John August

Indie

Let me give you some advice

Episode - 112

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Film Industry, Indie, Producers, QandA, Random Advice, Scriptnotes, So-Called Experts, Story and Plot, Transcribed, Words on the page

Craig and John go back to basics with an all advice episode, looking at the Dear J.J. recommendations for Star Wars, Tony Gilroy’s advice to screenwriters and whatever’s up with Max Landis.

From there, they open the listener mailbag to answer questions ranging from mastering characters’ voices to indie financing.

Links:

* [4 Rules to Make Star Wars Great Again](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_joDNOpeWWo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D_joDNOpeWWo&app=desktop)
* Clerks on [Death Star politics](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGOVbXF7Iog)
* Eddie Izzard on [the Death Star cantina](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ2yRTRlMFU)
* Tony Gilroy’s [Top 10 tips for writing a Hollywood blockbuster](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24348113)
* The New York Times on [Rethinking Gender Bias in Theater](http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/theater/24play.html?_r=1&)
* [Max Landis](http://shelbysells.com/2013/09/30/interview-series-max-landis/) on the Pillow Talk interview series
* Wikipedia on [Bitcoin mining](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mining#Bitcoin_mining)
* John’s 2011 blog post on [Blue Valentine and adoption](http://johnaugust.com/2011/dear-cindy-in-blue-valentine)
* [WinesTilSoldOut](http://wtso.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener The Face of Human Error

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_112.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_112.mp3).

**UPDATE** 10-10-13: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-ep-112-let-me-give-you-some-advice-transcript).

Use whatever camera works

Geek Alert, Indie

IndieWire [lists the cameras](http://www.indiewire.com/article/what-cameras-did-the-2013-tribeca-filmmakers-use) used by filmmakers at the 2013 Tribeca Festival. The ARRI Alexa is, unsurprisingly, a popular choice, as is the Canon 5D.

But what I find heartening is just how many different types of rigs are in use, from SLRs to older videocams to iPhones. There’s no one “right” camera, so fetishizing pixels and dynamic range is often detrimental.

If you’re making a movie, the best camera is the one that works for your style, story and budget.

The two kinds of endings

Indie, Story and Plot

In [The Art of Fiction](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fiction-Notes-Craft-Writers/dp/0679734031), John Gardner makes an interesting point about endings:

>[Stories] can end in only one of two ways: in resolution, when no further event can take place (the murderer has been caught and hanged, the diamond has been found and restored to its owner, the elusive lady has been capture and married), or in logical exhaustion, our recognition that we’ve reached the stage of infinite repetition; more events might follow, perhaps from now till Kingdom Come, but they will all express the same thing–for example, the character’s entrapment in empty ritual or some consistently wrong response to the pressures of his environment.

> Resolution is of course the classical and usually more satisfying conclusion; logical exhaustion satisfies us intellectually but often not emotionally, since it’s more pleasing to see things definitely achieved or thwarted than to be shown why they can never be either achieved or thwarted.

Observed: very few Hollywood movies take the logical exhaustion route, but you find it all the time in indies and foreign films.

/via [Susan Wise Bauer](http://books.google.com/books?id=7T-1jnYgIWUC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=logical+exhaustion+well+educated+mind+Bauer&source=bl&ots=Ym29VX-nHL&sig=Wau7gV-KQ2PfnTVn-i7l_58w714&hl=en&ei=vEU4TpaACcPTgQfLyvSEAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Staying indie after getting big

Film Industry, Indie, Talk

Jay Duplass and John August Prompted by a recent [post about Kickstarter](http://johnaugust.com/2011/raising-movie-funds-on-kickstarter), writer/director Jay Duplass (The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Cyrus) emailed me about an indie documentary he’s putting together through the crowdfunding site.

His email suggested a larger discussion about why filmmakers continue to pursue indie projects after they’ve found studio success. I certainly do it, with both The Nines and The Remnants, along with other experiments like The Variant.

None of them are a good use of time, at least in a monetary sense.

I’d make more money simply writing more screenplays. If I want to direct something, it should be a studio feature. My agent tells me this. It’s his job to tell me this.

And yet Jay and I still find ourselves drawn towards the little, difficult, uncategorizable things. Is it boredom? Fear of failure? The appeal of new frontiers? A desire to reclaim our scrappy youth?

Rather than keep the conversation between us, I suggested to Jay that we record it. He was game, so he came by the office today.

This is our half-hour conversation, un-edited:

Some links to things we mention:

* [Jay’s documentary Kevin, on Kickstarter](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2035579744/kevin)
* [Jay’s credits](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0243231/)
* [The Remnants](http://vimeo.com/2755105)
* [Topspin](http://www.topspinmedia.com/)
* [A Thousand True Fans](http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php)
* [Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture](http://tinyfurniture.com/)

Runtime is 30 minutes. You can also download this as [an MP3](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/jay_duplass_john_august_kickstarter.mp3).

My thanks to Jay. Check out his doc.