John August

Search Results for: beat sheet

Are animated specs worth the time?

Corpse Bride, Genres, Projects, QandA

questionmarkI have been tossing around an idea for an animated feature film. I have a ton of notes, character breakdowns, beat sheets, outlines, etc., etc. Now its just a question of putting it down on the page. My question is fairly simple and straight-forward: Am I wasting my time?

I’ve read that writing specs for animation should be avoided, as the big animation studios typically take pitches, ideas, and submissions internally. Is this the case?

I know you are credited on Corpse Bride and Titan A.E. I’m assuming those were both work-for-hires. But what do you think about specs?

— Jack Mulligan

Go ahead and write it. It’s very unlikely that an animation spec will get sold and produced, but remember, that’s not the only goal of writing a spec. You write specs to get your *next* job, and if you can write a great animated spec, do it.

Both Titan A.E. and Corpse Bride were rewrites of movies already close to production. In both cases, I didn’t need to write at all differently than live-action. There were small semantic changes — in animation, you number for sequences rather than scenes — but when reading the script, you wouldn’t necessarily know that it was going to be animated rather than live-action. So don’t freak out about some special formatting you see in a printed script or guidebook. Just write it like a normal feature.

Last year, I had a meeting with Disney Animation, in which they talked through all of their upcoming projects. It’s clear they really develop in-house, and aren’t searching the town for new material. And I suspect that’s true for all of the majors.

But the animated spec you write could be a great sample for live action, particularly if it showcases comedy and set-pieces. If you write Shrek, you can write funny, and someone will want to hire you.

Organizing reality

Television

Yesterday, the WGA [announced plans](http://www.wga.org/subpage_newsevents.aspx?id=493) to begin organizing writers working on reality television shows. Unlike writers working on traditional dramas or sitcoms, these writers haven’t been covered by the guild, which means they receive no health insurance, no residuals, and no set pay minimums.

As WGAw president Daniel Petrie put it in the press release:

The secret about reality TV isn’t that it’s scripted, which it is; the secret is that reality TV is a 21st-century telecommunications industry sweatshop.

Most readers of this site are familiar with one kind of writing when it comes to film and television. It happens on three-holed paper, with uppercase scene headers and neatly indented blocks for dialogue and parentheticals. But the truth is that much of the work a professional writer does in Hollywood takes on other formats: treatments and beat sheets, outlines and season patterns. Even in non-reality shows, a lot of the writing takes place before you type “FADE IN:”. So it’s a mistake to confuse “unscripted” with “unwritten.”

Many of the people who the WGA would like to organize are currently called producers — which is the norm in television. Be it [The Simpsons](http://imdb.com/title/tt0096697/combined) or [The Sopranos](http://imdb.com/title/tt0141842/combined), many of the writers in television are called producers of some stripe: Executive Producer, Co-EP, Supervising Producer. Despite the title, there’s no doubt they’re writing. Every episode says “written by” or “teleplay by.”

In reality TV, there’s usually no “written by” credit. But it would be a mistake to think there’s no writing.

In addition to the obviously-scripted moments (someone has to tell Jeff Probst what to say), every episode needs writers to figure out what the hell the story is. Yes, video crews will capture the action, and a team of editors at Avids will ultimately cut the footage together, but the decisions about what actually happens in a given episode fall upon the writers, who have to tease plot, character development, comedy and tension out of hundreds of hours of “real life” taking place.

These people are, in fact, organizing reality. Which is why they deserve to be able to organize under the WGA umbrella. You can read more about the situation [here](http://www.wga.org/organizesub.aspx?id=1088).

UPDATE: After reading a note left in the comments section, I don’t want to understate the role editors often have shaping the “what happens” in reality TV. They’re often performing functions that would normally be the purview of writers; the question is, why aren’t they being compensated for it?

[Formatting a reality show proposal](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/formatting-a-reality-show-proposal)

Library

This page contains .pdf versions of various projects I’ve written over the years. The best way to learn screenwriting is to read a bunch of scripts, so these are intended for educational purposes only. Obviously, don’t try to sell/stage/pilfer any of the material you find here, or the studios involved will send scary lawyer types after you. It’s not pleasant for anyone.

Important: If you want to link to any of the scripts here, please link to this page. Everything else you see here will inevitably move, and broken links suck.

Table of Contents

Produced projects:

Unproduced:

Things I’m hosting for others:


###Go

  1. Original spec script
  2. Final shooting script
  3. Additional audition scene for ‘Mannie’

Big Fish

  1. Original one-page outline
  2. Revised full outline after first draft
  3. Final shooting script
  4. Introduction to paperback version

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

charlie poster

Here I’m including the production draft (white), along with the blue and pink revisions so you can see how they fit into the white draft. (Rather than release entirely new scripts, only the revised pages are printed and sent to departments, who can then insert them into their scripts.)

The final shooting script incorporates the blue and pink revisions.

  1. Production draft (white)
  2. Blue revisions
  3. Memo for blue revisions
  4. Pink revisions
  5. Memo for pink revisions
  6. Final shooting script

Frankenweenie

frankenweenie poster

  1. Production Draft. The original draft from July 2010 isn’t vastly different.
  2. Final Conformed Script. This draft reflects changes made during storyboarding, production and editing. In particular, notice how much the third act has been tightened.

