Screenwriting : Screenwriting Thought of the Day: The Writer Is the First Producer by Sandra Correia

"And what kind of support would help you move through it?" Somebody with great taste, great industry connections and a check book.

David Taylor, honestly, that combination would solve a lot of problems for all of us. Someone with great taste, strong industry connections, and a checkbook is basically the holy trinity of filmmaking support. But if we had all that from the start, the fun would be over, it’s like having the cake already baked. The real adventure is finding the ingredients and figuring out how to make it rise… even if sometimes it collapses and we pretend it was meant to be a crumble :))

My biggest challenge right now is finishing the polishing and micro polishing. I started writing this script as my first one, knowing anything about formatting. I only had this strong will to share the story that lives in my head. Many drafts have already been written. That’s why this polishing is so important to me. I want to be sure that the final one shows the world everything I want to talk about, to highlight.

Sandra Correia , what I’ve been realizing through the last months is that sharing our pains and asking our doubts is not a weakness but a plus. So, I think that help is essencial and also different from screenwriter to screenwriter and his level of knowledge. Be it a mentor (in my case) , a friend, a webinar, lessons, it doesn’t matter because the most important of all is to learn more and more and share knowledge.

The cake is the screenplay. Remembering a quote from somewhere as a metaphor: "I eventually found my Prince but had to kiss a lot of frogs along the way".

Maria Caeiro I really resonated with what you shared polishing is such a delicate stage, especially when the story carries so much meaning. It’s where clarity, rhythm, and intention truly come together. I work closely with writers at this point as a beta reader and copy editor, helping refine the work while preserving its voice. I’d love to connect and follow your journey.

Sandra Correia Yes. So true. And who gets the recognition no matter how little they contributed to the end result? The director. And you can thank the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) with their auteur "theory" for that. So... In my view, writers are, in particular, and most especially, the first directors.

Andrew Sarris, in his Introduction to INTERVIEWS WITH FILM DIRECTORS, Avon Books, 1967, p. 12, wrote:

“...screenwriting involves more than mere dialogue and plot. The choice between a close-up and a long-shot, for example, may quite often transcend the plot. If the story of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD is told with the Wolf in close-up and Little Red Riding Hood in long-shot, the director is concerned primarily with the emotional problems of a wolf with a compulsion to eat little girls. If Little Red Riding Hood is in close-up and the wolf in long–shot, the emphasis is shifted to the emotional problems of vestigial virginity in a wicked world. Thus, two different stories are being told with the same basic anecdotal material. What is at stake in the two different versions of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD are two contrasting directorial attitudes toward life. One director identifies more with the Wolf—the male, the compulsive, the corrupted, even evil itself. The second director identifies with the little girl - the innocence, the illusion, the ideal and hope of the race.”

Okay, wait a minute. Did he say “two contrasting directorial attitudes toward life”? So, if you make a film it isn’t about the story in the film, it’s actually your take on LIFE? This may have more to do with Sarris’s personal predilections than any interpretations of the story. After all, there is an interpretation in between his two examples that has to do with a hungry and wily predator trying to hunt and eat defenseless prey as is its nature. This, rather than some kind of twisted and corrupt expression of pure, yet sexually perverse evil, or contrarily, some innocent expression of racial hope. You know he is over-thinking this when he employs P.C. buzz terms like “sexually perverse” and “racial hope.” It’s all too politically self-conscious, pandering as it does, to his “choir” full of cineastes, for my taste. Perhaps Sarris has been reading too much Freud. Perhaps it’s the ‘60’s. And perhaps, as are we all,

He gets it, but he doesn't stop there. Where a film's story is a reflection of a particular view, the writer's came first. So, in exalting the director while ignoring the writer, "auteurists" fall into the cineaste's version of the cult of personality. Sarris is a product of his times. The trick is to recognize it and transcend them.

But the reality is that before there can be a close-up or a long-shot, there must be a subject to be shot. And the assumption that the narrative left an interpretation of the subject to some neutral medium-shot until a director could come along and take a position one way or another is actually ignorance of an emphasis that is almost always already present in the narrative, placed there by the writer, and ignored by the director in favor of wresting control of the narrative for his own reasons.

