How to Trim Your Screenplay Without Losing the Story | Kinolime Podcast Ep 36

Show Notes

🎬 Episode Highlights & Screenwriting Takeaways

Tip 1: Cut the Scene Description: Stop overwriting your environments. John and Danny explain why you should aim for 3-4 sentences of description rather than massive blocks of text. They analyze a masterclass example from James Vanderbilt’s Zodiac script to show how minimal, punchy description leaves room for interpretation and builds better tension.

Tip 2: Kill Your Darlings (and Unnecessary Characters): Does every supporting character actually challenge your protagonist? The hosts discuss mapping out your character web and cutting anyone who doesn't actively serve the story's core engine—just like Steven Spielberg famously cut Harrison Ford's principal character from E.T.

Tip 3: Eradicate Exposition & Embrace Subtext: Avoid using dialogue just to feed information to the reader. Learn the "first two, last two" rule for entering and exiting scenes late, and discover how relying on subtext (like the iconic "I know" from The Empire Strikes Back) makes for unforgettable dialogue. Plus, a quick warning on why Voiceover should never just describe what the audience is already seeing.

Tip 4: The Jenga Method for Removing Scenes: Treat your story like a game of Jenga. If you can pull a scene out and the plot doesn't collapse, it needs to go. The hosts also suggest combining multiple locations into a single setting to save pages and keep the reader grounded.

Tip 5: Stop Directing on the Page: Unless you already have a blank check to direct your own movie, avoid littering your script with camera angles and tracking shots. Using a cut scene from Ari Aster's Midsommar, the hosts illustrate why spec writers need to focus on character action rather than dictating the cinematography.

Full Transcript

[00:00]

Steven Spielberg cut Harrison Ford out of the movie because he felt as if that character was a distraction

[00:06]

from Elliot's journey and kind of our overall POV seeing this story through our protagonist lens.

[00:13]

So again, like as much as you have a really strong character, a dynamic supporting character,

[00:20]

if you can't find a great relationship to your protagonist, it's not actually going to be in service to your story.

[00:25]

If it doesn't serve your story or your character's growth, you got to cut it.

[00:40]

Hey, welcome to the KinoLine podcast. See how I did do there?

[00:45]

I know you liked that, right?

[00:47]

You got a great podcast today. This is like where we get to nerd out.

[00:51]

We're not going to complain about film.

[00:53]

We're not talking about the industry.

[00:55]

No, but that's not about the industry. It's going to be great.

[00:56]

We're talking about the craft of screenwriting today.

[00:59]

Pure Kino today.

[01:00]

So we were thinking about how could we help you all in 2026?

[01:03]

We want to see the best spec market ever.

[01:05]

We want to see dozens and dozens of screenplay sell for million dollars plus and launch careers left and right.

[01:10]

We're here to help you hopefully be one of those people by Danny trimming your screenplay.

[01:17]

That's what we're going to focus on today in the 2026 writing series.

[01:22]

Each week we're going to give new notes, new ideas, thoughts on how to get your screenplay.

[01:26]

But today we're going to talk about trimming that screenplay because one thing we find when we

[01:32]

read the rest of mission phase and just through our normal yearly intake of screenplays that we

[01:38]

debour, they tend to be a bit long in the tooth. But Danny, I want to give you the

[01:43]

mic. The lav mic on the thoughts on this particular topic.

[01:48]

Yeah, it's something we find in pretty much every screenplay we read in the competition is that

[01:54]

there is room to be a bit more economical with how you're using your characters,

[01:59]

how you're using your page count. And also even in great screenplays,

[02:04]

finding ways to really hone your focus and your protagonist. I'm excited to ask you, John,

[02:10]

because I know you've been hired on multiple occasions to do this exact thing, to cut down on

[02:16]

page. Yeah, I can't say this specific job, but I was brought in on a movie that was made,

[02:22]

where I think the screenplay was clocking in that 127 I think could be wrong. And I felt that we

[02:31]

could get that thing down to around 113, which we did. So we were able to shave off like 14 pages

[02:38]

without affecting the production. We weren't missing a beat. And that's something that I love to do

[02:43]

personally, even on my own screenplays. I tend to vomit at first draft. It's 127, 130 pages,

[02:50]

but I just love to cut maybe too much. But we're going to give you some really great tips today

[02:55]

to help you in your screenplay. If you felt that it's bloated, we do find, though typically,

[02:59]

in the competition specifically, screenplays could probably cut between 8 to 15 pages.

