Competition for FD and Screenwriter?

This very puffy Variety piece says that lots of new screenwriters are ignoring the (expensive) two top screenwriting formatting programs, Final Draft and Screenwriter, in favor of newcomers like Scripped.

Over the past few decades, Write Brothers' Movie Magic Screenwriter has been the Pepsi to Final Draft's Coke in the screenwriting software aisle. With the exception of the niche occupied by Celtx, an open-source, all-in-one screenwriting and production package, the two companies have all but dominated the field.

Recently, however, Scripts Pro, ScriptWrite, Million Dollar Screenwriting and Scripped.com have popped up. And while none appear ready to overturn the big boys anytime soon, they could develop into significant competition down the road.

Discuss...

Studio Notes on THE MAGIC FLUTE

Wolfie, baby:

I checked out your show, THE MAGIC FLUTE. First of all, the music -- terrific. I think the soundtrack is going to be a smash.

Glad to see you're getting back to comedy. I mean, I loved Don G as much as anyone, but in a recession people want to laugh. There just isn't an audience for tragedy outside of HBO.

I gotta say, though, the plot could use some strengthening. Characters, too.

So basically you've got this prince, Tamino. When we meet him he's terrified by a big serpent. Three women kill the serpent, then run off. Really? Normally wouldn't you want to introduce your hero doing something heroic? Especially since the Queen of the Night immediately selects him to go rescue her daughter Pamina.

In fact, he never does anything heroic, ever. He spends the rest of the movie either following orders (the Queen's, Sarastro's -- he obeys whoever talked to him last!), standing around stoically ignoring his girl, or defeating enemies with the magic flute. He's never in any real jeopardy. He has the magic flute, which protects him from everything. But more importantly, the supposed villain he's been sent to rescue Pamina from, Sarastro, turns out to be a philosopher who immediately says Tamino is destined to wind up with Pamina, Tamino just has to go through a formal test which he's fated to ace. So he's reactive, not proactive, and there's never any real suspense or jeopardy.

The obvious fix here is to make Sarastro not such a great guy. In a lot of fables the villain suspects he can't defeat the hero, but offers him the girl anyway, subject to completing an impossible quest. If Sarastro doesn't really want to lose Pamina, he could send Tamino to defeat some serious boss baddie, not realizing that Tamino has the magic flute. Which, obviously, shouldn't neutralize every danger or it's all too easy. So then it's a surprise to him -- and us -- when Tamino survives the test.

Would be a nice beat if Tamino, who's been dismissing Papageno all along, fails at one point and it's Papageno who saves him, Sam Gamgee-style.

I couldn't help thinking there's a lost opportunity between Sarastro and the Q of the N. She says he stole the sun from her. He says she's trying to steal the sun. She wants Pamina to kill him. They really sound like a bickering couple. What if they're exes? It would add a level to their relationship. And then, if you want, they can get together in the end, brought together by the other lovers (T/P, Papa/Papa).

Talk to Dickie Wagner, he's good with dysfunctional family relationships.

Let's talk about Papageno, the cowardly birdcatcher. He sure is fun, and you've given him a lot of story time. I know your librettist is going to play him. (Emanuel Schikaneder -- c'mon, what was his name "before"?) Wouldn't be the first time an actor gave himself all the juicy stuff to play.

But Papageno's story doesn't make much sense, either, does it? He does everything wrong. He doesn't keep his mouth shut when he's been warned to, turns down the invitation to join the secret brotherhood, does his best to womanize, and nearly kills himself for no good reason -- but he's rewarded with his perfect mate, Papagena, who promises to love him eternally -- why? What's he got to offer? Could she at least give us a sense what she sees in him? His sense of humor?

Can we maybe get a script doctor in to do a pass for the other characters? Sarastro is such a stiff.

I won't criticize Pamina. She's the whiny victim all the way through, but I realize you're writing in the 18th Century, so that will probably work for your demographic.


I'm totally loving the Q of the N. This role is sheer Oscar bait. She's such a crazy bitch but we love her. Can we see more of her?

The final battle between the Queen and Sarastro could be a lot of fun, if we have a sense Sarastro could lose. I wouldn't even mind if the lovers resolve it somehow, rather than you just giving the win to Sarastro. It really deflates the Q of the N if she's defeated in one shot. I mean, we're going to want to bring her back for the sequel, aren't we?

Hope these notes make sense. Can't wait to see how it shapes up in the next pass. I smell a hit!

Storytelling in the Game Industry: A Panel Discussion

On January 19, at McGill (Leacock 232), from 7 to 9 pm, I'm moderating a panel discussion on storytelling in the video game industry.

(Many thanks to Trevor Ponech, of the McGill Department of English, which is hosting us, and Jason Della Rocca, of the International Game Developers Association, who is organizing this with me.)

• What is great video game storytelling? How is it different from great storytelling in film and TV?

• When does storytelling come into the process of game design? Who does it? How important is it?

• How do you break into the games industry as a story teller?

Our panelists (in alphabetical order)

Mary DeMarle is the lead writer for Eidos’s new RPG, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. A former animation writer for Hanna-Barbera in Hollywood, DeMarle also created the story for Myst III and IV.

Richard Rouse III is the Narrative Director of an action/combat game at Ubisoft Montreal. He created, designed and wrote The Suffering action/horror video game franchise. Rouse has lectured about games on five continents. His Game Design: Theory & Practice is one of the most popular books on game development.

Nina L. Sund has spent the past two years writing lore and backstory for Secret World, an upcoming MMO. She began as a hardcore Anarchy Online player, moving into Funcom’s story development team. Sund also wrote dialogue for Age of Conan, trying to recreate the narrative voice of Robert E. Howard.

Stephen Wark began as a board game enthusiast, but his skill as a technial writer brought him into the game industry. Now a game designer at Ludia, Wark creates game concepts, mechanics, scripts and concepts for a range of games from casual puzzles to online education RPGs.

If you’re coming, please RSVP to our Facebook Event page. The panel is free but RSVPs are over capacity, so you'll want to be early.

Special bonus for blog readers: if you email me to say you're coming, and tell me one of your favorite blog posts from this blog, I'll reserve you a seat. Good for the first 20 readers who write in!

Probably Not in Time for Christmas, but...

Amazon.ca (NOT Amazon.com) now has copies of THE CIRCLE CAST available for order. I just got a copy here in New York, so they can ship to the States, too. Buy your teenager a copy for Imbolc!

Richard Rouse III

As you know, I'm organizing and moderating a Game Writing for Screenwriters panel on January 19th, at McGill. Here's another one of our intrepid panelists.

Richard Rouse III is a game designer and writer, currently focusing on action games. He is currently Narrative Director on an unannounced project at Ubisoft Montreal. Earlier, he wrote horror games. He was Creative Director and Writer on the hit action/horror title The Suffering and its sequel, The Suffering: Ties That Bind. Rouse has led the design on a number of other games, including Centipede 3D, Damage Incorporated, and Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis, as well as contributing to the design on Homefront, Wheelman, and Drakan: The Ancients' Gates. He was previously the Director of Game Design at Midway and the Studio Creative Director at Surreal Software. Rouse has lectured about games on five continents and is author of Game Design: Theory & Practice, which remains one of the most popular books on game development.

