John August

John

Scriptnotes 100 tickets now available

News

UPDATE: Sold out. Really quickly. We’ll talk with the Academy folks and see if we can free up more tickets. If so, I’ll try to give fair warning about when they’re available.

It’s not surprising that we have resourceful listeners, and a few of them discovered tickets were actually available on the Academy site starting on Friday. Only a few folks bought them, so I decided not to publicize their availability so that people who were waiting for the promised July 1st date could get tickets.

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Tickets for the live taping of the Scriptnotes 100th episode, July 25th in Hollywood, are now available [on the Academy site](http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2013/07/script-notes.html).

This isn’t WWDC, but the combination of free beer and limited space means we’ll probably sell out pretty quickly, so don’t delay.

Tickets are $5, or $3 if you’re a student or Academy member. And if you’re both, well, aren’t you fancy.

The event is presented by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting program, and hosted in this strange and great space called the Academy Lab at 6322 DeLongpre Avenue, just south of Arclight Hollywood. It should be a great night. We’ll be announcing our special guests soon.

Previz for screenwriters

Follow Up, Monsterpocalypse

In [episode 93 of Scriptnotes](http://johnaugust.com/2013/lets-talk-about-nikki-finke), Craig and I talked about how storyboarding software (like Amazon’s new Storyteller) is largely a waste of time for screenwriters, who should be focusing on words rather than pictures.

That said, I’ve occasionally found it useful to use images so I know what the hell I’m writing. I’ll use Google Street View to check out a city, or search for photos of the Badlands.

And in the case of the never-will-get-made Monsterpocalypse, ((cf. this summer’s Pacific Rim.)) in 2010 I asked Ryan Nelson to make some graphics for me so I could keep the scale of things consistent.

The script opens with an attack on London by an alien creature.

Vaporous blue flames seep through cracks in the crust. Suddenly, the meteor begins to move. The shell splits and slides in articulated sections, folding open like an elaborate puzzle.

It rolls forward, then begins to rise. It’s only then we get a sense of its true scale.

Two hundred feet tall, it towers over nearby buildings. Its massive claws could lift a 747.

Here’s what 200 feet looks like in practice:

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Note that Ryan’s monster is deliberately adorable. In case I needed to show the image to others on the team, I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to design the creature, just the size of it.

Ryan’s image really helped. It was clear that the creature couldn’t really walk through the city as much as on top of it. The London Eye would still be big — probably too big for him to throw (for example).

Later in the story, we encounter animals that have become gigantified in the decade following the initial attack. I wanted them to be big, but not so large they couldn’t navigate a city like Paris.

Ryan’s challenge was to find a scale that made sense. Keeping these creatures about 40 or 50 feet tall seemed to work best.

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This kind of screenwriter previz is uncommon, so I don’t want to feed the fires of insecurity or distraction (“I can’t write that scene until I learn Photoshop!”). I had the luxury of having a graphic genius on the payroll and 20 feet away. These comps certainly helped me, but I could have written the same script without them.

I didn’t have these images when pitching the project, but that’s one situation in which a screenwriter might consider spending money for artwork — or buying some beer for a talented artist friend. If you have to pitch a project in which many elements are uniquely visual, having something to show might make sense.

Is your story set in a futuristic undersea world of sentient sharks? That might need a picture.

Otherwise, stick to your words.

Rationality vs. Umbrage

Follow Up

Four days in, sales of the [Scriptnotes t-shirts](http://store.johnaugust.com) are going fairly smoothly. We briefly blew off the lid of our PayPal account yesterday, but have been able to keep everything at a good simmer since then.

We’ll end up selling several hundred shirts — the upper limit of what we were prepared to handle. ((What if we had sold thousands? Just because it’s a high-class problem, doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. Physical goods are hard to scale, and we would have been scrambling to get them printed and shipped.)) Thank you to everyone who ordered one one. (Or four, in the case of one guy.)

I get a push notification on my iPhone every time an order is placed, which is addictive in a uniquely modern and pointless way. I muted them so my phone wouldn’t buzz all night, but the notices are waiting every time I unlock the screen.

We were originally only going to offer an orange shirt that matched the podcast logo, but at the last minute decided to add an easier-to-wear blue-gray. That seems to have been a good choice, because Rational Blue is outselling Umbrage Orange 2:1.

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We’ll be closing orders next Friday, June 21st. So if you want one, [head to the store](http://store.johnaugust.com).

T-Shirts and Transcripts

News

Now available for a limited time: official [Scriptnotes t-shirts](http://store.johnaugust.com).

scriptnotes t-shirts

Designed by Ryan Nelson and screenprinted in Los Angeles, the shirts come in Umbrage Orange and Rational Blue-Gray. ((Currently, rational is outselling umbrage two-to-one.)) Stuart swears the blue one is the softest shirt he’s ever touched. We offer both men’s and women’s sizes.

They’re $19 each, and you can **only get them through June 21st.**

The t-shirts help pay for our transcripts. Since the beginning, every episode of Scriptnotes has come with a full text transcript, posted within a few days of air. Not many podcasts offer free transcripts, but we think they’re important for a few reasons:

1. They’re easily searchable.
2. They’re accessible for the hearing-impaired.
3. They’re available even when you can’t listen to an episode — at work, for example.

We’re only doing one run of t-shirts, so unless you pre-order yours by June 21st, you’re out of luck. Orders will ship starting July 1st.

So if you’d like one, [visit the store](http://store.johnaugust.com).