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DRAFT ZERO
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Screenplay Gurus

2 episodes  ·  Mar 2014 – Mar 2014

"Dark Night of the Soul is less a formula beat and more a question every writer should be able to answer for their character. What is the lowest point? What does it take to get out of it?"

— Stu Willis  |  DZ-2: Do the Screenplay Gurus score big at the Box Office?

DZ-1: Do Screenplay Gurus win you Oscars?

Do Oscar-Nominated screenwriters follow the structural formulas prescribed by the 'gurus' and books?
Three of the most widely read structure books in screenwriting — Snyder’s Save the Cat, Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, and Michael Hauge’s Six Stages — all make essentially the same claim: this is how great films are built. In our debut episode, we run that claim against two Oscar-nominated films to see if it holds: PHILOMENA and DALLAS BUYERS CLUB… →
⏱ 1h 40m
1 MAR 2014
Listen if you want to know whether Blake Snyder, Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler's structural theories actually apply to Academy Award-nominated screenplays
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DZ-2: Do the Screenplay Gurus score big at the Box Office?

Do the biggest original films of 2013 follow more archetypal - or formulaic - structures?
Part 2 of our Screenplay Gurus series takes the same lens from Part 1 — Vogler, Snyder and Hauge — and points it at the two highest-grossing original films of 2013: GRAVITY and FROZEN. No franchise, no sequel. Just the two films that audiences went to see in the biggest numbers that year, and the question of what their scripts actually look like when you run them against the guru formulas… →
⏱ 1h 33m
17 MAR 2014
Listen if you need to know which guru frameworks actually deliver in Act Three.
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