It Takes A Smart Screenwriter To Write SHARKNADO by Thunder Levin Video Lecture | Screenwriting: From Beginner to a Pro - Career Development

staying on the theme of mach busters do
you have any tips on writing sort of
outrageous unbelievable moments in a
scene but having the actors remain
within that reality well that that's the
key to to something like sharknado is is
writing outrageous things and having the
the characters stay planted in the
reality and that's the that's the narrow
line we had to walk on that that I did
at on sharknado and I think one of the
reasons that they really wanted me to do
sharknado is I had done exactly that on
my independent film mutant vampire
zombies from the hood
is that I had written a lot of
ridiculous stuff but the characters
remain remained planted in the reality
they were in you know if the if the
actors start winking at the camera I
didn't do that right it should have been
if the actors start winking at the
camera it just strays into farce and
unless you're really really funny that
will fall flat on the other hand if you
play it too seriously and you're it's
it's not self-aware enough to know what
it is then that falls flat and I think
the reason that that sharknado connected
the way it did is that a lot of these
kinds of movies with the crazy mashup
titles and the insane premises have been
played completely straight or completely
winking at the camera and and what we
tried to do with sharknado was was walk
that line where the characters are
enmeshed in the reality no matter how
ridiculous the reality is but the
filmmakers are saying to the audience we
know how ridiculous this is
but isn't it fun
when I wrote when I wrote sharknado all
I really did was I put myself in that
situation they said okay a tornado full
of sharks this is what you have to write
a movie about so okay how do we get a
tornado full of sharks I actually took a
fairly logical realistic approach to it
how would we get a tornado full of
sharks
well tornadoes can spin off from
hurricanes and there are documented
cases of fish being sucked up into the
air by tornadoes and water spouts that
form over the ocean okay so now I have a
logical basis tornadoes spin off
hurricanes over the ocean there's a lot
happened to be a large concentration of
sharks in that area that water spouts
suck up the sharks and now we have
sharknadoes okay well that's that's step
one step two was creating a larger
environment for that to take place in
what would happen if a hurricane hit Los
Angeles so I had a realistic disaster
movie because with global warming and
everything it's it's an if not likely
it's at least less unlikely that a
hurricane could hit Los Angeles and Los
Angeles is a city that floods if it
rains for five minutes so what would
happen if a hurricane hit here so that
was a that was a reasonable realistic
disaster movie so I took that and I put
a character in it that was me basically
I'm the hero in that movie what would I
do if I was in this situation well you
know I've been reading science fiction
my whole life so I've always been
prepared for the zombie apocalypse or
for a comet to hit the earth or what
have you and I've always you know even
if I don't have a huge compound
somewhere waiting for the end of the
world I've at least thought about what I
would do in a disaster scenario so okay
I took some of that and put that in
there and gave in my motto semper
paratus
which means always prepared
and I I took this realistic approach to
it and then I added the unrealistic
sharknadoes and all I really did was say
to myself okay what would I do if this
actually happened and then the
difference between this and a realistic
disaster moving is that when you get to
the point where you say this is
ridiculous this could never happen
this isn't believable this isn't
realistic you don't worry about that you
just keep going as long as the
characters stay in that reality and
address what's happening to them in a
believable fashion as long as you as the
audience can say yeah that's what I do
if the tornado full of sharks started
coming at me or at least that's what I
would do if I was really brave and I was
forced to not hide what would I do if a
tornado full of sharks was coming at me
writing writing sharknado you still have
the same required dramatic requirements
of any good movie you still need to
develop character it still needs to go
from point A to point B to Point C the
characters need to be in jeopardy they
have to develop as they go along you
have to build suspense you have to
reveal things as you go you have to
reach a climax where it looks like the
the characters or you know out of
luck and they're gonna die you have to
follow all the same requirements of good
screenwriting you simply don't have to
stop when you get to the point where it
stops where it would ordinarily stop
being realistic or believable we get to
keep going so it's a it's it's a real
movie with real characters in an
unbelievable situation forced to be
believable I think
or I could be full of there's
really not telling
you