Hint Try to answer these questions when you look at a film: What made you interested in the story? At which minute/page did you first get inter- ested? Were there any common elements in the setting, the action, and the characterization that connect the films? What did you like least about each film? What did you like the best? There is no science to this approach but, if you deconstruct a story, you may discover techniques that you can use (or avoid) in your own work. 2. Commerce Orson Welles said `A poet needs a pen, a painter needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs a whole army'. Like it or not, that is the film business and it is a complex business at that. Writers tend to be drawn by the making of the film ­ the techni- cians, the actors, the scoring, the cinematography, costume design and the props. But these are the actions of the film industry (read car indus- try, aerospace industry). The actual creation and making of the film is the role of the film industry and not of the writer. Writers who forget the business side of the industry do so at their peril. The bankers and financiers, the marketing and public relations peo- ple, the owners and employees of the cinemas, the accountants with their complex procedures, the tax lawyers, the copyright and royalty col- lect-ors: these are a few of the silent faces who are employed by the business side of the film industry. Add in the more glamorous roles of the actors, the directors, the edi- tors, make-up artists, scenic artists, lighting and sound specialists and you really do have an army of people involved in the making of a film. Each area is really a sub-industry and the people in each sub-industry tend to distrust, and sometimes even hate the people in other sub-indus- tries. But money and collaboration govern the entire movie business. Therefore a writer who includes camera directions in a screenplay, or is too specific with stage directions, is precluding the possibility of col- laboration with the cameraman and the actors ­ two very important categories of creatives. The trick is to write a screenplay that inspires each and every category of person likely to be involved in the making of the movie. A successful writer learns how to do this, and to incorporate everyone's creativity into the movie. Thus a finished screenplay should be considered the blueprint for a movie, or the suggestion for a movie, and not a carefully bound package of precisely typed paper that repre- sents the death of a few trees! Writers who ignore this, or fail to research and educate themselves about the intricacies of the movie business, will hinder their chances of success. Writers must learn as much as possible about the industry. As a writer, you are inevitably going to spend long hours writing alone, and the commercial and collaborative aspects of the film business can 6 RAINDANCEWRITERS'LAB:WRITEANDSELLTHEHOTSCREENPLAY