ADDRESSING
To continue the previous post: by addressing the viewer's expectations, you let him know that you're aware of them and you don't plan to disappoint him. When Ephraim doesn't tell Amy, the audience needs to know the ep is not going to turn into an after-school special about the perils of lying. (You could even -- though this is lazy writing -- have Bright tell Ephraim, "Life is not an after school special.") And then you have to be sure not to disappoint the audience.
Remember, they watch a lot of TV. Probably way more than you. They may not think about it too hard, but after the first few thousand hours of TV, they know when something's been set up. If all they're doing is waiting for the next shoe to drop, they'll probably click over to Battlebots, where anything could happen.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
SECOND THOUGHTS ON TELEGRAPHING
Of course, to pick up the previous post, if you can't tell stories about people failing to communicate well, you are depriving yourself of a huge source of real life drama. We've all got in trouble for not telling someone something. What puts the curse on it is that we know we're watching TV, so we know the writers are going to make something of it. In real life, most of the time we don't tell someone something, we get away with it. That's why we keep doing it.
What I might have done to take the curse off the Everwood episode: allow the obvious setup, but call into question which story we're going to tell. Ephraim says "I'll get caught." Bright tells him "You won't get caught. People lie all the time." Thus calling into question, for the audience, whether someone who lies will get caught.
I think this is akin to the believability issue. If you have a hard-to-believe plot turn, you can (a) come up with something more believable, (b) contrive to make the plot turn as believable as possible or (c) address its very unbelievability.
By addressing the unlikelihood, you can make it mean something else. Ephraim's feeling guilty about not telling Amy made it about something else, so the plot didn't hinge on "will he get busted" but instead on "which is worse, lying, or telling the truth too late?" Had we been given a sense earlier on that that was the issue, it might have reduced the wince factor. For me at least.
Of course, to pick up the previous post, if you can't tell stories about people failing to communicate well, you are depriving yourself of a huge source of real life drama. We've all got in trouble for not telling someone something. What puts the curse on it is that we know we're watching TV, so we know the writers are going to make something of it. In real life, most of the time we don't tell someone something, we get away with it. That's why we keep doing it.
What I might have done to take the curse off the Everwood episode: allow the obvious setup, but call into question which story we're going to tell. Ephraim says "I'll get caught." Bright tells him "You won't get caught. People lie all the time." Thus calling into question, for the audience, whether someone who lies will get caught.
I think this is akin to the believability issue. If you have a hard-to-believe plot turn, you can (a) come up with something more believable, (b) contrive to make the plot turn as believable as possible or (c) address its very unbelievability.
By addressing the unlikelihood, you can make it mean something else. Ephraim's feeling guilty about not telling Amy made it about something else, so the plot didn't hinge on "will he get busted" but instead on "which is worse, lying, or telling the truth too late?" Had we been given a sense earlier on that that was the issue, it might have reduced the wince factor. For me at least.
Monday, November 29, 2004
TRAIN WRECKS
/* MILD SPOILERS */
On Everwood tonight, Ephraim lies to Amy that he's sick, because he wants to go see his ex-girlfriend's band playing.
I hate plotlines like this because you can see the train wreck coming. The writers are taking the rails apart right in front of you, and you're just waiting for the 8:47 to come round the bend. And even if by some miracle Ephraim does not get busted for lying to Amy, throughout the ep I'm dreading the moment when Ephraim gets busted, so I can't really enjoy the story line.
I wonder if this is just because I'm a writer, and I see it coming? Or is the audience as sick of this kind of lazy plotting as I am?
Watched Boston Legal. With David E. Kelley you have a slightly different problem. You know the writers are not going to be allowed the easy way out. So you're wondering what the twist is. So when, for example, there's a plotline about a client who talks about murdering his wife, the one thing you know won't happen is for the lawyers to come to her house and find he's murdered her. You can probably guess what the twist is -- I did.