Read his book over the holidays, and you can pummel him with even more questions!

Another Awesome Googletool

Now that Google has scanned umpteen gazillion books into its Big Computer Brain, you can now ask it to graph how common a word or phrase has been over the past 200 years.

It's like Googlefight, but in the fourth dimension!

I mean, how awesome is that?

I have no idea what use this is, but it sure is fun.

Ubicunque Ezio, ibi Ubi

So want to work for Ubi again.

(Really, any company named via a Latin-English-English pun appeals to me at a deeply geeky level.)

Thought of the Day

A lot of sitcoms are, in fact, darker than you realize. At its core, "Two and a Half Men" is about loneliness. "The Big Ban Theory" is about alienation. "Mike & Molly" is about self-hatred. You would never know it from the shows themselves, but you do, sometimes, feel it while watching them. To laugh at these things with our mental families may allow us to cope with our own loneliness and alienation and self-hatred. It may be that the sitcom's constant avoidance of any final, dramatic catharsis is its accidental strength. If so, that would make this least lifelike form of entertainment the most comfortingly similar to real life."

"A Simple Medium," by Tom Bissell, The New Yorker, December 6.

Comedy is discomfort. It is about something bad happening to someone else.

Slapstick is comedy about physical pain and, occasionally, death. ("And now we see the importance of Not Being Seen.")

A lot of teen comedies are about the characters being embarrassed or scared.

A lot of grown-up comedies are about characters doing things for which they should be embarrassed, but aren't, so we're embarrassed for them. (E.g. the Marx Brothers, THE OFFICE, SEINFELD, ROSANNE, Mr. Bean, etc.)

I would say a lot of Woody Allen's comedy, back when he was funny, was based on frustration. The comedy in my series, NAKED JOSH, was mostly frustration. A lot of Jewish humor is based on frustration. And fear. No soup for you!

Absurdist comedy ) is really a sort of intellectual discomfort. ("We want your pollen.") Juxtapose two things that don't go together and you get absurdity. (ROMANES EUNT DOMUS!) As my six year old daughter will say, laughing, "Thaaaat's not riiiiight!"

Game Writing Panelists: Nina Sund

On January 19, I'm moderating a panel on videogame writing. It will be at McGill at 7pm; save the date. Nina Sund will be one of our panelists.

Nina Sund started in the game industry with what I'd call in a screenplay Inevitability and Surprise. She was a hardcore Anarchy Online game player, and volunteered to be part of their volunteer customer service program (ARK*). AO is a Massively Multiplayer Online game, like World of Warcraft; the ARKs help craft in-game events to bring story development and random encounters to more casual players. In other words, she was writing and implementing game story for free. After three years, Funcom asked her to come in for an interview. She paid her dues in Quality Assurance (QA, or playtesting), and then moved onto the development team for Anarchy Online. As Nina puts it:

This kind of recruitment isn't at all common in Funcom, and I have no idea how common it is in other companies, but it's happened for Anarchy Online a few times. It's an old game with an enormous wealth of information, and often, players themselves are good candidates for working on it, given they have the proper talent and skill, of course.

Since then, she has written dialogue for Age of Conan, trying to recreate the narrative voice of Robert E. Howard. For the last two years, she has written lore and backstory for an upcoming modern-day MMO.

Come see her and pester her with questions on January 19th!

*This acronym makes sense in Norwegian.

UPDATE: Check out Nina's post on How to become a content designer.

Louis B. Mayer on the Auteur Theory

"The best-selling book of all time was written by a committee, and it was called The Bible."

We Has Panelists

We've got some terrific panelists set for the game writing panel on January 19 at McGill. I'll be introducing them to you over the next little while, but in the mean time, I can tell you that we have a game designer; a narrative designer; someone who writes story for a major FPS/RPG franchise; and someone who is writing mythology ("lore") for an upcoming major MMO. Very fun. And if you are not sure what the difference is between these various flavours of game writing, better come the panel!

I'll be putting up a Facebook event page soonish, but in the mean time, save the date! Wednesday, January 19, Leacock 232 on the McGill campus.

UPDATE: If you can't make it, we're planning to tape this and podcast it, technology and participants permitting.

UPDATE: Want to know the answer to a question about game writing? Come to the event, or post your question here.

Surprise!

So Mom asks Michael Bublé if her kid can come up and sing with him, and Bublé decides to be cool about it, and then the kid sings.



What I love about this video is how long it takes Bublé to realize the kid can sing: about two seconds. (If you want to skip the preamble, start around 1:20.)

I showed YOU ARE SO UNDEAD to a cinematographer I'm working with. After literally 5 seconds, he said, "You shot this on the Red?"

I know I keep harping on how your query email has to impress inside of, literally, 3 seconds, and that just seems crazy unfair. And ditto for the maybe 5 pages someone will read of your screenplay if you're not paying for the read. But professionals can identify professional work in a tiny, tiny few seconds.

Yes, of course there are exceptions. Satyendra Nath Bose sent his paper to dozens of science journals and they all rejected him.

But then he got it to Einstein, who got it published, and further developed the Bose-Einstein condensate theory. But that only goes to suggest that the gatekeepers at the journals weren't professional enough, and that Einstein could read a physics paper like you or I would read the morning paper, and go either, "Hah! Ridiculous," or "Wow! That's so true!"

Indigènes (Days of Glory)

I watched Indigènes (Days of Glory), a feature about three Berbers who join the Free French to fight for their "fatherland," France. Although they fight very hard for the French, and die for the French, it soon becomes clear that the French don't regard them as equals. They are mistreated in all sorts of ways, making them question whether France really stands for "Liberté, Egalité et surtout Fraternité". Racist French officers didn't promote them (there was a quota), their letters to French girls were censored, they weren't given leave to go home or the same food as the white guys.

This is a beautifully made, well-written and well-acted movie. Oh, and it won Cannes, no doubt because it told the French some uncomfortable truths about themselves.

But its story starts to become not all that surprising, unless one is laboring under the delusion that the French live up to their own rhetoric. And the movie becomes a bit tiresome to watch.

Lord knows I'm not against bashing the French for being colonialists. But I think if I were trying to tell people how France abused its territorial troops, I think I'd make the story about something else. Maybe about a sergeant and a soldier who don't get along. Maybe about class differences among the recruits. Two guys in love with the same girl back home. And the guy who actually has the girl is screwing every French girl he can, while the guy who doesn't have the girl is faithful to her. Whatever. Make that racism the background to a story whose resolution isn't predictable from the beginning.

Sometimes you can reveal a truth better by letting the audience uncover it, rather than waving it in their faces. It's sometimes hard to remember that when you're stoked up about an issue. But unless the audience is already stoked up, you're going to push them away.

First Review Is In!

The first review of my novel just came in, courtesy The Toronto Star::

Montrealer Alex Epstein explores the youth of infamous Morgan, King Arthur’s half sister (and ultimately his nemesis), in The Circle Cast: The Lost Years of Morgan le Fay (Tradewind, 300 pages, $12.95, ages 13+). Shipped off for safety when her father is murdered and her mother taken by Uther Pendragon, Morgan lives in exile in Ireland. First welcomed, then enslaved, she develops her gift for sorcery wherever she is — even for a time in a small Christian community. Revenge for her father’s death is her sole desire, and to that end she turns magical knowledge, lust, love and all her abilities as a strategist of war. This has the darkness of Celtic magic — not fanciful, period romance — and a poetic terseness that suits its stern, passionate hero.

