John August

Follow Up

When you don’t get the job

Follow Up, Meta

Two years ago, I announced on the blog that I was [hiring someone for a new job](http://johnaugust.com/2010/hiring-a-new-person) called Director of Digital Things.

Greg Tung was one of the final contenders for the position, and recently [wrote about the experience](http://blog.scareyourselfeveryday.com/?p=47):

> It sounded like a job that was hand tailored for me. It sounded like a way out of the job I hated. But most of all, it sounded like the perfect way for me to get my foot in the screenwriting world door. I would be working shoulder to shoulder with one of the big names in screenwriting. Eventually he’d have to agree to at least read my script or help get me started, right?

> I made a silly little animation to send along with my application. It gave a bunch of funny reasons why John should hire me. Sprinkled in were some legitimate ones. I thought I nailed it and pretty soon after I sent it, John emailed me and said he wanted to interview me through iChat.

Greg’s application was terrific, and his animation/design skills were spot-on. I got 67 applications for the job. I interviewed five candidates. Greg did great.

> I can’t tell you how nervous I was for that interview. I’m terrible at interviews for jobs I don’t give a shit about. Now imagine what I was like when I felt this was my dream job (well, second dream job next to writing). I took a tough yoga class in the morning to tire me out but it didn’t really do anything, I was still bouncing off the walls.

> The interview went ok. Not great by any means but probably not terrible. I waited for days in agony for a response from John. I finally got one. He informed me I was one of three finalists. Joy! The next step? We would all be given a test project and the one he liked the best would be hired.

For the test project, I challenged the candidates to build a site somewhat like [Snopes](http://snopes.com), but centered around logical fallacies rather than hoaxes. You can read the [original instructions](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/digital_challenge.pdf) to see what I was looking for.

I was curious to see both artistic skills and problem-solving. I encouraged candidates to contact me as much as they needed to while they were working. After all the candidates submitted their sites, I looked at what they did.

> Later that week I got a call. I didn’t recognize the number but it was a fancy 310 area code. My heart raced. I picked up my cell phone and ran out of the office while I answered it.

> “Hey Greg, this is August,” the voice on the phone said. It was John. And he didn’t even call himself John. Is that what all big screenwriters do? Call themselves by their last name?

I’m pretty sure this was misheard or misremembered, because I’ve never called myself August in my life. (But if I somehow actually did, I apologize. Perhaps I’ve blocked it out my memory for douchiness.)

> I went into my car for some privacy. I could hardly contain myself. He was calling me. That had to be a good sign right? I was finally going to get out of this shitty job and start headed towards being a screenwriter. All would be right with the world!

> “I wanted to call and let you know that I decided to go with someone else,” he said.

> “Oh. Ok. Thanks for letting me know,” I said, in shock.

> “Sure. Thanks for applying. I wish you the best in the future,” he said and hung up. That was it. There was no explanation. No consolation. Just a short little rejection.

> I sat in my car for a long time after that. I was crushed. Beyond crushed. I was like the T-800 in the hydraulic press at the end of The Terminator.

I can honestly say the worst part about hiring people is not-hiring people.

I don’t remember calling Greg specifically, other than a fuzzy representation that’s probably a fabrication. But I remember making those calls. They killed me.

There’s no clear protocol for how the conversation is supposed to go after the news is broken. Should I explain what was not-especially-awesome about their work, or how they seemingly misunderstood the assignment? Should I tell them that, honestly, some of the contenders were just head-and-shoulders better?

Maybe I should have asked each applicant during the interview: “Hey, so, if you don’t get the job, would you rather I call you or email you?” But I hadn’t done that. So I called. And it sucked.

As a screenwriter, I’m used to being on the other end of these calls. I don’t get most of the jobs I want. I meet on projects that don’t go anywhere, and write scripts that never become movies. I get fired and rewritten. While my economic well-being doesn’t depend on a single job anymore, it never gets less painful.

Sometimes it’s my agent who calls to break the bad news. Other times, it’s the producer. (It’s never the director, FYI.)

I can’t say whether it’s better to rip the Band-Aid off quickly or slowly. But I’ve definitely found that it hurts less if you have something else to focus on. One of the luxuries of screenwriting is that you can always just write something new. You’re not waiting for permission. The studio may own one project, but they don’t own you. Fuck’em.

Greg Tung said fuck John August, and good for him. He went on after this to create a very cool site called [Scare Yourself Every Day](http://scareyourselfeveryday.com/), which has gotten him a lot of notice:

> And SYED has been the best thing that’s happened to me. Better than that job because this is something I did on my own. Something that actually affected other people. Something that inspired. If you said I could go back in time and get that job but SYED would not have happened, I’d never take that deal. Not in a million years.

You can read Greg’s full post [here](http://blog.scareyourselfeveryday.com/?p=47).

Selling apps in bulk, cont’d

Follow Up

Last month, I [blogged the good news](http://johnaugust.com/2012/selling-apps-in-bulk) that a certain well-loved entertainment company wanted to buy 40 copies of [Bronson Watermarker](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/bronson).

But with that came a complication: we needed to figure out how to sell it to them.

The Mac App Store (unlike the iOS App Store) doesn’t have a system in place for developers to offer bulk licensing. Which, I noted, creates a host of problems:

> That means we’ll have to roll our own serial number system. (Or more likely, just forego it.)

> Without the Mac App Store’s update system, we’ll have to check for app updates another way. (Probably Sparkle.)

> We may be left maintaining two (or more) versions of the app.

All of that happened.

We rolled a special version of Bronson for this company with updating baked in. They liked it enough that they ended up buying 100 copies. So, score.

We’re now offering volume licensing, with a 100-seat minimum. I hope we’ll be able to do it through the Mac App Store at some point, but for now we can do ad-hoc distribution.