For example, one can describe an action in several ways: as pure and focused (close-up), as within its immediate location (medium-shot), or as within and against its surroundings or environment (long-shot). It can even be described in such a way as to evoke a mind’s-eye view suggesting an up-angle to yield a powerful or dominating subject, a straight-on angle to yield a power-neutral subject, or a downward angle, suggesting a subordinate and helpless subject. The lighting influencing that mind’s-eye view can be (and often is) adjusted in the writing. When a writer describes characters and action in any of these ways, the writer is influencing the reader’s interpretation of the story in service to a vision that precedes the coming collaboration. This is to specify that vision toward production of a film that serves it. The fact that the director comes along and changes it doesn’t necessarily indicate a superior vision, it merely indicates, a superior control of the result.

Sarris, again, p. 14:

“It is fashionable to say that the screen is a director’s medium and the stage is a writer’s medium, but it is difficult to say that a Broadway-to-Hollywood-and-back director like Elia Kazan is any less in command in one medium than in another.”

Why is it difficult? It’s because every production, stage and film, both, is a unique case when it comes to collaboration involving who did what, and how much. Sorting out film credit is worse than herding cats. It’s closer to herding herds of cats after particularly difficult negotiations with each of the various and sundry Cat Guilds. Better to accept the collaboration for its own strengths and dispense with what amounts to aesthetic idolatry at the expense of facts. Produced narrative works don’t demand some kind of religious “leap of faith” to enable one’s deepest appreciation.

The stage is a writer’s medium because plays are re-produced, and survive any given director. Therefore, the writer’s vision is the only constant. Meanwhile, films are rarely re-produced, so the director’s version is generally the sole version. Add to that the writer exits the thing, willingly or not, early. The implication, then, is that the writer will lose control of his/her vision because, he/she is not the “last man standing.” The director is.

Director Arthur Penn has gone on record in THE DIRECTOR’S EVENT, by Eric Sherman & Martin Rubin, Atheneum, 1970, p. 120 – 1, taking an unabashed writer-be-damned view:

“In the theater, the script is embalmed. It is The Text, a revered work. A man’s written it, and it’s meant to be delivered as such. In the cinema, the dialogue is only a guide. My writer friends are often offended by the literary level of the scripts of my films. On the other hand, I keep thinking it doesn’t matter a great deal, and I’m sort of offended sometimes by the look of their plays.

“An awful lot of vanity is inherent in the movie-making event. It’s a seductive event. Seldom in one’s fantasies can one achieve the kind of power that you have on a movie set. Power corrupts; movie power corrupts absolutely. Dialogue in the cinema only serves as a guide to a kind of visualization, and if this be megalomania, so be it. There is only one event in making movies, and that’s the director’s event. It’s not anybody else’s. I don’t care how well written the script is. You can get into a motel room in Texas, and the dialogue can be exquisite, but what you choose to look at and how you look at it is everything.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like a number of Penn’s films. His “writer friends” must be novelists or those exalted playwrights, because they surely aren’t screenwriters. Penn, though, has become “hoist by his own petard.” He admits to the corrupting influence of the role of the director, and then exercises that corruption when he says, “...what you choose to look at and how you look at it is everything.” The key word there, however, is “what.” Without the script, there is no “what.”

This ain’t a small thing, folks.

And by its presence, script having been read, that “what” has been “viewed,” so a view-point is established: the writer’s viewpoint.

The maximum that the director can bring to the film is an interpretation of what was already there or a forced re-write to that director’s specification. In his “corruption,” and because of his theater-based notion of screenwriting as merely dialogue, and “suggested” dialogue, at that, he believes direction is ‘The Text.’

Perhaps this is all really sour grapes, and, like his single screenwriting experience trying to make a two-hour movie from a twenty minute song (ALICE’S RESTAURANT) it’s based on his experience directing those playwrights’ untouchable words for the stage. With his elevation of the “what” and “how” one chooses to “look” with the camera, he implies that all screenwriting only exhibits a neutral point-of-view; that, other than scene transitions, it implies no cutting; that screenwriting is actually mis-named and really amounts to just suggestive dialogue-writing, the action ignored; and that dialogue doesn’t compare to camera placement, the use of which is “everything.”

Let him shoot that motel room in Texas with no script: with just the improvising actors, without those characters saying those written lines; and without that story (in fact, without that motel room or even Texas!). He’d find himself without that audience. I wonder how different it would be from the Penn family’s home movies. “Slick sh*t,” to borrow a phrase. And...

