John August

QandA

Are music videos worth the bother?

Directors

questionmarkI am an aspiring director. If my true passion lies in films (action-adventure in particular) and not in music videos or commercials, should I bother trying to make a run at being a music video director? Would learning how to tell a story with no dialogue in under three minutes be worth it to me?

Or should I just stick with the indie film route and write a low-budget film?

— Tyler Leisher

As a general rule, don’t waste your time building a proxy career.

Every director needs practice with visual storytelling and composition. You can do that homework by shooting as much as possible: photography, short films, docs, etc. Study how others do it. Read books. Learn VFX.

Watch movies with the sound off. I’ve learned a lot by not putting my headphones on while staring at random inflight movies. For whatever reason, you particularly notice matching eyelines this way.

If your goal is to direct the next Once, I suspect these smaller steps would be enough.

But in your case, Tyler, genre matters. To direct movies with loud trailers and explosions, you’re going to need a director’s reel that shows size and scale and sizzle. Music videos and commercials are a great way to do that, as are spec shorts with a lot of visual FX. [Modern Times](http://vimeo.com/17631561) will get Ben Craig more attention than a nicely-observed indie would:

Yet it’s a misconception that Hollywood is eager to hire music video directors. They really aren’t.

Studio execs want to hire directors they believe can get the movie on the screen as effectively and cheaply as possible. Music video and commercial directors tend to have great-looking reels that showcase high production value for low production costs. And they’re hungry: they’ll work their asses off to land a feature directing assignment, even shooting spec scenes to show what they can do. ((And yes, this drives established directors crazy. It creates that expectation that directors should have to audition for jobs.))

So if you, Tyler, want to direct these kinds of big movies, you’ll need to show you have the visual chops to pull it off. You could do that with music videos or commercials, or a small feature like Gareth Edward’s Monsters. Also consider television: the walls separating film from TV have never been lower, particularly given the quality of many one-hour dramas.

Whichever path you take, remember where you’re trying to head. It’s all too easy to get stuck on treadmill of small assignments that never lead to your intended destination.

All yourselves belong to us

Psych 101

I saw The Social Network again last week — the first movie this year I saw twice in the theater.

On second viewing, you notice how often the movie answers questions across a cut (such as in the overlapping depositions) and how often people run across a campus, or up a flight of stairs. For subject matter that might seem well-suited for a play, the filmmakers were determined to never let it feel like one.

Reading Lev Grossman’s [profile](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183,00.html) on Mark Zuckerberg for Time, it’s clear that the actual guy isn’t quite the character portrayed in the movie, particularly in terms of his social skills and motivation. That’s not a criticism at all; I’m sure the actual Henry V wasn’t much like the character in Shakespeare’s play. In both cases, I’m happy the writer’s first allegiance was to the audience’s enjoyment.

Beyond its rounder, softer profile of Zuckerberg, what I appreciate most about Time’s article is its concise description of what makes me uneasy about Facebook in its current form: the binary definition of friendship, and unified version of identity.

> Facebook runs on a very stiff, crude model of what people are like. It herds everybody — friends, co-workers, romantic partners, that guy who lived on your block but moved away after fifth grade — into the same big room. It smooshes together your work self and your home self, your past self and your present self, into a single generic extruded product. It suspends the natural process by which old friends fall away over time, allowing them to build up endlessly, producing the social equivalent of liver failure. On Facebook, there is one kind of relationship: friendship, and you have it with everybody. You’re friends with your spouse, and you’re friends with your plumber.

In the seven years I’ve been running the blog, I’ve noticed the online version of myself drifting closer to the “actual” version. ((I’m sure a CS student could write a script to compare my usage of “me” and “I” over time.)) But there is still a difference, and that’s deliberate. Even though this site has my name on it, it’s still a fairly controlled product: *a ton of useful information on screenwriting.* You’re getting the screenwriter John August, not the Eagle Scout, the cook or the Real World/Road Rules Challenge completist.

I mostly write about screenwriting and the film industry. When I do go off-topic, I generally put it in the Off-Topic section or flag it as [Random Advice](http://johnaugust.com/archives/category/random-advice). ((I set up a Posterous blog to handle longer-form musings, but haven’t yet used it. I’m not sure I can split the streams any further.)) But I’m not an absolutist. It’s my blog, and I write about the things that interest me. When I see complaints about articles that don’t concern screenwriting, I happily offer readers their money back. (Oh, wait.)

Profiles in ambivalence
—-

I’ve found it harder to decide who I am on Facebook. Am I the writer of this blog, the sponsor of a [Malawian charity](http://www.fomo.co.uk) or the guy who went to Fairview High School? While they are physically the same person, their social worlds barely overlap. Screenwriting students don’t want to see vacation photos from Ohio, nor do I want them to.

I could limit Facebook to actual friends. Granted, “friend” is a slippery definition, but I might define it as someone I’d be glad to connect with at a moment’s notice and happy to hang out with for several hours. College and high school friends, whom I see rarely but would like to see more, would still fit nicely in this box.

The trouble is, actual friendship isn’t always so reciprocal. Am I hard-hearted enough to deny a friend request from my college roommate’s wife?

For the time being, I’ve decided to limit Facebook to “people I know in real life.” While that’s a fairly low bar, it seems to help cull the numbers a bit.

[My Twitter account](http://twitter.com/johnaugust), on the other hand, is come-one-come-all. Anything I tweet is open for the world to see. It’s less specifically about screenwriting, but still a version of Work Me. I’m circumspect about revealing much personal information, like travel plans or dining companions.

I’ve enjoyed meeting folks I follow online in real life, though it’s awkward to decide on levels of familiarity. I hugged [Melanie Lynskey](http://twitter.com/melanielynskey), but then, LA is a hugging town.

The most unnerving aspect of both Facebook and Twitter is following people you know well. It’s odd to learn about your husband’s day through a status update, or watch a friend take an odd side in a political discussion.

In real life, we carefully tailor which topics we discuss with which friends. Particularly on Facebook, that’s hard to do. We’re forced to be one person to more people. That affects what we say, and may ultimately affect who we perceive ourselves to be.

How much screen time does the hero get?

QandA, Story and Plot

questionmarkMy question deals with the amount of screen time the main character(s) receives in a script. In other words, how much screen time can be devoted to the main character(s)? Is there a unspecified limit as to how much face time a main character gets on screen?

The reason I ask is because I feel as if the viewer needs breaks from constantly seeing the main character(s) on screen.

For instance, the script that I am currently writing has two main characters that receive relatively the same amount of screen time. The two characters lead separate lives and do not meet until about page 60-65, of a planned 110 page script, where their lives intertwine.

So, is it feasible that these two characters are seen in every scene of the movie (be it that they share or do not share the scene together)? Or is it better to develop minor characters that serve as breaks in the film which would serve the purpose of moving the story forward as well as give the viewer a break from seeing the two main characters on screen?

— Nick
Long Island, New York

Your hero can be on-screen 100% of the time, as Ryan Reynolds is in Buried. There’s no rule that you need scenes centered around other characters.

In fact, many high-concept comedies focus almost exclusively on their heroes. Consider Groundhog Day or Liar, Liar. There’s hardly a scene in which the hero isn’t front-and-center.

But it’s true that in most stories, you’re going to want something else to cut away to: a villain, a supporting character, an asteroid headed this way. Cutting to something is a crucial part of pacing, and you generally gain more energy by cutting to something new than following a single character through a series of actions.

Part of planning your story is deciding which characters are allowed to take the wheel and drive scenes. In your case, it sounds like you’re ping-ponging between your two main characters, which is a well-accepted structure. As long as the story feels like it’s moving forward, your audience probably won’t object to the distribution of screen time.

Premise pilots

Ops, Television

If you’re writing the pilot episode of a TV series, you have a choice to make: will this episode be more-or-less typical for the series, or will it be The Beginning?

The latter are called premise pilots, because they establish the underlying premise of the series — how it all came to be. In screenplay-speak, premise pilots contain the inciting incident of the entire series. Without this event, the series would be fundamentally different.

