John August

QandA

Were I to seek examples of the subjunctive…

Resources, Words on the page

…I might begin with the excellent [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive) on the issue, which provides a nice introduction to its usage in English and other Indo-European languages.

I’m a native English speaker, but the first language I studied was Spanish, which I think accounts for my fascination with the subjunctive mood. It’s much more commonly heard in Spanish, partly because its usage in English disappears amid polysemy:

→ I wish **you were** nicer to your brother. (past subjunctive)
→ **You were** lucky he didn’t hit you. (past indicative)

Different words, but you wouldn’t know it. The only time you notice the subjunctive in English is when the verb doesn’t seem to match the subject:

→ If **I were** rich, I’d have you killed. (contrafactual)
→ I request that **he be** given exile. (indirect command)
→ **Let us fight** our enemies, not each other. (hortatory)

When the subjunctive shows up, there’s almost always drama. Someone is expressing hope or doubt. It’s worth paying attention.

Cynics have been predicting the death of the subjunctive for years, arguing that it is mostly confined to archaic phrases. I disagree. While there are many shaky grammatical constructs I could easily see collapsing (who/whom, lay/lie), I think the subjunctive has several points in its favor:

* **Most native speakers don’t know they’re using it.** While we notice when it’s omitted (“If I was president…”), the majority of people get it right without knowing why. (“I demand my account be reactivated immediately.”)

* **While there are alternatives, they’re rarely better.** The previous example could be rewritten, “I demand you reactivate my account…” or “Reactivate my account, you idiot!” But neither achieves the same effect as the subjunctive. English thrives on having many ways of saying similar-but-different things.

* **It’s really common in religious material.** The U.S. is very church-y, so Americans get a weekly dosage of subjunctive in their sermons and prayers. (“The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace.”)

Remember that the subjunctive is invoked by the semantics, not just the words leading up to it:

→ If I were correct with my answer, I would have won Jeopardy.
*but…*
→ If I was correct in my calculations, we should hear a boom in three seconds.

Now that I’ve expressed my deep affection for the subjunctive, let me urge discretion when using it in screenwriting. Many times, your characters will speak ungrammatically. Your knowledge of the subjunctive should never trump their ignorance.

PAPPY

If was a bettin’ man, I’d say he demanded Sonny kills that other fella lest he rats him out to Bubba.

That’s three missed opportunities to use the subjunctive, but it may be the right choice for Pappy. Always go by ear with dialogue.

How to Meet

Film Industry, How-To, QandA

questionmarkI’m at the stage where I’ll hopefully be meeting with managers, agents, and producers. As a writer/director, what should I expect from these initial meetings and do you have any advice, or pitfalls to avoid?

— Sam
Los Angeles

Meetings are a crucial part of a professional screenwriter’s job. Even when you’re not pitching a specific project, you’re basically pitching yourself as someone worth hiring in the future. So you’re right to be thinking about what you should say, do, and wear. (In fact, I’ve [already addressed](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/the-not-so-well-dressed-screenwriter) that last point.)

Let me briefly lay out the structure of every first meeting I’ve had in Hollywood.

The meeting is set for 10 a.m. You get there at 9:55. An assistant asks you if you’d like anything to drink. The proper answer is, “A water would be great.” ((You may also ask for a Diet Coke. These are the only beverages you can be reasonably assured will be on the premises, and not a hassle leading to frustration or extra work. Back in the day (say, 1999), you could also ask for a “Snapple-type beverage.” But no one drinks Snapple anymore.)) This phrasing makes it clear that her request has been heard and appreciated, and that you haven’t mistaken her for a waitress.

The assistant will bring you the beverage, then inform you that the agent/executive/producer is running a few minutes late. This is completely expected. Entertain yourself with your iPhone or copies of Variety laying nearby. If the assistant is nearby and doesn’t seem particularly busy with some other task, engage in conversation. There’s a pretty good chance this assistant will run Hollywood someday, so it never hurts to be friendly.

When the Big Man calls you in to his office, try to figure out which seat he likes to sit in. Generally, you’re safe sitting on the couch. If it’s a two-chair situation, you might as well ask, “Do you have a favorite chair?” Because if you sit in his spot, you’re just starting the meeting off on the wrong foot. ((Meeting with multiple executives is an extra-credit situation, and generally necessitates asking about who sits where.))

