HITCHCOCK ON…PREMISE

I’ve just finishing reading Hitchcock/Truffaut, and it’s an excellent film school. Here’s a couple of sample quotes about Premise:

“I always feel comfortable with a project when I can tell the story in a very simple way, from beginning to end, in a fairly abbreviated version. I like to imagine a young woman who has been to see the movie and goes home very satisfied with what she’s seen…
Her mother asks her, “What was it about?”
And the girl replies, “Well it was about a young woman who so and so…”
Well I feel that before undertaking to shoot a movie one should be able to do just that, to satisfy oneself that it can be narrated just as clearly, the whole cycle”

“It‘s as if you‘re going to put up a building. You have to have the steel structure first. I‘m not talking about the story structure, but the concept of the film itself. If the basic concept is solid, then things will work out”

And you thought that all that pitching and 25-words-or-less malarkey was a new thing! BTW, Euroscript are running their Pitch and Premise workshop Saturday. More details here if you’re interested. I went last year, and I cant recommend it highly enough.

I’ll post a few more quotes when I feel like it. Meanwhile, here‘s a link to Amazon page for Hitchcock/Truffaut, and a bonus quote:

“charge the screen with emotion.”