John August

John

New videocamera

Geek Alert

Samsung CameraIn preparation for both the Charlie [press junket](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/back-from-the-charlie-press-junket) and my impending fatherhood, I bought a new videocamera. I already had a Sony DV camera, but small as it is, I never end up bringing it along with me. It’s overkill for what I want, which is mostly posting little clips on the web for friends and family.

I ended up buying the [Samsung SCX105L MPEG4 Sports Camcorder](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0007QN8AG/), which, as the name implies, records to digital mpeg4 files rather than standard DV tape. The camera itself holds 40 minutes or so, but can be expanded with Sony Memory Sticks.

It feels really good in the hand. It’s a little fatter than an iPod, with a rubberized coating. The screen is bright and sharp, and the menus are intuitive, even if the controller is a little wonky. (It’s two-way, up and down, which doesn’t really work with the slide-show interface for navigating between clips.)

The video quality is fine. I wouldn’t shoot a feature on it, but you could certainly use it for an experimental short. I can’t find anything in the documentation to say how many frames/fields per second it records, but it definitely has that somewhat-stroby, [Saving Private Ryan](http://imdb.com/title/tt0120815/) feel to it.

Here’s a full-sized [clip](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/boarding.mov) (QuickTime, 7.6MB) that shows the look.

The sound is not great. The microphone is tiny, and the speaker is usually right under where I keep my thumb.

It doesn’t work natively with iMovie. Instead, you have to put the camera into USB 2.0 mode, dig through some folders, and yank out the applicable clips. (I’ll probably build an [Automator](http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/automator/) workflow to do that.) But you can then drag the clips into iMovie without any trouble.

Final Cut Express is more of a hassle. It wants to re-render the clips almost constantly. I’m sure there’s a way to pre-convert them to a more friendly format, but I haven’t really experimented with that yet.

So would I recommend the Samsung camera (or one of its tapeless compatriots)? Somewhat. The video is certainly better than you can get from a camera phone, which is the nearest real competitor. I strongly suspect Apple will come out with an equivalent product in the next year or so, with a better interface and better integration. But for now, it’s a promising idea that works surprisingly well.

To repeat: this is not the camera to buy to shoot your 18th century whaling epic. If you’re interested in using video for filmmaking, definitely check out Mike Curtis’s [HD for Indies](http://www.hdforindies.com/) blog, which covers all the mid-range cameras and issues in abundant detail.

Back from the Charlie press junket

Charlie

Bahamas PlaneThis weekend, I travelled to The Bahamas for the [Charlie and the Chocolate Factory](http://imdb.com/title/tt0367594/) press junket. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a press junket is a two or three day period during which the stars and filmmakers of a movie meet with the press (both domestic and international) to answer questions about the film. Since most of the U.S. media is based in New York or Los Angeles, press junkets are usually in one of these two cities.

Which begs the question, why the hell was the press junket in The Bahamas?

Answer: Johnny Depp. He’s currently shooting the sequels to [Pirates of the Caribbean](http://imdb.com/title/tt0383574/) down there, and since he’s The Guy on the Poster, Warner Bros. decided to fly everyone to The Bahamas so he could participate.

The event itself was at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island. I’d never been to the Caribbean, but I’ve been to Vegas plenty of times, so here’s my best analogy. Take [The Luxor](http://www.luxor.com), exchange the Egyptian theme for a vaguely Mayan one, add in [Mandalay Bay](http://www.mandalaybay.com)’s shark tanks, and put the whole thing on a pretty beach. It’s only an hour-and-a-half from Florida, so that’s your target audience.

I ended up spending a whopping 20 hours in the country, so I don’t feel qualified to comment on anything about The Bahamas beyond the fact that everyone I met was friendly.

As for the press junket itself, my job was to sit next to producer [Richard Zanuck](http://imdb.com/name/nm0005573/maindetails) and answer questions from three different groups of journalists, all of whom had just seen the movie at a special screening. Then I did an on-camera interview for a VH-1 special.