[03:06]

A lot. That's a lot. And even with mob mentality, our 2.0 winner, which we're going out to directors

[03:13]

immediately, which is another big update, we'll give you. We found working with Eric that we could

[03:17]

tighten that screenplay up even more so than it was. And it was already an extremely tight script.

[03:22]

Exactly. And Eric thought Eric agreed and we progressed and it was amazing. So our first tip is

[03:28]

cutting description. Let's go put the cutting description here. This is our first tip that we see

[03:33]

all the time in screenplays. 6, 7, 8 lines of scene description. So after you're scene heading,

[03:40]

like interior, so and so, you have your next thing is the scene description. What's going on in

[03:45]

the scene? We tend to see that constantly to 6 to 8 maybe sometimes 10 sentence mark. I was

[03:52]

always taught to keep it through for sentences. We're going to have an example of today,

[03:55]

the Zodiac by James Vanderbilt. It was an amazing treeplay. If you haven't read Zodiac, you got to

[04:00]

read it. But we took a scene of description and we bloated it. What we typically see, just so you can

[04:06]

understand and see what we get on our side of Keenaline and what James did in the draft. So I'm going

[04:11]

to read the bloated version right here interior Vaughn's basement night. The door creaks open.

[04:19]

Vaughn and Grace Smith stand at the top of a rickety wooden staircase. Dusty from the years of

[04:23]

neglect. We can hear the sound of water dripping somewhere down in the darkness, somewhere unseen.

[04:28]

Vaughn flicks a light switch and naked bulb snaps on somewhere below. Very little light illuminates

[04:32]

the dark space, leaving the corners dark and the contents hidden. Now in a book, that's probably great.

[04:40]

But what the writer is doing here, the fictional writer, is they're adding too much to the scene,

[04:45]

right? Like just we're going to go to the first thing, the door creaks open. Actually, I don't mind

[04:50]

that so much. I don't mind if you're adding a little audible Vaughn and Grace Smith stand at the

[04:54]

top of a rickety wooden staircase. Dusty from years of neglect. There's a lot going on there,

[04:58]

which we don't need. We can be more economical in how we write the scene description. We're going

[05:04]

to show you now what James did in his draft. So we have the seven sentence here, and then a

[05:10]

snap of my finger. We're going right to the nice and lean James Vanneville's description. I'll read

[05:18]

it again into your Vaughn basement night. The door creaks open. Vaughn and Grace Smith stand at the

[05:23]

top of a rickety wooden staircase. We hear water dripping somewhere down in this darkness. Vaughn

[05:28]

flicks a switch and a naked bulb snaps on somewhere below. Very little light. It evokes the same

[05:34]

thing. If you're comparing the bulb, I know they talk about it being a rickety wooden staircase,

[05:38]

but do we need to know Dusty from years of neglect? We already know. It's rickety. And also,

[05:43]

it's nothing that's pertinent to the scene. James does a fantastic job of keeping it around that

[05:48]

four sentence mark as opposed to seven. And I know that that sounds... Oh, well, it's four to seven,

[05:53]

but over the course of 120 pages, I'll say. That's a lot of pages that you're going to be cutting. So

[05:57]

every time you look at your scene description, I want you to count the lines, and I want you to know

[06:02]

is it four, maybe five or less. And if you'd seven, eight, whatever, see if there's ways to tighten it

[06:08]

up without saying every little detail that you need. The director is going to do that. It's going to be

[06:12]

on the set design. You want to invoke them in a mood and emotion, but I don't think you need to overdo it.

[06:16]

And especially, there's something fascinating. If you've seen Zodiac, this is the best scene in the

[06:22]

film. Unquestionably, when they go down the stairs, what makes it so incredible? And I think this

[06:28]

is a bit genre specific, but when you're looking for attention, like you want to leave a lot of the

[06:34]

description kind of up to the interpretation of the reader, right? It's what makes this scene so great

[06:41]

when you're watching it is like whoever's watching it is not spelled out to you like what could

[06:47]

possibly happen and your brain goes crazy. Imagine like what are they about to do to crack Jill

[06:52]

and Paul down here? I know. Best scene in the movie. Yep. We'll do one more example from the

[06:56]

bloated version. While talking, he guides Grace Smith to a bookshelf in the far left hand corner of

[07:01]

the basement. The bookshelf is full of tones and volumes, old and leather bound, sagging under

[07:06]

its weight. Vaughn pulls one hard bound volume from the middle shelf and begins flipping through the

[07:10]

pages until he stops somewhere about two thirds through. Grace Smith looks around the shadows

[07:14]

and nervous and anxious. This is the bloated version. Now we're going to go back to James Van

[07:18]

and the approaching. Bing, they finally stop by an overstuffed bookshelf. Lawn pulls one hand

[07:23]

bound volume from it and begins flipping through the pages. Grace Smith looks around nervous.

