Scriptnotes, Episode 646: Industry Software, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is Episode 646 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

There are many software products aimed at the film and television industry, and more in development. But why do the bad ones persist, and why is it so hard for the better ones to succeed? Today on the show, we’ll look at the challenges and opportunities around making things that don’t suck. Then it’s another round of the Three Page Challenge, where we look at pages submitted by our listeners and give our honest feedback. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, magic, who needs it?

Craig: Are we talking the card game or prestidigitation?

John: We’re talking about our D&D campaign at the moment. We’re 10 installments into a campaign without magic. Let’s discuss what’s worked and what’s not worked so well, what’s been surprising about that campaign.

Craig: Fairly niche topic, but honestly-

John: It is a niche topic, but that’s why it’s a Bonus Segment.

Craig: It’s a Bonus Segment, and really our Premium Members should be playing D&D. They’re premium, for god’s sake. They should pursue quality in their life.

John: I think in a more general sense though, it’s like, what happens when you don’t uphold some genre premises. Take anything. If you took a horror movie and dropped out some of the aspects of what we expect out of that genre. We just saw the movie Bodies Bodies Bodies, which is an example of that, because it looks like a one-at-a-time killer thriller thing, and yet it’s not really that.

Craig: I like that idea. If we had an action movie, like a cop action movie, but no one ever fired a gun. It’s an interesting exercise in self-limitation to inspire some creativity and change.

John: We often talk about that on the show, how constraints are the writer’s best friends and that when you have constraints, it forces you to work within that. A project that I was approached by the last couple weeks, one of the problems was that it was just a world. There was no other kind of constraints to it. The first thing I had to do is like, “What constraints am I putting on myself?” because otherwise this is just an amorphous blob.

Craig: Yeah, I remember talking to Scott Frank when he took the job to do the Wolverine movie. He said his condition was Wolverine has to be able to die, because otherwise, who gives a crap? Everyone was like, “But Wolverine doesn’t… ” He’s like, “Mm-hmm. So anyway, Wolverine has to die.”

John: In a Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we’ll talk about constraints and death, because death is a bigger factor when there’s no magic.

Craig: Massively so. That’s an exciting one. What do we have going on with news? Probably nothing.

John: There actually is some news here today, because-

Craig: What?

John: You and I are headed out of town.

Craig: Oh, my.

John: We are going to go to the Austin Film Festival, which we are often doing. We’re going this year. It’s October 24th through 31st. We are scheduled to attend. We’re gonna plan a live Scriptnotes show. We’ll probably do a Three Page Challenge. There’s talk of doing a 25th anniversary screening of Go.

Craig: Oh, that’s nice.

John: It should be fun. If you are inclined to go to Austin and are thinking about travel there, now might be a time to think about that.

Craig: We haven’t been there in a couple years. Is that right? Did we miss last time?

John: Yeah, probably two years.

Craig: Two, yeah.

John: Because I remember you didn’t go last year, and the year before that was the year you got really sick.

Craig: Oh my god. I got so sick. I think I got a stomach bug is what happened. No, let me revise that. I got a stomach bug. It happened. It was that 24-hour stay in bed clutching your stomach in pain after you’ve barfed your world out and then just try and drink a little Gatorade. It was miserable.

John: It was bad.

Craig: Yeah, so no one breathe on me.

John: A stomach bug is probably something you ate though, right?

Craig: Look, it may have been something I ate, but it felt like just that nasty gastritis.

John: We are so selling the Austin Film Festival. Come for the illness. It should be a good time. It’ll be Drew’s first time going.

Craig: Wow. Look, as long as your room has a toilet.

John: Wow.

Craig: It’s like those cruises where everyone gets norovirus. No, it’s not like that, I swear. I’ve been there many, many times. The only time I got sick. It’s actually quite fun. It’s raucous. Drew, you will be somewhat of a rockstar there.

Drew Marquardt: Weird.

Craig: It is a little weird. I gotta be honest with you. That part gets weird. People will be like, “Oh my god, it’s Drew. You sound just like… I imagined you looking different from your voice.” You get a lot of that.

John: Megana was a rockstar when she was there, but Megana’s always a rockstar.

Drew: Megana’s a rockstar though.

Craig: I’m not saying that you’re necessarily gonna captivate people the way Megana did.

Drew: I don’t have that charisma.

Craig: You know what? You got enough rizz. You got enough rizz.

Drew: I’ll take it.

Craig: Listen. People are gonna be talking.

John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to it, but Google Austin Film Festival and that’s all the information you need. Let’s do some follow-up.

Back in Episode 644, we talked about new federal reporting requirements for loan-out companies like Craig and I have and like what Scriptnotes is. That is for sure happening. But since that time, there was also a bit of a freak-out about, it looked like the California Employment Development Department was going to crack down on loan-outs in a bigger, more general sense. Cast and Crew, which is this big payroll company in Hollywood, sent out this alert right before Memorial Day, saying red alert, there could be huge changes coming here. It looks like that’s been backpedaled, but I thought we might spend a few moments talking about loan-outs, why they’re important, why a change to this would be a big, disrupting deal.

Craig: It’s hard to tell if Cast and Crew freaked out unnecessarily or if they freaked out necessarily. The fact is that loan-out corporations function essentially to protect Hollywood workers, duly artists, from being overtaxed, essentially. Some people could argue that loan-out corporations exist to keep artists below the line of fair taxation. There’s a fair debate to be had about it.

That said, literally every single writer, actor, director, producer that is, let’s just say, succeeding is working with a loan-out corporation. It is par for the course. California already has quite a high tax rate. We are taxed twice. You do actually get taxed as a corporation. Then you get taxed as an individual. It really exists because there are a lot of deductions that you can take as a corporation that you can’t take as an individual.

I have no doubt that once this letter went out, the unions and people that donate a lot of money to California politicians called those chips in and said no, don’t do that, and somebody then yelled at the EDD, who was probably some guy there who was like, “What is this all about? [Indiscernible 00:06:59].” Then he got like 15 texts in 12 minutes, like, “You’re gonna die.” It looks like the fight is over.

John: The fight is over. At least it’s been stalled or it’ll change a different way of approaching it. Listen. Loan-out corporations are a weird thing. It is strange to set up a system where you have companies that basically have one employee, or sometimes two with an assistant or something. It’s a weird way to do it, and yet the way that we work is just sort of weird.

I can both understand why regulatory agencies might say, “No, listen, these are employees. You should just treat them like employees,” and it’s also strange that above a certain earning threshold it makes more sense to go through a loan company rather than me being paid directly. It is kind of weird, and yet trying to change the system now would be so, I think, disastrous. You’d have to have a real, clear plan for how you were gonna do this.

Craig: Yeah, it would cost so much money that you might end up losing some people to neighboring states. It would be that crazy. The name “loan-out,” you might as well say it’s a fake corporation. You might as well use the word “fake.” Yes, it’s a weird bit of paperwork dancing, but it is, what, forever, right?

John: Yeah.

Craig: How long have these things been going on? Long before we showed up. That’s for sure.

John: Oh, yeah. It’s easier for big companies to hire other big companies. For this job I’m just finishing up now, it was on a rewrite for something. It was complicated. But they chose to pay me through their payroll company rather than through just the normal way. It was a mess to do it that way. There’s reasons we do things the way we do things. It’s not just because we’re trying to save dollars. It’s because there’s a structure behind it. There’s a reason why you pay a company rather than paying an individual in some cases.

Craig: The system, as far as I can tell, will not be changing any time soon.

John: But some potentially good news for you, Craig, because we got some follow-up about your Space Cadet movie.

Craig: Oh, fantastic.

John: Drew, help us out.

Drew: Yeah, because you mentioned on Episode 644 that the Space Cadet title, Lucas was sitting on it for a long time. Jose Luis in Puerto Rico says that there is a Space Cadet movie coming out this year, July 4th, 2024. It’s written and directed by Liz Garcia and will be released on Amazon Prime.

Craig: I guess Lucas finally got off the title there. My thing was in 1997. That’s a year that Drew doesn’t even understand as a year. I think it’s fair to say that nearly, what is it, 27 years later, that yeah, Lucas probably let it go.

John: Which is fair and reasonable.

Craig: That’s fair.

