Oscar.go.com sez: 8 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes, 9 seconds until the Oscars. It’s not like you need more speculation on who will bring home the little Gold Guy this Sunday. Heavens knows, the Blog Universe is full of such drivel, but here are my two cents…

I came close to Oscar once. We were editing Jane Doe in New York in the summer of ’96. In the Avid room next to us was Taylor Hackford, working on what would become the 1997 Best Documentary Feature When We Were Kings. Not a single Hi! How’s it going in there? passed between us those summer weeks. Alas, he didn’t thank me in his acceptance speech either. Hackford started his red-carpet walk in that very room. For myself and Jane Doe, it was the Green Mile walk straight-to-DVD. “Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee!”

Let’s get the Oscar preliminaries out the way first. Being as I’m a former craps dealer, I will give you an Oscar Office Pool Choice as well as a Personal Choice. Bet those Office Pools with your head, not over it. Here goes:

Best Supporting Actor: Personal & Office Choice: Jeremy Renner was bad ass in The Town; Goeffrey Rush had a great turn in The King’s Speech. Really though, it’s no contest: Christian Bale as the meth-head brother in The Fighter. Scene-stealer par excellance.

Best Supporting Actress: Personal Choice: Hallee Steinfeld as the pigtailed 14 year-old pain-in-the-ass searching for her father’s killer in True Grit. Office Pool: Melissa Leo as the utter nightmare of a mother in The Fighter.

Best Actor: Tough choice. James Franco (127 Hours) absolutely nailed it. Office Pool: Gotta be Colin Firth (The King’s Speech). Personal Choice: Jeff Bridges (True Grit). How can’t you love Jeff Bridges? He gets stronger with the years, as opposed to some former Gods who have faded into irrelevance (What was the last classic movie starring DeNiro? Does anyone even remember?)

Best Actress: Office Pool: Annette Bening (The Kids Are Alright). Personal Choice: Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone).

Best Director: Personal Choice: David Fincher (The Social Network). Office Pool: Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech).

Writing (Original Screenplay): Haven’t seen Another Year yet. See below for Inception but no, I’m no fan. The Fighter is honest work with some great performances, as is The Kids Are All Right, but my money has to go on The King’s Speech. Great work by screenwriter David Seidler.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Brutal choice! Not a weak script in the batch. Toy Story 3 was a decade in the making. Has Pixar ever, and I mean ever, made a bad movie? 127 Hours flies by as a contained thriller until that awful scene—you know the one I’m talking about!—and the upbeat ending was well earned. The Fighter, too, had an upbeat ending well earned. Beating on a character for 90 minutes apparently draws kudos from the Academy. True Grit? How can’t you love the Coen Brothers? Great re-interpretation of this material. However, like the 2011 World Champion Green Bay Packers, there can be only one winner: Office Pool/Personal Choice: The Social Network. 161 page script that plays in two hours. How do they do it? The words fly. Look at the film again for pacing. Against the backdrop of that phenomenal Trent Reznor soundtrack, this script sings. What more is there to say: Aaron Freakin’ Sorkin!

Best Feature:

Let’s start with sacrilege: I walked out on Inception. It happened somewhere around Ellen Page saying: “Now, whose dream are we in?” Just didn’t care, kinda really enjoy hating on Leo Di Caprio (if only for dragging Scorsese into his World Of DiCaprio) Not to mention the CG effects after awhile, just a yawn.

More sacrilege: I’m not on the Black Swan train. Must have been on the wrong drugs watching it, but it was basically 108 minutes of “What the f….?” Aronofsky often does this to me (though The Wrestler kicked my ass last year.)

Speaking of this year’s The Wrestler…The Fighter: Good honest drama but tell me, wasn’t that ending utterly predictable?  This movie is closer to Rocky than Raging Bull or Requiem For A Heavyweight. Think about it: Micky Rourke in The Wrestler ends the movie by going into the ring to—for all intents and purposes—suicide himself. Mark Wahlberg has to win. How does the project even get made if he doesn’t win? Great character work by Melissa Leo and Christian Bale though. His entire family (who could forget those seven sisters!) is a nightmare. The reveal with the HBO Doc was spectacular too but, ultimately, this one is by the numbers.

