Screenwriting : Where Does a Bad Film Go Wrong? by Karen "Kay" Ross

That's Hollywood right there at the same table - 7 final decision makers.

Anyways, I've never made a studio picture but my college classmate has. He's a DGA Director with two studio distributed films and he says the Suits in the Marketing Departments have too much control. They're more bean counters in positions of power than Artists.

Let's face it, this industry is a moneymaking business, as an ice-cream cart next door, as a coffee shop next door. Your balance sheet, your profits, your shareholders' smile at the end of the quarter. It's not about entertaining people, it's not about making good or bad movies, it's not even about a message anymore, just the buck and the power. You take telcos, take banking, take kitchen appliance maker - your decision-making process is split into limits with budgets and level of accountability. In the R&D process which is similar to taking a script, investing time and money, people and timeslots - there is always a big chance that you won't make it on time, you can't get the right supplies or raw materials, you won't execute all the steps the way you imagined and planned it - that's why many R&D houses in-house or outsourced do trials - in the innovation business, it's called an experiment budget - you take something you build a proto and you get 10 to 1000 people to test it. Then you fine-tune or bury it. And here we go - the product is ready, it's marketable, it's well accepted by the end-users. In TV business (well, Pilots, too time-consuming, too expensive) you invest a lot in the idea. The solution to the struggles to minimize the risk of becoming a failure on your next project is the trick called - do not take the risk if you cannot handle the exposure. Executives, the big bosses are just middlemen between the jar and a customer, aggregation of efforts - that's their role and it should be paid as in any other industry - studio gets 5% of aggregation - I'm sorry but that's the reality - banks pay the buck, the rest is the magic called aggregation of resources. You do it on large scale you survive, you wanna monetize as Apple or Louis Vuitton on the brand - do everything inhouse - but please, make good movies then, not the failure of another franchise, too boring.

I recently watched the series Emerald city at Amazon Prime. The lack of character development of the protagonist is where I stopped watching. There is a romance, risking both their lives to safe one and the other, but then at a certain point she is offered to return home and she does not hesitate for a second to take the chance (ofcourse she doesn't), but this felt really unnatural to me and took me right out of the story. If you don't have authentic characters, if their actions or motives are not in line with the previous scenes I am lost. So for this example it was the screenplay, but also the scenery felt a little bit weird as everybody knew it was shot in Barcelona. It did not feel authentic, as too much involvement was made to make it a succestory. For the man in the high castle it was the speed, it took too slow to tell the story and I left, because I had the feeling that a story that would fit in a movie was told in many episodes and seasons. I didn''t have the patience for that. So this is again screenplay. More examples are, wrong casting (City of Bones), too much diverting from original plot (Insurgent/Allegant), too many infodumps, but most of the time it is the screenplay/plot/dialogue.

HOLY COW! *Please know that I actually curse like a sailor, so I'm keeping it PG for the sake of professionalism.

Now THIS is a lengthy discussion! Give me a minute to read and respond LOL!

Hi, Karen. It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to watch a Roundtable so thank you so much for sharing. :) Well, according to those who are sitting at that table, the overall, broad-stroke, quick answer to “where does a bad movie go wrong” is the screenwriting and/or the story, the marketing, and/or too much of a rush to finish a project. For me as an audience member, it’s the marketing. I love film and I’m always interested in the filmmaker’s creative intent, far more so than any imposed outside expectation or interpretation or opinion. So, bad marketing that sets up a false expectation or a false representation or a skewed notion of what the film is or what it really is about is very damaging. With the thousands of decisions that are made in the making of a film and the many hands involved working on it—all the things that could go wrong—it’s amazing movies get made at all! ;)