Many of the pilots you remember were premise pilots:

* Lost: The plane crashes on the island.
* Moonlighting: Dave meets Maddie.
* Remington Steele: Con-man assumes role of fictional detective.
* Buffy: Buffy moves to Sunnydale, meets friends.
* Angel: Angel moves to Los Angeles.
* Six Feet Under: Father dies, leaving funeral business to his sons.
* Frasier: Dad moves in.
* Heroes: An eclipse reveals people with superpowers.
* Arrested Development: Father arrested.
* 30 Rock: Liz meets Jack and hires Tracy.
* Futurama: Fry awakens in the future.
* Desperate Housewives: The narrator kills herself.
* Star Trek (TNG): Characters meet for first time.
* Star Trek (DS9): Sisko takes over as commander.
* Star Trek (Voyager): Ship stranded in the Delta Quadrant.

Other shows start with non-premise pilots that could have just as easily been episode four:

* Star Trek (TOS) (Both the Kirk and Pike versions).
* South Park
* The Office (British and U.S.)
* Mad About You
* The Simpsons
* Gilmore Girls
* Seinfeld
* Law & Order

Remember: a premise pilot doesn’t mean introducing the setup to the audience. A premise pilot is about what’s new *inside* the world of the show. It’s the big thing that’s changed which marks this The Beginning.

For shows that last several seasons, it may become easier to argue that the events of the pilot weren’t fundamental to the premise. For example, if you only watch the first season of Cheers, it seems like a premise pilot, since it is the first time Sam and Diane meet. But several seasons in, it’s clear that Sam and Diane’s relationship isn’t fundamental to the show. ((In fact, Cheers is a One New Guy pilot.))

By the same logic, True Blood feels like a premise pilot now — Bill and Sookie meet — but as the show has evolved, it’s easy to see other moments that could have been the starting point.

Why this matters
—-

Networks hate premise pilots. Studios, too. They will flatly tell you that they don’t want to make premise pilots. They may offer a few reasons why, but one stands above rest:

**Premise pilots don’t feel like the show.** It’s often hard to get a sense how a “normal” episode of the show will function based on a premise pilot. Watching fifteen pilots, the network wants to pick the shows it feels it understands. They want to know what episode eight will be like. That’s hard to do with a premise pilot.

So studios and networks will insist that they don’t want premise pilots. But secretly, they do: roughly half the new shows every fall begin with a premise pilot. The Good Wife is a premise pilot. Same with Glee, Mike and Molly, Undercovers, The Event, Vampire Diaries, Outsourced, Hawaii 5-0 and $#*! My Dad Says.

In fact, outside of true procedurals (body-of-the-week like CSI) and family shows, it’s rare to find a series that doesn’t start with something of a premise pilot. The trick may be to do it less overtly, introducing one small-but-important change in the world rather declaring this day one.

In the pilot episode of Friends, Rachel arrives at Central Perk in a wedding dress, having bailed on her nuptials. If this was called The Jennifer Aniston Show, it would clearly be a premise pilot. But because the six primary characters already had relationships — Ross and Monica already knew Rachel — I’d argue that it falls in a middle ground I’ll call **One New Guy.** You’re introducing a new member to an existing group.

The pilot for Modern Family includes Mitchell and Cameron presenting their daughter Lily to the rest of the extended family, but if she had been introduced in episode four or ten or twenty, the basic dynamics of the show would have been the same. Everyone already knew each other. The arrival of Lily made a good starting point for the audience, but it wasn’t the start of the family.

Similarly, Adam Scott joins the catering company in the pilot of Party Down. Structurally, the episode works like any other, just that characters are introducing themselves to him.

Both of these are examples of One New Guy. In Party Down, the newbie is more central to the action, but it’s not his show. You could do an episode without him, but you probably wouldn’t do an episode that focused on him but not the rest of the cast.

I’ve written one pilot of each type. D.C. is clearly a premise pilot: the gang meets and moves into the house. Alaska is a One New Guy, with a new prosecutor joining the team. Ops is very deliberately an ordinary episode, with the company already up and running.

You can find all three in the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library).

If you take away nothing else from this, let me stress again that a premise pilot isn’t about setting up the characters or world — every pilot has to let the audience figure out who’s who and what’s what. A premise pilot is about Something Happening that marks the pilot as the beginning.