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Here are some of the guildelines I follow when writing a screenplay.
It’s a screenplay, dammit: Books are about what people think, plays about what they say, and movies about what they do. If you are going to write a film, watch movies and read screenplays. Learn the basics of how films speak far less than plays, and how you are never in the minds of the characters like in books; you are always outside looking in. This is why it is so hard to turn many books into successful films.
Make the audience ask questions: The best way to engage an audience is by making their brains work. To do this, make them ask questions. Do not over explain actions in films. Let the audience ponder why a character did an action, or why an event occurred. The master of this is Quentin Tarantino. His film Reservoir Dogs is one long set of questions, with the answers held to the end.
Action first, explain second: This is about grabbing attention. Start a scene with a person running from pursuers. We do not know who he is, or who he is running from, but the audience will want to know more. Do not be afraid to push it. I have seen scenes like this not explained for half a script and it works. This variation of the “ask question” idea above can used quite often.
Conflict! Conflict! Conflict!: Drama is conflict! Every time two or more characters interact in a scene, there needs to be conflict. A big mistake writers make is to write scenes where people always agree on everything. Boring! Even if two characters in a scene are on the same side, find a reason for conflict. Perhaps it is the methods they will use, or who is in charge. This is a good time to use one character to point out the dangers of a plan, making the audience aware of risk. Note: conflict does not mean an out and out fight, but can be anything from a firm disagreement on up.
 Show, don’t tell: Exposition is when a character relates facts to the audience through dialog. This becomes tedious, fast. Always try to limit character talking about what happened. Show it. Boring is a character describing an event, show the event. Try not to lump all the explanations of the plot in one scene, spread them out. While small amounts of exposition might be used to explain plot points (“Don’t cross the streams. That would be bad,”), when the explanations get too long it becomes an information dump. This is when you need to go back and change your approach to the scene. A good example of bad exposition is the end of Hitchcock’s Psycho, when the detective gives a two minute monolog explaining why the villain did his deeds. Another is the mind meld in Star Trek (2009), where the film stops and Leonard Nimoy gives a monolog explaining the events that preceded the movie. Even with the cool visuals, the movie grinds to a halt at that point.
An anecdote involving Humprey Bogart is a good lesson. Supposedly, while performing a scene with a lot of exposition, Bogart asked the director if he can get to camels to hump in the background, so the audience has something to watch while he spouted out the boring exposition.
Another aspect of “show, don’t tell,” is avoiding narration. Narration is normally used if the filmmaker is scared the audience will not get it. Most narration was added after the fact for this purpose, such as on Bladerunner.
Use cinematic motion: Cinematic motion is the techniques of tying individual images and sounds together to tell the audience something, without words. For example:
The scene opens showing a farm house. The house needs a paint job. In the yard is a broken swing, and a discarded doll. We see a grave stone, silhouetted in the afternoon sun. Beyond the gravestone, on the patio is a middle aged woman, thin, hair unkempt, smoking a cigarette. She looks at the swing as it barely moves in the wind.
Putting it together, you know her child died. Use this to get rid of uninteresting exposition this way. This is far better than having the woman say to her husband, “I am missing my child.” We just get it. The master of this was Fritz Lang, in his German language masterpiece M. Rent it, watch it, and learn.
Don’t Explain Everything: The actions that characters take should be enough for the audience to piece together what is happening. Do not be afraid to leave things unexplained or hinted at. This gives the audience something to discuss after the film ends. Sideways ends without an ending, and it was award nominated.
Break the rules: None of the above is a commandment from the mount, but are guidelines. Do not be afraid to break them. Narration has been used to great effect in certain cases. Tarantino and Kevin Smith’s dialog is more stageplay like, but it works. Jaws contains the single coolest breaking of the “show, don’t tell” rule, when Quint relates the story of the USS Indianapolis. This monologue is so engrossing no one in a theater breathes during it.
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As a content creator, I know piracy is rampant, and we all want to make as much profit as we can, however punishing people who buy our product, or making them pay multiple times for the same thing, is not the way. 
There is a strategy game of star ship combat called Federation Commander, set in the days of old Star Trek. I wrote a scenario for it. Even if you do not know the game, look it over. I am proud as I was told it could take a year or two to get to my submission because the company gets so many. Six days after I submitted it, it was published.