687 - How to Not Ruin Your First Film
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John and Craig dig through the mailbag to answer some of our trickiest listener questions. They lay out their best advice for first-time feature directors — from picking department heads to making sure your movie actually gets seen — and look at how to adapt Craig’s “How to Write a Movie” for structuring a TV series.

But that’s not all! Do you owe your writer’s group access to your contacts? How do you break out of the mailroom? Where should high-school students start? How far can adaptations stray from the source material? And how do you remain professional in the middle of a dumpster fire?

We also follow up on tariffs, mysterious birds, and a different set of 36 Questions.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we play John’s new game, Strong Opinions, where we all have to guess each other’s true feelings about things we didn’t know were controversial.

Links:

• Scriptnotes on YouTube!)
• Strong Opinions game)
• Hollywood Unions letter to President Trump)
• The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch) by Forrest Wickman
• Foggy Brume) on Twitch
• 36 Questions, the podcast musical)
• Austin Film Festival)
• My First Movie: 20 Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film)
• Orange T-shirts are back!)
• Aqua voice dictation software)
• Ghost Town) by Fireproof Games
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!)
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter)
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member), or gift a subscription!)
• Craig Mazin on Instagram)
• John August on Bluesky), Threads), and Instagram)
• Outro) by Nick Moore (send us yours!))
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt) with help from Sam Shapson. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli).

Email us at [email protected]

You can download the episode here).