John: Let’s get to our marquee topic this week. Over the past couple months, I’ve had some conversations with two different startup companies who are trying to make software for film and TV productions. Here’s the problem that both of these companies were trying to solve. On a film or TV production, you have all these different departments who need to work together and need to communicate with each other. You have the ADs, you have wardrobe, props, locations, transpo, VFX, everybody working on the same project, and they need information from each other. How do they get that information to each other? What is the central source of truth?

The sources of truth would be the script, obviously, and also the schedule, the breakdown, like, this is the schedule for how to plan to shoot this thing. But there’s no obvious established way to do that, so instead, a bunch of homespun solutions have come up. Some of them work for some places, don’t work for other places. But it’s not hard to imagine that there could be a better way of doing this.

If in the script we know that Scene 15 is taking place at a roller rink, how does each department weigh in on what they’re going to do? Craig, I ask you, on The Last of Us, what is that process? What is the process by which all departments can see what each other is doing?

Craig: You really touched on a sore spot here.

John: I’m not surprised. There is a problem here. That’s why.

Craig: There is a problem. Basically, the way is done is through, I’m now gonna editorialize, endless, repetitive meetings. Endless, repetitive meetings. I found myself in a meeting just the other day. I love my crew. The department heads work so hard. Our show is a massive aircraft carrier. It takes so much time and effort to do everything, and everything is happening all at once, all the time. But I was in a meeting, an endless, repetitive meeting, just last week that brought up a topic that had been already met upon multiple times in prep, which is a half year ago. I started to feel like I was getting punked, like how is this possible? The fact is that there is a certain amount of human, face-to-face interaction and questioning that needs to happen, and I don’t know if there even is a software solution for that.

Beyond that, we do what every production does. The script gets broken down into a schedule by ADs using whatever Movie Magic scheduler or whatever the hell they use.

John: Probably that.

Craig: Probably that.

John: Probably that very old program, yeah.

Craig: Which is annoying, because it puts on the schedule thing in a list, the things we shoot, and then at the bottom of that it’ll say what day it was. That’s stupid. It should be at the top of it. Then everything in terms of distribution goes through Scenechronize, which I believe is owned by aforementioned Entertainment Partners, which I believe also owns my least favorite writing software, Final Draft. You start to see a little bit of a monopolization problem here.

John: Remind us again, what do you use Scenechronize for?

Craig: Scenechronize is a platform that distributes documents to the crew-

John: That’s right.

Craig: … electronically. Scripts can only be viewed in super watermarked ways and cannot be downloaded unless you have certain privileges. If you’re a department head, they let you download it. It also releases all communications like call sheets, schedules, preliminaries, memos, everything like that.

John: Most of your crew is looking at the stuff that would’ve been printed paper. Instead, they’re getting it through Scenechronize. They’re seeing it on their laptops, on their phones, on their iPads, right?

Craig: That is correct. We don’t have any printed stuff, except in the morning we distributed printed sides for very few people, just the ADs, the actors, producers, directors.

John: The decision not to use paper for very much stuff, is that because it’s more efficient or because you’re worried about stuff leaking out?

Craig: Both. This is Canada, where when you go to throw your garbage out, there are 400 bins. They’re very green. They’re like, before you throw your garbage out, is it soft or hard plastic? Is it a pen? Is it colored blue? There’s so many. I think probably also it’s just about not burning through… Productions used to burn through forests of paper.

John: Paper like crazy.

Craig: Insane. There is that aspect. It’s certainly cheaper. There are security measures that we can use with that stuff. It’s a little frustrating, I think, for people, because they can’t really have a script and mark it up and all the rest, but it’s just a necessary evil.

John: We talked about scheduling. We talked about Scenechronize. What are the other pieces of software that you or members of your team are using regularly to get the show done, both during production and then in post?

Craig: I write on Fade In. Then once Allie, who is both my assistant and also our script coordinator, goes through and puts it through the Scenechronize machinery to distribute, she also converts it to a Final Draft file. Why is it converted to a Final Draft file? Because Chris Roufs, our script supervisor, uses a very specific program for his job that only imports in Final Draft, of course. You start to see the problem with the closed system and the proprietary formats. It just begets just this legacy system of misery.

John: We have that, and then for while you guys are shooting, what is the software you guys are looking at cuts on? I know you also have the ability to look at things if you’re on another set while one set is shooting. What’s that kind of stuff?

Craig: There are two platforms for that. For the distribution of dailies and cuts, we use PIX, which I also do not like.

John: Oh my god, I’ve had to do nothing but PIX the last five weeks. I think PIX’s main job is to sign you out as frequently as possible. I’ve been on Zooms where I’m just tapping the screen and wiggling 10 seconds back just so it won’t sign me out.

Craig: PIX will log you out if you blink. PIX will force you to change your password if you go to the bathroom. PIX also is poorly organized and difficult to use.

John: Oh god, their bins are really tough.

Craig: Horrible.

John: The equivalent of folders.

Craig: I do not like PIX. I don’t. In fact, when I say to the editor, “Okay, everything’s great here, I just need you to change this, this, and this. Can you just send me that little section?” I make them not send it to me on PIX, even though that violates everything. I apologize to Time Warner, Discovery, HBO, AOL. The other platform we use constantly is Box. Box is our digital file management system.

John: It’s very much like Dropbox, but it tends to be used in the industry more for various reasons.

Craig: There are a few of those. We used I think Frame.io in one season. Maybe for Chernobyl we used Frame, and for this we use Box. We have somebody whose job is to oversee and manage that entire system. We use that to distribute tests, images, proposals, illustrations, previses, all that. Then you can comment, and you can also annotate, draw on it and comment to that. It’s a better system.

But I will say it only functions for me because I don’t actually get any notifications from Box. They all go through a separate account that Allie manages. Then she can compile all the things that I need. Three times a day, I get an email from her with 12 Box links, describing what they are and what I need to respond to, because if you don’t have that, basically you’re getting an email every 12 seconds saying somebody commented, somebody thought, somebody did this.

John: Oh, god.

Craig: A nightmare. That’s what happened to me in Season 1. I didn’t stop looking at it. It was a real problem.

John: Let’s talk about email. You are still using email to communicate with certain people, or do you believe in Signal threads? Are you using Slack? What is the way you communicate with department heads?

Craig: With department heads, typically I’m speaking to them directly or commenting through Box. If I really, really, really need to get them ASAP, I text. We don’t have Slack. I think that’s probably a good thing. It’s a good thing for me.

Part of this discussion is who are you and what are you doing on the production. If you are in the middle of things, you need as much communication as possible. If you’re the showrunner, you need the most curated discussion as possible, because you will drown in questions and details with three minutes, and you’re trying to do other things and stay in big picture and work on shooting and all the rest of it.

We don’t have Slack, or at least I’m not aware of one. It’s just texts if I need to, or I call somebody. But more often than not, I just say to an AD, can you have somebody come over, and I’ll talk to them.

John: Then you also have the ability to look at what’s happening on set. If you have to step away, but you still need to see what is that shot that’s going up or the setup. What’s that that you’re using?

Craig: We use QTAKE, which again I believe is the industry standard. QTAKE works quite well. QTAKE is incredibly important. There’s the whole system that Amanda Trimble, our video playback operator, uses. I don’t know what she actually has loaded on her cart there, but it is some special system. There’s a special system that the DIT uses. That’s the guy that manages the information flow from the cameras, because of course it’s all digital. I also use Evercast to edit remotely with our editors.

John: A lot of specialized software that’s just for the industry, but also some things like Box, which are just off-the-shelf things that you guys are using because they’re there and they work.

We’ve talked a little bit about the screenwriting side of it, which most of our listeners are involved with screenwriting software. Obviously, Final Draft, or at least the FDX format, tends to be a thing that you go back to. I guess I can understand the FDX of it all, because it is at least an organized format. It is an XML format, so there’s some logic behind using that as a basis of things.

The challenge though is, if you’re passing around files for things, will the files get out of date? It would make much more sense if there was one continuously updated file that everyone was looking at the same file. That’s very hard to do.

There’s a service called Scripto, which Stephen Colbert’s company developed, which a lot of the late-night shows use, because they are all banging together to work on one script. It’s more like a Google doc, where everyone is working on one thing simultaneously, which makes sense for those kinds of shows. You would hope that in the future at some point there could be a centrally updated script that is the source that you don’t have to then redistribute scripts out to people.