WritERS aren't the most important thing in filmmaking, writING is.

For me, the main concerns are the structure and the writing. That is exactly why I booked the 30-minute session: I want to know how I can strengthen the script and make it market-ready.

This is one of the most underrated truths in this business. The writer decides what is possible before anyone else shows up. Every choice about the world and the setting and the rules of the story are production decisions disguised as creative ones. When you write a scene that needs a specific location or a system that behaves a certain way you just committed someone else's budget and schedule without them being in the room. That gap between creative freedom and downstream reality is what makes the writing phase so consequential. The writers who feel that tension and work inside it instead of ignoring it are the ones producers actually trust.

As a writer, I have realized that I cannot do it alone!

There are four elements or groups of people involved: The story, written by the writer (this is the person who ignites the fire); the actors who give life to the characters; the director who brings magic and essential elements to the story; and finally, the editing team that puts all the pieces together.

Therefore, as a writer, my main issue is bringing everyone who shares the same vision together.

I love this post Sandra Correia. I think I'm going to print it out and attach it to every contract I sign from here on out. My biggest challenge right now? Time. I'm grateful for the source of income that provides for my family. I just wish I could focus on what I love and provide at the same time.

Maria Caeiro, polishing can feel like its own marathon, especially when the script carries so much of your heart. It’s beautiful that you started with pure will and shaped it draft by draft, that dedication shows. And you’re right, sharing doubts and asking for help isn’t weakness; it’s how we grow. Each writer needs something different, whether it’s a mentor, a friend, or a class. What matters is exactly what you’re doing: learning, refining, and staying open. Keep going — you’re almost there.

Lee Matthias, you make a strong case: the writer’s vision is absolutely the first lens through which the story is shaped, long before a director interprets it. And you’re right, the collaboration gets messy because every project has its own balance of influence. At the end of the day, it isn’t about exalting one role over another. It’s exactly what you said: writing is the foundation. Without that “what,” there’s nothing for anyone to shoot, reinterpret, or elevate.

That's a smart move, Meriem Bouziani. I did, and I do the same several times. Booking a 30-M coverage will help us a lot. I hope the results are what you expect :)

Eric Charran, absolutely! Writers set the parameters long before anyone else steps in. Every choice on the page becomes a real‑world decision for someone down the line, and the writers who understand that ripple effect are the ones producers trust most. That balance between creative freedom and practical awareness is exactly what makes the writing phase so powerful.

Alinser Hoyos, absolutely. Filmmaking is never a solo act. The writer may spark the fire, but it takes actors, a director, and the whole post team to turn that spark into something real. And you’re right, the hardest part is gathering people who share the same vision. When that alignment happens, though, the story finally breathes the way it was meant to.

Leonardo Ramirez, I am so happy for that, my friend. And I hear you on the time struggle. I have the same challenge. Balancing the work that pays the bills with the work that feeds the soul is one of the hardest parts of this path. The fact that you’re still showing up for your writing, even with a full life on your shoulders, already says everything about your commitment. Little by little, you’re building the space for both.

Yes, I hope so. Thank you Sandra Correia

Beautifully said, Sandra Correia and you're absolutely right. We persevere.

Yes! I would add that screenwriters should also be budget conscious as a producer might be and be aware of the marketing potential and strategies for the script.

Sandra Correia that ripple effect point is exactly right. And what makes it even more interesting is that most writers never get to see where their decisions land. They never sit in the production meeting where someone says this location will cost us three extra days. Or the financing call where the budget forces a rewrite of the third act.

The writers who do get that exposure almost always write differently after. Not worse. Not safer. But with a sharper awareness of what they are asking for and why. That awareness does not limit creativity. It focuses it. And it changes the way a reader on the other side of the table trusts the material.

Michael David is right about the budget awareness piece too. But I would take it further. It is not just about knowing what things cost. It is about understanding that every creative choice carries a downstream consequence. The writers who think that way are not just writing a story. They are building something someone can actually make.

This is a perfect post, Sandra Correia, and such an important one. Especially in he current climate. More important that ever. You also make that first decision as to where the project should live. And that should be wearing a producer's hat as well. This is why I always say, whether you want to be a producer or not (and keeping in mind, if you have the chance you will control more of the process), you should be taking producing webinars and classes. This is vital knowledge that will shape your pitches and make you stand out in rooms in 26 and beyond.