The first topic of conversation will be about one of four things:

* Something he read of yours that he liked
* A mutual acquaintance
* His office: either the view, or how he just moved in
* A movie that came out this past weekend. ((Only appropriate if the meeting is on Monday, and the movie did significantly better or worse than expected.))

This is a warm-up period, and is not scored.

While engaged in this conversation, listen for the word which signals the end of the period: “So.”

As in, “So, tell me about the kinds of things you write,” or “So, let me tell you a little about our company, and the movies we’re trying to make.” At this point, judging begins. If it’s mostly a listening exercise, be ready to restate his points in different words, preferably with insightful analogies to successful movies. ((Bonus points if you can include movies he’s worked on. Box-office disappointments are okay, particularly if there are praiseworthy aspects.))

If he’s asking you to talk, say three smart things. Then get him talking again.

EXEC

So, is that the kind of thing you mostly want to write, is thrillers?

YOU

Thanks. Yeah, I love thrillers. I mean, I love all genres, but what’s great about thrillers is you get to do the **character work setting up motivations,** you get the **puzzle aspect of plotting,** and **real stakes.** With comedies and dramas, you get one or two of those, but thrillers are the whole package.

EXEC

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

YOU

You take a movie like Collateral, and it can be funny and tight and dangerous.

EXEC

I worked on Collateral.

YOU

I love that movie. How did that come about? Was that a book?

This process will continue for ten to 20 minutes, at which point he may pull out a buck slip ((A buck slip is a piece of heavy paper cut down to roughly 4×10 inches, which is often attached to a script in lieu of a typed letter. I’m not sure they even exist in other industries.)) listing all of the company’s open writing assignments. (Or in the case of agent/managers, a list of studios and development companies.) After a little more discussion, he thanks you for coming in.

This is your signal to stand, shake his hand, and leave. Say goodbye to the assistant. Remember to ask if you need to validate.

If there’s any specific project you talked about, follow up the next day with an email. If you don’t have his email address, it’s fair to call the assistant and ask if you can email her (the assistant) something for the boss. You don’t need to send thank you notes and such.

When I first signed with an agent, he sent me out on 15 meetings. I was meeting junior executives at companies that had never made a movie. But it was smart of my agent to set those meetings, because it gave me a lot of practice — which I needed, because I was terrible. By the time I was taking meetings for Go, I was pretty unflappable, even in the face of egregious behavior.

My overall advice is to not freak out over any given meeting. Pretend it’s just having coffee with somebody who went to your same school. Unless you’re pitching a specific project, don’t approach it with any particular expectation, and it’s likely to go fine.

James Cameron on 3-D

Directors, Geek Alert

Variety has a [terrific interview](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864.html?categoryid=2868&cs=1) with James Cameron about current state (and possible futures of) 3-D filmmaking. A couple of things that stood out for me:

> Godard got it exactly backwards. Cinema is not truth 24 times a second, it is lies 24 times a second. Actors are pretending to be people they’re not, in situations and settings which are completely illusory. Day for night, dry for wet, Vancouver for New York, potato shavings for snow. The building is a thin-walled set, the sunlight is a xenon, and the traffic noise is supplied by the sound designers. It’s all illusion, but the prize goes to those who make the fantasy the most real, the most visceral, the most involving. This sensation of truthfulness is vastly enhanced by the stereoscopic illusion…

> When you see a scene in 3-D, that sense of reality is supercharged. The visual cortex is being cued, at a subliminal but pervasive level, that what is being seen is real.

Seeing U2:3D last month, I agree: the best thing about 3-D is not that it makes things look cool. It’s that it makes things look more real. My favorite shots in the movie are when the cameras look out over the crowd, because you really feel each individual person. Not only are you there, you have permission to stare.

> On “Avatar,” I have not consciously composed my shots differently for 3-D. I am just using the same style I always do. In fact, after the first couple of weeks, I stopped looking at the shots in 3-D while I was working, even though the digital cameras allow real-time stereo viewing.

Of course, most directors aren’t James Cameron, who helped invent the technology and can trust his instinct on all of this. But we should trust someone’s instincts, because the result is paralysis. One of pitfalls of adding new technology to film production is that the director moves further and further from the action (and the actors) to a Den of Experts, often in a dark tent, who make decisions around monitors. In most cases, you’re better served by having a d.p. you trust.

