johnaugust.com

I’m in a new situation that I’m trying to navigate, and I was hoping you could help for my benefit and the benefit of those who read your column and blog and might find themselves in a similar situation.

I recently wrote and directed a low-budget feature that played at a film festival in [...]

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I won’t throw around terms like “beta,” but if you’re interested in checking out what we have working on the scrippet front, you can visit the test blog and leave a comment to see how it works.

You can leave feedback either here or there.

There’s still more testing to be done to make sure it works [...]

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UPDATED. See below.

For the past four years, I’ve been including little blocks of formatted screenplay examples in my posts, such as…

INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY As the phone RINGS, Gary dozily reaches one dirty-socked foot off the couch to sit up — and suddenly finds himself falling. He lands hard, dazed. We REVEAL that the [...]

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I have recently finished writing a screenplay with a friend. It takes place in present day. Towards the end of the first act, we go to a flashback, 30 years earlier to 1978, when the main character was 8 years old. After the flashback, we come back to November of the next year.

[...]

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Recent articles about the political leanings of popular comic book characters got me thinking about the uncanny valley between fictional and real-world ideologies. We’re happy to have characters speak in broad terms — “With great power comes great responsibility” — but the minute they start referring to specific issues, we become very uncomfortable. [...]

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I’m writing a movie that makes a time jump about 90 pages in, meaning at the beginning I’ve got a couple of 10-year olds who’ll be about 18 at the end. That’s not my problem though, since the jump is unavoidable and casting different actors actually makes sense in this case.

My question is: What’s [...]

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Because it also happens to be mine. And it’s today. So in lieu of a brand new article, here’s a brand new plug-in: Random Post.

(Comments are closed, but thank you.)

 Comments Off

The WGA announced this afternoon that all three proposed revisions to the Screen Credits Manual passed handily, ranging from 83 to 90 percent yes votes.

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I have a character — let’s call him Evan — leans out an open kitchen window. I want it to be a POV shot, so everything on the screen is outside the window. Do I have to put the action of what’s going on, outside, under a new scene heading (EXT. FRONT YARD [...]

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IMDb has message boards for every film and every filmmaker. I would strongly advise you to never read them, and in particular, don’t read them for any film you’ve worked on. You will walk away feeling a little worse about yourself and humanity.

But today, while looking up the name of an actor in Go, [...]

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How do you go about using a pseudonym? My name doesn’t particularly stand out, and I’ve been using a pseudonym I really like while blogging. I’d like to use this as I submit scripts to contests/fellowships/agencies, but I’m not sure of the legalities of doing such. I don’t want to legally change my name — [...]

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It’s been weirdly under-reported, but Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that seeks to amend the California constitution to ban same-sex marriage, had its official language changed earlier this month. It used to read as follows:

LIMIT ON MARRIAGE. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman [...]

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I’m headed to Seattle tonight for a quick screening of The Nines. I’m packing almost nothing: my iPhone, my Kindle, toiletries and a change of undies. Over the past year, I’ve found I am packing less and less, to the point that it’s become a sport to see how little I can get by with. [...]

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A quick trip to London over the weekend gave me 20+ hours of plane time to catch up on reading. I finished three books. The first two had been sitting on my Kindle1, while the last is dead-tree-only at the moment.

As I’ve mentioned before, screenwriters spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and talking [...]

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Just a reminder for WGA members: ballots are due Thursday for the three screen credit proposals, which I wrote about in more detail a few weeks ago. It’s an easy Yes for all three. They’re basically just closing loopholes.

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I have lots of questions, but by all means choose two you’d like to answer.

– Ric New Zealand

1) What’s the commercial potential of movies without happy endings? I’m tired of every movie having to end in a good way, even if that’s a main character surviving a slasher flick. Does a movie automatically fail if it [...]

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Because a sizable number of WGA members read the site, I want to spend a few paragraphs talking about the Board of Directors election coming this September.

Since joining the guild in 1998, I’ve always read the candidate statements carefully — they come in a booklet along with the ballot — trying to balance [...]