The Kids Are All Right is another good, honest story well delivered. Didn’t really speak to me on a personal level though, not like…

Toy Story 3. Seriously, name me a bad Pixar movie. Don’t even say Cars…. Ain’t none.

127 Hours has the scene everyone’s talking about. Screenwriting books are filled with the necessity of a character having to make a choice–well, here it is! I couldn’t watch it. I had no such problems with trendy horror like Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. If anything, that terrible moment reminded me of Open Water, when the diving couple is left behind to the open sea, the encroaching night, and the sharks. 127 Hours, great flick.

Winter’s Bone. If only it had a chance. Perfectly delivered masterpiece about the meth-trade in backwoods Missouri. From the moment the sheriff rolls up (Inciting Incident) with the news: “If you don’t find your dad in a week, you lose the house.” Drives the entire movie.  Pitch perfect in script, tone, casting, production.

Which boils our Best Picture down to:

The King’s Speech. Sure, this one could sweep. For the Office Pool, I have to lean here. Another pitch perfect movie. Performances, art direction, costumes, words…wonderful build-up to the last scene, the King’s big speech. I would root for it as my Personal Choice, if not for:

The Social Network. May I repeat: Aaron Freakin’ Sorkin! 161 pages in two hours. Jesse Eisenberg won’t win Best Actor but it’s the role of a lifetime. Not to mention: Justin Timberlake can act! The best art defines its time. Sorkin caught grief for not being entirely truthful with the facts, which is crazy. Reminds me of the story of Picasso’s 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein. When it was unveiled, someone commented that Stein didn’t look like her portrait. Picasso replied: “She will.”

The Social Network: Great art, great flick. It’s for the ages, Best of 2011.

Everybody–and I do mean everybody–has got a script. How the hell can you separate yourself, far from the maddening crowd?

Ever consider making a short film?

On the most basic level, making a short can serve—for all intents and purposes—as a low-cost film school. It can also serve as a calling card, or as a trailer for a feature-length script. And, to the powers that be, it can show that you are a filmmaker to be reckoned with, someone who will not be ignored.  It can be done, and in the Digital age, done cheaply.

I’ve had students spend as much as $30,000 on a short film. They can also be made for $500. Don’t believe it? The short film that became Napoleon Dynamite was made for $500, in two days. It was called Peluca, and looked like this:

The beauty of making a short is in one word: Control. Short films can be made without the Jerry Bruckheimers and Michael Bays of the world. They can be made without help from William Morris-Endeavor. They can be made without winning the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship.

Will your $1,500 short be a cinematic masterpiece? Probably not. That’s not the point.

If you”re just starting out, you can’t beat making a short just as an experience; to be on a film set, to get a sense of movie making at the most basic level. As an education, as long as goals are in perspective, making a short can be valuable and worthwhile.

How do you make a movie on the cheap? Start by writing the script cheaply. Minimize locations, set ups, and actors. Ditch the exterior night shots. Do your best to pay for nothing. Find a DP with an HD camera & light package. Install Final Cut Pro editing software on your computer, take a class and learn it, then edit the movie yourself. Cast through Craigslist, put up audition and crew notices at local film schools and college theater departments. Look into craft services alternatives to feed your people. Pay only when you must.  If you’re confused what happens on a film set, PA on other people’s films; get the feel of it on any level before you make the jump to doing it yourself. In this way, short films can work as a film school.

More likely than not, you will not see your money back. So what? You now have a calling card. Being able to pitch a producer with something more than a script gives you an advantage. It’s a living, breathing example of your creativity. Submit to film festivals. If seen at a Sundance or Cannes,  it exponentially increases the chances that others will learn about you or any future projects you have.

