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Producers can deny films based on amount of money it could cost

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Producers can deny films based on amount of money it could cost

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Give characters problems without clear solutions

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Give characters problems without clear solutions

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Personal lives can interfere with screenwriting

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Personal lives can interfere with screenwriting

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Midnight in Paris was shot late into morning against director's wishes

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Midnight in Paris was shot late into morning against director's wishes

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Quickly written scripts can be excellent

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Quickly written scripts can be excellent

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For most of us, writing a screenplay can take months, even years. Sometimes, just getting a working outline can be a Herculean effort. We've all heard of a 'vomit draft' but for me, even that can take weeks. You may be surprised, however, to learn that some of our favorite screenplays were written in just a couple weeks, even a couple days. What does it take to finish a draft so quickly? Great dedication, focus and perhaps even locking yourself in a hotel room as many successful writers have done. For one writer, a looming WGA strike was all the motivation he needed to bang out a draft.

Here are 10 of our favorite screenplays written in just three weeks or less.

For writer and star, Jon Favreau, the process of writing Swingers , a comedy about struggling actors looking for love in Hollywood's trendy nightclub scene, writing the screenplay was a breezy, fun experience.

"I wrote the screenplay in about a week and a half," he tells Grantland.com. "The writing process wasn't filled with any sort of turmoil. If you really do the math, it's 10 days, 10 pages a day. It's not like you're chained to the computer. I was just entertaining myself and really enjoying it, sort of giggling at it as I was writing it. I couldn't wait to share it with my friends more as, like, doodles in the notebook than saying, 'Hey, here's my big movie.'"

Former advertising copywriter, the late, great John Hughes was known for his quick turnaround writing style. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1986, he explained his writing process for Ferris Beuller's Day Off .

"How did I come to write 'Ferris?' Well, let's see. There was a writer's strike coming up in a week and my agent called and warned me so I thought, 'Gees, John, you better write something' and so I got this sentence... out of the ozone. 'I am 17 years old and I know exactly where my life is going' and then I thought, 'I am 17 years old and I have no idea where my life is going,' and I thought, 'That`s it!'"

Apparently, Hughes wrote in 20-hour binges and would typically finish a screenplay in about four days.

Another teen classic from speed-writer John Hughes, he claimed to have written the script for The Breakfast Club in two days, according to IFC.com.

"Hughes was a notoriously fast writer, leaving behind dozens of unproduced movies after his death. During his productive peak, he was known to knock out a whole screenplay in a weekend."

In the mid-1990s, screenwriter Kevin Williamson was struggling to pay his bills. He knew if he could just focus, he could pound out an idea he had for a horror flick.

According to the IMDb, "Williamson secluded himself in Palm Springs and focused on the development of his 'Scary Movie' treatment, hoping for a quick sale to meet his financial needs. Over the course of three days, Williamson developed a full-length script, as well as two separate five-page outlines for potential sequels, Scary Movie 2 (2001) and Scary Movie 3 (2003)."

Known for writing tragic male anti-heroes, Paul Schrader was apparently dealing with depression when he wrote Taxi Driver . According to the IMDb, he, "wrote the script in ten days via two drafts, one after the other. As he was writing, he kept a loaded gun on his desk for motivation and inspiration."

Writers Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon (who met when they both wrote for the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer ), spent months working on the outline for Cabin in the Woods . Goddard told FilmmakerMagazine.com, "Once we got the outline to a place we were happy with, we locked ourselves in a hotel room. I had the upstairs and he had the downstairs, and we just wrote as fast as we could. We didn't allow ourselves to leave that hotel until we were done... It was three or four days, something like that. But writing 8AM until 1AM. It was the most intense writing I've ever done. We knew we needed a ninety-page script, so that meant each of us had to do fifteen pages a day. It was hard. Certainly after those initial three days, we revised the script a lot. But it was nice to get the structure right initially, because Cabin is very much a structure dependent movie. The things that need to happen come from a skeleton. And once we locked all that into the script, things really started to come alive."
Learn the best way to structure your screenplay with this free guide.
For writer/director Spike Lee, writing the screenplay for Do the Right Thing wasn't about binge writing, however, he told Rolling Stone he did write the first draft in about two weeks. "I'd wake up in the morning and write three or four hours, then I'd quit, carry on with the rest of the day, and come back the next morning."

