Filmmaking

I’ve Made 3 Feature Films, This Is How I Start The Writing Process – Sarah T. Schwab

Filmcourage

Published

5 hours ago

[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]

Film Courage: How important is it for you to write bad pages?

Sarah T. Schwab, Writer/Director/Producer: It’s very important for me to write bad pages.

I love just getting everything out on the table. I love that.

But I love that first draft because you can do anything and it doesn’t matter if it’s not good at the end of the day.

It’s just you have so much material and you’re just emptying your brain.

That’s really important to get all of that out.

It’s the second draft that begins to I don’t know, kind of stinks a little bit because you have to really start killing your babies and looking at the parts that are strong and less strong for the story.

But to get those initial bad pages out fosters ideas that you might not have thought were in there and so yeah very necessary.

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Film Courage: What’s your research process? You’re diving into arachnophobia, mothers and their children and urban legends.

Sarah: My research process is different for every project.

For Recluse [an upcoming project], I’m even less afraid of spiders now since writing that script because I had to look at a lot of scary pictures of spiders and study them and research what their habits were, what their webs looked like, how aggressive or non-aggressive they were.

It was fascinating for me, that process.

And then with Crybaby Bridge [Sarah’s new movie] looking at the different crybaby bridges around the country. Some folklore had if you stop in the middle of the bridge you hear…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).