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The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 538 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today’s episode is something new for us. One of our listeners, Jake Kelley, he wrote in to say that, “Many of my favorite episodes are the ones focused on craft, yet I find myself drawn to those discussions on being a screenwriter, which offer so much insight.” I put this show together to be somewhat the antithesis of a craft compendium. It won’t help you on your script right now, but offers a way to becoming a rounded and mature creative thinker. Jake provided the episodes and time codes for his vision of what this episode could be. Megana and Matthew took those suggestions and a few other bits to come up with this compendium of our conversations, not about screenwriting per se, but being a screenwriter.

If you’re Premium member, you of course have access to the backup episodes, all 537 of them. Today, Premium members should stick around for my conversation with Jake about why he picked these clips and how Scriptnotes has influenced his work as a visual artist, so enjoy. This first clip comes from Episode 6: How kids becoming screenwriters.

What we might talk about today is how people become screenwriters. I don’t mean how to become a screenwriter, because there’s countless books you can buy on any shelf in a Borders to tell you how to be–

Craig Mazin: I would take my microphone off and leave this podcast.

John: Another podcast we’ll talk about the so-called experts and our fury about some of the screenwriting books out there. Rather than talking about how to become a screenwriter, I want to talk about how a person becomes a screenwriter and the paths to that, because if you talk to a professional tennis player and say like, “Hey, how did you become a professional tennis player?” they’ll say something like, “Oh, when I was eight I started playing tennis, and I just played tennis for forever, and now I’m a professional tennis player.” It’s not that they were 21 and they picked up a racket for the first time and became a professional tennis player. That just doesn’t happen. Or if you talk to a doctor and you say like, “Hey, how did you become a doctor?” maybe they were interested in medicine growing up or maybe thought, “I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,” but they didn’t really do anything serious about becoming a doctor until they went to college, and really until they went to medical school. They might’ve studied the sciences they needed, they got prerequisites they needed, but they didn’t do anything serious to become a doctor until quite late in the game.

Screenwriting is not really either one of those paths. There’s not a thing you could point to where you say, “I’m an eight-year-old who wants to become a screenwriter.” Not only does that not really happen, there’s not even a meaningful way to think about that.

Craig: True, true. It’s the difference between the word “career” and the word “vocation.” “Vocation,” the “voc” root is designed to imply a calling, that you’re called to this somehow by–

John: An evocation.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. Screenwriting falls into that area. You have this innate desire to tell stories, but when does that come, where does that come from, and how do you know you have it, and all that?

John: Malcolm Gladwell famously has been trumpeting this idea of 10,000 hours, that if you look at people who are very successful in any field, you can track back and they’ve put in 10,000 hours of practice to get up to that point. It applies particularly well to sports figures, but even other professions, like musicians and other artists. You can really see that they’ve put in the 10,000 hours of time to get up to their mastery of something. No screenwriter I know, at least no screenwriter I know that’s ever getting started, has put in 10,000 hours of writing screenplays. That just doesn’t happen. You don’t start writing screenplays when you’re six.

Craig: That’s right. If you’ve put in 10,000 hours of screenwriting and you’re still not a professional screenwriter, you suck.

John: That is true. You’re sad, and you probably suck.

Craig: You’re sad and you suck.

John: It’s just a tragedy that’s happened there, because 10,000 hours is a lot of time.

Craig: That’s a huge chunk of your life.

John: I’m not gonna open my little Solver program and tell you exactly how many days and weeks and moments of Seasons of Love that is, but it’s a lot of Seasons of Love to get to 10,000 hours. As I’ve thought more about how did I become a screenwriter, where did I get that experience… The first thing I wrote wasn’t great, but it wasn’t, like I said, I put 10,000 hours in between my first screenplay and Go. Go was a pretty good screenplay. It’s that I think I can make a good argument that I actually had my 10,000 words of experience and exposure in there. It wasn’t all writing, and it certainly didn’t look like screenwriting.

My first memory of this storytelling kind of stuff that I do now is, as a boy I would often… First off, I always woke up really early, and my parents wouldn’t let me come out of my room, so I had to stay in my room and play with all my toys. I would always line up my little toys. There’d be two rival faction armies. Actually, not really armies. They were sort of like Battle of the Network Stars. They’d be on the other side of the river and they’d have to come some competitions and things. I’d always have my favorites, but my favorites wouldn’t always win, because that’s the way the narrative should play.

I’d always have this ongoing narrative of the battle of the network toys, that later progressed once I was allowed to stay up to watch the James Bond movies on Monday nights right before school started in the fall. Again, James Bond and new fall TV shows coinciding in the fall, it was an important season for me. Once I was allowed to watch the James Bond movies on ABC, a lot of my imagination play became James Bond. I was on the speedboat. It was really my bed. I would build myself a graveling hook out of a hanger and some string and do James Bondy kind of things. I think that my early narrative development in the sense of figuring out how this action sequence worked was really as a six or seven-year-old playing James Bond in my room.

Craig: I know exactly what you mean. There’s a way to practice the art of storytelling without actually writing. My experience was around the same time as you, six, seven years old. First of all, I saw Star Wars, which blew my brain open. Then I had a clear memory that almost every night when I would go to bed, I would stay up for about 30, 40 minutes, with the lights out, in my bed, just I guess you’d call it daydreaming, although it was evening, just imagining scenarios. Just imagining. Just envisioning little movies in my head. I would make little sound effects to go along with things. My dad would come in and say, “Stop making rocket noises.” I remember that was the phrase, “rocket noises,” because everything was blowing up all the time. I would do that every night. I don’t know what it was. I was just compelled to tell stories in my head.

John: There’s an assumption that it’s all about how much you read as a kid. I was certainly a big reader, but I wasn’t a bigger reader than many of my peers, most of whom aren’t involved in any sort of narrative writing capability. I read a lot. I read the same kinds of things. I read a lot of the Encyclopedia Browns and the Three Investigators and the things that people read, but it was the imagining my own stories constantly that was more important. I did write. I did some creative writing. I probably wrote stories earlier than other kids might have done that. I was rewarded with teacher praise for doing a good job with it. I can’t chart that writing, my ability to put some words together, with my interest in telling movie style stories later on.

Craig: I’m with you. I remember always having a sense of narrative structure. I read a lot when I was a kid. I would say movies certainly inspired more of my visual sense. In my mind I would tell stories in a very visual way. The books that I did love would inspire those things. The Three Investigators, I remember the thing about them I loved the most was that Jupiter Jones had his headquarters underneath the dump.

John: Uncle Titus’s dump, which is –

Craig: There you go. Thank you. That was awesome to me. I desperately wanted my own headquarters under a dump, because it was so visual and it was so cool.

John: I tried to put on weight in 3rd grade so I could be more like Jupiter Jones.

Craig: I was always more of a Pete guy. Pete seemed like the cool one. I think he broke his arm at one point though.

John: Yeah, and therefore was slightly handicapped, and therefore–

Craig: Yeah, and thus an object of pity.

John: Pity/lust, I get it.

Craig: You feel me on that one. I love those. I remember in 5th grade I had a facility for language. I found reading and writing just came easily to me. Words came easily to me. In 5th grade they asked me to deliver the graduation speech. I remember that I wrote a speech that was rather mockish and infantile, in the way that a 5th grader would. It was a lot of bad metaphors about going through doors, opening doors and closing doors behind you and nonsense like that. It had a structure. I remember that I just innately understood that there should be an introduction where you establish this metaphor of doors opening and closing in your life and then three examples and then a final conclusion where the door closes behind you and you step out and you begin again.

John: That sounds very Toastmasters.

Craig: It was as paint by numbers as you can be, but the interesting thing was there were no numbers. I just had that. I was born with formula. I don’t know, maybe you need to start there. It’s a weird thing. Instead of having to learn it, it’s already in your DNA or something.

John: I think what I can also chart as probably the biggest influence on my development that way, and where I logged a lot of my 10,000 hours, was in Dungeons and Dragons, because D and D is one of those things where on the surface of it, it just seems like you’re pretending to play with swords, and it’s a bunch of people rolling dice and sitting around and table and drinking too much Coke.

Ultimately, when you’re playing a lot of D and D, especially when you’re playing at that age, you recognize that there’s two distinct phases to Dungeons and Dragons. There’s the social aspect where you and your friends are sitting around with your parents at a card table, and you’re playing a game, and one of you is the dungeon master. The other two or three of you are playing. He’s the fighter, he’s the thief, and that’s the wizard over there, the magic user over there. You’re trying to get through this dungeon. It’s very graph papery. You’re looking at a bunch of charts. That’s the part that feels baseball statistics-y, where there’s math involved and you’re trying to win a game. As you play more of it, you get a little bit more sophisticated, you start to really focus on the story and the role-playing aspect of it where you’re pretending to be… You’re this character. You’re this character in this situation. What does this character want? You start to think about your characters independent of this dungeon that you’re going through.

My friend Jason and I had, he had his character Garrett Darkhorse, who was a ranger. We started to build out these elaborate mythologies for the Darkhorse clan and who all the people were in the different generations. Suddenly it was about your character who would have a kid, and that kid would marry the other girl from over there. You started to look at the death of your character being part of the overall arc of the thing. It’s this sophistication that came only as you got to be more sophisticated, thinking about the narrative beyond this one specific game, this one specific dungeon that you were playing.

Craig: I didn’t quite get that massively nerdy, although I did play the… Marvel had a role-playing game.

John: I remember that.

Craig: A few of my friends and I played that. I remember not caring so much for the game, which I thought was just a little odd. I never quite got into the actual game part of it, but I loved making the characters. Everybody had a character and they had a name, and then I typed up backstories for all them, sort of like what you were describing, and actually tried to make sense of their… What happens is you roll dice, and they’re like, he’s really strong and he’s really fast, but he’s stupid. That’s interesting. Now, how can I create a narrative that explains that? I remember doing that and typing it up and printing it out on my daisy wheel printer.

John: You would print out these character backstories for the people who were playing your Marvel role-playing game.

Craig: It was interesting, because what they had were like, he’s got a power and he’s this old and he’s blond. Then I would try and explain where he was from and is he a human and how did he get this way and is he related to anybody and what does he fear, and come up with… The idea I guess was that there was a narrative puzzle presented. I always thinking of screenwriting as just endless puzzle solving. The puzzle is how do you make logical sense of this, some sort of dramatic, compelling theory that makes sense of the character you just created with dice. That was fun. I don’t know so much that I spent a lot of time practicing that is why I do what I do today. It’s that I felt the need to do it in the first place that explains why I do what I do today.

John: You felt a compelling need to create narrative meaning out of this thing that actually didn’t have a lot of meaning because it was rolled by dice. You wanted it to make sense and to exist in a way. It was probably one of the earliest occasions for you to see that the decisions you were making about who the characters were would influence the kind of stories you’d want to tell with those characters. Were you being the equivalent of the dungeon master for this, where you were leading the games?

Craig: No, my friend Dave Rogers was usually the dungeon master. Interestingly, he is a Emmy award-winning director now. He’s a very, very well-regarded director in television, directs a lot of episodes of The Office.

John: I’ve noticed several people who are involved with big TV shows right now come from D and D background. John Rogers, who does Leverage, who’s done a lot of other great shows, still writes for… I guess it’s not TSR now, it’s Wizards of the Coast, who bought out the D and D franchise. I first noticed, oh, there’s this… I was looking through one of the new manuals. I noticed his name. I was like, “I wonder if that’s the same person.” I Googled, like, oh, that’s just so strange that he still is doing that. In fact, he’s doing the new Dungeons and Dragons comic book, which is great. It’s like Firefly, but with swords. If we were to have him on the show, I suspect he had a similar experience where that experience of developing characters and developing a world for characters to run around in is really similar to developing the world of a movie, or even more so, developing the world of a TV show, is that you have a sustainable world that goes beyond the adventures of this one week’s play but has an overall narrative, an overall arc. I haven’t talked to David Benioff to see whether he played much D and D, but I’ve got the feeling that it’s probably true.

Craig: Knowing David, I would guess that he did. Knowing Dan Weiss, I would guess that he did as well.

John: It’s a pretty safe bet. I’ll also stump for the new D and D manuals. I don’t actually play D and D anymore. I wouldn’t have time to. I feel like so much of what I do and get paid to do is so similar that I would be burning out that part of my brain to try to DM a session. I’d still buy the new manuals. The new manuals are fantastic. Anybody who’s listening to this who played in the past and has seen those manuals, and like, “Eh, I wouldn’t go into them,” they’re remarkably well done. It’s Gary Gygax’s sort of legacy but sort of brought through to make a lot more sense. They made very smart choices in the new books. I have a ton of them that are all sitting on shelves and I read them as leisure time books.

Craig: That’s where I would fall apart. That’s why I can’t do that sort of part of the game because I don’t understand all the rules and my mind could not wrap around on that stuff.

John: One of the things I think is interesting about where we are right now is the online games, Diablo and World of Warcraft, that seem to be very similar, where they’re doing a lot… You’re running around and you’re killing things. They don’t develop that same instinct, really, because in those games you are optimizing, because ou are trying to figure out the best kind of character to make, but the character is really just a collection of statistics. The character has no backstory. The character has no motivations beyond the quests that are assigned through the game. You have goals as a person, but that character, individually, has no goals.

Craig: I like the Bethesda games. The main quests, at least, give you some sense of identity and sense of purpose.

John: In terms of choices you make?

Craig: Even in terms of your goal. In Oblivion you are tasked with a job by the dying king. In Fallout 3 you’re actually murdered in the beginning of the… Isn’t that right, in Fallout 3? No, no. That’s not Fallout 3. That was the other one.

John: Fallout 3 is an example of a tremendous–

Craig: Oh, it was in New Vegas you’re murdered.

John: New Vegas, yeah.

Craig: In Fallout 3 you’re actually born and you’re raised by a father and then he disappears and you have to go find him. There’s some sense of character.

John: There’s a sense of character, but you’re not generating that sense of character.

Craig: No. You’re right.

John: You are essentially an audience to that character development. While you might learn a lot by observing it, you’re not responsible for the making of it. You’re not making choices about how that narrative is going to be shaped.

Craig: That’s correct. That is the difference between the passive act of playing a video game that’s presented to you and scripted for you, and the idea that you’re going to make your own story as you go along. No question. No question.

John: Our next clip is from Episode 119: Positive Moviegoing.
Craig wanted to talk about positive moviegoing, which I’m not even sure what it means, so Craig start us out. What is positive moviegoing?

Craig: It’s this thing I’ve been thinking about lately because this is the time of year when all the so-called good movies come out. A lot of them are actually good movies. I think it’s just we live in a time of snarkiness and suspicion and nobody seems to want to like anything. People a lot of times go into theaters with their arms crossed, especially in Los Angeles. We’re all in the business. I think people go to movies and they’re demanding to hate them and they’re prejudging them. You name any movie and I could just sort of come up with some pretext for hating it.

What I really have been trying to do is when I go to movie to go wanting to love it and accepting everything about it for at least 20 minutes. I don’t care what happens in the first 20 minutes, I am on board. I will accept it and I will attempt to enjoy it as best I can. I will give myself to the movie. Then at some point, okay, listen, sometimes you just don’t like movies. Sometimes they disappoint. Sometimes they anger you because you hate them so much, and that’s okay. I’m not denying that that can happen. I’ve really been trying to just give myself over to movies.

I went and I saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I went in, just gave myself to the movie, and I loved it. I think I would have loved it anyway, but I think it helped that I wasn’t judging. I just decided nobody else goes to movies to judge. Why do we go to movies to judge? Can’t we just enjoy them? Anyway, that’s my thing, positive moviegoing.

John: What you’re describing is almost like… I can picture the body language of it. It’s like you’re sitting down in your seat. You’re not crossing your arms in front of you saying like, “Okay, impress me.” You’re saying, “I’m here. I’m eager to be entertained. I will follow you wherever you go. Take me on a journey.” That’s the message you’re trying to send to this movie.

Craig: That’s right, sort of like meeting somebody at a party and they start to tell you a story. You’re standing there, so be nice. Listen to it. Give it a shot. I get so depressed when I see people ripping movies apart before they even see them.

Aline Brosh McKenna: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s easy to hate things and to bag on things. I think it’s just, it makes people feel fashionable and intellectual. It’s harder. It takes more effort to go out there and say, “You know what? Even if it wasn’t perfect, even if things aren’t prefect, sometimes things that you love are the imperfect perfect thing.” Going in there with an attitude of like, “I’m going to enjoy this. I paid my money to enjoy this, not to find something that I can sit down with my friends later and pick to shreds.”

Craig: Yeah. It will happen that we will encounter movies that infuriate us. And we will pick them to shreds and we will pick them to shreds. If you’ve earned that experience, so you’ve earned it, but there is something to be said for letting yourself be entertained and not attempt to make yourself feel better by pushing a movie away. Frankly even the feeling that, okay, it’s not perfect. How often does that happen? Movies win Oscars and people go, “Oh my god, that piece of crap won an Oscar.” Perfection is irrelevant. I almost think, okay, mistakes aren’t really mistakes. It’s just no more than I got from here to there on a road and it was a really enjoyable journey and there was a pothole. It’s just part of it.

Aline: I like it. I also think it’s very Christmas-y.

John: It’s very Christmas-y. Now, on some level are we talking about expectation? I find that a lot of times the movies that I enjoy most were the ones where my expectations were not set too high going into them. That’s why I love to see a movie during its opening weekend before everyone has sort of told me what I’m supposed to think and feel about it, because when I come into a theater with a set of expectations, nothing can surprise me. I’m sort of preconditioned to think this is how I’m supposed to feel about this particular entertainment.

Aline: Yeah. I miss the days of just going to see a movie and knowing nothing about it. My parents would drive us to the Paramus Park. We used to call it the Millionplex. It had 14 theaters. They would just drop us off there and we would see the 7:30, whatever it was, and just be happy. That’s how I saw Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which pleasantly surprised us. We laughed, fell out of our chairs laughing. We also saw Yor, The Hunter From the Future that way.

Craig: Good one.

Aline: You don’t have that surprise anymore. You’ve been so inundated with media before you go to see a movie now, that I miss the days of just thinking like, “I just want to see a movie. Let’s see what’s out there.” I miss that.

John: Yeah, I remember seeing 9 to 5 that way. I was a kid dropped off at the theater, and the theater we were supposed to go to… They just dropped us off at the wrong movie, essentially, so we saw 9 to 5. I was far too young to see 9 to 5, which is the best way to see 9 to 5, because they’re smoking pot and having sex and all these things.

Aline: Stringing people up.

John: I also remember in college going to see… We ended up seeing The Handmaid’s Tale because the other movie that we wanted to see was completely sold out. We had no idea what the movie was. That’s so incredibly rewarding when you sit in, the only information you have is what the filmmakers are giving you frame-by-frame as the story unfolds. You had that experience of positive moviegoing because you weren’t preconceived with what we were supposed to feel. There was no expectation about what to —

Aline: You haven’t checked a review aggregator that’s given you 60 opinions before you even set foot there.

Craig: Yeah, or your Twitter feed, or comedians teeing up, or whatever, anything, or even articles that are insisting that it’s the most important thing of all time. It’s funny. 9 to 5 was the first movie I think I was dropped off to see on my own. I remember it was like a weird triple date, like a weird triple fifth-grade date. What were our parents thinking? I really make an effort now when I sit in the movie theater before the movie starts to blank my mind completely. I just say, go ahead movie, write all over me and let’s see where this goes.

John: Some of my favorite experiences are actually like when you see the three trailers, or the four trailers, and then the real movie starts and you’ve forgotten what the movie was that you [unclear 00:25:40] what movie is this. Oh right, it’s the Muppets. It is very exciting.

Now, let’s talk for a second as filmmakers, as screenwriters. Is there anything we can do in those opening pages or in the opening minutes of a movie to get people in the positive moviegoing experienced? What is that like from our side as writers to hopefully foster that good spirit?

Craig: I do have one thing that lately I’ve been tending to do, and that is write a credit sequence. It became out of fashion. Originally movies used to have these opening credit sequences that includes even the credits that we now call end credits, where there are logos and rosters of people. Then there were the standard opening credit sequences. That became out of fashion. For a long time, all the credits went in the back of the movie, so you just started the movie. I really like credit sequences. I like opening credit sequences. The opening credits for Mitty are beautiful. I think that that helps kind of get everybody situated and in the mood, so I’ve been doing that lately.

John: I will also write credit sequences in movies where I feel it’s appropriate. More than anything I try to make sure that the reader and therefore the viewer feels confident, like, trust me, this is going to be a ride that you will enjoy taking with me. You’re going to feel rewarded and smart on this journey. We know what we’re doing. Everything is going to be okay. That shows up in your word selection on those first pages, but also just making sure no one is confused in a bad way in those first pages. If it’s a funny movie, you need to have something funny happen really quickly, so everyone sort of gets what the world of your movie is.

Aline: My husband has a thing where we’ll go to see a movie, and sometimes movies take forever just to get going, and he’ll turn to me at some point and say, “When does the movie start?” 20 minutes into the movie, because sometimes it just seems like, especially because we do know what movies we’re going to see, it does seem like if you’re taking 15 minutes to get us acquainted with what we’ve seen on the poster, that makes me a little itchy. I think our attention span for that has probably changed a bunch, too. I think it’s great to see if you can get to the heart of the matter so the audience knows what movie they are seeing.

John: Let’s segue to our next topic, which you brought up also, which is why it’s important to be friends with writers. My recollection, and my early days in Hollywood, I was friends with a bunch of people who were starting out in Hollywood, but they weren’t necessarily writers. I went through a graduate film program, so everyone was trying to become a producer, a film executive. Some people became writers. I didn’t necessarily seek out other writers. What was your history going to–

Aline: I feel really strongly about that. I think that people sometimes misunderstand what the idea is. The idea is not to be friends with writers who are going to network for you, or who are cool, or who are writing, or who are employed. That’s not really the critical thing. The critical thing is to have friends who do what you do and are engaged in the same kind of work that you are.

A couple of my writer friends are from the very, very, very beginning of our career before we had any success or barely any work. We don’t have workplaces in the way that… My husband works at a mutual fund. He has a workplace. He has coworkers. We don’t have that. Even when we do for a specific project, they’re just for that specific project. My ongoing workplace, my Cheers, my group of people that I check in with, are my other writer friends that I talk to on the phone periodically, or have lunch with.

John: Aline, you talk on the phone?

Aline: I talk on the phone.

John: Wow.

Craig: Who talks on the phone?

Aline: I do.

John: Wow.

Aline: We can check in on what we’re doing and say, “Hey, I was working on that. What do you think of this? Is this a good idea? What do you think of this person?” That network is invaluable. You will grow with these people. It’s less important to seek out people who you think are going to connect you with a job and more important to seek out people whose process you find productive. Gatins refers to it as lab partners. Finding a lab partner who does their homework and has a neat notebook is important.

John: I don’t think Gatins has a neat notebook. I think Gatins’s notebook is one of those PT folders that he’s like sort of half colored in as he fell asleep.

Craig: Gatins’s notebook, it’s like a folder that you open up and it looks like it’s full of stuff, and you open it up and there’s nothing in there.

Aline: It’s so brilliant.

Craig: It’s all in his head.

Aline: It’s like a workbook where he didn’t do any of the math, but around the margins are those amazing drawings and thoughts. He’s a good example. He’s a great lab partner. Also, something another friend of mine said, which is easier said than done, we were talking about having your friends read stuff. I said, “Who do you go to for that?” He said, “It’s very simple. Send it to someone who roots for you.”

Craig: Perfect. He’s exactly right.

Aline: I don’t know, it was something I hadn’t really thought of in quite that way, because I think we all have friends that we love, but maybe we have other friends who we think root a little harder.

Craig: You mean to say, “Maybe some of them are rooting against us.” That’s what you mean to say, which I think is real, by the way. Listen, it’s human. It bums me out, but I sometimes sense it.

Aline: It’s funny, I have the opposite.

Craig: Same thing about the positive moviegoing.

Aline: I have the opposite of that, which is I really like everyone around me to be really successful because I think it makes me look better.

Craig: Exactly.

Aline: It gives me more names to drop. Sometimes it’s even on a specific project. Sometimes you can have a friend who is really supportive but they don’t like an idea that you have. There was just a friend that I had that I pitched him a few things I was working on, and one of them he just thought was a terrible idea. That’s not somebody who I would ever go to and say, “Do you want to read this?” It’s just find somebody who really wants to see you do well, or find someone who really roots for that specific project, because that’s positive moviegoing. You want to share your work and share your career with people who are going in with the best possible intentions.

