Most of my posts offer advice about screenwriting. This week, I’m going to be running a few articles with advice about everything else.
Archives for 2009
Fansubbing
This [Flickr photostream](http://www.flickr.com/photos/insubs/) consists of nothing but photos of DVD collections, which seems like a pretty pointless thing to photograph. But it’s all to make the point that users who download subtitling files aren’t necessarily pirates. In many cases, they have legitimate DVDs — but in the wrong language.
Hollywood has gotten much more aggressive about releasing blockbusters in theaters “day-and-date” — a movie like Transformers will appear pretty much everywhere worldwide simultaneously. But for home video, and particularly for less-than-blockbusters and television series, the disparity in release dates is maddening. My movie came out in Australia one full year after the U.S release. Australia, people.
That’s the point behind “Queremos Cultura” (“We Want Culture”). There is a worldwide audience that wants to watch American movies and TV shows, but because of bureaucracy and myopia, there is no legal way for them to do it.
I was [sympathetic about this on The Nines](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/more-on-the-torrents), but sympathy accomplishes nothing. There’s not going to be a filmmaker-driven solution. The studios are all now international corporations, and need to take more leadership in letting the global audience see movies and TV shows in a timely fashion.
Raiders story conference
Reader Jonas tipped me off to this [great post at Mystery Man](http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2009/03/raiders-story-conference.html) looking at the 125-page transcript of the conversation between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan as they first sat down to discuss the movie that would ultimately become Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I haven’t read the .pdf transcript — in fact, it’s hosted on one of those sketchy providers that I wouldn’t link to — but MMoF’s long post gives you ample excerpts and a lot of thoughtful commentary.
> LUCAS: What I’m saying is that character just would not fit in a college classroom or even as an archeologist. He’s too much of a scruffy character to settle down. A playboy, or however you want to do it. He’s too much of a wise-guy, maybe that’s a better way to say it, to actually be a college professor. He really loves the stuff, but he became too cynical, he’s too much of a wise guy to fit into an academic situation, or even an archeological situation. He’s really too much of an adventurer at heart. He just loves it. So he obviously took this whole bent that was different because it’s just more fun. He just can’t settle down. It’s a nice contrast. It’s like the James Bond thing. Instead of being a martini drinking cultured kind of sophisticate, he’s the sort of intellectual college professor James Bond. He’s a superagent.
I’ve never worked with Lucas, but the snippets with Spielberg feel very accurate based on my interactions with him on JP3, Minority Report and Big Fish. He’s always looking for the little moments that click:
> SPIELBERG: …it would be funny if, as they’re talking about this and the olives are between them, you see a hairy little paw is pulling olives off the plate, coming in and out of frame. Finally the paw comes up to grab an olive and begins slipping, like palsy. You use a little mechanical paw. And then you hear a thump.
The screenwriter’s role in marathon meetings like this is to listen and refocus the ideas. You’re trying to capture not just the plot points, but the enthusiasm. Fast forward a few drafts, and there will likely be torturous meetings in which every decision is micro-analyzed. But at this first step, the only goal should be mapping out the territory you want to explore.
What should I do in a general meeting?
I’m a new writer: I have an agent, I have a manager, I have a spec that’s a good sample but will never sell, I have a spec that might sell and that my reps are trying to attach elements to. For a month or two, I’ve been going on general meetings off of my sample spec as they wait for things to align before sending out my new one. In my meetings, people talk about how much they love my sample (but of course aren’t going to buy it), how much they want to read my new spec, and how much they like the ideas for future projects I talk about. That’s all great.
But — and, being very new at this, this may be a stupid question — now what? What should or could I be doing to help make myself/my projects easier to sell, either when my new spec goes out, or in the future? I trust my reps completely, but I’d love to do anything I can to make their jobs a bit easier.
I have this nagging feeling that I should somehow be trying to turn my general meetings into possible work down the line, but I’m not sure if that’s true, or if it is, how I would go about it. I just don’t want to look back a year from now and realize that I squandered what heat I had, if that makes sense.
— E.
You’re at the phase in your career in which you’re “taking generals.”
General meetings are the hey-it’s-nice-to-meet-you part of a screenwriting career, and while you do fewer of them once you have more credits to your name, they’re always an important part of the job. This is how you meet the junior executives who will later become senior executives, and get them thinking about you as the kind of person they would like to hire.
I had a ton of general meetings off my first script (Here and Now), which never sold. When I say ton, I mean fifteen or twenty, at least three a week for a while. Mostly, my agent was sending me out there so I could practice being in a room without making a fool of myself. After the first dozen or so, I learned [How to Meet](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/how-to-meet), and stopped worrying about being [the worst-dressed person in the room](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/the-not-so-well-dressed-screenwriter).
Your goal in a general meeting is to figure out what they might be able to hire you to write. At a certain point, they’ll talk about the kinds of projects they have in development, and the things they’re looking for. If anything sparks, pursue it. Talk about it in the room, then follow up the next day, and the next week. You’ll be chasing a lot of half-baked projects, most of which will never come to be. But one or two might. And that’s what you need.
Your advantage at this point is that you’re cheap and available. A producer could likely hire you with discretionary funds to rewrite a mediocre project she has sitting on the shelf. And if that opportunity comes up, take it. Do an amazing job, then let your reps spin that in your next assignment. And your next.