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Period Space

Episode - 130

February 11, 2014 Apps, Film Industry, Follow Up, Rights and Copyright, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig tackle the greatest controversy in screenwriting: how many spaces to put after the period. From there, it’s follow-up on the Final Draft episode, including some behind-the-scene details.

Why is it often better to write in public spaces? How do you keep your hero in the driver’s seat? What do you do if you’re dating an emotional vampire? We have some answers.

We also have annoyances: the $1 billion lawsuit against Tom Cruise, similar hijinks with The New Girl, and Time Tailor.

The Big Fish cast album is available on iTunes and Amazon. A few last Scriptnotes t-shirts are available on the John August Store.

Links:

* [Slate](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html) on why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period
* John’s [2005 blog post](http://johnaugust.com/2005/fixing-double-spaces-after-periods) on fixing double-spaces after periods
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 65](http://johnaugust.com/2012/the-next-117-pages), in which John and Craig discuss their period-space preferences
* [Courier Prime](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/)
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 129: The One with the Guys from Final Draft](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-one-with-the-guys-from-final-draft)
* Kent Tessman’s [Notes on Scriptnotes](http://www.kenttessman.com/2014/02/notes-on-scriptnotes/) blog post
* [How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quarkxpress-the-demise-of-a-design-desk-darling/)
* Heather Havrilesky’s [Ask Polly: I Moved To A New City To Be With An Emotional Vampire](http://www.theawl.com/2014/01/ask-polly-i-moved-to-a-new-city-to-be-with-an-emotional-vampire) on The Awl
* The AV Club on [Tom Cruise being sued for one billion dollars](http://www.avclub.com/article/tom-cruise-is-being-sued-for-allegedly-stealing-th-107570)
* THR on [The New Girl lawsuit](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/fox-wme-peter-chernin-sued-671788)
* [Time Tailor](http://www.visualdatainc.com/time_tailor.htm)
* [SuperCook.com](http://supercook.com/) tells you recipes to cook with what you have on hand
* [One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385351836/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by B. J. Novak
* B.J. on the [Nerdist Podcast](https://www.nerdist.com/2014/02/nerdist-podcast-b-j-novak/)
* The Big Fish cast album on [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/big-fish-original-broadway/id816289324?ign-mpt=uo%3D2) and [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H3UKZ6E/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* We have a few shirts left in [The John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

You can download the episode here: [AAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_130.m4a) | [mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_130.mp3).

**UPDATE** 2-17-14: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/scriptnotes-ep-130-period-space-transcript).

Fountain 1.1 — “Use The Force”

January 29, 2014 Apps, Fountain, Highland, Screenwriting Software

We’re about to put out the first revision to [Fountain](http://fountain.io) since we launched it two years ago, and are calling for comment from users and developers.

When we were developing the plain text screenwriting syntax, we tried to balance normal uses and edge cases. Overall, I think we think we got Fountain mostly right. But Stu Maschwitz and I always expected that we’d evolve the specification as we learned more about how people use it on a daily basis.

The theme of the Fountain 1.1 update is “Use The Force.” It’s all about better control over “forcing” elements.

Most times in Fountain, you don’t need to force anything. It just understands what you want. But when you need to, you can force a Scene Heading with a leading period. You can force a Transition using a leading greater-than symbol.

For Fountain 1.1, we’re discussing adding two new forceable elements, and making a change to how Action is forced.

## LYRICS

Highland has been testing a Lyrics variation on Dialogue for a while now, and it works. We think it’s time to make it official.

You create a Lyric by starting with a tilde ~.

~Willy Wonka! Willy Wonka! The amazing chocolatier!

~Willy Wonka! Willy Wonka! Everybody give a cheer!

The parser will remove the ~ and leave it up to the app to style the Lyric appropriately. For screenplays, lyrics are often handled like a dialogue element, but in italics. ((Courier Prime italics are especially nice for lyrics.)) For stage musicals, it’s often uppercase and placed on the left margin.

