Script in the Door

I have a reputation of writing good busniess letters in my MBA classroom.

but when it comes to show biz, I'm ending up in problems.

for example: if I were to target Dreamworks, and I address the letter to Steven Spielberg. it'll go to the trash can.

if I were to find out an intern and then address to him, he may change companies in weeks so that he can get more pay. so whom do I target.

It is the same even with the smallest Producer co/agent/management firm. how do I solve this.

so I decided to go to www.inktip.com and maybe www.scriptpimp.com. what is your take on posting screenplays on these websites?

which else are the other recommended sites for presenting your work on the net so that it is accesible to prod co.s/agents/managers?

Yeah, I wouldn't send anything to Steve, he's busy. However, reading material is what interns and assistants and development people do. It doesn't matter how long they're there, so long as they read your script and bump it up to the next person. Moreover, if someone likes your script, they might take it with them to their new job and try to interest people there.

I still think sending queries (as I've blogged and written about extensively -- see my book CRAFTY SCREENWRITING) is the best way to get material into the system from outside. (The best way from inside is to give a script to people who like you who are higher up the food chain. That's why you move to LA.) The main change I'd make in my book (if they'd let me publish a second edition) is that email has largely replaced snail mail for queries.

I don't think the script web sites are a great way to go. There's no record of who's reading your script or what they're doing with it. People rarely steal scripts, but they might steal your concept -- you can't copyright a concept -- and rewrite it with different characters and a different plot. You'd never know and you'd have no way of proving anything. If you send it to a person at a company, they are far less likely to poach it. They may option it for almost nothing, but at least you'll have an eventual payday if a film goes based on it.

How to Give Notes

McGrath reposts his fine essay on how to give notes. The key: rather than telling the writer what to do, challenge his or her assumptions. Why did they do it that way? What were they trying to achieve? Is that what you, the buyer, wanted to achieve?

The best division of labor is for the buyer to decide what he wants the result to look like, and to ask the writer to figure out how to get there.

In the US Army, the commanding officer decides what he wants: take that hill, relieve that battalion, stop that enemy assault. He leaves it to the guy or gal leading the troops to decide how to take the hill, how to relieve the battalion, how to stop the enemy. They are going to have to do it, after all. They will spend ten times as long pondering the how as the CO has available. They are closer to the material: the soldiers, the terrain, the equipment.

Micromanaging from the top can lead to spectacular failures. The Spanish Armada failed because King Philip of Spain, a landlubber, insisted that his admiral follow his orders precisely -- orders written several months before the battle. The Iraq invasion of 2003 turned into a debacle because the Secretary of Defense, who had never been in combat, was micromanaging troop deployments.

The best notes say: "we want a wham-bang opening," for example; not, "when Nick gets to the bridge there should be snipers and they should be shooting tracer bullets at him." The best notes come from being a great audience member who understands his own reactions: "I want to be pulled into the story viscerally before I even understand what's going on."

The most challenging notes are those which don't make clear what exactly the note-giver is looking for. The more prescriptive the note is, the harder it is to parse. Why does he want snipers? Is the opening not scary enough? Does he want the opening to take longer? Did the note-giver see a movie with cool snipers and he wants something like that? Are we appealilng to the Halo crowd?

It takes a lot of restraint to avoid giving writers unnecessarily specific notes. Everyone in this industry wants to be creative. The writers are having all the fun. Execs want to share that fun. But execs: you will look like a genius if you simply make clear what results you want, and let the writer get there by his own path. The results will be much fresher, and more coherent, too.

Writers: you need to address notes, but you don't always have to take them. Don't be afraid to ask, "what are you looking for, here, exactly, because I may have another way to do this."

