John August

Archives for 2004

More D.C. stuff available in the Downloads section

Dead Projects, Projects

DC logoChris Landa of Salt Lake City, Utah, wrote in to say:

I just finished reading your scripts of D.C. Do you have a series
bible that you could put on your site? I’m trying to find examples of series
bibles and would love to find out what happens to the characters of D.C.

A series “bible” is a document that’s usually created at the start of a television series, which contains all the vital information about the characters, their history, and relationships. The idea is that you update it as you go along, so that in season four, you don’t have a character saying something that conflicts with something in season two.

Apparently, some showrunners go much further, and really do map out years ahead. [J. Michael Straczynski](http://imdb.com/name/nm0833089/) is said to have plotted out all of the seasons of Babylon 5 before even starting to shoot the pilot.

All this said, I’ve never even seen a real series bible. Perhaps that’s because I’ve never worked on a show that lasted more than three episodes.

But Chris’s question brought up a point I keep trying to make: a writer’s job doesn’t start and end at the script. Particularly in television, a writer needs to be able to write a lot of different kinds of documents, many of which are designed to get others to share his or her vision for the show.

I’ve added five examples of this from D.C. in the [Downloads](http://johnaugust.com/downloads) section. Included you’ll find:

  1. the initial pitch I made to the WB
  2. the outline for the pilot
  3. a template for a “normal” episode
  4. and an exercise in which I look at God from each character’s perspective.

Also included is the pilot presentation script. In order to save money, the WB asked all its drama pilots to shoot a 30-minute version of the show (called a “pilot presentation”), rather than the whole hour. To do this, I had to omit a bunch of scenes, and rewrite some others so that it would all make sense. If it sounds like a difficult task, it was. When we got ordered for series, the first thing we had to do was go back and shoot the missing scenes from the pilot.

Four Seasons, Five Season or just some fancy hotel

QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkMy question involves specific locations. How specific can I get without it becoming a problem? For example, what if instead of a murder in a “nice city hotel”, I set it in the Four Seasons Chicago, for example, is it legally alright for me to do that?

I’m sure the Four Seasons wouldn’t appreciate a memorable murder scene set in their hotel lobby, but what’s my other choice? Create a fictional prestigious hotel called the Five Seasons to give me total creative license?

–Matthew Bradley
Chicago, IL

Standard advice applies: do whatever works best, and don’t worry about it. Let the lawyers decide whether it will need to be changed before production.

If it’s crucial to the scene, just say The Four Seasons. If you simply need to indicate that it’s a luxury hotel, say luxury hotel. Either way, remember that the burden is still on you to give enough flavor in your description.

You’re better off coming up with your own name for the hotel if a lot of your story will take place there. This way, you’re not competing with the reader’s expectations, and have wider latitude in creating the logistics you need.

Backing up is hard to do

QandA, So-Called Experts

questionmarkI just had the unfortunate happen: the dog pulled my laptop off the table by tripping across the power cord. Yeah. Anyhow, I lost a bunch of screenwriting materials because the fall damaged my harddrive beyond repair.

I’m learning the VERY hard way that backing up is not just a good “insurance policy” but a MUST. I thought it might be a subject you might shed some light on from your personal experience.

— Eric
Indiana

Like flossing, stretching, and updating your will, backing up your work is one of those unquestioned Good Ideas that’s pretty easy to ignore. It’s the law of delayed consequences: people tend to put off work that doesn’t have immediate gratification.

Honestly, I don’t back up nearly as much as I should. Or, “should.” If you read any computer magazine, they’re constantly harping on you to back up every night to a redundant RAID, then weekly to a tape drive, with off-site storage and whatnot.

Bah. My philosophy can be summarized in six words: What’s the worst that could happen?

It’s a revelation that came to me the last time I switched to a new computer. I dutifully dragged my files onto an external hard drive, ready to migrate them to their new home, when I realized that pretty much everything I needed on the new computer was either…

  • already installed, or
  • would need to be redownloaded for the most recent version.

The only item that needed to make the move was my “Projects” folder, a mere 500 megabytes. So why was I bothering with everything else? It was time to apply my new philosophy.

What’s the worst that could happen if I didn’t back up my applications and system software? Well, it would take a little more time to re-install them. But, I’d be saving a lot of time by not bothering to back them up every day/week/month.

What’s the worst that could happen if I didn’t back up my old projects? Well, I’d hate to lose them; they’re like old friends frozen in 12pt Courier. Beyond the emotional cost, I do occasionally need to refer back to them. So it’s worth the effort to periodically grab the folder off the server and copy it to my local hard drive. Likewise, every few months I burn a copy of the whole thing onto a CD-ROM and mail it to my mother in Colorado, figuring that if an asteroid wipes out California, at least future generations will be able to read what [SCOOBY-DOO](http://imdb.com/title/tt0267913/) was like before they cut it down to a PG rating. (Answer: much funnier.)

What’s the worst that could happen if I lost the current version of the project I’m working on? This is probably the worst-case scenario, because I’m generally on deadline and working for people with very little patience for technical difficulties. If I’m using my Powerbook, I’ll often email the file to myself as a backup, and also save it to my keychain drive. When I’m at home, I’ll often do the email trick, or copy items to my .Mac iDisk.

And then there’s the backups you don’t even plan. In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond makes a convincing argument that the best place for a tribal chief to store his surplus food is in his neighbor’s stomach. The same is true for data. (Go with me here.) Most of the scripts I work on these days travel around as .pdfs. One side benefit of this digitalization is that for any given script, some friend or assistant will invariably have a copy sitting in her mail. I sleep a little more soundly knowing that I could simply ask her to send it back.

In conclusion: Backing up is a waste of time, except for the few items for which it’s crucial. So worry about those, and not the rest.

A very, very big fish

Big Fish, Projects

very big fishThis from Daniel Wallace, a photo of two guys who have apparently caught Edward from BIG FISH.

Like Mulder from X-Files, I Want to Believe, but in the age of Photoshop, pretty much anything can be faked. But I welcome your opinions. Maybe this really is the biggest catfish in the Ashton river.