[07:27]

Again, I understand the desire to want to explain every detail, but look what Van and the built it

[07:32]

there. Minimal to the point, we get it, you know, overstuffed bookshelf. Great. He pulls one

[07:37]

hand bound volume. We know it's hand bound. He flips through it. The other guy is looking around

[07:41]

nervous. Perfect. Again, from a seven-page seven-sentence description to three. Now in those two

[07:49]

paragraphs we did, we just shaved off, I don't know, 10 sentences, right? That's going to add up

[07:55]

over the course of your screenplay. I know I mentioned that, but I really want to drive home. Every time

[07:58]

you have a scene description, after your first or second pass, when you want to get into that area,

[08:03]

where you want to trim your screenplay down, really look at the scene description and see where you can

[08:07]

tighten things up, say the most in the least amount of words. Yeah. It also just comes down to

[08:15]

the intention, right? You want each description sentence you have to like evoke a feeling or kind

[08:21]

of give off something specific to your characters, right? What you see at this is Van pulls one hand

[08:27]

bound volume from it and begins flipping through the pages. In the bloated version, again, adding

[08:34]

that, it's sagging under its own weight, adding that he's flipping through specific parts of the book.

[08:40]

Unnecessary. All we're trying to do is show that it seems like he's buying time, right? It seems

[08:46]

like he's looking for something to do and maybe he's hiding something. Be subtle and try to give

[08:52]

every word in your description real meaning behind it. Yeah. Dee, you have our second tip for

[08:59]

how to trim your screenplay. Yeah. This is something that whether it be when I'm giving coverage or

[09:05]

just reading any one of the scripts that come through the competition on my own, what you find a lot

[09:14]

in screenplays is a large supporting cast where you could kind of easily identify you really don't

[09:24]

need a couple of these characters, right? So the tip that Danny is saying is cutting character.

[09:29]

Yes. You really looked through your script and see if there's any supporting characters

[09:34]

that the story foundationally doesn't change if you don't have them there. You will find a lot

[09:41]

when you're reading screenplays, especially in ensembles, that you will usually have one guy

[09:47]

who is just kind of there to reaffirm people's emotions or to tell you, you're right, this is how

[09:53]

you feel. It is shocking the amount of scripts you will find where that character exists. Go

[09:59]

through. See if a character doesn't actually have a real purpose to your protagonist. If they don't,

[10:06]

you probably don't need them. So I'm going to give you a little tip. I'm going to get a piece of paper

[10:09]

here. This is something that I do. And I would say on your first couple of drafts, it's okay to

[10:14]

throw in character. Like you got to you got to feel it out. But once you start getting to the

[10:18]

trimming phase, there's something that I like to do. So I would put the main character. We're

[10:22]

going to call the main character Michael in the middle. And this is what I do. I will throw up

[10:28]

Michael in the center. And I'll have every character sort of around him. And if they are not

[10:33]

interacting in a place where they're influencing back and forth, pushing Michael for growth,

[10:38]

plot, distraction, intention, obstacle, they're gone. So a really cool thing that I like to do is

[10:44]

put your main character in the middle, throw a circular square, and then do little lines to

[10:48]

every character you have. And you'll start to see visually if a character is really interacting

[10:54]

and working with the main character or just really being fat. Yeah. And also like to that point,

[10:59]

just think about plainly. Can you easily identify as the right of yourself? Like,

[11:06]

what is this character doing? That's in this instance challenging your protagonist, your Michael,

[11:11]

right? If you're not gripped by what that character brings to the table, you can probably

[11:18]

you can probably cut that character and find whatever you find compelling about them. I'll swear in

[11:23]

another character. A great example of this that I actually didn't know about until I was kind of

[11:29]

researching for this episode was Harrison Ford was initially in ET. He played Elliott's principal at

[11:37]

school. And again, like Steven Spielberg cut Harrison Ford out of the movie because he felt as if

[11:43]

that character was a distraction from Elliott's journey and kind of our overall POV seeing the story

[11:50]

through our protagonist lens. So again, like as much as you have a really strong character,

[11:57]

but dynamic supporting character, if you can't find a great relationship to your protagonist,

[12:03]

it's not actually going to be in service to your story. If it doesn't serve your story or your

[12:07]

character's growth, you got to cut it. There's a turtle here, kill your darlings. This is one of those

[12:11]

moments. I don't know about that HF. That's interesting. Yeah. If you look through, I mean, there's a

[12:17]

shocking amount of amazing performances that have been cut from great movies for the season.