Obviously when you're writing for a director or an animator or a real creative producer -- a Zanuck, a Spielberg, someone who is truly taking part in the creation of the project -- then the situation changes. If Spielberg wants snipers, give him snipers. On BON COP BAD COP, the director had entire action sequences he had mapped out in his head; my job was to happily write them down and marvel at how fun they were. But even in this case, don't be afraid to ask what your creative collaborator really wants when he asks for certain details. You may be able to come up with something better, and most creative people are open to a better solution most of the time.

Free Screenwriting Software

Celtx 1.0 Now Available For Free Download!

After 4 years, 1,000,000 downloads, 20 languages, 160 countries, and 250,000 very active users like you, we're thrilled to announce that Celtx 1.0 has arrived. With 1.0, Celtx is now truly the world's first full-featured, all-in-one media pre-production software. And, like every other version before it, you can download Celtx 1.0 for free at www.celtx.com.

We've added some new features and innovations to 1.0 that we think you'll find useful and enjoy, like:

Adapt To - a single click now converts a fully formatted script of one type into a fully formatted script of another - for example a Stageplay to a Screenplay - displaying instantly the multi-media potential of your work.

Comic Book - a new editor to write properly formatted Comic Books, and a common framework for collaboration between writer and artist.

iPhone - now view your Celtx projects from just about anywhere with a display optimized for your iPhone.

Catalogs - a new organization and searchable dashboard view of all your story's elements and production items.

Sidebar - annotate and break down each scene with notes, media (images, audio, and video clips), and production items through an easy to manage, thoroughly upgraded new sidebar.

Project Scheduling - has been vastly upgraded to fully integrate with the script breakdown and provide a Call Sheet and a host of new shooting reports.

Storyboarding - as requested, you can now choose from a variety of ways to view and manage your images, create a storyboard outline based on your script, and add shot descriptions to each image.

I don't know how they plan to make money giving away software. And I don't know anyone professional who uses it. But if you're a n00b, why spend $150 for Final Draft 7 when you can download Celtx for free? You can always use Final Draft when someone buys you a copy.

The Dialogue Series

THE DIALOGUE SERIES is a DVD series of 70-90 minute discussions in which more than two dozen top screenwriters share their work habits, methods and inspirations, secrets of the trade, business advice, and eye-opening stories from life in the trenches of the film industry. Each writer discusses his or her filmography in great detail and breaks down the mechanics of one favorite scene from their produced work.

Interview subjects include Oscar® winners and industry veterans like Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby), Callie Khouri (Thelma and Louise), Paul Attanasio (Quiz Show, Donnie Brasco), Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich), Peter & Bobby Farrelly (There's Something About Mary, Stuck on You) and David S. Goyer (Dark City, Blade, Batman Begins). The series is hosted by Michael De Luca, film fanatic and former President of Production at New Line Cinema. In a climate where "industry" talk shows are mostly fluff pieces, Mike De Luca's probing and savvy style elevates this series to a true exploration of the craft and its masters.

The people behind this series were kind enough to send me the David Goyer interview.

Now, I'm not the best person for this sort of disk. Most of what David Goyer has to say in this disk isn't news to me. It may be interesting for you, though.

What I want in a writer interview is for someone to ask the questions I'd ask the writer if I were taking him out for Irish whiskey at the Paddock, or fine tequila at Reposado. Questions about writing craft. Questions about how the business works at a high level.

Granted, most writer gossip is too specific to publish. How is it working with [name of executive]? What is up with him? How fast do you think [name of writer] is gonna get a show on [network] now that he's dating [name of executive]? Did she jump or was she pushed?

Or, Hey, I hear you're working with [supposedly respectable producer who owes me $33,000]. Watch out!

But smart writers always have arcane questions for each other. And perhaps if the interviewer had been another writer, instead of the former President of Production at New Line (i.e. a suit), the questions might have been more probing and useful.

For example, De Luca asks Goyer about his monicker "The Prince of Darkness," and Goyer talks about how he got that nickname in high school, and then goes on to talk about his tattoos. I would have asked: do you promote that name as part of your brand as a writer? Do you find it helps you get jobs like the movies you've been writing -- DARK CITY, BATMAN BEGINS -- because people say, "Hey, let's get that Prince of Darkness guy!"? Do you find you're losing out on period dramas and rom coms because you're that Prince of Darkness guy?

