John August

Search Results for: 3 page challenge

Scrippets for Blogger

Geek Alert, Hive Mind, Scrippets

The [Scrippets](http://scrippets.org) [plug-in for WordPress](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-scrippets/) seems to be working well for self-hosted blogs, but it’s no use to folks who use services like Blogger, Tumblr and the like. For people on these platforms, the cost of simplicity is customization — they’re easy to use and hard to modify.

But in an effort to share the scrippets love, Nima and I have hacked together a solution to let users on these platforms copy-and-paste scrippets. It’s not as elegant as a plug-in, but it works.

It’s a two-part process.

First, you need to install the [scrippets CSS](http://pastie.org/273557). I wrote up instructions on [how to do it for Blogger](http://scrippets.org/blogger), but the same basic theory should hold for any other blogging or forum system that lets you modify the CSS.

Second, write your scrippet. We have a new [Scrippets Maker](http://scrippets.org/maker.html) that will automatically generate the code to copy-and-paste into your post.

So if you’re feeling brave — or if you want to duplicate your entry in the Scene Challenge on your own blog — give it a shot. You can even add Scrippets Maker to your bookmarks bar. Just drag the following up to your bookmarks:

Scrippets Maker

Do you have a better solution?
===

Currently, Scrippet Maker is a page, but it would make a lot of sense as a bookmarklet. That’s in the works, but if you want to roll your own, by all means do it.

Coders out there might have a slicker overall solution for non-Wordpress users, and I’d love to hear it. Many systems (including Blogger) allow outside JavaScripts, so it may be possible to do text filtering much like the WP plug-in. The core scrippetize function is [already available in JavaScript](http://pastie.org/273604).

Meanwhile, there is the bigger issue of how to handle systems that don’t allow CSS modification at all — and forums that don’t want to deal with it. I’d love to find a way to let users link to a graphic version of a scrippet. (Essentially, click a button and the server converts the div into a jpg or png, and provides a link.)

As always, your brainstorms are welcome. And proof-of-concept links will be most graciously received.

Five quick questions

Big Fish, Formatting, Projects, QandA, Words on the page

I have lots of questions, but by all means choose two you’d like to answer.

— Ric
New Zealand

questionmark1) What’s the commercial potential of movies without happy endings? I’m tired of every movie having to end in a good way, even if that’s a main character surviving a slasher flick. Does a movie automatically fail if it ends with the world blowing up? Forrest Gump wouldn’t quite be the same movie if Forrest suddenly went mad and killed everyone, but surely not every single movie has to end on a good note.

Movies can certainly end with everyone dead, ((Consider The Blair Witch Project, or Cloverfield. If either of these are spoilers, you’re officially behind on popular culture.)) and it’s not at all uncommon to kill off key protagonists (e.g. Romeo and Juliet, Titanic). Even a comedy can end on mixed notes — The Graduate being a good example. But your basic assumption is correct: the commercial potential of most movies is going to be stronger if it ends happily, simply because people will walk out of the theater happy. So you need to decide how important a happy ending is to your story, knowing the extra challenges you face with a downbeat ending.

I’d also challenge you to remember that a happy ending doesn’t necessarily mean everyone skipping off into the sunset. From The Godfather to Aliens, many great movies end on a note of uncertainty. The immediate threat may have passed, but the road ahead is dangerous.

questionmark2) What’s the best way to handle an “early life” part of a film, where you need to show the character growing up? How much is too much? How many “stages” are too many? Will it break the movie if my screenplay uses the whole first act to show incidents: at birth, 5 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old, 14 years old (and that’s condensing things, stage-wise) and then further flashbacks later on? And how do I show the character’s “want” or “why” through all of this? Or is it okay if the want or why doesn’t start until later in the film?

Every movie works differently, but trying to include that many stages will almost certainly fail. Here’s why.

In a book, aging a child from five to seven to ten to fourteen costs you nothing. You can skip from age to age, incident to incident, without trouble. Readers don’t have a strong expectation about “when the story is supposed to get started,” so as long as you are holding their interest, you’re okay.

In a movie, aging a child from five to seven to ten to fourteen means casting at least three actors. ((I’m assuming the same child actor is playing 5 and 7, or 7 and 10.)) Each time, you’re forcing the audience to identify with a new kid, with a new face, and new quirks. The replacement cost is very high, so it has to be really worthwhile to consider doing it.

More importantly, movie audiences have strong expectations about when the story is supposed to get started, and we know the story won’t really begin until we reach the grown-up version. Any scenes involving the young versions are going to feel like stalling.

Big Fish follows Edward Bloom’s life from the day he was born until the day he dies, but deliberately structures those moments to tell the bigger story of Edward and Will’s reconciliation. That’s the A-plot, and everything else is in service of that. In fantasy flashbacks, we see Edward very briefly as an infant, then jump ahead to him as ten-year old. After that, he’s either adult (Ewan MacGregor) or elderly (Albert Finney).

