Archives for 2011

Who are you and what do you write?
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Despite the name Chris Nee, I am not an Asian man — although I did get a staff writer job on a show because the studio was looking for an Asian male perspective. When they met me, a chick and Irish, I’d already been hired and they couldn’t exactly say anything.

I’m currently the Executive Producer, showrunner and head writer of an animated series I created for Disney Junior. The show is called Doc McStuffins. We’re in post on 26 half hour episodes (52 11-minute stories) that will premier on Disney Junior in March of 2012.

I’ve had a pretty eclectic career. I started at Sesame International and spent time in Mexico, Finland, Israel and Jordan working on local versions of Sesame Street. Somewhere I have tapes of the Arabic Bert and Ernie taking long drags on their cigarettes after every take.

For many years I juggled writing for kids TV — both animated and live action, teens to tots — and producing documentary/reality TV series. I wrote the first Wonder Pets Christmas Special from a converted WWII barracks-turned-hotel on an island halfway between Alaska and Russia while producing season one of The Deadliest Catch.

I won an Emmy for writing Little Bill on Nick Jr. while I was Supervising Producer on Roseanne Barr’s first reality show. All in all, weird and wonderful.

Where and when do you write?
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I write in one of three places. While we’re in the nine months of writing the series, I have an office/loft space, which I share with two staff writers and our writing coordinator. Or I’m in Ireland sharing an office with the director of our series; the show’s being produced in Dublin. Or I’m working in my home office. It’s a separate room in the front of the house. I watch everything that happens on our street. You can’t believe how often people drive the wrong way up a one-way street.

I have no explicit rule that my five year-old can’t come into my office, but he’s pretty good about it. Sometimes it’s a huge distraction, but mostly he’s dying to see what I’m working on, and that’s pretty validating. I think I once had a rule about my partner not coming into my office, but she pretty much just ignores that, so I gave up.

I can’t do music. Or talking. Other than that, I’m very good at blocking out the outside world. With next-door neighbors in their fourth year of construction, this is a good thing.

I do a round of emails right when I wake up, since I’m in LA while my production team is in Ireland. Conference calls are also early. I try to run four times a week. Then, I write from 10 to 6-ish. I’m almost always home for dinner.

If I’m up against a tight deadline, or at the height of the writing schedule, I sit back down for a few more hours after my son is in bed.

What hardware do you use?
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I have a 27-inch iMac at home. The screen is ridiculously big, but I love seeing a complete top-to-bottom page on the screen. Even more, I love having an outline or notes open on the left of the screen, and a full page of a script on the right.

I’d worked exclusively on a laptop for years, but it was catching up with me. I don’t have carpel tunnel, but I get numbness in my fingertips from the track pad. So I knew it was time to set things up right in my home office. That meant a desktop computer. An Aeron chair. And a foot stool, as I’m short. [Beth Schacter short](http://johnaugust.com/2011/workspace-beth-schacter).

I use the standard Mac wireless keyboard. I’m very sensitive to the weight of keys on different keyboards, and this one feels incredibly light and easy on my fingertips. When I go to a bigger keyboard that requires more punch to get the keys down, I tend to start having finger pain.

My current laptop is a 15-inch, almost 5-year-old MacBook Pro. I take it back and forth to my writing office, the voice records, the mixes and Ireland.

I usually update computers every three years. I figure I spend most of my life on my computer so I should let myself be on one I love, but I started feeling bad about the environmental impact, and am now trying to get an extra year or two out of my laptops. About two years ago I stripped my MacBook Pro, had the memory doubled, and started clean with the machine. It’s been great for this extra time, and I feel better traveling with an older computer, but I’m itching to upgrade and am sure I will when my series gets picked up for season two.

I review all 52 episodes of my show at all of the follow stages: EMR, rough animatic, animatic, rough animation, offline animation, score pass, revised score pass, pre-mix and final. Plus I get huge amounts of artwork, voice auditions and animation tests every week. All of which is to say, my computer is overwhelmed by huge files. I stopped keeping everything on my internal hard drives. I have a 500 GB LaCie external hard drive that lives on my desk for backup. And I carry a portable 500 GB LaCie drive with me everywhere I go. My show lives on that drive, and is backed up to the other one.

I use small-sized [Moleskin notebooks](http://www.amazon.com/dp/8883701003/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) to keep lists in. I write the lists, but can’t read my own handwriting and rarely look at them. Still, it’s good to know they’re there.

I have a wall with 3×5 cards of all of our episodes — 52 of them — color coded for the stage of production they’re in. I live for it. I stare at it. I need it. Almost weekly I panic on record days and ask my assistant to take a picture of the wall and send it to me so I can visually see where I am.

I have a white board for breaking stories with the staff writers or freelancers. We take a picture of the board when we’re done and erase it.

I have a separate white board by my desk. It has three lists:

1. Everything that’s been assigned to writers.
2. Everything I need to talk to Disney about. That way when my exec calls, I can tick through the things on my agenda without fumbling or having to call back.
3. My to-do list. I love this list. I often finish something, turn to the board anticipating the satisfaction of the check mark, realize I never wrote it down in the first place, run over and write it down, wait a beat, then change to the correctly colored pen and check it. Still satisfying.

I have an HP 3-in-1 jet printer, and a laser printer. As someone who is a terrible speller and was always a bad proofreader, I’ve had to teach myself to hand in pages that are professional and error-free. I live by the printed proof pass. It’s been proven that you see more on the printed page than you do on a screen. If you’re not naturally good at proofing, always print. Put your finger on the page. Mouth the words. It is a skill you can learn and improve on. And yes, it matters. People do notice.

What software do you use?
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I use [Final Draft](http://finaldraft.com). In the world of TV animation, it’s the only format I’ve encountered. To change would be a royal pain in the ass. I try to ignore talk of greener grass.

I also use Microsoft Word. I use [Skype](http://skype.com) quite a bit when communicating with the Europeans. I envy John August and his technical relevance.

What would you change about how you write?
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I’d always write as if it were crunch time in production. When there’s more than is humanly possible to do, I’m a machine, and I do it. Well. And without angst. When my schedule lightens up, I can’t seem to get half the work done in twice the time.

For me, having a child was the greatest productivity booster of all time. A) I want him to be proud of me. B) I can’t fuck around anymore. I just sit down and get the shit done. When I think of all the times when I was single and not a parent that I said I didn’t have time to do/work on this, that or the other… I could just shoot myself. I had all the time in the world.