Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

IFH 764: Where Writer's Go Wrong with ACTION Screenplays with Robert McKee


Listen Later

Robert McKee, A Fulbright Scholar, is the most sought after screenwriting lecturer around the globe. He has dedicated the last 30 years to educating and mentoring screenwriters, novelists, playwrights, poets, documentary makers, producers, and directors internationally. Those who have learned from McKee have called him "the Aristotle of our time" because of his insight into the substance, structure, style, and principles of the grand art of story.Peter Jackson (writer/director of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit) has lauded him as "The Guru of Gurus." For the writers of Pixar (creators of Toy Story 1, 2, & 3, Finding Nemo), McKee's Story Seminar is a rite of passage. Emmy Award-Winner Brian Cox also portrayed McKee in the Oscar-nominated film Adaptation.McKee's former students include over 60 Academy Award Winners, 200 Academy Award Nominees, 200 Emmy Award Winners, 1000 Emmy Award Nominees, 100 WGA (Writers Guild of America) Award Winners, 250 WGA Award Nominees, and 50 DGA (Directors Guild of America) Award Winners, 100 DGA Award Nominees.A winner and nominee of BAFTA for his popular Channel Four series Reel Secrets, McKee also wrote and hosted 12 episodes of BBC's Filmworks series. He was profiled by Bob Simon of 60 Minutes for CBS news.McKee's articles on Story have also appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world including Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker Magazine, Swiss Business Magazine, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, CBS Morning News, BBC, Channel 4 in UK, RAI (Italy), CBN Weekly News & Morning Glory (China), MBC TV, KBS & Arirang TV, Korea Times (South Korea), Kiev Weekly, Kultura Moscow, all major TV, Radio and/or newspapers of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, France, India, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland and given seminars in all of the above countries.Since 1984, more than 100,000 students have taken McKee's courses at various cities around the world: Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco, Helsinki, Oslo, Munich, Tel Aviv, Auckland, Singapore, Madrid, Beijing, Shanghai, Barcelona, Lisbon, Malaga, Hamburg, Berlin, Johannesburg, Rome, Stockholm, São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Beijing, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Seoul, Istanbul, Hyderabad, Mexico City and many cities regularly.McKee continues to be a project consultant to major film and television production companies such as 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, & MTV. In addition, Pixar, ABC, BBC, Disney, Miramax, PBS, Nickelodeon, Paramount, GLOBOSAT, MNET and other international TV and Film companies regularly send their entire creative and writing staffs to his lectures.His new book is Action: The Art of Excitement for Screen, Page, and Game.

ACTION explores the ways that a modern-day writer can successfully tell an action story that not only stands apart, but wins the war on clichés. Teaming up with the former co-host of The Story Toolkit, Bassim El-Wakil, legendary story lecturer Robert McKee guides writers to award-winning originality by deconstructing the action genre, illuminating the challenges, and, more importantly, demonstrating how to master the demands of plot with surprising beats of innovation and ingenuity.

Topics include:
  • Understanding the Four Core Elements of Action
  • Creating the Action Cast
  • Hook, Hold, Pay Off: Design in Action
  • The Action McGuffin
  • Action Set Pieces
  • The Sixteen Action Subgenres
A must-add to the McKee storytelling library, ACTION illustrates the principles of narrative drive with precision and clarity by referencing the most popular action movies of our time including: Die Hard, The Star Wars Saga, Dark Knight, The Matrix, and Avengers: Endgame.

Enjoy my conversation with Robert McKee.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/indie-film-hustle-a-filmmaking-podcast--2664729/support.
...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking PodcastBy Indie Film Hustle

  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7
  • 4.7

4.7

296 ratings


More shows like Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

View all
The Business by KCRW

The Business

656 Listeners

The Treatment by KCRW

The Treatment

614 Listeners

The Filmcast by The Filmcast

The Filmcast

3,536 Listeners

Scriptnotes Podcast by John August and Craig Mazin

Scriptnotes Podcast

2,408 Listeners

IndieWire: Screen Talk by Indiewire: Screen Talk

IndieWire: Screen Talk

327 Listeners

The Director’s Cut - A DGA Podcast by Directors Guild of America

The Director’s Cut - A DGA Podcast

710 Listeners

The No Film School Podcast by No Film School

The No Film School Podcast

420 Listeners

IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit by Chris O'Falt

IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit

101 Listeners

Show Don't Tell: Micro-Budget Filmmaking by Noam Kroll

Show Don't Tell: Micro-Budget Filmmaking

159 Listeners

Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast by Bulletproof Screenwriting

Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

237 Listeners

The Movies That Made Me by SpectreVision Radio

The Movies That Made Me

545 Listeners

The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna by Meg LeFauve & Lorien McKenna

The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna

946 Listeners

Team Deakins by James Ellis Deakins, Roger Deakins

Team Deakins

1,107 Listeners

Script Apart with Al Horner by Script Apart

Script Apart with Al Horner

156 Listeners

The Town with Matthew Belloni by The Ringer

The Town with Matthew Belloni

986 Listeners