"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
-- Thomas Edison
Certainly, my career was in very poor shape in 1999. My parents kept banging away at me to go to law school, part time if necessary, or go back into computer science, and I always took the point of view that I would either continue hammering away at showbiz, or dump it and go full force into something else. No point in doing things halfsies.
Rather than do that, I got my permanent residence in Canada. And then I split up with my first wife. Either might have been responsible for putting me over the top. Emotionally I was in a rut. That couldn't have helped my writing. And I just wasn't making a dent in LA. I made the move out of logic and desperation. I wound up on a TV show within weeks of landing in Toronto, and it wasn't long before I was supporting myself writing.
I think the flip side of Mr. Edison's lovely sentiment is that you must give it everything you've got. You shouldn't quit before you've given it everything you've got. (Unless of course you decide you don't really want to do it that badly after all.) If you're holding anything back, then it's practically a guarantee that what you're holding back, is what's holding you back. 85% gets you nowhere in showbiz. 90% gets you treading water. You need to be at 95%+ to put you over the top. People see that commitment and they want to be part of it.
Hope you had a good year. Hope you have a better year next year.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
I Hope This Is Not the Future
I've been trying for the past ten minutes to see LEVERAGE on my computer. (My parents don't have a TiVo, inexplicably.) The TNT website promises me "full episodes." But first I have to get FlipforMac to watch Windows video. So I do. Then I reboot and reload, and it tells me I have to get FlipforMac.
So I try Firefox. Firefox tells me I can only watch on a Windows computer.
So I try my mom's Windows computer. This asks me to upgrade two components of my browser, Flash and something else. And then agree to some sort of DRM. And then watch a commercial. And then another commercial.
Then I got a couple of seconds of video. And then it froze. And then it jumped. It's unwatchable. (The commercials, interestingly, had no such problems.)
The TNT site is really crappy.
For a mere $2.99 I can download the whole thing to iTunes. And I might do that. But only because I consider John Rogers a friend. $2.99 is a lot for a heist show.
I think they're going to need to work out a few bugs in these systems before they replace broadcast and cable.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Good Times, Bad Times, You're Fired
I got a very thoughtful letter from a friend and colleague:
Hi Alex,Excellent points, thank you!
Interesting points about CTV and arguments to reduce Cancon.
I agree with your analysis. That is, that in poor economic times, broadcasters cut jobs because of the recession, but then again in better economic times, broadcasters still cut jobs because of .... consolidation, streamlining, operating efficiencies, [insert your rationale of choice here]. When you compare private TV broadcasters' profit margin with layoffs in broadcasting, there just isn't much of a link. So, layoffs in good times, layoffs in bad times:
The simple truth is this: having caved to unsupported claims that laissez-faire reliance on the marketplace will achieve all of Parliament's objectives for our broadcasting system, the CRTC is on the tipping point of accepting broadcasters' claims that what we really need is not more Canadian content, or even the same amount of Canadian content but .... wait for it ... high-quality Canadian content.
So please, just let us spend the same amount of money on less Cancon, attract more audiences, make more ad money that way, and we will all be better off. And then we will really really really try very very very hard to put more Cancon on air. Honest, we will.
Naturally this argument entirely ignores the last twenty years of broadcasters pleading to become bigger ... so they are better placed to fund more Cancon with more money .... and face fewer competitors (having bought them out) ... and can make more money .... and history continues to repeat itself. I can accept that few people remember the Aird Commission, or the Massey Commission, or the Fowler reports.
But doesn't anyone remember in 1967 and 1968 when Parliament finally decided that Canadians should run Canadian broadcasting, and give Canadians Canadian programs about themselves? Doesn't anyone remember that in 1967 Quebec's only private TV stations (CFCM-TV and CKMI-TV) were both controlled by non-Canadians (Famous Players, 51.8% owned by Americans), and that some American cable companies were running cables (literally) across the river to serve Canadian subscribers?
Yet here we are: CRTC is going to be renewing OTA TV licences next year (early 2009). Some 70 TV station applications will be heard in April, which means that Canadians will have the chance to comment in either February or March on these applications.
The CRTC has the legal authority to enforce Parliament's objectives, but only conditions of licence and regulations can be enforced. "Commitments", "expectations", "promises" and "undertakings" are simply not enforceable in law or under the Broadcasting Act.
