John August

QandA

My role in Transformers

Film Industry, Los Angeles, News, QandA

questionmarkAre you in TRANSFORMERS? There’s a quick shot of a soldier escorting someone away from a helicopter. On screen for two or three seconds. Looks EXACTLY like you.

Just curious.

— Ben
Los Angeles

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but as far as I know, I am not in [Transformers](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418279/). I have a somewhat ordinary face, and coupled with my big bald head, it’s not uncommon for someone at the gym to say, “You were really good last night on Law and Order.” (Apparently, my doppelganger was a white supremacist.)

But I can’t say definitively that I’m _not_ in Transformers.

Years ago, a friend called to say, “I saw you in ‘L.A. Doctors!'” That was a CBS show at the time. She described the scene: I was walking a pug on Melrose Avenue. Which was in fact my dog. I was probably walking home from Starbucks when a second-unit camera crew caught me. (Yes, they should have had me sign a release. No, it’s never worth pursuing.)

I guess it’s possible the filmmakers digitally put my face on some random soldier. They certainly had the technology; they put all those tentacles on Bill Nighy for the second and third Pirates movies. But [Occam’s Razor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) would suggest it’s probably just a guy who looks like me.

Split screens

Formatting, QandA, Recycled

How would you go about writing two scenes in a script that run at the
same time in split screen, but don’t necessarily have anything to do with
each other? Basically like a scene from the movie Timecode.

–John

That’s a real challenge to do in standard screenplay format. While someone watching a movie can follow the action happening in multiple sections of the screen at once, the reader simply can’t. Reading is a left-to-right, top-to-bottom process. So you’re going to have to figure out another way to communicate the same idea.

Your approach depends on how crucial the split-screen timing becomes. For instance, in an earlier draft of the first CHARLIE’S ANGELS, there was a chase sequence between Alex (Lucy Liu) and the Thin Man (Crispin Glover), in which they were both trying to get to the roof of the building in order to reach the satellite dish that Eric Knox was using. The chase started with the two characters on opposite sides of an iron fence, which formed the dividing line down the middle of the screen. We then followed each character on separate, sometimes overlapping paths, as they fought their way to the roof. Finally, Alex kicked the Thin Man “through” the center dividing line.

In this example, the exact timing of who-is-where-when was important, so I chose to write the action as two parallel columns on a horizontal page. It was a pain in the ass to format, because Final Draft couldn’t handle it, so each time I printed out the script I had to make sure to leave blank “filler” pages in which to insert the properly-formatted side-by-side pages. Still, it was a fun challenge.

Ultimately, the split-screen stuff was dropped and the sequence became about Alex and the Thin Man kicking the crap out of each other.

For TIMECODE, Mike Figgis apparently didn’t work off a traditional screenplay at all. The entire movie was rehearsed and reshot more than a dozen times. To figure out who-is-where-when, Figgis used musical score sheets.

For your script, since the two sides don’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, I would recommend writing the scenes out straight. If it’s important to indicate to the reader that certain scenes are playing side-by-side, just put a note in parentheses in the first line of a scene’s description. It’s not a perfect solution, but in most cases that’s as straightfoward as you’re going to get.

(This article originally ran September 29, 2003.)

September 11th

Psych 101, QandA

(Note: This article comes from February 2002. I’m including it as part of my summer reruns, and crossing my fingers it doesn’t become timely.)

Finding inspiration
and motivation to write is hard enough on an average day, but ever since the
September 11th attacks and the chaos which has followed, I feel especially
useless.
As I am not a professional writer, there are no demands
or deadlines forcing me to stretch those muscles with any regularity. The
state of the world we
live in makes me sad, angry, and afraid. While those emotions may drive others
to create an expression of their feelings, I simply say to myself, "Why
should I bother? Movies don’t really matter."
How have you been dealing with the recent events and if you don’t mind, should
I bother? Thank you for taking the time.

–Russ

Screenwriting is a pretty trivial profession even on the most sun-dappled
days. In the context of human tragedy and international strife, it’s even harder
to justify the ninth revision of your hockey-playing chimpanzee comedy. (For
the record, there is already a hockey-playing
chimpanzee comedy.)
Much like every single person in North America, I went through the same stages
of bewilderment, frustration, grief and fear after the September attacks. But
after about a week, I got back on the saddle and started writing again.

Why? I think the answer is that I had to do something, and I’m better at writing
than anything else I’ve found. I’m a pretty good cook, and know my way around
a Macintosh in terms of graphic design, but pretty much the only hope I have
of keeping a roof over my head is to continue to write. I don’t always enjoy
it, and sometimes it makes me miserable. But in the sense that anyone truly
has a calling, this is probably mine.

Now, since I’m a screenwriter and not a psychologist or counsellor, I’m completely
unqualified to judge whether the sadness, anger and fear you’re feeling five
months after the attacks is healthy. Obviously, it’s unproductive in the most
literal sense, since you wish to be writing but find you can’t. So my advice
to you would be my advice to any friend in your situation: find somebody who
can help you out.

For what it’s worth, my friends and family who’ve sought help invariably say
they wasted months making up their minds to see someone. Once they finally
did, things improved much faster than they expected, and the world seemed much
less onerous.

As far as should you bother writing, I’d argue it’s absolutely worth the trouble.
Because while it’s true that some things did change on September 11th, 99.9%
of things are exactly the same as they were on September 10th. What did change
is your perception of them, and that’s a much easier problem to address.

Linear writing for non-linear films

QandA, Story and Plot

When writing a narrative that jumps back and forth throughout
time and events (ie. PULP FICTION, THE KILLING) is it standard operating procedure
to write the story in a more traditional straight ahead format then re-arrange
the script;
or is the script written in a non-linear format as we see it in the movie?

–Matt Higgins

While there have been cases where a film’s timeline was juggled after-the-fact
(HEAVEN AND EARTH was one), the vast majority of scripts are written with the
non-linear elements in place. It’s
a cliché, but screenplays are
really
blueprints for making a movie, so the two forms should match up scene-by-scene.

If you’re planning to write a story that will ultimately unfold in a non-linear
way, such as GO or MEMENTO, it’s a good idea to make a second outline of the
story as it happens in "real time," to make sure the logic tracks.
In fact, this kind of outline is helpful with any kind of story, because even
if a script moves forward scene by scene, inevitably characters will refer
to things that happened "earlier," and it’s important to make sure
all these events could have happened in the sequence you propose.

Personally, I find that non-linear structure is often just a flashy trick
to disguise bad storytelling, or worse, a boring plot. It demands that the
audience pay closer attention in order to figure out what’s going on, but rarely
rewards the effort.

An analogy: When laser printers first arrived, they gave people access to
calligraphy fonts like Zapf Chancery Italic, a typeface designed for wedding
invitations. Suddenly, people printed entire newsletters in 9-point Zapf Chancery
Italic, without any consideration of whether it was the right tool for the
job. (It’s not. It’s almost unreadable.) Now I cringe whenever I see the font.
It’s been ruined for me.

What these novice designers – and many novice screenwriters – failed to recognize
is that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. I wrote
GO with three overlapping chunks because that’s the only way it made sense;
to intercut between the plotlines would have slowed everything down too much
and made it confusing. In short, I used a strange timeline because that’s what
the story required.

Always ask yourself why you’re choosing a particular way of telling the story.
Used well, and with the right material, non-linear structure can be a very
powerful technique. Used poorly, it just makes a crappy movie harder to follow.

(Originally posted in 2003.)