[12:21]

You do hear that a lot. And that's part of the reason why they're so great. Moving on. This is

[12:26]

something that drives me crazy, but I as a writer, I suffer from is exposition. So we are

[12:36]

we are writers and we always want to say what we feel through the characters, but sometimes,

[12:42]

again, in your first couple of drafts, it's okay to vomit out the exposition, the dialogue,

[12:47]

but there comes a point where we really got to trim that and we got to say the least amount,

[12:53]

possible or maximize the impact with the least amount of words.

[12:58]

100%. Something that was taught to me by the great Fred LeBeau was when you write your dialogue

[13:03]

underneath, and what are you trying to say? And then say it without saying. It's a hard exercise

[13:09]

to do, but we're going to hear a show you an example of a bloated exchange here that our great Mira

[13:17]

wrote up this morning on a sample scene here. So exterior grocery store day,

[13:22]

Garrett is holding up two boxes, cereal, trying to make the tough decision between Cheerios or

[13:26]

Cinematos Crunch. He notices someone from the corner of his eye. It's Luke and old Frank hasn't

[13:30]

seen in years. They were inseparable once upon a time until a girl got in the way of that friendship.

[13:35]

We'll get into that scene description in a second. He did that on purpose, but let's get into the

[13:38]

dialogue part. I'm going to be Luke, Garrett. Alright, Garrett, is that you? Luke, hey man,

[13:45]

what's it been? Three, four years? I'd say five at least. Ever since whole of stuff went down with

[13:49]

Jessica. Yeah, I'm sorry, things ended like they did. Like they did, that's one way to describe

[13:55]

the massive brawl at Samantha Sweet 16. Well, I'm back in town for a few days. It's got the

[14:02]

week off from my corporate job in Chicago. We should hang out. It's good to see, man. And scene.

[14:07]

So we're going to stop there. Now we're going to do the tighter version. And we're going to show you

[14:11]

how a scene that you may not think is exhibition, how it is extinitional and how to change it.

[14:16]

Okay, exterior grocery store day. Garrett is holding up two boxes, cereal, trying to make the tough

[14:21]

decisions between Cheerios or Cinematos Crunch. That first line is fine. This is where we trim. He

[14:26]

notices someone from the corner of his eye. The very person who was hoping not to bump into Luke.

[14:31]

See here how he went from a four line description to two. That's something that he can keep going.

[14:37]

But we're going into the exhibition here or the lack of exposition.

[14:41]

Garrett Luke. Hey, man. Been a man. For real? You back in town? Just for a few days visiting the family,

[14:49]

you know. And that's it. So what we said in, I don't know, seven lines, three fourths of a page,

[14:55]

we said in a quarter. So normal dialogue exchange sales time. Like, hey, what's going on? How's the weather?

[15:00]

The great John Himes. He's a director, amazing guy. He was attached to a movie I was going to

[15:06]

that I wrote. And he said his father, Peter Himes, was a, you know,

[15:10]

former vice director. He did the sequel to 2001 in Space Odyssey. He told me that when you write

[15:17]

a scene with dialogue, get rid of the first two exchanges in the last two. And then everything

[15:22]

in the middle is necessary. I always love that note because it is like you normally might enter

[15:27]

a scene saying, Hey, how are you? The weather was great. But I'm about to cut it. Just get right to it.

