Screenwriter and author John August

Corpse Bride trailer up

January 21, 2005 Corpse Bride, Projects

The [trailer](http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/corpse_bride/) for Corpse Bride is now up at Apple. Before you ask, I don’t know if this is a teaser or the final trailer. It does a good job setting up what the movie is about, so I’m not sure they’ll need to cut a longer version.

Corpse Bride is the second animated movie I’ve worked on, the first being [Titan A.E.](http://imdb.com/title/tt0120913/combined). Unlike Titan, which was a combination of traditional and computer animation, Corpse Bride was done with stop-motion animation like Tim Burton’s earlier [The Nightmare Before Christmas](http://imdb.com/title/tt0107688/combined). The artistry behind the animation is painstaking — each frame you shoot is pretty much the way it’s going to be in the final film.

From a writer’s perspective, there’s not a lot of difference between writing for animation and writing a normal live-action movie. Where you feel the difference is in production and post. In “normal” movies, it’s not too hard to re-arrange a scene, or change a line of dialogue in editing. With this technique, there’s less wiggle room. Once the shutter clicks, you’re pretty much locked. In some ways, that’s liberating. It means there’s a lot more attention to the details from the outset.

The movie comes out at Halloween in the States. (I’m not sure about the rest of the world.)

Archives section (temporarily) broken

January 21, 2005 News

As someone pointed out — and many others have discovered — the Archives link on the right is broken. Click it and you’ll get a bunch of MySQL gibberish, which is actually the result of a few PHP commands that aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.

The move from the old web host to the new one went remarkably smoothly, but this one section didn’t make the transition. I’m working on it, but it could be a few days. Or weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s back up and running.

Formatting text shown on screen

January 14, 2005 Formatting, QandA

First, it was such a pleasure to meet you in Austin last year. Hope to see you next year, too. I had a question that I’ve never gotten a straight answer on.

How do you format it when you’re trying to show text being written on a computer monitor, specifically showing the exchange between two people in an internet chat room (a la “Closer”, but I haven’t found that script)? I’m guessing INSERT: COMPUTER SCREEN would be a start, but what’s after that? Would the same be used to show the text message on a cell phone?

— Derek

Your instincts are right. I might choose slightly different words, but the net result would be the same:

With a glance back over her shoulder to be certain no one’s looking, Sydney quickly types in the search parameters.

ON THE SCREEN

Bank records scroll past at unreadable clip, finally arriving at a single matched record:

CREDIT DAUPHINE, 204394753, BRUSSELS

ON SYDNEY

She GASPS, recognizing her former faux-employer.

SYDNEY

(sotto)

SD6.

I used a separate slugline (“ON SYDNEY”) to get us out of “ON THE SCREEN.” If you were crunched for space, you could probably omit it; it’s pretty clear in context.

I don’t often use “INSERT:” or “ANGLE ON:” in screenplays. They feel fussy, and rarely offer anything more than a single slugline in uppercase would.

And as far as a cell-phone screen, there’s really no difference:

Hearing a strange CHIRP, Chloe digs out her cell phone. She’s gotten a new text message.

ON THE SCREEN

WHRE U AT?

CHLOE

grimaces, frustrated. Starts to dial.

CHLOE

(to Ruth)

I swear, your brother could get lost in a closet.

Keeping motivation after four drafts

January 14, 2005 QandA, Writing Process

When starting out did you ever have trouble finding motivation to keep working on rewrites? Doesn’t the same story lose its interest after about four drafts?

— Brannek Gaudet

Good guess. Four drafts is about the right number. The first draft is exciting, bewildering and fresh. For the second draft, you have all sorts of brilliant new ideas and suggestions to try out, so that keeps it interesting. The third draft is generally damage-control from the second draft, where many of those good ideas ended up not working. The fourth draft, well…

The fourth draft sucks. By this point, the intractable problems of your script are readily apparent, and you’re faced with either (a) writing around them, or (b) trying to tackle them head on. In my experience, while you should choose (b), you generally choose (a).

It all boils down to two related questions: What script did you sit down to write, and what script did you end up writing?

At this fourth draft stage, you have to really decide between Great in Theory and what Actually Works. If you approach it this way, you can sometimes gain fresh eyes on your script. Read it as if some other, lamer screenwriter wrote it. What would you do differently?

Then, do that.

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