Get to the grown-up. We need to know much less of a character’s history than you think.

questionmark3) What is, in your opinion, the best way to write a synopsis?

A good synopsis doesn’t follow the plot beat-by-beat, but gathers together related story threads to explain What It’s About rather than exactly What Happens. Depending on its purpose, a synopsis can be two sentences or two pages, but I find almost any movie can be well described in a paragraph.

questionmark4) How would I show someone “studying really hard all year.” Would that be a montage?

Yes, but it sounds incredibly dull. Please avoid it.

questionmark5) Say the character starts singing a song and then all these different scenes start showing. How would I write that, considering each scene coincides with certain lyrics?

The character begins singing, then as you move through other scenes, you include the next part of the song as voice-over.

BOY’S CHORUS

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies / For amber waves of grain...

SONG CONTINUES as we...

CUT TO:

INT. PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE – DAY

Mrs. Wiggin’s ginormous bare butt bounces up and down. She’s evidently straddling Mr. Garcia.

BOY’S CHORUS (V.O., CONT’D)

For purple mountains majesty, / Above the fruited plain.

Mrs. Wiggins opens her mouth in wide-eyed ecstasy:

BOY’S CHORUS (V.O., CONT’D)

America! America! / God shed his grace on thee.

CUT TO:

FIVE MINUTES LATER

Sweaty and slaked, Mrs. Wiggins lights a cigarette. Mr. Garcia is trying to work a kink out of his back.

BOY’S CHORUS (V.O., CONT’D)

And crown thy good / With brotherhood

BACK TO:

INT. AUDITORIUM – NIGHT

BOY’S CHORUS

From sea to shining sea!

The parents APPLAUD.

Looking at the credit proposals

Film Industry

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) determines who is the credited writer on a feature film. This is a Good Thing. It prevents studios, producers and directors from grabbing undeserved credit. But it makes for a lot of work and controversy within the Guild, because inevitably some writers will not receive credit they believe they deserve. It’s not just a matter of pride and bragging rights. Credits also determine who receives residuals.

For readers unfamiliar with how screen credits work, here’s the briefest introduction.

Let’s say you write a movie, and it gets made. If you were the only writer who worked on it, you get “Written by” credit, both on screen and in advertising.

If another writer was hired to work on the movie, then the two of you attempt to figure out who gets credit, possibly dividing up “Story by” and “Screenplay by” credit. For instance, you might take “Story by” while sharing the “Screenplay by” credit. ((When you see two writers names separated by “and” in the credits, that means they worked independently, as opposed to an ampersand (&), which denotes a writing team like Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel.))

What happens if you and the other writer can’t figure out a fair deal? Arbitration.

The Guild recruits three members (writers) to read all of the relevant drafts and determine who should get credit. Both the arbiters and the participating writers remain anonymous — the drafts are labelled “Writer A,” “Writer B,” etc.

It’s an exhausting and imperfect process, and the source of never-ending conversation among any gathering of more than three working screenwriters.

This week, the joint credits review committee of the WGAw and WGAE sent out [three proposals for amending the credits process](http://wga.org/subpage_writersresources.aspx?id=2859). They’re very modest, and don’t try to tackle any of the bigger and more controversial topics ((Foremost of these is the Catering Analogy. Currently, the guy who drives the catering truck has his name listed in the end credits of a movie, but a writer who spent months toiling on it gets no mention at all, even though her impact on the final product is much greater.))

But they’re worth close examination.

1. Arbiter Teleconference In the Case of Non-Unanimous Decisions
The current manual states that each arbiter shall reach his/her decision independently of the other arbiters and that there shall be no conference among the members of the Arbitration Committee. The proposed change would allow for a Guild-hosted teleconference among the arbiters and the Arbitration Consultant in the event the Arbitration Committee is unable to reach a unanimous decision as to the appropriate writing credit. The identities of the arbiters would remain confidential during the teleconference. If a unanimous decision is not reached during the teleconference, the majority decision will be final.

Easy yes. I’ve served on several arbitrations that have resulted in split decisions, and would have greatly appreciated the ability to talk with the other two arbiters about how they reached their decisions and why. Did they notice something I didn’t? Is there something I could point out to them? Generally, these decisions come down to pretty small issues that merit discussion.

Currently, when arbiters are coming up with different credits, it falls on a WGA staffer to talk to each arbiter individually and see there is common ground to be reached. Not only is it inefficient, but it introduces an outside element to the decision.

A telephone conference call maintains the anonymity and autonomy of the process, and should result in better, quicker and more thoughtful decisions.