We generate enough of our own schadenfreude towards ourselves in this process. You don’t really need it from other people. I have lots of friends who are producers and executives and agents, and actors too, but your writer friends understand your struggles and your travails and they can really be there for you. I think if you look around, you can find people to link arms with, and you will all come up together.

John: My friend, Andrew Lippa, who did the music for Big Fish, he has this group of composers, lyricist composers, and they get together once a month and they have to show the work that they’ve been working on. As a group they have to perform the thing and they talk about it, which just seems amazing. There are obviously screenwriter groups that can do the same kind of thing, but it’s different to show your written pages versus actually performing something. It’s that trust element that kicks in.

You were talking about how you might have directors or producers or other people who can read your stuff, agents, but all of them have some vested interest in maybe how they’re going to associate with this project. The great thing about another writer is the writer is just the writer. They’re not trying to take your project. They’re not trying to do anything.

While there’s still sometimes that, it’s not even schadenfreude, but that realization of there’s only so many musical chairs, and that sometimes you’re competing for the same spots, in general we can be very supportive of each other because we’re not trying to do the same thing. We’re all working on our own projects.

Aline: Yeah, and it’s interesting, because I know you guys have talked about this too, but the three of us all met at different phases in our careers.

John: We should talk about how you and I met, because that’s a strange version of how you and I met. Let me tell my recollection of it, because I’m really curious to hear your version of it. Aline and I met on the phone because I was coming in to rewrite a project that she had written as a spec, correct?

Aline: No, I wrote it on assignment for New Line. Then John rewrote it and he cold called me and said, “I want to make sure it’s okay with you that I’m rewriting this.” I said, “Sure.” Then John did a draft of it, and never to be heard from again, that thing.

Craig: John, you killed her movie.

John: I probably killed her movie.

Aline: They were bringing in the big guns, and I got pushed down the stairs. John was the first person, I think might have been the first person ever to call me and do the gracious thing. I was outside on my deck and I remember he said, “Is it okay with you if I do this?”

John: I remember you also saying like, “Somebody is going to do it, and I’d rather you do it than somebody else,” which is honestly the reality of most of these situations. The answer is not going to be they’re going to go back to you, the original writer. If they’re looking for another writer, they’re going to hire another writer, so you want the writer who actually has the ability to make the movie be good and not ruin the movie. Those are the situations you want to have. That was a strange project, because the reason why I was able to get a hold of you is because we both had John Gatins as a friend. I called Gatins to get your number and said like, “Is it going to be cool if I call?”

Aline: Oh, that’s nice.

John: It was this movie that you wrote that I really liked. It was just a really good idea. Suddenly Dustin Hoffman was attached, and so I went to this lunch, this crazy lunch with Dustin Hoffman. Suddenly, this is a movie, and then it just disappeared.

Aline: Yeah, it got complicated in that way those things do. We already knew each other, and I knew Craig already when the strike happened. The strike was really the thing where writers really connected in a different way. I think it was sort of the convergence of the strike plus the internet. All of a sudden people really got to know each other in a way that I had not experienced previously in my career where people really know each other now in a different way than they ever had before. I really think it’s for the good. I always find it funny when you’re talking to an agent or an executive or a producer and you say, “Oh yeah, I talked to so-and-so about that project. Oh, yeah, she did a draft on that. So-and-so is directing it.” They’re like, “How do you know that?” It’s because, I think, we know each other more now than we did.

Craig: We know more than they know sometimes. We know so much more than they think we know. We talk to each other. I have a lot of writer friends. I like writers. It’s been a wonderful thing for me for the last, I don’t know, six or seven years to get this coterie of writers around me that I admire and that I trust and that I can learn from. We share and talk about everything. I think we do so in a way that is informed by our experience of being safe with each other, that over time we haven’t screwed each other over, that the narrative that we just feed off of each other and compete with each other and undercut each other is essentially bullshit, and that, in fact, we are supportive of each other because the pain that we feel is the most salient thing about the job we do. When we see somebody else feeling it, naturally we just want to help them. There have been a couple people here and there, but for the most part I have found screenwriters to be incredibly generous and incredibly empathetic, and sweet and encouraging, to me at least.

Aline: I’ll tell you a good story. On this spec that I was working on, I wanted to give it to somebody who didn’t know me and didn’t know the situation and didn’t know anything about it that I could give to cold, who I really respected. I gave it to a writer who I really, really respect but don’t know super well. I maybe hung out with him a dozen, no, half a dozen times. I sent him the script, and then I didn’t hear from him for a while which is always the thing where you’re like, “Oh god, he hates it and he can’t figure out how to tell me.” Then I get an email from him that says, “Look, my dad was sick, he was in the hospital. I’m just about to read the script,” whatever. I was like, oh no. Then a couple days go by and I get a set of notes, seven pages of notes–

John: Wow.

Aline: That are the most amazing thoughtful, heartfelt–

Craig: You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

Aline: Well thought out. Including like, “Page 26, you could be doing this. Page 43, you could be doing this.” Sometimes you get notes from people and it’s like they’re fighting what the movie is. This was just a writer understanding like, oh, this is what she’s trying to do. You are trying to do this. Let me help you. You’re trying to get to such and such a place in five hours. Let me give you the best directions on how to get there.
I was so moved when I got that notes document that I was in my office and tears sprang to my eyes. I know how hard it is as a writer to turn your attention from your own imagination and delve into another person’s script. That he would do seven pages of these incredible notes really blew me away. It’s professional camaraderie. Man, the more of that you can find the better. It doesn’t have to be somebody famous. If you’re 23 years old, it can be somebody else that you know who wants to do this, who will read your stuff and put their heart into it.

John: It’s also back to the issue of as writers we want movies to be better. When I’m advising on projects at Sundance or other places, everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s a tremendous amount of your time that you’re spending.” It’s like, yes, but it’s a chance to make movies better. It’s a way to sort of see what a person is attempting to try to do and help them get to that place that they’re trying to get to.
Seven pages of notes is above and beyond the call. That’s terrific. Really only a writer could do that, because only a writer could understand what you were trying to do and provide specific ways that you could get to that place.

Craig: I would also say that only a writer can convince you that you’re any good.

Aline: That’s interesting.

Craig: I had a very nice experience. I started writing a novel a couple of years ago. Honestly, I wrote two chapters and then stopped, mostly just out of fear that it wasn’t going to be any good and that I wasn’t any good and I’m no good and blah, blah, blah, rotten tomatoes.

John: Dennis Palumbo?

Craig: No, it’s not Dennis Palumbo. I gave it to Kelly Marcel because she asked to see it. She’s a really good writer. She loved it. I have to believe that. When we give screenplays, or we give our work to people that are employing us, they’re just as overly optimistic as we are. Everybody is rooting, rooting, rooting, but you always wonder. Or you give it to somebody, some producer or agents or coverage. Who’s doing coverage? I don’t know who they are. If a writer reads something of yours and says, “This is good,” then you need to believe it. We can’t get that from anybody else.

John: Yeah. You want that response of, “I’m so happy for you and also a little bit jealous.” That’s the best feeling you can get as a writer is when another writer says, “This is great and I wish I had written it.”

Craig: You know what’s so funny? That’s exactly what she said. She said, I actually think she used the words, “I’m a bit jealous.” Now, I have this other task master that’s making me write this book, which is terrific, terrific, because we also need that. We need somebody. We need a lab partner. We need a lab partner.

John: As we wrap up this segment on the importance of writers being friends, we also need to credit Aline, because during the strike – I agree that the 2008 strike was a big game-changer in terms of especially feature writers knowing who each other are – you organized these events that would happen during the strike, these drink events where we would all get together and mingle. It was my first chance of actually getting to know faces with names of some of these people.

During the strike you were assigned to different studios where you were supposed to be doing picketing. Because I am the palest person on earth, I would picket at Paramount Studios from 5:30 in the morning until 8:30 in the morning, so it would be dark and so I wouldn’t get sunburned. I loved that group of people I was hanging out with. Everyone else was at different studios.

The events that you organized, and there were three or four of them, were terrifically helpful,
because just suddenly all these names that I’d seen in the trades are suddenly in front of you
and you’re talking about the things you’re talking about. A lot of what we were talking about was the strike, but you’re also talking about the work, and you’re talking about how to make things better.

Aline: It came at a critical point. If you try to do those mixers sometimes, it’s hard to get people to go, but people were really wanting to be with other writers then and talk about what’s going on and what are we going to do, and nobody was working.

You were able to organize them over the internet really quickly, send out an e-vite to hundreds of people. There were a lot of people who I knew their names but had never met them. We all really got to know each other during that experience. People had really varying opinions was the other thing. A thing that always amazed me was people were really all over the map about what they believed about this, but by and large people were able to… The camaraderie of being screenwriters overcame people’s different point of views on the strike.

John: I would say there were different point of views on the strike and what we should be doing on the strike and how long it should go and what we should be fighting for. It made a common point of focus in terms of what our profession is and what it is our job is and what our craft is. By focusing on the feature writers who are usually completely in isolation, bringing thing together, it was a way for us to identify ourselves as a group, because usually we’re not a group the way that TV writers are often in rooms together and know each other. It was a way for us to actually know who these people were.

Craig: There’s a certain kind of way that screenwriters interact with each other that is unique. I love it. It is a very talky, chatty, low-tech, low-fancy environment, almost always. We don’t do it the way other people do it. There are few screenwriters I know that love to glam it up and throw parties at nightclubs and stuff like that, but for the most part it seems to me we’re at our happiest when we’re talking somewhere where we can hear each other. That’s fun. It’s a nice, real way to be in Los Angeles, a town where just around the corner there’s some place that has convinced you is important and you have to go inside, and if you can’t get inside, and who do you know inside, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There we are with our jeans and our sweaters and our cigars and our wine. We’re able to be real with each other.

Aline: I will tackle people. It’s funny, because I won’t do this with actors or directors really, but if I see a writer whose work I admire… I did a panel with Peter Morgan in 2006, and I was so excited he was going to be there. The video of me is like a running back approaching, of me literally taking guys and grabbing them by the nape of the neck and chucking them out of the way to get to Pete. I was so excited to meet him. I got to him and I was like, “Oh my god, I just came to this thing so I could meet you.” That moment someone said, “Let me take your picture.” There’s a picture like 30 seconds after Pete and I meet, and I look like I’m standing next to Santa Claus. I’m so excited to be meeting Peter.

Craig: John, who was my Peter Morgan in Austin?

John: Oh, it was Breaking Bad. It was Vince Gilligan.

Aline: Vince.

Craig: Vince Gilligan.

Aline: That thing, when you meet somebody whose work you so admire.

Craig: It’s everything. It’s everything.

Aline: It’s so amazing. I will tackle people. Kelly Marcel just moved to town.

Craig: Did you tackle Kelly Marcel?

Aline: I tackled her at the Mr. Banks thing. She’s new to town so she doesn’t know a lot of writers. I was like, oh, there’s people for you to meet.

John: There’s a mixer in your future.

Aline: She went to Austin, which is a really good way. One thing I would say is go to an event like Austin if you’re somebody who is starting out. Again, we just did not have stuff like this when we were starting out. I would have been there tackling people. Go to these events where there is going to be other aspiring people and you will find people that you connect to, that you can pitch your movies to, that you can talk about what they’re working on. You don’t have to be connecting to the fancy people. You can be connecting to people who are exactly in the same stage that you’re in.

John: Everyone grows up together, so there’s lateral things where you’re reading their script, and if you love their script, keep reading their scripts, and keep helping them out, and they will reciprocate. You will find your people, but you have to look for your people because it’s not you’re a professional football player where you’re just going to be around professional football players.

Aline: That’s right.

John: You are always going to be isolation unless you choose to make yourself not in isolation.

Craig: Don’t be judgey. Don’t be judgey. Don’t think that your friends have to be the fanciest writers in the world, or the most successful writers in the world. Don’t let that get in the way. When you fall in love with another writer, you’re falling in love with a kindred spirit and a fellow mind who understands you, who can help you and you can help them. There is no better feeling. The only better feeling than being helped is helping. How is that for Christmas?

John: This clip is from Episode 425: Tough Love versus Self-Care.

This is inspired by a Chuck Wendig blog post over this past week where he talks through the dueling notions of do you buckle down and sit in that chair and get all those words written when you’re hurting, or do you take a step back and practice some self-care. He’s really looking at the trap you can fall into where you’re just self-caring all the time and you’re not actually doing the hard work. As we head into NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, which is where I started Arlo Finch, I thought it was a good time to look at the dueling instincts to you’ve got tough it out versus relax and be easy on yourself.

Craig: Yeah. I loved this. I thought it was really smart. The reason I really appreciated it is because there are two positive ways of thinking about things, and one positive way is I need to take care of myself and be gentle with myself and not beat myself up, because that’s going to be counterproductive. There’s another positive thing that says I need to apply myself and motivate myself and push through difficult things and be resilient in order to get things done.
The problem with both of those things is that bad sentiments can easily masquerade as those things.

That’s the part that I thought he really put his finger on brilliantly is that the two things I just said are correct and good, but here’s something that can masquerade as tough love: a kind of brutal self-loathing and self-denial. Here’s something that can masquerade as self-care: just fear and withdrawal and a sense that engaging isn’t worth it. I thought it was really important that especially now because we do concentrate so heavily on self-care ,that somebody said, just watch out, there are these two imposters that will wear the clothing of these two things and neither one is going to help you.

John: Yeah. Let’s go back to that tough love, because someone who is advocating tough love will say, “Yeah, so what? Writing is often hard. You’re not digging a ditch.” To some degree, writing is exercise and it’s just like working out. You get stronger sometimes by pushing through the pain. You’ve got to rip those muscles a little bit so that they can get stronger. I don’t know if physical science would hold that up to be true.

Craig: You did it.

John: I get that. Writing, for all of us, actually sitting down in the button chair and getting to that 1,000 words or those 3 pages can be really tough sometimes. It’s hard to string the words together. We’ve talked about this a lot on the show. What Craig describes as that imposter is a real thing where sometimes it’s your romantic notion that art must be suffering. That writing must be hard and so therefore if writing is hard then I’m doing the right thing because that’s what writing is supposed to be like, that it’s supposed to hurt and it’s supposed to be torture every time you do it. That’s probably not true. That’s not a healthy way to be approaching the craft that you’ve chosen for yourself.

Craig: You can easily get into a trap where you think of yourself as stupid or lazy because it just didn’t happen that day. You can try and try and try. There are days where it’s not going to happen. The healthy thing is to say that that is normal. I am not perfect. Not every day is going to be optimum. That imposter dressed in the clothing of tough love will say, “You suck. You’re weak and lazy and dumb, and a real writer would have gotten it done. You just failed.” That’s not helpful at all.

John: Let’s look at self-care, because you and I are both dealing with shoulder pain. Part of the recommendation for that is, take it easy on your shoulder. Don’t do things that are going to hurt your shoulder. That really is a form of self-care. If you are encountering a lot of mental anguish and other things in your life that makes it hard for you to write, possibly pushing through and forcing yourself to write is going to make that mental anguish worse. Be mindful that there could be a good reason why you should step off the accelerator and give yourself a little bit of a break and not be pushing yourself so hard.

Chuck was writing from the perspective of he’s a guy in a shack who is writing books. I’m reading his book right now. His book is really good. He wrote a big giant tome called Wanderers. It’s sort of like The Stand. It’s as long as The Stand. It’s a big tome that drops down. Chuck is a guy writing by himself out in the woods. He is not in a writing room. I’m going to keep using that word as much as I can.

Craig: Good for you.

John: He’s not in a writing room in a social environment with other people, and so therefore he only has himself to turn to. Some of his advice can be a little bit different about self-care when you are surrounded by a group who can be pushing you or also be supporting you.

Craig: The self-care thing is interesting because we didn’t really have it until a few years ago. Of course, it existed and people would come up with different names, but the notion of self-care and the popularity of it is a relatively modern phenomenon. What happens is there’s this backlash where people say, “Problem is all these snowflakes with their self-care, ergo self-care is stupid.” By the way, the people that say that never use the term ergo, but whatever. That’s not correct. Self-care is actually crucial.

What is correct is that self-care can be used as a name for something that isn’t self-care at all, but a different kind of self-abuse, which is hiding. We can, when we are afraid, sometimes put on the clothing of somebody that is trying to take care of themselves, when really we’re just scared. People might think, how exactly is writing scary? When you don’t know what to say, it’s terrifying. It really is. It’s as scary as a dream where you have to go on stage and give a speech but you haven’t prepared one. That’s what it kind of feels like.

John: Yeah. There’s a natural anxiety that happens, like, am I going to be able to do it? If I can’t do it, then it’s going to suck and I’m going to be embarrassed. Even if I’m the only person who is going to see that I can’t do it, it’ll going to be embarrassing. Yes, there’s a whole cycle that can start about should I sit down and actually start writing today?

Craig: Correct. You can wear the clothing of modern parlance and say, no, today is a self-care day. It is worth taking a real clear moment when you say today is a self-care day to say, “Or is it?” It doesn’t mean you’re lying to yourself. It just means let’s really ask and evaluate first. Then if everything checks out, then yes, it’s a self-care day.

John: I put together a list of five questions that I thought would be a starting place for looking at is this a time for self-care or is this a time for some tough love with myself. et me read through here. Craig, I suspect you’ll have other things to add to this checklist.

First I would say is check the facts. Basically that’s a chance to sort of step outside yourself and just look at the situation you’re in. Is this a situation where you’re dealing with some big stuff that anyone in your situation would say like, okay, given what you’re going through, like the loss of a family member, a big breakup, you’re moving, there are some real reasons why you are not equipped at this moment to be doing this stuff. Just check the facts. Independent of your emotions, what are the actual facts about this situation?

I would ask, are you taking care of the basics? Are you actually eating properly? Are you sleeping enough? Is there some basic survival function that you’re not doing a good enough job at, and is that the thing you really need to fix rather than worrying about how much you’re writing on a day? I would ask, can you take smaller bites? By that I mean rather than committing to 3 hours of sitting writing, can you just write for 20 minutes, or an hour? Can you do a little sprint to get you through some stuff? Can you write 100 words rather than forcing yourself to write 1,000 words at a sitting?

Can you lower the stakes? And this is where I come back to Aline Brosh McKenna’s method of getting in the ocean. I don’t know if you remember her describing this at some point. This is how Aline describes starting to swim in the ocean, is that you sort of step on the sand and you get your toes wet, and then you get your ankles wet, then you splash a little water up on your shins, and then your knees. Eventually you’re in the ocean and you’re swimming and you don’t even realize that you started swimming. I always loved Aline’s visual for how she gets into the ocean, because it’s true. It’s scary to jump into the ocean, but if you just wander in there, you’re like, oh hey, I’m in the ocean and I’m swimming.

Craig: It’s literally how every Jewish woman I’ve ever seen gets into a pool. It’s like every Jewish woman slowly wets the arms, wets the legs. It’s so careful. Maybe it’s just my family. Maybe it’s just the women in my family. I don’t know. It’s such a weird stereotypical thing, and I guess as far as stereotypes go, fairly harmless, because it is a smart way of acclimating to a new environment. I think lowering the stakes is a brilliant point of view on this, because there are times where you may say, “Listen, I think today is a self-care day. You know what? Today is a self-care day. That said, what if I did some writing on a self-care day? It doesn’t even count. It’s like free calories. Because it’s a self-care day. If it happens it happens. If it doesn’t it doesn’t. I’ll just try it now with zero stakes attached because it’s a self-care day. I don’t have to sit there grinding my teeth because it’s not happening.” I think that’s really smart.

John: Katie Silberman when she was on the show recently, she talked about how when she starts a project she’ll write scenes and scenes and scenes that aren’t going to be in the movie that are just the characters talking. Perfect. Those are throwaway scenes. It doesn’t matter. You’re just getting a sense of the voices. There’s no demand that those actually have to be the real scenes in the movie. Try writing those. You’ll be surprised. Some of those will end up in the movie. It’s lowering the stakes. The world isn’t going to come crashing down if those scenes are not perfect.

Craig: There you go. Yeah.

John: Last I would say, can you define what you’ll need to be able to do in order to get back to work as normal? If you say, okay, this is a self-care day, I can’t do it, great. What are the criteria you need to meet for you to be able to get back to work? If you can be just a little bit more concrete about that, like, “Okay, I need to be able to sit for 10 minutes without bursting into tears,” great. That’s a thing, if you can do that, then you’re on your way to being able to do the next thing. “I need to be able to focus on one thing for 20 minutes.” Give yourself some real criteria, benchmarks that you need to hit, so that you can actually say, okay, I’m in this state or I’m not in this state. There’s a sense that there’s an end date to it, that it’s not going to be a permanent condition for you.

Craig: Those are five great questions to ask yourself. I really only have one other one to suggest. It is simply, is the biggest problem on this particular day your writing? Because if the biggest problem, the thing that is taking the most wind out of your sails, the thing that is making you the sickest in your gut is the work itself, it may not be a self-care day. It may be a day where you just have to kind of re-approach your writing and think about what’s not working, because otherwise you could hide forever from that.

John: Yeah. When I was writing the Arlo Finch books, so the third book is in and done, so I’m essentially done with them, it was a lot more regular writing than I’d ever had to do. It’s been four years of really regular writing to get those books done. The word counts were just so much higher and the workload was so much higher than before. I did have to be little tougher on myself in terms of like, yeah, I don’t necessarily really want to do it today but I kind of need to do it today and I’m going to do it today. Even family vacations, I would say, okay, I need an hour this morning to write. I’m not being selfish. It’s what needs to happen. We would plan for I’m writing during this time. then once I got that writing done, I was just free in a way that was great. It wasn’t looming over me because I knew I’d gotten that work done.

I bring this up because sometimes writing actually is what you need to do. Sometimes writing is a really important way to get healthy again because it lets you step outside of yourself, outside of your own internal narrative into a different narrative and really focus on that for a time. It can get you out of your head with the right project.

Craig: That’s such a great point. I’ve got to tell you, that’s me. There are times where I needed a day off or even a week off because of extant circumstances, things that are going on in my family. My son has surgery. You got to deal with life as it comes and there are days where you just can’t do your work. In all honesty, 90% of the time when I am feeling miserable it’s because something is wrong with what I’m writing. The only way to fix that is to solve that problem. It doesn’t mean I have to write the solution. Sometimes I just have to take a long walk or a long shower. Sometimes I just don’t know the answer and I have to sit in that discomfort. That is still a work day to me. My fingers may not be moving on the keys, but I am thinking. I’m trying. I know exactly what you said is correct. When I do solve it and when I write that solution, the pain that I’m feeling will go away. Therefore I can’t self-care that. That can’t be self-cared away. That has to just be worked away. It’s a really smart distinction that you’ve made there.

John: Cool. We will link to Chuck Wendig’s original blog post which we thought was terrific. Chuck Wendig also writes a lot about writing and the writing process, so if you’ve not read any of his books on writing you should do that as well, because he’s a very smart, clever guy and talks really honestly about the frustration of writing but also what’s cool about writing, and has a very good voice. I would encourage you to check out his books as well.

This clip is from Episode 539: How to Grow Old as a Writer.

We have two big topics this week. This one you proposed, so I’m going to let you take leadership on this topic of growing old as a writer.

Craig: I was just thinking about because we’ve been doing this for a while, you and I, and when we started, there was actually quite a lot of concern about ageism in our business. The general idea was that somewhere after 50 the business started kicking people out. In fact, when you look at what the Writers Guild considers a protected class, writers over the age of 40 are considered a protected class. The world has changed drastically since the mid-’90s. I was talking to some people the other day who were pointing out that the writers who are being employed as showrunners, and we’ll call them sort of major feature film writers, generally are older than they’ve ever been before.

I thought, this is interesting. There must be some sort of lessons that we can learn, since you and I are among the people that are still here, about how to keep yourself fresh and motivated and relevant as the years go on, because we are not kids no more.

John: No. Craig, do we want to talk about how to have a long career, or how to be comfortable with aging in your career? Are we talking both? What are the edges of this conversation?

