Learn Screenwriting By Rewriting A Movie You Love

As a writer and filmmaker, I've always been inspired by movies like "Whiplash" about people overcoming obstacles to pursue dreams in the arts. 

Imagine my delight when, while attending the American Film Market (AFM) in Los Angeles earlier this month, I got the opportunity to rewrite a scene from "Whiplash." 

AFM brings together filmmakers and distribution companies from all over the world to strike deals. In addition to the business side of the movie industry, the conference also features a wide variety of workshops on everything from the art and science of pitching an idea to how to tap into the rapidly growing faith-based movie market.

During a workshop titled "Revision: Seeing Your Script With New Eyes," instructor Ken LeZebnik offered some very useful tips on how to tighten up a script. This was truly a master class, since LeZebnik is an instructor at the prestigious University of Southern California, director of Stephens College master of fine arts in screenwriting program, and a successful screenwriter and playwright himself.

I was part of a group of about 400 workshop participants who filled the cavernous conference room at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica. LeZebnik passed out copies of a scene from "Whiplash," in which Miles Teller plays an aspiring drummer who will stop at nothing to be the very best at his highly competitive music school. He also nearly kills himself to win the approval of his drill sergeant-like instructor, played by J.K. Simmons in an Oscar-winning performance.

In the exercise, LeZebnik had us break off into small groups and analyze the scene, in which Simmons calls Teller to his office to discourage him from transferring to a different school. LeZebnik added extra dialogue that did not appear in the final "Whiplash" script, which was written and directed by Damien Chazelle (who went on to direct the equally riveting, Oscar-nominated "La La Land").

My fellow workshop attendees and I all came up with different ideas on how to prune the scene to its bare essentials, mostly by cutting extraneous small talk between the student and professor.  The single biggest takeaway I got from the workshop was LeZebnik's recommendation to begin and end scenes earlier. No matter how important you think dialogue is at the beginning and end of a scene, it can always be trimmed. 

This blog post is part of a series about my experience at the 2017 AFM. To view the video version of this blog post, click here. 

To read the first blog in the series about a panel discussion with Oscar winner Geena Davis talking about the status of women in film, click here. 

(Chris Bournea is the writer/director of the forthcoming documentary "Lady Wrestler: The Amazing, Untold Story of African-American Women in the Ring.")