Elan Mastai: Pro in film

 

While most students of film would be happy with a credit in a third-circuit festival entry somewhere, Elan Mastai is getting right to business.

He graduates this year with a Master’s in Media Studies, and he has already tackled his first big Hollywood project, writing the screenplay for Alone in the Dark, starring Christian Slater and Tara Reid.

Mastai initially won attention when his first screenplay pitch resulted in the 2001 movie MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate. It turned out to be the year’s highest-grossing English-Canadian feature.

“I was really fortunate right out of the gate,” he says. “The win for me was just getting in the room.”

Mastai’s area of study is improvisation in filmmaking. He says that if a script is structured well enough the dialogue can be improvised, bringing with it the energy and spontaneity unique to on-the-spot acting.

For years, moviemakers have recognized the value of the spontaneous, often leaving in some of the unscripted exchanges that occur when creative people stand in front of a camera. Mastai suggests that with effective screenwriting, the extra costs can be minimized and improvisation can be more readily integrated into the filmmaking process.

“The hardest work you do as a screenwriter is creating the structure of the film,” he says. “If you create that foundation you have a lot more leeway. The dialogue is like the icing on the cake.”

Andra McCartney, director of the MA program in media studies, called Mastai’s master’s project “a truly excellent piece of work.” Mastai recently translated the project into a film called Sk8 Life, and is currently working in Toronto on projects with Canadian and American companies.