QandA

Shoe leather and bric-a-brac

April 18, 2005 Glossary

[Artful Writer](http://artfulwriter.com) has a great list of [shorthand jargon](http://artfulwriter.com/archives/2005/04/test_ms_html.html) from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker school of comedy. Even if you never end up using the terms, they provide a useful guide to the do’s and don’t-do’s of comedy writing.

While you’re reading up, check out John Roger’s [comedy glossary](http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/04/writing-jargon-preservation.html) at [Kung Fu Monkey](http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/). (Link via [Artful Writer](http://artfulwriter.com))

Writing about real events

April 18, 2005 QandA, Rights and Copyright

I’m writing a spec akin to [The People vs. Larry Flynt](http://imdb.com/title/tt0117318/combined) or [Catch Me if You Can](http://imdb.com/title/tt0264464/combined) that involves several real people, the FCC and a major U.S. company. There’s a lot on record regarding the incident in newspapers etc. I’ve hunted down the main character (a private citizen) and will talk to him about rights to his story. Assuming there hasn’t been a book written about the incident, what is the protocol for using real people (high profile like the former head of the FCC, etc) as characters?

I’m going to guess anything transcribed in a public hearing is available as dialogue but of course it’s the juicy stuff behind closed doors that I will have to infer to progress the story along. And what about using the major company’s name? Could I use, say Kmart, if the film is about an incident with Kmart?

— Matt
San Diego

John’s Standard Advice applies here: if you’re writing this as a spec, just write the best possible script you can. Yes, down the road, there may be some legal hurdles. You might have to change a company’s name, or lose/combine/alter a character for icky defamation reasons. But those are all making-the-movie concerns, not things to freak out about while writing the script.

However. You seem like a diligent guy, so there are things you can do now to save yourself some trouble down the road. First off, make a list of “facts” as you understand them. Who is who, who knew what, when things happened. For each of these facts, make a note of how you know this. Is it a matter of public record (i.e. you’re looking at court testimony), a newspaper story, or an interview you conducted yourself? Basically, pretend you’re a fact-checker working on a major story for the New York Times. Be detailed. Be obsessive.

Then tuck this list away. Don’t even think about it while you write.

A lot of what makes a script interesting isn’t fact. It’s the stuff in-between the facts: conversations that probably took place, motives that make sense but aren’t documented. While you’re writing about real people, you’re writing characters, and characters can’t be found in court testimony. You’re going to have to make some stuff up — so make it compelling. Find a point of view. You’re trying to create two hours of great movie, and great movies are rarely objective.

Do people sue when movies are made about them? Sometimes. But the fact is that no one is going to sue you, Matt Screenwriter from San Diego, for writing your script. It’s only when a script becomes a movie that the fear of lawsuits really merits any attention. And by that point, you’ll have more studio lawyers than you can handle. Hand ’em that list you made and let them do their job.

How to include abstract images

April 13, 2005 Formatting, QandA

There is one element that I have to include, as it is integral to the script. It is a recurring image of a curved line that reveals itself as a circle to the background of a high speed train.

How can I format this properly as there is no scene heading for it?

— John C.
via [IMDb](http://indie.imdb.com/Indie/Ask/)

Beginning screenwriters often get too nervous about formatting, scared that one missing scene header will make their scripts un-filmable. Or worse, un-commercial.

Get over it. If you need to write your curved train tracks, just write ’em. Images like this don’t need their own scene headers; just treat them as stand-alone sluglines, or little mini-scenes.

A CURVED LINE

slowly moves across the screen. We’re looking at something from a very high angle, but it’s not clear what.

TRANSITION TO:

EXT. SOMEWHERE ELSE

And a scene happens.

Later in the script, when you need to finally reveal what this image actually is, you might try something like this:

THE SAME CURVED LINE

stretches across the screen. Now, a high-speed train enters from the bottom of the frame, running along the arc — actually the tracks of the French TGV.

We RUSH IN closer, feeling the energy of the train as it races through mustard-yellow fields. We drop alongside the fourth car, looking in through the window to find Charlotte asleep, her head tilted against the glass.

Movable Type vs. WordPress

April 12, 2005 Geek Alert, QandA

Not a screen-writing question, I’m afraid — more a “Geek Alert” one.

I’ve got a blog on blogger.com at the moment, and am thinking of
moving to a different blogging tool. I’m a techie by background
(computer science degree) now working in film visual effects
(currently on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and would love to
have much more flexibility than blogger.com gives.

How have you found WordPress vs. Movable Type? They are the two that I
am currently thinking about switching to, and would love to get your
take on the two. How flexible are they, and do they allow you pretty
much any access to the data that you would want?

— Hugh Macdonald
London

In another post, I’ll talk about blogging recommendations for the not-so-technically inclined.

geek alert It sounds like you, Hugh, are geeky enough that either [WordPress](http://wordpress.org) or [Movable Type](http://movabletype.org) will work fine for you. WordPress is done in PHP, while Movable Type is (mostly) Perl, so if one of those languages is more your strong suit, let that be your guide. And if you don’t feel like climbing under the hood, the default installs of either WordPress or Movable are pretty powerful, and both have plug-ins that let you do a lot without touching a line of code.

There are some technical and philosophical differences between the two systems as well. WordPress generates each page on-demand (at the moment someone requests it), which allows more flexibility in design and upkeep, at the cost of a slight delay in page loading. Movable Type, on the other hand, stores static pages that can be loaded very quickly — but can slow down when you make a change that ripples throughout the site. In recent revisions, both WordPress and Movable Type have taken on some of the other’s strengths — MT can generate certain page on the fly, while plug-ins for WP allow it to cache frequently-requested pages.

Both in terms of pricing and spirit, WordPress is “more free” than Movable Type. Movable Type is an honest-to-goodness company, with the goal of making a profit. For a single user, the MT software costs $70. WordPress, on the other hand, is open-source, and free. Both platforms have active support forums, but in my experience, the basic documentation on Movable Type is better.

I found WordPress much easier to install, however. The trickiest part is setting up the MySQL database, and the instructions do a good job explaining that. Movable Type has a much better exporting system, which ironically makes it a lot easier to move from MT to WP than vice-versa.

In summary, they’re both good. My gut tells me you’ll pick WordPress. But if you really want to impress the geeks at the FX bay, also check out [Ruby on Rails](http://www.rubyonrails.org), which is very much roll-your-own, but allows for immense customization.

« Previous Page