Apply their scripts into screenwriting contests, try to go to conferences and meet people from the industry
I wrote my first movie script in the screenwriter 101 class at my University, it was a requisite for acing the course. This first script I wrote was the prequel for my new vampire script, The Darkest of Fears, and it’s the story of the main vampire character Maltus before he was turned and when he was still a mortal, he was a teenager going to high school and all the usual issues a teen his age goes through, parties, girlfriends, trouble with the law and his parents, etc. except he is being followed by a couple of vampires for a long time without him knowing this. It’s a completely different format and type of vampire story as opposed to part II where he’s a vampire since page 1. Really cool stuff!
How will you describe your writing
I see my writing as art, I tend to see my stories as a symphony, where there’s many different dynamics, changes of tempos if you may, some scenes are like an Allegretto, fast, vibrant and full of action and madness, others are like Elegies with a slower and more somber or cryptic tones, perhaps like an Adaggio or a Larghetto… Then there’s the Crescendos when the story seems to be spiraling out of control and perhaps a bit chaotic, but it’s all controlled chaos of course, then you have the Epilogue or climax when things get Fortissimo and every single piece of the puzzle kinda fit together and make some sense… There’s also Interludes and Laments, where things tone down and there are some elements of sorrow and drama, like when some of your main characters dies or something beautiful is destroyed… And then there’s the Grand Finale where we get a resolution for the characters and plot and everything kind of falls into place. Music was my main foundation before taking on the screenwriting and writing path, I recorded several albums with several musical projects during a decade and half and performed Live as much as I could. So I think my writing took some of the musical dramatic structure that I tend to use regularly when creating musical pieces… So far it’s worked real well! Specially in writing Horror where there’s really no boundaries on what you could do, you know? You can’t really put some blood and guts in a Comedy too much without changing it’s tone, or bring some corpses and demons into a Drama, before it turns just ridiculous, you know? but you can definitely put some drama and comedy or whatever you want into your horror stories, if you know what I mean? It’s a very broad and vast landscape with that genre and I just love it’s freedom!
How did you get into writing
I graduated from College where some of my studies were Film and I had written 1 movie script back then. Then I started working on my music career for many years and I achieved many things with my main band Dynasty of Darkness, but with the current state of the music business it’s very hard to make any money or have success as a musician, so after many years of struggling and suffering difficulties I decided to put a hold on all this and go back into writing. I couldn’t be happier! In just one year I finished my main horror script The Darkest of Fears which is a really cool vampire movie and then I worked on 2 more scripts, Heart of Doom which is the story of 3 men whose lives are being affected by what it appears to be some strange paranormal events and they are all somehow interconnected by this, without them knowing it and my 4th script Behind the Sun which is based on real events of a serial killer who’s still at large and has been killing since the late 60s. I returned to writing just last year and it just felt as if the Pandora’s Box was opened for me, I am regurgitating horror stories non-stop and I’m currently doing some extensive research for my 5th script which will be something entirely new and different for me, it’s a Biopic of a very famous engineer who revolutionized the world as we know it, it’s a very ambitious project and it’ll take a lot of work, but I’m just pretty excited about it. Then there’s another great story that it’s on queue that I will probably start writing next year. To put it in perspective I think I was always writing and creating things, my parents tell me that even when I was a kid I was orchestrating plays with my neighbors and drawing graphic novels with crazy stories. I always loved cinema and grew up watching hundreds of movies so it just felt natural that I should start writing my own stories for movies as well.
Did you study writing
I got my degree on Communication Sciences form the Tech Institute in Mexico in 2008, then I also went to study to Germany for a while and some of the courses were about screenwriting; That was really my only source of learning how to write a script professionally, but it all just got consolidated eventually by me reading some of my favorite movie scripts that I downloaded from screenwriting pages on the Web. I really like watching a movie while reading from the script at the same time, it kinda makes me have a broader and bigger picture behind the films and over the written script.
What is the difference between a screenplay and a play
I have never written a play since I am a screenwriter and director, but I believe there’s many similarities, the only difference, I guess it would be the technicalities that filmmaking involve, like writing shots and camera angles for some of your scenes on your movie script, perhaps even the camera sequences and timing on a scene. Those are things that you just don’t even bother to write for a play because they are not necessary. I guess in a screenplay you adapt the story more into how it would end up looking on a screen, hence the name screenplay…
How did you get into acting
Well, me as a musician I always felt like I was portraying a character while I was performing onstage, who I am while holding a guitar and screaming into a microphone is not who I am when you meet me down the street, when you’re up there you become someone else, maybe your Alter Ego could be the closest way to describe it. So I always liked putting a show and acting like a Rockstar or whatever I was doing onstage and since I’ve always had a big passion for film and actors, I think it was just in the back of my mind that I wanted to be like Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro or Marlon Brando, you know? I always found acting to be a fascinating way of living and how it gives you the power to become somebody else and allows you to have so many different personalities that perhaps you don’t necessarily possess in the real world. I always thought that actors had the coolest and best paid job on earth.. them and the Astronauts! haha. It was always a dream of mine to become an actor. I haven’t done too many jobs but I know the few characters I’ve done have looked really cool on the screen and I would love to keep getting more acting jobs in the near future.