Craig: We don’t have anything like that. We still operate under the old system of blue revision, pink revision, goldenrod revision, but it’s all done digitally.

John: Then there’s the programs that you and I are actually writing in. I’m writing in Highland. You’re writing in Fade In. Those are great single-computer systems. There are some things to try to do the onliney version of that. WriterDuet did that. Celtx did that. Arc Studio does that. There’s ways to do it. It can be overkill for the single writer, but it can be useful for team situations. It’s tough to say what the right solution is. Still, the script and the schedule are at the heart of what productions need. It’s not surprising that people are trying to figure out how do we organize all these things so all these different ways we do stuff can be centralized and make life happier for showrunners, for department heads, for ADs, for everybody else.

In most of these cases, I’ve been talking to folks who are ADs who naturally have this instinct to… They want information to go to places without being repeated and for people to be able to see what the plan is. They look so good on paper. I look at the slideshows and the little mock-ups. I’m like, “Yeah, that seems great.” But what you’re actually talking about doing is you actually have to build Slack, you have to build PIX, you have to build all these things that exist that are really difficult to do.

The problem is there’s not a big enough market for it. You’re not gonna be able to get somebody to pay enough to make it actually worth developing, and much worse, worth supporting, because the expectation of your users is that this has to have basically 100 percent uptime, because if PIX goes down or if QTAKE goes down, that is a crisis. You have to have this crazy expectation for your uptime.

Craig: Anything that is served like that has to be bulletproof. You’re absolutely right. It’s why the hammer costs $800 instead of $5, because there’s only 12 people buying the hammer. It is incredibly specialized. A lot of these things I imagine are quite expensive. I don’t know. Things that like Fade In or Highland, that’s marketable to millions of people who want to write things. But Scenechronize, it’s just the people making stuff that use Scenechronize. I don’t know what it costs, but probably a lot.

John: I think as we talk about both the problems and solutions, you’re gonna need to find some way to make recurring revenue from your existing customers, because you can’t just find the next customer and the next customer after that, because there’s a hard limit on the number of customers who could potentially use your software. You need to find ways to monetize each time. That means either you are charging per user, per production, per month. There has to be some way that you’re making that sustainable, because otherwise your company’s gonna go bankrupt.

That’s also the reason why it’s very hard to attract the initial kind of money it takes to build the product in the first place, because any investor will say, “I don’t think this is a survivable business. I don’t think you can actually make enough money here, so why would I invest in it?”

Craig: You could see a world where let’s say Disney, as large as they are, says, “We’re gonna create our own system.”

John: They are.

Craig: They are?

John: They are. Disney and Netflix both apparently have their own systems they’re developing. That makes sense because they’re doing so much production and they can top-down force people to use it.

Craig: You can force people to use it anyway. But what you are always dealing with is the fact that, A, you are at the mercy of those companies, who charge, I can only imagine, exorbitant yearly subscription fees that scale in terms of the size of your company, and B, you’re at the mercy of their features. The way they do it is how you have to do it. But the method of organizing things per production to customize it, there is no customization really like that.

The upside for a company like Disney, which is so big and makes so much stuff, is, yeah, we can completely control it, we can manage it, and we can make sure it is bulletproof and not be held hostage. The downside is people that come into your system now have to use that, which means they have to learn it, which means they have to deal with it. They’re used to using the other thing, and everybody gets very, very cranky. Either there will be a revolt or it will work and it will spread, meaning if Disney and Netflix, in their combined might, create a system like this, everyone’s gonna use it. It’s just gonna happen.

John: Agreed, agreed. Everyone’s gonna use it who can afford to use it. Indie films will develop alternate systems. Maybe that’s appropriate. Maybe they can do some different stuff and it would make sense for them on that smaller level. Here’s the subtlety on that. If Disney or Netflix says you have to use this, people will use it, but I also suspect department heads will still go back to their own native ways of doing things and then just have to duplicate the effort to use the other system. They’ll still find off-channel ways to do stuff. I was talking to a British AD who says for their productions, they have WhatsApp channels for each scene or something, which is just-

Craig: Oh my god. Oh my god.

John: … ongoing discussions about how stuff works.

Craig: Oh my god.

John: It’s like, oh god, that seems so-

Craig: That’s horrible.

John: Yeah, it’s awful.

Craig: That’s just awful.

John: This is a person who made a giant Amazon show, and that’s how they did it.

Craig: “That’s how I do it,” in quotes, you’ll hear a lot. Obviously, there’s very powerful calendaring software and scheduling software. But also, when I walk into certain offices, in our production offices, I’ll see people who have calendared their wall with post-its, because that’s how they do it, and it helps them. I’m like everybody else. I have a way of doing things that I’m comfortable with. You get set in your ways. By the way, side question for you, John.

John: Please.

Craig: This is a “set in your ways” question. In the old days when we would print scripts, people would have a script, and then you would make revisions. The revisions would change the way the page count would be, so instead of changing the page count, you would just make A and B pages so that the following pages didn’t change. People just had to open their huge binder, pull out pages 38 and 39, and replace them with 38A, 38B, 38C, and then a new 39. But we don’t print anything anymore, and we have scene numbers. My question is, why do we still do this with pdf?

John: Craig, we should absolutely not be doing this.

Craig: We shouldn’t be doing it.

John: It is ridiculous that we’re doing it. I’m sure one of the showrunners who’s listened to the show says, “No, we stopped doing that.” Let’s all do this, because it’s dumb. It’s ridiculous.

Craig: It’s stupid. It’s stupid, because what happens is, on the day, you get there to rehearse the scene and there’s a page with one effing line on it.

John: It’s crazy.

Craig: It’s just dumb. It’s too late for me now. I’m in too deep on this season, but next season I’m not doing it. I’m not locking pages. It doesn’t make sense. People refer to everything by scene number anyway. I am infamous for not knowing what scene numbers mean. Somebody from prosthetics will walk over to me and say, “Question about 533.” I’ll say, “I do not know what that is. You have to give me some context.” But they all have scene numbers that never change, ever. So why? Why?

John: Hey, Craig, instead of scene numbers, should we as the writers come up with the three-word name for that scene or that sequence that we all are gonna refer to that thing as?

Craig: If you think about it, the scene number really is the ultimate version of that. They really do all think in terms of scene numbers. I have the program make scene numbers and I never think about them again. But what happens is they’ll say, “Oh, it’s Jane and Vanessa are arguing in the library.” “Oh, okay, that’s what Scene 533 is. Got it, got it, got it. Okay, continue with the question.” It’s easy enough to do. But the page thing, honestly, it just occurred to me how stupid it is that we still do it.

John: It’s ridiculous that we’re still doing it. We shouldn’t be doing it. Hey, if you’re on a show that has given up locked pages, let us know. By the way, late-night has never had locked pages. I bet there’s other things that have never locked pages. I don’t know if – did multi-cam sitcoms lock pages? [Indiscernible 00:29:02] on that too. It feels like they should’ve.

Craig: I don’t know. All I know is that for movies we always had them and it made sense and I understood why, because you printed things. But now, it just doesn’t… Why?

John: Let’s wrap this up with some takeaways here. I think one of the real problems we’ve talked about is inertia. There is that first mover advantage. People are used to Final Draft. They’re used to Movie Magic scheduling. So when a better system comes along, like Highland or like – there’s a competing scheduling software out of Germany called Fuzzlecheck, which is a terrible name, but apparently, European productions use it and it’s a lot better and it’s all online.

Craig: You’re saying Germans made a great scheduling software?

John: That is a shocker. This apparently is great. It’s all online, which makes so much more sense that you’d have multiple users touch things rather than have one person on one computer doing the thing. But I think it’s struggling to break through into the U.S. because everyone is used to the standards. It’s hard to get people to adjust from what they’re used to doing, unless you’re forcing them to or show them this is 10 times better and then they’ll switch, which is the frustration.

Craig: It won’t happen from the bottom up. I think your Disney revelation here – it was a revelation to me – is how it happens. It happens from the top down when a bunch of people in a room say, “Attention, all. This is what we’re doing now.” Everyone’s gonna, “What?! No!”

John: If you think about it from Netflix’s point of view, Netflix is essentially a software company, and so it would make sense that they would have ways to do these things.

