PBS Off Book has a nice video about the design of opening credits. Karin Fong compares a great title sequence to raising the curtain before the show.

Not every movie needs elaborate opening titles — the trend recently has been towards simply giving the name of the film and moving on with the story. But I’m a fan in general. Opening credits can be a terrific way to establish the world, so I try to anticipate them when writing the screenplay.

Here’s the opening sequence for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was shot largely as I wrote it:

Keep in mind that the first frame of the film might not be the right time for opening titles.

For example, James Bond movies traditionally stage an entire sequence before the main titles, which serve as a bridge between his last adventure and the new story. It’s like an extra act break.

If you have sequence that sets up the world, the opening titles can help you set up the hero. That’s the approach I took in my will-never-get-made Barbarella:

The ultimate decision about a title sequence will come down to the director, but if you’ve scripted it in a way that helps tell the story, you’re likely to see it used in some form.

One caveat: If your script starts with a montage of smaller moments that you intend to play under the opening titles, write the words OPENING TITLES. Otherwise, you may end up with both a title sequence and an empty-feeling minute of movie at the start.

A reader forwarded a link to this structural analysis of Big Fish, which attempts to break down my screenplay down into five plot points:

1. Inciting incident

2. Lock in

3. First culmination

4. Main culmination

5. Third act twist

It’s always strange seeing your work dissected by others, especially when they’re trying to fit a specific template with unfamiliar terminology. (I’ve never used or seen the term “first culmination.”)

In this case, I can’t disagree with the report’s overall accuracy — events in the script do happen on the pages listed — but I’m not convinced it’s a particularly helpful exercise.

What might be more useful is to compare what this report describes with what I actually intended when writing the screenplay.

INCITING INCIDENT

It’s been three years since Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) last spoke with his father Edward Bloom (Albert Finney), but he flies back home to see his dad, who is dying of cancer. Will enters his father’s bedroom and asks his dad to tell him the true version of the stories Edward has told all his life.

One could argue the inciting incident is really the fight at Will’s wedding, since that provides a point of focus for the conflict and sets up the central dramatic question: How can this father and son reconcile?

But as I pitched it and wrote it, I really did consider that first aborted bedside conversation as the inciting incident. The cancer diagnosis provides a ticking clock, and refines the question by adding urgency: Can this father and son reconcile in time?

LOCK IN (End of Act One)

In one of his stories, the young Edward (Ewan McGregor) leaves the small town of Ashton along with Karl the Giant; however, early on in their journey, they reach a crossroads: the longer, safer route and the shorter, more dangerous one.

Big Fish has two parallel stories: Edward in the past and Will in the present.

Edward leaving Ashton feels like the end of the first act (a character goes on a journey), but it doesn’t have much to do with the central dramatic question (father and son reconciliation). For example, if we omitted Spectre altogether, the Will-and-Edward plot line could be largely the same.

As I was writing it, I considered the witch’s eye a more significant moment. Young Edward learns how he is going to die, a detail that impacts both the storyline in the past (Edward no longer fears death) and the present (Edward is now dying).

FIRST CULMINATION (Midpoint)

[Edward works] at a circus for free under the condition that the ringmaster, Amos Calloway (Danny DeVito), will tell him one thing each month about his dream girl [Sandra Templeton].

I would agree that the focus of the middle of the movie is Sandra. I’m not sure which moment in the romance I’d single out as the most important, but the daffodils scene is a strong contender.

The movie is much more of a romance than Daniel Wallace’s novel, which didn’t have the circus, the war or most of the other obstacles on the path to true love. We spend a lot of time on Edward’s quest to find Sandra.

In the present day storyline, Will suspects his father has been cheating, and may have found proof. Both father and son have achieved goals — but they’re further apart than ever.

MAIN CULMINATION (End of Act Two)

Back in present day, Will is cleaning out his dad’s office and sees a document about Jenny from Specter. Thinking this is a woman in which his dad had an affair, Will drives to Specter and meets Jenny.

I always think of the end of the second act as “the worst of the worst,” the moment at which sucessful resolution seems absolutely impossible.

To me, that moment comes when Will learns his father has had a stroke. Jenny Hill has just told Will that his father has been faithful to his mother. Will would finally be able to have a conversation with his father about it — but because of the stroke, he can’t.

THIRD ACT TWIST

At the hospital, Edward […] wakes up, saying that this is how he dies but panics, unable to tell the story. Will then takes over his dad’s storytelling and begins telling an amazing fantastical story of how his father will die.

