– kaz

This will never end. It will continue to be a problem as long as you write. I’m certain that Stephen King, even after umpteen books, wrestles with this problem. In fact, his prolificacy might be a coping strategy; rather than decide which thing to write, he just writes them all.

At this moment, there are no less than fifteen projects competing for brainshare in my head. Five of these are things I’m contracted to write, while the other ten or so are old ideas, recent ideas or things that just occurred to me as I walked up the stairs to my office.

So which projects do I write?

Well, I should write the ones that I’m being paid to write, and more specifically, I should work on the one that is next due. So I spend the bulk of my writing time on the project with the nearest deadline. Honestly, that may not be the project that excites me the most at any given moment. But I’m getting paid to do my craft, so I’m certainly not going to complain.

But what about those other projects, the ones I’m not currently writing?

They’re battling it out in my subconscious, each trying to get my attention long enough that I’ll recognize how worthy it is. Sometimes they’ll even gang up on me: The Nines was three separate ideas that conspired to fit together.

Some “old” ideas get written this way. Others simply recede so far back they’re nearly forgotten. That’s okay. You’re not going to become best friends with every nice person you meet. You’re not going to write every good idea you have.

In some cases, simple timing makes a new project suddenly possible. For the Alaska pilot, I pitched it to the network within a week of having the idea. The Remnants was possible only because the WGA strike meant I couldn’t work on any of my “real” stuff.

If you have four ideas, all equally viable, I’d recommend writing the one that has the best ending. That’s the one you’ve thought through the most, and the one you’re least likely to abandon midway. But whatever you do, just pick one and write it without delay. If you have great ideas for your other projects, absolutely take some notes, but don’t switch. Finish what you’re doing, or you’ll have a folder full of first acts.

For something that’s been sitting on a shelf for a year, it’s really gratifying.

Viewers had a lot of questions, so I’ll do my best to answer them here.

It’s actually not about zombies.

When I pitched the show, I described it as a cross between The Office and The Stand. Something Very Bad has happened, but we’re focusing on the survivors and their dysfunctional attempts to reestablish normalcy. Like Stephen King’s book, there are good people and some very bad people — but they’re not the living dead.

I completely understand why viewers might expect some shambling corpses. Mia claims that she’s “not one of them,” and former group member Stan apparently “went Jurassic Park.” The bad people, “them,” are truly scary — but also incredibly organized and sneaky. Think fascist.

Think V, not Z.

In the final scene, Mia and Josh both admit they don’t really understand what happened. That’s important.

The correct answer is an amalgam of all three.

How did you get that cast?

I knew Ben Falcone and Justine Bateman, so I wrote those parts with them in mind. Ze Frank is a friend of producer Matt Byrne, and I had a hunch he could act. So I wrote the part hoping he’d do it.

Robert Ulrich, who’s been my casting director on several projects, graciously agreed to help me find actors for Chas, Mia and Wallace. You’d think that given my credits, it would be easy to get people in to meet and/or audition, but several agencies simply refused to send their actors out for a web series.¹ I deliberately hired people with a writing or improv background, because I knew from shooting Part Two of The Nines that I’d need to let people veer far off the script in order to get the feel I wanted.

Because Justine is very active in SAG, she got us to test out their new web series agreement, which basically allows guild actors to work on experimental projects like this for less than scale. From cast to crew, everyone got about $120/day.

How long did you shoot? How much did it cost?

We shot three pretty easy days, with most departments getting a day to prep and a day to wrap. With six actors and a fair amount of improv, I didn’t want to feel rushed. We shot two cameras (the HVX-200) most of the time, generally gunning the same direction for a wide and a close-up.

All in, the show cost $25,003. Depending on your perspective, that’s either expensive for a web show or mind-blowingly cheap for television show. We paid for locations, permits and other details a scrappier web show would just ignore. And we had more crew. Some web shows are literally just the actors and a guy holding the camera. We had 15 people. We were more like an indie feature, but without trucks or trailers.

