John August

John

The General Meeting

Film Industry

I didn’t write this, but I’ve been in almost exactly this meeting at least twenty times.

—
*by Anonymous*

first person
Hey, come in, come in. Wherever you like. Nice to finally meet you. I’m a big fan. Big fan. You have trouble parking? I know. This place has like a million ways out and only one way in and it’s impossible to find. Like a maze. I know, I know.

Now are you from around here or…? Oh, yeah? Nope, nope… New York, then Boston, then here. About twelve years. On the West Side. Not too far.

So… what do you know about us? Great… well let me tell you. First of all, we’re not like other producers. We don’t have 80 gazillion things in development. We don’t develop. That’s not what we do. If we decide to do something, then we do it. We make movies. We’re in the movie business, not the development business. Plain and simple.

The old days of buying up everything under the sun, that’s not us. That’s not what we do. We have our own money, so we can hire writers and get things going. Then we bring on a director, or we bring on a piece of cast, or we hire an in-house line producer to say, “Hey, this is how much this is going to cost.” Then we take all of that to the studio and we say, “Here’s the movie. Do you want to make this movie, with this script, with this director, with this cast at this amount of money?” Then we go.

Because they’re not looking for scripts anymore. They’re looking for movies. Amy? Donna? To a lesser extent, Stacey. That’s a whole separate thing because they’re dealing with Steven and who even knows what they’re doing over there anymore. But all of them… they’re looking for movies. They want us to bring them movies. And that’s what we do.

With Bumblebunny, that was a piece of material we found, we hired the writers, we worked on draft after draft, we put the package together and we said, “Here you go. Here’s your summer movie.”

Now what’re you working on? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yep, you don’t have to tell me. Okay, well, let me tell you what we have. Back up for just a second. Let me tell you where we *were* and where we *are*.

Do you know of a property called SLAPPY PAPPY? Why would you, right?

Well, it’s based on a best-selling children’s book and was like the number one show in all of Europe for like five years. And no one over here had heard of it. No one. So we bought it and brought it over here and we gave it to Attanasio who did a pass and then we gave it to McQuarrie who did a pass but no one could crack this thing. McQuarrie even said, “I love this, I love this, I love this… but I can’t solve it. Hahhahah. You know?” And that’s Slappy Pappy which I think you would be perfect for.

Oh, right… it’s about a kid who’s about nine-years-old and he smokes and cusses and is really irreverent, you know, because no one gives a shit in Europe, you know? And anyway, he has this old grandpa who’s always trying to hit him — I mean, we say “spank” we don’t say “hit” — but anyway, the kid finds out about these worm-people who are taking over his town and he has to convince his Pappy this is real but everyone thinks the Pappy is crazy, and he’s crazy, and maybe he is, you know? And that’s Slappy Pappy.

Okay, so what I’ll do is I’ll send you the book and I’ll send you this story document we wrote… I won’t send you any of the drafts because they’ll just… that’s NOT what we want to do, you know? And take a look. And if you spark to it, then we can talk some more.

Listen, this is a personal favorite of the studio’s. It’s their kind of movie and they’re looking for a franchise. They’re begging for this.

Okay, great. Yep, yep, exactly. Okay, did Veronica give you validation up front? Okay… well stop by there and she’ll stamp you. Seriously, terrific to finally meet you. Okay… yep, and we’ll send it over. Thanks!

Subscribing to app developers

Apps, Follow Up

Cameron Bonde wants the App Store to take a page from YouTube and Twitter, allowing users to [subscribe to app developers](http://camsvirtualrealityreality.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/how-to-fix-appstore-and-android-market.html?m=1):

> Subscriptions could show up the same way updates do now and in the same list. Much like ‘updates’ and ‘installed’ apps are separated now, just add ‘your subscriptions’ (i.e. you get a notification about a new app, or simply be able to display all new subs like YouTube does now).

This is a non-trivial amount of work, because it would require Apple to keep track of a new set of relationships betweens customers and developers.

But the upside might be worth it:

> Rarely-released quality apps from indie devs won’t get forgotten in the 6 months it takes to make another one.

> Getting new apps from devs you already approve of will lower the crap ratio.

> The dev will know how much of a following they have and be more reluctant to release crap due to the risk of unsubscribing. Encouraging QUALITY over quantity.

> Other people will know the general quality of a dev from the ratio of subs vs blocks which should be publicly visible.

> The block-to-sub ratio could be used by Google/Apple to semi-automatically detect devs who should be kicked off the market.

Bonde’s post is from 2011, but it’s a better idea than many I’ve seen.

Would customers even bother subscribing? Would app developers pester them to subscribe the same way they nag for App Store reviews? Any system can be gamed. I’m sure this would be as well.

