• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

John August

  • Arlo Finch
  • Scriptnotes
  • Library
  • Store
  • About

Monsterpocalypse

Previz for screenwriters

June 14, 2013 Follow Up, Monsterpocalypse

In episode 93 of Scriptnotes, Craig and I talked about how storyboarding software (like Amazon’s new Storyteller) is largely a waste of time for screenwriters, who should be focusing on words rather than pictures.

That said, I’ve occasionally found it useful to use images so I know what the hell I’m writing. I’ll use Google Street View to check out a city, or search for photos of the Badlands.

And in the case of the never-will-get-made Monsterpocalypse,1 in 2010 I asked Ryan Nelson to make some graphics for me so I could keep the scale of things consistent.

The script opens with an attack on London by an alien creature.

Vaporous blue flames seep through cracks in the crust. Suddenly, the meteor begins to move. The shell splits and slides in articulated sections, folding open like an elaborate puzzle.

It rolls forward, then begins to rise. It’s only then we get a sense of its true scale.

Two hundred feet tall, it towers over nearby buildings. Its massive claws could lift a 747.

Here’s what 200 feet looks like in practice:

chart

Note that Ryan’s monster is deliberately adorable. In case I needed to show the image to others on the team, I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to design the creature, just the size of it.

Ryan’s image really helped. It was clear that the creature couldn’t really walk through the city as much as on top of it. The London Eye would still be big — probably too big for him to throw (for example).

Later in the story, we encounter animals that have become gigantified in the decade following the initial attack. I wanted them to be big, but not so large they couldn’t navigate a city like Paris.

Ryan’s challenge was to find a scale that made sense. Keeping these creatures about 40 or 50 feet tall seemed to work best.

chart

chart

This kind of screenwriter previz is uncommon, so I don’t want to feed the fires of insecurity or distraction (“I can’t write that scene until I learn Photoshop!”). I had the luxury of having a graphic genius on the payroll and 20 feet away. These comps certainly helped me, but I could have written the same script without them.

I didn’t have these images when pitching the project, but that’s one situation in which a screenwriter might consider spending money for artwork — or buying some beer for a talented artist friend. If you have to pitch a project in which many elements are uniquely visual, having something to show might make sense.

Is your story set in a futuristic undersea world of sentient sharks? That might need a picture.

Otherwise, stick to your words.

  1. cf. this summer’s Pacific Rim. ↩

When to talk about your idea

February 4, 2011 Monsterpocalypse, Preacher, Producers, Psych 101

Last night, I moderated a panel with eleven of the writers nominated for WGA screenwriting awards. By any normal standard, it was way too many people to have on a stage, but we managed to make it work. My thanks to the panelists, the WGA and the Writers Guild Foundation for putting it all together.

The organizers had already decided there wouldn’t be a Q&A afterwards, but I wanted to give the audience a chance to participate a little. So I told them to tweet their best question to @johnaugust. I would pick one to ask before the end of the session.

I chose one by @oHaiZZ:

Lawrence Turman suggests asking random people for their opinions of your concept. Any panelists do this or is mums the word?

Aaron Sorkin cautioned that talking about what you’re planning to write can easily sap your enthusiasm for it. Stuart Blumberg agreed, noting that even one ‘meh’ response might scare you off your dream project.

Lisa Cholodenko said that while they were working on The Kids Are All Right, they hadn’t talked to many folks about the plot. Only after the movie was finished did an executive mention that she’d read a couple of scripts with similar storylines over the years. Had Cholodenko known there were competing projects, she might have had second thoughts, worried that someone would beat her to the screen.

I largely agree with these opinions, but I also agree with Turman. I think the difference is that Larry Turman is a producer, not a writer.

A producer serves several functions, but one of the most important is pitchman. He needs to convince directors, actors, studios — and ultimately audiences — to invest their time and money in a movie. So he’s constantly testing and refining his message. He doesn’t have to write “Wuthering Heights with mummies” — he just has to gauge if there’s interest. If no one sparks to it, he has very little at stake.

The writer, on the other hand, has spent days, weeks or months thinking and writing. It’s so easy to get derailed and never finish. So my advice depends on your job title:

Producer – pitch constantly.

Screenwriter – zip it and write.

The 20-page threshold

Several panelists mentioned how valuable they found it to get feedback from trusted colleagues at around the 20-page mark. By that point, you’re far enough into the script to feel you have a handle on it. You hopefully like what you’ve written. But you’re wondering if it’s actually any good.

That’s a good time to get feedback.

It doesn’t have to be 20 pages. For Monsterpocalypse, I shared the first act. For Preacher, it was 45 pages. In both cases, enthusiastic feedback gave me a nice bounce of energy to help me finish.

