John August

Archives for 2006

Confessions of a genius script reader

Rant, Resources

LC (whose email handle ThrobbingSocks is much more provocative) tipped me off to this [Film Threat article](http://filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=1766) by Allan Heifetz which explains some of the more significant pet peeves of professional (and unprofessional) script readers.

Newbies also love to break the fourth wall. These fools must think they have super strength. “Hulk smash fourth wall! Aaargh! Hulk need to address audience for lighthearted and wacky fun! Hulk’s rom-com is effervescent and delightful! Aargh!”

Unfortunately, once you have a character address the camera you are essentially saying that your movie takes place in a magical fantasy land where anyone can talk to a theatre full of people from another dimension whenever one feels the need to vent.

The full article is [here](http://filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=1766).

Final Draft updated

Software

Final Draft, the screenwriting application I use most despite profound reservations, has been upgraded to 7.1.3. I haven’t gotten it to crash, so that’s something.

My assistant Chad had never used the Tools>Reformat command, which despite its clunky interface is a huge timesaver when importing text from other places.Including other Final Draft scripts. Too often, Final Draft will retain the margin and font information after a copy-and-paste, so it’s up to you to remind it that you really do want the dialogue lined up. Basically, it steps through your script paragraph by paragraph, waiting for you to press a key indicating which type of element — action, dialogue, parenthetical — that paragraph should be. If the formating is okay, ‘N’ will leave it alone and jump you to the next block. ‘P’ moves you back.

Make friends with Command-R.

One aspect of Final Draft I’ve long neglected is its ability to do multiple panes. I’ve never found splitting the window all that helpful, but with today’s giant monitors, I could see myself doing it more. One often needs to refer back to other parts of a script while writing a scene. Multiple panes make that marginally easier.

One annoyance is that Final Draft won’t let you see the two panels in different views. If I could see the “real” script on the right and the expanded script notes on the left, that would be helpful. But Final Draft can’t do that. The exceptions are Scene Navigator and Index Cards. Scene Navigator is almost worthless without the split screen. Index cards you either dig or you don’t. (I don’t.)

What’s new in jaWiki

jaWiki

[[wiki logo]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki)Last week, I [opened up jaWiki](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/introducing-jawiki), which to my relief and surprise hasn’t ass-ploded into a jagged minefield of broken links and PHP fragments.

The total number of articles has grown from 91 at launch to 121, largely driven by reader contributions.

Notable new entries include:

* [[[non-diegetic]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/non-diegetic)
* [[[macguffin]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/macguffin)
* [[[red herring]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/red_herring)
* [[[hubris]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/hubris)
* [[[advances and shortcomings of knowledge]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/advances_and_shortcomings_of_knowledge)

That last one is a surprise; I like surprises. I’m happy to see articles that provide information on aspects of screenwriter-dom that I know little about. To that extent, I’ve created [[[stub]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/stub) entries that I hope readers can expand upon.

* [[[robert mckee]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/robert_mckee)
* [[[syd field]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/syd_field)
* [[[writers boot camp]]](http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/writers_boot_camp)

There are also a lot of articles in the archive which could use some dusting-off and wikify-ing. Some possibilities include:

* [Specs, treatments and pitches](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2003/specs-treatments-and-pitches)
* [Formatting montage sequences](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/formatting-a-montage-sequence)
* [Opening titles](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/opening-titles)

Again, jaWiki is an experiment. My hope is that it evolves into something useful and compelling. Time is the best test of theory.

High net-worth individuals

Rant, Words on the page

I’ve encounted this euphemism for “rich people” at least five times this week. It’s not exactly new; I’ve heard it occasionally for the last few years. But I don’t know where it came from, or how long it’s been gaining traction around the memosphere.

This morning’s appearance came in a [Variety article](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117953808.html?categoryid=13&cs=1) about Radar’s Ted Field acquiring roughly $600 million in financing:

The financial partners in Radar’s fund are a combination of equity financiers and high net-worth individuals, including JP Morgan & Co., D.E. Shaw & Co., Kevin Flynn, the Rothman family, Cardinal Growth, GE Capital, US Bank, CIT and Mercantile Bank.

Kevin Flynn is an individual. The Rothman family presumably counts — though technically, they’re not an individual. You or I would just call them rich, wealthy or loaded. So why doesn’t Variety?

My theory is that super-rich people are actually a bit embarrassed by their vast wealth. “High net-worth individual” is a way of obfuscating and distracting from the dollar signs. Don’t judge me; I have a condition. It’s scientific. It’s treatable: “Oh, I’m not rich. I just have a high net worth.”

To refer back to the old-school SAT analogies:

alcoholism::disease
wealth:: high net worth

My friend Chuck is a VP at a bank that specializes in high net-worth individuals. (Which, to be fair, makes a lot more sense than banking for the poor and indigent.) When I ask him about his job, Chuck uses the HNWI term a lot, generally to protect the anonymity of his clients. Hearing him talk about it, one realizes that vast wealth is like a supertanker; it’s actually kind of a pain in the ass to move it around.

The only time it gets awkward with Chuck is when he refers to, “high net-worth individuals such as yourself.” I can never tell if he’s being generous or deluded. My net worth is high compared with, say, a Kentucky coal miner. But I’m not looking for places to park $600 million. “High” is clearly a relative term.

Which leads to my second hunch: “high net-worth individual” was coined because there’s a vast realm between millionaires and billionaires, and you need something to call these people.

The film industry increasingly calls them partners, because they’re bankrolling many of the super-budgeted movies filling our megaplexes. But I wonder if we’ve lost something by reducing our tycoons and barons to mere high net-worth individuals. Great wealth is supposed to invoke romance, intrigue and familial drama, not spreadsheets and hedge funds. Just by giving it a new term, they’ve taken away half the reason to be rich.