Craig: Absolutely. People will complain, gripe, moan, and then they will adjust. But it will never come from the bottom up, because making television shows and movies is chaos. It’s utter chaos. Anywhere you can find some kind of comforting repetition and security, you grab it and you hold onto it forever. You will have to pull it out of their hands and give them something new. They will freak out, but then they will adjust.

John: Last thing I’ll say, you have to be thinking about what is a sustainable business model for this app you’re thinking about making. The problem is not that you cannot imagine a better tool or even design a better tool. It’s that you cannot afford to make it and sustain it and to actually keep it up and running. When people get frustrated about per-month fees or per-user fees or all that stuff, it’s like, that’s because that’s how this company can stay in business.

Craig: You’re saying that they’re not in business to go out of business?

John: They’re not in business to go out of business. That’s the problem with the Final Draft. Because they sell it to you once, they’re like, “Crap, we ran out of screenwriters. Okay, we need to make a new version of Final Draft that adds a useless feature that no one needs, just so we can keep the lights on.”

Craig: That’s not great.

John: Not great. Not great. That’s how you end up with Final Draft.

Craig: That is how you end up with the tragedy of Final Draft.

John: Let’s go to something we can maybe help and fix. Let’s talk about some Three Page Challenges.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: For listeners who are new to the show, every once in a while we do a Three Page Challenge, where we invite our listeners to send in the first three pages of their pilot, of their feature. We look through them. We give our honest feedback. These are people who asked for our feedback. We are not picking random people off the street. We are trying to give constructive feedback on what they have sent through.

Craig: That would be so cruel.

John: What happens is we put out a call for submissions to the Three Page Challenge. People go to johnaugust.com/threepage. They read the little form. They submit their pages. Drew and our intern have to go through 100? How many generally come through?

Drew: A little over 100 this week.

Craig: Wow.

John: Go through a bunch of these to find three or four that seem like they’re good for our show. The criteria are they have to have no obvious spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. We don’t want to be talking about those. We want to talk about what’s working on the page, what’s not working on the page, what can our listeners benefit from. They’re not picking necessarily the best entries, but the most interesting ones, the things we’ll have stuff to talk about.

We have three really good ones here to discuss. For our listeners who have their phones or their iPads handy, there are links in the show notes that you can read through these pages. Pause this, read through the pages, and join us as we discuss them. Drew, for folks who are not reading along with us, can you talk us through what happens in Planet B by Christopher James?

Drew: Sure. It’s 2055. In the White House Situation Room, President Keiko Pearl is briefed by her advisors on the discovery of a new Goldilocks planet able to sustain life. The head of the EPA cautions about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, but he’s laughed at. We then cut to a creature smashing through terrain, only to reveal that the creature is in fact a human toddler.

John: Craig Mazin, talk us through your initial reactions to Planet B.

Craig: We have what hat appears to be possibly a comedy. I think it’s a comedy.

John: I think it’s a comedy.

Craig: Science fiction comedy where Earth is in trouble, almost certainly because of climate change, and they have managed to find a mirror Earth that they can go settle.

This is a pretty common way to start these things. There are multiple problems that are inherent to this method of starting things. The way Christopher goes about it is he’s using a situation room in the White House to introduce people and concept and character. We have, I think, a bit of an over-stuffed three pages here, because it’s trying to do so much at once that it doesn’t feel like an actual scene with human beings. It feels more like a machined thing to teach us stuff about people.

We meet Sarita Arya, and we also meet Keiko Pearl, and we also meet Anne Reiss, and we also meet Brian Dale. Everyone, by the way, has some sort of race and wardrobe, hair, makeup, except for Anne Reiss, who is none of those. Does that mean she’s white? That’s a weird-

John: The default white problem, yeah.

Craig: Default white problem there. We also meet Bear “Grizz” Norris, and we meet Ryan Arya and Nowell Arya. In three pages, that’s too many people to meet. That’s too many. Everybody is a person. Everybody is a thing. Everybody has a thing, a vibe, whatever. We’re learning all of these things.

Here’s what I learned. I’m just gonna list the things that I’ve learned here. It’s Earth. It’s 2055 and Earth is in trouble. I learned that in the White House, Sarita Arya has a “steady demeanor and short, spiky hair.” I’ve also learned that Keiko Pearl, who’s Japanese American with “shoulder-length hair and youthful skin-“

John: She’s the President.

Craig: She’s the President. I’ve learned that Anne Reiss is a science advisor and is “always on defense.” I have learned that General Brian Dale is bald and from the Army and he is a stroke survivor and he uses a cane. I have also learned that Bear “Grizz” Norris is White. Oh, so he’s White. Okay, so Anne, she’s whatever. He is “shaggy haired and bearded.” I have also learned that Nowell Arya is biracial Indian/White and his father, Ryan, is Indian American and athletic. That’s all separate and apart from the plot stuff that I’m learning. It’s too much.

John: It’s a lot. I would say I think Christopher is doing almost the best job you could with this kind of shotgun intro problem. One of the reasons why I like this as an example is it shows how hard it is actually to do this.

I can envision a scene. Let’s say this is actually shot and there are recognizable actors maybe in some of these roles that help you distinguish who people are and remember them. But you’re trying to do so much. There’s so much table setting to do about that there is a second planet that has breathable air, who these people are, that it’s 2055, that it doesn’t feel real or legit in a way that even in a heightened comedy setting, which this is, is not going to work especially well.

I want to talk about just on the page. It’s in Courier Prime, which looks lovely. I think the breakups of scene description and dialogue, it all reads well. I’m not terrified to look through these pages. It’s pretty easy to get yourself through them. The use of underlines and single-word sentences, also really good. All these things work nicely.

I don’t mind the character descriptions. I think a lot of times I could visualize these characters better than in many samples because you’re giving me some details that I can actually click in my head. The problem is there was just too many of these things introduced back to back to back to back. Then I got confused and a little frustrated.

Craig: Everything has the same importance. Everyone has the same importance, because there are so many. Then there’s the tone itself. First of all, we go from the exterior of space, where we see Earth, and then we’re interior the Situation Room in the White House. The Situation Room in the White House is just a room. You might need to see the White House itself just so we know where we are. Then Sarita, who I assume is President Pearl’s chief of staff-

John: Chief of staff.

Craig: Yeah, it says chief of staff. Sorry, that was the other bit of information. See, it’s lost in the clutter. Everyone’s talking, and she whistles to make everyone stop talking. I didn’t believe that. I don’t think that’s how it works. They show this other planet, and then President Pearl immediately gets into an argument. “Why didn’t we know about this sooner? What took so long to find it?” I guess she’s just dumb. Is she dumb?

John: It feels like a question that is being asked for the audience rather than for herself.

Craig: Exactly. Then everybody else has a very… Anne Reiss, the scientist, is very sciencey. General Brian Dale, he’s very military-y. Then Buzz [sic] “Grizz” Norris is very EPA administrator-y. They are their jobs. That’s the roughest part of this.

John: I would like to propose a line that is banned from future scripts, which is, “In English, please.” General Dale says it. That feels just the tropey-est, clammiest line.

Craig: That’s a clam, especially because what Anne Reiss, 64, nothing else to know, says, “The atmosphere is 19.5 percent O-2.” General Dale, “In English, please.” He’s a general. He knows what oxygen is.

John: The actual question is, is that good, because I don’t know if 19.5 is good. I don’t know if that’s appropriate. Then her answer makes sense. It’s, “It means humans can breathe.”

Craig: If someone said, “So too much or not enough?” “It’s about right.” That’s fine. Christopher, I’m gonna pitch you a different way of doing this.

John: Tell us.

Craig: Christopher, what if the entirety of this scene – and you could go to interior, you don’t even need to know it’s the White House yet – is Sarita and President Pearl, and we don’t even know who they are. We don’t even know that President Keiko Pearl, “42, Japanese American, shoulder-length hair and youthful skin,” is the President. We just have two people talking over lunch, and one of them is explaining to the other one, “This is what’s happening.” What that scene is about is not about the information, but rather, their relationship.