The Nines

the nines poster

  1. Final shooting script. The original draft isn’t vastly different, save for two scenes added in reshoots.
  2. Shooting schedule. Pretty close to our final shooting schedule.
  3. Visual FX breakdown. Boards and descriptions for two of the more complicated sections.
  4. The audience questionnaire we used for our second test screening.

The Remnants

This is the web pilot I shot in February 2008. You can find it here.

God

This is the short film I made in 1998, a prequel to The Nines. You can find it here.

D.C.

  1. Pilot script
  2. Episode 2: Truth
  3. Episode 3: Justice
  4. The initial pitch I made to the WB
  5. The outline for the pilot
  6. A template for a “normal” episode
  7. And an exercise in which I look at God from each character’s perspective
  8. The pilot presentation script

In order to save money, the WB asked all its drama pilots to shoot a 30-minute “pilot presentation” of the show, rather than the whole hour. To do this, I had to omit a bunch of scenes, and rewrite some others so that it would all make sense.

Yes, if I had written Episode 4, it was supposed to titled, “The American Way.”

How to Eat Fried Worms

Note that this is not the script for the 2006 movie. It predates it by almost a decade. You can read more about the backstory here.

The Circle (a.k.a. Alaska)

  1. Initial write-up/pitch document/treatment
  2. Pilot script
  3. Episode 2: Gravedigger

Casting sides:

  1. Mathers
  2. Harper
  3. Prescott
  4. Vico
  5. Connie
  6. Elias
  7. Ivanhov
  8. Mary
  9. Valerie
  10. Van Der Kamp
  11. Bobby

More information about The Circle is here.

Ops

There are three versions of the pilot. The first is set in Afghanistan and Venezuela. The second, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The third, in Brazil and Uzbekistan. Since the first two pilots were both called “Blood and Oil,” they’ve been labeled here as “Venezuela,” “Iraq,” and “Uzbekistan.”

  1. Initial write-up/pitch document
  2. Venezuela beat sheet
  3. Venezuela outline
  4. Venezuela pilot
  5. Venezuela pilot, revised
  6. Iraq outline
  7. Iraq pilot
  8. Iraq pilot, revised
  9. Uzbekistan outline
  10. McGinty casting sides
  11. Vanowen casting sides

Station Eleven

station eleven poster

On Scriptnotes 553, Station Eleven showrunner Patrick Somerville joins us to talk through the writing of the 10-episode limited series. We discuss the script of the first episode, but Somerville agreed to share the entire series’ scripts for reference.

  1. Episode 101
  2. Episode 102
  3. Episode 103
  4. Episode 104
  5. Episode 105
  6. Episode 106
  7. Episode 107
  8. Episode 108
  9. Episode 109
  10. Episode 110

Chernobyl

poster for chernobyl

The acclaimed HBO/Sky miniseries written, created and produced by Scriptnotes co-host Craig Mazin debuted May 6, 2019. As promised, here are Craig’s scripts for the five episodes.

You should also listen to the excellent companion podcast co-hosted by Peter Sagal.

  1. Episode 1 – “1:23:45”
  2. Episode 2 – “Please Remain Calm”
  3. Episode 3 – “Open Wide, O Earth”
  4. Episode 4 – “The Happiness Of All Mankind”
  5. Episode 5 – “Vichnaya Pamyat”

Researching and writing The Circle

QandA, Television

Question MarkI just finished reading [both episodes](http://johnaugust.com/library) of The Circle, and I was wondering if you could answer a few questions about writing for television.

  1. How much time did you spend doing research for each episode?
  2. How long did it take you to write an episode?
  3. Seeing as how you created the show, but would have not written every episode during the season how are the episodes handled by other writers?
  4. Do you as the creator set an outline for the season as to what each episode would center around and where you wanted to show to go?

Thanks for your time, I enjoyed reading them both.

-Josh
Federal Way, WA

I probably spent three weeks researching Alaska for The Circle, most of that before I started writing the pilot. By the time I started working on episode 2, there really wasn’t anything new I needed to research.

Television scripts are short, at least by feature standards. An hour-long drama will clock in below sixty pages, so it’s no big chore to write one in a week. Unfortunately, in the real world of television production, you often have to write one in a weekend, and that’s where it gets ugly.

Since The Circle never went to series, we didn’t end up hiring a writing staff, although [Matt Pyken](http://imdb.com/name/nm0701487/) and [Michael Berns](http://imdb.com/name/nm0076965/) did pen a follow-up episode. Had the show been picked up by ABC, we would have hired an executive producer to ultimately take the reins of the show. Although I would stay on to consult, he would have supervised the writing staff, setting the course for each episode and the series as a whole. This would include meeting with the writers (both individually and as a group); approving beat sheets, outlines and scripts; and rewriting scripts as needed.

This executive producer would be considered the showrunner, since all the creative decisions would ultimately rest with him. I knew this going in. I deliberately created a show I felt could flourish without my day-to-day involvement. Although I love TV, I prefer features. That’s where I make my living, and the time table is much more relaxed.