I am pretty happy with that!

UPDATE: Just spoke with the printer. Books are already on their way to stores. They should be at stores in the East by Wednesday, which means I would guess they ought to be in stores by Monday.

UPDATE: Now available at Amazon.ca.

ND

Can a writer get sued for signing an NCND (non-circumention, non-disclosure agreement) by the funder of the movie? I am 'talent', should the writer be that involved in the business of making the movie? I mean, what if the executive producer violates the NCND and gets sued, would I get sued too just because my name is on it even though it wasn't actually me who violated it?

It is not normal for writers to be asked to sign ND agreements in show business. It is normal in the game business. The unconscionable standard agreement that showbiz writers are asked to sign is called a "release form," and often they say things like "If we independently make a movie similar or identical to yours, tough luck.

If you sign a reasonable ND agreement, you can be sued if you reveal confidential information about the project to the public. Since you're the writer, the only confidential information you normally would know is how the movie turns out. If you were the writer of BASIC INSTINCT, and you got mad at the producers and started telling everyone who done it (it's not who most people think, incidentally), you could be sued. If you were a "preditor" on SURVIVOR and revealed who won, you would definitely be sued. However, if you don't know confidential information, you can't be sued because you can't reveal it. And unless the ND agreement really is unconscionable, you can't be sued for the actions of someone who is not in your control.

Even if the producer violates it, I can't be sued? The writer is 'talent' and is apart from the business side of it all, so if the funder decides to sue production company, I can't be included in the lawsuit? Am I right about that?

You CAN be sued for almost anything. Whether you WILL be sued, or whether you can get the suit thrown out as frivolous, is a more important question. But generally, you should not be sued for things you did not do. You would presumably have a separate ND agreement from the one your producer is signatory to.

Caveat: it all depends on the actual wording of the contract you signed; and I am not a lawyer and this does not constitute legal advice. Don't sign anything unless you've had a legal expert look at it.

CFC Film Program

CANADIAN FILM CENTRE – CALL FOR APPLICANTS!

The Canadian Film Centre is looking for applicants for one of its training programs: the Cineplex Entertainment Film Program.

APPLICATION DEADLINE | JANUARY 21, 2011

PRODUCERS – EDITORS – WRITERS – DIRECTORS

In this five-and-a-half month program, directors, producers, writers and editors will be completely immersed in the art and business of dramatic filmmaking. Filmmakers develop their technical, collaborative and business skills, while developing project slates and refining their artistic expression in an intensely demanding, creative and professional environment.

Apply today.

Flash Mobs...

I'm not sure if this is really a flash mob in the traditional John Brunner sense -- all the participants are coming from the same place. But I love this as theatre. It is of course a brilliant piece of music, and the singers are superb. But making it a flash mob takes it to people who would never go see it if it was being performed in a church, with better acoustics, and the chorus wearing nice clothes. The singing is coming from the audience, rather than being separated. It puts the audience in the ritual space.

This is what the Protestants were getting at when they destroyed all those rood screens separating the priest from the congregation. They wanted to be part of the magic.

I love that flash mobs are here to stay. And I am still waiting to be in a crowded fire so I can shout "Theater! Theater!"

Busting a Cap

The other day, a few story missions short of the FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS final mission, I was surprised to discover I’ve reached the level cap. Quests no longer award experience and the skills that go with it.

I’ve never reached a level cap before. In most of the games I’ve played, you really have to play an exhaustive number of side quests or generally run around killing random critters for hours to max out your character.

Sure, I can still get achievements and Gamerscore points. I can accumulate in-game money. But I was shocked to discover how much less fun the game is when I don’t get XP for missions. It feels like the wind is out of the game’s sails. It’s funny. I wouldn’t have said I was playing F:NV in order to level up my nameless courier character. I would have thought I’m playing it to run around a beautiful and witty fictional world, and follow the story, and of course to massacre bad guys. (It is a first person shooter.)

But take away the little reward of finishing a quest and getting some XP and getting to parcel out the skill points, and suddenly I’m no longer staying up till two in the morning. I actually did not bother to play the game today.

Why is that?

And there’s the whole Xbox Gamerscore phenomenon. I like getting achievements. I like seeing my Gamerscore point total go up. Like Hunter, it hardly seems worth playing a game on the PS3: no cumulative points for achievements, only “trophies.”

None of this makes rational sense. When I first heard about Gamerscore points I had to keep asking Hunter: what can you actually do with them? Nothing? Then who cares?

But later on, he asked me to play Mass Effect on his profile. Mass Effect has a clever system where each time you play the game, your next incarnation of the main character gets some goodies from the previous incarnation. I was playing as an Adept, so his next guy would start out with an extra biotic superpower. I agreed, but only if he would play another game on my profile. I didn’t want to lose the achievements and points on my profile.

It’s not currency. You can’t spend it. Who cares? Well, I do, apparently. It must be hardwired pretty deeply, because for sure my rational brain can’t explain the attraction.

Somewhere deep down, I just like to collect points.

Why?

UPDATE: In the shower, it occurred to me that what I'm feeling is unappreciated. I do all this questing, and I don't get no love? The Gamerscore points correlate, in some abstract way, with society's approval. Humanity being a social animal, it makes sense we're hardwired to seek the approval of the tribe. The leveling up corresponds to status within society. Because it's hardwired, it doesn't actually have to make sense, it just has to tickle that particular nerve.

UPDATE: Incidentally, F:NV is an incredibly buggy game. It freezes constantly. Sometimes your permanent companions just disappear. Some story forks dead end, because the programming glitches and you can't complete your missions. In fact, I couldn't complete the game at all because of an unfixed "known bug": if you do too many chores for Mr. House or Yes Man, and then side with the NCR, your entire game playthrough is permanently doomed.

I would not recommend this game until they release a second patch and fix the programming. Boo, Bethesda.

The Rising Cost of Theatre Tickets

Americans have put up with a lot of security theatre in airports over the past decade. But theatre isn't free. According to a Cornell study, 520 people die every year because they drive so they don't have to have their junk groped.

The US government's reaction to 9/11 has never been rational. Bruce Schneier has been writing about this for some time. It is not a numbers-based approach. It is a story-based approach. Each time we hear a story about terrorists, we devise a security measure to respond to it.

A short history of airport security: We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn’t have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces — the level of magical thinking here is amazing — and they’re going to do something else.

This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.

It’s not even a fair game. It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater.

Understanding how stories work also means understanding where they don't work. Sitting around the campfire talking about how Og killed the tiger helps us all survive the next tiger. But not if the tiger is listening to the story.

I think that human beings are hardwired to understand the world through stories, just as we're hardwired to learn language. I think there is a part of our brain architecture that enables us to make stories out of what happens in the world.

But not everything should be boiled down into a story. What makes a story compelling does not also make it true. But we have a tendency as a species to prefer a compelling story to a boring (or frustrating, or fearsome) truth.

Stories are wonderful. They help us understand the world. You watch a movie about a relationship and maybe you take away an insight about your own relationship. But they are not a substitute for rational thought.