Craig: I feel like they’re intertwined. So, rather than talk in a very practical way about something that is applicable to about 80 people, I want to talk about something that’s applicable to everybody. Everybody who pursues any kind of creative concern, whether you are a visual artist or an actor or a writer or a producer-director, whatever it is that you do, as you get older your relationship to your own art and your own creative process does need to change, or you’re going to suffer. A reflection of that may be in terms of the industry around you and people’s interest in you, or an audience’s response to you. Rather than view it through the lens of industry, I just want to talk about how to keep ourselves in a kind of good place with our own creative minds.

John: Great. The artistic side of growing older and how that relates to the craft and the thing that you’re trying to make on a daily basis.

Craig: Ideally that would be reflected back at you with some sort of industrial success, if that’s what you’re looking for as the years go on. First let’s just consider it all in terms of strategies, because I do think like anything else there’s just practical things that you can apply to yourself as time goes on. These are good thoughts and questions to just, even every birthday, take a 10-minute walk and think about it.

First, you have to think about what your task actually is. Because it changes over time. You may start as someone who for instance in the mid-’90s, you are, “I want to write sitcoms. I’m going to be a sitcom guy that works on network sitcoms.” There are hundreds of them. Over time, that changes. The tasks that are available that match what you think you do can change. Also, formats can change. We think of television as a certain thing now. It’s all over the place. When we started, it was something else. Chernobyl, for instance, couldn’t have been really done until a certain format change occurred. That meant paying attention to what was going on with formats.

There are two kinds of challenges that you can make to yourself. The first is, is the thing that I’m doing the only thing I can be doing, or could I be writing a different kind of thing, like a short story, or like you did, a novel, or like we’ve both done, some songs, or nonfiction work? Also, are we working within a format that is maybe dying out or just getting boring to us? What other formats might expand our own personal expression? If we don’t rotate the crops, as it were, then we will end up with a field that isn’t doing too well.

John: Let’s talk about rotating the crops, because I think that ties into a thing that happens with age, which is this burnout, which is that you’ve done one thing for so long that it’s boring to you. It’s just not interesting to you. It’s hard to work up the enthusiasm to do it again.

I was talking with a writer recently. She was just starting on a new script. She’s like, oh wow, wait, I’m back doing this again. I’m having to start a whole new script again. She was ready to. She knew how to write a script. It was also she didn’t have the same enthusiasm for it that she would have had 5 years, 10 years earlier in her career.

I think that’s one of the reasons why I was attracted to writing the Arlo Finch books or to writing the Big Fish musical is it gave me a chance to be a beginner again, to be someone who is brand new to things and be curious and eager to explore and willing to make mistakes as I’m figuring out this new art form. When you have mastery over something, it’s nice, it’s helpful, things are easier for you, but they’re also less exciting. Picking a new thing to try to do… Just challenge yourself on a regular basis to try something that you haven’t done before as a writer, so that you get that experience of being new at things.

Craig: Yeah. Getting yourself in that rut is the function of a good thing, I think. We know that you need to focus and you need to practice and perfect. That’s part of how you get good at any creative pursuit. There is a point where, and a little bit like when you get in a video game you’ve maxed out your level, you’re now just walking around all the areas of Skyrim and beating everyone’s brains in with ease.

John: Yeah. You’re just doing a little side quest.

Craig: There’s no challenge because you are perfection, and it gets boring. You’re absolutely right. Being a beginner again is a wonderful thing. It’s a little scary, so it’s also a function of fear. Trying new things is scary. The thing that I’m scared of the most is actually, at this point now in my life, being bored. Challenge yourself to reconsider the nature of the formats you do work in, that you’re willing to work in, that you’re willing to try. Take a look at some formats that you didn’t maybe know even existed before, because there are new ones all the time. Challenge yourself to even break out of a genre and into another genre.

John: You’re really saying just stay curious and really look at the world around you and see, what is out there, what is a thing I could make out there that is interesting to me? It doesn’t mean you have to pursue everything. You don’t have to become a social media influencer. You don’t have to master TikTok. It’s okay to leave some stuff by the side, but also recognize that if these things are coming online, they’re serving some need. What is it you can bring to this need, and what can you do that could fit into this bigger universe of new content that’s being made?

Craig: You’ve mentioned the key to all of this, which is stay curious and be connected with the world. The biggest complaint people will make about, we’ll call them aging artists, is that they’re out of touch. How do we get out of touch? We get out of touch by essentially ignoring the world around us because we feel like we figured it out in a moment, and then we stay there. The world will move past that moment. If you don’t, you will be out of touch.

Sometimes people engage with the world simply in opposition. “Kids these days.” Let me just boil it down to that. “I don’t understand the world today. Everyone is on their phones.” Anybody who ever says, “You know what the problem is with the world today? Look around you man. Everyone is staring at their phones. They’re not looking at each other,” you go ahead and tell that person they’re an idiot, because the world changes. They are interacting in fact with more people faster than you could have ever done in your life. Is it true that sometimes uninterrupted eye-to-eye contact is wonderful? Absolutely. Is it a cliché, out-of-touch thing to say, “They’re all looking at their phones?” Absolutely out of touch.

Rather than instinctively saying, “In my day everything was perfect and now it stinks,” listen. Just listen to the world. Even if you disagree with it, listen to it, because perhaps in your experience of the world around you and your differences of opinions with it, you may find grist for the creative mill. Defensiveness isn’t going to get you anywhere.

John: Yeah. Being defensive is never a good look. When you say no to something, people stop engaging with you. I would say over this last 20 years, one of the most helpful ways I’ve been able to stay caught up with how things are for screenwriters and just for general people making creative things, I’ve always had an assistant. My assistants have always been younger than me. They’ve always been at the start of their careers and doing stuff that people at the start of their careers do. It’s been fascinating to see how the starts of careers have changed over the last 20 years because just the industry has changed around them.

Also, just engaging with the people who originally were writing into the website who are now Scriptnotes listeners. You see what they’re doing and what the challenges they’re facing, but also what is exciting to them. I may not be excited about the same things, but what they’re into is valid. Listening to what it is that they are going after is great. I always try to remember that the people I’m interacting with are the people who are going to be running this town in 10, 20, 30 years. It’s worth hearing what’s sparking for them because those are the kinds of movies and TV shows that we will be making the next couple decades.

Craig: Inherently, you are not jealous of the young, nor am I. I think a lot of older people get quietly, subconsciously jealous of young people. My feeling is that when we judge them, remember what it was like when we were judged by older people, because in my memory my feelings were not hurt at all. I just kind of rolled my eyes and made fun of them, because soon they were going to be dead and I was not. They were old and out of it and not vital. My feeling is, judging people who are younger and thinking that all they do, they’re obsessed with their influencers and their TikTok and blah blah blah, you’re not having any impact on them. They’re laughing at you. Maybe just listen to them and observe them. What’s wrong with that?

John: You can also ask advice, which I think a lot of times older people have a hard time asking advice of younger people because it reveals something that they don’t know. The fact is you just don’t know some things, so again, be curious. Ask the questions. Don’t ask the questions in a way that feels judgmental like, “Why are you doing it this crazy, stupid way?” What is it that’s interesting to you about this thing, or why did you decide to make that choice? Again, when you get to move into new fields, that’s very natural because you just actually just don’t know. You’re in a much better position to ask naïve questions because you don’t know what that thing is, versus us as screenwriters we have a good sense of how all the stuff fits together.

That said, when I talked with a writer, Liz Hannah, who just did a movie for Netflix, I am genuinely curious about what the experience is like making a movie for Netflix. What are the deliverables like on that movie? Are they expecting the same things that we’d expect in a theatrical feature delivery system where they want… Are they cutting negative? Are they doing all the stuff that we used to do for normal, traditional features, or is it more like a TV delivery system? Ask those questions and realize that the different kinds of things people are making these days are more likely the future than what we knew.

Craig: The things around us that happen that we can lose touch with in a dangerous way are not just I guess the different experiences that younger people are having, but also the general viewpoint of the world. Attitudes change. It’s very hard for us to keep up with it. It really is. I understand that.

I remember a friend once told me, he was like, “I’m going to keep listening to whatever the pop music station is, the current hits station, because I never want to be one of the old people that doesn’t know current music.” Inevitably, you will be. It’s not possible. There are some things that are going to leave you behind.

General attitudes and vibes and feelings are things you need to be in touch with, because what was once funny may not be anymore. Things like funny and dramatic and scary and shocking are not absolute values. They are relative to the time in which you live. If you’re not paying attention to the kinds of things that are shocking people or making them laugh, you’re going to flop, because you’re out of touch and out of time.

John: Let’s talk about authenticity, because one of the things I see which can be kind of embarrassing is when an older person is trying to seem younger than they are and is not acknowledging the fact that they are in a different generation than people they’re talking to.

Craig: Hello, fellow kids.

John: Language is one where they’re trying to use slang and they’re using it improperly. That’s sort of a tell. It’s not just that it’s embarrassing that they’re using it wrong. It’s that it’s clear that they’re not being authentic to who they are. I think one of the reasons why young people spark so clearly to Bernie Sanders is he feels very much himself. That is true of any generation. When we were in our 20s, we didn’t want the old person who was trying to be like us. We wanted the old person who felt like themselves. Don’t reach too far in terms of your own voice trying to sound young.

In terms of your writing voice, though, you are going to be writing characters of all different ages, all different backgrounds. You have to be listening for how those things sound so that your character’s voices don’t drift away.

Our example in last week’s episode, where we were listening to how people speak, that’s I think even more important as you age into your career, because your assumptions, your memory of what 20-somethings sounded like is not going to match how 20-somethings sound right now.

Craig: Yeah. Then we come to our last point, which is just language, just the realities of language, because you’re right. There is something terribly inauthentic about someone that is chasing language. They will always be five steps behind anyway. They will always be your dad walking in saying, “Oh, chill out. Oh wow, this is fresh.” Shut up, dad. That’s so old and lame. It’s faster now. Whatever is cool five seconds will not be cool five seconds from now, because that’s what youth is. It’s a churn.

Don’t chase it, but do let yourself be carried along by it. Be aware of it. Let yourself be old authentically without either chasing something, which is inauthentic, or denying the reality of it, which is just as terrible. Just be aware of the way that the world is changing and be aware of the way you’re changing. If you are those things and you are willing and open to evolving, then it doesn’t really matter how old you get. You’ll just be cool. Dr. Ruth Westheimer is 4,000 years old.

John: Good lord, yes.

Craig: She’s cool.

John: Yeah, she’s a lich, but she’s really cool.

Craig: She is a lich.

John: There’s a [unclear 01:17:21] hidden away someplace.

Craig: Yeah, she’s a lawful good lich. Very rare. Very rare.

John: Special when you find them.

Craig: She’s a lich.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao, with segments produced by Stuart Friedel, Godwin Jabangwe, and Megan McDonnell. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Chris John Mince [ph]. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions, on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin and I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies. You should get them. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record with Jake, who wrote in with the suggestion for this episode. Thanks, and we’ll see you next week.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, I’m here with Jake Kelley, who is the listener who wrote in with the suggestion for this episode. Jake, welcome to Scriptnotes.

Jake Kelley: Hello. Thank you for having me.

John: Tell me about the inspiration for this episode. What got you thinking about, “Oh, I should put together a compendium episode.”

Jake: It started because I think as listeners what we appreciate about you and Craig is your expertise on the craft of screenwriting. If you listen to enough episodes, it becomes evident that you’re both very wise and experienced guys in other manners. I wanted to put this episode together to showcase some of that wisdom that’s not necessarily craft-specific, but that can still help screenwriters.

John: Stuff that’s not about the words on the page, but the actual experience of being a screenwriter. Are you a screenwriter? Do you write yourself?

Jake: I do write. I am not a professional screenwriter.

John: I see by the little bit of Googling that you’re actually a visual artist. That’s your background?

Jake: That is correct.

John: How do you find the relationship between the creative process, writing, trying to write a script, versus the work you’re doing, painting or doing other visual arts?

Jake: I find the process to be pretty similar. I would say the biggest difference, and it’s a very surface-level difference, but I can only write for about two or three hours a day max, and usually not even that, whereas if I’m doing visual art, it’s pretty easy for me to do five, six, or seven hours straight.

John: They’re similar disciplines, but different in the way that doing physical art, you’re physically doing stuff, you’re in a space, you’re moving around, versus writing, you’re at a desk and you’re making a thousand decisions about this word or that word, this moment or that moment. Even Craig and I, we’re writing two or three hours maximum a day also. It’s not realistic to assume that you’re going to be able to crank out that number of hours.

Jake: There still is a lot of those decisions in creative art. Every time I mix a color, it’s like, is this the right color or the wrong color? Every line, I’m questioning it. It really is a process of thousands of micro decisions you’re making through the course of that working session.

John: Craig, of course, if he were on this podcast, he would say [unclear 01:20:48] drop out of film school. Did you go to art school? Did you learn how to do this in an academic setting?

Jake: Yes. I did go to the University of Wisconsin, where I studied fine art.

John: What are those classes like? I know a writing class, because I went through a journalism program. Those metrics were like, are you able to do the job or not do the job, versus it would seem to be harder to figure out, is this student in my visual arts class actually progressing? Are they doing the work that deserves an A or a B or a pass or a fail?

Jake: I think that was the trouble for some of my educators, some of them being grad students. I would say overall it is measured by progress. These classes were open to non-artists a lot of times. We did try to foster a healthy atmosphere if somebody wanted to come in from a science field and just try to do a life drawing. It was based on progress and effort and attempt. You’d just blow it off, but that was the starting place.

John: Now, coming from a visual background, were you always also writing? Did you write even back in those days or was it a later thing that you got into?

Jake: We can say I was doing some writing, but where they really came together was I was doing comics and comic strips, which is really both writing and drawing at the same time.

John: Talk to me about the comic strips, because that’s absolutely true that you were both having to figure out what the stories, what the words are, what the actual point is, yet you have to have a strong visual representation of how that works. As you were doing comics, were you scripting them out first and then figuring out the panels? What was your process?

Jake: For that, if it was a simple four-panel comic, generally I would just have a vague idea of one I wanted to do. I would fill in the visual information, and then do the text last. Other people did it the other way. If it’s longer form, then I would probably start with some sort of words on a page to help guide me, break up the storytelling information that way.

John: I’m writing a graphic novel right now. I’m loving it. It’s a great process, but I’m finding it is actually exhausting to really have to visualize the page and think, okay, how is this going to be presented on the page, what’s actually happening panel by panel to get me through it, what is the top-of-page to bottom-of-page experience? I love it, but it’s just, even after 20 years doing this as a job, it is still different than the normal screenwriting I’m doing.

Jake: When you’re screenwriting and you’re using only words, what is the engagement of the visual process there for you?

John: Screenwriting with just words, I am envisioning the space, envisioning who the people are and where they are in the space and basically what they’re doing. I just create the loop of this is the moment, this is the scene, this is happening. I don’t think shot by shot. I don’t think what the coverage is going to be. I don’t think necessarily who’s big in frame, who’s small in frame, usually. I just have to put the people there and get them in motion, as opposed to doing this writing now for this graphic novel, I really have to think about who’s in that frame and who am I focused on in that moment. It feels a lot more like the directing from the page has always been okay, but it feels like calling out those closeups, calling out what it is moment by moment I’m going to be seeing. That is a little exhausting for me.

Jake: Of course.

John: I want to talk to you about, you pulled for this episode way back to Episode 6. When did you start listening to this show? When did you find all these little moments? Were you always listening from the beginning or did you go back through the archives? How did you find all these moments?

Jake: I believe I discovered your podcast, I want to say around Episode 390 or so. I’m not actually sure what date that lines up with, maybe three years ago or so. At first I was just listening to the new episode every week it came out. Then I did start to become more interested in the past episodes, because there is a wealth of information there. What I did was I would go reverse chronological by… You break it up into 50-episode chunks. I would go backwards a chunk, but then within that chunk, go forward. I’d jump to Episode 250, then go 251, 252. Then when I reached 300, I would jump backwards to 200 and then 201.

John: I’ve never listened to the back-catalogs. I have a memory of recording them, but I can’t remember who I was at that time or what the show was like.

Jake: Of course.

John: How much has the show changed when you listen back to those early episodes versus what’s happening now on the show?

Jake: I don’t think it actually changed all that much. I know that some people say that the earlier episodes are a little bit rough around the edges. I think that’s only true maybe in terms of microphone quality. Very, very early on, I think you and Craig maybe don’t have quite the same rapport. Honestly, it’s not that noticeable. It really is you could jump to those back-episodes that far back and really truly have the same experience. You guys are as wise and smart as always.

John: Aw. Jake, thank you so much for this. Thank you very much again for writing with this suggestion, because it really was a great pitch for putting together the kind of episodes that we’ve been doing more of as Megana’s come online, to really pick stuff up from this big catalog and make episodes that make sense. We some rerun old episodes, and that can be great, but so much of that information gets weirdly out of date, and our wonderful things don’t match up to anything. A suggestion like this for a special compendium episode is great. Jake, thank you so much again for this.

Jake: Of course. Thanks for having me.

John: Absolutely.

Links:

• Episode 6: How Kids Become Screenwriters
• Episode 119: Positive Moviegoing
• Episode 425: Tough Love vs. Self Care
• Episode 439: How to Grow Old as a Writer
• Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium to listen to all the episodes in our back catalogue, including the ones sampled here.
• Thanks to Jake Kelley for the episode suggestion!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Aline Brosh McKenna on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Christiaan Mentz (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao (with segments by Stuart Friedel, Godwin Jabangwe, and Megan Mcdonnell!) and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/vfx-deep-dive).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** This is Episode 563 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, we’re going to do a deep dive with two VFX pros to figure out how they break down and discuss a sample scene. It’s a master class in thinking about how you turn that scene description into an actual scene.

In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we’re going to talk about friends.

**Craig:** Ew.

**John:** How to make them and how to keep them.

**Craig:** Yuck.

**John:** Especially as we get older.

**Craig:** That’s really sweet actually. Considering who we are and who our audience is, I think this is a really good topic. We should talk about this.

**John:** Listening back to old episodes for the book that we’re doing, at the start of the podcast, I said on the air, “We’re not actual friends in real life,” and you were heartbroken.

**Craig:** Oh, wow.

**John:** Now we’re friends.

**Craig:** More than friends, John. We’re partners.

**John:** Oh yes, we are. We are podcast partners. Business partners.

**Craig:** You keep talking, and you know who’s going to show up, right?

**John:** Nope, it’s not allowed. Matthew will edit him out. Let’s get to our main feature of the day. A few episodes back, we discussed how writers should think about visual effects and what they look like on the page. That was kind of abstract. It’s like doing a Three Page Challenge without three pages to actually look at. Today we’re going to take an effects-heavy scene and talk through it with two VFX pros. Before we do that, if you want to read the scene, it’s pretty short. Just click the link in the show notes. I’ll also put it on Twitter. Craig, you are a good narrator. Could you just read aloud this scene for us?

**Craig:** Of course. This scene was written by our own John August.

**John:** It is. It’s pretty impressive.

**Craig:** It’s pretty good stuff. Here we go. “Interior/exterior the cathedral, day. Oona gets to her feet, badly hurt but alive. She retrieves the eldenspear. She knows the fight’s not over.

“With one wall taken out by the missile strike, it’s incredible the whole building hasn’t collapsed. The altar has been reduced to flaming rubber. Smoke carries singed bible pages.

“Goodwin emerges from the debris, flames clinging to his Kevlar vest. One of his eyes is missing, a green light glowing in its place.

“He sloughs the flesh off his left arm, revealing the metal skeleton beneath. No sense pretending he’s human anymore.

“Oona gives a thunderous war cry, so powerful it shatters the remaining stained glass windows. Prismatic shards of glass rain down.

“Goodwin charges. Oona makes an acrobatic spring off a pew, leaping to drive her spear right through Goodwin. He’s impaled like a martini olive.

“But he’s not dead yet. With both hands, Goodwin pulls the spear back out and throws it at Oona. She barely dodges.”

That should be easy to shoot.

**John:** Easy to shoot. Simple.

**Craig:** Just put it in a volume and shoot it.

**John:** Half a day.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** It’s only like maybe six eighths of a page.

**Craig:** Yeah, we could do that in the morning.

**John:** 100%. Easy. Easy for me to write, much more challenging for the visual effects pros who have to make the scene come to life, so let’s meet them. Alex Wang cis a visual effects supervisor whose credits include Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Dominion, Terminator: Dark Fate, Fast and the Furious 7, and more. His most recent project is the VFX supervisor on The Last of Us at HBO. Welcome, Alex.

**Alex Wang:** Thank you very much for having me.

**Craig:** He’s got such a good radio voice too.

**John:** It’s really impressive. You have been working with Craig on this series, and so doing all the visual effects for a show that we’ve never seen.

**Alex:** Yes, that is correct.

**Craig:** And maybe we’ll never see. No, we’re definitely seeing it. We’re seeing it. It’s coming. It’s coming.

**John:** They bury your show, Craig. It’s like, “Oh, we’re never going to release it.”

**Craig:** No one will be hearing about this.

**John:** Next we have Addie Manis, who’s a visual effects producer/supervisor. Her credits include Marvel’s Agent Carter and Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey. After she VFXed for the first season of Foundation for Apple TV Plus, she’s transitioned to writing, as she and her writing partner were asked to join the writing staff for Season 2.

**Craig:** That’s amazing.

**John:** We could really use her help to make this scene possible. If you’re looking at the pdf that we have linked to in the show notes, you’ll see that I’ve numbered each of the paragraphs, which is not necessarily each shot, but it gives you a sense of what the challenges are going to be. Let’s start at the start. We’ll start with you, Addie. Let’s say this scene lands on your desk. What is your first step as you’re looking at this scene in terms of thinking about, okay, this is the visual effects challenge or issues that I see here on the page.

**Addie Manis:** Excellent question. Let’s say I get this as a script page. I’m going to read it out of the gate. That’s what everybody does with a script page. I’m going to read it with a highlighter. I am reading both for story, character, writing, pacing, tone, because all of that stuff tells me what’s this going to look like, what’s the director going to do, how are we going to cut it, like I am reading the final edit on the page out of the gate.

**John:** That makes it sound like the actual writing on the page is incredibly important in terms of your first impression. It’s not just like here’s a list of things that are in it. How it actually feels and reads on the page is influencing your choices at this early stage.

**Addie:** That is completely correct. I have in the last 10 years focused more on event television rather than feature film. Especially the first episode of something, which is often written by the showrunner, the showrunner’s first script is conveying to me very much what the final show is going to look like. Because visual effects lives in a world of edits or cuts essentially, we’ll say how many shots is how many cuts in a scene. I am reading the cuts in the sentences. Every clause, every period, every comma is telling me, okay, this is going to be three cuts, this feels like a master shot and it’s going to be one long cut. It tells me the pace of the action and what’s going to be the rhythm of the editing. I know that’s a funny thing to say, because the writer is not the editor. In my experience, it does flow all the way through.

**Craig:** It almost sounds like what you’re saying is that the writers are directing on the page, which is something we’ve been insisting writers should be doing forever.

**Addie:** Alex and myself will start very, very early in a process. What we have is the script. We may have only the script for six months, or a year if we’re doing really long prep. We root down into that script and see what is this show going to look like, what’s our pace, what’s our tone, what’s our rhythm, which I’m sure Alex could expound upon further. I read with that in one side of my brain, and in the other side of my brain, I am already saying, “Interior/exterior the cathedral. Okay, is this a practical cathedral? Are we going somewhere to shoot a cathedral? Are we going to build a cathedral? Are we going to shoot this on a blue screen? Are we going to shoot this in a volume?” Any of the answers to any of those questions kicks off a very long chain of action, building, budgeting, hiring, travel planning.

I think we’re both looking at the final product and what is the piece of art that we’re making and the story that we’re telling, and then also physically how do I get all this stuff? Is somebody building an eldenspear? Are we going to have fire on set that day? Is this all going to be CG? How do I get this actor scanned? It’s of two minds. It’s the artistic mind and the logistic mind simultaneously.

**John:** Alex, talk through this scene from your perspective. This lands on your desk. You probably are highlighting it also. If it’s for a show that you already know… Let’s say this is Episode 3 of a series. You have some sort of basis for how things are going. What are you looking at? What are your first challenges? What can you do before there’s a director or someone else on board?

