John August

QandA

Giving up on Blu-ray

Film Industry, Tools

Khoi Vinh [doesn’t recommend the format](http://www.subtraction.com/2011/01/10/blu-ray-blues):

> Aside from the fact that Blu-Ray’s high definition picture is so ridiculously gorgeous, the whole format is demonstrably worse than what came before it.

> [Blu-ray] takes longer to load and menus take longer to navigate than on a stock DVD player. This is doubly frustrating because one of the early promises of the format was that users could pop in a disc and the movie would begin playing immediately, doing away with the interminable trailers that have opened DVDs for the past decade. Not only has that promise been essentially broken, but trailers are an even worse problem on Blu-Ray. Often the way a Blu-Ray disc is formatted, it’s harder to fast-forward through a bundle of trailers than it used to be on a DVD.

On friends’ recommendations, I bought a PS3 as my Blu-ray player. I’ve ended up really enjoying it as a game machine, but in two years, I’ve watched exactly two Blu-ray movies on it.

Remember the showdown between HD-DVD and Blu-ray? Streaming won.

What audiences know

Adaptation, Story and Plot

Discussing the very talky opening scene of The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin makes a key point about how writers [dole out information](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/aaron-sorkins-writing-process-69586):

> We started at 100 miles an hour in the middle of a conversation, and that makes the audience have to run to catch up. […]The worst crime you can commit with an audience is telling them something they already know. We were always running ahead.

Figuring out what the audience needs to know — and when they need to know it — is one of the trickiest aspects of screenwriting. The novelist can suspend the action for paragraphs or pages to establish background information. Screenwriters can’t. We don’t have an authorial voice to fill in the missing details. Everything we want the audience to know has to be spoken by a character, or better yet visualized in a way that suits the big screen. ((As a trade-off for losing the authorial voice, movies get something good in return: the audience’s complete attention. You don’t skim a movie the way you might a 400-page novel. Tiny moments can have huge impact on the big screen.))

So we have to be clever. Sometimes, we use the form to our advantage: A lengthy sequence explaining dinosaur cloning techniques in Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park becomes an animated film strip in David Koepp’s movie adaptation. In most cases, we do more with less, distilling the information down to a minimum effective dose to get the audience through the scene, sequence and story.

The frustration for screenwriters is that many of the decision-makers — directors, producers, studio executives — will have different opinions about that minimum effective dose. Directors will try to cut all the dialogue. Producers will focus on strange details, having read the script so many times that they’ve lost fresh eyes. And studio executives, having faced confused audiences at low-scoring test screenings, will want things over-explained to painful degrees.

But that’s politics. In terms of craft, Sorkin’s point holds: you engage the audience by making them work. One of the best ways is by understanding and controlling what they know.

2010, the year in film

Film Industry, Video

I’m perpetually amazed by mega-edits like this one from [@genrocks](http://twitter.com/#!/genrocks), which combines pieces of [270 movies](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wv-PfzG8aGp43ZF-vARPbcJaRRSJWJ8FXlMcQIrOiOo/preview?hl=en&pli=1&sle=true#) from this past year. Who has the time to do this? Are there pharmaceuticals involved?

One thing to consider: These are almost entirely American movies. You can look at this as a recap of the American film industry’s output for the year.

We make a lot of movies.

(/via [kottke](http://kottke.org/10/12/the-year-in-film-2010))

Dick jokes for classy producers

Film Industry, Psych 101, QandA

questionmarkI recently met a Hollywood producer. Let’s call him Frank. Frank is a big name everyone reading this has heard of. Through a quirky, unrelated favor that I did for Frank he agreed to meet with me and read one or two of my scripts.

During this meeting I professed to having written a dozen scripts or so, over the last ten years. When in reality I have really only managed to see five full length screenplays to the finish line. Okay, four. Frank told me to put my best foot forward and give him only the script that I was the most proud of. The one script that would show him what kind of writer I am and that I can really write.

I narrowed it down to the last two scripts I’d written and just sat down and re-read each one as though I were looking through Frank’s eyes. I’m pretty convinced he wouldn’t like either one.

My screenplays are nothing like any of the movies Frank has ever produced. In fact, when I consider the caliber of films he has produced, I’m pretty sure he’ll find my scripts rather offensive. As I had an entirely different audience in mind when crafting my odd little raunchy comedies. They make me and my buddies roar with laughter. Some of the most sublime and genius dick jokes ever conceived. But again, to Frank, those same jokes will probably be interpreted as simply flaccid and tasteless.

This window of opportunity that I have been given will start closing soon and I don’t have time to write something he may like. I don’t know what to do. Should I just go ahead and give one to him anyway and hope for the best? Or, should I humbly ask to cash in this favor later, after I’ve had time to dress my best foot in a nicer shoe?

— Dirty Feet

Favors like these have an expiration date, so you really can’t bank it for later. Pick the script you think is best — even if it’s the raunchiest — and send it over.

In the (short) cover letter, warn him that it’s deliberately offensive and tasteless. If there is a specific genre you were trying to hit, give examples. South Park isn’t everyone’s taste, but a script that aims for and achieves its level of clever offensiveness is worth reading.

Let’s hope Frank likes it, or at least understands what you were going for. In all likelihood, he won’t be the only person in the office reading it. His assistant or development exec might love it and call you in for a meeting. You don’t know. The only thing you know for sure is that they can’t love it if they don’t read it.

And don’t assume Frank is always classy. You’d be surprised who likes dick jokes.