What Do You Learn The First Week Of An MFA Screenwriting Class? by Marty Lang via FilmCourage.com.

Film Courage: We’d like to hear about your first day or week in the MFA screenwriting program. What topics were initially taught? Was everything an introduction to the courses?

Marty Lang, Screenwriter/Director and Assistant Professor of Film at the University of Central Arkansas/Director: It was a little bit of both. The first semester we had three classes. We had an Introduction into Screenplay Analysis and that was with Professor Edson [Eric Edson of California State University Northridge]. That was the beginning of his explanation of screenplay structure. We didn’t actually write in that class but that first class was sort of like a top level introduction to the terms he would be using, kind of a general overview of what the structure paradigm is and then sort of an assignment where we had to watch a film and then break down the first act of that film of what happens in every single scene...(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

Want more Film Courage videos? Check out new videos 5:00 p.m. daily — subscribe at the main Film Courage Youtube channel. Subscribe to the second Film Courage Youtube channel here…

[filmcourage]

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

The 8 Sequence Method Versus CSUN Professor Eric Edson’s Story Structure Paradigm by Marty Lang, Assistant Professor of Film of University of Arkansas via FilmCourage.com.

[filmcourage]

(Watch the video interview on Youtube here)

Screenplay Structure Is The Enemy by Marty Lang via FilmCourage.com.

Film Courage: How has the screenwriting Master’s program transformed your screenwriting process? What do you do differently now?

Marty Lang, Screenwriter/Professor/Director: Well, I think a lot more about the structurefrom the very beginning than the way that I used to do it. Previously if I had an idea for a movie I would just start writing and just sort of see where it went and sometimes good things would come from that. There definitely is a benefit to sort of free writing and just kind of seeing what comes from it.

But my experience has taught me that spending time to outline an idea before actually writing it makes the writing much more efficient. I’ve saved multiple drafts of screenplays because I’ve gone and outlined ahead of time and I figured out the major turning points of the film and that sort of thing. That’s something I really didn’t do beforehand because I sort of rebelled against it. I thought that structure is the enemy and the thing that I’ve learned is that structure is your friend. It helps point our errors before you get to them and it helps you stay on track.

If you know what the next thing is that you’re writing toward, it’s a lot better if it’s five pages away then if it’s 50 pages.

So you know you have a specific thing to write to, your scenes have more urgency, your scenes have more conflict as a result of that. So I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned.

The other thing that I sort of picked up along the way is that the more personal you can make your stories and the more raw you can make them I think the more effective they are for the reader.

The story that I wrote about my dad, there were some really dark things that were in there. And it’s not a dark film per se. It’s a drama but really laying there some emotional things that I had dealt with a long time ago, it really helps with the writing. It makes it more engaging, it makes it more interesting for the reader.

The more you try to cover up sort of the raw things that your characters are dealing with the less interesting it becomes. So I think it’s kind of good to lay it all out there. It’s kind of a form of free therapy.

Film Courage: I know you’d said in another class from another professor that they talked about deciding what kind of protagonist you really want to focus on. Did you start to see parallels in who you wanted to write about?

Marty: And you know it’s funny, I have and I see...(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

See Film Courage’s collection of Writing and Filmmaking and Acting videos on Youtube.

New videos 5:00 p.m. daily! Subscribe to the main Film Courage Youtube channel and our second Film Courage Youtube channel here…