Broadcasters will claim they must cut more Cancon to survive. They will commit to do more, sometime, when things improve to some unknown degree.
Will Canadians comment? Will they ask for more and better Cancon? Will they ask for their local news to be reinstated? Will they ask for more than one (one!!!) hour of Canadian drama a week at night? Will they even be aware of this issue? Who knows. But it's good to see people such as yourself writing about this.
My Morning Drive Time Schtick
When you do a slew of drive time CBC Radio shows, the hosts are all looking at the same overall script emanating from 205 Wellington Street in Toronto. They make the questions their own, but you wind up touching on the same points.
What Canadian hosts want to know this morning:
Q. How's the recession affecting television?
A. You hear a lot about CTV firing employees because of the recession. Corus fired a lot of guys last year, and there was no recession. So maybe when there's a recession on, and you fire people, you blame the recession.
Traditionally, cheap entertainment does well during a downturn. People need entertainment, and they're not going out to dinner. That $16.95 a month for The Movie Network starts looking like really good value for money. The movie companies made money hand over fist during the Depression. People went from the bread line to the movie theatre, to see Fred Astaire dance on a piano wearing a top hat.
Q. But there are fewer advertising dollars.
Advertising is the big question in TV regardless of the recession. Our deal with TV has always been that they put the shows on the air for free, and we watch the commercials. We're not doing that any more. We're recording the shows and blipping over the commercials. Who's going to pay for all this great television? Do we move to a pay cable subscriber model? Do we pay $1.99 an hour for an internet download? Or do we see Pepsi cans in every shot? No one knows. If we're paying for shows, we're going to want smarter, more urgent shows. We won't accept "eh" television. And there are some shows advertisers won't want to put their products in. It will change the mix.
Q. How is Canadian TV different from American TV in all this?
Canadian TV is protected. We have a requirement that broadcasters air a certain amount of Canadian homebrew programming. And that's the only reason why Canadian TV exists. And it's a good thing. You look at Canadian music. 25 years ago the only stars anyone had heard of were Anne Murray and Bryan Adams. Now Canadian music is beating the world.
And it's important we tell our own stories, because we're a different culture. I'm a New Canadian from America, so I get to say this. Americans are scared of terrorists, and losing their health care. So they put on 24, where Jack Bauer beats the stuffing out of people whenever he needs to know something. We put on THE BORDER, where Major Kessler says, "Well, unfortunately we can't beat the stuffing out of this guy, so what do we do?"
But I guarantee you that CTV and Global are going to try to use the recession to justify putting on more American programming. They're going to go to the CRTC and say, "Hey, there's a recession. We need to get rid of the Cancon requirements"
And the CRTC is going to say, "Huh? It's cheaper to make Canadian shows than to license American shows."
And CTV is going to say, "But there's a recession!"
And the CRTC is going to say, "You want us to ship Canadian jobs to America during a recession?"
And CTV is going to say, "But didn't you hear us? There's a recession!!!"
Q. What changes are we going to see next year?
There's a lot of talk about Jay Leno moving to prime time. I don't know if that's going to work. At 11:30, people want TV to help them turn off their brain. I think at 10, they want to be told grownup stories. The kids are asleep, they want LAW & ORDER.
If the recession has an impact on shows, I think you're going to see more escapism. More LOST. More shows like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. When you're trying to pay the rent, you want to be taken to another world which isn't about rent. Paradoxically you may see budgets on shows go up.
Meanwhile, in other news, Boston and the Habs were winners last night...
What Canadian hosts want to know this morning:
Q. How's the recession affecting television?
A. You hear a lot about CTV firing employees because of the recession. Corus fired a lot of guys last year, and there was no recession. So maybe when there's a recession on, and you fire people, you blame the recession.
Traditionally, cheap entertainment does well during a downturn. People need entertainment, and they're not going out to dinner. That $16.95 a month for The Movie Network starts looking like really good value for money. The movie companies made money hand over fist during the Depression. People went from the bread line to the movie theatre, to see Fred Astaire dance on a piano wearing a top hat.