Yes, you’re taking a risk that you’ll get a bad reaction. But if it’s not working at this stage, it’s unlikely the problems would magically resolve themselves by page 120. Very few good movies have bad first acts. It’s worth stopping forward progress to get the beginning right.

Monsterpocalypse, and why some projects get announced (and others don’t)

June 10, 2010 Big Fish, Charlie's Angels, Monsterpocalypse, Projects

monsterpocalypseAs announced today, I’m going to be writing a big movie version of Monsterpocalypse for DreamWorks, based on Matt Wilson’s kaiju-themed giant-monsters-smashing things extravaganza.

Wilson’s creation — published by Privateer Press — imagines the modern world under siege by super-sized creatures of every stripe. Giant apes, terrasaurs, planet-eating extraterrestrials? Check, check and check.

Plus robots. C’mon. You need robots.

Many of the elements are still being locked down, so there’s obviously a lot I can’t say about the movie yet: the plot, the players, what the humans are doing in all of this. Will every possible monster be in it? Logic would say no, but I can’t give you a list.

What I can talk about is why the project is getting announced today, while so many others are kept under wraps.

Shouts and whispers

Most of the projects I work on stay under the radar until very close to production. That’s intentional. There are huge advantages to being out of the spotlight.

Particularly with properties that invite media and/or fanboy speculation, there is a real risk of putting the cart before the horse, and having to manage public perception before even finishing the first draft.

That was certainly the case with Charlie’s Angels. From the moment Drew Barrymore signed on, we were constantly battling expectations and fabrications about what a disaster the movie was going to be. Gossips were convinced the actresses would fight, because everyone knows you can’t have more than one female character in a movie. It was an exhausting part of an already difficult project.

Compare that with Big Fish, which over the course of its long gestation had much bigger directors (Spielberg, Burton) but a lot more breathing room. No one said a thing about Big Fish until the trailer. That let us focus on making the movie.

As an extreme example, consider Cloverfield. Secrecy served that movie well.

Another great advantage to keeping a project out of the public eye is the fact that most movies never happen. I’ve got a sizable list of those never-weres, including Tarzan, Shazam, Barbarella, Fantasy Island and Thief of Always. All were announced in the trades. All went through multiple drafts. None of them got made. But they still linger on as “what’s going on with…” questions whenever I do interviews.

So why not play it low and quiet with Monsterpocalypse?

Because there was simply no way to keep a lid on it. As detailed in the article, Monsterpocalypse potentially affects many other tentpole movies at other studios in a way that’s certainly newsworthy. And while I’m hardly the biggest element in this, Monsterpocalypse will take me off the market for a year or so, and make it pretty much impossible for me to direct a movie in the near future.

So an article was going to be written regardless. Announcing the project allowed DreamWorks the chance to have some control over how the story got out. That’s the main and best reason to announce something.

Monsterpocalypse has been the fastest a movie has come together in my career, and I’m ridiculously excited to start writing it. But I’m also ridiculously excited to be writing the other things I’m working on, most of which have been kept very quiet.

Primary Sidebar

Newsletter

Inneresting Logo A Quote-Unquote Newsletter about Writing
Read Now

Explore

Projects

  • Aladdin (1)
  • Arlo Finch (27)
  • Big Fish (87)
  • Charlie (39)
  • Charlie's Angels (16)
  • Chosen (2)
  • Corpse Bride (9)
  • Dead Projects (18)
  • Frankenweenie (10)
  • Go (30)
  • Karateka (4)
  • Monsterpocalypse (3)
  • One Hit Kill (6)
  • Ops (6)
  • Preacher (2)
  • Prince of Persia (13)
  • Shazam (6)
  • Snake People (6)
  • Tarzan (5)
  • The Nines (118)
  • The Remnants (12)
  • The Variant (22)

Apps

  • Bronson (14)
  • FDX Reader (11)
  • Fountain (32)
  • Highland (72)
  • Less IMDb (4)
  • Weekend Read (34)

Recommended Reading

  • First Person (87)
  • Geek Alert (147)
  • WGA (123)
  • Workspace (19)

Screenwriting Q&A

  • Adaptation (66)
  • Directors (90)
  • Education (49)
  • Film Industry (487)
  • Formatting (129)
  • Genres (90)
  • Glossary (6)
  • Pitches (29)
  • Producers (59)
  • Psych 101 (117)
  • Rights and Copyright (96)
  • So-Called Experts (47)
  • Story and Plot (170)
  • Television (164)
  • Treatments (21)
  • Words on the page (238)
  • Writing Process (178)

More screenwriting Q&A at screenwriting.io

© 2023 John August — All Rights Reserved.