Film Courage: How did you learn to write a feature-length script? Peter Dukes, Writer/Director: Yeah I never went
to any master programs I never went to any film programs that specifically
taught me my craft as I'd mentioned CU [University of Colorado Boulder] was more about film theory and various
things like that it didn't really teach me in great depth what you need to do as
a director or writer I had to learn all that on my own whether I did it right or
wrong who's to say but for me is that it looted to you before I just wrote and
wrote and wrote and wrote and through all that writing through all those years
you start to find your own voice and when I wasn't writing I was reading
again great scripts different kinds of scripts the more type of scripts the
better any different styles you know you never want to get attached to one
person's style that he might start to emulate it I mean read different styles
and go gosh this is amazing I never thought you could do it this way and
what I eventually earned learned through the years is is when I'm writing my
scripts I don't just want to write a scene or write a story
I bring literally the words the structure of the sentences themselves to
life I break things apart certain descriptions certain ways I do it
depending on the project it should be an experience to read it and it should be
something that literally pulls the reader from one page to the next where
they can't stop if your script doesn't hook the reader on the first page you're
done that's just the realities is a lot of agents and managers will joke well
I'll give you the old five page rule there was the rule of thumb some say ten
but that means I'll read the first five pages and if it doesn't have me I don't
read the rest because these guys are reading hundreds of scripts a week they
don't got time and they've got a good radar they know it gets it in my
personal opinion I think they give it half a page or page if your script just
isn't really good both from a grammatical structural story standpoint
whatever it is immediately you're not going to gain any traction to them so
that's the goal as a writer as you keep writing and when I was teaching myself
to write I aspired to get to that point I want to
pull them in from the first sentence and never let them go and how to achieve
that in a variety of different genres and you know whatever your stories about
was a challenge and you just keep working on it until you get it did you
read any books or screenwriting books or no it was just all scripts and watch
movies okay yeah yeah and I that's a good point you just made watch and watch
a lot of movies watch some good movies you can learn a lot from that what some
people will do because you know writing is seeming a lot of dialogue can be
tricky because once you film it you go boy this is so it's just lunch of
Talking Heads this is so dialogue heavy watch a great scene between two
characters talking in a movie and then write it down most of the time not all
the time well there in store it might be a different choice or a different
circumstance but with most writers once you write down the dialogue some of your
favorite movies you'll see it's a lot shorter than you think these guys know
what they're doing they know how to write something that that doesn't turn
into a five page monologue watch a lot of movies watch them and learn from them
and then again keep reading screeding lots of different screenplays obviously
I'm sure there's some invaluable books out there you could read and obviously
there's master programs you can go out there and get a masters in screenwriting
and for all I know you can write the pants off of me after going there for a
year but there's certainly those types of things are available to anyone at any
time I never had the time or money for it so I did it you could say the hard
way but you know for me it was just I guess I'd learned through my directing
and producing that experience breeds experience and that's what pushed me
forward so it was the same with my writing I wasn't reading books I was
just writing in what reading I was doing was other people's work what's working
for them what are they doing that I'm not doing in my scripts and I would
never try to emulate their voice because every great script writer you can read
it you could almost go I know who wrote this would never try to emulate that but
I would just from a broad stroke standpoint look and go what are they
doing that's so great you know you obviously the best script
screenplays I've ever read as I'm reading it I visualized the movie I
don't even think about the writing it just pulls you in to such a degree that
before you know it you've gone through it and you've been perfectly visualizing
the film and you don't feel yourself turning the pages you don't feel
yourself reading the paragraphs how do I get to that point so I would read these
guys and read them and read them and just try to make my own writing better
and I'm still doing that to this day always trying to push myself to me
better did you see him is it Nosferatu Bela Lugosi it was like oh the original
yeah there's no dialogue right oh yeah oh there is okay no no I'm saying which
I love by the way no dialogue in fact that was another challenge I gave myself
back when I was doing shorts I did short with no dialogue can I tell a great
story without a single word I love things like and in fact one of my
favorite features when I was a kid was I think was black stallion black stallion
was such a good movie but pretty much the first half of film is dialogue free
it's a boy and it's in the horse on an island right and it's fabulous
it's so good and there's not a word you know or if there are it's just a couple
here and there that's still something I'm mastering when it comes to writing
because you know as the general rule of thumb is it's a minute per page when
you're writing you write a page of you one page of your script equals about a
minute of screen time by and large I guess that's true but I mean if you
don't have dialogue it really can alter things and I ran into challenges with
that with escape room because there was certain segments that were dialogue free
a lot of action happening in inside of this escape room and when we got to
actually shooting and I went this is gonna be a lot shorter than I had
originally planned you know I don't want to have like the nicest like 50 minute
feature ever so I had to kind of work my way around that and kind of find some
other ways to tell the story but you know I'm a big fan of that I did you
know sriracha was something you I think I watched the first part of it and it
was just very slow and I just found a very interesting because it was creepy
and it was scary yeah but but just yeah the the the slow the pacing of it and
yeah it's not everyone's cup of tea sure you know listen it sometimes the slow
burn is a little bit too slow there's another old film by I think it was Carl
Theodor Dreyer around the same time as Nosferatu I believe 1932 1919 31 is
called the vampyre that one you should check out same thing all that was fear
amazing experimental photography of these kind of foreboding shadow figures
right yeah didn't have special effects it was all practical but it was very
clever and it was just a very different take the Nosferatu but very interesting
not everyone's cup of tea I showed it to a group of friends once and they all
split it was me watching the phone but but it still a worthy experience at the
other time
you