Or, Goyer mentions that on the first BLADE he was a writer, on a second a writer-producer, and on the third, a director. Both Goyer and De Luca are very interested in Goyer's experience as a director, because directors are important people in Hollywood. But I would have been interested in knowing what it means to be a writer-producer. Was that just a courtesy title? How much authority came with it? And authority over whom? Did the director listen to you any more?

It's hard coming up with good interview questions. It is perhaps the hardest part of doing an interview. You have to really know your subject and figure out what to ask him that he hasn't been asked before. The rest is typing.

This is a DVD, and that ought to have a higher signal to noise ratio than a radio interview, say. Because you're paying for it, and you're supposed to actually look at it, not just listen while you sit on the 101. (The Dialogue Series does leverage the screen a bit, by explaining who people are talking about when they name drop.) I want someone to take a three hour conversation and squeeze it down to the juiciest one hour. I want ideas going by at high speed so I want to stop the disk and run that by me again. I did not feel these discs met that standard.

But then, a DVD like this is not for me, and you may not have a lot of writer friends to quiz over Red Breast. If you're still getting a sense of the biz, and wonder what really, really successful writers are like in person, you may find these disks useful.

UPDATE: I ran this by a smart emerging writer, who wrote:

There's lots of interesting information about Batman, Blade, The Flash, and other superhero movies. De Luca asks him questions that are related to screenwriters in terms of working and surviving the industry -- how to deal with notes, problem actors and directors, being rewritten, rewriting others, studio politics, cycles of movies, how genre movies can be taken seriously... things that are all useful.

But there is nothing on craft.

The closest they get to it is when David Goyer talks about finding a theme to focus on -- Batman is really about fear and parent issues, The Flash is about speed as a vice, something you get addicted to. But that's maybe a minute or two out of a 79 minute running time.

One thing that was kind of interesting was a writing exercise called "the object". De Luca presents a random object (in this case, a toy clown on a scooter), and Goyer has to mine from it a story or idea (something about a cop searching for a supernatural killer, and "the souls of 40 murdered children"). Hearing him explain how he got that from the object, and in turn, how he gets inspiration and ideas from other things, was insightful.

The questions De Luca asks that are actually related to screenwriting are along the lines of "did you go to film school, how did you break in, what kind of stuff do you have in your office, do you outline, how many hours a day do you work...". Things that are somewhat interesting, but not that helpful. ... It is cool to find out these sort of things. But there needs to be more than just that.

Being There

A Friend of the Blog is having trouble parsing an email her would-be producer has sent her about financing. She's unsure how to react.

First of all, if someone is being unclear about whether they are going to be able to pay you or not, you are entitled to ask for a straight answer. If they don't have a straight answer to give you, then the answer is probably "no," and if they are resistant to giving you a straight answer, then the answer is "no" with a topping of "you don't want to work for them."

Second, don't use email as your primary form of communication. Many people these days hide behind email. What email is great for is creating a paper trail. After a creative discussion, write up what you think you understand from it, and send it to the other parties. Same with negotiations.

But if you are trying to find out answers, call. You can't tell tone of voice from an email. Better yet, if you can, drop in. Best of all, go to lunch. The more time you spend in person with people, the more you will develop your relationship with them, and the more you'll know what is up with them. When you are there in person, people are more likely to remember what they needed to say to you.

If you are cultivating a relationship, that goes triple. Never send an email when you can call. Never call when you can visit. Never visit when you can wangle coffee.

When people get emails, they usually try to bat them away as fast as possible. That means they may not give you a full answer. They will feel justified in giving you less than two minutes attention.

On the phone, they will at least try to finish off their thoughts. They will rarely give you less than five minutes of their attention. But they may not remember everything they had to say, and they certainly won't bring up additional projects.