We could have done it cheaper. Of the $25,000, more than $17,000 went to pay people, and a lot of those folks probably would have worked for free. But I didn’t want to do anything I couldn’t replicate for a series of 10 episodes. You can’t ask someone to work for 25 days for the love of their craft.

I saw the pilot as an experiment not just in storytelling, but production. I wanted to it to be sustainable.

Why isn’t this a web series?

There are at least five answers, all of which are obstacles.

• The lack of a major advertiser who wanted to sponsor it. That was the original goal: to find a company that would promote the show as hard as we would promote their product. Pringles is sort of a placeholder. We could swap that out for almost anything: Coke, Ace Hardware, Duracell.

• Actor availability. Every actor in The Remnants works a lot. The writers’ strike was a major reason why so many great people were available. And no, I’m not wishing for an actors’ strike.

• My schedule. I don’t know when I could do it. I haven’t announced the post-Shazam projects I’m working on, but trust me, I’m really busy with features. Doing ten episodes of The Remnants would be three solid months of work.

• The lack of a viable business model. A series of ten similar webisodes wouldn’t cost that much (maybe $300K), but there’s still no model for how investors could get their money back. If I thought there was, I’d pay for it myself.

• My ambitions. I need to write another movie to direct. The more things I put in front of it, the longer it pushes off that goal.

All this said, I’ve been thinking a lot about The Remnants, and have mentally moved it from the “Impossible” to “Unlikely” box.

What happened at the Grand Canyon?

Something so awful it still gives me nightmares.

(That’s the answer I gave actresses when they asked that question in auditions.)

The Remnants from John August on Vimeo.

1. Props to William Morris and ICM for taking us seriously.

For example, if most of a character’s scenes are with groups of people talking, the auditioning actor probably won’t to have enough lines to really make an impression. And in television, you may need to cast a part that isn’t especially big in its first episode, but becomes more important later.

Knowing this, casting directors will often try to cobble something together. But a smart writer should also volunteer to write special scenes just for auditions. Sometimes they’re cut-down and rearranged versions of scenes from the script, but it’s also an opportunity to just come up with something new. On movies and shows in which I’m involved with casting, I’ll generally give the casting director specially-prepared sides a few days before auditions begin.

In the Library, I have an additional audition scene from Go for Mannie, whose character didn’t talk much but was crucial to the first act.

And I just added three audition scenes from The Remnants:

Chas, Mia and Wallace auditions

And all the casting sides for the Alaska pilot.

One added bonus of writing new scenes for the audition is that you don’t get completely burned out on the real scenes. After you’ve heard fifty actors read the same ten lines, they become meaningless. You don’t want to be on set hearing them again.

It’s called The Remnants.

It’s a comedy about a group of squabbling survivors in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Tonally, it’s a cross between The Stand and The Office.

It stars Justine Bateman, Michael Cassidy, Ben Falcone, Ze Frank, Ernie Hudson, and Amanda Walsh. It was produced by Dan Etheridge and Matt Byrne.

60Frames and NBC Universal Digital Studio are in discussions about shooting a bunch of episodes as a web series. If that happens, hooray. If not, it was a great experience making it. We shot it during the darkest part of the WGA strike, so to be working again was amazing.

You can watch a two-minute snippet from the middle of the pilot here:

Better yet, if you have a fast connection and a fairly fast computer, check out the HD version. It even looks good full-screen.

I recently won a modest grant to shoot a half-hour pilot that I co-wrote with a fellow NYU alumna. We assembled a cast of young actors, brought in a skeleton crew, and shot the pilot over six long, exhilarating days this January.

Now, as we wait for the final cut of our show to return from the sound mixer, we are working out a way to get our episode into the right hands -– and we aren’t exactly sure whose hands those should be. Independent financiers? The networks and their web initiatives? Talent agencies? Given how new the idea of independently produced episodic work is, there seem to be very few resources for how to go about seeking distribution for a project such as ours.

I know you recently worked on your own privately financed web pilot, and thought you might have some particular insight into how two young writers can best proceed with an independently produced pilot.

Any guidance you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

– Isaac Aptaker

Congrats on your degree and your pilot. I’m glad you realize you’re not “done” in any meaningful way. You’re about to start a sprint that will hopefully become a marathon lasting your entire career.

