Brian Koppelman's Sixty Second Screenwriting

Brian Koppelman, the screenwriter behind Rounders, Runner, Runner and Ocean's Thirteen, has been recording six second Vine videos giving writing advice. They range from the practical, "Remember the last argument you had? Write it down." To the no-nonsense. "Today I'd prefer to be reading, playing in the snow, but I'm a writer - are you?"

His straight up delivery is sometimes unforgiving and sometimes comforting. In the latest #sixsecondscreenwriting Vine, number 176 states, "I promise you this, if you write every single day, a year from now you'll be a much better writer than you are today." The catalyst for these injections of knowledge were Brian's dislike of screenwriting gurus and their professed rules to writing, "All screenwriting books are bullshit, all. Watch movies, read screenplays, let them be your guide." You can find an archive of all Brian's Vines here, and with over two decades of experience these video nuggets can't be ignored.

The Art of Close Ups with Edgar Wright

He's got one of the most distinctive directorial styles of any auteur working today and his collaborations with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have resulted in some of the best British comedy films ever made, not to mention my favourite British sitcom Spaced. Here Edgar Wright talks to Slash Film about the art of the close up, as well as whip pans and snap zooms, all shots he's particularly fond of and the use of which is a large contributing factor to his visual flair. He shares some tricks and techniques, for example the whip pan onto a close up is usually done in reverse, although their camera operator was such a don he didn't have to do this.

"I'm a big fan of getting into a scene late and getting out of a scene early." Good advice often cited for writing an affective scene, in any form be it for the page, screen or stage. Edgar Wright also references James Cameron's tooling up montages as a big inspiration in Shaun of the Dead where he applied it to typically mundane sequences of everyday life such as boiling the kettle and tying shoe laces. Then in Hot Fuzz he took the Tony Scott and Michael Bay fetishization approach of slick cuts and sexy visual affects to the usually boring parts of police procedure such as the paperwork.

Deep Blue Sea - Plot Point Breakdown

The second best shark movie out there after Jaws 2, Deep Blue Sea (1999) also has one of the greatest surprise deaths in any blockbuster movie. Yeah the plot's riddled with holes but it's got LL Cool J as a Jesus-loving chef, Samuel L Jackson as a tight-ass suit and errr...Thomas Jane? To be fair it's full of great moments, like when LL Cool J's chef - Sherman "Preacher" Duley - gets locked and almost cooked in his own oven by a super smart Mako shark. That's B-movie poeticism. Of course, he escapes the oven and uses a lighter to blow the shark to smithereens, which would definitely happen. It's also got Michael Rapaport, nuff said.

Inciting Incident - Dr Susan McAlester genetically engineers three Mako sharks in order to harvest their brain tissue for the cure to Alzheimers. After one of the sharks escapes and attacks a boat full of hot teens, Dr Susan McAlester must persuade her financial backers that her research is worth funding, so they send corporate executive Russell Franklin (Samuel L Jackson) to investigate the Aquatica facility. As he arrives at Aquatica a foreboding storm closes in.

Lock In - While pulling brain tissue from the largest shark to demonstrate their progress to Russell, the shark tears Dr Jim Whitlock's arm off. With the storm at it's peak the rescue helicopter carrying Jim on a stretcher, crashes into Aquatica's watch tower and the biggest super smart Mako shark uses Jim on a stretcher as a battering ram to smash the huge underwater lab's window. The facility starts to flood, the other sharks are freed, and the group of survivors must make their way to the surface without getting eaten.

Midpoint - Not-so-stiff suit Russell is in the underwater lab giving a rousing speech on how the group need to stick together to overcome adversity when one of the sharks rises out of the water and eats him whole. Meanwhile LL Cool J's battling a shark in his kitchen and manages to blow it up by throwing a lighter into the oven which was turned on and nearly cooked him alive.

Climax - After the ever-expendable Janice (Jacqueline McKenzie) dies, poor old Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport) is traumatized what with all his colleagues dying around him, but Carter (Thomas Jane) persuades him to return to the flooded lab because the controls to open a door to the surface are there. Tom Scoggins is eaten by a shark, obviously. Dr Susan retrieves her research from her locker but is almost eaten by one of the sharks when she drops her research in the water. Fortunately she gets down to her undies and electrocutes the shark with a live power cable, unfortunately destroying her research in the process.

Resolution - Carter, Dr Susan and LL Cool J make it the surface through a decompression chamber. Carter realises that the grand daddy shark is trying to escape and that they purposefully flooded the facility so they could jump over the fence Free Willy style. Dr Susan, in an effort to stop the shark escaping into open water, cuts herself and dives in so she can get eaten, which she does, deservedly. LL Cool J pierces Carter to the final Mako shark with a harpoon as it breaks through the fence. Not knowing whether Carter's still attached to the shark LL Cool J triggers the harpoon explosive and blows it up in a pulpy shower of blood and meat. Turns out Carter did detach himself from the shark and swims back to the facility wreckage in time to see the other crew members returning from leave, not knowing that they're all out of the job.