Scream: The series that inspired me to study filmmaking

It is the summer of 1997. Me and my older sister are over my dad’s house for the weekend. My dad shares a place with my uncle who has a lot of movies. My uncle lets me and my sister watch movies from his stash, our favorite movie to watch out of all of them: Scream (1996). This movie would of course become one of my favorite films ever and it also became a hit series. This series would become my top favorite movie series of all time and the reason why I have a passion for the art of filmmaking.

Everyone who knows me knows how much I love movies. Most are also aware that it is one of my biggest dreams to be a filmmaker, but only a select few know that the film series that inspired me to want to be an actual filmmaker is Scream, directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. If anyone were to ask me why and how the Scream series inspired me to want to be a filmmaker I would say because of its style and formation.

At the age of seven I went to California for the first time ever to visit my family on my mother’s side. When I went to stay at my grandparent’s house in the Bay Area they let me and my older sister take a movie home as a gift. The movie we took home was Scream 2 and when we got home and watched it I have to say it really scared the mess out of me. Scream 2 scared me so much that I became infatuated with it and after the copy my grandparents gave us broke I got my dad to buy me another copy of the movie. Later in the year during Christmas he bought me Scream 3 and it was here I had all three films of the time.

I was really intrigued with the story of series because of how much it paralleled the real world crimes and murder cases you heard about on the news. I also loved the cinematic commentary the series had about the world of film, especially horror. With Scream I learned a lot about tropes and stereotypes of film and horror that I should have been too young to understand at the time, yet the story, characters, and style in which they were all crafted made me hungry for how exactly all of this was put together.

I was so obsessed with how well put together this film series was that I started faithfully watching the end credits at the end of all the films to know who it’s creators were. It was here that learned what it meant to be the writer and the director, the person who comes up with the story and the person who puts together the way in which it will all play out, respectively. For Scream this came in the form of Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven. I would also come to understand the concept of a film studio and production company as I paid attention to the logo from Dimension Studios that came up at the beginning of the films because it was this studio that distributed the Scream films.

I’ve always been just as passionate about music as I am about film, so as one could imagine, movie soundtracks have always been a big deal to me. The soundtracks to the Scream films are of course all some of my favorite soundtracks ever thanks to songs like the cover version of “Whisper to a Scream” by Soho from the Scream (1996) soundtrack, “She Said” by Collective Soul from the Scream 2 soundtrack and “What If” by Creed from the Scream 3 soundtrack

Scream is where I started paying attention to all the behind the scenes elements that make up a film, but it did not stop there. Sure enough I found myself focusing on the credits of every film I ever laid eyes on from there on out. I would do this so much that all my friends and family would pick on me for how credit focused I was when I watched a movie and they all found it interesting that I could tell you so much about a film because I paid so much attention to the behind the scenes details. By doing this I learned who so many different filmmakers were as well as their styles in crafting a film.

As I grew into my teens and 20’s I definitely was a bigger film and cinema buff like never before. As I obtained a greater understanding of cinema I also gained an understanding of all the flaws and stereotypes that come with the territory. When I looked back on that history I realized that the Scream series was historical for breaking many of those stereotypes and overcoming repetitive flaws, especially in the horror genre. For me, Scream is like the Star Wars of the slasher genre, it has one great big legacy of a story and it had a great team that was responsible for every film in the series. I learned from Scream that if you want a successful film as well as a series that follows you have to have a solid story in front of the camera and a solid team behind the camera who keeps everything organized and consistent every time around. This is how I want to be as a filmmaker. Someone who not only crafts a great story with great characters, but also has a great work ethic crafting it’s formation behind the lens.

The Scream series inspired me so much that every detail about the series has become some of my favorite everything about film. One of my top two favorite screenwriters of all time is Kevin Williamson, Wes Craven is my number one top favorite filmmaker ever, Scream frontman David Arquette is truly my top favorite actor of all time and many of the other frontline actors and actresses of the series are some of my favorites as well including Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and Jamie Kennedy. Something I never thought about when I was younger was who my top favorite character from any movie I’ve ever loved was, but if anyone were to ask who that favorite character is I would tell them Dewey Riley in Scream portrayed by David Arquette, without hesitation.

If you fast forward to the present day the Scream series has conquered a whole new generation on not just the big screen, but the small screen starting with Scream 4 (2011) and Scream: The Series (2015).

Every time a new film in the series comes out I am at the theaters opening night to catch the scare and just like how I loved all the films back in the day, and the new ones never disappoint. This is so true for me that my number one favorite film of this 2022 year is the fifth and latest film in the franchise, Scream.

There is so much more to come from Scream and I’m excited to see it unfold. I’ll always love this series because of its incredible and realistic story. I’ll always value the important lessons it taught about how to craft a great work of art that sets trends, breaks the rules, innovates the game and repairs the brokenness of the past. Above all else, I appreciate Scream for being the series that inspired me to want to be a filmmaker.

~~Dedicated to the memory of Wes Craven, my all time favorite filmmaker.