Brothers Ethan and Joel Cohen were working on the screenplay for Miller's Crossing , but hit a wall. "The story of Barton Fink's conception is a curious one. Faced with writer's block, even though they refuse to call it that, Ethan and Joel decided to put their work on Miller's Crossing on pause, and spent three weeks 'washing out their mind.' What came to existence was the screenplay for Barton Fink , with the central role written specifically for Turturro, with whom they were working on Miller's Crossing ," according to CinephiliaBeyond.org.

According to the New York Times, Rocky , written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, was inspired by a real boxing match between Chuck Wepner and Muhammad Ali in 1975.

"I was watching the fight in a movie theater," Stallone said, "and I said to myself, 'Let's talk about stifled ambition and broken dreams and people who sit on the curb looking at their dreams go down the drain.' I thought about it for a month. That's what I call my inspiration stage. Then I let it incubate for 10 months, the incubation stage. Then came the verification stage, when I wrote it in 3 1/2 days. I'd get up at 6 A.M. and write it by hand, with a Bic pen on lined notebook sheets of paper. Then my wife, Sasha, would type it. She kept saying, 'You've gotta do it, you've gotta do it. Push it, Sly, go for broke."'

Rocky earned Stallone both a Best Actor and Best Screenplay Oscar nomination.

10. Sex, Lies and Videotape

This powerful indie film was written by Steven Soderbergh in eight days, according to Mental Floss magazine, but he doesn't recommend writing at such fast pace. 'I don't think I will ever write another script in eight days, and that's fine," Soderbergh said. "Normally, once I have an idea in my head, it takes me about four to five weeks. See, what worries me about it is that someone will think they ought to be able to sit down and write a script in eight days, because they shouldn't. Ultimately, I don't think it's a good way to go about it."

Shanee Edwards graduated from UCLA Film School with an MFA in Screenwriting and is currently the film critic for SheKnows.com. She recently won the Next MacGyver television writing competition to create a TV show about a female engineer. Her pilot, Ada and the Machine, is currently in development with America Ferrera's Take Fountain Productions. You can follow her on Twitter: @ShaneeEdwards
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Top Ten Fastest Screenplays Ever Written - ScreenCraft

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For most of us, writing a screenplay can take months, even years. Sometimes, just getting a working outline can be a Herculean effort. We've all heard of a 'vomit draft' but for me, even that can take weeks. You may be surprised, however, to learn that some of our favorite screenplays were written in just a couple weeks, even a couple days.

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Writers work with co-writers or by selves

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Writers work with co-writers or by selves

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We already told you that Suicide Squad, despite a glut of bad reviews and potentially peeved fans, will still most likely coast its way to box office success this weekend. Big deal, who cares, etc. But don't take it from us. Though the Hollywood Reporter is predicting that Suicide Squad will likely top $140 million domestically on opening weekend, its sources have also unveiled some behind-the-scenes anguish that appears to be becoming a bit of a standard in massive Hollywood productions.

"[Director David Ayer] wrote the script in like, six weeks, and they just went," one source close to the film told THR of its sprint-like production tactics. "It's not just that you've told the public the movie is coming, you've made huge deals around the world with huge branding partners, with merchandise partners," another industry source added. "It's a really big deal to move a tentpole date."

To recap everything we've learned so far: big studio stress isn't fun.

Prior to Suicide Squad, Ayer's impressive filmography ( Fury, Training Day) was mostly devoid of strategically branded blockbusters. According to an unnamed franchise producer, that's exactly what big studios like Warner Bros. look for when putting together a project of this size. "There are a lot of people who don't want to direct those movies, and that's a huge problem," the source told THR. "A lot of the proven guys are back-to-back with their stuff, or they want to develop it for five years."

According to the report, Suicide Squad's behind-the-scenes problems became strikingly apparent after Warner Bros. higher-ups received word of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice's mostly negative response from both audiences and critics alike. Studio officials then reportedly started working on their own cut of Suicide Squad, while Ayer continued crafting his own simultaneously.

Confusingly, in a joint statement released to THR Wednesday, Ayer and Warner Bros. production boss Greg Silverman asserted that all involved parties were practically stoked with the final result and mentioned no such drama:

"This was an amazing experience. We did a lot of experimentation and collaboration along the way. But we are both very proud of the result. This is a David Ayer film, and Warners is proud to present it."

