Startups and slippery facts
I cut startups a lot of slack. Innovation and entrepreneurship rely on some suspension of disbelief: we’ll be able to make this product, on this schedule, at this price. Google was once a pipe dream, as were Twitter and Facebook. Dream big, I say.
But since I was name-checked twice in this interview from Wharton School of Business, I feel some responsibility to point out a few fallacies and follies.
When the Writers Guild of America went on strike in 2007, it looked as if Hollywood’s balance of power favoring big, money-hungry studios would never be the same again. To some extent, that’s the case, but not necessarily in the way the striking screenwriters expected. The growing popularity of free, web-based writing software — available to anyone, anywhere — is breaking down the barriers to entry of the screenwriting profession as never before, says Sunil Rajaraman, co-founder, president and CEO of Scripped.com. As he tells it, the urgent mission for his California-based screenwriting software startup couldn’t be clearer, yet more daunting: Change Hollywood.
I met with Sunil and his partner Zak Freer (a Starkie) in 2007 when they were coming up with their concept for Scripped. I gave them a few suggestions and wished them luck.
In particular, I hoped they could fulfill the international aspect to their mission:
We combine cloud computing and web-based software to provide free access to Scripped.com to aspiring writers worldwide, to find the next John August. He or she might be in Thailand, China or India — not necessarily in Los Angeles, which is the way the film industry has traditionally thought about sourcing this kind of talent.
Their site is up and running. I haven’t really checked in with it for the past two years. But it annoys me to see Rajaraman recycle this Hollywood urban legend as proof his software is needed.
Two problems are solved with web-based screenwriting software. The first is collaboration. Many of the scripts of the films we see in movie theaters have undergone dozens of rewrites before they make it to the screen. For example, for the original of Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck put the screenplay together with more anecdotal stories about South Boston and friends they grew up with. Characters were eliminated from the screenplay and it underwent a very detailed rewriting process. Who knows how many writers had their hands on that screenplay before it was made — and it eventually won an Oscar.
So, wait: does the untrue story about rewriters on Good Will Hunting mean your collaboration software is good thing, or a bad thing? Rajaraman is taking one of the few actual advantages of of web-based screenwriting software — real-time multiple users on an open document — and making it sound unsavory.
The second problem online software solves is access to writers. If you give the software away for free — it is very cheap to provide the software — you can attract all sorts of talent that would have otherwise not been interested in screenwriting.
There are many free or low-cost options for screenwriting software, including the basic word processors everyone already has on their computers. I wrote Go in Microsoft Word. Screenwriting software is useful, but hardly necessary.
For that matter, both of the flagship applications cost less than $200. When the price of an iPod will buy you all the software you need, that’s a very low barrier to entry.
The Writers Guild West consists of about 15,000 writers, a very small group. The average price in Hollywood for a feature-length script from an accomplished writer is US$250,000. These writers have to protect the system, and the system exists to provide for them. Because Scripped aggregates talent worldwide and brings new content to producers, it is a threat to the way business is currently done.
WGAw membership is closer to 8,000. I don’t know where Rajaraman is pulling the $250,000 figure, but he’s committing the classic mistake of confusing a script sale with a career. In 2007, median earnings for a WGA writer were $104,857.
Hollywood pays roughly US$1.2 billion a year for feature-length scripts. So point one, producers are not necessarily getting the most talented writers to write those scripts. And, two, they are overpaying for those scripts. We aim to democratize the process, cut the cost and increase the talent pool of writers who have access to the Hollywood studio system and elsewhere.
I emailed Rajaraman to ask about the $1.2 billion, but I think he’s off by at least a zero.1 Regardless, I can’t fathom how that proves producers are overpaying for less-talented writers.
I don’t know that there’s a viable business model for Scripped. I still wish them luck; I’m not rooting against them by any means. But they do themselves a disservice by misrepresenting the facts behind the motion picture industry and the career of screenwriting.
Through my work with the Sundance Screenwriting Labs, I’ve experienced that the best way to extend the craft of screenwriting to other countries is through example and outreach. The Labs does it with in-country sister programs. I do it with this site, trying to make sure my articles acknowledge the wider world beyond the 30-mile zone.
But I’m also very leery of trying to promote screenwriting as a career separate from the greater film industry. The reason most screenwriters live in Los Angeles is because this is where Hollywood movies are developed, financed and produced. Software doesn’t change that.
- Update: Rajaraman says he’s basing that on $30 billion in worldwide film production costs, with 3% to 5% going to the writer. He will try to get the article updated. It still doesn’t help make his point. ↩
Filed under: Film Industry, International, Screenwriting Software
Reading scripts on a MacBook, book-style
If you could physically remove your laptop screen and hold it vertically, it would be the perfect size for reading a script. That’s the hope behind the mythical Apple tablet that always seems six months away.
But until Mr. Jobs decides we’re ready for the future, reader Douglas has a suggestion that is surprisingly close. Turn your laptop on its side, and hold it like a hardcover book.
No, really. It works much better than you’d think, particularly with one of the unibody MacBooks.
I suspect there’s a way to get the screen rotated in the proper direction on almost any laptop. But on a Mac running Snow Leopard, it’s pretty easy to get a .pdf turned the right way.
- Open the .pdf in Preview.
- Click on one of the pages, then Select All (⌘-A) to highlight all the pages.
- Choose Rotate Right (⌘-R) or Rotate Left (⌘-L).
- Choose Full Screen (Shift-⌘-F).
- Click the zoom-to-fit button.
I’ve found it more comfortable to read with the screen on the left-hand side, using my right hand to advance pages with the arrow keys. But experiment to see what works best for you.