2. Eliminate Relaxed (“Any Substantial Contribution”) Standard
The current manual states that where a production executive or production executive team makes the requisite contribution to receive screenplay credit, the Arbitration Committee may — but is not obligated to — accord any other writer screenplay credit for “any substantial contribution,” without that writer meeting any specific percentage requirement. The proposed change would eliminate the relaxed standard and provide that the normal percentages apply, even where one of the participating writers is a production executive or a production executive team.

Yeah, my eyes glazed over too. It’s difficult to parse. So let’s break it down.

“Production executive” in this case means a producer or director, rather than a studio suit. So the proposal is talking about situations in which one of the participating writers on the project is also the producer or director. For sake of example, let’s call her WRITER B. ((For WGA credits, a writing team is treated as a single writer, so the same would apply if it were two writers working together. But note also proposal #3.))

As the rules stand now, if Writer B gets credit, the arbitration panel may also award credit to any other writer who provides “any substantial contribution,” disregarding the normal percentage requirements.

This is weird.

You’re throwing out all the rules and asking the arbiters to possibly consider awarding credit based on an oxymoron (“any substantial”), without offering guidance as to why the special case exists.

My hunch is that the “any substantial contribution” clause was enacted to thwart a situation in which a writer-director (or writer-producer) rewrites someone else’s script so completely that the original writer would find it impossible to get credit based on real percentages.

Having been on both sides of arbitrations, I can tell you that it’s extremely unlikely for the original writer of a spec script to come out uncredited. But the real question is why this special case only kicks in when one of the writers is also a producer or director — a situation that already requires a higher threshold to receive credit — and why it doesn’t just apply to the original writer, but ANY writer who works on the movie.

It’s a weird, bad, dangerous precedent, and it should be changed. So I vote yes on the proposal.

3. Eliminate 60% Rule for Production Executive Teams
The current manual states that where a subsequent writer is a production executive team (i.e., one or more members of the team is a production executive), the team must contribute “substantially more than 60%” to receive screenplay credit. This rule applies even if one of the team members is not a production executive. The proposed change would reduce the threshold for a production executive team to receive screenplay credit from “substantially more than 60%” to “more than 50%.” The change would bring subsequent production executive teams into line with subsequent production executives who write alone, who are currently subject to a “more than 50%” requirement.

Again, not the easiest paragraph to read, but easy to agree with once you understand it. Let’s take it from the bottom to the top.

Currently, for a Production Executive (really, a writer-director or writer-producer) to receive credit, she must have contributed more than 50%. That’s higher than the threshold for non-production executives, which stands at 33%.

Currently, if a Production Executive is writing as a member of a team (for example, Todd McClever & Sarah Goodwit, of which Goodwit is the director), they need to show that they’ve contributed “substantially more than 60%.”

This doesn’t make sense.

Why should McClever’s presence change anything?

The proposal has it right: if we’re going to set a higher threshold for hyphenates, it needs to be consistent.

The upshot
—-

All three get a “yes” from me.

But make no mistake: they’re very modest improvements. Over the next few years, the real discussion needs to be how to accurately and fairly recognize who wrote on a movie. The current credits system reflects failed attempts at social engineering, penalizing hyphenates and encouraging writers to make Hail-Mary attempts at credit through arbitration, since it’s the only way they’ll see their name on something.

For now, though, the committee deserves a thank you for presenting three proposals for patching glaring holes in the current setup.

How to explain quantum mechanics

How-To, Words on the page

One of the more common challenges faced by a screenwriter is how to explain a difficult concept that’s important to your plot. For instance, in Jurassic Park, we need to understand how the dinosaurs came to be living on that island, so that when they start running amok, we’ll feel like we’re grounded in some sense of reality.

I haven’t read Michael Crichton’s novel for Jurassic Park, but if it’s anything like his others, I suspect he spent five or more pages detailing the cloning process in exhaustive detail. You can get away with that in a book. If a reader becomes bored, she can skim ahead a few paragraphs until the story begins again. But the movie viewer is hostage, ((More specifically, someone watching a movie in a theater is hostage. On video, there’s nothing to stop a viewer from zipping ahead during dull explanations.)) forced to endure whatever information is presented, whether interesting or not.

Since the boring bits of a movie are generally the first things to get trimmed out in an edit, these crucial explanatory moments are likely to get dropped unless they’re written extremely carefully, in the (often misguided) theory that no information is better than boring information. So let’s look at some Best Practices when explaining something in a script.

Keep it short. No, even shorter than that.
—-
As the writer, you may know exactly how the Thessalactan Grid enables transdimensional travel, and why there’s a 34-second delay before the Quantifier engages. I’m sure it’s fascinating and well-reasoned. But the audience doesn’t care. Or, more precisely, the audience doesn’t need to care, because all that really matters to them is how the hero is going to get off the space station before it blows up.

