Stella Grammenos-Dimadis Blog

"Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things."  Ben Jonson 1641 When I have formulated the idea for a story in my head and I begin to organise the major events as experienced by the main characters, I begin to think about the dialogue.  What will the characters be speaking about?  How will their dialogue drive the story forward?  Is what they say interesting?  Ultimately how will they speak, and will they speak well?  It is quite hard to understand what speaking well is, and this can come from a process. In earlier blogs I have written about the importance of writing without the blocks or the constraints.  I see scripts and dialogue in the same way, write as you think it is to be said.  It will never be right the first time, in fact if it is I'd place you in the genius compartment.  But write as you think it should be said, that way the crux of the dialogue will become evident, and by this I mean th...

Cinematography "Photography is truth.  The cinema is truth 24 times per second." Jean-Luc Godard. It comes as no surprise that I made a point of watching 'Silver Linings Playbook', directed by David. O Russell for the one and only  reason that Bradley Cooper is the lead.  I admire his ease and fluidity as an actor in front of the camera, coupled with the control that his eyes muster with each line of dialogue that he delivers.  'Silver Linings Playbook' revolves around Bradley Cooper who plays Pat Solitano, a teacher with Bipolar disorder who has been released from the psychiatric hospital, under the care of his mother, Jacki Weaver and his father, played by Robert De Niro.  He is determined to win back his ex wife, but in the interim meets Tiffany Maxwell, played by Jennifer Lawrence, a recently widowed sex addict who tells him that she will help him get his wife back, providing he enters a dance competition with her.  It is a feel good story by ...

Hero The Hero of my tale-whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful-is truth. Leo Tolstoy  I fall asleep a lot, and I like to consider my sleeping pattern normal, although when it happens during a film, I question whether I  am in fact tired or ultimately bored.  I watch films to learn, be challenged, swept through the tide that is so often called life without having to go through it myself.  All the time though I am watching the hero or heroine, who is going to teach me a thing or two, show me how its done, or pose in the moment, expressing the truth. Through time, stories will dictate a version of that truth and it will be the hero that will be at the forefront of this.  Fourteen years ago I came across Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and more recently Christopher Vogel's summary of that.  Filmmakers around the world have embraced the con...