First Phone Conversation!

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!

Not Just For Battlestar Fans

This Slate article suggests you might want to listen to Ronald D. Moore's four hour recording of his writer room in action.

They're breaking story. And they're letting you listen in. You wanted to know what it's like to be in the room? This is what it's like to be in the room working on BG.

The podcasts are pretty fine, too.

Look for the link to the Writer's Meeting. (I couldn't find the exact link. Anybody?)

UPDATE: See the comments for the correct links to the Writers Meeting. Thanks, guys!

A Bottle Show is inside

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.

Outdoors you also have sound problems. Jets flying overhead. Trucks rumbling by. Teamsters blowing their horns during the take because you didn't hire their drivers. Inside of a sound stage, the world could be ending and you wouldn't know it until the end of the take.

Of course, in Los Angeles you can count on day after day of full sunlight for months at a time, which is one reason the film industry settled there. (The other was that in the early days, they were all violating Thomas Edison's film technology patents, and L.A. was about as far as they could get from his lawyers.) In those days they built their interior sets out in the sun, and sometimes even put them on turntables so the angle wouldn't change. But you probably won't be doing anyone a favor if you set your whole episode in Griffith Park.

DMc on the CBC

[Canadiana] Denis McGrath will be telling truth to power on the CBC this afternoon. The subject is: how can the CRTC gut Canadian drama even more, and if they do, why should we watch American series on CTV when we can watch them on NBC?

For those of you who haven't been following this, the Canadian broadcast networks are asking for the right to fulfill their Canadian Content requirements by airing infomercials. Which leaves us wondering: if they're not going to fund Canadian drama, why do we need Canadian networks at all? We could just have local affiliates of ABC and NBC airing local infomercials.

Denis, in case you didn't know it, is even funnier and smarter live than in print. Try to catch his words of wisdom. Especially if you work at CTV. He will make a great talk show host, after he sabotages his screenwriting career here.

(Of course, maybe they'll listen to him and get it. And be so grateful to him for telling the Canadian nets what they're doing wrong.)

Here's the program guide for today. You can also listen online.

UPDATE: Aha, here's the schedule:

3:30 pm (1:30 p.m. your time)
CALGARY

3:40 pm
TORONTO

3:50 pm (um...is that..uh...4:50 Halifax time, right?)
HALIFAX

4:10 pm
WINDSOR

4:20 pm (5:20, right?)
SYDNEY

4:40 pm
SAINT JOHN (um...5:40? If it was St. John's, I might have a aneurysm here.)

4:50 pm
OTTAWA

5:10 pm (3:10 local)
EDMONTON

5:40 pm
THUNDER BAY

5:50 pm
WINNIPEG

Why is Studio 60 Better?

[No real spoilers, I don't think.] I think it might be because the early episodes were about global stakes -- how better sketch comedy could save the world -- and these episodes are about personal stakes. Instead of being about whether Matt Albie will save the show -- it wouldn't be much of a series if he lost his show, would it? so a bit of schmuck bait there -- it becomes about whether the various characters will save their part of the show. Can Darius and the English Chick get a sketch on the air? Can Amanda Peet overcome her pride to save her job? Can Harriet tell a joke? (OK, that was more of a runner.)

One of the strange things about TV is it has no perspective. You see it on TV news all the time. We see a story about horrific bombings in Baghdad followed by long lines for holiday shopping. Darfur gets two minutes (or no minutes), OJ gets four, that weirdo claiming to have killed Jon Benet gets 25. TV wants stories it can put a face on -- which is why I get my news from The Economist.

TV wants personal stories. They can be small or big in ramifications. Jack Bauer's story has huge ramifications. But we're really watching to see Jack Bauer deal with his enemies. And it is, apparently, more important whether Meredith gets McDreamy than whether her latest patient dies -- except in so far as Meredith losing her patient might make McDreamy more or less interested in her. Friends got ten years out of whether Ross would get Rachel to think he's cool or Rachel would get Ross to respect her.

No perspective. Or rather, any perspective you want to give it.

'Cause people are like that. There's always the horror story of someone shooting someone over burned eggs. We're not good with perspective either, unless someone has put us in a position where it's our job to have perspective.

The stakes are part of the fun. But the stakes are only important to the extent that they're important to the hero. Make sure you firmly establish exactly how the hero would feel to win the stakes.

(Which is why, incidentally, we'll never care about the aimless/apathetic hero I'm always seeing in failed spec feature scripts. If he doesn't care, why should we?)

Who was that singer?

Who was the singer on Studio 60 tonight?

$14 Steadicam

All you aspiring filmmakers, here's how to build a semi-steadicam for $14. It doesn't have all the fancy hydraulics, but your footage will look better than handheld, thass for sure. Via this handy linkfest on the Celtx site.

Make It a Character Flaw

I'm working on my zombie picture off and on these days. One thing that has always bothered me in horror pictures is when the characters don't immediately call the authorities. Tremors is so effective because the characters never waste time investigating the strange phenomena -- they do their best to get the hell out of town from the get-go.

So I've got my guys in a building in the woods surrounded by a passel of zombies, only they don't know it's zombies yet, they think it's only a pair of ordinary psychopaths. (There's more to the hook than that, but for the purposes of the exercise you don't need to know the details.) I want some of them to try to make a run for town, which is terminated when they realize there are more than two creeps out there.

But wouldn't they be carrying cell phones? Wouldn't they just call the police?

No, as it turns out, because part of the point of the vacation was to get away from cell phones.

But I find that unsatisfying on its own because I don't want the whole enterprise to hang on the characters having not brought along cell phones. Surely someone would have cheated.

As it turns out, one of the characters did cheat. But I only want that revealed after they make their abortive run for town. So I had the character, in one draft, forget he'd brought along a cell, and in another draft, he just didn't mention it.

Neither works, as a perspicacious fellow who read my script pointed out.

One solution would be to find out that he's got the cell phone before they make the run for town. But then it just feels like shoe leather. Something to get out of the way.

Another would be to go back to nobody having brought cell phones. Or having brought a cell phone, but no signal. Not fun.

The solution I'm going with is to eliminate the surprise -- because it feels like a cheat -- but embrace the character not telling anyone he has a cell. Establish earlier that he does have a cell. But he wants to make a run for town. Because it would be more fun than calling the police. And he thinks (for reasons having to do with the hook) that his friends can handle two garden variety lunatics.

Now it's not a cheat, because we know he's got a cell as soon as he does. Now there's suspense, because we're wondering why he didn't tell anyone, and when he's going to use it. And best of all, we've now established our guy as a reckless adrenaline junkie. He's not doing the wise thing. He's doing the foolish, character-establishing thing.

When you bump on a plothole, don't just look for a way to smooth it out. Look for a way to make it a character-establishing moment. It may be more fun. It may be more human, too.