What do you do to get an idea that you can turn into a film
I used to really break my head when wanting to write a story, I used to get really stressed out about it, you know? Thinking what could be a good story? Will it be good enough? etc.. But then one day I met the great writer and director Kim Ki Duk at a Film Festival and he was so inspiring to me, I think he made like 20 movies in 21 years, and I’m talking about back in the day where there was none of this easy and user-friendly digital technologies for film, I mean, you had to manually cut and paste endless rolls of films in the edition room, wait for long times to reveal the film you shot, etc… I don’t know how the heck he did that?! Talk about love and commitment to the art! But what really impressed me was that he could make a full movie with just 2 characters under a bridge, that right there, if you think about it real well, it puts the whole idea of cinema and film in a nutshell… So that day I just realized there was no point in agonizing to try to make the biggest most complex story filled with 50 characters, unless that’s what you are really aiming for, I mean, you can basically make a story out of anything! Kim saw a bridge and that inspired him, you know? So when I realized that perhaps sometimes I complicated things without necessity while writing, I kinda let go and let loose and suddenly I was putting stories out like a madman. I wrote 2 full horror movies in about 5 months and finished the vampire one who took 10 years (perhaps cuz of the reason I named above!).. I just couldn’t stop! I knew I loved writing and that there was no turning back… I’m currently writing a script and this idea I got it from a nightmare I had, I can thank James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola on that one cuz they both created some of their greatest movies out of nightmares (The Terminator and Twixt) and I usually dream a lot of bad stuff so I thought, ‘well now! there’s a lot of potential material right there! and it’s never going to stop anyways so I might as well make good usage of this pains!’
How has writing helped your acting
In the case of The Darkest of Fears story I was reluctant if I should try and act as Malthus, the main vampire character. But me being a devote follower of anything vampiric (with a few sparkling exceptions) I thought to myself, Ok, I might be able to do the job for this, I shot some promotional videos for my fundraising campaign and they turned out really good. Having written the full story helped me get in the right mindset and the ‘heart of the character’ and allowed me to portray this vampire as best as I could since I knew his background and what he’s been through even tho he suffers a great transformation in the story, but you’ll have to watch the film when it’s finished to know what I’m talking about.
Do you take courses to improve your writing
I wish I could take some courses and I’ve seen some here and there that I’d like to take, but I haven’t had the opportunity yet, but like I said, to me just reading as much scripts as you can could be the best teacher on learning how to write a good story with a proper format and all the dramatic acts A-B-C.
What books do you read
I have read a lot of vampire books… Any White Wolfe or Anne Rice are great, Queen of the Damned, Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, Prince Lestat, etc. I like some philosophical books as well, specially from Friedrich Nietzsche such as Thus Spoke Zara Thustra, Genealogy of Morals, The Wanderer and His Shadow, The Antichrist, etc. Also Sun Tzu’s Art of War is a very good one. I like some dark and occult literature as well such as the works of Aleister Crowley like The Book of The Law, The Book of Lies, The Necronomicon, etc… And of course any Stephen King book will always be great, too many to name here! John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, any Edgar Allan Poe book is also great as well as Hermes Trismegistus like The Emerald Tablets, etc… This are just some great books that inspire me in writing Dark stories but lately I’ve found it really hard to find the time to read as much as I would want, since I am very busy writing new scripts and working on my other career which is music.
What do you do to keep in shape as a writer
The best thing you can do is WRITE! Just keep writing and keep exercising that as if it were a muscle. Some of the most successful writers try to write at least 1 page or half a page a day, every day, even if it’s something that won’t work or will be discarded, the key is to keep it flowing and keep working, I believe.
