D.U.M.P.S

Found some prettyy cool stuff online for film-makers. Here it is.

D.U.M.P.S contains not the usual advice you get in film school about the elements of good screenwriting. No, no. Rather, it is a very specific list of common mistakes and trends which we've seen in crappy student films again and again at screening after screening.

The Tortured Artist Film
The Tortured Artist Film usually involves a so-called "man vs. himself" struggle which is guaranteed to put you to sleep in the first two minutes. Related to this is the "introspective shot" which usually features the main character staring into space for a good minute (usually smoking a cigarette). File this under "Pretentious as Shit."


Bad Audio
You can have a real nice looking short film, but if the sound is bad, the film itself comes across as bad. Nothing gives away a student film like the soundtrack. And now, free of charge, a canonical list of BAD musical soundtrack instruments:
-Your friend's band (trust me, they suck)
-"the lone, slow piano"
-"the lone guitar" (flamenco esp.)
-The "impish" clarinet
-The cello dirge.
-The "spirited" piccolo.
-Any kind of wood blocks.


Ultraslow Dialogue
A film professor once told me that on a film set, one second of "real" time equals three seconds of film time. Watch a student film and notice how often there are long pauses between lines of dialogue. Why is this? I don't know, but if you watch the average "real" film, you'll see that the dialogue often occurs ultra fast. Maybe it's because we can hear faster than people normally speak. Who knows. A side note-- these pauses also extenuate bad lines of dialogue. A poorly written line is going to hang in the air like a fart if not closely followed by a fresh line to cleanse the air like a gentle breeze...

Scene One: The protagonist wakes up.
There's nothing INHERENTLY wrong with starting a film with the buzz of an alarm clock, a hand slapping the snooze button, eyes fluttering open, followed by a yawn or an "oh my gosh, I'm late!" - But why so much of this? We see it all the time. It's as if the writer/director woke up one morning, looked around and said "Wow. This is cool!" Uh yeah. Better go back to sleep.

Convincing? Your choice.
-http://www.filmmaker.com/DUMPS.html-