In the Everwood story, Ephraim busts himself in the end, and gets no credit for it with Amy. At least that had emotional coherence: he busts himself because he feels guilty about lying to her in the first place. What I can't stand is when characters get busted because they're on TV and we have to wrap it all up inside an hour. I guess one reason I like Gilmore Girls so much is you don't know where the story's going until the story's already got there. Then you go, wow, yeah. That's a hell of a story. Until then you're wondering where Amy Sherman Palladino is headed with it. Nice work, Amy.
/* MILD SPOILERS */
On Everwood tonight, Ephraim lies to Amy that he's sick, because he wants to go see his ex-girlfriend's band playing.
I hate plotlines like this because you can see the train wreck coming. The writers are taking the rails apart right in front of you, and you're just waiting for the 8:47 to come round the bend. And even if by some miracle Ephraim does not get busted for lying to Amy, throughout the ep I'm dreading the moment when Ephraim gets busted, so I can't really enjoy the story line.
I wonder if this is just because I'm a writer, and I see it coming? Or is the audience as sick of this kind of lazy plotting as I am?
Watched Boston Legal. With David E. Kelley you have a slightly different problem. You know the writers are not going to be allowed the easy way out. So you're wondering what the twist is. So when, for example, there's a plotline about a client who talks about murdering his wife, the one thing you know won't happen is for the lawyers to come to her house and find he's murdered her. You can probably guess what the twist is -- I did.
In the Everwood story, Ephraim busts himself in the end, and gets no credit for it with Amy. At least that had emotional coherence: he busts himself because he feels guilty about lying to her in the first place. What I can't stand is when characters get busted because they're on TV and we have to wrap it all up inside an hour. I guess one reason I like Gilmore Girls so much is you don't know where the story's going until the story's already got there. Then you go, wow, yeah. That's a hell of a story. Until then you're wondering where Amy Sherman Palladino is headed with it. Nice work, Amy.
MEDIA
I've got the Unseen feature out to a trusted friend to read, so I'm working on the TV series pitch. It's intriguing what aspects of the story seem to want me to reconsider them as I go back to the series from the feature.
In the feature, Rebecca is new in town and feels out of place. Then a freak accident changes everything ... and she discovers that she really does belong in Montreal.
The movie is self-contained, so you can start your character arriving in town, then having a freak accident, and it's a precipitating incident.
But after the pilot episode of a series, you pretty much want it to be standing on its own, like a newborn calf. You're likely to get a big chunk of your audience after the pilot. So too much setup in the pilot is probably a Bad Thing, because you can't count on the audience to be there for it. So while, e.g. the Buffy pilot established that Buffy had transferred out of some big city school after some kind of catastrophe, you don't really know or need to know the details. She's new in school, she latches onto some goofy new friends, that's all you need to know.
Which would seem to argue that while you can use both Rebecca's being new in town and having a freak accident thereafter in the movie, in the series maybe both are too much.
I've got the Unseen feature out to a trusted friend to read, so I'm working on the TV series pitch. It's intriguing what aspects of the story seem to want me to reconsider them as I go back to the series from the feature.
In the feature, Rebecca is new in town and feels out of place. Then a freak accident changes everything ... and she discovers that she really does belong in Montreal.
The movie is self-contained, so you can start your character arriving in town, then having a freak accident, and it's a precipitating incident.
But after the pilot episode of a series, you pretty much want it to be standing on its own, like a newborn calf. You're likely to get a big chunk of your audience after the pilot. So too much setup in the pilot is probably a Bad Thing, because you can't count on the audience to be there for it. So while, e.g. the Buffy pilot established that Buffy had transferred out of some big city school after some kind of catastrophe, you don't really know or need to know the details. She's new in school, she latches onto some goofy new friends, that's all you need to know.
Which would seem to argue that while you can use both Rebecca's being new in town and having a freak accident thereafter in the movie, in the series maybe both are too much.
THE GREAT INDECENCY HOAX
Good piece by Frank Rich in the Times about the Monday Night Football hoo-hah: how the right-wingers making a big to-do about indecency on the tube are (a) hypocrites and (b) the vast minority. It was interesting to see that when someone checked to see how many complaints the FCC had received about one supposedly indecent show, there were only 169 complaints ... from only 23 actual distinct people ... of which 21 were worded exactly the same, i.e. only three people were actually worked up enough to write their own letter.