HERO

How does it work?

SCIENTIST WOMAN

It creates a well in time-space that bends…

HERO

WHICH BUTTON DO I PUSH?!

Give them a guide…
—-
While the cliché of a wise old man (think Obi-Wan or Gandalf) is rightly avoided, ((One of the appeals of the Captain Marvel mythology is that the first thing Billy Batson’s wizardly mentor does is die.)) there are smart ways to use a supporting character as explainer-of-things.

For starters, make sure the character has a function beyond exposition. The Day After Tomorrow was frustrating on many levels, but I liked that Dennis Quaid was both hero and explainer. (You could say the same about Jeff Goldblum in just about every movie.) A villain is another classic choice: since he knows what he’s trying to do, he’ll likely have a concise way of explaining it. Just avoid mustache-twirling, and “before I kill you, let me just explain…”

When possible, let the hero pursue the Answer Man, rather than vice-versa. Nothing screams exposition more than a character showing up simply to explain something. If getting an answer is an explicit goal for your hero, we at least have a sense of forward progress.

…or just let the characters figure it out for themselves
—-
No one teaches Spider-Man how to use his powers. A large chunk of the first movie is spent watching Peter Parker explore his strength and web-shooting prowess. Similarly — but less successfully — the hero of Jumper finds he’s able to teleport, and receives no training or guidance until quite late in the movie. ((The lack of any instructor or context-setting becomes a real problem once the villains are introduced. Poor Samuel L. Jackson is forced to announce his motivations, but they’re so nonsensical that we’re forced to conclude he’s either (a) lying or (b) bat-shit crazy.))

If characters need to learn something for themselves, try to build situations that are both organic and progressive: you want to build upon simple, relatable discoveries. A great recent example is the videogame Portal (from the Orange Box), in which the player has to learn how to control a physics-defying device. While there’s a disembodied voice who seems to be offering guidance, she’s actually just a comedic menace. The real learning comes from carefully-designed levels, each with a specific (but unstated) teaching objective. ((The game is worth it just for the developer commentary. And the cake.))

In screenplay terms, this means letting the characters experiment. The first Narnia movie would have played very differently if the children had landed in the snowy woods without any sense of how to get back; the quest to return home would have felt obligatory. By letting them cross back and forth, the movie silently sets up its rule system, and lets the story chart a different path.

Take away the questions
—-
Often, the best way to answer questions is to remove them from consideration. For instance, the make-believe science of precognition in Minority Report raised a huge number of causality issues, which you could easily spend the whole movie trying to address.

But it was meant to be a thriller, not a head-scratcher, so I added a scene in which a skeptic (Witwer) catches a glass ball just as it rolls off a table.

KNOTT

Why did you catch that?

WITWER

Because it was going to fall.

FLETCHER

You’re certain?

WITWER

Yes.

JAD

But it didn’t fall. You caught it.

Witwer smiles a little, starting to catch on.

JAD (CONT’D)

The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.

WITWER

It’s the same with the murders.

FLETCHER

The precogs are showing us what’s going to happen unless we stop it.

Like time travel, foreknowledge of the future is always going to involve paradoxes and gotchas. But by showing it as something visual and physical, we’ve preempted endless questions about the physics and ethics of their legal system. While we’ll learn more about how it works (by meeting the precogs), the ontological overhead has been reduced to a ball rolling across a table.

It’s like…
—-
Such similes and metaphors can be a screenwriter’s best friends. How do you explain a margin call? “It’s like you’ve been buying stock with a credit card, and suddenly you have to pay the bill.” How are you going to catch the subatomic weapon? “Picture a net, but made of magnetic waves.” Does a clone have a soul? “Absolutely. It’s an identical twin, just born later.” Or, “No. It’s like a bad photocopy.”

Roll tape
—-
Speaking of clones, in David Koepp’s script for Jurassic Park, he packaged all the how-we-did-it information in an animated film strip. In Dodgeball, the rules of the game are established in a black-and-white educational film about the history of the sport. And in Lost, the Dharma Initiative’s training films provide both crucial information (“keep entering the code”) and intriguing clues about what’s really going on.

Obviously, it’s not always possible or appropriate for your characters to stop what they’re doing to watch a film. But if it makes sense in context, it’s worth considering. Just keep it entertaining, and brief.

“Entertaining and brief” is good advice no matter which method you choose for presenting difficult information. Done artfully, the reader should never sense that he’s being told anything. It was just story. To that end, avoid scenes which could be summarized, “Hero learns…” That’s a tip-off that your character is listening rather seeking, observing rather than participating. “Discovering” is an action. So are “confronting,” “exploring,” and “testing.” Put your characters to work, and the audience will never realize they’re getting an explanation.