There is some relationship here that is the central relationship of the movie. If that’s not the central relationship of the movie, find one and make that the beginning. But if it’s just two people talking and then President Pearl goes, “Okay, got it,” walks out of the room, walks into another room and finds this scrum all arguing, tells them all to shh, then they’re like, “Oh, the President’s here,” and she’s like, “This is it. This is what we’re doing,” I’ll go, “Oh, that was the President, and this is important.” But we have to focus this scene and put it within the context of a relationship, or we just won’t care.

John: I think our expectation of the first scene of the movie is that we’re gonna meet characters who are the fundamental most important people. Sometimes that can be defeated, where a bomb can go off and all these people could die. That could be a choice too. My expectation is that Keiko Pearl is probably the most important character. She’s the one we’re gonna follow. We don’t really quite know at the end of the scene whose point of view this scene is from. That is the frustration, if one of these characters is going to be the central character of the story.

I want to talk about, just as we wrap up here, the scene on Page 3 which is basically this monster is smashing things and it’s revealed to be a toddler. That will never work, because we’re seeing something. You’re not gonna be able to hold that premise, that joke for very long. You could have the bom-bom-bom music of something stomping around, but the minute we see his-

Craig: Legs.

John: … cute little shoes, his legs or something, it’s not gonna really work. You can describe it metaphorically, like, he’s like a monster smashing things, but only on the page could you get away with the, “Oh, there’s a terrible monster smashing things. Oh, surprise, it’s a child.” That’s not gonna be a surprise to people with eyeballs.

Craig: That is correct.

John: I love that we now have log lines for things. Drew, tell us the log line of what the actual full movie is.

Drew: “In 2055, climate change is irreversible and humans live on borrowed time. When Americans discover a nearby inhabitable planet, they must consider what’s worth giving up for a future as refugees in an alien society.”

Craig: Just about what I thought. It doesn’t mention what the tone is, but it does feel comedic.

John: I think so too. I’m guessing this is a feature and not a pilot. I think something would’ve said pilot on the title page.

Craig: Feels featurey.

John: Feels featurey. Cool. Let’s go on to The Long Haul. Again, if you’re gonna read along with us, why don’t you pause and read this. But if you’re not reading along, Drew, give us a summary.

Drew: The Long Haul by Becca Hurd. Emmy Baxter, 24, is irritated when an Australian stranger named Angus hijacks her karaoke performance at a Chicago pub. But despite her initial annoyance, their banter turns to flirtation.

John: I want to start with the title page here. This is The Long Haul. The O in “Long” is a heart. Below this is an image of the country of Australia and the country of U.S. with a line between them and a heart. It’s cute, sure. I kind of get what it’s about. It feels like a lot on this cover page. I would go with either the heart or the image there.

At the bottom it says, “Sydney, Australia, February 2024,” and it has her email address. The “February 2024” generally is over on the right-hand side where she put it, but things like her email address tend to be on the left-hand side. I don’t know why Sydney, Australia is there, other than maybe to tell us she’s Australian. But I don’t know that’s useful information for a title page.

Craig: I’ve never actually seen the location of where the script was written on the page there. I think you’re probably right. But I enjoy the graphic quite a bit. I agree with you, the issue with putting the heart in “Long” is that you have two hearts on the page.

There’s a very clever thing. “The Long Haul, Written by Becca Hurd.” The line between Australia and the United States is the old style, when you fly, a little dotted line happens, and the dotted line does a curlicue to become a heart in between. That actually is a beautiful summary of what this is gonna be about. It’s gonna be about a long-distance relationship between somebody who lives in the U.S. and somebody who lives in Australia and flying back and forth, I suppose. But that heart is diminished by the fact that there’s another heart in the word “Long.” Make that heart special, I think, by making the O just an O in “Long.”

John: Agreed. Once we get into Page 1 here, it starts with a discussion between Beth and Emmy. Emmy is our central character. Beth is her friend. They are awaiting their time to do karaoke. There’s some chitchat here, which is not great. There are some lines I would love to scratch out here.

Beth says, “Thought you were off the clock.” Emmy says, “Thought you were a vegetarian. But your mouth is full of Meat Loaf?” referring to this guy she’s making out with. Meat Loaf is not a great contemporary reference. I don’t think people are gonna get the joke that you’re referring to the singer Meat Loaf here.

There’s a better joke in the next line, which is, “Where’d you find him, an episode of Stranger Things?” Great, I get that as a joke. That is the better one. If you’re going to start with these two talking, I think that is your better way in.

More trimming here. “Somehow he’s not your worst. You’re too good for these guys, Beth.” If Emmy says, “He’s not your worst,” that tells us more and it’s more efficient.

Craig: But they’re sisters. Why are they talking to each other like they don’t know each other? If your sister is constantly making out/dating with guys that she’s better than, you’ve had this conversation before. It feels like we’re having it for the first time.

John: Agreed. For a sister, it feels like a stretch. There’s a semi-friend that you could actually have these things with. Craig, I want to talk to you about Emmy’s line near the bottom of the page, “When are they gonna play my song??” question mark question mark. I kind of like the question mark question mark. I kind of hear the delivery in the line with a double question mark. What’s your take on a double question mark?

Craig: I’ve never used it myself. But it feels like if a drunk person is asking a question. Then two question marks does definitely indicate drunken questioning.

John: That’s an overall note I had on Page 2 is how drunk are these people, because once we actually get to the standoff over the karaoke song, it feels like I need a clear sense of how drunk each of these people are to believe it or get a sense of a reality check on this moment that’s happening.

Craig: Let’s roll back to, for a moment, where even are we? The script tells us we’re interior Chicago pub. How do I know this is Chicago? It’s important, because apparently, this is gonna be a movie about an American and an Australian. I need to know where we are. Even if you just, again, give me nice exterior of Chicago-

John: That helps.

Craig: … it would help. The beginning, Emmy “is speedily typing on her phone.” Then her sister is gonna say, “Thought you were off the clock.” I’ve now got her character down to a post-it note. Works too hard. I don’t like that. Why is Emmy there? Why is she there? If she’s there to just speedily type on her phone, why is she at the karaoke club? Beth says, “Sometimes it’s okay to just have fun and not control every little detail. Wild concept for you, I know.” Post-it note character description. Why is Emmy there?

John: Craig, she’s there because she wants to sing karaoke, which is established in the very next line, “When are they gonna call me?”

Craig: But I don’t believe that, because she’s-

John: I don’t believe it either.

Craig: … “speedily typing on her phone.” If she comes to sing karaoke, she’s gonna have a drink or whatever and have fun. But I love the idea of somebody being impatient that her song isn’t coming. That tells me more about their character-

John: 100 percent.

Craig: … than this other stuff. Also, John, we just talked about the toddler. This is another toddler moment. This is good advice here, Becca. When you’re writing, I want you to see it actually happen in your brain. Here’s what happens. Emmy is “typing on her phone while her younger sister, Beth, sucks face with an ’80s-musician-looking-dickass. Beth takes a breath and glares at Emmy.” No, she doesn’t. She’s making out with a guy. What’s happening is she’s making out with a guy, then stops making out with him to stare at her sister and then criticize her sister.

John: Has never happened.

Craig: I don’t know about you, but when I’m making out with somebody, I’m making out with them. I’m not looking around to make comments. Emmy should interrupt Beth. That I’d believe.

John: Yeah, or the kiss breaks off and he goes off to hit the restroom or whatever, and then she can land her sniper comment there.

Craig: Yes, but there’s no reason for her to stop. She can’t do both things at once. Also, just a little bit of advice here, Becca. If you do want Emmy to make comments about Beth, she’s sitting there waiting for her song. The bartender or somebody is sitting next to her. The two of them are like, “What the fuck with those two?” “Yeah,” blah blah blah. Then we find out it’s her sister. There’s ways to also just reveal these relationships and who they are, because right now I don’t know that they’re sisters. There’s no way to know, other than that the script told me.

John: These are all real challenges. I do think if you’re gonna start with Beth making out with the rocker guy, we know the experiences of when you’re sitting there and someone’s making out right in front of you or right beside you. That is a playable moment. It’s like, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, this terrible person. Please,” willing this person to go away. That’s a thing that can also happen.

But I agree, we’re gonna need to quickly establish they’re sisters or something else there, because it’s gonna be weird if we’re a couple scenes into the movie and we don’t know that they’re sisters.