Michael David, absolutely, being budget-conscious and thinking ahead about marketing is a huge advantage for any writer. Those choices on the page have real downstream impact. Thank you for sharing.

Eric Charran, that kind of exposure changes everything. Once you’ve sat in those meetings and seen how a single creative choice ripples through budget, schedule, and financing, you start writing with a different level of intention. Not smaller, not safer, just sharper.

For me, that awareness is part of the craft. It’s understanding that we’re not only telling a story; we’re building something real people will have to make. The writers who think that way earn trust because their pages already anticipate the downstream reality.

Richard "RB" Botto, thank you; that means a lot. And you’re absolutely right: that first decision of where a project should live already requires a producer’s mindset. Even if someone doesn’t plan to produce, understanding the fundamentals of packaging, positioning, and the current market is essential. It shapes how we pitch, how we build trust in the room, and how we navigate this new landscape. I also believe that taking webinars, labs, or classes is one of the best ways to learn and evolve. Right now I’m doing the 6‑Part Advanced Level Lab: Build Your Feature Film Package with Tiffany Boyle, and it’s elevating my education exactly as I prepare for my next step: packaging.

If you want to follow RB's advice, you can find Stage 32's great education program at this link: https://www.stage32.com/education

It also narrows your chances at rejection, Sandra Correia, which is a major factor in being kind to your psyche. I posted a video about this yesterday on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/p/DXNQuvjyKsz/

No doubt Richard "RB" Botto. I also have learned a lot since I began to moderate Stage 32 webinars, it’s a great school:)) I just saw your instagram post, and we are aligned. My wish is to help filmmakers to achieve this mindset and Stage 32 have all the resources to help them accomplish this :))

Richard "RB" Botto and Sandra Correia bought "How to Prep to Sell Your Completed Feature Film at a Film Market" and "Plan Your Film Festival Strategy in the "New Normal" - Virtual Film Festivals and Beyond" so I'm truly ready for Cannes and success! Stage32 kids!

You are one of a kind Pat Savage, and I love that and your energy. You know that! I love your education programs and I believe Cannes will be ready for you and Stage 32 success :))

Hi Sandra Correia, this is such a thoughtful post. I agree with you, when you are really doing the work, it absolutely feels like functioning as a CEO.

Pitch decks can definitely be challenging, too. This month, I ran into a few hurdles while trying to bring more clarity to a particular villain in one of my projects. I needed to clarify the philosophy behind his nature and what truly drives him, so it took a lot of research, reflection, and studying different films to find the right thematic foundation for his darker motivations. I also had to dig into what life was like in the mid‑70s for another project, so I’ve been doing another round of deep research to help build the world and keep the story grounded in real details.

Fantastic webinar choices, Pat Savage. Sure you got a ton of fantastic, actionable info out of them.

Richard "RB" Botto absolutely bud! I;m going to Cannes to get a streaming deal, agent and more! I hope Amanda will be able to secure me a stage on one night with the possibility of having Jason Mamoa, Kiefer Sutherland, Russell Crow Kevin Bacon to join me in a few tunes. Pumped!

Thank you so much, Dwayne Williams 2. I really appreciate your insight. And yes, stepping into the CEO mindset is real. Some days it feels like we’re running a studio, a research department, and a therapy office all at once.

Your deep dive into the villain’s philosophy sounds intense but incredibly rewarding. Getting to the “why” behind a character’s darkness is such delicate work; it’s not just plot, it’s psychology, history, and worldview. And researching the mid‑70s for your other project... that’s a whole world‑building exercise on its own. I admire the level of detail you’re bringing to both stories.

By the way, Stage 32 has a great offer right now for a pitch‑deck webinar with Michelle Alexandria. She’s amazing. I did a lab with her, and I recommend her 100%. If you’re refining materials or looking for new angles, it might be a really helpful resource. Here's the link: https://www.stage32.com/education/products/how-to-put-together-a-perfect...

I'll second taking Michelle's webinar. Best in class in this arena.

Richard "RB" Botto, absolutely; Michelle’s webinars or labs are truly best‑in‑class. I also recommend a lot.

Thanks so much, Sandra Correia and Richard "RB" Botto for the recommendation. I’ve added Michelle’s webinar to my cart. Looking forward to diving into it!

That’s great news, Dwayne Williams 2, I am so happy for you. I hope you make the best of it.