Making and releasing the micro-budget indie
Several readers who couldn’t make it to the One Too Many Mornings screening on Tuesday night asked whether there might be video from the Q&A I hosted afterwards. Thanks to the OTMM crew, there is:
Part One (8:45) talks about the genesis of the movie, from script through Sundance.
Part Two (9:57) looks at how they’re trying to get the movie out in the world, from direct downloads to DVDs to college screenings around the country.
Although the discussion in general will make sense to anyone interested in making indies, some of the specific details on OTMM will make more sense if you watch the movie. For this week only, readers can download the film for $2 here.
In the rooftop party after the screening, several people asked about my interest in tiny movies — most of the projects I work on have a lot more commas and zeros in the price tag. To me, it’s an experiment in disintermediation, just like The Variant was.
What happens when you take out the typical distributor? What do you gain? What do you lose?
I’m toying with the idea of doing The Remnants as an itty-bitty feature, but would only do it if I could get it out in the world in a way that made sense creatively and financially. So I’m watching things like OTMM closely. I’m happy to be a trailblazer, but would love to know what cliffs and monsters lie along that path.
(cont’d) vs. CONTINUOUS
Via Twitter, I got a question about the variations on “continued” you often see in screenplays.
The first form, a contraction of the word, is widely used to indicate that the same character is speaking after an interrupting bit of scene description. Almost every screenplay you read will have it.
MARY
What’s wrong? Why are you smiling like that?
TOM
No reason.
Under the table, the dog begins licking the arch of Tom’s foot.
TOM (CONT’D)
Do you need any h-h-h-help with dessert?
Most screenwriting software will automatically generate the (cont’d), and you should let it. It’s standard, and particularly useful for actors. It’s your choice whether to have it be uppercase; (cont’d) or (CONT’D) are both fine. Pick one and stick to it.1
A related situation happens when a block of dialogue needs to extend off the bottom of the page. Screenwriting software will offer to put a (more), with a matching (cont’d) on the next page. Let it — though you might also consider tweaking the lines so that the dialogue doesn’t break there.
A second form of continued happens when a scene spans across multiple pages. If a scene continues off the bottom of a page, most screenwriting software will offer to put CONTINUED: at the top left of the next page, next to the scene number.
A134 CONTINUED:
EDWARD
I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born. And if you can’t see that, it’s your failing, not mine.
You don’t need it. Turn it off.
The only time to use these continueds is when you’re headed into production, complete with a shooting schedule and scene numbers. They help reduce confusion when you have colored revision pages. Beyond that, they’re clutter. Get rid of them.
The final form of continued happens in scene headings. Some screenwriters use CONTINUOUS to indicate that action is ongoing despite changes of location:
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT
Mary searches for Rex, checking under the bed.
INT. BASEMENT – CONTINUOUS
Tom WHISTLES, shaking Rex’s favorite toy.
I’m not a big fan of this use of continuous, because it’s all too easy to forget what time of day it’s supposed to be. In the (rare) cases in which I need to clarify that the action from one scene to the next is continuous, I put it in brackets.
EXT. BACKYARD – NIGHT [CONTINUOUS]
Rex digs his way under the fence.
- You may run into situations in which a character is both speaking and giving voice-over in a scene. Your software might try to flag those voiceovers as continuations of the character’s normal dialogue. Don’t let it. ↩
One Too Many Mornings screening
One Too Many Mornings, the Sundance movie I’ve written about a few times, is having a screening tomorrow night (Tuesday, March 16th) in Los Angeles.
I’ll be leading a Q&A with the filmmakers right after the screening, talking not just about the film but the challenges and opportunities in making and releasing a microbudget movie.
If you’re considering making a little movie, you should keep a close eye on OTMM. It’s good — a tiny, Swingers-esque two-hander. And the filmmakers are smart guys, not just how they made the movie, but how they’re putting it out in the world. They’re doing everything I would try, but will it work? It’s a great case study for indie films in 2010.
Here’s the info:
Tuesday March 16th – 8:00pm
Downtown Independent
251 S. Main Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Tickets are $7, available in advance at Brown Paper Tickets.
How to logline a dual-plot story
What is the best way to write a short logline for a screenplay with dual storylines, especially if both storylines are crucial to the telling of the story?
I feel like scripts with multiple storylines (3+ stories) like Pulp Fiction or Crash can rely on simple loglines that get across the overall theme of the story. But what about scripts with two distinct storylines that parallel one another…do you pack both storylines into the logline? Or do you pick one and focus the on it?
– Mac
Los Angeles
Some movies are really difficult to logline. Go is one. When forced to give a short description, I try to chart the three main threads: “It’s about a really tiny drug deal, a wild night in Vegas and two soap opera actors — all of which cross paths at LA’s underground rave scene.”
Again, not great. But it gets the job done.
For something like Big Fish, I make the parallel structure clear: “It’s the story of a man’s life, told the way he remembers it: full of wild, impossible exaggerations. At the same time, his grown son is trying to separate the truth from the fantasy before his dad dies.”
Julie and Julia has dual storylines, yet summarizes easily: “It’s the story of a young woman determined to cook her way through Julia Child’s famous cookbook, intercut with the adventures of Julia Child’s life.”
If both plotlines are key to your story, you need to make that clear in the logline. Otherwise, you risk future readers feeling like you bait-and-switched them.
Free ebooks correlated with increased print-book sales
Cory Doctorow points to a BYU study that shows releasing a free ebook version may boost sales of the printed edition.
You’d love to see a bigger sample, and correlation does not imply causation. But to me, it suggests that increased sampling usually generates more sales than it costs.
Advance screenings of movies work the same way. When a studio expects good word of mouth, they are often willing to give up a day’s box office1 in order to get more people talking about their movie. They’ll also conduct word-of-mouth screenings tailored to specific audiences. “Free” and “exclusive” are big motivators.
(thanks Howard Rodman)
- When you buy a ticket for a sneak preview of The Proposal, it’s actually counted towards another film, generally one from the same studio currently playing at that theater. ↩
Hiring complete
I’ve picked my Director of Digital Things. His name is Ryan Nelson, and his portfolio can be found here. He’ll be starting in April.
Longtime friend-of-the-site Nima Yousefi (he coded Scrippets) will be coming on board to handle a few special projects in the meantime.
With ridiculously good candidates to choose from, it’s not just protocol to say it was a tough decision. I learned quite a bit, both from video-chat interviews with applicants and calling references. I would have been happy with any of my final few choices; hiring just one was difficult. It forced me to focus on what I saw this person doing two, six and twenty-four months down the road.
I largely followed my original plan for the hiring process, starting with reviewing portfolios and emailing follow-up questions. I assigned a special project to my top few contenders, both to see what they could do and how they would discuss it afterwards.
You can read the assigment if you like. I’ve left it to the candidates whether they want to share what they did with the world.
If you feel like doing your own riff on the project, by all means go for it. If you’re using my text, I’d like attribution, but otherwise it’s free and clear.
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