Friday, August 17, 2018

DesignCuts New Bundle and Tutorial ~ The Designer's Essential Font Selection


Today I'm bringing you a fabulous font bundle and its tutorial. You'll need to act quickly as it expires soon, like Monday night if you want to be sure at snag it, Tuesday morning if you're a risk taker :)

I promise in the future since the bundles are so awesome, but only available for two weeks, I post the bundle, then later as the tutorial is available, I'll post it.  






In this tutorial, The Designer’s Essential Font Selection from Design Cuts. You will be shown some very handy and useful Photoshop tricks along the way, so if you are all ready to begin then fire up Photoshop and prepare for the storm!

You'll see how to design a stormy concert poster in Photoshop. To do this we will be using the Vivaldi typeface from URW Type Foundry along with some free resources that you can use to follow along. This typeface is a special giveaway that you can get simply by sharing

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Watch the video tutorial below and subscribe to our YouTube channel for regular updates direct to your inbox.



Here’s a look at what we’ll be creating:
‘'The
To access the Vivaldi typeface from URW Type Foundry giveaway used in this tutorial, please visit The Designer’s Essential Font Selection and look for the ‘Share this Bundle’ option situated under the grid image. All you need to do is share the bundle using one of the links provided in order to get your free download link! Please note that this offer is only available until Tuesday 21st August 2018 at 3pm UK time.
The Storm Concert Poster Design


Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Screenwriter Robert Gosnell ~ The Ten-Percenters

It's always a pleasure to bring you a post from my mentor, a multi-produced screenwriter, and fabulous teacher/writer. And yes, he has a book out about screenwriting that Hollywood is taking notice of--see below. 

The Ten-Percenters

Hollywood agent: "Hello," he lied.

As the above joke illustrates, agents are often the subject of ridicule and scorn in Hollywood. Producers and studios see agents as bloodsuckers, who try to drain every penny and perk they can from them. Writers use them as excuses for why they aren't getting work.

The reality is that you are in charge of your career. An agent will work for you only if they see you working for yourself. They get ten percent of your script fee because they only do ten percent of the work. If you want them to do a good sales job, you must give them a good product.

Acquiring an agent without living and working in Hollywood is an uphill climb. They want to be able to shop you for assignments and rewrite opportunities and set up "get to know you" meetings. None of that can happen when you're a thousand miles away.

It is possible to change their minds, though, and, you already know how, don't you? Yep. The right script. Bowl them over with the material, and all things are possible.


Agents can be invaluable to you, if for no other reason than to release you from the burden of business requirements that you can't, and shouldn't have to deal with. It may be a profession that is looked down upon, but it's a profession screenwriters rely on. They get bad-mouthed because part of their job is to be the bad guys when they negotiate on your behalf.

I once had a producer I was working with say to me, "Man, your agent is tough." He was right. My agent could be tough. Better him than me.

The truth is, you want a bad guy in the room, hammering out your deal, and you want him to be good.

~Robert

"The Blue Collar Screenwriter and The Elements of Screenplay" is currently available at:
Amazon digital and paperback
Find Robert at:
Website (with information on classes)
Email





BIO: 
A  professional screenwriter for more than thirty years,  Robert Gosnell has produced credits in feature films, network television, syndicated television, basic cable and pay cable, and is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of Canada.

Robert began his career writing situation comedy as a staff writer for the ABC series Baby Makes Five.  As a freelance writer, he wrote episodes for Too Close for Comfort and the TBS comedies Safe at Home andRocky Road.  In cable, he has scripted numerous projects for the Disney Channel, including Just Perfect, a Disney Channel movie featuring  Jennie Garth. In 1998, he wrote the  Showtime original movie, Escape from Wildcat Canyon, which starred Dennis Weaver and won the national "Parents Choice Award." Robert's feature credits include the Chuck Norris/Louis Gosset Jr. film Firewalker, an uncredited rewrite on the motion picture Number One With A Bullet starring Robert Carradine and Billy Dee Williams, and the sale of his original screenplay Kick And Kick Back to Cannon Films. Robert was also selected as a judge for the 1990 Cable Ace Awards, in the Comedy Special category.

In 1990, Robert left Hollywood for Denver, where he became active in the local independent film community. His screenplay Tiger Street was produced by the Pagoda Group of Denver and premiered on Showtime Extreme in August of 2003. In 1999, Denver’s Inferno Films produced the action film Dragon and the Hawk from his script. In 2001, Robert co-wrote the screenplay for the independent feature Siren for Las Vegas company Stage Left Productions. His feature script Juncture was produced by Front Range Films in March of 2006. 

Robert is a principal member of the Denver production company "Conspiracy Films." He is frequently an invited speaker for local writers organizations,  served on the faculty of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in 2002, and in 2007 was chosen to participate as a panelist for the Aspen Film Festival Short Screenplay Contest. Robert regularly presents his screenwriting class "The Elements of Screenplay," along with advanced classes and workshops, in the Denver area.

Additionally, he is a frequent contributor to this blog. 

Monday, August 13, 2018

R & R ~ Raves & Rants For August, The Troublesome Twos


The Troublesome Twos

I need to start with a confession. Despite the title, this post is not going to discuss the number two. Instead, we’re going to explore the various uses of the word “to” and its sibling “too.” Although I’ve seen errors, particularly the misuse of “into” and “in to,” I hadn’t realized that there was confusion about simple “to” versus “too” until another writer mentioned that her critique group questioned her use of both words.


Let’s start by looking at a paragraph where I’ve used both words multiple times but for different purposes.

It was ten to six on my trip into Manhattan to visit a museum when I ran into a friend standing next to the doorway of a famous restaurant. He asked me to come in to sit at his table and pointed to the single red rose in the center of the table. “Don’t you think that’s a little too much of a cliché? Maybe I should ask for a white rose too. Just to make it more interesting.”
How many instances did you find for each of these “to” functions:
  • Indicate direction or position
  • Indicate position in time
  • Create an infinitive
My counts are two, one, and four. And that’s only scratching the surface. If you look at your dictionary, you’ll discover there are numerous other ways “to” is used.

What it’s not used for is to indicate excess or as a replacement for the word “also.” That’s where “too” comes into play. If you reread my sample paragraph, you’ll see that the first time I used “too” was to indicate excess, the second instead of “also.”

Easy, right? 

Although it ought to be just as simple, there seems to be confusion about when to use “into” rather than “in to.” “Into” is a preposition, and prepositions need to be followed by nouns. That’s why I wrote “into Manhattan” and “into a friend” in my sample paragraph. 


“In to” is very different. In this case, “to” serves the function of creating an infinitive, which means that it must be followed by a verb, while “in” can be considered shorthand for “inside” or “indoors.” Here’s an example: I inadvertently bumped into the door when I came in to turn on the oven.


Clear? I hope so. I also hope you’ll come back next month. We’ll be talking about clauses then, and, no, I don’t mean Santa and Mrs.


~Amanda


A lifetime of reading and writing, not to mention a host of teachers who believed that good grammar was one of the essentials of life, have given Amanda Cabot such firm opinions about the printed word that I asked her to share some with us in her Raves and Rants posts.  Although her working career was in Information Technology, Amanda achieved her dream of selling her first novel before her thirtieth birthday and is now the author of more than thirty novels as well as a number of books and articles for Information Technology professionals.  

Her most recent release is A Borrowed Dream, the second of the Cimarron Creek trilogy.

Find all of Amanda's books, newsletter info and social media links here.