One of the best ways of improving your screenwriting is by watching the greatest films ever made and learning from how they do it. An extension of this is watching film analysis.
I’m going to suggest that all of you head to The Cinema Cartography on YouTube – created by Lewis Michael Bond and Luiza Liz Bond. Its exploration of the history of film, themes like tragedy, relationships, time, poetics, and recommendations for films you might not have heard of, is second to none.
One of the hardest things to pin down when writing a screenplay is Theme: what are you trying to say? Theme also folds into how you’re trying to tell your story, which lends itself to structure, scenes and dialogue.
When I’m struggling to clarify what the theme of something I’m writing is, I head to Cinema Cartographer. When I’m struggling to find the theme of someone’s work I’m reading, I tell them to head there so they can re-examine what they’re trying to say through the lens of Lynch, Kaufman or Tarkovsky.
How do you portray evil aesthetically? What are the limits of cinematography (if there are any)? How to write characters with secrets (the Michael Haneke analysis is great on this)? How is cinema the medium of time?
I’ll say no more. Check out Lewis and Luiza’s channel. It’ll be well worth your while.
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