Q. But there are fewer advertising dollars.
Advertising is the big question in TV regardless of the recession. Our deal with TV has always been that they put the shows on the air for free, and we watch the commercials. We're not doing that any more. We're recording the shows and blipping over the commercials. Who's going to pay for all this great television? Do we move to a pay cable subscriber model? Do we pay $1.99 an hour for an internet download? Or do we see Pepsi cans in every shot? No one knows. If we're paying for shows, we're going to want smarter, more urgent shows. We won't accept "eh" television. And there are some shows advertisers won't want to put their products in. It will change the mix.
Q. How is Canadian TV different from American TV in all this?
Canadian TV is protected. We have a requirement that broadcasters air a certain amount of Canadian homebrew programming. And that's the only reason why Canadian TV exists. And it's a good thing. You look at Canadian music. 25 years ago the only stars anyone had heard of were Anne Murray and Bryan Adams. Now Canadian music is beating the world.
And it's important we tell our own stories, because we're a different culture. I'm a New Canadian from America, so I get to say this. Americans are scared of terrorists, and losing their health care. So they put on 24, where Jack Bauer beats the stuffing out of people whenever he needs to know something. We put on THE BORDER, where Major Kessler says, "Well, unfortunately we can't beat the stuffing out of this guy, so what do we do?"
But I guarantee you that CTV and Global are going to try to use the recession to justify putting on more American programming. They're going to go to the CRTC and say, "Hey, there's a recession. We need to get rid of the Cancon requirements"
And the CRTC is going to say, "Huh? It's cheaper to make Canadian shows than to license American shows."
And CTV is going to say, "But there's a recession!"
And the CRTC is going to say, "You want us to ship Canadian jobs to America during a recession?"
And CTV is going to say, "But didn't you hear us? There's a recession!!!"
Q. What changes are we going to see next year?
There's a lot of talk about Jay Leno moving to prime time. I don't know if that's going to work. At 11:30, people want TV to help them turn off their brain. I think at 10, they want to be told grownup stories. The kids are asleep, they want LAW & ORDER.
If the recession has an impact on shows, I think you're going to see more escapism. More LOST. More shows like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. When you're trying to pay the rent, you want to be taken to another world which isn't about rent. Paradoxically you may see budgets on shows go up.
Meanwhile, in other news, Boston and the Habs were winners last night...
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Alex on the Air
I'm taping a slew of CBC drive time shows this morning, talking about the state of showbiz during the recession.
I'll be on in Corner Brook, Ottawa, Yellowknife, Victoria, Labrador City, Calgary, Kelowna and Quebec City.
By the time we get to Quebec City, I should sound like I know what I'm talking about.
I'll be on in Corner Brook, Ottawa, Yellowknife, Victoria, Labrador City, Calgary, Kelowna and Quebec City.
By the time we get to Quebec City, I should sound like I know what I'm talking about.
You Know You're Not Going Out Tonight...
I had an interesting chat with a friend of mine about the state of showbiz in the recession. All around, I'm hearing anxiety and fear due to the economy tanking. Networks have been firing employees and blaming the downturn, though as DMc remarked yesterday, they likely would have made those cuts without a recession to blame. Certainly Corus didn't need a downturn to fire dozens of employees last year, including beloved veteran network execs like Shelley Gillen.
What I hadn't heard till yesterday was a convincing explanation of why the downturn had to affect my own neck of the woods. Canadian broadcasters already make the absolute bare regulatory minimum of homebrew drama, preferring to air American shows they buy for more money than home-made shows cost to make. They could make less by petitioning the CRTC to allow them to air fewer hours of original drama. But I'm not sure how well that conversation would go. They would be asking a Canadian government agency to allow them to ship jobs and money out of the country. That doesn't sound like a winning argument.
The convincing reason to panic is simply the credit crunch. Producing movies is the same business as producing clothes. (One reason why so many of the great names of the early days in Hollywood started in the rag trade.) Unless you're a studio, you don't start with the money to make a movie. You start with a script, a director, and a cast. You sell your package of bankable elements to distributors in the various territories. (I'm making these numbers up; I haven't been in foreign sales for a decade.) The contract with the British distrib gives you a "minimum guarantee" (m.g.) of X number of dollars. Say Great Britain comes in for 15%, and Germany for 20%, and Japan for 15%. Say you wind up with 70% of your budget presold. Often a foreign film won't be able to presell the US market for any kind of reasonable price. How do you make your movie?