You and I are in pretty much in the same boat. We’ve both just finished a scrappy little pilot that could become a series, ideally one that works a little more like independent film than standard television.

This concept of “indie TV” is almost at a point where we can stop putting it in quotes. Give it a year or two. In the meantime, we’re going to be forging some new ground. We both need to find two things: money to make the show, and a way to distribute it. The latter is easy; the former is more challenging.

Big media conglomerates dominate traditional television, both broadcast and cable. There are plenty of other outlets for people to see your show, from basic (YouTube) to more complex (specialized web, cable and satellite networks). The common theme is that none of them are going to be able to pay you the upfront money you need to make the show the way a typical TV network would.

Obviously, our situations are a little different — I have more credits and contacts. But it’s the premise and execution of the pilot that matters most, so a year from now, you may be the one with an actual series.

Let me talk you through what we’re doing, and how it might apply to your show.

1. Don’t dismiss standard TV altogether.

We made the pilot for a web series, but if a network (likely cable) loved it and presented a compelling case for doing it with them, we’d certainly consider it. For all the freedom a web series gives you (flexible running times, interactivity, simplified production), there’s no competing with the money and marketing muscle of a network. For example, South Park started as a Christmas card video, which spread virally in pre-internet Hollywood by videotape. Done today, South Park could easily be a web show. But would it be nearly the same phenomenon (and cash cow) if it didn’t have Viacom behind it? Probably not.¹

Particularly if your pilot resembles a traditional TV show, you should get it in the hands of people who work in traditional television. Use anyone you can at Tisch to reach out to television agents, managers and executives. Yes, you’re hoping they love you and want to represent you as a writer/director/whatever for your future career. But the immediate focus is whether this pilot could be a show.

2. Think about how you’ll make money, and how others will, too.

You can do a pilot for very little money because it’s a short time commitment for everyone. For my pilot, I brought in longtime accomplices and newcomers eager to make a relationship. But all the things you can skimp on for a three-day shoot become necessities when scaled up to a series, so you can’t expect a crew to work for praise and Quizno’s.

You’re going to need money. And whoever gives you this money needs to have a reason to believe it’s worth it.

For our show, we’re going to be targeting several big advertisers, trying to find one who will sign on as the exclusive presenter. Like the BMW films, our premise lends itself to very direct product integration. The money to make our show would be a trivial portion of a brand’s ad budget.²

For a web series, advertising can also be handled by a distributor or accumulator, some of whom give content creators a cut. That’s been the way many web shows have been handled so far. Chaotic? Absolutely. And I have no idea what the best practices are, or whether you can realistically expect to make money from it.

If you think you’re headed towards traditional television, your best bet is to target production companies with shows on the air that resemble what you’re doing. They’re most likely to have the contacts and experience to find the money needed. They’ll take a big percentage, but they’ll earn it.

3. Make a lot of screeners. Distribute them.

You don’t know who is going to be the crucial connection in getting your pilot to series, so there’s no benefit to keeping it a secret. If someone expresses any interest in you or the show, get them a DVD as soon as possible. Make it look professional, and follow up. Encourage people to pass it along.

I’m torn whether to recommend putting it online at the start. While it’s convenient to send a link to something, it makes it feel less exclusive. Even in 2008, there’s a sense that if something is already on the internet, it’s no longer valuable. So at least in the first wave, I’d try to keep it on physical media.

We’re at roughly the same stage of production: we finished the sound yesterday, and do final color correction this week. For me, it’s been great to explore what’s possible at budgets well below The Nines, relying on desktop software rather than specialized suites, and trying to remain agnostic about brands and workflows. If we end up doing a series, the pilot process will have taught us a lot about where to spend our money and time.

1. It’s worth pointing out that Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane is betting on the web. He’s doing a new show directly for the internet, [partnering with MRC and Google](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3iae79e78c381150a59a046b6e8dcd5169) for advertising.
2. This is working under the assumption that we’re a web series, but the beauty of a deeply-embedded advertiser is that it doesn’t particularly matter what format or medium the show ultimately takes. If it shows up on the torrents, even better.