A Day in the Life vs. A Life in a Day

Preparing for a meeting, Lisa came up with an interesting thought.

A TV show is, fundamentally, about the sort of things that happen to your characters every day. They may be extraordinary things, but then your characters are people to whom extraordinary things happen every day.

A movie is, fundamentally, about the most remarkable time in the character's life. The turning point, the moment they change, the time they face their greatest challenge.

When you're trying to figure out if your idea is a movie or a TV show, these criteria might be helpful.

An opportunity ...

An opportunity is a problem to which you have applied enough imagination.

Just sayin.

O Hive Mind, Do You Like Your Prius?

We are very close to buying a Prius. We drove a nice 2008 just now.

But the acceleration is, well, not so much.

If you drive a Prius: do you have any problems merging on to the freeway / passing cars / going up hills? Please let me know!

I Know What They're Thinking

So, they want to remake BUFFY: THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, without input from Joss Whedon.

I think I know what they're thinking. "Let's dumb this idea down, so that more people can enjoy it." Joss is not really a mainstream taste. The original movie, which he wrote, was a niche success. The series went on for seven seasons but it was never a monster hit. Screw the hardcore fans, how many of them are there? Let's get rid of the creator, with all his difficult, complex ideas. They make the audience's brain hurt. Oh, and we have to hire a good-looking chick writer. Someone who can really reintroduce us to Buffy. Make her more approachable. Less dark. More like CHARMED.

And when I say, "hire a chick writer," let me clarify that I'm not against them hiring a woman. They could have hired Marti Noxon. But reading failed actress/professional hottie-turned-unproduced-screenwriter Whit Anderson going on about how she's going to do what Chris Nolan did for the Batman reboot, my gut tells me that they were looking for a chick writer to "bring something new to the franchise."

I tend to think it will flop badly. Thas all the earmarks of a cheesy, misconceived notion. Just for starters, how do you nail Buffyspeak fifteen years later, make it seem contemporary, and not sound like you're a bad mimic?

Joss's response is priceless:

This is a sad, sad reflection on our times, when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths — just because they can’t think of an original idea of their own, like I did with my Avengers idea that I made up myself.

Obviously I have strong, mixed emotions about something like this. My first reaction upon hearing who was writing it was, “Whit Stillman AND Wes Anderson? This is gonna be the most sardonically adorable movie EVER.” Apparently I was misinformed. Then I thought, “I’ll make a mint! This is worth more than all my Toy Story residuals combined!” Apparently I am seldom informed of anything. And possibly a little slow. But seriously, are vampires even popular any more?

I always hoped that Buffy would live on even after my death. But, you know, AFTER…

In Camera to Camera

Q. I was wondering, five years later: is the "writing room" mentality still dead in Canada? Or has it picked up any steam since you last discussed it in your book?

I would say it has largely taken over. I can't think offhand of any prime time dramas or comedies that are still going with the old, bad system of one head writer and a lot of free lancers. So that's a bit of cheery news.

Outstanding Award for Writing

Congratulations to Lisa for winning the Outstanding Award for Writing for YOU ARE SO UNDEAD at the Vampire Film Festival in New Orleans!

The Game Biz

I spent Monday and Tuesday at the Montreal International Game Summit. It was fascinating. The game industry is the kid sister of the motion picture industry. But my, she has grown up. Commercial computer games have only existed since the mid '70's, but they're a much, much bigger business than showbiz.

For example, HALO: REACH sold $350,000,000 in its first 16 days of release. The latest CALL OF DUTY made $242 million in its opening weekend worldwide. The game industry grosses $50 billion a year.

That much, I knew. I also knew that Montreal is now an international hub of game design and production. Ubisoft Montreal has grown from 1000 employees to 2300 in the past five years. The Canada Media Fund has been pushing investment in digital media. Quebec has any number of CEGEPs and universities where you can study game design, game programming, art for games, etc. Warner Bros opened a studio in Montreal this year. I talked to an exec producer from Funcom who's just moved here from Oslo -- along with the whole Oslo operation.

Game production is truly international. The film industry is LA plus the various national industries. Peter Jackson may shoot in New Zealand, but his films are funded in LA. France makes movies, but almost all the tickets are sold in France; likewise Germany, India, etc.

But games are made all over the place, and then "localized." It helps that they're animated, so by definition, they're all dubbed. Games are made wherever the talent can be found, and the funding, and government support. (Quebec has a 37.5% tax credit for labour, but I heard one speaker say you can get up to an 80% tax credit for R&D. 80%! Calice!) And people move around. It's not at all uncommon to hear someone say they got a job offer to work in China, or they flew in from North Carolina, or they spent five years in Sydney.

The game industry is much more seriously corporate. it comes out of the software industry. In the game industry, people actually study the art of management. At an IGDA roundtable I heard people discussing the merits of "scrum management." Scrum is a reaction to the "waterfall" management people tried in the beginning of software development: define the objective, go write the code. "Waterfall" is what we do in showbiz: write the script, hire the staff, go shoot it, edit it, release. In software development, it turns out to work better if you prototype bits of your game, test them out, refine the software, test it some more, etc. It's called "iterative" or "agile" management. Scrum is a style where the whole team has regular meetings where everyone reports in what they've done. It gives a feeling of being on a team rather than in an army. Game companies send their managers off to learn how to do it.

There's a lot of training in the game biz. Showbiz folk rarely get any training once they're out of film school. We work on the apprenticeship system. Work as a p.a. until you can get a job as a production coordinator. Work as a coordinator until you can be a line producer.

I was impressed to see how much of the MIGS was actually people attending seminars. If you go to Banff, the seminars are packed, but so are the hallways. As many people are there to schmooze as to go hear people talk. At MIGS, the corridors were empty during sessions. They had professors there to talk about the latest in psychophysiological feedback studies, and game designers there to do post-mortems on their latest project.

Both of those were fascinating. Prof. Veronica Zammitto's research involves hooking gamers up to various sensors that track (a) eye movements (b) galvanic skin response and (c) smile and frown muscles. Eye movements reveal where the gamer is looking. In the case of an NBA sports game, when are they looking at their player? The player they want to pass to? Other players? Their coach? The other team's coach? The crowd? The electronic advertising banner on the side of the court? (You bet they sell ad space there.)

Galvanic skin response shows, millisecond to millisecond, how excited the gamer is. Tiny variations in the smile and frown responses show when the gamer is feeling happy or not-happy. Put it all together, and you can track, with extreme precision, whether a gamer is excited, frustrated, bored or just having fun. If part of the game is slow, you'll know. If part of the game is boring, you'll know.

I'd like to see someone apply this technology to screening films before release. We're still giving the preview audience little cards to fill out about what they think they liked and what they think they didn't like. Imagine being able to track exactly where the audience is looking, and when they're thrilled or when they're scared. That might clear up the conversation between studio execs and directors about what parts of the movie are sagging (though the fix, as always, might not be in trimming the scene that's sagging).

Post-mortems are a regular thing in the game biz. I've been to a couple. Game designers come before an audience of a couple hundred of their peers and talk about how the production of their latest game went. What were they trying to accomplish? How well did they succeed? What went wrong? What would they do better next time?