I agree that this is the crucial moment. Will has to create one of his father’s stories on the spot.

Also, I’d argue that this “how I go” moment shows how important the witch’s eye moment really was.

In early drafts of the script, Will didn’t tell the story directly to Edward, but rather told a similar story to Edward’s friends at the funeral. I’m eternally grateful to my smart producers for convincing me to try it at the bedside. That simple shift had a huge impact.

Does any of this matter?

Not really. I can’t even agree with myself which plot points should carry which labels, so it can’t be that important.

Far too often I see aspiring screenwriters struggling to make the great movies they see in their heads fit into proscribed templates. So I’m officially giving you permission to stop. Relax. You’ll be fine.

Theory is theory. Writing is real, and really hard sometimes.

It’s worth learning enough about dramatic theory so you can ask smart questions about your work — “How can I make things worse for my hero?” is always a good one — but you’re not required to answer every question or tick every checkbox.

And remember: If so-called experts really knew the secrets, they would be writing movies rather than selling books about writing movies.

The deal between Starz and Netflix expires March 1st, so if you have any titles you’re eager to watch online, get cracking before they disappear.

You can see a list of what’s going to be lost here.

Among my movies, that includes Go and the first Charlie’s Angels. The Nines and Titan A.E. will still be available.

When might Go come back to Netflix? Or for that matter, Corpse Bride? I have no idea. Filmmakers get no advance warning, so if you see a film of mine suddenly become available, let me know.

After a long gestation, Final Draft has announced that their official iPad app, Final Draft Reader, will be available for sale next week.

Their app is a lot like our app, FDX Reader.

In fact, the only reason we made our app is because we needed to read Final Draft files and their app didn’t exist. So the question now is how to position our app vis-à-vis the official one.

At least on paper, their app does more than ours:

• Production drafts (colored pages, locked pages)
• ScriptNotes
• Searching
• Multi-page title pages
• Printing with AirPrint

All of these things are useful. The question will be whether the official app does enough things better.

One advantage: Final Draft Reader should be able to exactly match page breaks (and page numbers) with the desktop version. We come very close with FDX Reader, but we’ll never hit them exactly. Page breaks aren’t part of the file, but rather an internal calculation. We don’t know Final Draft’s math. They do.

I suspect many users will be disappointed that Final Draft Reader apparently only supports .fdx files, and not the older .fdr files.

That surprised me. We don’t support .fdr either — and at least half of our support emails come from users confused why we don’t. In our case, it’s because we can’t decipher Final Draft’s old, proprietary binary format. Final Draft can, but has chosen not to.

They’re going to be answering a lot of emails on this topic. ¹

Perhaps the biggest difference between our app and the official one: Final Draft’s Reader only works on the iPad. Our FDX Reader is universal and works on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) as well.

What to charge

Final Draft hasn’t announced their price yet, which has led to speculation on Twitter about how much they’ll charge, with guesses ranging from $19.99 to $49.99.

Meanwhile, we’re currently priced at $4.99. As I wrote in December, I suspect we’ll raise our price once their app comes out.

That seems counter-intuitive. Wouldn’t staying at our current price — or going even lower — pull more sales away from the official Final Draft app?

Probably, but I don’t think that’s a worthy goal. If Final Draft Reader is good, I want it to succeed.

In general, I think prices for good software — particularly specialty software like screenplay readers — should be high enough that companies can earn money developing and supporting these apps. That shouldn’t be a radical idea, but the race-to-bottom pricing of the App Store has conditioned buyers to think that anything more than 99 cents is too much.

Honestly, the only reason we can make and support FDX Reader is that I make a good living as a screenwriter. That’s what keeps the bills paid. We’re not bringing in enough money to pay Ryan what he’s worth, let alone Nima.

Psychologically, whatever price Final Draft chooses for their app will become the new baseline. If their app costs $20, ours looks like a bargain at $10. No doubt we would lose some sales, but I suspect we would earn just as much or more.

At a certain price point,² FDX Reader becomes expensive enough that a buyer comparing the two apps might decide, “Screw it. I’ll just buy the official one.” That’s okay. I want people to choose the app that best serves their needs.

We consider FDX Reader done. We’ll continue to sell it and support it with bug fixes, but most of our energy is going towards Fountain, Bronson Watermarker, and soon-to-be-announced magic.