If that sounds like a straight-up clusterfuck of abominable proportions, you're not wrong. Though THR's immersive report claims Ayer and the studio were able to find common ground, the "studio-favored version" of Suicide Squad ultimately won the battle. If recent whisperings of notable shake-ups during the post-production process of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story are any indication, no property-no matter how massive-escapes the stress of franchise filmmaking.

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'Suicide Squad' Director David Ayer Was Reportedly Only Given 6 Weeks to Write Script

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We already told you that Suicide Squad , despite a glut of bad reviews and potentially peeved fans, will still most likely coast its way to box office success this weekend. Big deal, who cares, etc. But don't take it from us.

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Producers sometimes have to overrule directors to preserve budget and shoot

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Producers sometimes have to overrule directors to preserve budget and shoot

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October Films via Everett Collection

How Long It Took: 8 years, or about how long it'll be until we get another Hellboy

Why It Took So Long: Guillermo del Toro's dedication to every detail of his films was enough to guarantee a long shooting schedule, but then the film ran over budget, which brought filming to a halt. Del Toro raised the last bit himself through loans, some of which had a 60 percent interest rate, and star Ron Perlman was forced to take a pay cut. That he graciously did so solidified his friendship with the director for life.

Was It Worth it? Financially, no, but Cronos was critically acclaimed and became a cult hit, which helped del Toro get the Hellboy films.

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article continues below ad October Films via Everett Collection How Long It Took: 8 years, or about how long it'll be until we get another Hellboy Why It Took So Long: Guillermo del Toro's dedication to every detail of his films was enough to guarantee a long shooting schedule, but then the film ran over budget, which brought filming to a halt.

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If you've worked on a show, you've likely seen financial waste of varying degrees, from minor wobbles to downright trainwrecks. While sometimes sh*t happens and production just has to deal with it and carry on, more often than not a lot of terrible budget-suck can be avoided. Here are a few tips that apply to many situations (keeping in mind there is no one-size-fits-all method). Paying attention to a few key details can help on your quest to make a good product while staying within budget.

Now the director makes the piece what it is, be it a feature film or a 30 second TV spot. Without them you don't get your project completed, but that doesn't mean giving them free reign. Everyone who's worked more than a day in the industry has likely heard the term "Adult Supervision" muttered around an uncontrolled set, and let me tell you, it's incredibly important if you want to keep runaway production costs from spiraling out of control.

Producers are there to say no. Someone must wear the black hat. Not always mind you, but their job is to look out for the good of the project and play bad cop when need be. At hour 17 when a director is on his 35th take of an insert shot that could be picked up by 2nd unit, that's an easy example of when a producer must pull the plug. Unfortunately people want to be liked and often are reluctant to be that guy, but if you put on the producer hat, you have to accept that some days you won't be terribly liked. Suck it up and keep your project (and budget) on track.

Rein in rampaging actors (when possible).

Ok, actors are a unique bunch. Folks make fun of them, but when you really consider what they must do to put on a good performance, a bit of flexibility is warranted. I mean let's not forget Lawrence Fishburn and Hugo Weaving's epic fight in The Matrix. Even after 16+ hours, bangs & bruises, and horrible allergies from all the dust, they acted like pros and made the fight look amazing.

Here's the but. BUT, everything is on a schedule and every extra minute spent on something that should be otherwise completed is costing the production money. Be it demanding frivolous alternate takes, or refusing to come out of the trailer while the whole crew is standing around waiting, once again it is the producer's job to play bad cop, albeit with kid gloves more often than not. I should also mention that I wholeheartedly support shooting extra takes when an actor has interpretations of scenes they want to try, so long as it really may add to the scene and won't cost the production tens of thousands in overages in the process..

One notable exception to this is when the actor is also the financier. I once worked on a ridiculous film where come shooting call we were looking for the lead. " Ready to shoot" the AD said. " Oh, he went to Texas to do a concert." Yep, the talent/financier left and didn't tell anyone. " Ok, we'll shoot the other parts of the scenes." " Um, those were all his posse... they went with him." A quandry, but not insurmountable. " Ok, we'll shoot the actor who isn't in his crew." " Yeah, about that, he heard they were going to Texas, so he flew to Ohio."