It's hard to imagine a film producer talking to a bunch of film producers, directors and techs about what went wrong or right on their movie. Partly that's because they have less control, and it might come out sounding like they were blaming the director or actor or studio. Partly because games attract analytical people. Gamers are naturally analytical. They have to solve problems in order to win games. Many game producers are former programmers. The head of BioWare, Yannick Roy, for example, is a former programmer. Programmers are extremely analytical people.

(And here I'd like to plug Jill Golick's Writers Watching TV group in Toronto, for doing the same thing for TV writers: post-partum analysis of what went wrong and what went right.)

Game production is still a sausagefest. 97% of teens may call themselves gamers of one kind or another, and gamers overall are 40% female, but the game industry looks to be about 90-95% male, most of them guys in their 20s and 30s. (If you are a gal, you'll have a huge leg up in the biz.) Oddly, aside from the facial hair, the game industry is not a geekfest. People are too serious about what they're doing to give off a geek vibe. They really want to design great games / write beautiful code / create compelling characters and worlds. There is as much passion for games in the game biz as there is passion for movies in the movie biz.

Games are still a new business. There was a lot of talk of "indie" vs. "commercial" games, much as in showbiz. But games are still in their Ediacaran fauna period. There are critters walking around with seven feet and fourteen eyes. There's a lot of room for exploration of the genre.

Fascinating, Captain.

(Incidentally, Jason Della Rocca of the IGDA and I are organizing a panel on game writing at McGill on January 19th. If there's any territory you'd like us to cover, please let me know, as we're still working on our list of panelists.)

Fredericton?

If you happen to be in Fredericton, NB tonight, my short film, YOU ARE SO UNDEAD is playing at the midnight (well, 11:45 pm) screening of shorts -- "B Movies, Bad Behavior and Blood" at Tilley Hall on the UNB campus.

No Submissions?

Q. I recently finished a film and I'm ready to put it out there. As it is a very specific niche film, I've done some research and I think there's a particular distributor that can best handle a project like this. I've acquired the contact information for their director of acquisitions and I'm ready to try and make contact.

The only problem is, reading through the distribution site's 'terms of use', it looks like they have a policy about not accepting outside materials (for fear of litigation for stealing ideas). I don't know if this is strictly for web submissions, or if it's the company rule throughout. Is this common? If I send an email should I not include any description for fear they'll simply delete it? How do I get them to look at my product if they're specifically saying the don't want a submission?

Generally companies that have policies about submissions mean they don't want you to wrap up your script or movie and send it to them. They don't mean you can't query them about submitting your script or movie. They are, after all, in the business of buying / optioning / licensing / repping scripts or movies.

You can't copyright an idea, only the execution of an idea. Therefore they can freely read your query (which is only long enough to contain an idea); they just don't want you to send them your script or movie (which is the execution of your idea).

Of course if you're unsure, you can always call them. I realize this is a shocking notion these days, but your phone can do so much more than text, give directions, and play music. You can actually use it to talk with your voice to another human being.

Unleashed

Hunter and I were watching the trailer for the STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED II game. "That looks cool," he said. "And I know it's going to be a terrible game. It's going to have no story and all kinds of gameplay issues. Just like all the other ones*. And I'm going to buy it anyway. Because it looks cool."

In other news, if you want to see how dialogue and story really take the game play experience up a notch, check out FABLE III.




*KOTOR excepted.

It's the little things...

I'm definitely digging the bullet time in Fable III -- adds that heroic movie feel to the sword play...

Not the Pinnacle of My Existence

If I may grouch a bit about doubleplusungood programming in games ... MASS EFFECT was telling me that my Pinnacle Station downloadable content is corrupt and has to be deleted. Then when it's deleted, it tells me I can't play my game without it. I need to download it again. Then when I download it again, it only works when I'm signed into Xbox LIVe.

My Xbox LIVE connection is flakey. Unclear why. I thought it was an ethernet jack problem. (Q. How many programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A. That's a hardware problem.) But it wasn't, because if I use a workaround to connect my Xbox to Xbox LIVE through my computer via Ethernet cable, rather than directly to the router, it works fine, if slowly.

Point being, I can't play my game.

Here's why this is stupid: at no point has my character gone to Pinnacle Station. Pinnacle Station is utterly irrelevant to the game. If the game were cleverly programmed to take into account the possibility of corrupt content and flakey Xbox LIVE connections, it would simply wait to see if you tried to fly to Pinnacle Station, and then tell you to sod off. Instead of invalidating my ten hours of gameplay, which I can't access now.

But ultimately, I find out what I suspected all along: this is some idiotic evil Microsoft problem.

You see, this is not my original Xbox. It's a refurbished Xbox after the first one died under warranty.

It turns out that you can't use your downloadable content from your original Xbox. Not unless you manually transfer the DLC licenses.

WTF? The content is all on your hard drive, not the Xbox. Why should it matter what Xbox your content is on? It should only matter what hard drive it's on. I suppose this is some arcane way of making sure you can't pirate free DLC.

Why would you do that? Why do I feel like an abused wife every time I use a Microsoft product?

UPDATE: Good technical point, Greylocks. But then why doesn't MS transfer the DLC licenses automatically when they swap the consoles? Rather than requiring the owner to figure out what has gone wrong with his DLC when his game doesn't work? If I migrate from one Mac to another, iTunes simply says, "Hey, this is a new Mac, do you want me to transfer your iTunes account?"

La Hacienda

Some friends of mine are throwing an "industry social" housewarming / cinq à sept at their new sound studio, La Hacienda, tomorrow night. If you're in Montreal tomorrow night, swing on by. I'm going to try to come, if I can trust Child One to keep an eye on Child Two while Lisa is in Nawlins for the Vampire Film Festival.

Hart Hanson in Toronto

AN EVENING WITH HART HANSON, CREATOR OF BONES

Monday November 8th, 2010, at the Varsity Theatre, Toronto, the Canadian writer and creator will be discussing BONES and working in the US. Film critic Richard Crouse will moderate.

Doors open at 6:30PM. 7:00PM screening of an episode of BONES. Q&A to follow.

Wow, it's like an evening of Writers Watching TV, but with a budget!

UPDATED: This event does not require tickets. It is first come, first served, and has moved next door to the Price Family Cinema. Thanks to reader Scott for the info.

Who's Going to MIGS?

I'm going to the Montreal International Game Summit. If any of you Fearless Readers are coming, too, give me a shout and let's have a coffee.

Incidentally, if you're a WGC member, you can get a discounted rate -- log in to the WGC site and check out the news feed for the code.

Brevity is the Soul of Wit

If you're a student in the UK, the National Student Film Association, would like you to submit your short film script (up to 5 pages) to the National Student Screenwriting Competition. The competition is free. Deadline is the 7th November 2010.

I've juried short films, and the one thing they had in common is they were all too long. Five pages is just about perfect. Who doesn't have five minutes to watch a short?

In Appreciation of Jenny Schechter

We've been watching THE L WORD, Season 4, after a long hiatus -- we didn't feel like watching Dana's breast cancer spiral in Season 3, so that derailed our watching the show a few years back. I continue to be amazed at the high points of the writing. When THE L WORD is good, it's as good as anything on TV. I think part of the secret is that it has a core audience that can be counted on to watch it no matter what -- and that leaves the writers free to jettison any requirements of "likability" and just make their characters as compelling and human as they can.