You take those contracts to a bank. They "discount" your contracts (as they would in the rag trade), and give you cash for your contracts (taking a small fee). That leaves you with a 30%+ "gap."
Now you need "gap financing" to "bridge the gap." Gap financing costs more than discounting, because it's riskier. What if the movie stinks? The presold territories have to pay anyway -- their contracts don't promise a good movie, only a movie based on the script, starring the stars, and directed by the director. But you'll have trouble selling the unsold territories. So the bank is going to want to see territories worth, say, twice as much as the bridge money it's fronting.
In years when credit is loose, banks love gap financing. They charge a lot for it. Charging for financing is their business. But now that credit is tight, banks are wary of gap financing. They might only gap 10%, and they might demand, say, three times the gap in territories. They'll make less money, but they won't get left holding the bag.
You don't have to go to a bank for gap financing. You can find your own money from investors. They might take, say, a 30% piece of the movie's gross revenues in return for bringing 30% of the budget. If the movie's a hit, they'll do better than the bank. The bank gets paid the same fees whether the movie is a hit or not. Investors get a share.
But when credit is tight, there are fewer investors around, and they're more demanding. If they do put money in your movie, they might want, say, 45% of the revenues for their 30% contribution.
One reason Canada has a film industry is that government subsidies and regulatory protection help bridge the gap. If you shoot your movie in Quebec, you wind up with federal and Quebec subsidies amounting to 25% of your budget. Canadian distributors and broadcasters have to buy a certain amount of Canadian films, so they'll contribute another 9%. That 31% can solve a producer's gap problem right there.
TV is financed along similar lines. The Canadian broadcaster provides a much, much bigger chunk of the puzzle. Instead of 9%, you could be seeing anywhere from 30-45% from broadcasters, which could be topped up by the CTF envelope to a max of 25% of budget; so potentially 70% of budget. (Even more if they take an equity position, as CTV did with CORNER GAS.) So financing Canadian TV, if you have a broadcaster, is much easier than financing Canadian features. But you still have to find that remaining 30%+. That usually means a foreign sale, unless you can wangle a US broadcaster on board up front. If you can get a US broadcast partner up front, of course, you're laughing. Even if you get a lousy license fee, you're now selling a "US" series overseas, and you'll get more for it.
I've been fortunate in that all three of the series I've staffed had US sales. GALIDOR and NAKED JOSH were sold up front to FoxKids and Oxygen; CHARLIE JADE sold to Sci Fi after we made it.
So the Canadian TV market shouldn't be in as much danger.
But here's a bigger reason I'm not panicking.
Movies and TV are two of the best industries to be in during a recession. Why? Because movies and TV are cheap entertainment. Compare a night at the movies to a night out to dinner. $12 a ticket versus $30-60 a person? How about nightclubs? Let's not even think about ticket prices for rock concerts or theater.
TV, of course, is even cheaper. For about $60-80 a month, you can get cable or satellite with premium movie channels, and no babysitter to pay. I told my exec at The Movie Network that they ought to be taking out full page ads in the papers, saying "You know you're not going out tonight. What's on TV?"
That's the economics of entertainment. But there's also the appetite. In a downturn, people desperately need to take their minds off their problems. The movies boomed during the Great Depression. The Warner brothers were in the red in 1929, but cleverly invested more and more money in their movies. They did better in 1930, and even better in 1931 and 1932. The lousier the economy was, the more people wanted to see Cary Grant playing a millionaire or Fred Astaire dancing in a top hat.
And reruns won't cut it. People will fix their old car instead of buying a new one. But no one wants to see last year's AMERICAN IDOL, and there's a limit to how many times you can watch HELLBOY 2 before you really won't be satisfied with anything less than HELLBOY 3.
So I'm not extra worried about finding work this year. And maybe you shouldn't be, either.
(I think. God willing.)
(There's a huge irony. When I was in school, the safe jobs were in banking, insurance and real estate. Who knew that showbiz was a more reliable choice? And nobody's outsourcing screenwriting to Mumbai.)
There will be changes in the type of entertainment that gets greenlit. I am told that Harvey Weinstein recently stood up in a crowd of producers and said, "We're not looking for artistic integrity any more. We're looking for commercial integrity."
In other words, Harvey, of all people, is looking for popcorn movies. Your MEAN STREETS style idea might not be the way to go these days. Think about your AMELIE or WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING or OCEANS 21.