Lyrics are always forced. There is no “automatic” way to get them.

## CHARACTER

The ability to force a Character element will be helpful for names that require lower-case letters, and for non-Roman languages, where a character might be named something like 黒澤.

To force a Character element, precede a line with the “at” symbol: @

@McCLANE

Yippie ki-yay! I got my lower-case C back!

The parser will remove the @ and interpret McCLANE as Character, preserving its mixed case.

Speaking of lowercase, one other change is that Character Extensions, the parenthetical notations that are on the same line as a Character element, are no longer required to be uppercase:

HANS (on the radio)
What was it you said?

The parser interprets HANS (on the radio) as a Character element.

## ACTION

Figuring out how to handle forced action required the most discussion.

Fountain interprets an uppercase line followed by a second line as a Character. Most of the time, that’s what you want:

MARY

Hi, Tom.

But sometimes you really want two lines of action, with no blank line between them. You’re going to for a style — but Fountain doesn’t know that. So instead you get:

BOOM

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

In Fountain 1.0, we allowed the user to force Action elements with two trailing spaces.

BOOM{two spaces}

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

This has turned out to be problematic in practice. The spaces are invisible, and can be introduced by accident as you write. Highland and Slugline users got confused. Hell, I got confused, and I co-created the syntax.

MARY{two spaces I didn’t realize were there}

Wait! Why isn’t my character name where it should be? Why isn’t my dialogue being handled like dialogue? Nima!

Furthermore, not all Fountain apps supported the spaces consistently.

In the end, we’d like more transparency and less invisibility. Using spaces to force Action should be deprecated.

In Fountain 1.1, we propose that users force Action by preceding a line with an exclamation point:

!BOOM
BOOM BOOM. Closer.

The parser removes the ! and interprets BOOM as Action.

BOOM

BOOM BOOM. Closer.

Since forcing action is rare, and the other changes are purely additive (and evident to the naked eye), we don’t anticipate huge issues for most users.

Unless we hear a hue and cry about these changes, we anticipate making them official next week. Apps can start supporting this syntax shortly thereafter.

But we’re not stopping there. Upcoming goals for Fountain include:

1. Better consistency among apps when parsing Fountain. We keep finding edge cases, and want to make sure they are handled the same way regardless of which app you’re using.
2. New syntax for marking changes or highlighting elements in finished documents.
3. Continued development of screenplay-like formats, including three-camera and stageplays.

If you have notes or suggestions, I’d invite you to join the discussion on the [Take Fountain](https://app.glassboard.com/web/app/boards/dff2b3bf-5f61-4ab6-8a64-16c71dd57160) Glassboard. Registration is free and open to everyone.

Puppet person needed

November 14, 2013 Geek Alert, Projects

For an upcoming project, I’m looking to hire a puppet designer.

My producer and I are talking with several name-brand puppetry houses, but since I’ve often had great luck finding talented folk among my readership, ((This blog is how I found Ryan Nelson (my Director of Digital Things), Nima Yousefi (our coder), Stu Maschwitz (Fountain) and Alan Dague-Greene (Courier Prime).)) I thought I’d put out the call. You might be the right person, or know the right person.

For this live-action film project, I need a puppet that interacts with human characters. It’s not a hand-in-foam puppet, but something more like a marionette. Imagine Pinnochio without his strings.

My hunch is that it’s a rod puppet, and we’d be painting out the rods in post. But it might be a marionette (think Team America). It might be a combination of real puppet and CG and stop-motion. Regardless of technique, the goal is to make something that feels very real and grounded in its environment.

I don’t want a puppet-y puppet. I want a 15-inch tall character.

If you’ve seen the stage version of War Horse, that’s another good example of what I’m going for. Imagine Joey, but with the puppeteers digitally removed.

war horse

I’m hoping to shoot this project in LA, and would prefer to work with a local designer. But I’ll consider folks from all over. My ideal collaborator would have sketches, reels and references that convince me we could make something really cool together.

