John August

Projects

Test screening The Movie

Charlie's Angels, Film Industry, The Nines

Last Monday was the first time I put The Movie in front of an audience: thirty friends and colleagues recruited to help figure out whether the film was appropriately funny, dramatic, and comprehensible. (Answers: Yes, Yes, and Not So Much. We’re working on that last part.)

Screening a work-in-progress is just as nerve-wracking as it sounds. Going in, you know the film isn’t perfect. You’re projecting low-resolution video, with temp music, temp visual effects, and bad sound. But it’s a crucial step, because it’s impossible for filmmakers to see their movie with fresh eyes. You need an audience to laugh, gasp or murmur in confusion.

The thirty people who watched the cut were incredibly generous with their time and comments, not only staying afterwards to talk, but also filling out cards and emailing additional thoughts. They made the movie significantly better.

But as great as they were, the fact that they were friends and colleagues was a significant detriment. They had an emotional investment: they wanted to like it. They were also largely film-and-television people, hardly a representative cross-section of the movie-going public.

The obvious next step would be to put The Movie in front of a real recruited audience, i.e. strangers.

But I can’t.

The very same internet that makes this site possible makes a real test screening impossible. Or at the least, a very risky proposition.

Odds are, one or more of those recruited strangers would recognize my name, the producers, or the actors involved and decide it would be a really good idea to write in to Ain’t It Cool News or a site like it. Quite a scoop, after all, reviewing a movie where even the premise has been kept hush-hush.

Reviews of test screenings are frustrating for a big studio like Warner Bros., but they’re potentially ruinous for a little movie like ours. Keep in mind: We don’t have distribution yet. We’re hoping to sell the movie after a festival premiere. So if DrkLOrd79 trashes the movie, that sets a bad tone going in. Almost worse would be if DrkLOrd79 loved it and gushed on for pages. We’ve all experienced the disappointment that follows having our expectations set too high.

The friends and colleagues at last Monday’s screening were chosen for their insight and opinion. But more importantly, they were chosen for their discretion.

With one exception, every movie I’ve written has had a traditional recruited audience screening, with 200 or so demographically-mixed young filmgoers circling numbers with little golf pencils. After every screening, we learned important things which made the film better.

And after every screening, someone posted his thoughts on the Internet. It was annoying, but it was inevitable. For CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, I stayed up until 2 a.m. waiting for the first test screening review to show up. Sure enough, it came.

The one film which didn’t have a traditional test screening was CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE. It was fear of internet leaks that kept the studio from bringing in a recruited audience. And let me be clear about the cause and effect: Full Throttle was not untested because it was a bad movie.

Full Throttle was a bad movie because it was not tested.

The premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was the first time I saw Full Throttle with a full audience. As the lights went down, there was palpable enthusiasm, and some real residual love for the first movie. By the time the lights came back up, it was pretty clear we really should have done a test screening.

Part of me fears the same could happen with The Movie. Our fear of internet leaks may keep us from giving it the test it deserves. Lord knows, I don’t want the first time I see it with a real audience to be at Sundance or some other festival. So I’m trying to figure out some middle ground, an audience of trustworthy strangers.

As always, suggestions are welcome.

Temp Music

The Nines

This week’s work on the [The Movie](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/so-i-made-a-movie) is largely about music. Our composer, Alex Wurman, has already composed one piece that plays on-camera, but most of the music at this point is temp — stuff grabbed from other soundtracks that roughly approximates what we’re going for.

There’s one piece of temp music that works really well — so well, that we might just want to license it for the movie. Unfortunately, we have no idea what it is. It’s an mp3 the editor had leftover from Oceans 12’s temp music. The track is labeled “Big Fuzz,” but that’s not brought me any luck through Google. So, I’m calling on the power of the hive mind to help me figure out what it is:

[Click here to hear it.](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/bigfuzz.mp3)

Anyone out there recognize it?

Monovision

First Person, Projects, The Nines

About halfway through shooting [The Movie](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/so-i-made-a-movie), the propmaster asked, “Hey, where are your glasses?” I had taken them off to check my email, and left them sitting on the dining room table. It’s part of his job to recognize continuity issues, so it’s natural he noticed something was off.

But it was only his comment that made me realize: *Holy shit. I wear glasses.*

The truth is, I’ve had glasses since high school, but I’ve never considered myself a glasses-wearer. I’m near-sighted, with mild astigmatism. Originally, the glasses were only for driving at night and watching movies on the big screen. After college, I found myself wearing them for watching TV. Then, several years ago, I started wearing them for all driving, day and night. But I work at home, so I don’t drive much. And TV hours are limited, particularly with the baby. Most days, you’d only find me in glasses for ninety minutes, tops.

Then came The Movie.

Whereas a writer only has to look at the words on the screen, a director has to look at actual things: people, props, stupid bamboo plants that keep getting moved into the shot to conceal light stands. In having to look at all of these things at various distances, I found myself wearing my glasses 12 hours a day.

