Bad writing for film and television really irks me because of how avoidable it is. I’m not talking about mediocre or lackluster writing, but the actual bad writing.
TV shows and movies are tremendously expensive to make. Every part of it costs a fortune except for one: the writing. Even if a studio or production company was paying for a whole team of writers to work full time it’s still only a fraction of the cost of paying film crews, actors, editors, and VFX artists.
Given the relatively lower expense, relative lack of time constraints, and enormous importance of the script to the overall quality of the product it absolutely boggles my mind that production companies consistently fuck up the writing process.
It’s like reading a news article and seeing horribly constructed sentences and typos. Like, this is your main job! I know there are a lot of English majors out there who would love to find work.
Really though writing should be the least important part of a journalists job, digging through stories and finding the truth or understanding the complex strands of the story should be and that often involves going back and editing, restructuring, reediting, reworking and adding to it over and over again.
It gets really hard to see your writing with fresh eyes once you’ve got it so perfectly constructed in your head, it’s super easy to miss awkward mistakes that have crept in - this is why editors were a thing but newspapers rarely bother anymore or the editor is too focused on political and social acceptable to notice grammar or word choice errors
Because writing doesn’t really work like that, the reason we get bland writing is because they keep adding extra chefs.
Thay get these professional writers that learned formula in school and apply it to sections of someone else’s work and wonder why the result is an ugly tapestry of formulaic rubbish.
All the things people love are written by people with passion for the project, then they get a budget increase and professional industry writers get brought in and it’s all shitty generic snappy dialog and dramatic posing that feels uncomfortable and awkward in the scene.
I’m sure there’s plenty of those making a mess of things, but taking time in the writing process, getting input from relevant parties, and doing as much preparation as possible cuts out a myriad of problems.
Studio got a product placement deal? Great, let’s integrate that into the story long before filming even begins so it feels natural.
Director doesn’t know if he wants plot point A to happen or not? Good thing he heard about that while the movie was just a script instead of having him decide with dozens of people on set.
I’m sure there are uncontrollable, unforeseeable problems that will come up in any production. There is no reason to exacerbate those by being willfully unprepared. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but it seems like film studios reliably hamper the “prevention” part to shave a few weeks off on prep time and end up losing more time or huge piles of money because of it.
Bad writing for film and television really irks me because of how avoidable it is. I’m not talking about mediocre or lackluster writing, but the actual bad writing.
TV shows and movies are tremendously expensive to make. Every part of it costs a fortune except for one: the writing. Even if a studio or production company was paying for a whole team of writers to work full time it’s still only a fraction of the cost of paying film crews, actors, editors, and VFX artists.
Given the relatively lower expense, relative lack of time constraints, and enormous importance of the script to the overall quality of the product it absolutely boggles my mind that production companies consistently fuck up the writing process.
It’s like reading a news article and seeing horribly constructed sentences and typos. Like, this is your main job! I know there are a lot of English majors out there who would love to find work.
Dropped subplots is like reading a news article with sentences that are
Great, now I have to find page B12.
Really though writing should be the least important part of a journalists job, digging through stories and finding the truth or understanding the complex strands of the story should be and that often involves going back and editing, restructuring, reediting, reworking and adding to it over and over again.
It gets really hard to see your writing with fresh eyes once you’ve got it so perfectly constructed in your head, it’s super easy to miss awkward mistakes that have crept in - this is why editors were a thing but newspapers rarely bother anymore or the editor is too focused on political and social acceptable to notice grammar or word choice errors
Because writing doesn’t really work like that, the reason we get bland writing is because they keep adding extra chefs.
Thay get these professional writers that learned formula in school and apply it to sections of someone else’s work and wonder why the result is an ugly tapestry of formulaic rubbish.
All the things people love are written by people with passion for the project, then they get a budget increase and professional industry writers get brought in and it’s all shitty generic snappy dialog and dramatic posing that feels uncomfortable and awkward in the scene.
Maybe it’s studio meddling or director indecision? Lots of changes at the last minute make the writers fly by the seat of their pants?
I’m sure there’s plenty of those making a mess of things, but taking time in the writing process, getting input from relevant parties, and doing as much preparation as possible cuts out a myriad of problems.
Studio got a product placement deal? Great, let’s integrate that into the story long before filming even begins so it feels natural.
Director doesn’t know if he wants plot point A to happen or not? Good thing he heard about that while the movie was just a script instead of having him decide with dozens of people on set.
I’m sure there are uncontrollable, unforeseeable problems that will come up in any production. There is no reason to exacerbate those by being willfully unprepared. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but it seems like film studios reliably hamper the “prevention” part to shave a few weeks off on prep time and end up losing more time or huge piles of money because of it.