Some of the characters are enormously likable. And then there's Jenny Schechter. Jenny is a narcissistic personality verging on a psychopath.

/* SEASON 4 SPOILERS */

In Season 4, Jenny reacts badly to a bad book review, and, seeking revenge, concocts a plot that involves adopting a sick dog from an animal shelter so she can go to a vet to put him down , in order to seduce her reviewer's girlfriend, solely in order to prove a point.

Jenny is a dog-murderer.

Jenny is insane. But she is insane in a very human way. She is one of those people who is never, ever wrong, and it is always someone else's fault.

Jenny Schechter is one of the best villains on TV. None of us is very likely to meet Tony Soprano. But Jenny? I know Jenny Schecter. I have worked with Jenny Schechter.

The show isn't perfect. When the writing is bad, there are misfires. There is a tendency to present LA, outside of the lesbian circle, as if it's small-town Texas. Kit goes to an abortion clinic that turns out to be a Christian adoption clinic -- as if anyone in the 213/323/310 would have trouble finding Planned Parenthood. The girls go to Tina's party, and Tina's straight showbiz friends don't know what to say to them, and say stupid homo-uncomfortable things to them -- as if showbiz people don't already know a slew of gay and lesbian people. For heaven's sake, when Marlene Dietrich was dating a woman, everyone at the Brown Derby knew it. ("Women make better lovers," she said, "but you can't live with'em.") Tina's showbiz friends would be swarming around Bette asking her for advice on what art to buy.

But when it is good, it is very, very good. Hats off to THE L WORD.

MIGS

If you're a WGC member planning to go to the Montreal International Game Summit next month, we have an association discount ($695 instead of $795). The code should be going up on the WGC website shortly, or if you're a Quebec member, email me.

Top List

For some reason, Zagat, the user-generated restaurant guide, has waded into the movies. Here's their list of the best movies of all time, in one handy press release.

Of course, the IMDB already rates and ranks movies, for free. And it's searchable, while a Zagat book is only leaf-through-able. I guess the idea is you can give a Zagat book as a present, where you can't wrap up the IMDb and give it to your niece.

He's My Agent (slap!) He's My Producer! (slap!) He's My Agent!

Q. I've been contacted by an agent in Agoura Hills in response to a script query letter that I sent and I'm pleased as usual, but this is the first time an agent has responded with a 2-year exclusive producer agreement instead of the standard submission release form. This agent operates as a producer and lit manager, but I don't know if contracts like this are industry standard. Do you have any experience with a situation like this? I'm still trying to break through, so I'm open to trying different avenues as long as I'm nit abused or cheated in the process.

First of all, Agoura Hills? Bzzzt. No.

There's some confusion of terms here. "Agent" is a job that is highly regulated by California law. Agents cannot produce. There would be too much conflict of interest. The producer's goal is to pay you as little as possible. The agent's goal is to get you paid as much as possible.

Moreover, a typical deal with a producer covers only one script. An agent is supposed to represent all your material, and also find you jobs.

Managers are unregulated, and can produce. There are major players who are manager/producers. However, if you are managed by, say, Echo Lake, you also have an agent, not at Echo Lake, who will be the person negotiating on your behalf. In fact, by law, technically, managers can't negotiate your deal, although practically, they discuss it a lot. You must be represented by an agent or a lawyer; your manager is only supposed to set up the deal.

Incidentally, if someone comes along claiming to be a producer, check out their credits on the IMDb. If they haven't produced a movie -- not Associate Produced, not Co-Produced -- then they're an aspiring producer. I tend to think there should only be one aspiring person in any one deal, if you want your picture to actually get made.

I don't think your first representative should be a producer. I would try to find a real agent first.

YASU Interview

Phil Ferrière saw YOU ARE SO UNDEAD at Screamfest, and since I couldn't make it to the Q&A, sent me his Q&A via email. The interview is up on his cleverly title blog, Not For Us At This Time.

A Real Screenwriting Competition Believer

One Friend of the Blog is a strong believer in screenplay competitions, has participated in many and won / placed / shown repeatedly. As you know, I don't believe in screenplay competitions, except for the network fellowships and the Nicholls. So I asked him what he gets out of them.

Screenplay competitions help me in four ways.

1) They impose a motivational deadline on my writing. And if I miss a deadline, no producer's gonna fire me and/or come after me because I've been found in breach of contract.

2) If I place or win, they provide validation. Some argue it's validation of a lesser kind than finding a producer willing to purchase your work or hire you on assignment. I'm not entirely convinced that's true. I think we can all agree that any low-level producer/creative exec with a modicum of business sense and a strong desire to climb up the Hollywood ladder will shy away from material that isn't likely to be easily marketable or won't get teenagers to giddily hand out their parents hard-earned money over two or three weekends. If you've been to the movies lately, you'll know that financial success and quality don't correlate. So, kudos to the screenplay contests that purposely reward financially doomed projects.

3) I can get notes on my work at a discounted rate. Granted, since you do not control who reads or judges your work, sometimes you receive inane notes from readers who are clearly less experienced than you are. Oftentimes though, well-respected screenplay contests do provide useful feedback notes. I would even argue that there's still more value in receiving notes from newbie readers than the classic "not for us at this time" (a.k.a. the title of my newborn blog) you get from producers who say they read your work. At least ridiculous notes you can laugh at and choose to ignore. A generic PASS letter from an established producer will only leave you confused and wondering.

4) If, like me, you're still at a stage of your career where your best marketing tool remains the (infamous?) query letter, a long list of placement and wins provides for a dense, awe-inspiring paragraph in the middle of your one-pager.

I'm curious to hear why you're down on contests in general EXCEPT the Nicholls. If you've read the winners of the Nicholl Fellowships, you know that they're often heavy dramas, war movies, period pieces, westerns - in other words - material that is highly unlikely to be produced. I got more requests for my work by making the quarter-finals of the Nicholl Fellowships than all my other win and placements COMBINED, but the vast majority of those requests came from managers and agents who aren't established yet. My impression is that most of them haven't understood yet that the reason why you did well in the competition is NOT because you've written the most marketable script ever. So why aren't you also down on the Nicholls, the Holy Grail of screenwriting competitions we all aspire to win, but a contest that does not even provide feedback? And yes, I know of a few notable exceptions (Allison Anders, Ehren Kruger...) who managed a post-Nicholl Fellowships career.

As you say, making the quarter-finals of the Nicholls got you real attention. Imagine what winning it gets you?

There are a slew of screenplay competitions out there. I can't help thinking that most of them are money farms for their owners. Say it costs fifty bucks to enter. I can probably get a recent college student to give notes for thirty bucks. Or free, if I can find one to intern. Hey, I just made twenty bucks? Now all I have to do is get a couple thousand people to submit, and I've got $40,000. Pay out $7500 in prizes, and I've made my nut for the next six months, with almost no effort except putting up a website and sending out some publicity.

That's why there are so many screenplay competitions, I feel. And if there are 2000 entrants, how many quarter-finalists are there? How many finalists?

Ooh, what if I can get 10,000 entrants? I've made over $350,000! Can anyone out there tell me how many entrants these screenwriting competitions get, or what percentage of their fees go to awards?

(Why do I keep running down competitions! I should open one! Ah, well, too late now.)