Remarkably, it was the first conversation I’d had about the strike in over a week. After three months of talking (and blogging) about nothing other than the AMPTP, the NegComm and picketing schedules, it’s surprising how completely the strike has vanished off the radar.

With the official contract ratification results due today, it feels like a good time to take stock of where various projects have ended up in a post-strike universe.

The web series

We’re finishing editing on the web pilot I shot at the start of the month. Once it’s done, the financiers will go off and look for distribution and advertising partners. If we can find the right combination, we’ll aim to shoot a block of episodes this summer.

Shazam!

I spent the weekend barricaded at the Disney Grand Californian working on the next draft of Shazam! I’d gotten the studio and producer notes just before the strike, so this was my first chance to address them. It was great having a three-month break from the script, because it meant I could look at it with fresh eyes.

There are some web reports out of WonderCon about a possible title change to something longer and more Harry Potter-ish. Nothing’s decided yet. Obviously, one of the challenges with the property is that an audience will automatically assume that the hero’s name is Shazam, when it’s not.¹

Dreamworks project

When the strike began, I was halfway through the first draft of an unannounced project for Dreamworks, with a major star and director involved. Without being too specific, Something Happened unrelated to the strike which made it very unlikely that our movie could (or should) get made. So one of the first conversations I had after the strike was with the producer and director to figure out whether or not to proceed. After about 15 phone calls, many involving agents and executives, the decision was made to kill the project.

It was the right choice. While it’s hard to walk away from 55 pages, finishing the next 55 while almost certain that they could never be filmed would be even more dispiriting. As I write this, it’s not clear whether I’ll segue into a different project for the studio, or just write them a check for the money they’ve already paid me. Either way, I feel better getting to work on a script that is much likelier to become a movie.

Heroes: Origins

My hunch is that this spin-off series will stay in the deep-freeze for a while, maybe never to be thawed out. Tim Kring has said in interviews that the priority is getting next season’s plotline (“Villains”) ready for launch, as it should be. If Origins is resurrected at some point, I’d be happy to direct my episode.

1. Shazam is the wizard who bestows his powers; the guy in the cape is Captain Marvel. For legal reasons, the movie can’t be called Captain Marvel.

At lunch, I gave my sincere thanks to a crew I really enjoyed working with. I’d long taken it as a given that production is stressful, but this honestly wasn’t. Yes, we had a bit of padding in the schedule, but we weren’t dawdling. It felt most like shooting Part Two of The Nines: a small, nimble crew and the freedom of constrained expectations.

Now we move on to editing. We’re cutting on Avid, but I’ve been using Final Cut Pro to check out footage as well. So far, I’m a fan of the P2. If we were shooting multiple episodes, we would need to find a slicker workflow, but our dumping-to-MacBook worked fine for this.

I’d hoped to make it to the picketing at NBC yesterday, but the cold I’d been medicating for the past few days took over. In the age of the internet, being sick doesn’t keep you from working, but it makes it hard to muster enthusiasm for much. I’m alternating DayQuil and Diet Coke in hopes of attending the WGA meeting tomorrow night, but that’s on the bubble.

Talking with writers last night, there was widespread belief that the end of the strike is approaching. And yet it doesn’t feel like the end — or more specifically, it doesn’t feel like what an end is supposed to feel like. There’s a profound lack of closure. Bob Fisher will shave his strike beard. I’ll have beer with my Van Ness crew. But you can’t throw a parade when there’s so much work to be done.

It’s going to be brutal trying to get the town started up, figuring out which movies are still happening, which TV shows are going to try to finish their seasons. You know when there’s a big evacuation — fire, hurricane — and the residents are finally allowed back to their houses? It will be like that. The first few days will be just about finding out what’s still standing.

I have six features in various stages of production and development, all of which will need tending in the first few days after we get back to work. Three months is a long break. I haven’t read a word in these scripts, or jotted a single note. I’ve forgotten half the phone numbers I used to be able to blind-dial. So going from stand-still to sprint is likely be rough.