Update: Several readers have pointed to a free utility called ReadRight which basically does steps 1-6 all at once, with some other handy options thrown in. I particularly like being able to advance pages with a click on the trackpad.
Since Preview is already included on every Mac, I’ll keep it as the general-case solution.
Reading scripts on the Kindle
Ever since I got my Kindle,1 I’ve been looking for a good way to read scripts on it.
Emailing a .pdf would result in mangled margins and bizarre gaps. Converting to a .doc format with a very specific template would give me something almost acceptable, but meant a lot of extra labor, and wouldn’t work for .pdfs of existing scripts.
So it was with great anticipation that I installed the free 2.3 software update that finally gave my little Kindle the option of using honest-to-goodness .pdfs.
It works just as I had hoped, except for the fact that the type is pretty damn small. Like, list-of-ingredients small. My friend Cort pointed out that the Kindle screen is only as wide as a buck slip, so there’s only so much real estate available.
After all this wishing and hoping, I’m not sure I’ll be reading many scripts on my Kindle. (The upcoming Nook from Barnes and Noble has essentially the same size screen, and will likely have the same kind of problem.)
The update gives you the option of rotating the screen, so you can see it much closer to full size, but then you have to read half a page at a time. The update is also supposed to increase battery life dramatically.
Bottom line: if you have a small Kindle, install the update. You might be willing to live with the tiny type (or half-pages) for reading screenplays.
If you’re thinking about buying a Kindle, take a second look at the bigger Kindle DX
.Zombie-class situations
Zombies are more than the walking dead. They’re a useful paradigm for a range of common scenarios in many genres.
Whenever your hero is facing off against a system or mob rather than an individual, that’s potentially a zombie-class situation. Any given opponent isn’t necessarily that formidable; it’s the sheer numbers that make it so difficult for the hero.
War movies are frequently zombie-class, as are comedies about plucky outsiders. Science-fiction and horror revel in zombie-class situations, from the Borg to the Visitors to those troublesome tribbles.
If you find yourself writing a zombie-class situation, here are some helpful class features to keep in mind:
You can’t fight the ocean. In a zombie-class situation, heroes ultimately won’t get far trying to defeat their opponents, who have the advantage of both numbers and replaceability. Rather, your hero must set an achievable goal such as escape, survival, or retrieval of a key asset.
Ants vs. Elephants. It’s great to be big, but it’s better to be numerous. Just as heroes will often rally a crowd, opponents can do the same — popular opinion is a hard thing to fight. And look for ways to use your hero’s size (or reputation) against him.
Zombie processes. In programming, zombies are bits of code that unintentionally keep running in the background, sucking cycles and threatening a crash. That’s a useful framework for many stories: noble intentions run amok. Just as every villain is a hero, every zombie was somebody’s baby.
One of us. In the Romero tradition, zombies eat brains. But this can be generalized to assimilation: your hero has something the opponents need. Can your hero figure out what they’re after — what makes the hero special — before it’s too late?
A zombie-class situation is a key difference between Alien and Aliens.
In the former, Ripley and company mostly battle a single creature. Survival means killing it, so that’s pretty much the only goal.
In the sequel, the aliens are so numerous that there is no hope of defeating them. Rather, Ripley’s goal is simply escape. Once Newt is captured, Ripley must face off against the Queen, but defeating her in no way impacts the hordes of aliens left behind.
That’s how zombie-class situations often end: the hero’s victory leaves the world just as dangerous as before.
Script-a-scene contest
Jessica Bendinger (Bring It On, Stick It) is hosting a competition centered around her new novel, inviting readers to adapt a bit from it into a scene.
It’s like one of this site’s scene challenges, but based on an actual real book rather than my random themes of science and/or self-amusement.
You can check out the rules for Jessica’s competition here.
Burn it down
You wouldn’t splash gasoline on the walls of your home, then toss a few matches while strolling out the door. In real life, this kind of willful destruction is criminal.
In fiction, it’s crucial.
As the writer, you need to burn down houses. You need to push characters out of their safe places into the big scary world — and make sure they can never get back. Sure, their stated quest might be to get home, but your job is to make sure that wherever they end up is a new and different place.
Writers tend towards benevolence. We love our characters, and want to see them thrive. So it can be hard to accept that what our hero actually needs is to have everything taken away, be it by fire, flood, divorce or zombie uprising. No matter the story, no matter the genre, we need to find ways to strip characters of their insulating bubbles of normalcy.
The Fire (or other catastrophe) often occurs as an inciting incident, setting the wheels of plot in motion. In The House Bunny, Anna Faris’s character is kicked out of the Playboy Mansion by page 10. In Gladiator, Russell Crowe’s family is killed.
Just as often, The Fire signals the end of the first act. In Star Wars, Luke returns home to find his aunt and uncle dead. In 9 to 5, the trio of secretaries has inadvertently kidnapped their boss. There’s no going back to the way things were.
But The Fire can work just as well later in the story, effectively burning bridges characters have just crossed. Three of my upcoming projects feature second-act or third-act Fires that not only keep the momentum going, but also remind the audience of the scale and stakes. 1 Late fires ward off complacency in everything from The Dark Knight to Revenge of the Nerds.
It’s easy to think of dozens of great movies that never really burn the house down. But the better exercise is to look at your own scripts and ask, (a) what could burn, and (b) why haven’t I lit it on fire?
- There’s something uniquely cinematic about destroying a giant set. A TV show, no matter its ambitions, generally has to protect its standing sets until at least the end of a season. ↩
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