John August

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Two things I liked about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark

Broadway

Taped to the back of my seat at this past Friday’s performance of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark was a survey soliciting audience opinions of the still-in-progress musical.

Survey cards are common in the film industry, but this was the first I’d seen used for a Broadway show. The front side of the form was designed to be filled out before the show began. It asked questions about demographics (age, income, education, whether you lived in NYC) and why you chose to see the show. It was more detailed than I’m used to seeing for movie test screenings.

The reverse side was for after the show, asking questions about scenes, songs and characters. I didn’t fill it out very thoroughly, because there’s not much I can offer as criticism of the show that hasn’t been said at length in last week’s excoriating reviews. Piling now on feels like schadenfreude.

I did make a point to highlight two things I thought worked. I’ll share those here.

**”If The World Should End”**
This is the song MJ (Jennifer Damiano) sings in act two. It’s lovely, spare, haunting — and nicely on-story. This and Peter’s song (“The Boy Falls From The Sky”) that comes right after it felt like they snuck from a much different, much more compelling musical.

**The Skyscrapers**
How do you translate an idea that centers on a vertical cityscape to the stage? In this case, really well. The forced-perspective Fritz Lang-ish skyscrapers are constantly in motion, culminating in a a fold-out Chrysler Building that juts overhead like a plane taking off. In general, talking about how pretty the sets are is damning, like complimenting a writer on his punctuation. But in this case, the skyscrapers really are something worth seeing.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with this musical. On one hand, it’s selling well, so maybe it’s review-proof. On the other hand, the producers are publicly and privately acknowledging it needs work.

I’m pointing out these two bright spots because (a) if it keeps running in its current form, they’d be the two reasons to consider buying a ticket, and (b) if it closes, these were Things That Were Cool.

It’s too easy to file things away as “success” or “failure.” Almost every creative work is a mix of both.

Talking over a black screen

Formatting, QandA

questionmarkI want my screenplay to begin with a short statement from my main character, just over the black screen prior to the film beginning, then cutting to that specific character already in action. I’m unsure how to format this.

Currently I just having his statement in quotation marks prior to any actual formatting:

EXT. BLACK SCREEN

“Something Important”

INT. HOUSE – DAY

Character stands in his home, exclaiming things.

I don’t like the looks of that, because it doesn’t state who is speaking. I’m unsure of how I should handle this, which is disconcerting as it is my first sentence.

— Ben
Saginaw, MI

answer iconA black screen is a black screen. It’s not INT. or EXT. Whether you start the film with a black screen, or you create one mid-way with a CUT TO BLACK, you can simply have your characters speak over it.

Dialogue always has a name above it. Always.

Even if we haven’t yet been introduced to the character speaking, it’s okay to use the character’s name. Depending on the situation, you might use a descriptor instead, e.g. “NERVOUS WOMAN” or “BOY’S VOICE.”

In your case, the intro might look like this:

A black screen.

MAX (O.S.)

What I saw today was failure. No, worse than that. I saw surrender. I saw someone taking all the opportunities they’d been given and throwing them in the trash.

FADE IN:

INT. DOG SHOW – DAY

MAX HERNSHAW (33) is on his knees, berating an adorable YELLOW LAB PUPPY.

MAX (CONT’D)

Do you know what I sacrificed to get you here today? A personal life. Girlfriends. Drinking buddies. Do you know how many times Andy got to see Inception? Four. How many times did I get to see it? One-and-a-half.

The puppy begins to lick its crotch.

You don’t have to say “black screen.” Until you’ve shown us something else, we’re going to assume it’s a black screen. But it’s not a bad idea to call it out anyway.

I used (O.S.) after Max’s initial dialogue, but one could make an equally good argument for (V.O) or (PRE-LAP) — or using nothing at all. It’s your preference. The reader is unlikely to get confused.

Learn more about formatting dialogue here!

Handling IMs in screenplays

Formatting, QandA

questionmarkI’m working on a script in which there are several IM conversations, not short ones. How do you go about formatting these in your scripts?

— Ben
NYC

Whether text messages or computer-based IMs, my instinct would be to handle them as dialogue blocks. The first time you do it in the script, call it out in scene description.

Hearing a BUZZ, Brent checks his mobile -- new text. [Note: IMs are in italics.]

COLIN (TEXT)

Can’t find Becca.

BRENT (TEXT)

On my way.

It’s ultimately the director’s choice how to show that onscreen. For 2011, the style to beat has to be BBC’s Sherlock.

sherlock text message

IMs and texts aren’t going away, so I wouldn’t be surprised if over the next few years screenwriters start using an alternative format for them. I chose dialogue blocks because that’s the closest analogy. But it misrepresents what characters are really doing on screen.

Something more like this could ultimately become common:

MICAH

Hold on. I’ll check.

On the computer --

MICAH: Red or green?

LISA: Huh

MICAH: Sauce.

LISA: Red. Green makes me puke.

MICAH

Green for Lisa.

Pitching Star Trek

Television, Treatments

[Several](http://betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com/between-the-pages-blog/2011/01/cool-find-gene-roddenberrys-original-star-trek-pitch.html) [blogs](http://blastr.com/2011/01/found-gene-roddenberrys-original-1964-pitch-for-star-trek.php) have recently linked to this [1964 pitch document](http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/1_Original_Series/Star_Trek_Pitch.pdf) by Gene Roddenberry laying out his initial vision for Star Trek. It’s great reading for anyone interested in the Star Trek universe or TV writing in general.

Documents like this are still common in television. I’ve heard them called different things: formats, treatments, show outlines, write-ups, pitch documents.

Whatever you call them, they generally cover a few topics:

1. What the show is (logline, genre, themes, similarities to existing shows)
2. What happens in typical episodes
3. The main characters
4. The primary locations/sets
5. Special opportunities and challenges
6. Future episode ideas

In the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library), you can see similar write-ups for D.C., Alaska and Ops.

In the case of Star Trek, it’s not clear at what point in the process this document was written. Generally, pitching a show is something you do in person, with writer(s) meeting with executives. If the pitch goes well, you might leave a document like this behind — in which case it’s called, quite unimaginatively, a leave-behind.

Executives like leave-behinds because it gives them something they can use to pitch the show to their bosses. Agents and seasoned writers caution against them, because it gives executives specifics with which to find fault.

So instead of a leave-behind, you might send something like this over a few days later, writing up the pitch so everyone agrees what kind of show was discussed in the room, including issues that came up. Ideally, you would want your deal closed before emailing this over, but everything in television happens with a sense of rushed deadlines, so that’s hardly a given.

Looking through Roddenberry’s Star Trek write-up, it’s tempting to focus on all the things that changed. The Enterprise is the Yorktown. The captain is neither Pike or Kirk, but Robert M. April. Spock has red skin. Bones is Bones, but his real name is Phillip Boyce.

But it’s more helpful to marvel on how much of the vision and philosophy for Star Trek shows up in this early incarnation:

> The “Parallel Worlds” concept is the key to the STAR TREK format.

> It means simply that our stories deal with plant and animal life, plus people, quite similar to that on Earth. Social evolution will also have interesting points of similarity to ours. There will be differences, of course, ranging from the subtle to the boldly dramatic, out of which comes much of our color and excitement. (And, of course, none of this prevents an occasional “far our” tale thrown in for surprise and change of pace.)

A quick read through the proposed storylines gives a very strong sense of what the show would become. Some of these ideas became episodes; most didn’t. But they all feel like they could be part of the show.

You can read the whole thing [here](http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/1_Original_Series/Star_Trek_Pitch.pdf).