[15:32]

That's something that I think when you're thinking of exposition, how to change it, that's the first

[15:36]

thing you could probably do is get rid of the first two or three or whatever in the last three. But

[15:41]

again, what we say here in four lines of dialogue, quick lines to is so minimal compared to the bloated

[15:49]

exposition scene prior. It's something that I always crazy. I always feel like a broken record

[15:55]

because anytime I'm giving notes or writing coverage or talking about a story that kind of suffers

[16:00]

this fate of having a lot of expo, post-tory dialogue, always write the same note, which is like,

[16:05]

give your dialogue subtext. Right. What makes good dialogue good is that like every line,

[16:12]

it's not what they're saying. It's like what they're not saying to each other. It's what makes

[16:18]

performances really interesting for actors is like being able to have something you're saying

[16:24]

and then having what that mean actually be a whole different thing. When you have things like,

[16:29]

hey man, what's it been three, four years and just acknowledging things that don't really matter

[16:33]

to the story or that you can explain in creative ways, you make that impossible to achieve. So again,

[16:42]

try to find subtext in your dialogue. It'll make it awesome. Yeah, we're going to do a video on subtext.

[16:46]

That's kind of one of those things that it's a little hard to grasp. But if you can master it,

[16:52]

my gosh, do you like take over and you know what? Speak it of Harrison Ford. We're going to play a clip,

[16:57]

just Ron, please get the clip ready for Empire Strikes Back when he's about to be carbon-freeze right here.

[17:10]

I love you. I know. All right, so see that right there. Princess Leigh just said,

[17:18]

you know, I love you and he goes, I know. Yeah. That is subtext to a T. It's his character. Didn't say

[17:26]

I love you too. But we're going to fight them together. He's like, I know. Yeah, but that's everything

[17:31]

you need to know about the character through subtext. That's a little nugget. We'll talk about that

[17:35]

our next video about or a video about subtext. But that does that might help you think about when

[17:39]

you're writing your dialogue, what to say without saying it. Now we're going to go into something that

[17:45]

I personally love is our fourth tip, removing scenes from your screenplay. This is something that I

[17:54]

love to do my own work or love to work with writers on is find the scenes that are not, again,

[17:59]

we keep talking about this servicing the plot or the plot forward or revealing and pushing character.

[18:05]

Think of your story as a Jenga game piece, wooden block. If you can remove a scene and the Jenga

[18:12]

story still holds up, it doesn't need to be there. This is so hard to do. I used to hate removing

[18:17]

scenes as a writer, but now I love it because it's so cathartic, like I'm getting rid of the fact

[18:22]

really trimming it down. So one tool that you can do is when you're going through the scenes,

[18:29]

is it servicing the plot or servicing the character. If it doesn't and you can remove it and the reader

[18:34]

can bridge the gap between A and B without anything in between, gotta go. Yeah, gotta go on the floor.

[18:42]

Gotta go on the floor. Again, it comes back to something that we said earlier about killing your

[18:46]

darlings. The thing though that you'll find when you have a scene you adore and it might just not

[18:53]

perfectly fit, you'll be amazed by the amount of creativity and new ideas that spark from removing

[19:00]

things that actually are roadblocks that you're afraid of getting rid of. It can totally reorient

[19:06]

your stories in ways you would never imagine until you do that. And also something within removing

[19:11]

scenes, something that we see a lot is where there are multiple locations that could be truncated

[19:17]

or combined to a single scene. Again, that's gonna save you page space, right? So if you're doing

[19:22]

four scenes, interior office, exterior park, interior lunchroom, if that same three four scenes

[19:32]

can be done in one location, you're gonna be saving on scene description and scene heading,

[19:37]

which could be pages out of your screenplay. And I also think it's better for the reader personally

[19:42]

if I'm in one location, I don't have to keep going, wait, where am I? I'm on the plane.

[19:46]

Takes you out of it every time. Takes you out every time. I don't know how you feel about that.

[19:49]

I agree 100% because like one thing that I'm actually really bad at is like keeping track of where

[19:55]

I am in the story. I'm just focusing on our characters. There's a lot of times I'll be gripped. I'll be

[20:00]

like, oh my god, that whole thing happened here. I didn't even know. So yeah, I agree fully. It's

[20:06]

something John and I talk about all the time, which is like, again, forgetting even the economics

[20:11]

of the movie, if you could ground your characters somewhere and like, again, focus on the characters,

[20:18]

like something we talk about a lot, like I see all the time you'll find writers that are so

[20:23]

worried about world building that again, like all the type of things that we've been talking about

[20:29]

so far come from a focus on world building and not character, right? You build these rich worlds

[20:34]

that generally need really colorful sporting characters in exposition to explain and multiple

[20:41]

locations. And then you look up and you generally find a protagonist that is like reacting to this

[20:46]

big colorful vast world rather than one that is like seizing a rich colorful journey and character

[20:53]

arc, you know? And we, something that I was taught as well is like when to enter your story.