**Alex:** Great question. Typically, when I get an action scene like this, the first step is, I’d say, “We should storyboard this,” because action scenes like this, I think what’s most important is camera angles, what is the scope. I read line by line. I break it down with my producer. We come up with the best methodology. Like Addie is saying, we go into very broad strokes as, “Okay, what is the art department going to be building? What is going to be practical? Do we need blue screen? Are we going to be in a volume?”

**Craig:** I’m going to interrupt you there, because I think some people at home may not know the difference between these things. Both of you describe this fundamental thing that happens when you’re thinking about where you’re shooting something. We have a practical location. We have blue screen. We have the volume. Can you just quickly give a definition for those things?

**Alex:** Absolutely. A practical set is essentially a set that is built practically that we can basically shoot in camera.

**Craig:** You may be in a practical location, which is a place in the world or a set that you built, but then blue screen you will put behind things to allow you later to replace that easily with stuff that wasn’t there, digital stuff.

**Alex:** Yes, that’s correct.

**Craig:** Tell us about the volume though. What’s that about?

**Alex:** The volume is something that is exciting and new. Basically, it is these LED screens where we can project content that is essentially what we would be doing in post early on on the LED screen. We can call it getting that it camera. We could still change it in post if we need to, but the idea is that we’re projecting what we will essentially be doing in post onto the LED screens.

**Craig:** The volume is essentially a room that is a bunch of TV screens that we fill with stuff. For instance, the Mandalorian, very famously, we shot on a volume. They put Pedro in his suit. They stand him on a ground that has some sand. All the stuff around him is actually not really there, nor is it done later with putting stuff into blue screen. It’s actually like rear projection except for much more advanced. You and Addie, the first thing you’re thinking is where are we doing this?

**John:** I want to bring up one other possibility for where we’re doing this, because when we say practical, it could be that you’re building a set for most of this. You’re building a set for the cathedral, maybe up to a certain height we’ll talk about, or in theory, you could be at a real location where you’re actually at a real cathedral, but the one wall that’s supposed to be missing, you’re putting up green screens or you’re somehow planning while you’re shooting this for like, “We’re going to take this wall out and put a virtual background behind that.” That would be a very early production decision, are we building anything, are we going to a practical location, versus this is all green screen or is this all volume.

**Craig:** From this very fundamental thing, is there anything that we as writers should be thinking about when it comes to this big decision of will we be going someplace in the world, will we be building a set, or is this something that has to be created virtually completely, or should we just write stuff and let you guys worry about it?

**John:** Addie, what do you think?

**Addie:** You guys should just write it.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Addie:** There’s just a wealth of professionals out there who can bring all their… People want to bring their skill sets. I think all your department heads really want to jump in and solve all these problems. I don’t even want to refer to them as problems, but they’re exciting problems, challenges to have. Tell the story, man, because Alex and I read scripts all the time. We read so many scripts. It’s a function of our job and picking what job we’re going to do next. We’re super jazzed to get a good script or a script that we’re going to be really excited to make. We bring all the visual effects, production and creative solutions to the table. I think the writers should write story and character.

**Craig:** Good, so one less thing for us to worry about.

**Alex:** I completely agree with Addie there. I think writers should just write the best script they can write. Close your ears, Craig. Visual effects can essentially do everything.

**Craig:** Oh, boy. Yeah, I know.

**Addie:** I would say, if I may-

**Craig:** You may.

**Addie:** Craig is now showrunning a show. In the transition from just writing to showrunning, there will become logistic, financial, and practical conversations about this script and the visual effects process, as it were with all departments.

**Craig:** Yeah, I know. It’s a good conversation to have. I think it is true that as you interface more with these departments from a showrunning point of view, you start to learn limitations. One of the conversations that Alex and I have had I think 4 billion times is this: “Hey, Alex?” “Yeah?” “Would it be hard to do this?” Then I watch his face, because he’ll never say, “That’s not possible.” He’ll say, “That should be good,” or, “Okay, yeah, doable. It’s going to be expensive, but we can do it.” Sometimes he’ll be like, “Uh, we could.” That’s when I know that it’s a problem. The nice thing is, as writers we don’t necessarily need to know what’s going to be a problem. I’m sometimes surprised by what’s difficult versus what isn’t. That’s what you guys do.

One of the things that I learned from Alex is, whenever possible, if there’s something practical… When we say practical, we mean something that physically exists. Whenever possible, if there’s something practical to base visual effects off of, let’s get something practical in there.

The best example I can think of is, let’s see, “The altar has been reduced to flaming rubble. Smoke carries singed bible pages.” It’s going to be hard to practically have singed bible pages where we need them in the air. That’s probably going to be digital. It may be very difficult for the rubble to be on fire just the way we want and for the smoke to move exactly where we want it to go. If we could have the special effects department, which those are the crazy guys that light things on fire, including themselves, if we could have them provide real flame there, just some, and maybe a little bit of smoke, just some, then maybe it will look better when the visual effects department comes on in there. Alex, does that sound about right?

**Alex:** Yes.

**Craig:** Tell me why that’s so important.

**Alex:** That is absolutely correct, because it really is important about the tone of the show as well. If it’s grounded and practical and realistic and the fire needs to look like real fire, though we can do a lot, it’s always that the hardest part of visual effects is trying to replicate what is real. It just takes iterations. It takes time, really talented artists to do that. If we have something practical to even reference off of, that just gets us a step ahead.

**Craig:** What do you think, Addie? Is that the method that you guys use as well, or when you were doing it?

**Addie:** Yes, certainly, especially on foundation, we leaned really hard into the practical. It’s definitely a show that has huge swaths of full CG. If we’re blowing up a planet, that’s pretty CG. Practical locations, practical effects, we did miniatures, we did all of it. The producer in the supervisor/producer dynamic is often the voice of no. I’m not going to say no to what Alex said, because I agree completely with him. I would only say the complicating factor is sometimes how much time production has to shoot something. If you had to shoot this scene that we’re talking about in half a day, one day, two days-

**Craig:** Oh, god.

**Addie:** I think Alex and I would be having secret meetings about how some of the other departments are going to struggle in that time frame. We are going to have special effects and stunts and everybody do their thing, but visual effects is going to brace to pick it up, because those departments need a fair amount of time to execute at the highest level. Alex might say something like, “Let’s shoot the special effects, but I would really like to get a clean plate.” That means I’d like to do one pass with no fire, and I would encourage producers and showrunners to let Alex do that.

**Craig:** I’m laughing just because I have heard Alex say, “Okay, and then we also need to get a clean plate,” about a thousand times. For people at home, a clean plate, when we’re shooting things that have… Let’s say we’re shooting this scene here. There’s something that we might want to have be completely CG. For instance, “Goodwin emerges from the debris, flames clinging to his Kevlar vest. One of his eyes is missing, a green light growing in its place.” Lots of ways to do that. Let’s say Goodwin’s body was half-skeleton or something like that, and he was going to be mostly CG. We can take real Goodwin, and we can do the best we can with him with a suit and maybe some green stuff on the suit that would get replaced by other stuff.

We’ll do that, and then Alex will say, “Great. Thank you. Now, just shoot the same thing with no Goodwin at all,” which seems weird. At the time you’re just shooting nothing. That stuff then becomes something where he can put an entirely CG Goodwin in there. That’s called a plate. Anything where we’re shooting something that then we stick something on to, or we’re shooting something that we’re going to stick into something, those are called plates. Yes, I have shot many a clean plate for our friend Alex.

**Alex:** I still thank you for that.

**Craig:** You are welcome. Listen to your VFX people basically is what [inaudible 00:17:08]. If they say they need something, give it to them. They need it.

**John:** Alex, the reasons why you might want that is say you might be inserting a fully CG character, but also you might be trying to paint out some stuff you don’t want there. You might be painting out his arm. There’s lots of good reasons why you might want to have that full plate for a reference to do some specific things, right?

**Alex:** Yeah, absolutely. The clean plate, like you and Craig mentioned, if I need to put in a fully digital good one, that’s helpful, but also just if I need to replace his arm where there’s a green portion on his arm or part of his head, and you might see his endoskeleton or something like that, what a clean plate allows is just something back there to help us paint back the background.

**Craig:** A clean plate is the visual equivalent of room tone for the audio guys. There’s a space here where we need the sound of a room without anybody talking. Sometimes you need that clean plate where there’s the space where nothing happened. One of the things Addie’s touching on here which is important to understand, I think, for us when we’re writing is that there are lots of levels of production capacity, and they’re all dependent on budget. Budget will not only drive the things that you can do in post, but they also drive how much time you have to shoot when you’re in principal photography. That amount of time definitely affects how you can go about doing the job of these VFX shots, which will start to head into the thousands when you’re doing a big show.

When you’re writing stuff, we have a general sense of, okay, we’re writing something that’s going to cost $10 million, we’re writing something that’s going to cost 40, we’re writing something that’s going to cost 200. Just be aware that if you’re writing something small, when you write anything that is not something you can shoot without visual effects people, it’s good to at least have a sense that you’re doing something that’s within the realm of reality. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with something rather disappointing like Birdemic.

**John:** Yes, or you may be making aesthetic choices at the very outset for what your effects are going to feel like. You just have to have a plan going into it. No matter what scale of scene you’re shooting, whether it’s a $10 million scene or a $100 scene, you have to go into it knowing what am I actually going to be able to do in visual effects afterwards, whether it’s something you’re doing in after-effects or you’re doing it on a huge, huge scale. Let’s just walk through the scene. Line 3, “Oona gets to her feet, badly hurt but alive. She retrieves the eldenspear. She knows the fight’s not over.”

**Craig:** Eldenspear.

**John:** Two questions for you guys. First off, let’s talk about Oona. She’s badly hurt but alive. A discussion about how much of her being badly hurt is hair and makeup versus how much of her being badly hurt is visual effects. Can you talk us through wounds on a visual effects level? Addie, you want to start us off with that?

**Addie:** Yes. Sorry, I’m so used to waiting for the supervisor to speak first. It’s like, I’ll let the supervisor go first, and then I’ll fix what he says. That’s how that works.

**Alex:** I was waiting for John to tell one of us to start.

**Addie:** “Oona gets to her feet, badly hurt but alive.” At least in the pre-production phase, I definitely flagged that as something to keep an eye on. Frequently, I would just make a note to plan for what I would call makeup effects assistance. I would probably assume that makeup effects is going to do the bulk of it, and we’re going to shoot with makeup effects, and then in post-production, visual effects might be called upon to augment it. There is a trick called heal and reveal, where we paint out the makeup, and then after the wound occurs, we reveal it again, and then we live with makeup effects for the rest of the scene.

**John:** I like that.

**Addie:** There might be squirting blood, and so we might remove a blood tube. If there is liquids involved, pus, blood, frequently those become continuity issues. We don’t usually want to stop filming to fix them, because it takes way too long. You might shoot a whole scene, and then by the time you get into the edit, you’ll say, “The blood’s all in the wrong spots. Let’s take it out in some spots and put it in other spots so that this looks even passingly realistic,” unless of course we have blown a leg off. Then that’s a much bigger visual effects process that makeup effects is not going to handle.

**Craig:** “Oona hops to her foot, badly hurt but alive.”

**Alex:** Just to really talk about the badly hurt part as well, I think just being as descriptive as possible really helps Addie and I understand how much… Is half of her face scarred? Is there a lot of blood? Just a few more descriptive words would really help us there.

**Craig:** In fact, this is where you’ll find out as a writer who maybe has been misled to believe that you shouldn’t be directing on the page, because you didn’t listen to us. When you get to a production meeting, there are going to be 4 billion questions. You want to try and limit when you get to those meetings to 4 million questions, because there will be 4 million no matter what. Once you get into the billions, you get really exhausted. If you do say things like “badly hurt but alive,” you’re going to get grilled by everybody. Getting some details in there will at least help the discussion along a bit further, so that Addie and Alex, maybe they can just relax, because “badly hurt” is just going to be blood. Alex, I think we’ve had… I try and avoid spoilers as much as possible, but people do get hurt in The Last of Us. That does occur.

**John:** Oh no, Craig, really?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I thought it was a comedy though.

**Craig:** I’m going to give that one away. It’s a comedy of errors. We do a lot obviously with makeup, but there are times where there are certain wounds where we can’t do it with makeup. Sometimes we use prosthetics, which help quite a bit. I think Addie’s brought up the crucial thing, which is continuity. The blood can change. Also, wounds are not static. You’ll notice that on a lot of things we watch in movies and television, somebody gets really hurt, and they’re just not bleeding, they’re just bloody. People bleed. How much do we want to make that wound active? These things are complicated. Hopefully the eldenspear has been described earlier in your script, John.

**John:** I really hope so too. It really is a question for the writer, who we’ll pretend is not me, and the director and everyone else involved in the project, that like, okay, does the eldenspear glow by itself? Is it like Wonder Woman’s magic lasso, or is it just a spear? Is it simply a prop, or is it a visual effects component to eldenspear from the very start, is something we need to know. Probably three pages earlier we may have found out that the eldenspear glows all the time. Alex, from your perspective, what is the difference between something that’s just fully a prop versus something that is also a visual effect?

**Alex:** If the prop is relatively static and there’s not much movement to it or there’s not a lot of say magic elements, supernatural elements to it, it should be a prop. We can do a lot on top of it if we need to add a glow, a subtle glow, or have some of those elements. If say the eldenspear has to transform in a way that can’t be done practically, and it constantly does that, then it’s a whole different conversation of, okay, maybe the spear should just be a green spear, so we can replace it later and have it do all those things. If it doesn’t, it’s a place where I would say we should save that money and just make the best practical eldenspear that everyone’s happy with and just get in camera.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Again, it seems like time is maybe the most precious of all resources, even more so perhaps than money, because if you have time, then the props folks can do some R and D and maybe build something great, but if you don’t, then you don’t. In ongoing series, and Addie, you’ve worked on some of those, there may be a situation where scripts are coming in late, and suddenly you need to have an eldenspear tomorrow. At that point, do you just put a green stick in their hand and figure it out later?

**Addie:** Yes, definitely I have done that. A funny classic one is photos in frames or newspaper props where somebody… Especially on a broadcast schedule or a broadcast show, you’ll get a script, and you’ll be shooting in five days, and you need all these photos from a family’s backstory. We put little green squares into a picture frame, and we make it later and stick it in in post-production. It’s a silly thing, because of course you could make that practically, but you just don’t have time, or production and design does not have time.

**John:** Production also sometimes gives you the dumbest looking Photoshops. So bad.

**Addie:** Sometimes you’re going to plus it up a little bit later on.

**Craig:** Plus it up.

**Addie:** I think to your point, I would say time is radically the most important factor in visual effects. It is for many, many of the departments. Visual effects can be such an expensive process. It’s sometimes confusing on even why it’s so expensive. Visual effects budgets on shows are tens of millions, hundreds of millions on feature films. The real component is time. What the money in visual effects is paying for is man hours, because many visual effects could take 20 different people. They could take 20 different people working sequentially over 6 months. You’re paying incredibly highly trained, skilled specialists to do creative bespoke work. Sometimes you can dump all the money in the world on that.

If we do not have enough time to design it, you want to iterate on it so that you can find what you really want it to look like as the director, showrunner. Then you got to stack 16 specialists on top of each other in a time frame, and you’re paying for computer hardware. It’s a complicated process. You’re paying for highly trained specialists to work many, many, many hours together to design something that’s probably never been made before. If you have 6 weeks to do that or you have 6 months to do that or you have 18 months to do that, the capabilities will be different, and the end result will be different.

**John:** I have a question about Line 4. “With one wall taken out by the missile strike, it’s incredible the whole building hasn’t collapsed.” Let’s assume that there’s either a practical that we are green screening off a wall, blue screening off a wall, or we’re building this a set, maybe set extending at the ceilings. The point is that we are able to look outside of this cathedral, outside this interior space into an exterior space, which could be a mountain valley. It could be a dystopia. My question for you is how much does that background need to be a 3D background, or could that just be a 2D background that’s painted in there? Do we need to send a crew to film what that’s going to look like out there, or is that something that we would do just pulling assets that already exist someplace else? What are you thinking about in terms of that background outside of the church?

**Alex:** I definitely know a thing or two about collapsed buildings.

**Craig:** What? Another spoiler.

**Alex:** I will say that at least if the actors are interacting or walking through this collapsed building, I would say I always would like to have a portion of that build, even if it’s just up to 12 feet. Then we can have blue screen. Obviously, going out and finding a plate of that is near impossible, so that will be all digital in my eyes. As far as 3D or DMP, it really depends on the camera, what the camera is doing. If it’s relatively static, we’re behind the actor, and it’s just an establishing shot, it could be what we call a DMP, which is digital map painting, or if the camera travels through that environment, then it has to be a 3D environment.

**John:** When you add a 3 in front of something, it becomes much more expensive.

**Alex:** Not necessarily. DMPs can be expensive too. I would say it comes down to what the camera move will be, what kind of a shot is it.

**John:** That’s a discussion with the director. You have to be deeper into planning and probably storyboards for you to know what those shots are going to be which would influence what we’re seeing outside of the cathedral.

**Craig:** In the case of television where you have a showrunner that is often not the director, then the visual effects supervisor needs to basically talk to the showrunner, and then the showrunner has to explain to the director why they can’t do something or why they should do it differently or what the limitations are, because we always have some limitations. I want to talk a little bit about this notion of movement and set extension.

In a very simple way of thinking about it for those of you playing the home game, when somebody is moving in front of something, if we want to replace the thing that is behind them when they’re moving, it’s hard, because every frame we have to basically cut our people out and then replace the background. God help us if they have a lot of hair that’s… If you’ve got Natasha Lyonne in there, oh no, you have to rotoscope Natasha Lyonne’s hair. That’s a nightmare. She has the best hair.

**John:** I love it.

**Craig:** For those situations, we try and put people in front of something that’s blue or green, because a computer can basically say everything that’s blue gets replaced, and everything that’s not blue, we keep. It gets much, much easier. Set extensions, what we’ll do is, okay, we’ve got somebody moving, and we want something practical behind them, so we will build enough behind them to cover where they’re moving. Where they’re not moving, it’s easy to replace that. That we can just throw blue on. The idea is to try as much as you can, unless you’re a certain kind of show or the environment is impossible to build, to try and make stuff real where people are.

For instance, in Chernobyl, there’s a shot where we see the firefighters marching up this hill of debris towards this reactor building. We couldn’t build an entire reactor building, but we definitely built that mountain of debris. You could see where the firefighters are moving even as they’re climbing up this thing. That’s all really there. Then everything beyond that, Alex and Addie come in and replace that with, like you said, a digital map painting, or in certain… I actually don’t know if I have one where it’s been a 3D environment back there. Do we have one, Alex?

**Alex:** Oh yeah, we definitely…

**Craig:** Shows you what I know.

**Alex:** Sometimes it’s just easier. Digital map paintings come in when you have to pull reference, whether it’s mixed photography. If it’s an environment that really 100% just doesn’t exist, it’s built.

**Craig:** Got it. Oh yeah, we do have that. I’m paying attention. I promise.

**John:** When you’re saying a built environment, is it on a real engine where you’re actually rebuilding 3D assets and creating a space? Is that the idea?

**Alex:** Very much like that. We have so many different types of software to do that. Essentially, it is that.

**John:** We talk about set extensions. I would imagine that this cathedral probably is a set extension beyond a certain point, because we have these high walls, the ceiling. On Line 8, “Oona gives a thunderous war cry, so powerful it shatters the remaining stained glass windows. Prismatic shards of glass rain down.” Those stained glass windows feel like a visual effect to me. Maybe there’s something. Maybe it’s the reason why you’re doing models or something else or shattering some real things to capture that. I have a question about what is raining down on our actors there. Is anything raining down there? Is this the time where we do some colored rubber glass? What are the things you’re thinking about as you read Line 8, Addie?

**Addie:** Line 8 with the shattering glass, so my gut is most likely this is potentially fully 3D, especially Alex had mentioned that maybe you would build a set up to 12 feet, which in that instance you’re aiming to build a set that goes above the actors’ heads so that you can cover the actors, maybe with a practical set. You only see above their heads in the wider shot. It keeps your shot count down. It gives the actors something practical to play against. If the stained glass is way up in the high part of the cathedral, which I think in a cathedral design it probably is, that is likely going to be fully CG, but you could rain what we call candy glass down on the actors to give them something to interface with. Probably a mix of visual effects and practical.

**John:** Even if you put the candy glass down on them, you would probably supplement it with additional stuff, just to give extra little bits of texture and something for them to react to.

**Addie:** Again, trying to read the movie in my head on the page, I’m also picturing a dramatic shot of the glass exploding into the camera, which will probably be heavily digital. Then maybe just the shards on the actor are practical. It seems like a very dramatic cinematic moment, where you might want to really art direct the glass performance.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Glass performance, I love that.

**John:** We talked a little bit about Goodwin. “Goodwin’s emerging from the debris, flames clinging to his Kevlar vest. One of his eyes is missing, a green light glowing in its place.” We’re assuming that this is a real actor. We’ve seen him as a human being for most of this. He’s wearing a Kevlar vest, so he’s some sort of law enforcement person maybe. The flames clinging to his Kevlar vest, am I right to assume that those are all going to be digitally added? Would you put any LEDs in there to create light on the actor? What are some things we’re thinking about with Goodwin emerging from this debris?

**Alex:** I would say that the debris should be practical if possible. Maybe we can add some debris on top of it or dust or something like that. The Kevlar vest, I would say it should be digital fire. Because it’s broad daylight, I don’t think I’ll need much LED lights or interactive lights. Only if it was nighttime, that would be helpful. In this case, I will say that that is not necessary. As far as the damage to him, we did a very similar thing on Terminator with Arnold’s character. There was explosion that happens. Basically, post-explosion, half of his face is missing, revealing his endoskeleton, and his arm is revealing the endoskeleton as well. Basically, we just had prosthetics do the burned skin portion, and then the other half would be… On the set, I think we had gray as opposed to blue, but some color of gray or green or blue for replacing that to be a digital endoskeleton.

**John:** Great. On his face, where they have this digital eye, does he have makeup dots on there so you can track where the eye needs to go?

**Alex:** Yeah, that would be really helpful. We have tracking markers, but we also have what is called witness cameras for helping, because sometimes if we have a long lens, it’s difficult to understand the position of the actor’s body. We position witness cameras around, which is going to be a relatively wide lens. It helps when we’re essentially tracking. If you think about if somebody’s on a ground getting up, we essentially will track where his body position is, in 3D. If we just have one camera doing that, that can be rather challenging or difficult, time-consuming. Like Addie said, time is the most important thing. Really when I’m on set, I’m trying to get as much data as possible that just buys me more time in post. Witness cameras, I’ll try to place them around the actor. Generally it’s opposite sides of where the main camera is to help me track the body.

**Craig:** That’s what those things were doing.

**John:** Alex, those cameras, those are synced to each take, so you can actually know on this frame, this is the same frame from this different perspective?

**Alex:** In an ideal world, for example on Terminator, we had A, B, and C camera. Generally if A camera’s rolling, then B and C, which is already synced, those can be our witness cameras. Otherwise, we have a poor man’s version, which is we just have our own visual effects cameras or consumer cameras. We just shine a little red light actually. The red light helps us when we’re looking at the take. Okay, we can sync our cameras to this. It’s like a poor man’s version.

**John:** What you’re saying is every little bit you can get helps, even if it’s just-

**Alex:** Absolutely.

**John:** … reference for things down the road so you get to feel what’s possible there.

**Craig:** It’s so much data being captured. It’s amazing how much data is being captured in a process that used to have no data. When you and I started, John, there was just film.

**John:** There was film, and we had a script supervisor who was taking pencil notes on paper about what happened.

**Craig:** That’s data, but I’m talking about digital data. There was zero digital data, and now there’s a gazillion bits of digital data, not only from the cameras that are capturing the actual footage that you see on film, but then there are these witness cameras. Then they’re scanning. Addie and Alex are making sure that characters that they may need to replace digitally, so for instance in this I would imagine Goodwin would be scanned for sure. They stand in a little cage built of a thousand cameras. Then they all just take pictures so that they have a fully digital 3D capture of this person. We had a van that did that. What would we call that thing? Was it a trailer, a scanning trailer? We also had a little portable scanning thing that we could set up. It was pretty amazing.

**Alex:** We had a scanning booth.

**Craig:** A booth.

**Alex:** It was a booth to scan our actors, our talent. What you saw was probably a Lidar scanner, which basically just helps us scan the set, the environment.