I included a link to The Group last week. This was a micro-budget short film shot in 2008. A student of mine, Boris Wexler, wrote a mockumentary about our little Saturday writing group. I wrote a second draft and we filmed it. $2000 bucks/2 day shoot. The film made it into multiple film festivals all around the country.  It has made money with DVD requests (though certainly won’t make even its tiny budget back.) This wasn’t the measure of success. Making this short film was a good experience, if only as an experience

It does happen every now and again that a screenwriter/filmmakers writes a short as a calling card which gets turned into a feature-length script. The short makes it to a larger festival and draws interest, people ask about feature-length possibilities, financing is found. Here’s a website that tells about the journeys of 16 well known-features that started as short films. Among others, In 1994, “Some Folks Call It A SlingBlade” was a Billy Bob Thornton short that pre-dated his Oscar Winning SlingBlade. Five Feet High And Rising was a much praised short film at Sundance and Cannes. When a producer approached Peter Sollett with interest, Sollett handed him a feature-length script already written.  It became Raising Victor Vargas.  Movies as varied as District 9, Bottle Rocket, THX 1138, Saw, South Park, Boogie Nights, Sin City, and D.E.B.S all started as shorts. You can find the link here.

One last story about success via shorts: In 2002, an unknown German director, Lexi Alexander, made the short film Johnny Flynton. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Short, Live Action. What happens when your short film gets an Oscar nomination? You stop pursuing and become the pursued. You sign with CAA. You get a choice of feature-length action films to direct. Leni made Green Street Hooligans (2005) and Punisher (2008). These aren’t Orson Wellsian movies, and Lexi Alexander isn’t exactly a household name…but she has a career! And, at least in part, that is due to her making a short film.

To repeat: The chances of you making money from a short film? Lousy. The chances of your short film landing you a CAA agent? Even worse. But making a short film makes sense, if only to make something happen.

Talent, sometimes, finds a way.

Screenwriting groups? Are they worthwhile?

Absolutely. If…

• If you have a group of people who give a shit—about your writing, about their writing.
• If you have a group of people who know how to give notes. This means not just speaking your mind, but being wise enough to know what the writer is trying to accomplish, and helping them get there.
• If you have a group that offers honest, useful, specific, no-bullshit critique.  The group should give notes on many levels: Format and structure, sure. But, more importantly, character and story development. Don’t be so concerned with the writer forgetting to leave out CUT TO’s that you neglect to mention you have no idea who the protagonist is by page 10.

Beware online groups if your work isn’t copyright protected. Example: You’ve just written a scene. You want feedback. You decide to put it online with no registration or copyright. Are you crazy? If it’s good, it’s good as gone. A thief can register it ahead of you, and then claim the words are original. Not to mention, who are you sending it out to in cyberspace? Are they qualified? The same concerns go into your search for critiques with screenwriting consultants. Sure, Scriptshark is well known. When it comes down to it though, who the hell is actually doing their critique? What are their credits, if any? Use common sense here.

Finding free, useful feedback is difficult. There are hundreds of screenwriting consultancy websites online.  These places are in business to sell “professional” critique for a hefty price to writers who, essentially, have nowhere to turn. Screenwriting groups offer a useful, cheap alternative. I’ve run one myself in Chicago for six years. Many shorts have come from it; some of my students have been accepted to national festivals; some have advanced in screenwriting contests (a recent student just made finalist at the Page Awards, another just finished shooting his first feature).

Look to Google and Yahoo to search for local screenwriting groups in your area. Don’t forget the online communities at www.meetup.com. The Chicago Screenwriters here in town meets once or twice a month and often has guest speakers of interest. Check out Kevin Spacey’s site at www.triggerstreet.com for possible submission of your script and message boards. Also, check the links at www.donedealpro.com. Great message board community there too.

Exercise due diligence before you join. You don’t want to end up in a Screenwriting Group like this: The Group. This is a short written and directed by Boris Wexler, a former student. Click on the picture of the woman for two trailers.

Or end up in a Group taking notes from some ultra-pretentious starving artists, like these guys: