Screenwriter and author John August

Screenwriters’ dinner

May 28, 2007 Film Industry, Los Angeles, News

Last week, I attended the First Annual WGAw Screenwriters’ Dinner. I’m not sure one should call a first-ever event “annual,” but it was successful enough that it merits a repeat in 52 weeks.

Since screenwriters tend to work alone, there’s not a lot of water-cooler talk on a daily basis. Message boards help to some degree, but WGA events are often the only venues for catching up in person. For example, it had been 23 months since I’d last seen [Simon Kinberg](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1334526/). I know because our kids were born the same week.

The event also gave me a chance to meet a lot of writers I’d only known by name — [Billy Ray](http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0712753/) and [Jeff Nathanson](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0622288/), to pick two tablemates. Seeing my nametag, [Iris Yamashita](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2111875/) said she’d just pitched a project as being “Big Fish meets Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which was flattering. I wanted to point out that she has the Oscar nomination, but we were already being urged to take our seats. I introduced [Jessica Bendinger](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0070566/) to [Robert Towne](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001801/), even though I didn’t really know Mr. Towne. It felt like the kind of event you could get away with that.

I got roped into recording an interview for a video podcast. If it ever hits the inter-waves, you might notice my hands shaking. I had just arrived, and was incredibly hungry. The mini-pizzas hadn’t made their way over yet.

Calling on the hive mind

May 22, 2007 Challenge, Projects, The Nines

bee One advantage of having a brilliant and devoted readership like mine is that I can occasionally reverse the Q&A process and appeal for your insight. Here’s the situation…

At Sundance, I talked about my plan-slash-pipe-dream of releasing the underlying footage of The Nines simultaneously to its DVD release. Essentially, you could load it into your Avid or Final Cut system and it would show up neatly divided into bins. From there, you could cut your own version — or better yet, mash in other content to create something unique: *The Nines vs. The Grifters*, or *Donnie Darknines: The Koalapocalypse.*Just typing that makes me eager to shoot new koala footage.

Yes, you could do some of this just by ripping the DVD, but having the original material allows for much more sophisticated re-cutting, just as the a cappella version of Jay-Z’s The Black Album enabled a thousand remixes and reinterpretations.

There are legal and political hurdles to be sure, but all of that’s months away.

Right now, we’re surprisingly close to having an official trailer.Once the official trailer comes, you’ll find a link here, and no doubt a lengthy talkback on a certain site. After seeing vastly different approaches–comedy to thriller to existential drama–it became clear that no matter what the tone, there are approximately 15-20 shots which were in nearly every version of the trailer. Which is a pretty small number. Which raises a natural question…

Why not let people cut their own trailer?

Surprisingly, everyone who could veto the idea hasn’t. So I think we’re going to do it. But that means there’s a lot to figure out, much of which falls well outside my area of expertise. I know this blog has a significant readership beyond aspiring screenwriters, so I’m hoping that editors, web-heads and other folks with useful insight will de-lurk and offer some of their genius.

Format
====
My hunch is that most of these trailers will end up on YouTube, where the ideal input format is MPEG-4, 320×240. (**Update March 2011:** Outdated, obviously.) It’s certainly compact. The trouble is, editing systems like Final Cut would rather ingest almost anything other than .mp4. Which leads to my first question:

**1. What’s the best video format for sending out the trailer footage?**

We’re trying to strike a balance between a few competing goals. First, it needs to look and sound pretty good, both as edited, and ultimately, as re-compressed by YouTube. Second, it needs to be fairly compact, so that it’s feasible download (or torrent) the footage.I’m going to guess and say that we’re looking at about six minutes of raw footage, if that helps the back-of-the-envelope calculation. Third, it should be something fairly industry-standard. No doubt there is a clever proprietary format out there, but if it requires special plug-ins, people are much less likely to bother.

**2. One clip, or many?**

Would it be more efficient to offer one long clip (perhaps with chapter marks) or a folder of the individual clips? The latter seems more convenient — you could just drop it into your system as a bin. But does more clips mean more chances for things to go wrong?

Logistics
====
Beyond the video format, there are other questions about the smartest way to do this. Such as…

**3. Should it be a competition?**

I suspect many people would participate just because they thought it was interesting, but my experience with the [Scene Challeges](http://johnaugust.com/archives/category/challenge/) is that even a phantom prize gets a lot more people invested. Assuming the trailers end up on YouTube, would a standard tagging scheme be enough to help identify the contenders, or should there be a forum for people to list/hype their entries?

**3A. If there’s a competition, how long of a deadline?**

Assuming the footage came out on a Thursday, would the following Monday be enough time? I suspect there’s a sweet spot between enough time and too much time.

**4. What’s the best way to get the footage out there? Torrent? Download?**

I’ve barely torrented, and have never set up any seeding situations, so I’m almost fully ignorant on the best ways to make this sizable file available. (In coming up with solutions, you can safely assume we have almost no money to spend on this.)

No doubt there will be other smart questions asked amid the answers in the comments thread. If you’re addressing any of the technical issues, it would be helpful if you mentioned your experience, or provided links. Thanks in advance.

Title page trouble with Final Draft .pdfs

May 21, 2007 How-To, Rant, Screenwriting Software, Software

Reader Josh C wrote in with one solution to a problem that’s been frustrating me for months. When you want to save a script as a .pdf, Final Draft won’t always include the title page. It’s frustratingly inconsistent. The obvious workaround is to save the title page as a separate file, which is what I’ve often done. But then you end up emailing two documents, increasing the confusion on the other end.

Josh was using Final Draft version 6.0.6.0. It turns out, the issue is whether the “Title Page…” window is open or closed.

1. Save your screenplay as normal (as a .fdr)

2. With your saved screenplay still open, go to Document > Title Page. A new, blank Title Page opens.

3. Fill in the blanks, then just CLOSE THE TITLE PAGE. This is the part that I got hung up on forever. If you leave the title page open, then try to save as a PDF, it won’t work. The Title page WON’T attach itself to the PDF if the Title Page is still open when you try to Save as. Just close the Title Page. It saves automatically to your screenplay.

4. With your screenplay still open, go to File > Save As — then select Adobe Acrobat Document (*pdf) – or whatever your computer says. Save the new PDF file somewhere and open it up. The Title Page should be attached at the top of the screenplay where it should be 🙂

In my tests with 7.1.3, the .pdf will also include the title page even if that window is still openHowever, if you haven’t closed or saved the title page, it won’t be updated until you do. — provided you have a [certain checkbox checked](http://oslo.instantservice.com/iskb/SearchAnswer.cfm?NodeID=181153) in “Preferences.”

Yes, I’ll admit that I didn’t read the manual with version 7 of Final Draft. But this is a pretty questionable place to put this checkbox. After all, sometimes you’ll want to include the title page, sometimes you won’t. Does it really make sense to have this be an application-wide preference, housed in a panel that has nothing to do with printing, saving or the specific document you’re working on? It’s pretty much the last place I’d think to look for it.

What’s more, at least on the Mac, Final Draft is using the built-in .pdf facility of OS X. It’s basically just printing to a file.You can test this by choosing a two-page layout in the Print dialog box. The next time you choose to Save as PDF, you’ll get facing pages. Since it seems to be using the standard print architecture, you’d think that choosing the “Print Title Page” option in the Print dialog box would have some effect. It doesn’t. And that’s why it’s frustrating.On the Mac, you always have the option of using the “Save as PDF” function built into the Print dialog box. But I’ve never had any luck getting that to include a title page. My guess is that Final Draft treats the title page as a separate document. When you print to a traditional printer, you’ll notice a one-page progress dialog flash for a second. I think Final Draft is kicking out the title page as a distinct job. It never incorporates it into the “real” script.

Whenever I complain about Final Draft, I get a nice note from the developers asking me to help out with the next version, and a few emails from companies working on competing applications. So let me make it clear where I stand. Despite its annoyances, I end up using Final Draft because what it gets right generally outweighs what it gets wrong. There’s certainly some inertia on my part, but given a better alternative, I’d switch in a heartbeat. The shipping versions of Screenwriter, Montage and Celtx aren’t better, particularly when it comes to revisions.

I’m hoping the upcoming Screenwriter 6 gives Final Draft some real competition, because that’s what’s lacking. When we were cutting The Nines, I realized that editing software has benefitted tremendously from the battle between Avid and Apple, with new features, better interfaces, and dramatically lower prices. I started out a Final Cut Pro man, while my editor was firmly Avid. We had the luxury of both being right. Both systems are terrific, and I think that’s largely because of the competition.

Inconvenient brilliance

May 17, 2007 Psych 101, QandA, Writing Process

How come I get all my best ideas when I’m jogging? Any experience with this phenomenon?

— Ben
Los Angeles

It’s because your brain hates you.

Well, maybe not *hates.* After all, it is giving you what you want — a good idea. It’s just that its timing is atrocious. It’s like having a girlfriend who is only in the mood for love during the last 20 minutes of [Lost](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411008/). You have to choose between sex and seeing the underwater station for the first time.

Here’s my advice: always choose sex. Because if you don’t, eventually, you’ll stop being offered it.

Those great ideas that come while you’re jogging? Write ’em down or you’ll lose them — and worse, you may dry up the well of ideas. If your brain notices you’re not paying attention to the good ideas it generates, it may decide to stop bothering. And then you’re screwed.

So always carry a pen. Pick up a piece of paper trash. Write on your hand if you have to. It’s often just one or two words which will let you remember what the idea was.

For me, the majority of these inconvenient ideas come at 11:30 at night, as I’m trying to fall asleep. There’s a weighing process as I decide whether it’s worthy of hauling my ass to the bathroom, where I keep a notebook handy to scribble down these ideas. Probably 70% of the time, I do get out of bed. At least half of the “big ideas” in [The Nines](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810988/) were first scribbled down in this book, along with the plots of enough unwritten movies to keep me busy for a decade.

This is part of what sucks about being a writer. I have a hunch that accountants don’t have this problem.

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