[20:59]

Yep, right. So we do want to give all the great backstory and the ordinary world as you'll

[21:04]

hear, but sometimes like you just your movie starts at a certain point, you know, and might be hard

[21:10]

to find, but when does your story really begin? So look at your screenplay. You might be able to cut

[21:14]

the first five pages. Maybe you don't need it. Maybe your story really picks up on like this page five.

[21:18]

And then everything else has gone because it was all just like fluff and like maybe a little back

[21:22]

story like come it's the same thing when you go enter your scene at the latest point possible.

[21:27]

Start your story at the latest point possible. Couldn't agree more. And then I mean, I think we

[21:32]

hit all the main points, but something we were talking about before we started recording.

[21:36]

And again, there are worlds where this is useful, but for most stories, if you have a lot of flashbacks,

[21:43]

if you have a lot of voiceover, again, be as economical with those as you possibly can, you usually

[21:49]

will not need them. Again, that's another thing. We'll talk about voiceover because you see this

[21:53]

all the time and I'm guilty of doing this well. Your voiceover can be used. I'm not saying don't use

[21:58]

voiceover. There's like camps on both sides that are like, you know, the Scorsese defenders and

[22:03]

the non voiceover people. I'd say use voiceover, but use it sparingly. If your voiceover is using

[22:09]

to describe what we've already seen, there's no need for it. As much as I would love to have voiceover,

[22:15]

who doesn't want to have like Ray Leo to talk about childhood, but you know, not everyone needs that

[22:20]

and I'm just complaining that you can maybe do it in the book and a little voiceover can begin

[22:23]

in a little voiceover at the end, kind of like stand by me right at the beginning of the end.

[22:26]

But if people are using voiceover throughout which we see all the time, there's like 15 pages you

[22:31]

could probably get rid of just a moving voiceover. Or if you're going to use voiceover, don't have

[22:35]

it described what we see. Yeah, use it to do the moments, an unreliable narrator or other things that

[22:40]

throw us off a little as a reader, but really look at your voiceover and see, is it truly necessary?

[22:45]

Do we already see it? Is it something that could be conveyed on screen? Yep. And I think you'll

[22:50]

save a lot of pages that way. It's something like my last note on that is sometimes I'll read a

[22:53]

script with a lot of voiceover doing what you said where they're kind of narrating what's happening.

[22:57]

It almost starts feeling like I'm watching a Nat Geo documentary. Yeah.

[23:01]

Like I'm more good freeman in the background, like talking about like,

[23:04]

yeah, here they come. Yeah, so be spare, like just do what John said. You're right. He knows

[23:10]

well. That should be a t-shirt. And our last note for the day, D. Number five is again,

[23:21]

do not be a director on the page. Right. If you are trying to shop a script and convince people to

[23:27]

make it with you, odds are having all sorts of directorial notes with any of your descriptions.

[23:33]

Explain what a directorial note is. So let's go straight into our example here.

[23:38]

What I pulled up is it is a page that actually did not make the final cut of mid-Samar.

[23:44]

But it's a great example of this, which is a cut scene from Ari Astor's mid-Samar.

[23:50]

Did he write that? Is he a co-writer? No, he wrote it. Great. So perhaps Ari Astor.

[23:54]

Okay, so we're going to go straight in. This is an airplane scene that did not, I believe,

[23:57]

make the final cut of the film. Interior airplane in flight minutes later. We are wide looking down

[24:04]

the length of the plane. We track forward, drifting over the heads of passengers. In the background,

[24:10]

Danny exits the lavatory and returns to her seat. Christian has seated beside her at the window.

[24:16]

We have arrived at a profile close up of them, the window in the background. Christian takes Danny's

[24:22]

hand and smiles at her. It's clear she's been crying, but she hides it behind a determinedly

[24:27]

casual, all as well expression. Christian goes along with the pretending and looks out the window.

[24:33]

We have begun a slow zoom past them. Toward the window, the window soon fills the frame.

[24:39]

We're flying over the beautiful terrain. We have entered Sweden. John, what's your take on that?

[24:44]

So we see this all the time. And again, man, I'm so guilty of all this. When I started out at the

[24:49]

same thing, maybe not the camera angles and techniques, but I would do a zoom or a lot like the

[24:55]

more minimal stuff. Yeah, I get it. We want to like, you're seeing it in your head and you're really

[25:01]

trying to evoke it on the page, but you don't need to. That's not your job.