**John:** Now Addie, let’s talk about scanning an actor, because I’m sure your principals for foundation would have to be scanned, because sometimes you just have to replace them. Are you scanning them in their full wardrobe, or are you scanning them just bare so you can put wardrobe on them? What’s important for you on a scan?

**Addie:** It varies by project. On foundation, we scanned actors both in modesty dress and also in each individual costume that had to be recreated. I think an optimal scenario is as many scans as you can possibly get. That might be as naked as possible within the realms of everyone’s comfort level. It could be in 20 different costumes if each of those costumes needs to be used for something. We scanned extras in costumes, because we were filming during COVID, and we were creating digital doubles to populate large crowd scenes, because we were limited on how many extras we could have at each location for safety protocols. I would say both skivvies and costumes is ideal. A lot of times, that takes up too much time. As we’re saying, it takes too much time for the actors. It takes too much time on the day.

For this scene, you would probably ideally want to scan Goodwin in his costume and with his shirt off potentially so you could get his arm skin. The scan itself is getting thousands of mathematical data points. You can make a geo map of his body. You can recreate him as a digital asset. The costumes are good for that. You’re getting costume texture. Fabric is down into the minutiae of visual effects. Production fabric is a complicated thing to create. In a perfect scenario, we would scan him in his costume, but maybe we wouldn’t need to send that fabric or recreate that fabric. You could just get down to his bare skin, and then he peels his skin off and you reveal a digital robot underneath that.

**John:** That’s great. Let’s talk about this shot, 7. “He sloughs the flesh off his left arm, revealing a metal skeleton beneath.” I’m envisioning this as not necessarily a locked-off shot, but we’re close in on seeing this thing and this sliding off. To what degree are we talking about Rick Backer practical visual effects versus this being a digital thing? What are the decisions there?

**Alex:** I think I would do it digital, to be honest, just with the interaction. I would just have the actor give the best performance he can, as if he’s really trying to slide off his skin, so it doesn’t feel like it’s just such an easy thing to do. I think many times I always say just give me the best performance and it’ll make our lives a lot easier when it comes to something like this, because if you can really sell him trying to tear his skin off his arm and revealing what is underneath, I think that will actually make our lives easier.

**Craig:** From a production standpoint, if we had something practical there, which you could do, and which is the only option that existed prior to all this, the resets eat up your day. You need to do takes two, three, four, five, six, and you’re peeling something off that is a one-use thing because it’s getting peeled off. They peeled it off. Now you got to take 30, 40 minutes to get it back on again with the… They have to make multiples of it. Then you get to shoot it again. You could spend all morning and get three takes of this. Now you just have them act, and you can get 9 takes in 30 minutes and find the one later that you want. Again, time is the most precious resource, and it’s the one we’re constantly fighting.

There were circumstances on The Last of Us where because we were in Calgary, in Alberta, which is very north, we always seem to be shooting at the wrong time of year. We would shoot night in the summer, and we would shoot day in the winter. Things go very fast there. We were shooting some night scenes where we really only had about five hours of darkness maximum. In those circumstances, you have to do things like this digitally. Then the idea is to plan ahead and make sure that we give the actor what they need. That means talking to them as well, so that they understand what’s expected of them, and they don’t just get there on the day and go, “Wait, how are we doing this?” They need to know.

**John:** Let’s wrap up this conversation of this scene, talking about the stunt here. In Line 9, “Goodwin charges. Oona makes an acrobatic spring off a pew, leaping to drive her spear right through Goodwin. He’s impaled like a martini olive.” Addie, talk us through what parts of this enter into your department?

**Addie:** Line 9, “Oona makes an acrobatic spring off a pew, leaping to drive her spear,” that’s probably wire work. We are going to look at are we shooting this on a blue stage. What is she wearing, because she will have a bunch of safety harnesses. There will be a wire rig to allow her to perform this. Her costume and how the rig interacts with her costume can be easier or harder, although the first priority is and should be actor safety.

There’s been a few things I think in this conversation, like the fire on a Kevlar vest. Visual effects can pick up a lot of work to make sure that the actors and the camera department are safe, which should I think not get lost in the visual effects conversation. We want to make sure she’s as safe as possible, even if that is more difficult for visual effects, because digital work is very safe. She is going to leap to drive her spear right through Goodwin, so she’s probably going to be holding a practical spear that might not have a sharp tip on it. In post-production, we might add a sharp tip. That is mostly again for actor safety, because we don’t really want anybody interacting with swords.

**John:** Would the spear she’s holding be half the length so that as she drives it, assuming this is in a shot rather than multiple shots, so that she can hit him and we can imagine it went through him? Are what point are you making those decisions?

**Addie:** I think we would make those decisions with art department and stunts all together. The departments really have to collaborate to make this stuff go smoothly. She’s probably holding the spear handle, and it has no blade on it. Maybe that handle is built as big as it needs to go, up to his chest. She could drive a safe, blunt object all the way up to his chest, exactly how we want it to look in the end. Then visual effects can add gleaming metal, dangerous blade on it for the full leap. We can do digital blade piercing through him like a martini olive.

**Craig:** The other option is that maybe we’re doing this with stunt actors only, where we can use a full spear, and maybe the other stunt actor’s wearing a protective vest underneath the costume. It looks like they really are getting stabbed. Then we face replace. Oh, face replace.

**John:** Exciting.

**Addie:** Face replace, yep.

**Craig:** Face replace.

**Alex:** That is Addie and I’s nightmare.

**Craig:** Face replace.

**Addie:** You’ll notice Alex and I did not volunteer face replace once.

**Craig:** That’s right, but I’m always like, “What about face replace?” We don’t do much face replacing, but there’s a couple moments where there is a face replace. We do try and avoid it, because it is hard and takes up a lot of resources. It’s hard to do well I think is the biggest issue.

**John:** Addie and Alex though, is face replacement one of those things 10 years from now will be easier, cheaper, and better?

**Alex:** I think so. I think we’re definitely going with AI these days. Just the deep fake technology is really changing the way visual effects handles face replacement. Ten years ago we would have to do a very high-res scan of our actor’s face. We would have to create a digital asset that is photo reel of our actor’s face. That’s very difficult. Until this day I have to say I haven’t seen a single face replacement through that way of creating a digital face that is very convincing. However, the AI deep fake sort of technology, it really is just building an image library in a very thoughtful way of what is the actor’s emotion and why it looks convincing, because it is that person. It is that actor. It’s just pulling those images and blending them together.

**John:** I didn’t want to get through your segment without talking about you seemed to repose that maybe Shot 9 doesn’t take place in the same space as the rest of the scene would take place. Is there an argument for taking this one stunt and taking it out of this cathedral where we’re doing everything else and doing it in a different space?

**Addie:** Yeah, I think potentially. It can go both back to the issues of speed and safety. Let’s say hypothetically we were shooting this at a practical location in a cathedral that was partially destroyed, which would be excellent and would probably make for an excellent scene. It might be nearly impossible for stunts and camera to execute a safe set of wire work stunts like this out in a field, because you might need ceiling rigging and crash pads and all kind of things to make sure that nobody gets hurt.

You would want to control the lighting scenario very intensely, which might be impossible in a daylight location. You could pull a stunt like this onto a blue stage or a green stage, for example. We would shoot the actors in the stunts completely against blue, ideally key out the blue screen and put in the practical environment in the background. I am wandering into supervisor territory there, so I think Alex could speak to that more. You’re probably only going to perform that a couple of times, because like Craig said, the resets are very difficult. You don’t want to burn daylight. You don’t want to drag all your rigging equipment out into Notre Dame, Paris, because the logistics of that are completely insane. We put it in a controlled environment. It’s safer. It’s faster. Then Alex, you could probably elaborate on how all those elements go together into final shots.

**Alex:** The one thing I will say about the acrobatic spring-off is I think that is when I will walk over to showrunner or director and ask for a creative explanation of what the acrobatic spring-off looks like. If it’s something that is not humanly possible, then I’ll say, “Okay, then there’ll be a digital takeover. We’ll have to shoot it in a way where we can’t take it over.” I think that’s definitely something that I have to consider earlier on as well.

**John:** I want to wrap up this conversations with some things I couldn’t cram into this one scene, which is crowds, because Addie, you’ve mentioned on foundation, because you’re shooting this during COVID, sometimes you needed to populate things with more people than you were allowed to have in a space. Even things like filling up an auditorium with people or a mob of villagers storming something, can you talk us through… Maybe, Alex, you could start with talking us through how we create groups of people as opposed to an individual character.

**Alex:** With crowds, I always try to shoot plates if I can, just because it’s cheaper and it looks better. It gets us there faster. If I can shoot plates, then I will. However, if I cannot, then it goes into digital crowds, and I need to create these digital assets of these crowd members. We call them crowd agents. Depending on what they need to do, if they’re just doing a cycle of cheering up and down, that’s definitely the simpler route to go. However, if they have to interact and react to certain things, that’s only software that’s smart enough to know what to do with that. That obviously takes more time, and it’s more expensive.

**John:** As we wrap up, let’s say we have listeners who are hearing you guys talk about this, and they say, “You know what? This is the kind of job I really want to do. This is a thing I aspire to.” What should that listener do next? Let’s say this was a college student who’s really interested in this. What are the next steps for that person? Addie, what would you say? What advice would you give?

**Addie:** I have to think about this. It’s a valid question, because there’s quite a lot of discussion about the lack of diversity in the visual effects space, so how to get one’s foot in the door is a good question. For me personally, I started as a production assistant in independent film.

**John:** Great.

**Addie:** I think that having some boots on the ground experience on a film set is incredibly important for anybody going into any department. I think the strongest visual effects supervisors, producers, artists, coordinators, are fluent in filmmaking in general. I think having a basis in filmmaking and storytelling is actually more important than the technical, because the technical can be learned, but it’s really integral to know how the whole thing goes together before you start talking about the technical. I would say get a production assistant job, see how the whole thing works.

**John:** Alex, what would your advice be for someone who wants to start a career in visual effects?

**Alex:** I think there’s definitely a wealth of knowledge on the internet right now for visual effects, just listening to visual effects supervisors talk to there are podcasts out there. There are tutorials out there. I think there’s just so much that a young artist can grab, that I wish I had when I was starting out. The other thing I would say is be a master at your craft. Be passionate. It is a hard job. It takes a lot of hours, takes a lot of effort. You have to be really dedicated and passionate about it.

**John:** Great. Craig, any last questions for our team here?

**Craig:** No, I think you guys covered it well. I just want to thank you both for coming on, because most writers simply don’t know about this stuff. The most important part I think of this discussion was hearing from both of you about how important the script is and how closely you read it. In television where the writers are in charge, this makes sense. In movies where the writers aren’t, this is part of the tragedy that the script is being read so carefully, and oftentimes in the absence of the writer themselves, who’s just not there. You have to ask the person who didn’t write it what it meant. Again, the way movies do it, stupid. The way television does it, correct.

I think I really connect with what Addie’s saying, that so much of what makes somebody good at this, and I can certainly confirm that this is the case with Alex, is how carefully they interrogate the screenplay and how much they care about the point, which is the story, the characters, the relationship, the tone, and the feeling you want to create in an audience, and not so much about the ones and zeros. Those are just tools like everything else.

**John:** Addie, Alex, thank you so, so much.

**Craig:** Thanks, guys.

**Addie:** Thank you.

**Alex:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Now get off our show.

**John:** Craig, that was a great conversation. Now it’s time for our One Cool Things. Do you have a One Cool Thing for us?

**Craig:** I do have a One Cool Thing, and it’s directly related to my friend Alex Wang, who we were just speaking with. When we are reviewing visual effects shots, oftentimes we are discussing certain details inside the frame. We’re showing this on a television, or when we’re into our later final reviews, it’s being projected on a screen. We can’t walk right up to the screen or the television and start tapping on it with our fingers. That’s not going to work very well. The convention is to use laser pointers. We have all sorts of laser pointers over here. I like the green ones, personally.

**John:** Aren’t they really dangerous? I’ve always heard that green ones are dangerous.

**Craig:** They’re all dangerous. They’re all dangerous. Don’t shine a laser pointer in your eye. They’re all dangerous if you shine them in your eye. I like the green ones, because they’re really easy to see, especially against the typical colors of a frame. It’s rare that you have bright green in a frame, which is why, for instance, green screen exists. All the laser pointers we have are weak. I went and I got one on Amazon that I love. It’s $22.

**John:** That’s not much.

**Craig:** No. It’s called the Solid Craft High-Powered Green Laser, Tactical Long-Range Laser, Rechargeable Laser Single Press On/Off, Adjustable Focus Hunting Rifle Scope with Carrying Case. I love the way that they’ve just gamed the system now so the product name is just a bunch of tags. Anyway, it’s really good. It’s incredibly bright. Do not shine it anywhere near your eye or anyone else’s. It’s got a nice [inaudible 00:56:23].

**John:** Or on a plane.

**Craig:** Certainly not at a plane or the sky or anything like that. I’m so delighted with this thing that the visual effects department here in our post-production office has taken to calling it Excalibur. My Excalibur laser is my One Cool Thing.

**John:** I love it. My One Cool Thing this week is a Substack post by Gurwinder Bhogal called The Perils of Audience Capture: How Influencers Became Brainwashed by Their Audiences. What I really liked about it is he’s talking through how we always think about how influencers are influencing the people who are watching their videos or listening to them. This really is a case of a classic behaviorism, where these influencers are being rewarded for the kinds of things that their audiences like. They become more and more like that. They fall into a trap of just doing the same thing to more extreme levels.

It talks through Nicholas Perry, who started out as this vegan YouTuber but became successful with his eating videos, and now he’s 400 pounds. I think this is a really interesting study in how to think about the feedback loops that are natural and probably good in societies that are about 100 people large but really fall apart on the internet, where you’re getting feedback from people you don’t know, who for reasons you don’t know why they’re wanting to do certain things.

**Craig:** This is an example of the internet amplifying something that has always been part of human nature. That is the way that we respond to feedback. We love applause. We seek approval from the people around us, which in part is correct. That’s part of socialization is making sure that you can read the room and see what might not be working and see what is working. We all then preserve part of ourselves to be resistant to that, because we don’t want to just be the person that changes ourselves for what people want. That’s when we’re dealing with a room. The room on the internet is millions of people. If you don’t have much of an identity or you don’t have much of a presence of approval in your life, and suddenly you have 6 million people loving something that you do, that’s a drug that you’ll become very quickly addicted to. This is very sad to see, for instance, this guy essentially trading his physical health for love, or at least what he perceives as love.

**John:** We’ve always had people who changed themselves because they’ve come into the spotlight. We have A Face in the Crowd or All About Eve. We have these stories of how fame changes a person. The fact that everyone can be a little bit famous now is really part of the problem and is really the danger. Everyone wants to be a little bit famous right now. I think it makes it really hard for someone who’s growing up on the internet to really have this sense of who they are independently of people looking at them on the internet. It’s a real challenge.

**Craig:** It’s tricky. My daughter had some internet popularity. She writes songs, and she sings and performs them. There was a song that she wrote that was based on this fairly popular series of stories on Wattpad, which we’ve discussed before. By popular stories on Wattpad, millions of people read it. She wrote a song that was based on it, and it blew up on the TikToks and so forth. She made money, and she got a lot of attention. I remember at some point she said, “I’ve noticed that I’m now chasing that, and I need to stop.” She actually said it. She said, “I think what’s happened is I’m now trying to write a song that will make the people that like this song as happy as they were when they heard this song, and I’m not going to do that now.” She noticed it. She felt it. I was very proud of her, because I think a lot of adults really struggle with that.

What it comes down to is something that Dennis Palumbo said to me once, he of Episode 99, our favorite therapist. He said, “Many people, perhaps most people, get into the entertainment business because they are seeking approval that they otherwise did not get in their childhood.” That is a very dangerous situation, because if you don’t have a baseline of self-esteem, then this becomes your only engine for approval and meaning. That’s terrible, because what the audience will do is ruin you. A wonderful story by Kafka called The Hunger Artist, which is the opposite of the story that we see here of Nicholas Perry, pretty remarkable stuff.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli. The outro this week is by Aguilera. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send larger questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. If you want to download the scene that we talked through, that’s where you’ll find it. We have T-shirts, and they’re great. You can get them at Cotton Bureau. We have transcripts that come up every week for our show and a weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find that at johnaugust.com. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on friends. Craig and Megana, as my friends, thank you very much for the fun show.

**Megana Rao:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** Megana, our bonus topic was suggested by a listener. Do you want to read the listener question?

**Megana:** Yes. Jacob wrote in and said, “As I hit my mid-30s, I fear I am starting to follow in my father’s footsteps. Is it normal for men to have fewer and fewer friends as we get older? As a kid, I always felt bad for my dad, but now I kind of get it. If you’re going to be a good dad and a good husband, how many friends can you really have? Any advice on that balance in keeping/making friends as we get older?”

**John:** Such a smart question, Jacob.

**Craig:** What strikes me immediately is how gendered the question is, because there is a presumption here that if you’re going to be a good dad and a good husband, it’s really hard to have friends, but there’s no question that being a good mother and a good wife is incompatible with having lots of friends. I do think this is something that happens to men. Is it normal? It’s common. Is it good? No. Is it necessary? No. Is having lots of friends incompatible with being a good dad and a good husband? No. I do think I have a lot of friends. John, I think you have a lot of friends.

**John:** I have a lot of friends, yeah.

**Craig:** Let’s see if we can give some advice, particularly for men, since this does seem like a gender-oriented thing, but hopefully some women will take some value from this as well, on how to keep and make friends as we get older. John, what do you think?

**John:** I’m going to start doing a very John August thing, which is trying to define our terms.

**Craig:** Oh, classic. “What is I?”

**John:** “What is friend? Explain friend.”

**Craig:** “Friend equals one.”

**John:** I want to be able to distinguish between colleagues and friends, because I think men will still have a lot of colleagues, people you work with or people you know through different places, but they won’t necessarily be friends. I would say a friend to me is somebody you can call with a personal problem or a thing going on in your life or just to hang out and have a good time, which is different than a work colleague. I might chitchat a bit with a work colleague, but I’m not going to go deep on things. Sometimes you can make friends out of your work colleagues, which is fantastic, but you need to find someplace that you have friendships that are outside of your work environment.

I’m friends with all the folks who have worked with me at Quote Unquote, which is great. I see them outside of the work environment. If those were my only source of friends, that would not be ideal. My other friends are my D and D group. We play D and D every week. That’s a group of friends. While we’re mostly talking about this endless dungeon that Craig is dragging us through-

**Craig:** It does have an end.

**John:** We’ll reach Hallister eventually. Is a chance to have a social situation that is not about work or family or anything else.

**Craig:** I understand, especially for a lot of men who are not socialized to share feelings and to process their emotions and their feelings through talking, that maybe the idea of friends gets tougher. I want to point out that we all as boys had friends. That was a thing we had. We deserve friends. Friends are wonderful, and they’re essential. Part of what I think might help men is a friendship that has something in the middle of it, an activity.

**John:** Bowling.

**Craig:** Anything, really. If you have bowling, Dungeons and Dragons, fishing, whatever it is, we generally… Do men have book club? No.

**John:** Could they? Should they? Absolutely.

**Craig:** Could they? Yes. Should they? I don’t say should. If they love it, yes. I know from my wife, what book club often becomes is talk club. For some men, that’s hard. Talk club is hard, particularly for men that are struggling to have friends. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that they probably aren’t big into the talk club vibe. An activity that you can all agree on that you love is essential I think. It helps bring people together. A hobby-based group is a good thing, finding something like that. If you are married, you may absolutely loathe the following sentence, which I’ve heard a number of times. “My friend so-and-so would love for us to get together with her husband and go out to dinner.” You may go, “Oh, no.” Give it a shot, unless you already have-

**John:** Give it a shot.

**Craig:** If you have a lot of friends, then you can say no, which I do all the time. I’m full up on friends. If you don’t, you never know, because what happens is sometimes couples interaction helps you find friends. You may then get invited to a party, and you might start chatting with somebody. If you’re a guy and you meet another guy at a party that you like, or by the way, it doesn’t all have to be gendered friends, or a woman that you’d be friends with, pursue it. Pursue it.

**John:** That’s the thing is people are I think afraid to pursue friendships after a certain point, because in college it was easy, because you were just around people, and you could strike up conversations. You all had a thing in common, because you were all going to the same school. You have a little less now. Post-pandemic, Mike and I very deliberately tried to make some new friends, because we recognized that so many of the friends we made over the last 10 years were couple friends, parents of other kids at Amy’s schools. That was great while we had that shared interest. Our kids are at the same school. During the pandemic, we weren’t seeing those people. They all fell out of touch. We didn’t care about a lot of them. We weren’t going to get back in touch. We had literally nothing in common other than our kids went to the same school. Mike and I have been trying to make some new friends. Literally, just in line at Outfest, we started talking to the couple in front of us, and we went out to dinner with them, and they’re now friends.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** Craig, I think I’m going to scare you here, but you have to state it, then manifest it.

**Craig:** Wow. You may have to state it and manifest. You have to be the change you want to see in the world. That means, by the way, that you have to risk rejection of a kind. When you are pursuing friendships, keep your antenna up for resistance and reluctance, because that means those people don’t want to be friends with you, and that’s okay. You don’t want to be thirsty, as the kids say. You don’t want to be desperate. Just stay open to it. I would say, Jacob, you’re in your mid-30s. Don’t follow in your father’s footsteps. My dad, who he’s been dead for, I don’t know, a couple years now, he didn’t have friends.

**John:** My dad didn’t either.

**Craig:** None. My dad lived way longer than your dad. My dad didn’t have friends for decades. For decades. That’s not good. I used to worry about it. Then I realized, why am I worrying about this? This is not my problem. I can’t fix this for him.

**John:** For your own kid, model good behavior.

**Craig:** That’s right. Exactly.

**John:** Make some friends. Take a chance.

**Craig:** It’s actually part of being a good dad is showing your kid that you have friends and that you’re not just the guy at home that’s a lump on the coach. By the way, I don’t know if you’re married to a man or a woman, but whoever your spouse is, give them a break by going and having your own friends. Otherwise, you’re like, “I don’t know. You’re going out. I’m alone.” Megana-

**John:** Give us your perspective on this, because you’re closer in age to Jacob.

**Craig:** You’re Jacob-ish.

**John:** Do you sense your friends groups changing, your friendships changing? What’s going on with you?

**Megana:** I definitely sense as I’m getting older, the texture of my social life changing a bit. It’s hard to tell whether that’s because of the pandemic and how that’s affected us the last two years or if I have to admit that I’m just getting older.

**Craig:** You’re getting older.

**Megana:** An uncomfortable thing to realize. I wholeheartedly agree with what you’re saying. Male friendships fascinate me. I think it’s just beneficial for everyone for men to have more friends, because I think classically, straight male guys tend to expect their significant others to do a lot of the emotional labor of helping them process and talk through everything, and they only feel comfortable talking about that with their partner. It’s exhausting. It’s so much better if you have a group of guy friends or just a group of friends that you can bounce things off of.

**Craig:** My wife would love it if I talked to her more about my feelings. She would actually love that. I don’t do it ever. She’s like, “Can you please just say your words related to whatever you’re feeling?” I have to make an effort to do that.

**Megana:** Are you having those conversations with your friends, or you’re just not having them at all?

**Craig:** Straight guys. It’s time for the straight guy hour. How do straight guys do this? Here’s how the straight… I don’t know if this is typical or not for straight guys. What I do with my friends is we do talk about these things, but we don’t talk about them in emotional ways at all. We talk about them in… The only emotion that we express generally is anger. That’s entirely acceptable for straight men. It’s like, “I’m so pissed off about this.” “Yeah, me too, blah, and here’s why.” Ultimately, it turns into comedy of some kind. You get heard without it being this thing of being heard, because we can’t ever just go right at it. We have to go around it, because again, we were instructed not to, at length, in our childhood. It’s interesting.

That’s why I think guys having friends is so important, particularly straight guys, because we were conditioned to not talk and not share and not listen. If we find friends that we can do that with and feel like we’re not doing it but still do it, if you know what I mean, it’s really helpful.

**John:** Now this is not a new observation at all, but I do feel like the root cause or one of the root causes of so many of the challenges facing America right now is the epidemic of male loneliness and just men who don’t have anyone to talk to or anything to do, so they’re only reaching out to the internet. It’s not good. It’s not healthy for women. It’s not healthy for society. I’d urge our male listeners to just be proactive about trying to find some more friendships. Just find an activity you want to participate in and do it. Find some other men around you or people around you that you can go do this. It could be board games. It could be hiking. My brother is in a four-wheel driving club.

**Craig:** There you go. It’s a club.

**John:** He loves it. Find a club.

**Craig:** There’s a reason why gangs exist. There’s a reason why teams exist and squadrons. I don’t know, there’s just something kind of groupy about men. They like to be on a team. They like to be a part of a thing where everybody wears the same shirt. Men love uniforms. I don’t know why. It’s just in there somewhere in the bones. That’s a good thing. Just be careful that you don’t end up in a club with a bunch of other people who are super angry about not having friends.

**John:** That’s not good.

**Craig:** That becomes a little toxic stew of bitterness. Then that’s where men start to egg each other on to do terrible things. What is al-Qaeda if not a club of lonely men, or what was it? That’s what happens. Just be careful about that. Keep your antenna up for people that are maybe just miserable, because then that’ll be a misery club. Find something that’s positive and fun.

**Megana:** Like golfing. This is why people golf, right? You are outside, and you’re just walking and chatting.

**John:** You’re not looking people in the eye. You’re standing side by side doing this.

**Megana:** You’re also not looking at a screen, which is a plus.

**Craig:** You are not looking at a screen. Golf is a fascinating one, because you’re also not competing against that person. You’re competing against yourself, which is amazing. Alec Berg, who is an excellent golfer, has often pointed out that golf is one of the only sports where anybody on any given day could be as good or not better than a professional. If golf isn’t for you, or if you’ve got a physical disability and you can’t golf, there are other things, for sure. You just have to make an effort to find them. The internet is a great tool and a terrible tool. More toxic groups on the internet than not. Maybe that’s a way for you to find something there. You have to try. Jacob, it’s really important. You may find that you could also reconnect with some people that you could naturally be friends with, you just lost touch with. Just see how it goes. You need it. It’s really important.

**John:** It is important.

**Craig:** You guys are my friends.

**John:** Thanks, friends.

**Megana:** Aw.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** Bye, friends.

**Megana:** Bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* Follow along with the sample scene [here](https://johnaugust.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/sample-scene-for-VFX-discussion-2.pdf).
* Alex Wang on [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1647984/)
* Addie Manis on [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1982088/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/adicaroy?lang=en)
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Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/563standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/20-questions-with-john).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** My name’s Craig Mazin.

**John:** This is Episode 543 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

While it may sound like a normal John and Craig episode, it’s actually not. Craig and I couldn’t find a time to record together this week, so instead we’re recording two separate episodes in which we attempt to answer 40 listener questions.

I am going to tackle the first 20. Of course, all this wouldn’t be possible without our intrepid producer, Megana Rao. Megana, welcome to the show.

**Megana Rao:** Hello.

**John:** I say welcome to the show, but you’re actually always on the show. We can hear your laughter sometimes in the background, even when you’re not asking questions. Today you’ll be asking so many questions.

**Megana:** I’m ready. I’ve done all my vocal exercises.

**John:** Sounds good. Now next week you’ll be doing the same exercise with Craig, who will answer 20 more questions. I’m curious who’s going to have the better answers. I will be listening to this without having any exposure to it. It’ll all be a surprise to me when the next week’s episode comes out.

**Megana:** Yes, but it’s not a competition, because they’re different questions. I couldn’t bear to pit you guys against each other.

**John:** Also, we’ll have a Bonus Segment, as always. This week, Megana and I will discuss murder architecture, specifically how it relates to the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Fresh. Basically, who are these architects and contractors who are hired to build these houses in which all you can really do is kill somebody? I really want to get into the backstory behind how these houses exist, because they’re really cool and cinematic, but they’re also not practical for things other than murder. It’ll be fun.

You and Craig, I suspect you’re going to discuss millennial stuff, because Craig is obsessed with you as a millennial.

**Megana:** I hope to represent us well.

**John:** Represent us, but not me, because I’m Generation X. You’re representing your people.

**Megana:** Correct.

**John:** Your millennial identity. Last week’s episode, we were talking about keyboards. Craig mentioned that he was incredibly fast typist, he was over 100 words per minute. I was joking that you were a slow typist. We actually took a typing test and found out that you are a faster typist than I am. What number did you get?

**Megana:** I had 81 words per minute and 100% accuracy.

**John:** I had 62 words per minute and 100% accuracy. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the test that we used, so if you want to compare yourself to the Scriptnotes folks to see how well you did. The 100% accuracy, I did make some mistakes and then back up and fix some things.

**Megana:** It counts against your total time, so I think that’s fair.

**John:** I think it’s fair too. That’s with my current weird keyboard. I do feel like the typing test, obviously you’re looking at stuff and you’re trying to type what they’re having you type, but that’s not necessarily reflective of how I really type in real life, which is basically dumping my brain out onto a page, which I think could be a little bit faster than that.

**Megana:** Because this typing test was you had to accurately notate what words they were giving you, it wasn’t–

**John:** Yeah. If I wanted to write their words, I wouldn’t be a screenwriter. In our discussion of ergonomic keyboards, several listeners also pointed me towards the ZSA Moonlander, which is a very cool looking keyboard. I always wanted to try it out, because it does look neat. It’s one of these very split keyboards where your left half and right half are completely separate units that you can position however you want to position them. They look neat. I’m eager to try something. An advantage to it may be that it’s much more portable, because one of the challenges I have with my weird vertical keyboard is it’s a bitch to pack. It’d be great to have something I could travel with if I need to travel. I’m going to be traveling this next week, so we’ll see.

**Megana:** Do you normally travel with that keyboard?

**John:** I don’t. Normally if I’m just traveling, I’m just using my MacBook, which is fine for short times, but it’s harder for longer periods of time. The year I was living in Paris, I did have to travel with my big keyboard, and so I had to find a whole setup there for how I was going to make this work with the keyboard. It’s a fragile thing to be packing and traveling with this stuff.

**Megana:** It’s massive.

**John:** It’s massive. It’s big.

**Megana:** This thing’s gorgeous though. I hope you get it.

**John:** You’ll see it. It’s coming in about two weeks. By the time I’m back from my trip, it’ll be here and we’ll try it out.

**Megana:** Cool.

**John:** Cool. It’s time for all these questions. Usually on the show, the questions get pushed to the end of the episode. Now we’re going to start with the questions and go through it. You and I were both looking at the 72 Questions with Phoebe Waller-Bridge from–

**Megana:** Vogue.

**John:** Vogue, yeah. This will not be nearly as scripted, but hopefully we’ll have some good answers to questions that our listeners actually really truly have.

**Megana:** Cool. Are you ready?

**John:** I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m stretched. I’m limber. Let’s go for it.

**Megana:** We’re going to start with a short one. Steve asked, “Are Stuart Specials a bad thing?”

**John:** Stuart Specials are what we call when we get a Three Page Challenge that starts in a way where a situation, a scene has happened, and then at the end of the three pages, then we flash back to the real time. Essentially, it’s opened in a flash forward. I don’t think Stuart Specials are always a bad thing. They become a cliché in the Three Page Challenge.

Here’s an argument for the Stuart Special is that you’re giving the reader and viewer a taste of where your movie is headed to and what it’s going to evolve into, which may not be indicative of what the normal start of the movie would be. It’s attention-grabbing in that way. Go opens with a Stuart Special. That’s fine. It is a little bit of a cliché. Megana, as you’re reading through Three Page Challenges, do you find yourself avoiding any of them because they are cliché within our little domain?

**Megana:** I think that’s exactly it. I like Stuart Specials when I see them on screen, but when I’m reading through so many Three Page Challenges, I think I get frustrated because I feel tricked by the end. I’m like, “Where is this going?” because I only have the three pages.

**John:** When I see them in real movies, they can be really effective and it gives you a sense like, oh, this is where it’s headed. You’re also waiting for that scene to happen. Sometimes you can become impatient for that moment to happen, because you know it’s supposed to be there.

**Megana:** I also realized this as I was reading this question. I forget about the beginnings of movies a lot.

**John:** That’s fair too. A movie that’s doing well, a movie that’s setting us up well and going well scene by scene by scene, you forget what you saw before, and you’re really just in it in the moment, so therefore you’ll forget about the Stuart Special. Hopefully, it caught your attention, but it’s not making you think back to it. If you’re thinking back to the opening halfway through the movie, something’s not working halfway in the movie. Cool.

**Megana:** Sam asks, “I’ve encountered a lot of advice over the years about dealing with scripts that are too long, but I rarely see people talk about what to do when a script comes up short in length, like when a feature draft is 75 pages. I realize I might just write 75-page features, but I have a hunch that I rush through things. I’m a video/podcast editor as my day job, and I think my instincts to cut things down take over during outlining and writing. I have a hard time not going as quickly as I can from wherever I’m starting a script to the ending I have in mind. Do you have any advice for how to allow scripts to breathe or for how to take a short script and look for what might be missing from it?”

**John:** Sam, I think the real problem here is you probably don’t have a second act. I’m guessing that what you’re really writing is a first act and a third act, and you’re not really allowing a second act to breathe and develop and grow and change. By that, I mean you’re creating a situation and then you’re resolving that situation, without building and conflicts and other developments in between. I suspect it’s not that your scenes are too short, that you’re running too efficiently. It’s just that you’re not actually creating enough obstacles along the way for your story to finish. There’s nothing inherently wrong about a short script. I think we all love things that can clock in at under two hours. You are probably just not actually creating enough moments of conflict and development and suspense. You’re just not doing enough there. It really is probably an outlining phase problem.

Before you start your next project, really look at where are you starting, where do you think you want to end up, but where are the surprising things along the way that can happen? What are the detours that will be rewarding? Remember, you as the writer know where it’s all headed, but the audience shouldn’t know where it’s all headed. Really, what does the character want in the moment? How can you send that character down a road that makes sense for the character, that point, but is going to lead to new obstacles and new complications? I think you’re just probably missing beats. You’re just not letting yourself explore and enjoy the story the way that you want to in a feature film.

**Megana:** Great. No Context asks, “What tools do you use to keep track of notes and ideas that happen when you’re not at your desk, digital or analog?”

**John:** A couple things. I’ve talked on this show a lot about how I have a stack of index cards scattered throughout the house. If I need to write something down, like a note, an idea, a thought, I’ll just grab an index card and write it down and put it some place where I can find it again. If it’s in the middle of the night, I will take that and stick it by the bedroom door so that it’s there and I can take it downstairs in the morning and process it and put it in my notes of things to do.

I will also use the Notes app on my phone for things like casting lists or like, that’s a good idea for this person in this role. The Notes app is really helpful for that. We certainly share notes between me and my husband for things like the grocery list and stuff like that, stuff we want to be able to easily access and add to and share at any moment.

For things that I want to hold on to and I don’t have a thing to do with them right now, but I need to not forget them, I started using Roam, R-O-A-M. It’s called Roam Research, which is like a personal Wiki where you can just dump information. I’ll have broad categories of places where I’ll put stuff. It wants to enter everything into a daily view, so you can track what day you entered some stuff. Then it’ll have little category labels for things. If this is related to a project, I’ll just use that project category and dump in my notes for that. That’s how I’ve processed those individual index cards full of information, make sure I don’t forget those things. I don’t do a great job of going back through that, honestly, and remembering it, but I know it’s always there. It keeps it from being a loop in my brain.

I think one of the best things about taking notes is it just frees your brain from having to remember stuff yourself. The only way you can remember things is by looping it and keeping an active memory. Put it in that long-term memory, and then you don’t have to stress out about it.

**Megana:** Super helpful.

**John:** Megana, what do you use for your notes? I see you doing different things. What are you using right now for your notes?

**Megana:** I mostly use the Notes app on my phone, but it’s an absolute mess. I found a note on there the other day that just said “animals” and I have no idea what that means or why I wrote that. I will write things in the middle of the night or whatever, I have an idea, I’ll create a new note for it, but it’s not organized and it’s not functional in any way.

**John:** We don’t have phones in our bedroom, and so I don’t ever turn on my phone in my room. Having just physical paper is good, because it lets me get it out of my head, but it doesn’t invite me to do anything more with it. I can’t look something up in the middle of the night, which is really helpful for me.

**Megana:** That’s very cool. I’m going to try the index card thing.

**John:** If you’re reading a book and you need to take a note about something in a book, how do you do that?

**Megana:** I guess I take a picture of it on my phone.

**John:** Then do you do something with that picture or it just sits in your photo roll?

**Megana:** It just sits in my photo album.

**John:** I think using the camera as a memory tool, it’s so helpful and it’s just so handy, but it’s hard to doing anything with that after the fact. Now with the iPhone, you can select the text in a photo and copy it out. It’s a thing to do, but you have to actually remember to do that.

**Megana:** You can search by text now, which is cool, because I’m always quoting things that I read, but have no sense of where they came from, so that’s helpful.

**John:** It’s nice. If I’m reading a book and there’s something I do need to remember, I will grab an index card and just write it down, because the actual process of having to actually write it makes me think about it more and makes me think of the context of it. I will, again, try to just use paper when I can.

**Megana:** Do you ever annotate your books?

**John:** I’m not a person who marks them up a lot. I don’t underline or mark stuff up. You’ll see some books around the house where I’ve done that, but it’s really the exception. Are you a marker-up of books?

**Megana:** If it’s something I’m using towards my writing, then yes, but otherwise, not really.

**John:** Makes sense.

**Megana:** It’s a lot of effort.

**John:** I feel like I’m never going to see that again. I have that shame about not marking up books, because what I was taught in grade school and libraries is you just don’t mark up books. I always feel bad for the next person who’s going to get that book.

**Megana:** Exactly, or embarrassed that they’re going to think the things that I marked up were lame.

**John:** It’s always fun when I read a book on Kindle. You can see that a bunch of people have marked, have highlighted a passage. It’s like, oh yeah, I can see why everyone has highlighted that one passage.

**Megana:** I know, but I judge them for that. I’m like, oh really?

**John:** So basic.

**Megana:** Clint asks, “Since shorts move so quickly, I’d like your opinion on ways to do character development. It feels like there isn’t much time to develop a character. Should we strive for longer shorts of characters more the focus rather than plot?”

**John:** Clint, I wonder if you’re not thinking about shorts in the right way, because I think we talk so much on this podcast about character development and characters having wants and needs and going through a journey, and there’s this whole sense of leaving home and emerging transformed, and it’s all about a onetime journey that transforms a character. Shorts aren’t necessarily that. Shorts are often just a situation. Shorts are like short stories. They’re really describing what a character is experiencing. They’re like a snapshot in many ways, more than a full journey at times.

I think maybe you can ease off on your pressure to have this massive character development, because there’s not really a time or space for that. It’s not really what a short film is designed to do. A short film is more like a joke. It has a setup, development, and then a punchline, a delivery. That’s great. You don’t have to think about, oh, I need to make a longer short in order to have better character development. No. I think as long as you’re really exploring the question that the short film is asking and delivering a good answer, that’s really the goal.

What you may also be thinking about is how many characters you’re trying to introduce into your short film. I think some of the best short films are really constrained in the number of characters they’re giving us, so it can really follow one person’s short journey in it. You may not have time or space to have meaningful characters set up who are having real conflict with each other. Really, it’s about one character encountering a situation and getting through a situation.

**Megana:** I agree with you. I think maybe the expectation for a short is different. Even as an audience member, I’m not expecting to see character development. I just want to see something, a little slice-of-life sort of thing.

**John:** Absolutely. It’s a postcard rather than a full book.

**Megana:** Adrian asks, “In what part of writing the script do you think about music? Not like the movie Yesterday where the plot revolves around the music. I’m particularly curious about music rights that you don’t own.”

**John:** I tend to think about music pretty early on in the process, because I’m really trying to figure out what does this movie feel like, what does this show feel like, what does it sound like. I will try to build playlists for myself in Apple Music pretty early on, just like, this is what reminds me of this movie that I’m writing. Those songs won’t necessarily make it into the soundtrack. They may not be part of the script, but they’re just giving me a sense of what this all feels like.

There’s a new project that I may be doing. I’ve already started pulling some songs that make me feel like, oh, I would love to see this in context of the show, or it just reminds me of what I want this to feel like. This is a composer that I think would be fantastic for it. This is a vibe that I think is fantastic for it. Pretty early on, I do think about the music.

Yes, there are practical concerns about what songs you’re going to actually be able to get or not get. That’s going to come down the road. I don’t try to stress out about that too much at the start. For my movie The Nines, I wanted some musical kind of numbers. There would be two songs that would be sung in the course of the movie. Quite early on, I knew those would be important story scenes and that we needed to actually license the rights and prerecord them and do all that stuff. That was great and that was exciting. That’s not the norm for most scripts you’re going to be writing for someone else to read.

I would say just use thinking about music as a way to help you build the world in your head, but also don’t let it become a time suck where you’re curating the perfect playlist for this movie that you’re never actually writing. All these kind of things can be distractions from the actual real hard work of sitting down and putting words after each other to actually build your movie.

**Megana:** I get to listen to that music sometimes when you and I are driving around or something, but are you sharing that with anyone else?

**John:** Generally not. There’s one project which I had a collaborator on, so he and I have a shared playlist for that. No, I’m not usually sending in a bunch of tracks along with the script to the studio. If it is generally musical, then of course we’re all listening to the same things or making sure we’re talking about the same songs. At this stage, I wouldn’t be sharing this with anybody else. For one project I’m working on, there’s a very specific vibe of music that I’m trying to do. I think it may make sense for me to put in links in the script to some examples of what this is going to sound like, because otherwise people may not really have a sense of what it is I’m describing. You’ve actually talked about one of your projects, you just put links in the pdfs to the songs, and that was helpful. I’ve done that with another project, on your suggestion.

**Megana:** Cool. I’ve never seen you reference a particular song if it wasn’t a musical in your script before, but I definitely feel that the vibe that you’ve created in your playlist translates.

**John:** In my script for Dark Shadows, Let the Sunshine In was an incredibly important song for one sequence. That’s a thing where I did script into the movie, like, this is going to happen here, but that’s really an exception for me.

**Megana:** Cool. Nick asks, “What are some of the ways seeing your work produced has influenced your writing style, particularly seeing actors perform your characters and their dialog, and possibly the questions they ask you about it?”

**John:** It is a big difference when you first see something actually happening in front of you. The first thing I had produced was Go. I remember sitting on set. We were shooting this scene which is no longer in the movie. We’re in this apartment building. I’m sitting on the floor outside of camera view and watching this first scene get shot. I was just so excited. I’m seeing these things happening. These words I wrote are actually now… Actors are saying them and it’s all happening in front of me.

Then you realize it all becomes small technical questions on the day. You approach the scene with this perfect idealized version of how it’s all going to be. Then when you actually get there, you realize there are a thousand compromises and some wonderful discoveries you make along the way, like, “Oh, I didn’t see that as a possibility. This is really great. I love that line reading they’re giving. I love how the director’s staging this thing.”

More importantly and more present are the compromises that are being made based on the reality of the locations you have, the time you have, who you have, the number of setups you can get into. I think a thing you learn over time is what’s easy and what’s difficult in production. The things that are going to be obstacles along the way could be the number of night scenes you have, the number of kids you have, the number of really complicated setups, the number of characters you have in a scene.

A thing I don’t think I realized was when I was just pushing words around on paper is that if you have a character who is not doing anything in a scene, it’s really tough for that actor to be present in a scene but not actually have lines or have a specific thing they’re trying to do. They just become dead weight there. When we’re reading a script, we don’t really notice it in there, but then you actually shoot a scene, you realize, oh wow, that character’s standing there and has nothing to do. That becomes a problem. That’s a conversation you end up having with directors and actors and finding business for them on the set.

A thing you also recognize once you’ve actually had things produced is recognizing that scenes that aren’t absolutely necessary will probably get cut, because there’s just this ruthless pressure to have everything build to the next thing and build to the next scene. If you have a scene that you really need to keep in there for tone reasons, for comedy reasons, make sure there’s a plot reason why it also needs to be in there, because otherwise, it’s in real jeopardy.

When you talk with actors about what they’re doing in the scene or what their motivation is, it’s important, as a writer, to remember that they are there to be the character, they are not there to be the movie. Always frame your answers in terms of what it is they’re trying to do right now and what is right in front of them and not what the scene is supposed to do or what’s happening in the movie, because they don’t know, they don’t care, that’s not their responsibility. Their responsibility is to their performance in this moment. That can be a thing that’s hard to remember, because you are the person who has this God’s-eye view on the whole thing. You remember why that character’s saying that line, because it’s setting up something down the road that doesn’t matter. What matters is why they are saying in that moment.

One of the things I think is really useful about being the screenwriter though who does have a God’s-eye view is sometimes there can be an instinct in a scene to make a little change. It doesn’t matter. It flows a little bit more naturally, but you know it sets up something very important later on. It echoes something later on. You may need to stop and say, “I get why you’re trying to do that. This becomes important later on for these reasons,” and you can have that conversation. That’s another good reason to have a writer on set, because you can sometimes point to things that they wouldn’t otherwise see.

The last thing I would say is that you’ll see in director Q and A’s about a movie that came out, it’s like, “Oh, I had this long scene, and then we decided that actor can just do it in a look. They don’t need all this dialog. They don’t need all this stuff.” Sure, that happens some. Often, you do need the dialog, or at least without that dialog you wouldn’t have gotten to that look. It’s recognizing that you are giving them things to say and stage directions to help create that mood. Sometimes they can cut things out, because we got it with a look. That doesn’t mean it was a failure on your part as a writer. It means it was a success that you were able to create a situation in which they could give a performance that didn’t need to have all the words you originally could’ve put there.

**Megana:** That’s super helpful. You and I both watched a movie recently where you could say all of the actors are in their own different movie. That’s a really helpful thing to keep in mind. Your point about having actors who are necessary to the scene reminded me of that Patton Oswalt clip in, I think it’s the King of Queens, where he’s in the scene but doesn’t have any dialog, and he just stands perfectly still in the background. Have you seen it?

**John:** I haven’t. That sounds great.

**Megana:** It’s amazing. I’ll include it in the show notes and Slack it to you. It’s so good.

**John:** That surprises me with something like King of Queens, because I feel like an ongoing show would have a really good sense of like, okay, we have to service all these characters and all these actors. They probably wouldn’t put somebody in the scene who didn’t absolutely need to be there. Sometimes they needed him for one line, which was coming at the very end. There are these wide shots that you can just see him there in the acts. It’s tough.

A thing you don’t appreciate when you’re writing scenes is how they’re going to be shot and how coverage is going to work, which is basically when the camera is focused on one actor versus another actor and when you’re in wider shots, when you’re in medium shots, and how differently it’ll play than the master shot that you’re probably thinking about as you’re writing the scene. Generally, we’re writing scenes to reflect reality, like what is actually really happening in this space. We’re not hopefully thinking too much shot by shot by shot by shot, but ultimately it is going to be shot by shot by shot by shot, and understanding that some things are going to change and feel different because of that. The rhythms and the tempos will change. That’s just the compromise we’re making for the media that we’re chosen to write in.

**Megana:** I’d love to hear you guys talk more about just the mechanics of characters entering and leaving scenes.

**John:** Absolutely. Let’s put that on the board for a future episode, because entrances and exits are so crucial. We try to cut them as much as possible, because they can be shoe leather, but they can also be really essential when they need to happen. On stage, they have to happen, because bodies have to move on and move off. There’s a whole art to that. There’s a very different art to how we do it on film and television.

**Megana:** Great. Next question, Katie in LA asks, “I’ve been wanting your perspective on the intersection of parenting and art, specifically in regards to Euphoria. Do you watch it? Do your children? As a parent of a five-year-old, it gives me panic attacks, but as you are further along in your parenting journey, I’d love to know if it’s a thing for you and/or how you’re talking to your kids about it.”

**John:** As a parent of a teen, Euphoria also gives me panic attacks. Listen, it’s a show about high schoolers, which means that junior high schoolers really want to watch it. They want to watch it most. Yet it’s a show that’s really made for adults.