1. I realize how weird it sounds to call an actor in a short a “guest star.” The point is that if this were a series, he wouldn’t likely be in future episodes.

I anticipate some uncomfortable questions and awkward moments. That’s almost a given at a meeting with 1,000+ people and open microphones. But I can plead for a little decorum. Specifically:

• Dissent does not equal treason. You can disagree with anyone in the room or on the stage, but that doesn’t mean they’re a villain or a sell-out.
• If someone else asks your question, or makes your point, sit down. Yes, you waited in line 20 minutes to get to the mic. But let someone else say something new.
• The future takes precedence over the past. There are a lot of histories to be written about the strike, including alternate scenarios. These make interesting message-board discussions, but don’t play well as one-sided polemics.

In Los Angeles, the meeting is at the Shrine Auditorium — often home to awards shows, but also the stage where I got my USC diploma. I’m planning on working the phone banks at the WGA mothership on Friday, so if you’re a member, there’s a chance I may be calling you to encourage you to come to the pow-wow.

Much of yesterday’s shooting on the web pilot was constrained to a narrow kitchen, which reminded me again why traditional TV comedies have unrealistically-sized rooms. Another challenge: this show has a lot more characters in a scene than The Nines did, which inevitably slows down the work as you connect eye-lines and coverage. But it went smoothly, and we got our last shots just as the sun went down.

Today, we have a late call — 11:30 a.m. — and wrap production after dark.

Today went really, really well. We’re shooting two cameras — the HVX-200’s I was all a-twitter over before they came out — with six actors in challenging sets. It’s a very different kind of shooting than The Nines, looser and less planned, with many departments and amenities absent but (largely) unmissed.

I’m tired, but happy tired, which is a huge difference.

Tomorrow, call time is 7 a.m. We’re wrapping early to allow cast and crew to vote in the California primary elections.

Added: I got the same email all WGA members got this evening, with word of important progress but significant points still to be resolved. So don’t pop corks just yet. But that’s not to say you couldn’t stockpile a few bottles. And get email addresses for those folks you met on the picket line.

For any writer — WGA or otherwise — tomorrow would seem an especially important day to be on the picket lines. If the strike is ending, it’s your last chance to be part of the picket line. If it’s not ending, then a big showing on Monday will be important for the media who show up to cover the presumed resolution.

My heart will be with my usual crew at Paramount. My body and brain cells will be in Eagle Rock, where I’ll be shooting a short-film-slash-web-pilot that’s been in the works for weeks.¹

The decision to do the project — I’ll tell you more when it’s done — really crystallized after Indie Day at Paramount. It was there I felt a change of memes. The message from writers to the studios had been, “Come back, baby. We can work this out.” But after the second time negotiations fell apart, the message became, “Maybe we should see other people.”

I decided to start seeing other people.

The project is financed outside the studio system, with some of that much-fabled internet money. It has actors you recognize, and it probably could be a TV show — but it won’t. There’s near-consensus that in the next year or two, one of the web shows will really take off and change the game. I can almost guarantee you it won’t be ours. We may never see the light of day. But it’s the right time to be experimenting: with tone, with format, with economic model.²

I hope to be changing lighting setups when the call comes in that the strike is over. The cast and crew will cheer. The irony that we’re filming something for the internet — the primary focus of these negotiations — will be noted. Then we’ll keep shooting, because in production, you’re always just about to lose light.

If the news comes back negative, that the negotiations have proved fruitless, and there’s no end in sight, at least we’ll be working. That’s been the interesting thing about putting together this project during the strike. Yes, people are nervous about money and mortgages, but mostly they’re just restless to work. To create. To perform. We had 2,000 submissions for three roles. We have talented tradespeople working for the joy of working.

I don’t know if the strike is over. I don’t know if this pilot will amount to anything. But after 92 days, it feels good to stop hoping and start doing. Call time is 7 a.m.

1. Thus explaining my “I’ll be loading more vans” comments a while back.
2. To answer the obvious question: Yes, it’s okay to be shooting during the strike. The WGA has been actively encouraging members to shoot work for the web as an alternative to the AMPTP-controlled networks.