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And suddenly, we’re up. Honestly, we could have probably been up earlier if I hadn’t mucked around with some things. If the site goes down again over the weekend, don’t despair. Why not see WALL-E?

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A story in today’s LA Times about chocolate-making got me thinking about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and an error I deliberately introduced. Early in the tour of the factory, Wonka says…

WONKA The cocoa bean happens to be the thing from which chocolate is made.

Wrong. The right word is cacao — it’s [...]

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This Distracted Globe has a new look back and review of my first movie, Go.

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The first episode of Joss Whedon’s three-part web series, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, is available on iTunes, and definitely worth checking out. It’s goofy and specific and huggable.

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I’m a struggling screenwriter in Brazil. About one and a half years ago, I had my first screenplay produced, a drama/thriller that had mixed reviews. The large part of the negative reviews pointed to aspects of the screenplay that I was forced to modify in the course of the production. In all, I like the [...]

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A few readers have asked whether I’ll weigh in on the SAG situation. I won’t, except to relate an interesting conversation I had with a TV showrunner a month or two ago.

He said his casting people were having a hard time finding actors of a certain age, especially minorities, for episodic parts. [...]

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In the Big Fish Sequence Outline posted in the Library, you have boxes around certain sequences (i.e. sequences 3,5,8 etc.), but not around others. What do these boxes reference?

– Gerald Mississippi

The boxes indicate which sections of the movie are Edward’s stories. I wanted to show the balance between real-world stuff and fable.

Why did Edward Bloom leave [...]

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Todd Sklar, who I know from his work up at the Sundance Labs, wrote in to agree with a lot of the points I raised in my post-mortem of The Nines. His experience with the indie film he made and self-released is alternately inspiring and exhausting, but worth careful attention for anyone considering making [...]

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I want to expand, redirect and challenge some of the discussion on my earlier post about Sundance, The Nines, and the death of independent film.

For starters, many in the P2P world were all too happy to declare victory over, well, logic. (The Nines Director: Forget Sundance, Use P2P Instead). That’s incorrect on a lot [...]

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In an effort to be less on-the-nose with my dialog, I sometimes avoid the dialog all together.

My overly dramatic example:

TIM It’s up to us to fix this. Sarah’s face: How? TIM We go back to where it all began.

I don’t want to make Sarah ask how. I want her face to convey the message. Have you [...]

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A quote from Mark Gill in the LA Times last week would seem discouraging for independent filmmakers:

Of the 5,000 films submitted to Sundance each year — generally with budgets under $10 million — maybe 100 of them got a U.S. theatrical release three years ago. And it used to be that 20 of [...]

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On Saturday evening, one hundred friends and family members got together for our wedding at a house in the hills. There were rings and toasts and food and cake. It’s all a bit of a blur. The photos I’ve seen so far have me grinning idiotically, which I’m sure I was.

We had [...]

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Useful reference for all writers. (via Team Forty).

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris for the link to the artist, Tom Gauld.

SECOND UPDATE: Because I was curious…

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I’m back from Utah, where I was working as an advisor at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. I had five projects in three days, which made for a lot of reading and meeting, picking-apart and putting-back-together.

The scripts this year were as emotionally challenging as ever — of the projects I covered, three involved the [...]

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Having a cold in the age of the internet gives you none of the TV-watching, bed-resting benefits. You’re typing and clicking just a little more slowly than usual.

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One page of screenplay translates to one minute of movie. Since most movies are a little under two hours long, most screenplays should be a little less than 120 pages.

That’s an absurd oversimplification, of course.

One page of a battle sequence might run four minutes of screen time, while a page of dialogue [...]

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To: FILE From: Studio Development Group Date: June 16, 2008 RE: PUZZLE FARTER, 6/2/08 draft

We think this draft represents progress from the 5/01/08 draft, but there are still areas that need to be addressed to make this the strongest possible casual videogame. As always, we look forward to discussing these issues with you.

1. DEVELOPING [...]

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The Writers Guild of America (WGA) determines who is the credited writer on a feature film. This is a Good Thing. It prevents studios, producers and directors from grabbing undeserved credit. But it makes for a lot of work and controversy within the Guild, because inevitably some writers will not receive credit [...]

