I’m on the early shift this week, with strike duty from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. at Paramount. (The Van Ness gate, most likely.)
Strike, day five
Yesterday was the big rally at Fox Plaza, drawing 4,000 protesters to Century City for speeches in front of the Die Hard building.
Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine kicked it off with a set, followed by remarks from…
- Jesse Jackson
- WGA president Patric Verrone
- WGA negotiating committee chairman
RobJohn Bowman - WGA executive director David Young
- SAG president Alan Rosenberg
- Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, and
- Norman Lear
I’m listing the speakers because unless you were standing pretty close, you’d have had no idea who was talking. Between the picket signs, the helicopters, and an under-powered amplifier, probably half the gathered crowd only cheered because they heard others cheering.
Still, the mood was quite celebratory. It was amazing to see that many writers in one place. I bumped into many people I forgot I knew. Probably my biggest happiness was introducing myself to Jane Espenson, whose blog on TV spec writing is so generous I feel the entire town owes her dinner.
Jane shared with me the plight of young writers caught in the prestigious Disney Fellows program. Disney is requiring these non-WGA writers to keep showing up to write their specs — crossing the picket line and jeopardizing their hopes of ever joining the WGA. (If you’re one of these fellows, please write in, anonymously if you need to. This is bullshit apparently getting resolved. See the update.)
I forgot to get a picture with Jane, but remembered in time for a few other snapshots, which I put up on Flickr.
Update: Jane wrote in with encouraging news:
Hi. My current understanding is that the Guild and Disney and their Fellows are all working together on some kind of solution as we speak. This Fellowship gave me my start and I believe in it and the people who run in. As I think about it now, I’m certain that the right thing will be done and no one will be required to either cross the line or to resign their fellowship. There are only three months left in the term of the fellowship anyway — certainly they will let the kids collect the small amount of pay and benefits owed to them and not give up any chance of ever working again. I have faith in the people involved in this extraordinary program. I’d suggest that we stay cool on this issue while they work out the details.
There’s a lot of talk about “cooler heads prevailing,” but it’s great to hear an example of this actually happening. Thanks for the update.
Using “we” in scene description
I once saw a video of a table read from NBC’s Scrubs on their video blog. The show runner, Bill Lawrence, read the directions and the cast read their lines. He read something like “We see J.D. running up to Elliot…” or “We cut to The Janitor…”.
Is this good writing style or does he read the directions like this on the fly? Do you think that what’s really written on the pages is more like “J.D. runs to Elliot…” or “Cut to The Janitor…” without the “we”? Or are scripts always written this way?
— John
Austin
P.S.: Good luck with the strike! We’re all behind you!!
I feel like I’ve answered a similar question before, but I welcome the chance to have a post that’s not about the strike.
Using “we” in scene description is perfectly valid, and is (in my completely unscientific guessing) a growing trend. My hunch is that Scrubs scripts are probably written very much like how Bill Lawrence read it, particularly given the show’s use of quick sight gags.
Screenplays can be written from a completely neutral third-person perspective (“the car SLAMS around the corner, tires SQUEALING”) or a first-person plural “reader as audience” perspective (“we SLIDE ALONG the steel skin of the 747, watching as rivets POP one after the other”).
“We” and “our” and “us” bothers some readers, who rightly point out that anything you describe using these terms could be adequately described without them. But I find it a handy way to avoid referring to the camera. It keeps the reader in story-mode, rather than thinking about the script as a technical shooting document.
So use “we” if you want to. But there’s no reason to overuse it. Always spend the 10 seconds to ask yourself if you need the “we see” or “we hear.” If it reads as well without it, drop it.
Strike, day four
In the shower yesterday, I was scrubbing my arm and silently wondering, “How did I get so dirty?” Then it hit me — that wasn’t dirt.
I was getting tan.
I’ve been on the afternoon shift all week. While the mornings in Los Angeles have been cool and overcast, the afternoons have been sunny. Very sunny. Far too sunny for a pasty writer like me. Even with 50 spf sunblock, my ears were getting crispy around the edges of my USC ballcap, so on Wednesday I had to break out my wide-brimmed Maui hat, which strikes that awkward balance of Australian Outback individualism and post-vanity not-giving-a-fuck.
Fortunately, yesterday afternoon stayed overcast all day, so I could revert to the ballcap.
I spent the first half of my shift at Paramount’s Van Ness gate, where I spoke with three blog-readers who’d come out specifically to say whassup. David is a recent USC English grad who has a remarkably cool job shooting documentaries for MTV. My advice to him was to keep his job and not brag about it. I then spoke with an Australian couple. She’s an actress; he’s a writer; their future children will be gorgeous.
At 3:15, we were hustled down to the Van Ness gate of Raleigh Studios, where the cast of Ugly Betty would be joining the picket line. Whenever Actual Celebrities show up, news cameras are out in force, so you want to have a lot of picketers on hand.
The problem at the Raleigh gate was that there were too many picketers crammed in too little space, which made it impossible to move. And once a picket line stops moving, it’s just a bunch of people loitering, which is illegal. The obvious solution was to extend the picket line further down the sidewalk. I took responsibility for implementing the obvious, doubling the length of the line.
Today, the protest moves to Fox, with all the picketers headed there at 10 a.m. Which means I need to get moving. Once I know my schedule for next week, I’ll post it here.