Three-Time Oscar Winner Says He “Still Struggles with Writer’s Block”

Stephen Baldwin, who recently won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for his script for “Woman in Shed”, was a guest on the Team Deakins podcast with Roger and James Deakins. After the resounding success of “Female in Hut” and “Lady in Shack”, the three-time Oscar winner admitted to still being a victim of writer’s block:

We definitely had a bit of a creative crisis. How do you keep reinventing the wheel, whilst still staying true to yourself? In my book that’s what it means to be an artist. A real artist. We decided to start from scratch and just, go back to the drawing board. I bought a thesaurus and after much back and forth, dozens and dozens of seconds of scouring through synonyms, we came up with “Woman in Shed”.

The pioneer in AI-backed screenwriting spoke at length to the veteran DOP about the difficulty of finding appropriate keywords to express his story. 

We tried many things: Gal in Cottage. Lass in Cabin. But we could never capture the essence of the story. I mean, writing really is rewriting. It’s about leaving no stones unturned. Trying and trying until you get it just right.

On the subject of the rise of AI-backed screenwriting, Baldwin lauded the newer models for their ability to remain original despite their constant use by talent-starved film school hacks and attention-seeking influencers.

What people don’t realise is how good the newer models are at paraphrasing other people’s work. Or sometimes their own work. It’s an absolute boon for big studios’ IP lawyers who constantly fight against accusations of plagiarism due to their unwillingness to try new stuff.

Sir Deakins, who started on Super-8, mused on the advent of technology and the way it impacts the arts. The Oscar-winning cinematographer believes that every new technology changes the nature of creative work but “must not be allowed to supersede the artist”.

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Related:

• Prompt Picker's’ Guild of America Instructs Members to Halt Work in Protest of Google New Keyword-Generator AI
• 8-Year-Old Prodigy Rewrites Chinatown using AI, “I just typed Chinatown Screenplay and It Completely Paraphrased the Story”

The interview took a turn for the worst when the Team Deakins host implied that Prompt Picking, a new controversial variant of screenwriting, was not a valid artform and “a monkey

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