Writing A Screenplay Begins With A Thesis – Matthew Berkowitz via FilmCourage.com.
Film Courage: What’s your process for developing an idea?
Matthew Berkowitz, Filmmaker:That’s difficult.
Film Courage: What are you doing before you write the screenplay?
Matthew: Well I’ll come up with an idea right? Or I’ll come up with a character or I’ll come up with a theory and most of the time for me it’s like a thesis and I think that might be because I love to read so much literature and I kind of come from philosophy. And I develop a thesis or something I want to say and then I find characters that I think can embody that purpose and that can function in a story that kind of carries this idea throughout it so I can communicate what I want to say in a story and through characters.
It always starts with an idea or a thesis or a theory that I talk about and the characters in the story kind of fall in line from there. Then I’ll just kind of binge watch a bunch of movies that apply and I’ll just write.
I carry a little notebook around me everywhere I go because…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