How does an agent know that a screenplay that gets into the finals is a truly commercial script with a great hook? As opposed to a "good" script, whatever that means?

The problem with screenplay competitions is that the economics means that the people evaluating your scripts are probably kids right out of Harvard or USC, who think they know everything, and don't. Industry veterans don't read scripts for Scriptapalooza, so far as I know; unless, like this notorious competition reader, they don't have to do notes, and they can knock off 75 scripts in 3 hours.

In the real world, pros read scripts because they are looking to make money from selling them (agents) or producing them (producers). And if they like something, they option it. That's the real prize. Sending a query email to an agent or producer is free, and if they like your hook, they will read your script for free too.

I take your point about cheap critiques. The problem is, you get what you pay for. You're getting a critique from someone who just started reading scripts and has no idea what gets a movie made except what she sees in the theaters. They'll tell you something they read in Syd Field, or possibly even Alex Epstein. But do they know what they're talking about?

You'll get far, far better feedback by telling your story out loud to someone, anyone, off the top of your head. If they stick with you to the end, you've made the quarter finals. If they say they would totally pay money to see that on a screen, you're in the finals.

The Nicholls is different because it's run by the Academy and people take it seriously. I bet the readers are professionals. The network fellowships, Sundance, etc., are different because you don't get a prize, you get a job, and the people reading you are professionals.

UPDATE: As Tommy points out in the comments, there are various goodies that Telefilm Canada hands out that are based on your screenwriting, and obviously those are worth competing for -- e.g. the currently defunct Writers First and Feature It! programs, the CFC, Screenwriter's Bootcamp, NSI and so forth. There's a world of difference between culture grants -- where a taxpayer-funded cultural agency already has a big basket of goodies and they hire professionals to decide whom to hand them to, and there is no fee to enter -- versus screenwriting competitions, where all the money is coming from the fees, and the ultimate objective for the competition is either profit or brand publicity.

Toronto Shore

My dear friend JC facebooks:

York University is presenting an evening with David Shore – Executive Producer/Creator of the hit TV series House, M.D., on Monday November 8. There will be a moderated talk followed by a Q and A. Everyone is welcome.

And in other cheery news...

... I just got an email from a publishing house in Paris asking about French rights for THE CIRCLE CAST. Now that is a nice way to start your morning...

Is Megan Aidan?

Lisa and I watched the MAD MEN finale last night. Quite an episode.

/* SPOILERS */
/* SPOILERS */
/* SPOILERS */

Lisa and I had an interesting conversation this morning about where the show is going to take Megan. Lisa interpreted the conversation with Betty Draper ("so you'll move again") to reflect back on Don. No marriage is perfect, and he'll pick this one apart, too.

But Lisa is a fretter, while I'm an optimist. I interpreted Don's comment to be a criticism, because Betty is a perfectionist control freak who'll never be happy. Don seems to have made the decision to finally be happy -- I think this episode is the first time I've ever actually seen him happy.

Of course TV shows rely on conflict, and characters not changing, so Lisa's probably right.

But that raises the Aidan issue. Aidan Shaw, you'll recall, was John Corbett's character on SEX AND THE CITY. He was pretty much Mr. Perfect. Low-key, loving, available, and he's a carpenter in New York. (Non-New Yorkers: it is almost impossible to find a carpenter in New York, let alone a craftsman. A carpenter in New York will never, ever, ever be out of work. Ever.)

So when Carrie dumped him, for me, some of the wind went out of the show. I stopped believing that Carrie Bradshaw was seriously looking for someone to be with, and it became apparent that what she really wanted was to keep dating.

And again, of course that's an artifact of it being a TV show, because the show is about Carrie wearing fabulous clothes and dating. It would have taken major lifting to morph the show into an equally satisfactory show about a writer in New York with a happy marriage. The show was never made for my demographic, and it's been hugely successful.

But creatively, when you create a Megan or an Aidan, you've created a challenge, I think. It never bothered me when Don cheated on Betty. First of all because I met the mistress before I met Betty -- she's the last character to show up in the pilot. And because Don's relationship with Betty is so shallow. For him, she's someone to raise the kids, and for her, he's someone to pay for the house. There are issues with all of Don's lovers. Even Faye, Ms. Almost Right, can't deal with kids, and that's a dealbreaker for Don, who lost his parents.

But Megan is pretty much perfect. Nurturing, loving, low-key ("It's just a milkshake"), smart, sexually liberated, and ambitious. (And played by the utterly adorable Jessica Paré, about whom you will, God and Telefilm willing, be reading more in these pages anon.)

So unless Season 5 is going to be about Don having a happy home life -- and what are the odds of that -- what does the show do? Joss Whedon would probably kill her, but I don't think this is that kind of show. Or Don starts to chafe at the bonds of happiness. But the price of that is we stop believing that he really wants to be happy.

The third way would be to slowly reveal that Megan's not so perfect after all. After all, when a girl throws herself at you, odds are there are going to be some surprises along the way. She could be bipolar. Or just plain nuts. Then we get to see something we've never seen in Don before: trying to hold onto a relationship that's falling apart for reasons that, for once, aren't his fault.

That's the way I'd go. But I'm an optimist.

Meanwhile, what to make of Matthew Weiner's portrayal of Betty Draper? A few months ago I began to feel that Betty is a portrayal of Weiner's mother. This is not based on any interviews or facts, it was just starting to get so intimately harsh, the way when you see a really harsh portayal of the Catholic church you know the writer must have been an altar boy. But then I found out that that creepy neighbor kid, Glen Bishop, is played by Marten Weiner, Matthew Weiner's son. Ooooohkay. I wonder where that portrayal came from.

Of course it could all just come out of Matthew Weiner's head. But creativity doesn't come from nowhere. Almost all of Lisa's main characters are trying to get over something they can't get over. A lot of my characters are trying to find a faith they can believe in.

What do you think?

Front and Back Cover!

We're revising the back cover copy to read:

The sorceress Morgan le Fay comes of age in a time when legends are born. After Uter Penndragon murders her father, Morgan is exiled to Ireland, where only her thirst for vengeance gives her the strength to survive. Secretly, she learns magic. But when she finds passion with a handsome young chieftain, she must choose between love and revenge.

Acting Out

Q. Should there be visible act outs in a feature script?

No. Only TV scripts have actual act outs. TV has real acts, broken up by commercials. Features only have nominal acts -- they're something for writers and development executives to talk about, but where the act ends is often arguable. Moreover "three act" screenplays often really have four acts, some screenplays seem to have seven or more, and many perfectly good movies don't really have meaningful acts.

Often when people talk about three act screenplays, they are talking about a 120 page beast where the first quarter is act one, the last quarter is act three, and the middle is about 60 pages. But of course there is some sort of turning point or flex point in the middle of act two. So arguably that is four act structure, except that messes up the nice correlation of act one with "beginning," act two with "middle" and act three with "end."

Meanwhile a movie like THE INCREDIBLES really breaks down much more neatly into seven acts than three. And you could probably find stories that really work in five acts. I don't think it's meaningful to talk about THE DARK KNIGHT in terms of three acts; there are clearly more than four identifiable sections.

And what about HARD DAYS NIGHT? And FORREST GUMP? What is even the point of talking about these movies in terms of three acts? Sure, you can make claims for the acts starting at various points, but how does that help you understand them?

