Week 7 Weekly Photo Challenge: Screenplay Cover

Screenplays are interesting monsters.  I say that in the most loving and hateful way I can. Every filmmaker wants or wishes they could write the next biggest screenplay hit. They want to be the next Joss Whedon with an Avengers script, or Shane Black getting paid over a million dollars based off of just the treatment and not even the script.  They can get too flashy, or creative, and loose track of the importance of writing a screenplay. It all comes down to just the story. That is why covers to my screenplays are very basic, and looks like most Hollywood scripts.

The Last Drive was a seven page short screenplay that I wrote in 2011 just for fun. It wasn’t for a class or assignment, just for myself because I had a great idea stuck in my head and I wanted to get it out. The importance of the title page is the same as a book, just not as showy. It’s the first thing people are going to see and read. Of course it’s important to have the writer’s name on it, more then once would be ideal, and it’ll have a way to contact the writer. For contacting it could either be a phone number, e-mail address, or in some case a physical address can be used.

The main thing about the cover page is the title of the screenplay you are showing. Titles alone can make or break your chance of getting it made, or even just looked at. I personally feel that the best titles tell a part of the story, while leaving just a little bit of mystery. Movies like The Sixth Sense, Along Came Polly, The Thing, and Cabin in the Woods, seem straightforward; yet still hold a slight bit of intrigue curiosity to them. That’s what I tried to do with The Last Drive. It’s telling you the part of the story it wants you to know right off the bat, this is the last drive for someone, but it makes you wonder why.