I want to both support the show in terms of it has its vision of showing high school life through a very different lens, and I want to support that vision, and yet as a parent I really wish the show didn’t exist. I can say that. I wish the show didn’t exist as a parent, not as a writer, because I think it is so dangerously attractive to exactly the teens who shouldn’t be watching it. It’s not trying to glamorize that life, and yet it is glamorizing that life, because these are ridiculously attractive people doing really dangerous things in this perpetual Southern California fog somehow. For all the reasons it is so attractive to teenagers, I think it’s also not a great thing for certain teenagers to watch. I think it can be really triggering for some kids who should not be seeing it.

Katie’s talking about she has a five-year-old. You can control access to media for a five-year-old. It’s much harder to control access to media for a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old who has the internet and who can find stuff, even if you were to put a password on your HBO Max account. That’s a real question. I think the issues of responsibility kick in there too. Yet I don’t want to take away their specific vision of somebody who wants to make this show about this experience. It’s just tough.

I have to hold both things, that I want the show to be able to exist, because it’s a show with an artistic vision and really great performances and all the things that are noble about it, and as a parent I don’t want it to be out there for teens who shouldn’t see it. It’s really hard to keep your teens from seeing it. I do feel like sometimes people who create things like this aren’t aware of how challenging it is to keep things from teens who want to see it. Megana, what’s your take on Euphoria? You’ve watched it.

**Megana:** I’ve watched it. I watched the first season. I haven’t seen the second season yet. I also don’t know if I’m ready for it. They are impossibly cool and hot. I could totally see how if I was in junior high school it would set up this expectation. I think kids are able to parse things out and know that that’s not reality, but it is a little bit harder to discern when you’re that age and you’re that close to it. I totally hear what you’re saying. That makes a lot of sense.

Jerry asks, “I’m intercutting between two scenes that happen at the same place, but at different times. This will be sustained for three and a half pages. Is it best to use slug lines in transitions or offer an action line detailing the nature of the transitions early on in the scene?”

**John:** The word Jerry wants is intercutting or intercut. What he can do, and this is common, you’ll see it in a lot of scripts, is let’s say there’s two basic scenes happening. There is a bank robbery happening and there is a scene in a diner happening. They’re happening at the same time. You’re intercutting between the two of them. They have some sort of play between the two of them, but they’re not the same scene. They’re two different spaces. Generally, you’ll set up one moment. The bank heist is happening, and we’re seeing what’s happening in the vault. That’ll be its own scene header. New scene header for INT diner day, and these two characters are having this meal.

Then at a certain point you say intercut. Intercut means both scenes are going to be happening. From that point forward, you can just use the scene description to talk about what’s happening in those moments. You don’t have to keep going back to scene header, scene header, scene header. For most situations, this will get you through it and it’ll feel nice and natural, because you’re not stopping the flow constantly the way you would be if you were throwing in scene headers all the time. It makes it really feel more like the sequence would be in the movie then just a bunch of scene headers on a page. Intercut or intercutting is your friend there.

At a certain point when you’re done with that, you say, END INTERCUTTING. That’s all uppercase, generally with a period, basically like, hey, we’re done with that sequence and now it’s time to move on. Then either you stay in one of your moments, in one of your situations, or you go to a whole new scene header for a new place that you’re going to end up.

**Megana:** I see. Would you also delineate when you are going to see a certain scene by using voiceover from the other scene? Does that make sense?

**John:** If it’s important that we’re not seeing the character on screen doing it, but that it’s a voiceover, sure, you put the VO after them. I think you would probably want to indicate, from Max side, Molly VO, they’re coming right towards you, or something like that. That’s a situation where you might want to try to make that more clear. In most cases it will just make sense. You can find ways just with scene description to have it make sense. We know who the characters are. We know where they are. You don’t need to hold our hand through it all.

**Megana:** That’s super helpful.

**John:** That was a good palette cleanser there. We can go back to something a little bit more challenging.

**Megana:** Enthusiastic But Not Ignorant asks, “I’m a mid-career mid-list novelist. I’ve written several books which have been published by commercial houses and well-reviewed in major outlets, but I’m not a bestseller. Now an established production company with a solid track record has made an option offer on my latest book, with the aim of making a limited series. My question is this. If I wanted to use this opportunity to get some TV writing experience, what is the best way to go about it? Should I ask to take a crack at the pilot on spec? Should I wait to see if something goes into production and try to get in the writers’ room? I want to be involved, but I also want to give this the best chance of success, which probably means allowing people who have actually done this before to take the reins.”

**John:** I love Enthusiastic, because Enthusiastic sees what they want, but also recognizes why going after what they want too aggressively may hurt the thing down the road. You’re coming at this from the right perspective. Congratulations on writing the books, and this book in particular which may go to limited series. Take that victory for what it is.

I think your goal now should be, how do I help this series be as awesome as it could possibly be? That is by being supportive and enthusiastic about the project, supportive and enthusiastic about who are they bringing to be the showrunner on this project, who hopefully you will meet with. Try to be that resource for them, so that they always feel like you’re on their side, you are that person who can help them achieve greatness with this.

I would not try to write this pilot yourself, because you don’t know how to do it. All the natural problems that are going to come up with writing this pilot are going to be amplified, because they’re going to be worried about you as a new screenwriter trying to adapt this thing. You could turn the same script that somebody else could turn in, but they’re going to judge it weirdly because you don’t have experience actually making the show. I think you should not try to write it.

I think you should offer to read absolutely anything, give enthusiastic, positive notes, really try to help the process, but not intervene very much in it, because I do worry that you’re going to probably derail it more than you’re going to help it. In success, then you have the opportunity to be more involved on the next project, and you’ll also read a bunch of these things, you’ll have seen how this all happened and how the sausage was made.

**Megana:** Would you recommend that Enthusiastic try to get into the writers’ room down the line? I hear what you’re saying about the pilot, but should they, I don’t know, try to position themself for any sort of writing credit on this project?

**John:** I don’t think that’s a great idea, because I think if you were going to be in the writers’ room on a project, there’s going to be this weird power dynamic between you and the showrunner, because you are the person who created the original material, and this is the showrunner, and if they’re changing things, people look, like, “Oh, is it okay that they’re changing this thing? I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

If people can write with other experiences where it’s worked out great, fantastic. I know on The Leftovers, Damon Lindelof and the guy who wrote the book The Leftovers, they did collaborate on stuff, and that sounded great. If the person who wants to adapt your book wants to adapt it with you, that’s great. That’s a fantastic dream scenario, but that’s not likely. It’s going to probably be a very special situation if that’s the case. I think Tom Perrotta is the man I was trying to think about for The Leftovers. Maybe that’ll happen, but I don’t think it’s going to probably happen in this case.

**Megana:** Got it. Francesco asks, “I’ve been watching the Dirty Harry series on HBO Max recently, as well as Bullet, and found myself wondering why we don’t get a lot of movies set in San Francisco anymore. In the ’60s and ’70s it seemed like a reasonable place to set movies, but in the last couple of decades, everything seems to be set in either New York or LA. The exceptions are biopics about people from SF, like Milk. Even a movie that was written and set in San Francisco like 500 Days of Summer ended up being switched to LA. Is there some financial or logistical reason for this, like San Francisco not offering good tax credits, or are cities other than Los Angeles and New York not considered relatable or interesting anymore? I ask about the lack of San Francisco-based movies because it’s my nearest big city, but I suspect if they were making Rocky now, it wouldn’t be set in Philadelphia. Thoughts?”

**John:** I think Rocky would still be set in Philadelphia. I think San Francisco is a weird special case that’s worth looking at. San Francisco, from what I understand from producers who try to shoot there, it’s just ridiculously hard to shoot there. It makes you recognize how much LA and New York City bend over backwards to make it comparably easy to shoot there. When it comes to permits, policing, neighbors, parking, basically the infrastructure within a town to make it simple to shoot a film there are just much robust in cities that shoot a lot. There’s a virtuous cycle where because things shoot here, it’s easy to shoot things here. Because things aren’t shooting in San Francisco, it’s harder to shoot things there. You don’t have the crew and equipment infrastructure, because there aren’t crews ready to go in San Francisco of a size for a big studio feature, because there aren’t people living up there who have been doing that all the time.

There are some logistical problems in San Francisco apparently also just because of it’s so hilly. Where you park the trucks is a real challenge. If you don’t have good cooperation from police and traffic and everybody else to move cars off the road, so you can actually park places where you need to put those big trucks, that can be a challenge.

That said, there are movies that are shot there. I’m thinking back to Diary of a Teenage Girl. Marielle Heller came on to talk about that. That was shot in San Francisco. Again, it’s a smaller movie. It has a smaller footprint, which makes a lot more sense for that. The HBO show Looking that I loved was also set in San Francisco, shot in San Francisco. They made it work, but I bet it was more challenging in San Francisco than it would’ve been here in Los Angeles. They made the choice to really do it in San Francisco, which is great for that.

I do think Rocky would shoot in Philadelphia. That was iconic for that movie, that place. You’re also close enough to New York City that you can pull in a crew from New York if you need to. It’s not that challenging.

When we made Big Fish, we were in Montgomery, Alabama and Wetumpka, Alabama. There was no crew, and so we had to pull people in from every place else. The city was really accommodating for us because we were the first big feature to come in there, but they didn’t have the kind of infrastructure that other places would have. We had to wing it. We had to spend money that we wouldn’t have otherwise had to spend, just because of the challenges of shooting in a place that was not used to filming.

**Megana:** Interesting. Cool. Paul asks, “Will Zoom pitches still play a big role in post-pandemic life or will this all go back to, quote, in the room?”

**John:** I think Zoom pitches are here to stay. Right now in Los Angeles as we’re recording this, it’s safe enough that people could go back in the room to do things in person. I actually think they’re going to go back to doing stuff in person. All the meetings and the pitches I’ve had recently have been on Zoom, and producers and other folks who aren’t even in Los Angeles. It would be really impossible or very unlikely to get them to fly to Los Angeles to do this one pitch. I think Zoom pitching is here to stay. I think 70, 80% of pitches coming up will be Zoom pitches, at least for the next few years. It’s not just the pandemic. It really is an easier, better way to do some of this work.

Megana, you’ve been helping me out so much on pitching recently. I have these slide decks I need to use. We discovered it’s much easier for you to join the Zoom call as well and be the person driving the slides while I’m just talking. I’m not responsible for clicking forward and switching stuff from one input to another input. I think it does just make sense for pitching really. When you’re on Zoom, everyone can look at the same set of slides or everyone’s looking forward. You’re not having to pay attention to one person in the room or other people in the room. I just think it’s better, and I think Zoom pitching is here to stay.

**Megana:** All the things about, I don’t know, your bodily awareness you don’t have to worry about in a Zoom pitch, like, oh, this outfit I’m wearing is scratchy or I’m too hot in this room. You can control it, because it’s your house.

**John:** Megana, you’ve been pitching a ton, but you’ve only done Zoom pitches. You don’t really have the experience of pitching a project in a room, correct?

**Megana:** Correct, but I love Zoom pitches. They’re fun. I guess I’ve adapted to the Zoom of it all. I’m sure I would love in-person pitches too, because I like meeting people and chatting. I think the Zoom, and now that we’ve all gotten a little bit better at the logistics of sharing kino and the tech behind it, it’s become really seamless and everyone knows what to expect.

**John:** What I do miss about in-person pitching and in-person meetings, general meetings too, is I think you get a sense of whether you vibe with somebody better in person than you do on Zoom. That’s just a reality check. I remember very early meetings with Andrea Giannetti, who’s at Sony now, but back when she was at TriStar, she calls me into her office and she’s like [unclear 00:37:46] going through stuff and just get a sense of, oh, I get who you are. I don’t think I would have that same experience with her now on Zoom, just because a Zoom meeting is just much more functional. It’s not hang out and vibe and chitchat a bit. It’s different on that level. I will miss a little of that, but on the whole, we’ve had the chance to pitch to, as you saw, 12 places that would’ve been impossible to pitch if we were trying to do this in person.

**Megana:** Oh my gosh. That’s a great point. I’ve had a couple of generals that have been in person. From the logistics of meeting someone and figuring out who they are at the coffee shop or where to go in the office, all of that in-between stuff, I do think you get a good sense of your dynamic and who the other person is that you don’t via Zoom.

**John:** There’s going to be some function of in-person stuff for certain kinds of things, but if we’re actually going out to pitch a project and trying to pitch to 10 places in a week, Zoom is just so much better. I remember when we were trying to set up Prince of Persia, and Jordan Mechner and I were literally driving studio to studio to studio, and it was all like, could we get from this place to that place, or suddenly we’d have to go from Sony to Warner Bros.

**Megana:** Oh my gosh.

**John:** It’s tough. The folks who don’t live in Los Angeles are like, what’s the difference between Sony and Warner Bros? It’s an hour in bad traffic.

**Megana:** What else is nice is I feel like it frees up your day, because there are certain times of day in Los Angeles where no one should be driving. Now you can pitch at 4 o’clock and it’s no big deal.

**John:** There was a company who wanted to do Arlo Finch, and so I remember going out to have a meeting with them in Santa Monica. I liked them, but the fact that they were in Santa Monica made me really a little bit down on them as a place. Now, much less of a deal, because I recognize I would never be driving out to Santa Monica.

**Megana:** Moving on to Ben, Ben asked, “I finally got a job at a major film studio. I’m a receptionist/office coordinator. On my break, my boss’s boss’s boss saw me working on my script. We talked about story for a while, and as she was leaving, she invited me to send her a, quote, solid script, and that she would forward it to the head of the studio. I told her that I had just started on this script and I wanted to take my time. She said, ‘No worries. This is an open invitation. Take a year if you need. We aren’t going anywhere.’ My question is, can I really take a year? I’m worried that she’ll forget about her offer or she might move on to another studio or something like that.”

**John:** Ben, you can take a year. Don’t burn this offer too quickly on something that’s not great. Whatever you do decide to give to her, have some other people read it first and tell you, oh, this is good, because don’t give her something that’s not good, because it’s not going to help anybody. She says she’ll forward it to the head of the studio. We’ll see. She’ll forward it to the head of the studio if she really, really, really likes it. More importantly, she’s a person who could be a fan on your side, so that’s great.

It seems like Ben is back in person where he’s working, because someone’s walking by and seeing him do something. That’s exciting for Ben. That is one of the real advantages to being in person is that casual notice somebody’s doing something and have it work there. It reminds me of when I was an intern at Universal. I was responsible for really menial filing of paperwork and stuff. Doing my lunch breaks, I would type up my script. I had handwritten pages, and over the lunch break I would type them up on my little laptop in the commissary.

**Megana:** Aw.

**John:** Some people would ask to see stuff, and I just knew that I wasn’t ready to show this to anybody. It was nice that they asked. They could see that my goal wasn’t to be a clerk filist, my goal was to be a screenwriter, and they were rooting for me in some way, which was nice. You had more experience though with this probably recently with folks in your writing group and when they show it to superiors or folks they’re working with. What is the consensus you’re hearing out there on the street?

**Megana:** I agree with you. I think a year is totally fine. I think in LA there’s just a weird sense of time because we don’t have seasons. To me I wouldn’t even notice if someone sent something to me a year later. The other point that I was going to make is I think definitely have your friends or your writing group or writers you respect read it. A piece of advice that my friend Joey Siara from my writers group gives is, at a certain point though, if your friends have been reading multiple drafts, they’re no longer objective readers, and they’re your friends, so they can’t always give you harsh feedback. I think at a point like that, using something like the blacklist or having a third-party reader who’s not been invested in your project since the genesis of the idea is really helpful to get some more measured and neutral feedback before you send it to a professional like your boss’s boss.

**John:** For sure. [Unclear 00:42:37] next.

**Megana:** Mark from Tennessee asks, “Can you give examples of scenes that you wrote that you realized would be difficult to shoot and how you rewrote them to be more shootable and/or production-friendly without compromising the quality or purpose of the scene?”

**John:** Great, I can think of a lot of examples of those kind of rewrites. In the original script for Big Fish, there is a sequence about how Edward Bloom was born. It came from the book. It was this big mythological birth moment that happened. We got to Alabama, and Tim Burton said, “I just don’t have a place to shoot this. It just doesn’t actually work here. Can we do something simpler like he’s really slippery?” I’m like, great, he can be a slippery baby. It became a much shorter, simpler scene. Also, it got a laugh and it was the right kind of change. It was really a production change. It was a money, budget, couldn’t actually shoot it change, but it was a better change for the movie, so I was happy to make that alteration.

In Go, the original script, there is an additional character who appears in the third section. I always called her the Linda Hunt character. She’s a supervisor to Burke. She got written out because she had nothing else to do. It was logistical in the sense of we just couldn’t really afford the scenes, but also it just didn’t need to be there. It was a good cut. Then when we went back and did the reshoots for Go, originally the three sections of that movie branched off from different scenes. It was at the supermarket, but they were different scenes. That’s what kicked them off. It was recognized, oh no, we should go back to the exact same scene each time that jumps us off to the new place. It was this simplification there that really helped.

For The Nines, I think one of the things that was really helpful is we found a way to shoot LA for New York City. When we did the actual real New York City stuff, our footprint was super, super small. It was just me, a camera operator, and a local sound person. We didn’t have any trucks. We didn’t have anything. We could just shoot the New York exteriors we needed and sell that. We didn’t need to bring anybody else there to New York. A lot of the stuff that takes place in the New York section of the movie is all LA, including the New York jewelry district, just because our downtown LA can look like New York if you frame it right.

The other thing which was so crucial for The Nines was recognizing that usually when you’re trying to schedule a movie, you’re trying to schedule around locations. You’re trying to shoot out a location and move on to the next location so you don’t have to go back to a location. In this case, we had to optimize for what part of the movie we were in, and really it came down to the state of Ryan Reynolds’s hair and beard, because we were cutting his hair, we were coloring his hair, he had a beard, he had no beard, and so we had to optimize for that. Because we were shooting the main set as my house, we could shoot at my house, go do something else, come back to my house, go do something else, and so we could dress the house and do the house, just be really flexible in that location. That made all the difference, because the movie would cost so much more if we had to do wigs and other things to make all the rest of the things work so we could shoot out a location. That was a big factor.

The general things you’re looking for when you’re trying to figure out for production concerns are, does it have to be night. If it can day, it’s going to be just simpler. Can we not have children? Can we not have animals? Those are things that add complexity. If you can avoid those, you’re going to save some time and some frustration.

**Megana:** Can I ask you a question about this simplifying out the Linda Hunt character? I know that you worked on movies that are shooting as you are rewriting things. What is your methodology for that? I feel like my brain would explode.

**John:** That got dropped out before we had really even budgeted. We knew that that was going to go away. If you’re in production and you’re recognizing, okay, all these things are shifting… The Charlie’s Angels movies are examples of everything was shifting every day, and you had to figure out what we shot, what’s coming up next, what was public. You really just try and optimize for what is the movie we’re trying to make right now and not be too beholden on what the original plan was behind things. If there’s a simplification to be had, do it. If it’s not going to materially affect the story you’re trying to tell or the production value you’re trying to achieve, you do it. Things like if you have to move the crew from one place to another place, that’s a huge drag, unless it’s not.

An example in Big Fish is we were shooting in Montgomery, Alabama, and we would shoot exteriors at the river, but then if the weather turned or the light was not good, they could just pull up the trucks at lunch and move back to our stages, which was just this warehouse, and shoot stuff in the afternoon at the stages. Being flexible and recognizing what is the priority. In the case of Big Fish, sometimes the priority was let’s get really good light for these exteriors, and you could optimize for that.

**Megana:** Very cool. Moving on, Ryan asks, “Screenplay examples for instruction comes in waves. Tootsie, Star Wars, Casablanca. Which scripts from the last 20 years do you think should get, quote, taught in film programs?”

**John:** My first instinct was to say Aliens, but then I realized Aliens is more than 20 years old, which makes me feel so, so, so old. Listen, I think there’s so many great scripts to be picking there. A lot of indie films should also be higher up there. I think Booksmart is a great movie and does a really good job of its storytelling and character wants being explored and expressed, and it has a sense of fun and a sense of style, which is great. All Lord and Miller’s work is creative and fun and does really interesting things with audience expectation, so I’d move those up higher there. Wow, other great, recent movie examples…

I think the reason I was reaching back to Aliens is that was such a seminal script for how we’re writing action on the page, and I feel like it’s been duplicated so thoroughly and modeled so much in movies after that point that you could probably read any action film over the last 10 years and it’s still going to have some of that quality to it. Megana, I’ll throw this back to you. You’re newer to the screenplay format. Of the stuff that you’ve read that’s more recent, what do you think is going to be very teachable?

**Megana:** I guess a couple of other examples that I think seem fresher to me are The Wolf of Wall Street or Adam McKay movies where there’s just so much breaking the fourth wall and exposition done in a different way that feels new. Is that true?

**John:** I think that is also true. I think it’s playful with the format. You look at The Big Short and it’s how it’s getting that information out there. We’ve talked about The Social Network as being a really good movie to watch in terms of how it is telling a story, how it is using real life just as a springboard to make a very specific point about this environment. I think those movies will be on the short list.

It’s also worth noting that so many of the classic movies we’re pointing to, say like Tootsie, Star Wars, Casablanca, white guys wrote them, and so I think making sure that the canon that we’re teaching from isn’t just like, these are the white male screenwriters of that era. There’s really amazing films being made by filmmakers of all different backgrounds, and making sure that we’re not just teaching one kind of thing.

**Megana:** Totally. Eliza asks, “I’m an aspiring writer, and I’ve recently learned about the TV fellowship programs and decided to apply. Fast-forward to a month later and I’m bleeding out of my eyeballs and pulling out my hair.”

**John:** Oh no, Eliza.

**Megana:** That was so graphic. “The truth is I find TV spec scriptwriting to be incredibly hard. The number one tip that I’ve encountered is, spec what you love, but I love highly serialized shows. When I sit down and try to find some tiny crevice where I can maybe explore something further, say on a season of Killing Eve or The Morning Show, I run out of steam by the end of Act One. I just can’t for the life of me come up with a spec story that has legs long enough to travel for 60 pages, which lines up perfectly with what occurred in the preceding episode and what will occur in the succeeding episode.

“Writing a TV spec has been so shatteringly difficult that it’s making me question if I have potential as a writer at all. It’s supposed to be a straightforward exercise that amateur writers can use as a steppingstone to become professionals. In other words, it’s child’s play, right? Is this an indication that I should just pack up my stuff and head to the exit?”

**John:** Yes, Eliza, you should give up now. You should completely give up. No, Eliza, you have, I think, some wrong expectations. Let’s disabuse you of your wrong expectations. First let’s talk about what spec writing is for TV. When someone says a spec script when it comes to TV, they’re probably referring to this is an existing show, I’m going to write an episode of this existing show, not because they’re paying me to do it, but to show that I know how to write and that I could write a show like this. You write one of these things not because you’re trying to get hired for that specific show, but as a sample for you to get staffed on a show that could be kind of like it. If you’re writing The Morning Show and you’re hoping to get staffed on Bridgerton or something, you have the ability to do an existing thing.

These kind of spec scripts have fallen a bit out of favor. They were much more common when I was starting. Some showrunners really like them. I remember Mindy Kaling tweeting about how much she loves reading specs, because you get a sense of can this person write this voice, can this person really understand how this TV show works.

Useful exercise, but just understand that it has its limitations. One of the limitations that you’re encountering is that you really can’t try to fit your episode into the existing narrative and existing plot lines of a serialized drama that same way. You can’t make this be an alternate Episode 3 of Season 4. It’s just not going to work. Take that pressure off yourself. Instead ask, what is something you would love to see the show do at a certain point. Don’t try to be so serialized.

Find a way to take these characters and have them do something interesting that feels like it could be an episode of the show, it just wasn’t an episode of the show. The characters feel consistent with the universe of that original TV show, and yet they’re not trying to directly slot into something else that has happened in there. I’m going to reach back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You don’t have to make it fit into one season mythology or one big bad mythology. Just have it be something that feels like a classic, good episode of that show. Maybe if you’re going to do something interesting, take those characters somewhat out of their normal environment, put two characters together who don’t generally have opportunities to interact.

Do something that is both the voice of the show, but also stands out and is unique, so that a writer who may want to hire you, a showrunner who may want to hire you, says, “This person not only understands the show, but understands how to do something interesting with those characters and the elements that they’re given.

**Megana:** Totally. I think some of the expectations that Eliza has are a little too high. I don’t think anyone who is reading these fellowship applications is going to be tracking at one point in the season or the plot line this goes. They probably don’t even watch that show. They just have a sense of who the characters are or maybe they’ve seen an episode. I think that you’re absolutely right, and taking some of that pressure off will really help.