Let’s run a studio!

Episode - 27

Go to Archive

Film Industry, Follow Up, QandA, Scriptnotes

Celebrating Leap Day, John and Craig play the game of “What If?” Specifically, what if we each were handed the reins of a major Hollywood studio?

We discuss what we’d movies we’d make, what standard practices we’d change, and how we’d address the shifting realities of movie-going and home video.

Could we really do it better? Doubtful. It’s easy to play make-believe, but much tougher when you’re reporting to a major multinational corporation.

Still, there are things that everyone seems to get wrong, and it’s worth the conversation about what could be done better. And if any tech billionaires feel like investing, you know where to find us.

Before that long conversation, we answer a bunch of follow-up questions:

* When optioning a novel, is there a rule of thumb for what percentage of the total purchase price the option should cover?
* Does the WGA cover a novelist’s based-on credit?
* What does it mean when a novelist has a producer credit?
* What is Daniel Wallace’s role in the Broadway version of Big Fish?
* What’s to stop a screenwriter from writing a novel version of his spec, and then having his script be “based on” it?

All this and more in this episode of Scriptnotes.

LINKS:

* [Asymco crunches the studio numbers](http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/07/hollywood-by-the-numbers/)
* Intro: [The Big Valley](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg3HcxYcbog) opening credits
* Outro: [Hey Ya](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-8nkkOA_AM&feature=player_embedded) cover by Mat Weddle

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_27.m4a).

**UPDATE** 3-8-12: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/scriptnotes-ep-27-lets-run-a-studio-transcript).

Say hello to Highland

Follow Up, News, Screenwriting Software

Today we’re announcing the beta release of [Highland](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland), our new screenwriting utility.

highland logoHighland lets you convert files between PDF, Final Draft (.fdx) and Fountain. It works in all directions.

→ It creates perfectly-formatted PDFs from Fountain or FDX files.

→ It creates future-proof Fountain files you can edit in any text editor.

→ It melts PDFs, making them editable.

That last part is basically magic. Highland can take almost any screenplay PDF and convert it back to an editable file in seconds.

Here’s a quick walk-through video I made to show how it works:

Highland is a Mac app. We’ll be selling it through the Mac App Store. But before we do that, we need screenwriters to beta test it.

This changes everything (into everything else)
—-

Screenwriters generally work with two kinds of files.

**Native files** like .fdx are for writing and editing. You need specific applications to use these files. They’re prone to obsolescence. If you have any old WriteNow files on your computer, you’ll have a hard time reading them.

**PDFs** are universal, and can be opened on nearly any device. Like digital paper, they’re basically frozen versions of the screenplay. They’re difficult to edit, in part because all the semantic information has been lost.

Last week, we introduced **Fountain files**, which split the difference between native files and PDFs. Because they’re plain text, they’re both universal and highly editable, since they can work with any text editor — and should for decades to come.

Highland is a quick way to move between these three formats.

Obviously, Highland is extremely useful for screenwriters who want to work in Fountain, or want to open a Final Draft file but don’t have the app. But its ability to convert PDFs is probably going to be its most-discussed feature.

Melting PDFs
—

It’s standard practice for screenwriters to deliver PDFs. Readers can easily read and print PDFs, but it’s onerous to change them — so they don’t.

As screenwriters, we’ve relied on security through difficulty: producers, directors and executives aren’t likely to mess with the PDF of a script because it’s just too much hassle.

Fountain takes away the hassle, for better or worse.

I fully expect some pitchforks: *How dare we assist the meddlers?*

I’d argue that there’s nothing inherently “safe” about turning in a PDF. Producers have always been able to muck around with scripts — it was just a lot of work. Relying on laziness is really no security at all.

With Highland, we’re going to respect the basic safeguards a screenwriter might take:

1. If you password-protect your PDF, Highland won’t convert it.
2. If your PDF is just a bunch of images, Highland won’t convert it. (For example, you could print your script then scan it, or use a feature like Bronson Watermarker’s “Deep Burn.”)

Could a meddling producer work around these safeguards? Absolutely. But she could also just have her assistant retype your script. That happens every day.

Highland and Fountain
—

LA-based screenwriters will have already guessed the origins of “Highland.”

Highland Avenue is a major north-south artery through Hollywood, just as Fountain is the famous east-west shortcut.

Much like how the real streets intersect, Highland and Fountain work well together — but they’re not the only ways to get somewhere.

Just as you can take many routes to drive through Hollywood, you should have lots of alternatives for working with your screenplay.

[Fountain](http://fountain.io) is an open-source markup scheme. We’re happy to see a lot of other developers embracing it. Some of them will come up with apps that are better than Highland, either by doing more or doing it smarter.

That’s the goal. That’s success.

But for today, Highland makes working with Fountain a lot easier. After this beta test, we hope to have an app that makes it effortless to move between formats and platforms.

If you want to help, we’re [accepting beta-testers now](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland#beta-signup). For this first round, we’re looking for fairly tech-savvy screenwriters — the app will fail, and we’ll need your help figuring out why. Down the road, we’ll expand the beta to get a better cross-sampling of users.

[Updated at 3:30pm: Due to great response — thanks! yikes! — we have all the beta testers we need for now. Follow us [@qapps](http://twitter.com/qapps) for news on future betas.]

We’re only going to add a few beta testers at a time, so not everyone will get picked. But if all goes well, we should be an inexpensive download before too long.

One More Thing
—

Remember my frustration about Final Draft’s old, incompatible .fdr format? The one with the [five-step workaround](http://johnaugust.com/2012/convert-old-final-draft-files-in-five-clever-but-tedious-steps)?

Well, Nima solved that last night. Highland will be able to open and convert .fdr files to modern formats.