The credit crunch will initially hurt movies and, to a lesser extent, TV. But in the medium run, people's appetite for filmed entertainment will, if anything, strengthen. And that appetite will pull in whatever money there is.
UPDATE: Looks like I'll be talking more about this on various CBC Radio stations tomorrow morning. I'll post times as soon as I know them.
What I hadn't heard till yesterday was a convincing explanation of why the downturn had to affect my own neck of the woods. Canadian broadcasters already make the absolute bare regulatory minimum of homebrew drama, preferring to air American shows they buy for more money than home-made shows cost to make. They could make less by petitioning the CRTC to allow them to air fewer hours of original drama. But I'm not sure how well that conversation would go. They would be asking a Canadian government agency to allow them to ship jobs and money out of the country. That doesn't sound like a winning argument.
The convincing reason to panic is simply the credit crunch. Producing movies is the same business as producing clothes. (One reason why so many of the great names of the early days in Hollywood started in the rag trade.) Unless you're a studio, you don't start with the money to make a movie. You start with a script, a director, and a cast. You sell your package of bankable elements to distributors in the various territories. (I'm making these numbers up; I haven't been in foreign sales for a decade.) The contract with the British distrib gives you a "minimum guarantee" (m.g.) of X number of dollars. Say Great Britain comes in for 15%, and Germany for 20%, and Japan for 15%. Say you wind up with 70% of your budget presold. Often a foreign film won't be able to presell the US market for any kind of reasonable price. How do you make your movie?
You take those contracts to a bank. They "discount" your contracts (as they would in the rag trade), and give you cash for your contracts (taking a small fee). That leaves you with a 30%+ "gap."
Now you need "gap financing" to "bridge the gap." Gap financing costs more than discounting, because it's riskier. What if the movie stinks? The presold territories have to pay anyway -- their contracts don't promise a good movie, only a movie based on the script, starring the stars, and directed by the director. But you'll have trouble selling the unsold territories. So the bank is going to want to see territories worth, say, twice as much as the bridge money it's fronting.
In years when credit is loose, banks love gap financing. They charge a lot for it. Charging for financing is their business. But now that credit is tight, banks are wary of gap financing. They might only gap 10%, and they might demand, say, three times the gap in territories. They'll make less money, but they won't get left holding the bag.
You don't have to go to a bank for gap financing. You can find your own money from investors. They might take, say, a 30% piece of the movie's gross revenues in return for bringing 30% of the budget. If the movie's a hit, they'll do better than the bank. The bank gets paid the same fees whether the movie is a hit or not. Investors get a share.
But when credit is tight, there are fewer investors around, and they're more demanding. If they do put money in your movie, they might want, say, 45% of the revenues for their 30% contribution.
One reason Canada has a film industry is that government subsidies and regulatory protection help bridge the gap. If you shoot your movie in Quebec, you wind up with federal and Quebec subsidies amounting to 25% of your budget. Canadian distributors and broadcasters have to buy a certain amount of Canadian films, so they'll contribute another 9%. That 31% can solve a producer's gap problem right there.
TV is financed along similar lines. The Canadian broadcaster provides a much, much bigger chunk of the puzzle. Instead of 9%, you could be seeing anywhere from 30-45% from broadcasters, which could be topped up by the CTF envelope to a max of 25% of budget; so potentially 70% of budget. (Even more if they take an equity position, as CTV did with CORNER GAS.) So financing Canadian TV, if you have a broadcaster, is much easier than financing Canadian features. But you still have to find that remaining 30%+. That usually means a foreign sale, unless you can wangle a US broadcaster on board up front. If you can get a US broadcast partner up front, of course, you're laughing. Even if you get a lousy license fee, you're now selling a "US" series overseas, and you'll get more for it.
I've been fortunate in that all three of the series I've staffed had US sales. GALIDOR and NAKED JOSH were sold up front to FoxKids and Oxygen; CHARLIE JADE sold to Sci Fi after we made it.
So the Canadian TV market shouldn't be in as much danger.
But here's a bigger reason I'm not panicking.
Movies and TV are two of the best industries to be in during a recession. Why? Because movies and TV are cheap entertainment. Compare a night at the movies to a night out to dinner. $12 a ticket versus $30-60 a person? How about nightclubs? Let's not even think about ticket prices for rock concerts or theater.