[25:06]

And it's just going to take the reader, whether it's us, executives out of the read. And you want

[25:12]

to keep the executives, director, producer, whoever, in the read. You want to have a blue time.

[25:17]

I love a screenplay where I'm like, oh my gosh, did I just sit this read this in one sitting

[25:22]

and then I'm not checking my phone. I do that for the, if I'm in a movie, if I'm checking my watch,

[25:26]

you know, my phone, I know that the movie's not getting me. So same thing in a screenplay. You

[25:31]

want to keep us in the scene. If you start talking about why, I mean, look here, we're going to

[25:34]

look up here. We are wide. Then we track forward in the background, the profile close-up of them,

[25:42]

window in the background. The window fills the frame. We zoom pass them way too much going on

[25:48]

there. Again, we know Ariaster was, you know, Ariaster is Ariaster. He's going to direct this, but we

[25:56]

use as an example. We see this all time. Yep. And the difference is if you're coming off of the

[26:00]

most profitable film ever for a new studio and you get a blank check to make an author film, he's

[26:07]

not writing this for others, right? He's writing this as a roadmap to himself. If you read Parasite,

[26:12]

you see the same thing, right? If you are looking to convince people to buy your film, give you

[26:19]

financing, attach themselves and your first time filmmaker or you don't have a blank check as an

[26:24]

author. There's really only a couple lines here that actually evoke character. Do not write like

[26:32]

you are Ariaster, Bong Jun Ho. You will be. Yes. You will be. But until then, focus on really just

[26:39]

getting down into the nitty gritty of character in your description. You do not need to explain

[26:44]

your directorial pursuits on the page. Look, this is what we found as something that when we read

[26:51]

our screenplays here at the competition, which we're gearing up for the 3.0 drop in in a few

[26:56]

days or submissions, we want your screenplays ready and tight and to grip us. So these are five

[27:02]

rules that we're sure to say, thoughts, ideas, suggestions that we think could help you.

[27:07]

If there's anything we miss, anything that helpful tips you found through your writing career,

[27:12]

I want to know personally so I can be a better writer. So does Danny. Hit us up in the comments,

[27:16]

email us or whatever. However, you want to reach getting contact with us. We would love to hear from

[27:21]

you. I want to know if we miss something of his better ideas out there or something that could help.

[27:25]

Let us know. I'm able to follow the video, but we really, truly believe in your screenplay. We want

[27:31]

you to write the best screenplay possible. And the first thing that I think most people look at

[27:35]

is page count. Unfortunately, 100%. So it's the nature of the business, the nature of the beast. I know

[27:41]

it's annoying. The 120 page mark used to be the barometer. Now, unfortunately, it's way less. Not saying

[27:49]

you can't do 120, but if you're trying to get someone's attention and if you can be minimal and

[27:54]

economical, it does behoove you to go through your screenplay and really get rid of every, you know,

[28:00]

punctuation, anything that's not necessary, a word here there just to make it tighter. We really

[28:06]

appreciate y'all. Hit us up. Like us, subscribe, whatever does you do. We have the competition 3.0 coming

[28:13]

up in a few days where your submissions will be ready. Actually, about time this airs. It'll already

[28:16]

be live. So thank you for submitting your screenplays. And we'll hit you next time the next screenplay

[28:22]

series. This was fun. This was really fun. Okay. Great time. All right. Thank you. Before I go,

[28:28]

I'm going to do a little John Stewart here. Oh my god. This here. Ready? Let's see if I can hit the

[28:32]

camera and we're out. Oh my gosh. I see you guys. Thanks so much. Like our previous two competition

[28:41]

winners, the Wafe in year one and Mob mentality year two are going into production this year.

[28:47]

Yes. In 2026, we were making two movies, the Wafe in Mob mentality. You, you win this year,

[28:53]

you're next. We're making your film next. So please, please, please, get your screenplays ready,

[28:58]

sharpen your pencils, get the keyboards going, get your screenplay submitted to keenalime.com,

[29:02]

create an account, ask questions. We're here to answer anything that you have to throw away.

[29:07]

We want to hear from you. And we also, I want to read your screenplay. So please go to keenalime.com,

[29:12]

submit your screenplay and we cannot wait to get this competition rolling.

How to Trim Your Screenplay Without Losing the Story | Kinolime Podcast Ep 36

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