> We all see the world in 3-D. The difference between really being witness to an event vs. seeing it as a stereo image is that when you’re really there, your eye can adjust its convergence as it roves over subjects at different distances…In a filmed image, the convergence was baked in at the moment of photography, so you can’t adjust it.

> In order to cut naturally and rapidly from one subject to another, it’s necessary for the filmmaker (actually his/her camera team) to put the convergence at the place in the shot where the audience is most likely to look. This sounds complicated but in fact we do it all the time, in every shot, and have since the beginning of cinema. It’s called focus. We focus where we think people are most likely to look.

Cameron is slaving convergence to focus, even pulling it as necessary throughout a scene. This makes sense, but I’d never heard it explained so clearly.

> The new cameras allow complete control over the stereospace. You should think of interocular like volume. You can turn the 3-D up or down, and do it smoothly on the fly during a shot. So if you know you’re in a scene which will require very fast cuts, you turn the stereo down (reduce the interocular distance) and you can cut fast and smoothly. The point here is that just because you’re making a stereo movie doesn’t mean that stereo is the most important thing in every shot or sequence. If you choose to do rapid cutting, then the motion of the subject from shot to shot to shot is more important than the perception of stereospace at that moment in the film. So sacrifice the stereospace and enjoy the fast cutting.

In front of U2:3D, there was a 3-D trailer for [Journey to the Center of The Earth 3D](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373051/), which I’m sad to say looked like ass. Actually, it kind of looked like nothing, because it was blurry in a way I can’t describe, like my eyes didn’t know how to process it.

I think this is exactly what Cameron is talking about. The 3-D shots in the Journey 3D trailer were probably composed for the movie, where they play much longer. But cut into a conventional trailer, it just didn’t work. ([link ](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5033580116498129767&q=Journey+to+the+Center+of+the+Earth+3D+trailer&total=32&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0))

> You don’t need to be in 3-D at every step of the way. And as long as your work will be viewed in 2-D as well as 3-D, whether in a hybrid theatrical release or later on DVD, it is probably healthy to do a lot of the work in 2-D along the way. I cut on a normal Avid, and only when the scene is fine-cut do we output left and right eye video tracks to the server in the screening room and check the cut for stereo. Nine times out of 10 we don’t change anything for 3-D.

I spoke with a writer-director during the strike who had the opposite experience. To get the cutting to work right in 3-D, he and his editor were constantly checking the “deep version.” And that’s a not newbie predilection — for Zodiac, David Fincher cut in HD with a giant screen.

No matter how advanced the technology gets, while you’re in the editing room, you’re still working with a rough approximation of what the final film will look and sound like. Just as with color timing, music and FX, anticipating the depth effect is something you’ll need to remember and forget while cutting.

> For three-fourths of a century of 2-D cinema, we have grown accustomed to the strobing effect produced by the 24 frame per second display rate. When we see the same thing in 3-D, it stands out more, not because it is intrinsically worse, but because all other things have gotten better. Suddenly the image looks so real it’s like you’re standing there in the room with the characters, but when the camera pans, there is this strange motion artifact. It’s like you never saw it before, when in fact it’s been hiding in plain sight the whole time.

> [P]eople have been asking the wrong question for years. They have been so focused on resolution, and counting pixels and lines, that they have forgotten about frame rate. Perceived resolution = pixels x replacement rate. A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second … with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won’t. Higher pixel counts only preserve motion artifacts like strobing with greater fidelity. They don’t solve them at all.

An example of why James Cameron is the Steve Jobs of filmmakers: he understands that what matters is the user experience, not the hard numbers. He also sees how important it is to control the entire process, from shooting through exhibition. The best camera technology is worthless if you can’t get the results you want in a theater.

The good news is that the next generation of moviegoers seems ready to forget that 24fps is how movies are “supposed to” look. And changes within a digital delivery system should be much less painful than the switchover from our current, analog system.

I know it seems like I’ve quoted a lot here, but the interview is long, and there’s a lot more in it about other aspects of the technology which will be interesting to anyone geeky enough to [click through](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864.html?categoryid=2868&cs=1).