And, of course, Desperate Housewives is #1 on the telly.
Boy I'm tired of these self-righteous blowhards.
Good piece by Frank Rich in the Times about the Monday Night Football hoo-hah: how the right-wingers making a big to-do about indecency on the tube are (a) hypocrites and (b) the vast minority. It was interesting to see that when someone checked to see how many complaints the FCC had received about one supposedly indecent show, there were only 169 complaints ... from only 23 actual distinct people ... of which 21 were worded exactly the same, i.e. only three people were actually worked up enough to write their own letter.
And, of course, Desperate Housewives is #1 on the telly.
Boy I'm tired of these self-righteous blowhards.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
PITCH BIBLES PLUS
Ah yes ... forgot to mention two of the most important things any pitch must say:
a. tone -- what kind of a comedy or drama is it? Glamour soap? Dark comedy?
b. template -- what happens every week? E.g. "Every week, our Crime Scene Investigators will uncover the truth about three murders." "Every week, Buffy Summers fights the forces of evil -- and kicks ass."
The template is the most important thing any pitch can have. It sums up the series.
Ah yes ... forgot to mention two of the most important things any pitch must say:
a. tone -- what kind of a comedy or drama is it? Glamour soap? Dark comedy?
b. template -- what happens every week? E.g. "Every week, our Crime Scene Investigators will uncover the truth about three murders." "Every week, Buffy Summers fights the forces of evil -- and kicks ass."
The template is the most important thing any pitch can have. It sums up the series.
Friday, November 26, 2004
THE CRAFT
Rented Clueless because we thought a character in it was like a character in Exposure, but he wasn't, and whatever charm the movie had then seemed to have faded. So we ditched it and rented The Craft, a very fine little occult movie I've always liked. The writers clearly did their homework on Wicca; this is what contemporary witchcraft would look like, if witches had real occult power. The high school aspects of the show were very real. The motivations of the girls were quite real and gripping, so when they get power and go overboard getting their own, the movie feels very real. The best science fiction, I think, feels like ordinary dramatic fiction, except that the science has changed. In great science fiction there are not only compelling metaphysical questions raised by the fictional science ("What is human?" in Bladerunner), but there is compelling drama. These are people you would care about even if they weren't in a science fiction movie. We came for the Enterprise; we stayed for Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
That's what I'm trying to achieve in Unseen. I'm feeling right now that there is not enough of the real world before the supernatural world asserts itself. I think I need a few more scenes of ordinary creepy before the supernatural creepy comes in.
The Craft eventually degenerates into a kung fu battle between Good Witch and Bad Witch, one that I found satisfying enough but Lisa got bored with. But up till then, it satisfied both of us. Good movie. Nice work.
Rented Clueless because we thought a character in it was like a character in Exposure, but he wasn't, and whatever charm the movie had then seemed to have faded. So we ditched it and rented The Craft, a very fine little occult movie I've always liked. The writers clearly did their homework on Wicca; this is what contemporary witchcraft would look like, if witches had real occult power. The high school aspects of the show were very real. The motivations of the girls were quite real and gripping, so when they get power and go overboard getting their own, the movie feels very real. The best science fiction, I think, feels like ordinary dramatic fiction, except that the science has changed. In great science fiction there are not only compelling metaphysical questions raised by the fictional science ("What is human?" in Bladerunner), but there is compelling drama. These are people you would care about even if they weren't in a science fiction movie. We came for the Enterprise; we stayed for Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
That's what I'm trying to achieve in Unseen. I'm feeling right now that there is not enough of the real world before the supernatural world asserts itself. I think I need a few more scenes of ordinary creepy before the supernatural creepy comes in.
The Craft eventually degenerates into a kung fu battle between Good Witch and Bad Witch, one that I found satisfying enough but Lisa got bored with. But up till then, it satisfied both of us. Good movie. Nice work.
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