Craig: It is weird. It’s also a little dangerous to introduce a character who is anachronistic right off the bat, because people will just think this is in the ’80s or they won’t know what time it is, because we don’t know what year it is either. It’s in a karaoke bar. People are singing old songs from the ’90s. I think Torn is from the ’90s. We’re gonna be like, “What year is this?”

But then we get to the meat of it. Now, this is a meet-cute. It’s a good idea for a meet-cute, except there’s a logic problem. A meet-cute has to just be solid. We have to buy it. We don’t want to stop and go, “I can feel the screenwriter.”

John: “We requested the same song.”

Craig: “We requested the same song.” Then Emmy says – great point here – “He literally just said Emmy. Is your name Emmy?” Angus’s reasoning for going up there and taking the mic is, “She’s Australian.” I guess I’m Australian, which means I have the right to just sing the song? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

If his last name was Emory and then, “We have Emmy with Torn,” and he’s like, “No, he said Emory. My last name’s Emory,” and she’s like, “No, he said Emmy. That’s my first name. And we both requested the same song,” then I would be fine. I would be fine. But that’s not what happens here. I wasn’t buying this meet-cute premise.

John: There’s a way you can maybe set this up where the thing comes up for the next song and it shows the Natalie Imbruglia, Torn, and the emcee is fumbling a bit to find who it was, and they both go up there. Then you finally get the emcee, like, “Whose song is this?” It’s like, “Oh, it’s Emmy.” Then he refuses to stand down, because, “No, I should be singing this song. I am the Australian. This is part of my culture.” There’s a way you could do that. But I didn’t believe the setup. I agree with you.

Craig: I didn’t believe it, and I also really did not like this guy. When you have a meet-cute where two people are arguing, you want to be able to see both of their sides. At that point, you’re like, “Oh, they both pulled into the parking spot at the same time, and now they’re arguing because it was a tie.” But this is not a tie. He’s just a jerk-

John: It’s not a tie.

Craig: … for doing this.

John: He’s a jerk. Page 3, we get after their song. I thought the actual intercut of them trying to do the verses can work. I can picture that on the page. I got the sense of what was actually happening there. On Page 3 they’re talking afterwards. They have electric chemistry. I don’t understand, “I’m a 3 wing 2, because I-” “A what?” “A 3, which is an Achiever.” Do you know what that’s about?

Craig: I have zero idea what any of this is about.

John: Drew, do you know what that’s about?

Drew: I have no idea.

John: It’s okay for people to talk about things we don’t know, but we need to have a context of what kind of thing they are talking about. I didn’t get it. At a certain point you feel dumb and you start to resent that you don’t know what’s going on there.

Craig: Also don’t care. It’s wasted time, because I’m not learning anything. Emmy said, “You would say that. Because you’re a 4.” What? What does that mean? Anytime somebody makes fun of “neur,” that always… I do love “neur.” Neur neur neur.

John: Neur neur neur neur.

Craig: Neur neur neur.

John: I think we enjoyed the potential of the premise and this as a meet-cute, because as we have discussed on the show from nearly Episode 1, we enjoy rom-coms. We want that genre to thrive. It’s nice to see when movies can succeed in doing this. We want Becca to have the best chance possible to make a rom-com. Drew, tell us the log line that Becca submitted.

Drew: “Determined to win back her ex, an audacious American woman sneaks into Australia by telling the government that she is in a continuing and loving relationship with the man who just dumped her.”

Craig: Wait, what?

John: I assume it’s Angus.

Craig: Are those two different people?

John: We don’t know. We don’t know from this log line.

Craig: Say that log line again.

Drew: Sure. “Determined to win back her ex-“

Craig: Her ex.

Drew: “… an audacious American woman sneaks into Australia by telling the government that she is in a continuing and loving relationship with the man who just dumped her.”

Craig: Who would also be the ex.

John: I guess so.

Craig: How do you sneak into Australia?

John: I think the idea of sneaking into Australia for love feels kind of fun.

Craig: If you’re talking to the officials of Australia, you’re not sneaking into Australia. In order to stay in Australia… But you can go to Australia for six months.

John: I don’t think so, Craig. I think Australia is a locked-down place. No, Australia is basically North Korea, Craig. You have to go through checkpoints. It’s incredibly dangerous.

Craig: I don’t understand.

John: This is a girl who’d do anything for love, like the song.

Craig: Like Meat Loaf. Like Meat Loaf, which Meat Loaf, referenced twice in three pages. I don’t understand. I don’t understand the log line. But there’s something very charming about the idea of this meet-cute. I’ve not seen this meet-cute before, where two people believe they each have the karaoke song, they start to sing to each other, and some little bit of magic happens. That’s a very nice way of doing things. I can see that moment. That’s encouraging.

I would say at a minimum, Becca, we’re gonna want to clean that log line up so it’s nice and sharp and doesn’t raise questions. Log lines should only raise the question you want to raise, not the questions you don’t.

John: Agreed. Let’s wrap it up with The Right to Party by Lucas McCutchen.

Drew: Captain Albert, a British officer, raises a British flag over colonial Boston. On his way home, he steps purposefully on an American child’s doll that’s fallen in a puddle. At home, his 17-year-old son, Edmund, struggles with chores, due to an injured hand, while trying to appease his stern father. Their tense interaction culminates in Captain Albert shooting at Edmund’s breakfast, inadvertently killing a passerby. Edmund and his brash friend Henry leave for school, where they discuss the dead bystander and girls they have crushes on.

John: This is a big swing. What I got by the end of three pages, this is a teen boy comedy but just set in this Revolutionary time, which is actually, I think, an interesting premise. A lot of stuff got in the way of the interesting premise, but I’m eager to talk about it, because I did think it was a clever idea to, again, just smash up tropes and genres and do a teen Apatow-y kind of movie but in this time period. Unfortunately, on Page 1, I have no idea what time period I’m in.

Let me read the first couple lines here. “Exterior Boston Town Square – Dawn. Sleepy merchants and townsfolk slowly begin their morning routines. Stores display their pitiful wares. Flies buzz in circles above the fruit in their baskets.” Finally, on the fourth sentence, “A prisoner locked in stocks stirs.” Until that sentence, I didn’t know that we were in the past. Boston Town Square exists now. I thought we were just in modern-day Boston. This is a problem, because I didn’t know where we were, when we were.

Craig: Never before has something so desperately needed “Boston, 1775.” It absolutely needs that. This is a broad comedy. Broad comedy is very, very hard to do. Take it from me. Struggled and succeeded and failed multiple times in my career.

John: Craig, you’re a drama writer. What would you know about broad comedy?

Craig: I’m a drama writer because I gave up finally. One of the most important aspects of writing broad comedy is logic. It is more of a science than an art. It’s science. Everything is about logic. Everything.

We have this very broad Monty Python-esque moment where Captain Albert, who’s this incredibly over-the-top British dickhead, fires a gun at his own breakfast, not because he’s angry at the breakfast, but rather to check if the sights are good on the pistol. They’re not good on the pistol, and a woman dies, and no one cares about the woman. The kernel of that, great. Logic problems. One, why is he firing the pistol at his breakfast? If the pistol is aligned correctly, he will ruin his breakfast. That makes no sense.

John: He should shoot at something in the room.

Craig: He could shoot at something in the room. Secondly, if you’re aiming at your breakfast on a table, I don’t care how misaligned the sights are. The most misaligned they could be is you’re off by about eight inches. You cannot be off by seven feet and then go through a window and kill a woman passing by, which by the way, is very difficult to actually film, because you have to shoot in such a way that you can see both the woman outside through the window and the man as he shoots. If this were happening outside, no problem.

John: I can envision a scenario in which he’s shooting at a thing on the wall and then it goes out the window and kills the woman. Do you necessarily need to see the woman in that first shot, or could you hear the scream and then that’s funny?

Craig: What you want to do is not see the woman at all. You want him to shoot at something on the wall, it goes through a window, and then there’s a pause, and then you hear a man go, “My wife.”

John: “Millicent!”

Craig: Yeah, “Millicent, no!” That’s what you want, and then people to start crying. Then when you go outside, there’s the guy, and he’s like, “Oh, Millicent.”

John: There’s the payoff.

Craig: Millicent, as it turns out, was actually a pig. Whatever it is. There’s all sorts of ways to do this. But the concept of being so broad that a guy is gonna kill somebody and they don’t care about somebody being killed is funny. It’s just logic.