It was the only time I got paid to sit and play Scrabble on set for 8 hours as production tried to figure out literally anything they could shoot. In the end it was one POV shot of someone's boots... worn by the producer.

Showing up and winging it may work on a student film, but if every minute costs hundreds or thousands of dollars, you'd better damn well know what you're doing next. This is where pre-production is vital, as is location scouting with the director and their keys. A little forethought can save you literally hours of paying a crew to stand twiddling their thumbs on the clock while ideas are bounced around.

The time for brainstorming is before you have the crew on the clock. I've worked with directors who will change their shots for that day's work, but there are two types. There's the type who torpedoes the schedule and budget in doing so, and there's the type who knows that they want to make changes and shows up early, walking the sets and planning their changes before the crew is even ready. The latter is a sign of professionalism, and trust me the crew notices these things.

Find ways to reduce needless complexity.

A lengthy scene with 6 people can eat up your whole day, but can some of those characters not be in the scene? Can their dialogue be spoken by another character, thus reducing the number of shots and coverage needed? Can they be out of the room, perhaps even answering from off screen? What can you do to keep the integrity of the scene while reducing its complexity and schedule demands?

Coverage can be death in crowded scenes. If you start doing multiple coverage angles at multiple sizes for multiple characters, pretty soon you'll not only burn through most of the day shooting the same scene over and over, but you'll also eventually start to burn your actors out as well. Now sometimes it must be done, and everyone appreciates and understands that, but when it is frivolous, all it does is burn time, money, and patience.

Want to piss off your actors and crew, waste time, and look like an amateur? Shoot hours of multiple masters from multiple angles before moving in to coverage. The master should be just that, a master, from which you then get into the meat of the scene with coverage. Shooting multiple masters screams out "I didn't plan this and am winging it!" Don't be that person. If you're truly making it up as you go, the crew and actors will know, and they will lose respect for you eventually. Even if the end result is amazing, you can't do it often. It is morale killing to spend a 15 hour day on set that could have been 10 just because someone was indecisive and unprepared.

Keep dolly and crane shots within reason.

Giving a director toys to play with can produce some amazing shots, but it can also cost the production tens of thousands in overages. This comes back to the idea of planning out your day. If you have a dolly shot planned for the morning and a crane shot for the afternoon, great, but if you have those tools and just start making things up it is going to derail your schedule faster than an Amtrak (sorry Amtrak).

This is where dialogue between the "Adults" (remember the term "Adult Supervision"?) and the director. Sometimes for a great bit of inspiration you have to suck it up and get the shot if it is truly worth it. A lot of amazing material has been filmed because of inspiration on the day. The key is knowing when to let them run with it and when to reign it in. Toys are fun to play with, but every dolly, crane, or drone shot requires a lot of time to set up. It's tough, but this is where the producer must make judgment calls and hope their decision was the right one.

Ok, I may be a bit biased, my cousin, Tony Liberatore, ( not his board shown above) is an amazing storyboard artist who comes up with brilliant shots and transitions on the fly for some of the biggest films out there (Fast and Furious, Captain America, and many more). The thing is, a good storyboard artist will help a director approach the day with a concrete plan. A course of action. A visual map of what they MUST get that day. If they can get more, fantastic, but the storyboard really helps keep the production on track.

Paul Hunter is a music video director whose shoots I've worked on in the past, and let me tell you that man is meticulous in his storyboarding. Now we all know music video shoots are almost always ridiculously long days, but Paul is a rarity in that he not only gets every single shot on his boards, but once he has them he then gets additional shots he's come up with if reasonable given the schedule. His work ethic is impressive, and it shows in the smoothness of his shoots. It's also a big reason so many of us loved working with him, it's always a pleasure working with a pro.

Even if you forget everything you've just read, try to keep this one thought in your head: Whether you work on tiny productions or massive projects, every minute wasted is money wasted, and boy does it add up. Strive to make every minute count and you'll not only save money, but will also most likely find your project will go smoother in nearly all respects.
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7 Simple Ways to Cut Film Production Costs

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If you've worked on a show, you've likely seen financial waste of varying degrees, from minor wobbles to downright trainwrecks. While sometimes sh*t happens and production just has to deal with it and carry on, more often than not a lot of terrible budget-suck can be avoided.

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Personal Connection Between Producers and Directors

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Personal Connection Between Producers and Directors