The crew naturally assumed I was a person who wore glasses full-time, so any moment where I had them off was an anomaly. Thus Greg Props’s question. Thus my dismay: Without realizing it, I’ve become a (nearly) full-time four-eyes.

I’ve got nothing against glasses, really. They work. But they kind of suck for a director. When we were filming out in Malibu, they kept getting streaked with sweat and sunscreen. When looking through the camera lens, one has to take them off, adjusting the diopter to find focus, which screws it up for the operator. Mostly, they just get in the way. I have magnetic clip-on sunglasses which work okay, but honestly look stupid. The alternative — carrying around prescription sunglasses — just isn’t going to happen.

Contact lenses aren’t a terrific solution for me, partly because my eyes freak out at the mildest irritation, and partly because my reading vision is better without them.

All of which serves as introduction to the real topic at hand: laser eye surgery.

My uncorrected vision is good enough that I’ve put off LASIK for years, assuming (correctly, as it turns out) that it would get better and cheaper. But in putting it off, I’ve also gotten older, which means that correcting my distance vision will put me in reading glasses sooner. Maybe immediately. (This isn’t particularly a laser thing; it’s a time thing. As you hit your 40’s, your eyes lose the ability to focus clearly at short distances. Fixing one’s nearsightedness often hastens the need for reading glasses.)

Is losing my distance glasses worth adding reading glasses? Maybe. And considering I’ll eventually need reading glasses anyway, it might be time.

One possible alternative to the either-or scenario is [monovision](http://www.stlukeseye.com/eyeq/Monovision.asp). That’s a terrible word for it, because it conjures up images of Colonel Klink, patch-wearing pirates and the foreign policy of George W. Bush. A better term would probably be “split vision” or “asymmetrical vision.” Basically, they correct one eye for distance, and the other for reading.

The literature touts it as the “best of both worlds,” but clearly it’s a compromise — your distance vision isn’t as good as it could be, nor is your reading vision. But good enough is often the best solution.

I’m test-driving it now, wearing one contact in my right eye (my dominant eye). So far, it’s pretty good. My distance vision is much sharper. The challenge is reading. I can focus with either eye separately, but together, things tend to be a bit blurry, as if the right and left are fighting about who should be in charge. From what I’ve read, your brain eventually figures out how to make sense of it.

For now, I’m enjoying my monovision experiment. But it’s brought up another issue: sunglasses. I didn’t have any non-prescription sunglasses, so I had to borrow a pair.

I guess you never really get away from glasses.

Because really, he should drive a Chrysler LeBaron

QandA, Rights and Copyright, The Nines

questionmark*My question concerns referencing branded objects in a screenplay. I’ve read that including name-brand references should be avoided in screenplays because you would need legal clearance in order to feature them.*

*That being said, what if my character drives a Chrysler LeBaron? Can’t I say he drives a beat-up Chrysler LeBaron? And not just as a description, but if it was mentioned in the dialogue as well.*

*Understandably, name brand references wouldn’t make or break my script, but I feel it adds a nice level of depth and detail to my characters if you know they like Gucci shoes and not fancy Italian boots.*

*I guess my question is, what are the do’s and don’ts of brand name references?*

*– Aaron Murphy*

In a screenplay, you can do anything. You can have Ronald McDonald shank Elmo with a sharpened Barbie over a pack of Marlboros.

The trouble comes when you’re moving from the printed word to the projected image. The corporations who hold these trademarks and copyrights don’t look kindly on other people profiting off them, even if the usage is not necessarily disparaging.

So, when you set out to make a movie, someone is generally assigned the chore of getting permission to use other people’s copyrights and trademarks. These “permission slips” are called clearances. During the summer of 1993, while I was interning at Universal, this was my job. I helped do clearances for [The War](http://imdb.com/title/tt0111667/) and [Reality Bites](http://imdb.com/title/tt0110950/), mostly working on props and set decoration.

How do you get permission? You ask.

A large part of the job is figuring out who to ask. In 1993, the Internet didn’t exist in anything approximating its current form, so my fingers got very fast at dialing New York information (212-555-1212) to track down corporate offices.

Once you get the right person on the phone (or email), you explain what the movie is, why you’re asking, and if they could sign and fax back the attached clearance form. As I mentioned in an [earlier article](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/getting-permission), Nolo Press’s book *Getting Permission* has templates for clearance forms, and a lot of information about how to handle everything from artwork to music. You can also see a generic version of what we used for The Movie here: [.pdf](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/clearance.pdf) or [.doc](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/clearance.doc).

My assistant Chad handled the majority of the clearances for The Movie, mostly artwork and books featured as props. It’s tedious work, but not particularly brain-draining. (In fact, I wrote my first screenplay while doing clearances.)

How do you know what needs to be cleared, and what you can just get away with using/saying?

I fall back on my standard advice: as a writer, just do what’s best for the script. If that’s Gucci shoes and Chrysler LeBarons, knock yourself out. Don’t worry about phantom problems. Rather, focus on writing the best screenplay you can.

Down the road, when your great script gets ready to become a great movie, there will be producers and other clever people to help you stress out over clearances.