In all, I travelled about 18 hours for less than three hours of actual work. Was it worth it?

Hard to say. I honestly don’t know if a single quote of mine will appear in any of the stories about Charlie. I try to say honest and witty things, but given a choice between me and Mr. Depp, a reporter will always use his quotes. I knew that going in. And for most of the longer stories about the movie, I do in-person or phone interviews, which are most easily done from Los Angeles.

However, I think it’s important that the screenwriter show up for junkets. My being there hopefully reminds journalists that the movie was written before it was shot. Far too often in the entertainment press, the only mention of the screenwriter is to lambaste a (supposedly) dreadful script; in success, we’re invisible. At least for a few sweaty hours in The Bahamas, I was part of the story.

Organizing reality

Television

Yesterday, the WGA [announced plans](http://www.wga.org/subpage_newsevents.aspx?id=493) to begin organizing writers working on reality television shows. Unlike writers working on traditional dramas or sitcoms, these writers haven’t been covered by the guild, which means they receive no health insurance, no residuals, and no set pay minimums.

As WGAw president Daniel Petrie put it in the press release:

The secret about reality TV isn’t that it’s scripted, which it is; the secret is that reality TV is a 21st-century telecommunications industry sweatshop.

Most readers of this site are familiar with one kind of writing when it comes to film and television. It happens on three-holed paper, with uppercase scene headers and neatly indented blocks for dialogue and parentheticals. But the truth is that much of the work a professional writer does in Hollywood takes on other formats: treatments and beat sheets, outlines and season patterns. Even in non-reality shows, a lot of the writing takes place before you type “FADE IN:”. So it’s a mistake to confuse “unscripted” with “unwritten.”

Many of the people who the WGA would like to organize are currently called producers — which is the norm in television. Be it [The Simpsons](http://imdb.com/title/tt0096697/combined) or [The Sopranos](http://imdb.com/title/tt0141842/combined), many of the writers in television are called producers of some stripe: Executive Producer, Co-EP, Supervising Producer. Despite the title, there’s no doubt they’re writing. Every episode says “written by” or “teleplay by.”

In reality TV, there’s usually no “written by” credit. But it would be a mistake to think there’s no writing.

In addition to the obviously-scripted moments (someone has to tell Jeff Probst what to say), every episode needs writers to figure out what the hell the story is. Yes, video crews will capture the action, and a team of editors at Avids will ultimately cut the footage together, but the decisions about what actually happens in a given episode fall upon the writers, who have to tease plot, character development, comedy and tension out of hundreds of hours of “real life” taking place.

These people are, in fact, organizing reality. Which is why they deserve to be able to organize under the WGA umbrella. You can read more about the situation [here](http://www.wga.org/organizesub.aspx?id=1088).

UPDATE: After reading a note left in the comments section, I don’t want to understate the role editors often have shaping the “what happens” in reality TV. They’re often performing functions that would normally be the purview of writers; the question is, why aren’t they being compensated for it?

[Formatting a reality show proposal](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/formatting-a-reality-show-proposal)

Hey look! err..Listen! John’s on NPR. Briefly.

First Person, News

podcastAfter meeting a friend-of-a-friend at a birthday party over the weekend, I ended up getting pressed into service for a story on NPR’s [Day to Day](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4704709).

Reporter Mike Pesca wanted to talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s challenges converting his action-movie persona into a consensus-building governor, and wanted to talk to a screenwriter about it. So I happily made with the quotes.

Here’s what I learned. Somehow, the experience of talking into a microphone makes constructing a coherent thought 300% more difficult. I sat down ready to talk about things like California’s abysmal [Proposition 13](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978)), and found myself speaking non-words like “governenceship.” Bah. Fortunately, the snippets that made it in to the report are at least English.

You can hear the results [here](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4704709).

(For the record, I’m pretty neutral on Schwarzenegger. He’s honestly been a lot better than I was expecting, but that’s sort of damning with faint praise.)