1. I’ve encouraged Final Draft to come out with a free conversion utility. I’ve offered to make one — and that offer still stands. (Same with Screenwriter’s .mmsw format.) It’s difficult to build a converter for these binary formats, but to me that makes it even more essential. In 20 years, nothing will open these files. ↩
2. What is that magic price point? If you have an opinion, let me know on Twitter: @johnaugust ↩

Last week, I ran an experiment to see what would happen if I took one of my existing Kindle titles and made it free for three days.

Snake People got a lot of downloads. Over the three days, it “sold” 654 times. It climbed the charts, topping out at #7 on Kindle’s free short stories list.

Since returning to its normal price of 99 cents on Saturday, it sold seven more copies. It no longer shows up on any of the best-seller charts. In no way did it catch fire.

However, if you compare those seven copies to how many it would have sold in a normal week — 2.2 copies on average — the free promo seemed to at least bump the needle. There was also a fair amount of spillover to my other Kindle title (The Variant), which sold 13 copies, up from its average of five.

In another week or two, I suspect Snake People numbers will be back where they were before the promo. I’ll post another update if I’m wrong.

So, was going free worth it? Hard to say.

It certainly increased sampling, and it was gratifying to see readers tweet about it, particularly those who stumbled across it on the best-seller chart and took a chance. I strongly doubt it cost me any buyers; the people who got it free hadn’t been holding off, waiting for a sale.

In the end, I’m hesitant to even label this an experiment because the numbers are so sketchy. I’d hoped to provide a graph showing how many copies were sold based on which spot it reached on the best-seller list, but I can’t. Amazon’s sales figures are maddeningly murky. You can’t be sure how often they’re updated, so any correlation is suspect.

As Snake People was rising on the best-sellers chart, the dashboard report would only show five more copies had sold. An hour later, 100 more sales showed up. Were those additional sales the cause or effect of moving higher in the best-sellers chart? There’s no way to know.

Most writers are probably better off writing new stuff than spending a lot of time gaming the Kindle publishing platform. That said, the spillover effect from one free title to other paid titles probably merits some attention, particularly for authors with many titles available for sale. If I had 15 books for sale on Kindle, rotating free sales periods among them would be a way to increase exposure and probably bring in new paying readers.

I’ve written several times about my experiments with self-publishing on the Kindle, mostly concerning my short story The Variant, which briefly hit #18 on the overall bestsellers list.

Overall, I found Amazon’s ebook tools satisfactory, but the price structure was frustrating:

Amazon doesn’t distinguish between free and paid content on their Kindle bestseller list. In fact, 19 out of the top 50 books are free. There’s nothing wrong with free, but it’s a semantic and tactical mistake to include them on a “bestseller” list.

They’ve fixed that.

Free books are now listed separately, and with the introduction of the KDP Select program, self-publishers can finally price a title as free for up to five days. (Before this, only major publishers could set the price at zero.)

After reading David Kazzie’s post about his experience with KDP Select, I decided to try it out on another one of my short stories, Snake People, which had gotten nice reviews but never achieved the traction of The Variant.

To enter KDP Select, you have to promise that the title isn’t available for sale anywhere other than Amazon. Unlike The Variant, I wasn’t selling Snake People as a PDF, so there was nothing to take down.

Dropping the price is handled through a pop-up box called the Promotions Manager. The only option listed for me was “free book,” but the system seems to be designed for more-extensive campaigns. You’re allowed to be free for up to five days total, divided however you want.

Snake People went free yesterday (February 1st), and as of this writing sits at #20 on Kindle’s free short stories list, with 75 copies “sold” in the last 24 hours.

The list is everything

From our experience with Bronson Watermarker, we’ve learned that where you fall on the lists has a huge impact on sales. The higher you’re ranked, the more people see you. The more you’re seen, the more you’re purchased. Winners keep winning.

The pure ranking matters, but even more important is where the page breaks.

For Bronson, we made the front page of the Mac App Store in the “New and Notable” section. For the two weeks we were there, our sales were ten times normal. Once we fell to the second page of “New and Notable,” we quickly regressed to the mean.

I realize that writing about Snake People while the experiment is still running will inevitably corrupt the data. Some readers will click and buy it because hey, it’s free.

And that’s okay. I mostly want more data to answer correlation questions: If 75 copies lands a title at #20, how many copies is the #1 short story “selling?”

In my initial experiments with The Variant, I was able to estimate how much Stephanie Meyer was bringing in off of her Twilight books. (A lot.) I’m curious what the numbers mean in Kindle’s new free ecosystem.

So if you haven’t checked out Snake People, go get it before the promotion ends on Friday. I’ll publish a follow-up on Monday with numbers.