How To Start Writing An Independent Film Screenplay

How do I start writing an 'independent film screenplay'?

Every great independent film starts on the page. You've got to just hit the keyboard and write an independent film, and often times movies are adapted from other source material whether it's a book, or a graphic novel, or even an article in a magazine can be adapted into an independent film or a short story. So for filmmakers out there who want to go out and write their own screenplay, you've just go to go out there and do it. Pretty much every film starts as an independent film. Every film starts as an independent idea, and then it's sold to a studio and that's where it loses its independence. But if you're making an independent movie, you've got to start with a script, and you've just got to hit the keyboard and write something down. You've got to be realistic in what you can pull off and what the resources you have and the budgets you have, and that's why you don't see the huge epics as indies. It's usually smaller, character driven things. There's a movie right now called Interview, which is with Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller, and it's the two of them in a room with the camera. That's the movie, it's cheap, that's why. It's all character driven, it's all dialogue. So it all starts with the writing. The writing has to be realistic in independent film, not in terms of it's characters or what the plot is about, but realistic in the sense of executing it and turning it from an idea into a film.