If you think you might be right person, email me at ask@johnaugust.com. If you think you might know the right person, you can also tweet me a link @johnaugust.

Shirts back in the Store

November 7, 2013 Follow Up, Geek Alert, News

Back in June, we sold the first-ever [Scriptnotes t-shirts](http://johnaugust.com/2013/t-shirts-and-transcripts). We took pre-orders, printed them, and sent them out all in a batch.

In that process, we learned a lot about the making and shipping of physical goods — how online shopping carts work, how to calculate sales tax, optimizing postage. We’re geeks. We like that stuff. Plus it’s been fun seeing Scriptnotes t-shirts out in the wild.

So we’re doing it again.

Through Friday, November 15th, we’ll be taking orders for a new batch of shirts. They’ll ship starting December 2nd, in time for the holidays.

Like last time, we’ll only print what people order, so if you want a shirt, you need to [order now](http://store.johnaugust.com).

The first batch of Scriptnotes shirts were available in umbrage orange and rational blue. The new Scriptnotes t-shirt is available in any color you want so long as it’s black. ((I always assumed this Henry Ford quote was apocryphal, but apparently it’s real. The original wording was, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”)) For this shirt, we offer both unisex and women’s cuts.

I’m really happy with how the logo turned out. It’s faint, and seems to be gently glowing from inside the shirt.

Scriptnotes is not our only labor of love, so we decided to make some more shirts while we were at it.

First up is Fountain. How do you show a revolutionary [plain text screenplay markup syntax](http://fountain.io) on a t-shirt? Ryan Nelson and I went through a bunch of variations with document icons and street maps, but none of them felt right.

Ultimately, it was the color that set the tone. Olive green felt appropriately basic. Paired with white type (Highway Gothic) and a Fountain flag, this shirt feels like what you’d wear at boot camp. We’re recruiting a Fountain army, and this is the uniform.

Courier Prime is a [beautiful font](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/courierprime/) designed by Alan Dague-Greene. Since it’s a text face, you aren’t supposed to notice the individual glyphs — it’s for reading, not showing off — but I wanted to highlight just how smart the whole character set is. What makes Courier Prime special — apart from its bolder bolds and crisper serifs — are the true italics, modeled after the “informal” script of old typewriters. Here you get to see the full alphabet at once. ((If you’re ever in doubt which Courier you’re seeing, check the lowercase y. In Courier Prime, the tail of the y never flattens out to a line.))

Right after Courier Prime came out, we made a few shirts with a similar design, but printed them on a heather gray. If you’re not familiar t-shirt lingo (I wasn’t), “heather” means that the fabric has a speckled quality, woven of threads in a range of colors to give it depth. For Courier Prime, that made it far too hard to see the details.

This time, we’re printing white on solid midnight navy, so you can see everything.

Our fourth shirt is actually the very first shirt we printed: Classic Karateka.

We made one hundred of these shirts to celebrate the launch of Jordan Mechner’s game on iOS. Only friends and team members got the first batch, but when we put up the few remaining shirts last month, they sold out in minutes. So we’re doing one last run.

Our final shirt isn’t about a product, but rather an idea. Longtime readers and listeners know I’m not just a fan of technology and gadgets, but the underlying science behind them. We live in a culture that has been completely transformed scientific innovation, yet at the same rejects scientific realities.

I vented some of my frustration through the frustrated science teacher (Mr. Rzykruski) in Frankenweenie. For this last shirt, I’m paraphrasing myself and his answer to the question of why no one likes scientists.

The adult shirts are silver (very light gray):

For the kids shirts, we went black:

All the t-shirts were designed in-house by Ryan Nelson, and printed locally in LA.

Once again, we’re only printing what people order, so if you want a shirt, [visit the store](http://store.johnaugust.com) before next Friday.

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