John August

Archives for 2004

Finished a short film: Now what?

First Person

One of my most frequent pieces of advice to would-be writer/directors is [to make a short film](http://johnaugust.com/qanda/93.html). After all, with the wonders of digital technology, any monkey with a good idea and a long weekend should be able come up with something watchable. Right?

The next step is getting someone to see your miniature masterpiece. That’s where my knowledge comes up a little lacking. Fortunately, my assistant [Chad Creasey](http://imdb.com/name/nm1548657/) has just been through the process. He and director [Dara Resnik](http://imdb.com/name/nm1551542/) recently made a charming short film called [“Great Lengths.”](http://imdb.com/name/nm1551542/) You can read all about it at their [website](http://www.greatlengthsentertainment.com/index.shtml).

Pretty much every weekend this spring, either he or Dara were flying to some festival across the country. With this in mind, I asked Chad to write up advice about short films and festivals. He was gracious enough to reply at, well, great length:

Take it, Chad:
***
first personYou did it! Maybe you had to destroy your great aunt’s guest cottage and illegally tap into the city’s electric line because you couldn’t afford a generator. Maybe you had to bribe the local sheriff to NOT make his 3:00am rounds in order to get that awesome explosion shot. And maybe you subjected your body to experimentation to cover the cost of the final audio layback. But dammit – you are now the proud owner of a completed short film!

So what do you do with it?

Chances are, you want people to see it. Although the internet offers venues like [IFILM](http://www.ifilm.com/index.jsp) with which to showcase your work, nothing beats the rush of the live audience screening. You can always rent a screen at the local multiplex (costly), but most filmmakers prefer to show their work at a variety of film festivals.

The festival circuit

The past five years have seen a tremendous surge in the number of festivals. It seems like every city from [Ashland, Oregon]( http://www.ashlandfilm.org/) to [Dubrovnik, Croatia]( http://www.dubrovnikiff.org/default2.asp) has one now. What’s fantastic is you have literally thousands of places to submit to — but the overall quality of these festivals varies greatly. I’ve been to ones that treat the filmmakers like they were A-list celebrities, and others that made me buy tickets to my own screening.

After going through it, I have a couple of recommendations.
[Read more…] about Finished a short film: Now what?

The Get A Mentor program

QandA, So-Called Experts

We met some time ago back in April of this year. You came to Boulder and were kind enough to come and speak to a group of aspiring writers. I was the one in the front who asked the question about the character Ronna (if she was meant to be black).

I wanted to find out if this Get A Mentor program is worthwhile. I’d like to be a director, but I’d like to obtain some practical experience beforehand. Any advice?

–Rayna
Denver

Rayna’s referring to the character [Sarah Polley](http://imdb.com/name/nm0001631/) played in [GO](http://imdb.com/title/tt0139239/). In an early script, I had written that she was “eighteen, black and bleeding.” When we were casting the film, we met with black, white and Latina actresses for the part, and ultimately picked Sarah, who was sublime. Over the years, a few people have written to ask if I was forced to change Ronna’s ethnicity, or if I felt it changed the movie in any way. No, and no. Her race was never a story point, so all that mattered to me was finding the actress who could nail the part.

I’m assuming the program you’re writing about is [this one](http://www.getamentor.com/), but I’m not familiar with it beyond what I’ve just read on its website. It seems legit, up until the point you’re paying a couple thousand dollars for privilege of being mentored. Call me old-fashioned, but I consider mentoring to be a pro-bono thing. And I don’t know what value you’d get talking to this mentor on the phone.

As an avid snoop, I’ve been trying to figure out more about this program. Based on its [Better Business Bureau profile](http://search.bbb.org/), it’s located at 7095 Hollywood Blvd. #325. That may be a rented mailbox. There’s a “Mail and More” at that address, and the guy who answered the phone said #325 was probably one of their mailboxes.

Now, a lot of legit businesses use rented mailboxes. But I always get a little nervous sending money to strangers, especially if I couldn’t track them down if I had to. None of this is meant to scare you off, or say that this organization is in any way shady. Its mission is certainly laudable, so I’d love to say that it’s as helpful as it claims. If any readers have experience with it, please write in.

Page count for animation scripts

Formatting, QandA, Television

First, I’d like to thank you for answering my last question. It was a big help and since then my writing career has been moving forward — slowly, but forward nonetheless. Also, my spine is in better shape.

My question is this: Is an animation script supposed to time out the same as a live action piece (one page equals one minute of screen time), and if not, how do you know how long a scene — especially an action-filled scene — will last on screen?

The two animation scripts I’ve read (half hour TV) are both long and short. One was 35 pages long. The other was 22 pages long, which is still longer than the 19 minutes of screen time, but not by much. Any words of wisdom?

Oh, and in case you haven’t mentioned it on the site, a great TV writing website is [TVWriter.com](http://www.tvwriter.com).

–Horace
Toronto

For starters, the one-page-per-minute rule of thumb is nothing to bank on. For me, it’s like saying it never rains in July, or that reality-show alliances only last until mid-point: while it generally holds sort of true, you wouldn’t want to stake your life on it.

Screenplays top out at about 120 pages, and most movies are about two hours long. But most one-hour U.S. television shows are really 41 minutes, although the scripts can be up to 60 pages or more. The script for a show like [ER](http://imdb.com/title/tt0108757/), with its rapidly spouted medical lingo, tends to run long. And don’t get me started on [Gilmore Girls](http://imdb.com/title/tt0238784/), where the character never seem to break for air.

As for animation scripts, I’m not aware of any particularly appropriate page-per-minute guideline. If you’re writing a spec episode of a given show, my best advice is find a sample script that’s been shot and aim for that page count. Failing that, I’d aim for something a hair over the page-per-minute guideline. It may not be right, but odds are it won’t be terribly off.

And thanks for the link.

Ingenious comment spam booster

Geek Alert

For readers unfamiliar with content management systems like [Movable Type](http://movabletype.org) (which this site uses), one annoying trend is [comment spam](http://www.elise.com/mt/archives/000246concerning_spam.php), where an automated system will place comments on various articles, linking back to a target site — often one that sells cigarettes, for whatever reason.

The original goal for comment spam was apparently to boost Google page rankings for ne’er-do-well sites by increasing their number of “incoming links.” Movable Type and Google are now smart enough to keep this from happening, but the spam comments persist. [MT-Blacklist](http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/), a plug-in, does a good job helping sort out the valid comments from the crap, but some of the older articles on the site which pre-date MT-Blacklist still have spam comments.

Which brings us to today. Every time someone adds a comment to the site, I get a copy of it in my email. This morning I got a strange one:

> Q: if two players are presented with a diamond flush(Ace, Queen, 10, 7, and 3) in the five community cards and player A has in the hole (ace of hearts and queen of clubs), and Player B has in the hole (jack of diamonds,and 9 of spade). who is the winner?,and please explain why player A or B is the winner.thankyou

I get a lot of off-topic questions, but this one seemed perversely far afield. (Even though I knew the answer: Player B, right?) Only when I pulled up the entry did I realize that the comment directly above it was a leftover spam ad for “seven card stud x play poker online x free texas holdem…” So the new “question” was really comment spam designed to boost exposure to the first comment spam.

It was meta-spam.

On one hand, I was sort of impressed. The spamming system either kept track of everywhere it placed its first spam and went back for a follow-up (months later, it seems), or searched the web for copies of the first spam and tacked on the second.

Here’s to you, Mr. Spammer, for a hard day’s coding. Now go to hell.