Now, the other issue is, in broad comedy we need somebody that we can identify with, especially when you have an uber-jerk like Captain Albert. He has two sons. The problem here is both sons seem just as callous as their father. Who do I like?

John: I think you’re supposed to like Edmund, but he’s trying to make his father happy. That’s the journey that the character needs to get past. I think that’s the goal is to have-

Craig: The problem is, when they walk by the small crowd around the dead woman and Henry goes, “Jeez… a bit dramatic.” Then he goes, “Your hand alright?” Edmund’s like, “Yeah, I’ll talk about my hand now. I’m not gonna have any comment about that lady whatsoever.” He doesn’t care that a woman died.

Then we’ve got a little bit of an anachronistic vibe, where there’s a cart driver who says, “Don’t hit my effing cart.” Edmund says, “Sorry. Have a nice day,” which does feel like Edmund is a bit of a nice kid. But are they afraid of the British? Are they not afraid of the British? Why is this guy yelling at them like that? Logic, logic, logic.

John: Logic, logic, logic.

Craig: That’s the key.

John: That’s a lot. The other thing I will say is that I was missing some uppercases that would’ve been really helpful. Generally in scripts, the first time you’re meeting a character, you’re uppercasing their name, or even if it’s just a person who’s gonna come back. I wanted those “dirty townsfolk” capitalized. I wanted “child” capitalized. We’re used to those things being uppercase the first time we’re seeing them, just to acknowledge that these are people who are gonna do something specific.

Craig: Yes, especially when you are creating very large bricks of action. There’s a seven-line paragraph and an eight-line paragraph. My whole thing is once I get past three lines, I start getting itchy. Seven is a lot.

John: It’s a lot.

Craig: Eight, people are just skimming.

John: Yeah, they are.

Craig: That paragraph is the gag paragraph, where he shoots. Oh, I see. He picks the plate up and “sets it on the window sill nearby.” He did do that. I totally missed that.

John: You didn’t read that because you skimmed.

Craig: Yeah, because I skimmed, because it was an eight-line brick. Then it said, “Edmund cocks his head.” You don’t want to use that. You don’t want to say “cocks his head” when there’s a pistol that can also be cocked.

He picks the food up, places it “on the window sill nearby.” Okay, so now that does make sense, except it doesn’t, because why is he using his plate to shoot at? It’s his breakfast. It’s very odd. It says, “Edmund is in shock as Albert returns and sets the gun in front of him.” Now I’m feeling like if he’s in shock, this has never happened before. But he doesn’t be in shock. He should be more like-

John: His father is this guy.

Craig: This happens all the time. If this is the first time, then I think Edmund would be vomiting. This happens all the time. Edmund should walk over to the window, look out, and just wince. There’s ways to do this.

By the way, I will say, Lucas, don’t feel bad right now. I’m serious. This is the hardest tone to get right. It is so difficult. If you Google, David Zucker has this lovely bunch of rules that he’s set forth for this kind of work, which are really compelling and useful. Just take a look at those. It’s so difficult to get right. If you don’t, then people just turn their heads. It’s incredible how technical and precise it must be. It looks like you actually did have that logic right, except that you didn’t, and also it was in too long of a paragraph.

John: Drew, tell us the log line.

Drew: “Two teenage best friends, an American colonist and the son of a British officer, set out to have the night of their lives before they’re drafted to opposite sides of the American Revolution.”

Craig: Such a great premise.

John: It’s a really good premise.

Craig: It’s a great premise. I don’t think these pages are setting that premise up.

John: I think we can do better, but I think it was a really good premise.

Craig: It’s a terrific premise.

John: Two episodes ago we had that service where you send off a sentence to describe what your script is about. If that was a sentence you sent in, they’d say, yeah, that’s a good premise. Love that.

Craig: That’s fun. That’s a fun premise. I really like that.

John: Let’s thank everybody who submitted their Three Page Challenges for us to discuss, especially these three entries. If you want to send in your pages for the next time, it is johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out. We’ll occasionally look through that pile and pick some new ones. Thank you, everyone who did that. It’s very nice of you to do so. It really does help others learn.

Craig, it’s time for our One Cool Things. What is your One Cool Thing?

Craig: My One Cool Thing is a director that I’m currently working with named Stephen Williams. He’s not the One Cool Thing. It’s actually an episode of Watchmen that he directed. I’m sure Watchmen was my One Cool Thing when it was on the air back in-

John: It’s a good show.

Craig: Was it 2020? I guess something like that.

John: 2019, because I remember the Wash-men, which was initially during the pandemic when you had to wash your hands.

Craig: Stephen is a terrific director. He directed an episode of Watchmen that’s still… It’s stuck with me to this very day. Written by Damon Lindelof, Cord Jefferson, and Dave Gibbons. Damon Lindelof obviously needs no introduction. Multi-Emmy award-winning Damon Lindelof. Cord Jefferson, Oscar award winner.

John: Oscar, right.

Craig: He’s an Academy Award winner now for American Fiction. We’ve got some pretty big names there working on this, and then directed by Stephen. It is origin story of a superhero in the world of Watchmen. It uses a character that was indicated in the original graphic novel, Hooded Justice, and turns it on its ear and tells a pretty profound story of the Black American experience in, I believe it’s the ’30s or ’40s. Just an outstanding episode of television, beautifully done, moving and subtle, and directed gorgeously.

If you haven’t seen Watchmen, can you just pop that one in and watch it? No, you cannot. You have to watch up to it. I think it might be the sixth episode. Yes, it is the sixth episode of the season. You’ll have to do some watching for that. But honestly, it’s worth it. It’s such a great season of TV. It stands alone. It is the only one that exists. It’s got some so-so actors in it, like Regina King and Jean Smart and Don Johnson. It’s so stacked.

John: Despite that, it triumphs.

Craig: It’s so stacked. What a stacked lineup, as the kids say. I had watched it again, just because I’m having such a lovely time working with Stephen. He’s just such a great guy.

John: Great. My One Cool Thing is a show that people can also watch. Ripley on Netflix. This is the Steve Zaillian adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. The Talented Mr. Ripley, the movie, is one of my favorite movies, one of my top 10 movies. I absolutely love it. I was a little bit nervous watching this adaptation, because I didn’t want it to spoil my love for the original or be compared. I really like this adaptation. It’s just so different. Everywhere the movie went left, this goes right. I love that the main adversary in the series is stairs, basically. Poor Ripley is always confronted by stairs.

It’s also, I think, a really great lesson in what you can do with time, and when you have the time of a series, how you can expand these moments that in the movie would be 30 seconds. You can now spend 15 minutes on, like, how do you deal with this dead body. The comedy that Zaillian’s able to find out of that is just terrific. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, and yet it’s still funny, just because it points out the absurdity of human bodies also, which is great.

It’s black and white. It’s gorgeous. Everyone talks about that. It’s all shot in Italy. Looks terrific. Great performances. Really strange casting that works. Just check out Ripley on Netflix if you get a chance.

Craig: I wish you’d get Steve Zaillian on the show.

John: We’ll get him on the show. I’m sure we can get him on the show.

Craig: He’s a lovely man. He is just a towering figure in our business of what we do. There aren’t many people who have demonstrated his kind of consistent excellence for so, so long. He was excellent out of the gate and stayed excellent. Just an incredible writer and one of the best of all time.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt-

Craig: Nope.

John: … with help this week by Jonathan Wigdortz.

Craig: Uh-uh.

John: It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: I don’t think so.

John: Our outro this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies. They’re great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on magic and the lack thereof in our D&D campaign. Craig, it’s always magic talking with you and Drew.

Craig: It is not.

John: See you next week.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, Craig, so the brief for the new D&D campaign we’re playing. We should explain to listeners that for the last four years we were playing a campaign that you were DM’ing. We finally finished that. I was gonna take over the next campaign for our group. I pitched to the crew that, what if we did a Robin Hoody kind of thing where it was a little bit more stripped down. We ultimately said let’s do the really stripped down. We’re only gonna have Humans and Halflings and maybe some Elves, but none of the other fantastical races. We would have a campaign with no magic, where it’s really grounded and you can’t cast spells, or not magic items. Everyone stepped up, and that’s what we’ve been playing.