Still, I think some sort of following/subscription model would help connect users with developers. For good reason, Apple doesn’t want developers to have email addresses. But without an ongoing relationship, there’s no long-term accountability or reputation.

The accidental set-up

Story and Plot, Words on the page

Talking with writers last week, I pointed out that readers (and ultimately the audience) are always on the lookout for details that answer the question, “Where is this going?”

Often, they literally want to know, “Where is the character headed?”

So any time you refer to a new place — be it “the supermarket,” “school,” or “Boston” — you create a natural expectation that we will visit that place at some point in the story.

Often you mean to set it up: it’s The Emerald City. It’s Wally World. It’s the place where the resolution will happen.

But it’s altogether possible to set up places that you have no intention of visiting. Your hero might say something about how he hears good things about Marfa, Texas. It’s not part of his journey, and not part of this story. He’s just saying it because he’s the kind of character who would say something about Marfa.

But once you’ve put it on the page, it’s out there as a goal. You’ve accidentally punched a location into [Chekhov’s GPS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov’s_gun).

I often see this when characters talk vividly about something in their past. The more details you give about a place, the more important we think it is. That raises our expectation higher and higher that we’ll see it in the story.

A final thing to keep in mind about places: the audience often use them as structural signposts. “Well, he’s trying to get to Boston, and he finally did, so the story must be just about over.” That can often help you — we’ve reached the rendez-vous spot — but it can be trouble if you’re hitting that spot an hour into a two-hour story.

Similarly, the audience keeps track of the order of locations. If a character says, “We’ll get pizza at Romo’s and then go to grandma’s house,” we expect to see Romo’s pizza place, or at least some evidence that pizza happened. In a cut, it’s often easy to lose the pizza scene. But if you do, try to get rid of any mention of the pizza so there’s no dangling expectation for a location we’ll never visit.

Making the App Store better

Apps, Bronson, FDX Reader, Highland, Weekend Read

Roughly this time last year, I wrote about how the App Store encourages [topping the charts and racing to the bottom](http://johnaugust.com/2013/topping-the-charts-and-racing-to-the-bottom), and how that hurts both developers and users.

David Smith has compiled a list of recommendations for [making the App Store experience better](http://david-smith.org/blog/2014/04/16/towards-a-better-app-store/). I especially agree with several of his suggestions:

> 1: Apps should be required to pass approval on an ongoing basis.

I’d go further and say that if an app has had no activity for a set number of months, it automatically gets de-listed. I suspect more than half of the apps in the store are effectively zombies, abandoned by their creators. These apps’ only function is to clutter up search results.

> 6: Make the process of applying for a refund clear and straightforward.

> Right now you go to reportaproblem.apple.com and then fill in a form. I’d love to see this integrated into the App Store app itself. Perhaps even into the Purchased Apps area.

Roughly 10% of our support emails are from people who really should just get a refund because they bought an app without really understanding what it did. We have a boilerplate email that walks them through the process of applying for a refund, but there’s no reason it needs to be so complicated.

I think prices for some apps could easily and appropriately rise if customers understood they could get their money back if unsatisfied.

> 11: Make the rating scale a rolling, weighted average rather than just current version, at least soon after updates.

We update our apps very frequently, sometimes twice a month. Each time we do, our ratings drop back to zero, effectively punishing us for improving the app.

A rolling, weighted average would better reflect not only how satisfied users are with the current version, but with the product overall.

In the iOS App Store, our products are [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8) and [FDX Reader](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8). FDX Reader is old — it hasn’t been updated in a year — but we’re keeping it around until the iPad version of Weekend Read.

By my criteria, should FDX Reader be dropped from the store? I don’t know. It still sells, and we haven’t gotten a support email for it in months, so users are apparently satisfied with it. But if we got a warning email from Apple saying it needed to be updated or face de-listing, we’d pay attention. More than anything, that’s what a regular review process would achieve: making developers take another look at their old apps.

For iOS, we also have the [Scriptnotes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scriptnotes/id739117984?mt=8) app, but it’s made by [Wizzard Media](https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/wizzard-media/id318848960?mt=8). We release it under the Quote-Unquote label only so we can track downloads.

In the Mac App Store, our products are [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12) and [Bronson Watermarker](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bronson-watermarker/id481867513?mt=12). If you look at the current Bronson reviews, there’s a one-star review from a customer who couldn’t figure out the app. He didn’t write us for support; he didn’t check any online documentation. He’s exactly the kind of user who should have been able to click a button and get a refund.

I hope at this year’s WWDC, we’ll see Apple taking some of Smith’s suggestions to make the App Store experience better.