[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: What are your favorite writing questions you ask yourself when beginning a story? When you’re going back to revise a story?
Sarah T. Schwab, Writer/Director/Producer: I ask myself:
-Why do you want to tell this story?
-What part of the human element?
-What are about the characters that interest you?
-What are the juxtapositions of those characters?
-How are they going to create friction?
-How are they going to create fiction with one another?
-What’s dramatic about it?
-What is the arc?
-What are the lessons to be learned and again to ask why?
-Why in general, why these people?
-What makes them so important to a greater idea?
-Why is anyone going to care?
-When it’s finished, do I care enough about these characters and their situation that they’re put in to stay with it in the long run, even if it’s going to take 5-6 years to make it happen?
Those are the things that I sit down with because I get ideas all the time but you really have to love each story like it’s your baby.
Film Courage: You’ve said at times you don’t necessarily always like the character or maybe you at first glance you wouldn’t like the character until you dig deeper and find out some of the reasoning behind their choices?
Sarah: Yeah. I want to search. I want to go through the labyrinth of their mind and their life experiences and figure out why they’ve locked some precious vulnerable thing away in an oubliette inside of them. Once I can look through those corners of that character and find it I’m like:
Oh, that’s the pain and this is how it’s manifested.
That doesn’t let them off the hook for the actions that they’ve done but it almost makes them more human which can be scary and uncanny because I think that people can understand that kind of hurt, whatever that hurt may be and so they’re not just a monster in the dark, they’re not the boogie person. They’re someone that has a tragic flawed past and this is the outcome.
Film Courage: And how is writing connecting with others?
Sarah: Just like my mom would get letters when she wrote for the newspaper or short prose pieces that she got published in Writer’s Digest which was a magazine, I think it’s still a magazine, I think she taught a class or she had a professor that she was learning from use one of her examples in prose writing. I think having that knowledge that you’re not alone and that the things that you feel good and bad and everywhere in between other people feel that way too and the more you can communicate about those things the better.
A beautiful example of that…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Award-winning filmmaker, Sarah T. Schwab, is a writer, director, and producer dedicated to crafting authentic narratives that connect emotionally with audiences. Through her lens, audiences are invited to examine the human experience in ways that feel vivid, visceral, and often vulnerable. As an active member of the playwright and directors unit at the Actors Studio in New York City, Sarah also remains a valued contributor within the theatre community. Sarah’s most recent film, “A Stage of Twilight,” received critical acclaim and premiered at the Woods Hole Film Festival. It featured performances by Karen Allen and William Sadler, who won Best Performance in a Feature Film. Sarah herself was honored with the Best Emerging Director award.
CONNECT WITH SARAH T. SCHWAB
Instagram.com/sarah_cardinalflix
WATCH ‘A STAGE OF TWILIGHT’
Tubitv.com/movies/100026437/a-stage-of-twilight
MORE VIDEOS WITH SARAH T. SCHWAB
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