Craig: It’s been kind of a delight. In Dungeons and Dragons, there are these different classes. Some classes are almost, by definition, un-magical. Wizards of the Coast-

John: They’re the company who runs D&D, who owns D&D.

Craig: They’re pretty clever in that they even will allow variants of basically every class to have some magic. Very difficult with barbarians. But you can have a Rogue, or Arcane Trickster, I think it is, and learn some spells, because spells are very powerful. There’s a spell for every circumstance. People love magic. It’s Dungeons and Dragons. But one thing that is true is that at some point, spells become so powerful and pervasive that they can make the game a little unfun for focus characters who don’t cast spells. They just at some point feel like, okay, you guys will do all this awesome stuff.

John: I will hit it with my sword.

Craig: I’m gonna hit you with a club, and then everybody else gets to do something extraordinary. Then I’m gonna run in there and, I guess, hit someone else with a club. It’s easy to play, but you can start to feel, as the characters increase in level, sort of like, I guess, the way – what’s the archer in Avengers? What’s his name again?

John: Oh, Hawkeye, yeah. One trick, yeah.

Craig: You start to feel like Hawkeye. Like, “Okay, so you’re literally a god and you can shoot lasers out of hands, and I have a bow and arrow.” “And what are you gonna do?” “Shoot my bow and arrow again.” It’s nice that we are all basically in that boat, not only us, but also the bad guys.

John: Talking about classes, you and I had an interesting discussion where we were talking through what is actually gonna make sense. There are Fighters. There are Barbarians. There are Rogues. There are Monks, but only certain kinds of Monks, because some of the Monks get really, really magical, and so variants that don’t have magic. And Rangers, but Rangers without the magic stuff, because Rangers have a lot of spells they would otherwise cast. But it’s a world without Wizards or Sorcerers, Clerics and Druids. You think about in a Robin Hoody kind of situation, a Bard makes a lot of sense, except the Bards in 5th Edition D&D really are Spellcasters and it doesn’t make sense to do that. Even Paladins, who you think, oh, it’s a brave knight-

Craig: Spells.

John: Yeah, but with a lot of magic there.

Craig: A lot of necessary magic. The thing that makes a Paladin good is that they have their various smites to add damage to their hits. We don’t have any of that, and it’s kind of a joy. When you face a bunch of bad guys, there’s no crowd control spells. There’s a lot of spells in D&D where it’s like, “I’m gonna just put you all in darkness. I’m gonna put you all in something. I’m gonna fireball you.” That’s the thing. You run up against seven guys, one person in your party can kill all of them with one spell. It’s nice to – you have to think more. There’s more strategizing. There’s more planning. The combat feels a little… I don’t know, it’s a nice gritty D&D.

Typically, everyone’s drinking a potion, or you have a Cleric or a Druid or somebody else that has healing spells that can restore all of your aches and pains – rather, alleviate your aches and pains. Here, my character took a feat which I don’t even know why anyone would take in a campaign with magic, that allows you to use an underutilized mechanic of healing kits to heal people, like a doctor would. If you’re not playing a magic-free campaign, why would anyone take the Healer feat, ever?

John: I don’t think they would.

Craig: Never.

John: It’s been interesting to see the ripple of changes that happen through this. I think combat speed has been a lot faster, because inevitably what happens is, like, “Oh, it’s my turn. Am I gonna cast a spell? What spell am I gonna cast? Let me look up what that’s gonna do.” Here it’s like, “No, I’m going to shoot somebody. I’m going to slash somebody.” Yes, people may use their special martial abilities to some degree, but it’s just been a lot faster to get through stuff. It can take more rounds to knock down an opponent, but that’s been nice.

I would say on the DM side I’ve been struck by just how much damage you guys can do, because you have these Rogues who can, through various mechanics, get sneak attack, get advantage on things, and they can take down a creature really quickly. I’ve had to adjust the number of monsters I’m throwing at you, just because you guys can do so much damage and take them out so quickly.

Craig: One of my DM tricks is – there are a few DM tricks. Now I’m telling you how to hurt us more, which is fun. One is, if there’s a big bad in the party, give him more HP. If the party is just crushing, just give him more HP. Make him last another round or two.

The other one, and this is the most useful one when you really want to mess with your party and you feel like they’re cakewalking, is to give one of the main boss guys legendary actions, because now that is essentially like increasing the number of bad guys without throwing a bunch of weak-asses on the field, who often can’t do that much damage on their own and get mowed down anyway, because our party’s capable of killing a couple of guys, three guys a turn if they’re just scrubs.

John: A thing I hadn’t considered until we got into this section of the campaign is that you guys are now underground, and light is a real factor. Often in these campaigns you’ll have more characters who have dark vision because they are Elves or have the ability to see in darkness, but you guys don’t. People would generally have a light spell cast on something, so they have a coin or something is shedding light. Here you guys have torches, and you have to deal with the torches. You as an Archer can’t hold a torch and shoot an arrow. It’s been really interesting to see from that perspective how a lack of magic is impacting you guys.

Craig: Light management is fun. I like that. It’s a little scary. You can’t be as stealthy as you want to be. That was one of the things about a traditional campaign that you have to deal with as a DM is that probably everybody’s gonna be able to see in the dark and light no longer becomes a thing. The only time it becomes a thing is, okay, so typical dark vision, you can see 60 feet ahead of you. Sometimes you run into, like, Drow. They can see 120. Now you got a situation. That’s interesting. But making us deal with simple things like not being able to see, especially when we’ve now encountered some creatures that can see in the dark, very interesting.

John: So fun. As we said in the setup, it is interesting to apply constraints to things, because we’re all very experienced D&D players. To make something feel fresh, you need to put on some new rules, new challenges to people. Rather than adding stuff, sometimes subtracting stuff is a way to make something more interesting. Do I want to play only this no-magic way forever? Absolutely not. But I think it’s been interesting for this round to try that and see how it all works.

It’s also been challenging to – on the DM level, I’m enforcing that you guys don’t have spells or magic stuff. As I’m picking adversaries, a lot of times what’s baked into these scenarios, they are Spellcasters too. I have to find, okay, what is the equivalent of that spellcasting ability for those characters. In some cases I’ve given them grenades that can duplicate an effect, but in other cases I’ve given them things taken from the Battle Master feats or Battle Master-

Craig: Maneuvers?

John: … maneuvers, yes, or monk-y kind of things.

Craig: You mean monkish?

John: Yeah, or monk abilities, because that would be the equivalent in this world for the third level spell they would otherwise be able to cast.

Craig: You’re dealing with people who have been playing for a long, long time. We all know what we’re doing. We all know the rules pretty well. Some of us know the rules pretty well, and then others do not, but that’s fine. The point is we’ve been playing for a long time.

I was in one brief campaign that another guy was running with some of the Joe Manganiello crew. The restraint on that one was every character had to be a Wizard. It was the opposite of this. It was an all-Wizard party, which meant that at least when we were starting out, it was like sending children out into the world. We were like, “I can make a light come on. Also, if you touch me, I die.” But by the time you get to Level 3-

John: Wow.

Craig: It’s pretty serious, but if anybody gets close to you-

John: You’re still fragile.

Craig: You’re pretty fragile. Now, that party, you get an all-Wizard party at Level 18, now everyone’s dead.

John: Good lord.

Craig: We win. You lose.

John: The rules of time and space have changed now.

Craig: Exactly.

John: We’ll continue with our campaign and with the podcast in the next couple weeks.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: Craig, good to chat with you as always.

Craig: Thanks, John. Thanks, Drew.

John: Bye.

Craig: Bye.

Drew: Bye.

Links:

• Follow along with our Three Page Challenge Selections: PLANET B by Christopher James, THE LONG HAUL by Becca Hurd, and THE RIGHT TO PARTY by Lucas McCutchen
• Submit your script for our Three Page Challenge!
• David Zucker’s 15 Rules of Comedy
• Space Cadet (2024)
• Movie Magic Scheduling
• Scenechronize
• PIX
• Qtake
• BOX
• Frame.io
• Evercast
• Scripto
• Fuzzlecheck
• Ripley on Netflix
• Watchmen – “This Extraordinary Being”
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter
• John on Mastodon
• Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Jonathan Wigdortz. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.