I had my first phone conversation with my daughter ever last night!
Jesse: Hello!
Alex: Hello darling! How are you?
Jesse: Bye!
Okay, not much of a conversation. But pretty exciting if it's your
first!
Writing for games, TV and movies (with forays into life and political theatre)...
I had my first phone conversation with my daughter ever last night!
Jesse: Hello!
Alex: Hello darling! How are you?
Jesse: Bye!
Okay, not much of a conversation. But pretty exciting if it's your
first!
Q. In your book, Crafty TV Writing, you mention that it is a producer's dream to have one location or standing set, for shooting. In your experience have you seen this done incorporating the outdoors? Can the outdoors be considered a standing set?Not really. While staying in one outdoor location for the whole story means you don't lose time moving the "company," shooting outdoors is problematic. Unless you are the prophet Joshua, you cannot get the sun to stand still. It is only available during the day, for example, and even during the day it persists in changing angles. That is, if the sun is not behind clouds. And it is not raining. Or snowing.
Q. In writing prose fiction, one key to vivid descriptions is specificity. So, a description of a beautiful woman might focus on her freckles or a crooked tooth or the way the muscles on her back move when she reaches up to change a lightbulb. I'm curious about doing the same thing in a script.Right. No, it does not. Unless a freckle is a story point, don't mention it. What if Rachel McAdams reads it, but doesn't have freckles, and now she doesn't want to do your script any more? That would suck.
To the extent that it's something that's just costuming or makup, it seems like good sense to do the same sort of specific descriptions in scripts (maybe the pretty girl pulls her long sleeves down so that they hide her hands). But does it make sense to describe physical characteristics if they're mostly going to be a matter of casting?
Q. When a producer asks you a writing sample, what does this mean? I never gave a good thought about it and usually I send "something" that I think it's good. But the question I always have is: how many pages?I always send a complete script. How can someone judge your writing without seeing a whole story told on screen? If it's for a TV drama, I send a TV drama script. If it's for an SF feature, I send an SF feature sample.
Q. I don't think you need to send writing samples today, but when you did, how big were your "writing samples"?I send writing samples all the time. I sent a couple of scripts to a guy yesterday.
PEACEKEEPERS... the story of a squad of Canadian soldiers in an unidentified African country. Based near a big town, they're trying to protect European and Canadian aid workers, and keep heavily armed local factions from killing each other and brutalizing the people. But our guys are not allowed to call in air strikes and blow things up. They have to use money, words and their own humanity to bring peace and order to a place where not everyone wants peace and order. They carry just enough weaponry to protect themselves -- and sometimes it's not enough. They're caught in the middle between the weak and the strong, the honest and the corrupt, local Muslims and local Christians, the West and the East, the past and the future. They're trying to understand the local people enough to help them -- without understanding them so much they forget what they stand for. One of our guys is there for idealism, one for honor, one to escape his past, one to escape his small town, one for the thrills; and all of them, men and women, are there for the brotherhood...I was getting pretty exciting about writing this up, but first I checked with my agent. Amy wrote
Unlike every American series about soldiers, this is one in which the solution to every problem isn't killing someone -- in fact that's the solution our guys are mostly forbidden to use. Which makes our guys' job all the much harder. Yet they're out there doing it in a dozen countries right now.
This wouldn't be about how they fail. It would be about how in spite of the odds -- in spite of the fact that they can't shoot -- they actually do mostly succeed at keeping peace in the town, mostly because people recognize that they're not there for gain and they won't be there forever.
Unfortunately there is a one hour drama called Peacekeepers that just got greenlit at CBC. Mario Azzopardi is directing, Paul Gross to star.And that is why you want an agent.
Q. I've posted my TV series idea online... Would you like to take a look at it?I don't generally read other people's work, unless they're friends, or someone hires me to.
Q. But I'm in [name of town], and no one will read it.Right. Because TV is a different animal from the movies. Someone can buy your spec feature script for its idea alone, and then happily have someone else rewrite it. In other words, your newbie-ness doesn't make it impossible for you to sell your script, assuming you can get people to read it. But in TV, even assuming you are clever enough to come up with a pitch-perfect TV pitch (and that is much harder than writing a sellable feature spec), they are not just looking for a pitch. They are looking for a killer spec pilot script, and an experienced writer who will turn the pilot into a series if it's greenlit.
Q. I wanted to ask at what age did you get you first job?I was a late starter. I remember seeing Day for Night in college and thinking, "If only I'd seen that when I was younger, I'd have gone into the movie business. Too late now, though."
Q. Should I leave a message, or call back?Nick Hartman asked me this question relating to getting show bibles, but it could apply to almost any communication between an unknown and a gatekeeper of some sort -- i.e. an agent, producer, production office, etc.
Q. How do I get the bible for the show I'm speccing?Depending on the show it'll be easy or tough.
Q. Are you thinking doing any kind of crafty screenwriting software?Gosh, no. I don't think I believe in screenwriting software. I don't know any pro writers who use screenwriting software. I believe in screenplay formatting software, but Final Draft is exactly what I need -- I can't think of a new feature they could give me that I'd want. They already have a ton of features I've never even tried to use.
I am sorry, that hook is lame.
I don't think so.Q. I'm posting pages from the spec pilot I've written [here]. Would you be willing to provide a link to them?This blog isn't really a forum for that. But there are a few places on the Net where screenwriters gather to critique each other's work. To that come to mind are the Zoetrope Screenplay Contest and Triggerstreet. Blog readers, know any other good ones?