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Every Writer-Director Should Have These 4 Skills To Actually Make Films Consistently

What a writer-director actually has to be able to do to keep producing work, argued as a set of skills rather than as talent. For the second or third short rather than the first.

D4Darious · 14 min · Intermediate · SCR · Screenwriting · 2025

What you take away

Consistency is a set of learnable skills, not a temperament.

Watch it

Filed under

Oscar winners for screenplay

Books on screenwriting

Writing Short Films — Linda J. Cowgill
Making Short Films — Clifford Thurlow
The Screenwriter’s Bible — David Trottier
The Art of Dramatic Writing — Lajos Egri
Writing Movies for Fun and Profit — Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant
On Writing — Stephen King

Kit for this lesson

Panasonic LUMIX S5 II — Full-frame, open gate, phase detect at last
Panasonic LUMIX S5 IIX — The S5 II with raw out and ProRes internal
Sony a7 IV — The all-round full-frame hybrid
Canon EOS R6 Mark II — The affordable full-frame RF hybrid
Nikon Z6 III — Partially stacked sensor, N-RAW internal
Rode Blimp — Wind protection and a shock mount in one

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