TV, of course, is even cheaper. For about $60-80 a month, you can get cable or satellite with premium movie channels, and no babysitter to pay. I told my exec at The Movie Network that they ought to be taking out full page ads in the papers, saying "You know you're not going out tonight. What's on TV?"
That's the economics of entertainment. But there's also the appetite. In a downturn, people desperately need to take their minds off their problems. The movies boomed during the Great Depression. The Warner brothers were in the red in 1929, but cleverly invested more and more money in their movies. They did better in 1930, and even better in 1931 and 1932. The lousier the economy was, the more people wanted to see Cary Grant playing a millionaire or Fred Astaire dancing in a top hat.
And reruns won't cut it. People will fix their old car instead of buying a new one. But no one wants to see last year's AMERICAN IDOL, and there's a limit to how many times you can watch HELLBOY 2 before you really won't be satisfied with anything less than HELLBOY 3.
So I'm not extra worried about finding work this year. And maybe you shouldn't be, either.
(I think. God willing.)
(There's a huge irony. When I was in school, the safe jobs were in banking, insurance and real estate. Who knew that showbiz was a more reliable choice? And nobody's outsourcing screenwriting to Mumbai.)
There will be changes in the type of entertainment that gets greenlit. I am told that Harvey Weinstein recently stood up in a crowd of producers and said, "We're not looking for artistic integrity any more. We're looking for commercial integrity."
In other words, Harvey, of all people, is looking for popcorn movies. Your MEAN STREETS style idea might not be the way to go these days. Think about your AMELIE or WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING or OCEANS 21.
The credit crunch will initially hurt movies and, to a lesser extent, TV. But in the medium run, people's appetite for filmed entertainment will, if anything, strengthen. And that appetite will pull in whatever money there is.
UPDATE: Looks like I'll be talking more about this on various CBC Radio stations tomorrow morning. I'll post times as soon as I know them.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Donors Choose
Some people like to give to a charity in honor of a friend, by way of a present for someone who doesn't really need a material gift.
DonorsChoose allows you to give the money to charity, but let your honoree choose who it goes to. And they concentrate on small projects -- e.g. a classroom of autistic kids in Nevada who need $587 worth of photo and other resources to help them learn to communicate. (Nevada has crappy social services.) So whoever you're giving the gift of a charitable gift to can choose where he'd like the gift to go -- and have a pretty good sense of exactly how it helped.
DonorsChoose allows you to give the money to charity, but let your honoree choose who it goes to. And they concentrate on small projects -- e.g. a classroom of autistic kids in Nevada who need $587 worth of photo and other resources to help them learn to communicate. (Nevada has crappy social services.) So whoever you're giving the gift of a charitable gift to can choose where he'd like the gift to go -- and have a pretty good sense of exactly how it helped.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
A Couple of Formatting Questions
Q. The more screenplays I read, the more I realize that, while there are conventions and trends, there is no single way to make formatting decisions. One thing, I have noticed is that transitions like 'cut to:' are rarely in scripts nowadays. Do you use them regularly or just to emphasize a cut or specify a certain kind of transition? I've used them, but only out of convention--scripts seem much more readable without them.CUT TO: seems to have gone out of fashion, because it is, strictly speaking, redundant. Of course you cut from one scene to the next. I used to use CUT TO: to indicate a big jump (in time, or characters), as opposed to following one character continuously from an interior to an exterior. But I don't do that any more because no one else does.
Also, most of the scripts available are shooting scripts, sometimes even with omitted scene markers in them. Frustrating when you want to see a writer's original intent, obviously. Other than that, what are some other principle differences between a shooting script and a writer's final draft?
Is the process different in movies and television?
Shooting scripts have scene numbers. Later drafts have changed lines indicated by asterisks on the right hand side of the page. Scenes that have been cut are indicated by OMITTED. I would be too put out about that. The writer's "original intent" isn't as important as his final intent. A good writer is trying to tell his story as effectively and efficiently as possible. That often means cutting scenes when you realize you don't need them any more.
The only way that movie and TV scripts differ are the act breaks. TV has act outs (see my book CRAFTY TV WRITING for an extensive discussion), and each new act goes on a new page.
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