In person, people usually feel obliged to give you at least fifteen minutes of their time. They will bring up additional projects, but they may not try to get to know you as a person.

Over food, people will rarely give you less than half an hour (coffee) or an hour (food). They will actually try to get to know you as a person.

Try to be there as much as possible. At least until you run out of time and you're so busy that you start telling people, "Just shoot me an email and I'll get back to you."

Pilot, Premise Pilot, Backdoor Pilot

Carl P writes:

Greetings from Austria, where the Europe Cup is driving everyone crazy. I am writing my masters thesis on serial narration in childrens literature and I need to work with the term "pilot" or rather different types of pilots (backdoor, establishing etc.) but I can't find any definitions.

A pilot is the first episode of a series.

Traditionally, networks shoot the pilot, and then make their decision to pick up the show or not based on how they feel about the results. There are drawbacks to this system. You can write a kickass pilot that paints the series into a corner; since the networks don't commission more scripts until they've shot the pilot, they won't find that out right away. Also, you spend months waiting to see if the network likes a pilot, then you have to jump into your story room on short notice and start cranking out scripts. In Canada we usually don't pilot (only the CBC goes to pilot). Instead you write a bunch of scripts and the greenlight decision is based on them. That means the writers have some scripts in the bank when the greenlight decision comes down. On the other hand there's no opportunity to recast after the pilot as there is in the American system.

A premise pilot is a first episode that sets up the circumstance of the pilot. In the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA pilot, the Cylons attack and the Battlestar Galactica goes on the run. In our NAKED JOSH pilot, Josh returns to McAllister University as a professor. In the BUFFY pilot, Buffy comes to Sunnydale, which turns out to be infested with vampires.

I've heard that you should try to avoid a premise pilot if you can. It's hard to re-air a premise pilot because it is often quite different from the regular show. The SEX & THE CITY pilot is just an episode of S&TC; no explanation how Carrie met the other girls, or how she got her column. The WEST WING pilot starts with Josh about to be fired. However, often you can't avoid a premise pilot. You need to explain who the Cylons are and why the Battlestar is running from them. You need to explain what the LOST island is and how all these people got stranded there. Often, too, it is easier to introduce characters if one of the characters is "coming into the family." Cop gets a new partner. Betty gets a new job. We see the characters through the new person's eyes, whether or not the new person is the hero.

A backdoor pilot is a feature film or TV movie that is made with an eye to an eventual television series. It works as a feature film, but also sets up the characters and situation for the series. If you have a TV series you haven't been able to get off the ground, one possible approach is to write a feature using those characters, that ends up more or less where your series starts. If the feature is a hit, or even well liked by the right people, you can go back and repitch the TV series. TV execs may dig your concept more if they can see it in action.

Secrets of Blog Posting

Successful bloggers like myself have been trying to keep the secrets of our success, well, secret. But now this guy has gone and blown it for us. Ah well. Now I'll have to take up something more lucrative, like knitting.

Whoo Hoo! Charlie Jade on Sci Fi

CHARLIE JADE, the show I worked on in Cape Town, is coming to the Sci Fi Channel beginning this Friday. It is a strange, impressionistic, dark SF series about a detective from a parallel universe who is blasted to our universe by an industrial accident. Complications ensue.

My team came on board beginning with episode 9 ("Betrayal"), but we (Denis McGrath, Sean Carley and I) didn't really hit our writing stride until episode 12 ("Charade"). I'm particularly proud of eps 17 ("Spin") through 20 ("Ourobouros"), where I think we finally delivered on the vision that showrunner Bob Wertheimer was asking us for. Check'em out!

If you don't get Sci Fi, I believe the episodes will be streaming on their site as well.

UPDATE: RA Porter has a nice bit on the show at Popcritics.

Oh, and... Way to go Obama! Oh, Noes, McCain!