How many acts does MEMENTO have? Isn't each progressive flashback essentially an act?

This is why I don't really hold with three act structure. I think it's more important to tell your story out loud and get rid of any parts that are boring. While TV really does need to have a certain number of acts -- ask your broadcaster how many -- movies don't.

YASU at Screamfest

Just a little reminder that our short YOU ARE SO UNDEAD is playing tonight at Screamfest LA at Grauman's Chinese during the shorts program, 7:30 to 9. Hope you like it!

Audience

Q. I recently pitched a pilot about a father and son serving inside an American humanitarian rescue & relief team. The son is more right-wing than his father, and resents his dad for pulling strings to get him transferred out of the Army and onto the team against his will.

People bumped on that. But don’t almost all leads in one-hour dramas find themselves in transition / in a situation they no longer want to be in? Whether it’s the onset of cancer (Breaking Bad, the Big C), being under investigation (The Shield), or a Marshall being transferred out of sexy Miami to backwoods county Tennessee ( Justified), isn’t it the whole point to start off with your character in a place that he doesn’t want to be?

Sure. The problem isn't the son's not wanting to be there. The problem is he doesn't want to be doing something we consider a Good Thing. That makes him a bit of a prick. (Most of us don't devote our lives to other people, but TV is more sentimental.)

On pay cable, your main character can be a prick (CALL ME FITZ, SOPRANOS) or a psychopath (DEXTER, arguably BREAKING BAD). But on broadcast, he can only pretend to be a bastard (LIE TO ME, HOUSE) but is really secretly A Good Guy.

Broadcast can show horrible things. But the good guys have to be Good Guys, and we have to want to wholeheartedly root for them. So you can have torture porn shows like CRIMINAL MINDS, but the cops are pure and good. Meanwhile on pay cable your main character has to be messed up in some way, and preferably despicable.

Needless to say the moral compartmentalization of the TV market is unfortunate for writers and viewers alike, because pay cable is also the natural home of serial narrative. I've got a bunch of serial narrative ideas, but unfortunately their protagonists have some good qualities. Meanwhile when I come up with procedurals, the main character is sometimes a bit of a prick. Neither of these combinations seems to work. It's either despicable people in serial narrative, or pure people in procedurals.

I'm exaggerating to make a point, of course. But not as much as you might think.

Antidotes to Dreams

A couple of interesting comments on this thread in Reddit, for those of you wondering whether to move to LA or not:

Screenwriter or other writers struggling in LA/NYC (self.Screenwriting)

submitted 1 day ago by dabeetrus

I was just wondering what it's like being a struggling writer in LA. What's the day to day life like? How do you make ends meet, do you wait tables at night and write during the day? I'm not asking specifically for people who have sold scripts, but anyone who is really struggling to find work in the business, or has already.

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kleinbl00 7 points 1 day ago[-]

I've optioned two scripts. I've made enough money at it to be ineligible for the Nicholl. I've seen some of my work show up on the big screen. I count among my friends some exceedingly pro screenwriters, a few struggling directors, a couple producers, and storyboard artists, makeup artists, art directors and concept designers whose work you have seen dozens of times. I'm hip-pocketed at one of the Big 5 and have, in the past, had offers of representation by managers you see prominently on the Black List.

I make ends meet by mixing sound.

If you're a screenwriter with a hope and a dream out there in Middle America, STAY THERE. The screenwriting-as-hobby sphere of influence (lookin' at you, Austin Film Festival) will have you believe that "if you write it, they will come." What they don't tell you is that USC, UCLA, Cal Arts, Loyola, AFI, Claremont and half a dozen smaller programs are turning out hundreds of grads a year, who already have the connections you need to make, who have already learnedthe lessons you need to learn, and are already going to the parties you wish you could attend.

And dollars to donuts, they write at least as well as you do.

The time to come to LA is when you absolutely positively can't make any more headway where you're at. And I can guarantee that unless you've shot an indie film that's doing well on the festival circuit, that's not you.

Little story. I grew up in New Mexico. Every fall, my mother would go batshit because the Canada Geese were migrating. And she'd whip out the binoculars and stare at these marvelous birds as they soared overhead. And my, but they were grand.

And then I moved to Seattle. And in Seattle, there are so many Canada Geese that just linger all summer that they close beaches and shores with their poop. They get aggressive and will attempt to steal the sandwich out of your goddamn hand while you're sitting on a park bench. The Parks department gets out trucks, gathers them up by the thousands and exterminates them because they create a public health menace.

I was a big deal in Seattle. A board member of one of the many film organizations up there. And you say "screenwriter" at a party and people think that's cool. I come down to LA and I've got a job on one of the lots... and CSI:NY is doing a casting call for extras. And there they are - hundreds of them, bright young faces, gripping their Macbooks, doing what they can to scrape by until they get that big break we're all looking for.

I wanted them all to die.

You see, they made it so I had to park on the 5th floor of the structure, not the 3rd floor. All they were was in the way. These people, whom I have more in common with than anyone else, whom I would gravitate towards at a party anywhere else, were suddenly nothing more than in my way.

What's it like being a struggling writer in LA? It's like being one goose in an unwanted sea of geese. When there's just a few of you you're magnificent, marvelous birds... but when there's as many of you as there are in LA, it's like being a public health menace and knowing it.

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dabeetrus [S] 4 points 1 day ago* [-]

Wow, didn't expect such an insightful post. Thanks a lot.

How do you feel about MFA programs in screenwriting? If one can get into a UCLA/USC/AFI type of program (which is no small feat, but hypothetically) is it worth it to move out to LA or do you still recommended being one of those magnificent regional birds?

Also, would it be advantageous to live near regional hubs where a lot of filmmaking is done--Wilmington, NC is closest to me although there are others like Shreveport etc--and try to get a PA job or something, or would you be better off working a job to make ends meet somewhere and work on your craft in your off time until you have something you can sell?

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kleinbl00 6 points 1 day ago[-]

I think they're expensive.

I think the spec market is dead.

I think that everyone is hiding from the economy in education right now.

My intent, when I made the move down to LA, was to get into the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. And I got a 1530 on my GREs, and I'd written 5 screenplays, and I had a letter of recommendation from one of the biggest screenwriters in modern Hollywood, and they told me to pound sand. I was good'n'pissed about that for a while.

But I came down and I started mixing and I landed on a pretty big show. And the guy who changed the coffee and made sure we had enough snacks in the breakroom and did whatever scut work the producers told him to do?

MFA, Peter Stark Producer's Program, USC.

It isn't all like that. One of my friends is a Starkie and he's produced like six movies so far. He does all right. But then, it didn't cost me $120k to make coffee for a bunch of below-the-line guys, some of whom didn't even graduate high school, for 18 hours a day for minimum wage. Me? $1900 a week after taxes.

Networking counts. Degrees don't. If you've got some way to increase your networking exponentially by coming to Hollywood, it's worth doing. If you're just some dude or dude-ette from Oklahoma with a dream of seeing your name in lights, know that you're one of millions.

KTLA did a stand-up at the corner of Hollywood and Vine in 2002. They sat there with a camera, a microphone and a reporter, and asked random passers-by "How's your screenplay coming?"

More than half of them had an answer.

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