**John:** Don’t bleed out your eyeballs and don’t give up on this, because you’re trying to do something that’s really difficult, and it’s not a normal job at all. It’s not a normal thing to have to write an episode of a show you’re not getting paid to write, that you don’t have the writers’ room as a resource. You’re trying to do a weird thing, so just try the best job at it you can. I think honestly these kind of spec pilots make more sense for comedy. They show your comedy chops and your ability to write characters’ voices in a way that make more sense, which may be why I think so much of staffing has moved to reading original stuff rather than specs of existing shows.

**Megana:** I think specking what you love makes a lot of sense because you know the world of the show, but I’ve never specked something that’s a highly serialized drama. I wonder if that’s also making it harder for her. I wonder if there’s a procedural she likes enough that she could write a spec for.

**John:** That’s such a great point. It reminds me of that Ira Glass quote about, at a certain point you recognize you have taste, but you don’t have talent. She probably has really good taste when it comes to The Morning Show, so she knows exactly how it’ll all work and she knows what a great episode this is, and she’s comparing what she’s writing to the very best episode of The Morning Show ever, and not being able to see the process to get there. I do think picking something that she loves so much may be part of the problem.

**Megana:** Totally. Moody asks, “What’s the deal with streamers and residuals? For example, do the writers of a Netflix Original or another subscription-based streamer make close to what a writer for a studio is going to make with purchase and rental fees? Are residuals even relevant the way they used to be?”

**John:** Oh yes. The question of streamers and residuals is an ongoing one. It’s going to be inevitably a focus of negotiation for the next MBA negotiations. Let’s talk through the current state of, if you write something for a streamer, how residuals work.
The important thing to understand is right now it is a fixed residual. Let’s say you got story and teleplay on a credit for a one-hour that you write for Netflix. This is an example here. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the WGA document that talks you through how you actually calculate what these things are, based on the current deal. For this one hour written for Netflix, the residual base would be $29,657. That’s not money you’re getting right now, but that’s what’s called the base of it. That’s how much the residual pot is worth for that.

Then it depends on how big the streamer is. There’s this thing called subscriber tiers, which is by how many people, I think only in North America, are subscribers to that service. In the case of Netflix, it’s the highest tier because they have the most at more than 45 million subscribers. It’s called a subscriber factor. You multiply that original 29,000 by 150%, so it increases that. Working off that, there’s what’s called an exhibition gear percentage. Basically, each year, a percentage of that total money, you’re getting paid out as a residual. It starts at 45% in the first year. It drops to 1.5% in years 13 and beyond.
For this hypothetical show that you’ve written that you got written by credit on, you would be getting a first-year residual of $20,000, and then it would drop dramatically year after year after year until 13 years where you get 1.5% of that, or one 40th of that really is the best way to think about that.

It’s really hard to compare this residual to what you would be getting in cable or in broadcast, because cable and broadcast, they are generally not fixed residuals. There’s a fixed residual for the first rerun in broadcast, but really your residual in normal TV is based on a percentage of the licensing deal. When Friends sells, for licensing, there’s a certain amount per episode, and you as a writer get a percentage of that. An incredibly successful show like Friends, that licensing fee is huge and your residuals can be huge. A show that is not a big hit could be a lot less.

Right now the deal with the streamers is, probably for some shows you’re getting a little bit more residuals on it, because it doesn’t matter whether it’s a success or not, but for the big hits you’re getting really screwed. You’re not getting any piece of that pie on a giant hit. If you write Stranger Things, you’re still getting the same crappy fixed residual. It’s not great right now. It could be a lot better. It’s a reason why I think there’s going to be so much focus on trying to improve how we’re doing this and to really make the success of a given show be reflected in the residuals that a writer gets for having written that show. Did that make sense? I’m trying to talk through a lot of numbers.

**Megana:** It does. We’ll link to this WGA article, because it’s really helpful, these graphs, and then the calculations and the examples that they walk through make it easier to follow. It is surprisingly complicated. I didn’t realize how much these percentages dropped off year over year.

**John:** Yeah, I think it falls off a cliff. Some caveats here, we’re talking about high-budget subscription video on demand, which is what you call the expensive stuff made for something like a Netflix. There’s a lower-budget thing, which obviously the results aren’t going to be as good, and the calculations work differently. If you’re making a movie that is originally intended for a theatrical market, but then it’s released on Netflix instead of being released theatrically, in that case they have to calculate what’s called an [unclear 00:59:01] license fee, which is basically how much they think the movie would be licensed for if it were out on the open market. That becomes harder and harder to do as there are fewer movies out there who then are showing up on streaming later on. There’s ways to calculate it when it’s not clear that it was made for this market, but it’s complicated.

When you’re in one of those situations, you get the Guild involved to check on it, and the Guild is constantly arguing about how certain things should be counted, so it’s tough. Let’s say you have an existing show that is then licensed through a streamer. That goes through a more normal residual process, which is basically there’s a license fee, Netflix is paying a certain amount per episode, you as a writer get a percentage of that amount in your residuals.

**Megana:** I have a lot of follow-up questions. Is that why day-and-date release stuff that came out during the pandemic was more complicated? Did that affect drastically how writers were being paid for movies that were simultaneously being theatrically released and put on streamers?

**John:** The fact of the residuals to some degree had a bigger impact though on box office bonuses, which is one of the ways we get around the problem of not having backend participation or having a meaningful backend gross is that we say in our contracts, okay, when this film reaches $50 million in the US box office, I get a bonus check of this. When it hits $100 million, I get a bonus check of this. It’s a way of giving us a backend. If something’s released day-and-date, your box office is going to be greatly lowered because of that. The Scarlett Johansson lawsuit over Black Widow was really about that, which is basically she had bonuses in her contract that she was not going to be able to hit because they released the movie day-and-date theatrically and in theaters.

**Megana:** Got it. Cool. We have four more questions left.

**John:** Let’s do it.

**Megana:** They’re pretty quick. Mattias asks, “Other than writing, what’s something aspiring writers who live in LA should be doing?”

**John:** A quick checklist of things you should do other than write while you’re in Los Angeles. You should see movies. You see a bunch of movies. See the new releases, but also go to things like the Academy screening series. Go to any sort of retrospective stuff. Those are great to see. Anything where there’s a Q and A afterwards, especially with the filmmakers, with the writers, those are terrific. Whenever the ArcLight reopens, they do those. Directors series at Film Independent is really good. I host some of those events. Go to festivals. Go to festivals like Outfest or the indie festivals. Volunteer to crew at one of these things. You’ll meet some people. You’ll see a bunch of movies.

Go to plays. Go to comedy shows like Groundlings. You’ll see stars before they become stars and see how all that works. Take a class if you feel like taking a class. Again, you’ll meet other people who are trying to do what you’re trying to do, and writers, which is always good. If you’re in LA, you should hike, because you can, because there’s just a ton of hiking around Los Angeles.

Make sure you’re exploring different parts of the city. It’s really easy to get stuck in your one little bubble in Los Angeles, but LA’s giant and there’s so much to do. If you’re in Silver Lake, make sure you make it out to the ocean every once in a while. Vice versa, if you’re on the West Side, make sure you’re hitting downtown and other parts of the city.

Crew on your friends’ films. Find films that need PAs and be a PA. Just get some experience on a set while you’re here, because there’s always so much shooting. Learn how to shoot something. Get a camera. It doesn’t have to be an amazing camera. You can do it on your phone as well. Write a short thing and learn how to shoot it, because that’s a skill you’re going to need to learn to have. Understanding how shot by shot by shot you put something together is crucial. LA is where film was born, so do that while you’re here.

Finally, there’s a bunch of events that are always happening in Los Angeles. It’s one of the biggest cities in the world. Go to concerts, go to museums, make an art date with yourself to get out of your apartment and see things and do things, because there’s no reason to stay trapped indoors in Los Angeles. Go out and do stuff. What other advice would you have for Mattias here?

**Megana:** I think all that’s great. It’s made me more excited to live in LA. I think also specifically do things that are not related to the industry or not going to help you in any way. I think working in the industry and living in an industry town is really overwhelming and sometimes just suffocating, and so having things that are completely separate from that is helpful, like hobbies like swimming or pottery or things where there’s no way for you to network or be thinking about anything professional.

**John:** Agreed.

**Megana:** Great. We have a question from Flustered. Flustered asks, “Later this year we’re shooting my first US studio feature. I’m not a total newbie. I have experience in my home country, but this film is definitely my biggest moment to date. I pride myself on being a pretty chill person. I’m used to working with actors. I’m someone who’s never really been into celebrity culture. People are people. That is, until they attached our lead.”

**John:** Oh, no.

**Megana:** “They booked someone who would have made my 16-year-old self fall out of my chair. What I want to know is how do we as screenwriters be chill? I’ve had a couple of meetings with him to discuss the character pass I’m about to do, and he’s been bloody lovely, of course, so I’m off to an okay start, but come production, I’d love to get a photo with him. Ugh, just typing that feels so cringe. I just need tips on professionalism, and if asking for things like a photo is crossing some invisible line. This is a total nonissue in the scheme of things, but I literally didn’t know who else to ask.”

**John:** Don’t ask for the photo, Flustered. Celebrate the fact that you are interacting with this actor in a way that they see you as a professional and that they are excited to have you on board as the writer of the project. Don’t be a fan. Don’t ask for the photo.
It can be hard to be chill around people who are really famous and who are rich and successful and just gorgeous and all these things that overwhelm you. I find it helpful to be specific and really focus on what is your job, what do they need, how do you help them get the best performance, what are they interested and into.

My first meeting with Drew Barrymore was about Charlie’s Angels, and we really could talk, really vibe on what is the movie that we are trying to make, what does it feel like. We could arrive at a shared vision for how the movie should feel. That was a really good experience. Yeah, she was very famous at that moment, but she was also focused on the work. It sounds like this actor is focused on the work too. Don’t make it a fan situation by asking for a photo.

Here’s when you’ll get your photo. You’ll get your photo at the premier, which will be fantastic, because you’ll be on the Red Carpet and get a photo together, or on set, or the stills photographer on set. There can be some fun way for you to get that shot that you really want, but really focus on the movie rather than the photo.

**Megana:** This is the perfect time for fake it ’til you make it.

**John:** 100%.

**Megana:** Rena asks, “Do you have any tricks for not falling into patterns and dialog? For example, I find myself using the word honestly a lot, and honestly, it’s getting old.”

**John:** Oh Rena, I hit the same situation, and I find myself doing things like that where I’m just like, “Oh my god, I used the word actually three times on a page.” The only thing you can do is just be aware of it, and when you see it, stop it. Having someone else read through it, having, honestly, Megana read through stuff and say, “You used this word twice,” is how you’re going to notice it. Then when you do notice it, you will find a way to stop yourself from using it so often.
Now, in terms of dialog, yes, you’re trying to make characters sound like themselves. I think what you may be noticing is that if one character says “honestly,” another character shouldn’t say “honestly” that much. If one character says “honestly” a lot, that can feel authentic, because individual characters should fall into loops where they do say things the same way and have the same structure to things. That’s why Jim Halpert sounds different than Michael Scott. People have the natural things they go to, the patterns that they go to. I think Rena’s going to be okay.

**Megana:** Yeah. Also, with a tool like Highland, you can Find and Replace and just search for those things once you notice them.

**John:** Absolutely. If you notice “honestly,” just do a find for “honestly” and see all the times you’re using it and see when you don’t need that word. “Honestly” is one of those things where it generally can just be cut, and it’s a stronger sentence without “honestly” in front of it. If you need a softener, just find another softener to get you into it.

**Megana:** I have a problem with my action lines where I’ll say “starts to” instead of just whatever the action is. I do a pass where I edit all those sentences.

**John:** Good plan.

**Megana:** Last question, Shewani [ph] asks, “How do you handle balancing writing your own passion projects versus pitching on assignments?”

**John:** That’s a good question. I don’t always balance it great, but I think I’m always aware of these are things that I want to write. I have a short list of projects that I do want to hit at some point, or either start writing or come back to. These are things that are just things that I own and control that I want to be my own stuff. Whenever I turn in an assignment for someone else, I will try to prioritize going to one of those passion projects for at least the time I have, while I’m waiting on notes back or whatever, just so I do get some time to spend with those projects.

In terms of pitching versus writing your own stuff, if I am pitching something out there, I still have a lot of free writing time. I’ll try to use that free writing time on my passion projects. Am I trying to pitch these passion projects? Sometimes. Sometimes it feels like this is the time to get that thing out the door and get people reading it, but more often, the stuff I’m pitching on is stuff that exists that I’m trying to get to the next point or I’m trying to either get the job or get this project, this book or other property, set up some place. I still have the time to go and write the new stuff that is for myself.

Basically, I would say recognize that your writing time is crucial and important, and if you’re not doing work for somebody else writing, make sure you’re doing that work for yourself writing. Megana, we got through 20 questions. Was it only 20 questions? It felt like 9,000.

**Megana:** I’m sorry. I hope that wasn’t me asking the questions, but yes, that was 20.

**John:** 20 questions. 20 questions done. Let’s see Craig Mazin beat that. Should we go on to our One Cool Things?

**Megana:** Yeah.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is this video by Paul Stamets, who is a mycologist. He studies fungi and mushrooms. He as a scientist developed this fungi that attracts ants and termites, and they eat this thing and they bring it back to their nest where it kills them. It’s a pesticide, but it’s a very specific, clever pesticide where they bring it back into their nest and it kills them, but also makes everyone else stay away from it. It’s very site-specific, which I think is a really good idea. His patent is expired. He got his patent 17 years ago. Patents expire.

What I liked about this video is he was describing how excited he was that this is now open for anyone else to use, that this is now in the commons and people can build products off of it. Also, he was never able to actually bring it to market. He could never actually find a way to do it. I liked his honesty about like, “I really thought this would be a great thing and revolutionary, and I couldn’t do it. Maybe somebody else can. Also, here are the challenges you’re going to have, because it doesn’t have this patent protection anymore.” I just really liked his approach to this thing he developed which was really cool, which was not successful commercially, but is still good for the world. It’s just a good mix of the open sourcing and public goods and the real challenges of capitalism all wrapped up into one little video.

**Megana:** That really fits with the ethos behind your work.

**John:** Fountain is an example. It’s a public good. It’s screenwriting syntax, which is good for a lot of people. It’s had some success, but it hasn’t revolutionized the world in ways I would’ve liked. It hasn’t been the ever-attracting mushroom that has destroyed other entities, but it’s had its own little, small successes.

**Megana:** Very cool. I guess thematically related, my One Cool Thing is Under White Sky: The Nature of the Future. It’s this book by Elizabeth Kolbert. She won the Pulitzer Prize for this book The Sixth Extinction. I haven’t finished it yet, but I think there’s nine different examples of ways in which humans have tried to fix certain problems that have happened in ecosystems or the environment, and now she looks at things 30, 50 years down the line, and how we are now trying to remedy the ways that we have interfered and caused greater problems in the environment. She looks at the Mississippi River and carp. I was just telling you this example about these pupfish that are in Devils Hole in the Mojave Desert. While that land has been protected, 100 miles away in Nevada they were doing nuclear testing, and how that has influenced this very specific species’ survival rates is so fascinating.

**John:** On the inspiring-depressing scale, where would you put this?

**Megana:** I was thinking about that before I recommended it, because I was like, it does depress me, but you know I love some dry nonfiction to get me to bed.

**John:** Oh yeah, me too.

**Megana:** It’s pretty bleak, because so far it doesn’t feel like we as humans can do anything right. If we do something that seems to temporarily help the environment or help the world in some way, this takes the long view look at it, and it’s like, nope, you actually messed things up far more than you realized. It is pretty bleak. It’s depressing.

**John:** I’ll add it to the list, but I think I have a few more cheery things to get through before I get to a mass bleak book.

**Megana:** Fair enough.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Thank you again, Megana Rao, our producer, for all those questions, and for everybody who sent in their questions. That’s so, so helpful. Our show’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Out outro is by Ben Gerrior. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I am @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts and hoodies, and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can also sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on murder houses. Megana Rao, thank you again.

**Megana:** Thanks, John.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** Megana, let’s talk murder and architecture, because you had encouraged me to watch this movie Fresh. It’s only a very mild spoiler to say there is a killer in this movie who has a really stylish house, a house like, oh, I would love to have this house. It’s a little bit remote. It’s not a creepy cabin. It has good, natural wood finishes and details. It feels nice. It also has a basement that is set up for murder, but not a grungy, grimy murder. It’s much more sophisticated. It feels like a spa. It’s like a spa where you get dismembered.

**Megana:** Like one of those places where you can get plastic surgery but you’re still at this retreat.

**John:** Oh yeah, completely. Like where she goes in Hacks.

**Megana:** Yes, exactly.

**John:** Like that. It’s all tasteful, all well-done. You might be chained to the floor, but it’s got good aesthetics to it. You got your stainless steel toilet. You got a little drinking fountain. You’ve got some things you need. Even the bars closing off your cell, they’re wood. It looks like teak.

**Megana:** It’s like Scandinavian.

**John:** It’s very Scandinavian, which is also a good tie-in to Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a Scandinavian thriller in which ultimately we discover this murderer who has this house. It’s like, okay, part of your house is just designed as an abattoir. It’s clearly set up to just slaughter people.

**Megana:** I re-watched that scene from Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. He also has this whole setup in the basement where instead of a sprinkler system, it fills the room with gas and he has his own personal gas mask that he just attaches, I guess, when he climbs down the stairs. It’s just all part of the process. I feel like he must have rigged that, because how do you get a contractor to do something like that?

**John:** Are they just really good do-it-yourself-ers who just have really good skills for this, because I was thinking the main character in Fresh is an accomplished surgeon himself. I don’t understand how he’s doing all the work he’s doing as a surgeon and as a dismemberer of bodies and as really an entrepreneur. Also, he has clearly some facility with how to build concrete structures and these things. Assuming he does have a contractor and an architect, what is the cover story for why these rooms are being built this way?

**Megana:** It’s like, yeah, I need you to build these guest bedrooms with metal chains that are bolted into the ground.

**John:** Maybe the chains are something he could do himself, or he could have just one lackey in on it with him. The bigger construction things, you got to have a crew there. There’s stuff that has to happen. Even with the pretense of, oh, maybe he has this private surgery center, yeah, I guess, but I find it suspicious, or maybe I find it as an opportunity for a movie or a docuseries about the people who build murder houses, like a home-flipping thing, but it’s really about murder houses.

**Megana:** You’re someone who owns a house and has remodeled your house. My understanding is that any time you want to make a change, you do have to get a permit from the city. Is that true? Is that true for everywhere or just LA?

**John:** I think that’s why murderers are moving out of Los Angeles, because it’s the bureaucracy really. It’s all the permitting that’s really getting in the way of innovation and murder houses. You have other things listed here in terms of the aesthetic. Parasite, of course, a great example. There’s the whole basement in Parasite. Essentially it’s a bomb shelter, I get that, but also it feels like a murder hole.

**Megana:** Totally.

**John:** Invisible Man. Look at this house that he built, that also seems set up for devious deeds. In that case, I can’t remember any specific room in there that feels like, okay, this is just a room that could only be used for evil, but maybe.

**Megana:** He has that room where he keeps the suits. I don’t know what about these really ultra contemporary homes is so frightening. I think maybe it’s all of the glass and then the concrete.

**John:** That sense of it’s all transparent so you can see everything, and yet…

**Megana:** It’s so disorienting.

**John:** Yeah, disorienting. Everything’s being hidden. It’s hiding in plain sight in some way. Concrete does feel fairly industrial and brutalist and confining and soundproof. They’re always a little bit remote so no one can hear you screaming as they’re cutting you apart. I see here in the Workflowy you have other examples of things that are tied into murder architecture or really questionable, like why would you build this this way.

**Megana:** Correct. One TikTok sensation that our whole office was obsessed with was Samantha Hartsoe, this woman in New York who discovered a secret… I guess she was getting a breeze through her bathroom and so she discovered that through her bathroom mirror, her apartment connected to an entirely different apartment.

**John:** Basically she could take out her medicine cabinet and climb into this accessory hallway that went into a completely different apartment which was empty. Why would you build that accessory hallway? It was all just unsettling.

**Megana:** So unsettling. Then I have this other story in here. I remember when I was in college, I was reading this story, the headline was Ohio State Students Discover Stranger Living in Basement. In the article, it actually really warmed by heart, because I was like, this is so Ohio. These boys were living in this house on campus. There were 10 of them. Strange things were happening in the house, but because there were 10 of them, they just always attributed it to a different roommate. Halfway through the school year they discovered that there was a squatter living in their basement. In the most Midwestern turn of events, all of the quotes are, “He seems like a really great guy. We wish we could help him out. Would’ve loved to be his friend or get to know him, but it’s actually not okay for him to live here.” It’s so apologetic and accommodating. It was so sweet.

I texted one of my friends from high school, my friend Sean, and I was like, “This is so funny and this is so Ohio.” He was like, “Yeah, man, that’s my house. Yeah, I was living there. He’s a great guy. He’s a philosophy major just trying to get by.” I was like, “This is so funny and heartbreaking.”

**John:** It reminds me of the people who are squatters in the Hamptons. Off-season in the Hamptons, they’ll just pretend that they should be living in these houses, and live in places where they don’t actually have any right to be there.

**Megana:** If Craig was here, he would talk about the nature of higher education and how cost-prohibitive it is, but yes, it is very similar to that.

**John:** College is the problem. Which would probably end up on Room, because you think about it, Room, it’s not within the house, but this guy has a structure in his backyard that it’s just designed to hold these people in. It’s apparently soundproof. I’m trying to remember. It’s underground? Basically, you can’t easily get out of it. A similar thing happened in one of the seasons of Search Party, where there was a secret underground bunker room that was all soft and padded and where she couldn’t hurt herself. Again, I ask, who are the contractors who are building these things, and what do they think is actually happening? I just think there’s a, I think if not actually a docuseries, then at least a good Onion article about the contractors brought in to do this project and what they believed that they were doing.

**Megana:** I think that there’s maybe too much overlap, and we need to be more suspicious of doomsday preppers and murderers. I don’t want to miscast doomsday preppers, because it’s like, do your thing, but I think maybe we should just be a little bit more skeptical or ask a few more questions around some of those precautions.

**John:** 10 Cloverfield Lane is a great example. It’s both a survivalist prepper bunker situation, but also a creepy murder shaft. The two things do seem like they fit together. If you have gratings in your floor and the ability to spray down blood into the floor, I don’t think that’s normal doomsday prep. It’s just me. I think those should be some things that if it’s on the spec sheet for the construction project, I think you’d intervene there.

**Megana:** Not only are these people committing crimes or murder, but they’re also probably violating some zoning laws.

**John:** 100%. Got to be strict here. Thanks, Megana.

**Megana:** Thanks, John.

Links:

* [Patton Oswalt in King of Queens Scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2QE3JpWfTo)
* [ZSA Moonlander](https://www.zsa.io/moonlander/)
* [Compare Your Typing Speed Against ours here!](https://www.typingtest.com/test.html?minutes=2&textfile=benchmark.txt)
* [Phoebe Waller Bridge – 73 Questions with Vogue](https://www.vogue.com/video/watch/phoebe-waller-bridge-on-fleabag-british-humor-and-her-creative-process)
* [Residuals for High-Budget Subscription Video on Demand (HBSVOD) Programs](https://www.wga.org/members/finances/residuals/hbsvod-programs) from the WGA
* [Paul Stamets on Seven Mycoattractant and Mycopesticide Patents released to Commons!](https://paulstamets.com/news/paul-stamets-on-seven-mycoattractant-and-mycopesticide-patents-released-to-commons?mc_cid=5d4ff8f8e6&mc_eid=8952ca1075)
* [Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert](https://bookshop.org/books/under-a-white-sky-the-nature-of-the-future-9780593136270/9780593136270)
* [Murder House Architecture](https://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/1506362648887136256)
* [Samantha Hartsoe’s TikTok NYC Apartment](https://www.tiktok.com/@samanthartsoe?lang=en)
* [Ohio State Students Discover Students Living in Basement](https://www.thelantern.com/2013/09/ohio-state-students-discover-stranger-living-basement/)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Ben Gerrior ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

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