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At a USC forum last Saturday, a writer asked whether it was worth considering product integration when writing a script. She said her project would lend itself really well to a major brand like Starbucks.

I told her that I’d often heard plans of trying to bring advertisers in on the ground floor of a movie, [...]

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A bunch of interesting questions have backed up in the queue, so let’s see how many we can get through while waiting for the new iPhone to be announced.

I’m currently outlining a spec feature, 98% of which takes place at the Superbowl. I’m on the fence about proceeding, however, because a few creative executives [...]

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Between deadlines, travel and wedding plans, I haven’t had the chance to blog about this first batch of summer movies, and more importantly, What We Can Learn. So before I get any further behind, let’s pick three of the most notable films to date.

(Mild spoiler warnings throughout.)

Heroes are more important than villains

Iron Man spent 85% [...]

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I have been tossing around an idea for an animated feature film. I have a ton of notes, character breakdowns, beat sheets, outlines, etc., etc. Now its just a question of putting it down on the page. My question is fairly simple and straight-forward: Am I wasting my time?

I’ve read that writing specs for animation [...]

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I have a question about formatting for a script I’ve been working on. The concept involves some scenes being completely silent, but with an occasional sound coming through (i.e. everything’s silent, including speech, until someone breaks a glass and the shattering is audible).

I’ve tried a couple of different methods of formatting this but I’m [...]

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This morning’s decision by the California Supreme Court means I no longer have to be an unwed father. And for a change, even our Governor is onboard:

I respect the court’s decision and as governor, I will uphold its ruling. As I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution [...]

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Based on my score in this list of 1001 important books, the answer is no.

I got 38.

Some disclaimers are in order. First, the list includes only fiction. If it included non-fiction, I’d score much higher. I only counted books I actually read — seeing the movie doesn’t count. The [...]

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I’ve written about the importance of a good title before. A great script with a crappy title faces an uphill battle. That’s why I always make sure I have a title I like before I type “FADE IN,” even if I later change my mind.1

So yes, I’d pay for a great title. Today’s LA [...]

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I’ve added two .pdfs to the Library. (Which is the rechristened “Downloads” section. Thanks to whichever reader suggested renaming it.)

The visual FX breakdown for two of the sequences — the end of Part One, and the end of Part Three. Both are spoilers, so skip them if you haven’t seen the movie yet. The shooting schedule. [...]

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“Paul from LA” wrote in with this link to a site I kind of remember using when we were picking a name for my daughter. It lets you type in any first name and graphs how popular it has been (in the U.S.) over the past 130 years. What’s less obvious is that if you [...]

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Y’know, I think we learned something today: Derivatives were maybe not the best choice for the third-ever scene challenge.

I deliberately picked something tough because in real life, screenwriters are often faced with challenging topics to explain. For example, last night I spoke with Ron Bass about the Einstein project he’s working on. Quick: Show special [...]

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I’ve closed comments on the Derivative Challenge to begin judging the 84 entries. Should have a winner this afternoon.

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I am a reasonably successful screenwriter. A working writer. I’ve sold two pilots, gotten a freelance episode of a high-quality one-hour drama, done some comic book gigs, and just sold a feature with myself attached to direct at a production budget of $3M.

Not A-list, or B-list, but maybe C-minus working my way up. [...]

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Following up on my article about How to Explain Quantum Mechanics, I think it’s high time for the third-ever Scene Challenge.

For the first one, Masturbating to Star Trek, you had to write an entire scene. For the second one, Make Your Introduction, you had to introduce one character. This time, it’s [...]

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In the second Charlie’s Angels, where did the phrase “Kleinhardt gambitâ€? come from?

– Duane Mount Pleasant

Duane is referring to this scene, near the end of the movie:

EXT. HIGH ROOF - NIGHT Madison finds herself alone on a high, empty roof. Reeling, confused. A giant, blinking “LOS ANGELES� SIGN flashes. A single telescope has been set [...]