Digital Media

I read in today's Playback that Stratford, known for its theatre festival, is launching a digital media festival. Banff keeps sending me promo material about their digital media festival. Is anyone actually making money off digital media? I mean, aside from people in the festival business?

Part of the problem is, presumably, that people expect things on the Internet to be free. They'll tolerate banner ads, and even ads at the beginning of a video, if they have to. But advertising doesn't scale well. The really lucrative ads are corporate sponsorships, and you have to be a smash hit, à la Têtes à Claques or 30 Second Bunny Theater, to get it.

People also seem to want things on the Internet to be short. Anything longer than, say, 6 minutes feels interminable on the Net. I hate to watch TV shows on my computer, though I'll happily watch the same shows on my TV. On my computer, I keep wanting to go check the Wikipedia or read news articles about Miley Whatsername that I don't even really care about. It's like the computer actually hurts my attention span.

Lots of producers are out there trying to figure out the Internet. They rarely intend to pay you. Because it's a new business, they generally want you to "invest" your time in the project, so that at some later date you'll get a chunk of the huge windfall your little flash animation or whatever will generate.

Sometimes old school producers will try digital media just to show they're hip. The results are often Quarterlife.

There doesn't really seem to be a business model here, is there? Just wildcatting.

Anyone know anything different?

More on Phone Dialog

Q. Do you have to write into phone) after every line of dialogue into a phone?

JOHN
(into phone)
I'm talking into the phone.

A professor of mine absolutely requires that I do that.

Well, I don't like to do that. However a showrunner friend of mine insists that it keeps things clear. So I actually do it even though I don't like to.

However, I put (INTO PHONE) on the character line so it doesn't take up space:

JOHN (INTO PHONE)
I'm talking into the phone.

If we hear the offscreen person's dialog, then her character name would be followed by (ON PHONE) or, old school, (FILTER):

JANE (ON PHONE)
Like, duh, yo.

Telephone Dialog

I could swear I'd written up a whole post about this, or possibly read one, but I can't find it, so...

JDC asks me how to format telephone dialog when you aren't meant to hear the offscreen character's voice.

Really, this is all about making sure the reader feels the amount of time your onscreen character isn't speaking. I'll usually go with something like this (and forgive the HTML):

Joe picks up the phone.

   JOE
 Yo.

He listens.

   JOE
 No, I don't think so.
  (...)
 I SAID I didn't THINK so!

He listens, pacing, getting progressively more nervous.

   JOE
 Can't you for once gimme a break???

He slams the phone down.

You can use a line of action just to delay ("he listens") or to characterize the delay ("getting progressively more nervous").

If you just want a little delay, use a parenthetical -- (beat) or even just an ellipsis (...) works fine.

Note that just embedding an ellipsis in the dialog itself doesn't work well:

JOE
No, I don't think so. (...) I said I
didn't THINK so.

It doesn't really hold the eye long enough to give the effect of someone else talking. One key to writing transparently is not requiring the reader to think too much. He should just be swept along in the read. So often you'll find yourself unpacking moments on the page just so that they take longer to read -- white space is your friend there. When it comes to dialog, don't be afraid to make pauses where you need them. The reader isn't acting the lines out for you in his head, he's just reading like you'd read a book. So you have to make the performance happen for him in the blacks.

UPDATE: Ahhh ... alert reader Jason Sanders points out that John August recently answered this very question. And with much better formatting than I, I must say.

Old Bailey

The Old Bailey, London's famous Central Criminal Court, has posted four centuries of trial records online, including transcripts. Want to read true stories of very, very bad people? Check it out.

Fast and Cheap

"Fast, cheap and good: pick two" runs the proverb. 

John Gaspard likes to focus on the fast and cheap, and he's written two books interviewing quick'n'dirty moviemakers. Now he's got a blog where he does more interviews. He's got Roger Corman, one of the Blair Witch guys, and some low-down filmmakers you may never have heard of ... but they make films.

Check it out!

All Broke Down

I just handed in about 60 pages of story: breakdowns for all ten episodes of my pay cable series (including the three I've already written), averaging about six pages each. That's four stories per episode (one for each of the core cast), so 24 fairly detailed story breakdowns. They're not technically breakdowns since I don't have everything split into acts -- which I would normally do even though there are no acts in pay cable. But if you are the network, and you want to know what the series is, it's all there.

(And if you are not the network, alas, I can't show it to you.)

This is not how shows are done in the States, of course, or even in Canadian broadcast. If you've been reading Rogers' blog, you know about shooting a pilot, getting a greenlight, then hiring yourself up a writing room. Our process started with a pitch bible. Then the network kindly commissioned a pilot script, then two more scripts. Then we had a three week writing room with two other writers and a writing assistant. Then I spent another month or so reworking the stories we'd come up with in the room. The point of this unorthodox system is to allow one writer to write all (or almost all) the episodes of a short season of television himself. I am constantly amazed at the networks' faith in me on this series. 

Now if you will all just kindly say a little prayer for me, or chat up Lady Fortune, or sacrifice a black lamb to the Joss... one day I may be turning these breakdowns into scripts. 

Walla

Mostly I'm stressing about Pennsylvania, but a reader writes in:

Q. How detailed do you have to be when describing small talk going on around your protagonist, but that he is not involved in?

For example, I have a character sitting at his desk, with co-workers talking just outside his cubicle about what they will be doing on the weekend. The character can overhear it all. The point I want to get across is that the character at his desk is not involved/included or sociable with anybody at work, and that he has nothing to do on the weekend.

Do I actually have to write out what each co-worker will be doing on the weekend, AND all their small talk to establish how well connected they all are? Or can I just write in the pros "they discuss their weekend"?

Really it depends whether you, the story teller, consider what they say to be important to your story.

If we're supposed to know what they're saying, then write it out. For example, if your character has just found out he has cancer, then we probably want to hear the co-workers talking about their summer vacation. You know, for irony. In your example, you're trying to build counterpoint between your hero and his co-workers, so you ought to write it out. 

If we don't need to know what they're saying, then it's fine to say, his co-workers babble on AD LIB about their vacations.

If they're talking on-screen, you probably need the former. If they're offscreen you have a choice: write out the dialogue (with (O.C.) after the character name, on the same line, thus: KERMIT (O.C.)); or write AD LIB.

If it's just background walla, then you don't need much at all: The crowd BUZZES in the b.g.

(Walla is the term for indistinct noise of people talking.)

Remember, in all these cases, make your choice according to what you want the reader to absorb. If you want them to hear what people are saying, you have to give them dialogue to read. If you just want them to know that people are talking, then just say that. 

Anyone Reading This in New Jersey? Or, Help Me, Hive Gut!

We're seeing the grandparents Monday, on our way back up to Montreal from New York, crossing the George Washington Bridge on our way up to I-87.

Can anyone recommend a yummy family-friendly restaurant not too far from the Palisades Parkway, anywhere North of the GWB, or anything off the 17? Anything in Fort Lee, Teaneck, Paramus?

Spicy and non-chain is a plus.