When you are offered a screenplay to write, what is your routine
I usually first like to prepare an extensive research, I devour all kinds of information available on the subject. I like to think of the basic backbone of the story and plan it all in my head and then I proceed to write a page or two with the entire plot, so I wont forget and I try to add as many details I can think of from specific scenes or characters so I can later come back and just elaborate it even further, so I basically just create some sort of a blueprint for the entire story, later I think real well about the dramatic acts and try to make them work and entwine real well so the story has a good flow and validity. I like to think of a lot of small details that will help the story to feel more realistic, like how will the weather be like, which seasons will the story go through, is it in a desert place or a forest, etc? How’s the political climate? Which year is it? You know, things like this help me map the story real well in my mind.
How do you develop a character in a script to a honest, believable and beathable person
I think the key to make the characters believable is in the small details, like real people, they are full of very peculiar individual traits, for example, their gestures, body and facial language, ticks or quirks, their mannerisms and personalities, what is their emotional and mental levels? What do they do? How is their lifestyle affecting their personality? What is their job like? What is their emotional, social and family background? Have they suffered traumas? Are they happy or content? Etc… All of this things will forge a solid foundation on your characters or at least some sort of foundation… I tend to make very diverse characters that fluctuate from the very meanest, creepiest and darkest to the most cheerful, relaxed and nicest or innocent… Sometimes I just let the character take over and let it evolve and see where it goes from there.
What is the most memorable character you have created
That is a hard one! I think it’s been Gray Wolf from The Darkest of Fears, she’s a XV Century Vampiress who used to be the queen of an empire in the Old World, she then was turned by a wandering vampire during one of her ballroom parties and she became a bloodthirsty murderer who wiped out entire villages, she then became one of Dracula’s concubine and was captured in Germany in the II World War by an European branch of an Anti Vampire Organization. She survived the bombing of the city and managed to escape and then moved to America where she commanded her own legion of vampires who wandered the night causing mayhem and chaos in 1940s New York, she eventually faded into the shadows and quit the vampire life and became the owner of a secret underground Electronic/Trance club where she feeds her blood to mortals there, making them her ghouls… She is a retired vampire who serves humans now and eventually she’ll be an important asset in the war between the good guys and the vampires… She has some epic moments in some battles and she has also very peculiar powers that set her apart from the rest of her vampire brethren.
What do you want from a director during production
To give justice to my story and keep it as close as possible to the original idea.
How do you prefer to work with a director during production
I personally like to direct myself, so that is what I usually aim for.
Do you get offers from film industries like Hollywood
I am shopping my stories as we speak so I am currently in the search for producers and studios and I would be open to consider any good offers.
What do you think a writer can do to get into the film industry
Apply their scripts into screenwriting contests, try to go to conferences and meet people from the industry. Contact studios and producers with a good query letter and a proposal and wish for the best. If you have a good story you might be able to make it through.
Who is your favourite writer
Stephen King
Why
Well there’s a reason why he’s called the Master of Horror. I like the diversity of his stories, he can do some psychological terror like ‘It’. ‘Apt Pupil’ or ‘The Shining’, then bring you to a visceral and bloody story like Pet Sematary’, ‘Cujo’ or ‘The Running Man’ to something really majestic and more uplifting like ‘The Green Mile’ or ‘Shawshawk Redemption’. That just tells you of the versatility and flexibility in his writing style. His influence has definitely opened a lot of doors in my creative process and I have incorporated many of the techniques he’s used on some of his stories and into my scripts, not that I copy anything but rather I venture to expand the stories and give them different hues and colors. My biggest dream is to be able to write a really good drama someday…
How would you advise writers all over the world
Everyone once was an amateur at the beginning and the only thing that will get you where you want to be and make you an expert is to try and fall indefinitely and to have discipline and work hard!… Stop at nothing! I think every single artist or creative person has suffered from insecurities and self doubt in their works, but being on the edge of the abyss is what keep us alive after all, isn’t it? ‘Live your dreams, don’t dream your life!’
Briefly write about my career.
I have written 4 horror scripts, The Darkest of Fears, Heart of Doom, Behind the Sun and a prequel for my Vampire movie. I have played a vampire on a series of shorts and a hitman on a music video; Being able to act for this projects have given me the drive and hunger to find even more jobs, even tho I am specialized and more focused on writing and directing. As far as directing I’ve worked on several documentaries about Metal Music, such as DocuMetal and The Out of The Black Documentary. I’ve shot a dozen of music videos for bands, some of which include a video for Sunn O))), Nine Inch Nails and some other bands like my own such as Dynasty of Darkness and Slitwrist, etc. I have also shot several experimental films and short films. I’ve done some commercial videos for companies and business as well. Currently I am consolidating my own production house called The List Productions and you can find everything I’ve done to this day in my own personal page www.themorbidone.com this will link you to all of my musical and video works as well as my Fundraiser campaign for my Vampire movie. Any support will be greatly appreciated!
