John August

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WGA Elections, 2011 Edition

WGA

Writers Guild members should have received ballots this week for the 2011 election, along with a packet of candidate statements and endorsements thicker than a screenplay.

You’ll see my name listed on several endorsements for candidates I think are terrific, but I also want to give a more general overview of the issues and personalities involved.

The top of the ballot
—

We have two candidates for WGAw president: **Chris Keyser** and **Patric Verrone**. Both have served the guild in a variety of roles. Both have strengths.

Chris Keyser comes from the Board of Directors and the Negotiating Committee, and spent seven years on the Health and Pension Fund, where he served as a Trustee. I didn’t know him before this election, but after [reading his statement](http://keyser4wga.com/2011/07/22/my-candidate-statement/) and [watching a video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qIU5BiXGCg&feature=player_embedded) of him speaking at a house meeting, I think his priorities are correct:

> We cannot demand that companies make more movies or pay for more development, but we can be a Guild that is strong in between negotiations, strong on those days when we don’t have an army on the streets. We can be strong through enforcement, strong through leveraging our shared membership with the DGA, strong through rapid, effective assistance to members in need.

A WGA president must occasionally play the general who leads us into battle, but far more often needs to be the pragmatic CEO who insists on the best from his organization and all its partners. We can do a much better job enforcing the contract we’ve already won. That seems like Keyser’s focus.

Patric Verrone is by far the better-known of the two candidates, since he served as president during the 2008 strike. It’s impossible to talk about Verrone without some rehashing of the strike, and what it means going forward.

Here’s my short assessment: I think Verrone did a commendable job of internally organizing the Guild. He kept members informed and engaged in a way I hadn’t seen before.

But his external communication was a disaster.

For months leading up to negotiations, Verrone kept beating the “strike or cave” drum, including an ill-fated campaign of picketing for reality TV. Watching this, the AMPTP came to us with a ridiculous offer full of rollbacks, giving no choice but to make good on our threat to strike. Meanwhile, the studios did an end-run around us and made a deal with the DGA.

We were boxed in, and Verrone built the box.

The contract isn’t up until 2013, but re-electing Verrone signals to the studios they might as well prepare for a strike — again. They might as well pre-negotiate with the DGA — again. They might as well just ignore us, because we’re lunatics who elected that guy – again.

I’m voting for Chris Keyser.

The rest of the ticket
—

I’m happy to see so many strong candidates for the other offices and board of directors. I’ll be reading through the candidate statements, but want to give a few recommends based on writers I know personally.

Keyser and Verrone both endorse **Howard Rodman** for Vice President. So do I. He’s particularly devoted to getting WGA coverage for writers working on indies.

I served on the Committee on the Professional Status of Writers with **Billy Ray** and found him to be smart, focused and incredibly generous. Last year, he organized a series of workshops for screenwriters hoping to direct. That’s exactly the kind of programming the WGA needs more of. A strong guild is made of strong members.

In his statement, **Jeff Lowell** focuses on enforcement. In particular, [late payment](http://lowell4wga.blogspot.com/2011/07/candidate-statement.html):

> Honestly, the fucking blatant disregard for the contract they signed… They acknowledge they owe me money, let me know that there is some kind of mysterious internal operation of indeterminate length to “process” the payment, and then, when that’s done, it’ll take five to ten business days to get the check from them to my agent.

He’s angry, but he’s right. The WGA needs to spend the money to get checks in writers’ hands on time.

**Ian Deitchman** focuses on repairing relationships with the DGA and SAG/AFTRA. He also has experience with web series, which still haven’t materialized as the Next Big Thing we were supposed to be striking over.

Ballots are due September 16th. I urge you to vote.

Final Cut Pro and Con

Software, Stuart, Video

Final Cut Pro X has been [controversial](http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video-editors-weigh-in-on-final-cut-pro-x/?pagewanted=all) because it greatly alters the traditional workflow and eliminates features many editors find essential.

Some of those missing pieces — like multi-cam editing — are apparently coming soon. But most of the big changes are simply The Way Things Are Done Now. They go beyond keyboard shortcuts and helper apps to fundamentally different ways of working.

It’s fair to call this a brand-app that happens to be named Final Cut Pro.

I’ve used several incarnations of Final Cut Pro over the years. I don’t cut things that often, so each time I started editing something new, I had to spend a few minutes reminding myself how everything worked. In 2006, I finally took a FCP class at UCLA.

Here’s a very juvenile video I cut using the sample footage that comes with one of the tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS6mrp7Sbu4

My assistant Stuart actually used to teach FCP in college. It’s fair to say he’s more experienced with how the old app worked.

Over the past four weeks, each of us has had the opportunity to cut a few projects in the new FCP X and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. I think the differences in our reactions are largely based on how familiar we were with the old version.

I’ll go first.

Runner
—-

I wrote, shot and edited this spot for FDX Reader myself.

Everything was shot on the Canon 7D. Rather than import directly from the camera, I used Image Capture to transfer the movie files to the hard drive, then created a New Event in FCP X and imported the files.

I find the Event metaphor to be one of the most annoying choices in FCP X. Events make sense for iMovie — here’s Katie’s birthday! — but not for Final Cut Pro. Functionally, you want a container for all the footage related to what you’re cutting. Events aren’t exactly analogous to Bins in the old FCP, but Bins would be a better name than Events.

Regardless, once I put the footage into an Event, and began a new Project, I found the process surprisingly enjoyable. FCP X churns away in the background, analyzing footage and transcoding proxies. But at no point did I notice, even on my 2006 Mac Pro. I could start going through footage right away, versus waiting an hour or more for FCP 7 to transcode to something editable. Big win for the new guy.

In FCP 7, I would often drag little bits of footage to the timeline and start picking favorites. FCP X strongly encourages you to make some choices right in the Bin (err, the All Clips window).

Using the standard J-K-L keys, you play through your clips. When you find something that you might want, mark ins and outs (I and O). Then F to mark that section as a favorite. Yes, the handles that mark ins and outs look a lot like those in iMovie, but the functionality remains pretty traditional. You can do a lot more from the keyboard in FCP X than I’d expected.

Once you’ve looked at everything, Control-F switches you to Favorite Clips. These are basically your selects. Everything you’re going to want will probably be here.

From there, you drag clips to the storyline and start assembling your cut.

Unlike FCP 7, you can’t just throw clips anywhere. In FCP X, everything is magnetic and wants to stick together. To leave blank space between clips you have to deliberately Insert Gap to get a chunk of dark nothingness. It’s neither better or worse than before, but it’s certainly different.

Also different:

* You have one Viewer, rather than two.
* The Inspector handles almost any variable that needs to be adjusted, from video to image to metadata.
* Recorded audio stays attached to its video unless you very deliberately detach it. Things don’t get randomly out of sync.
* In addition to the normal playhead, you can scrub across footage to play it. I found the scrubber mostly benign, but occasionally turned it off when it got annoying.

I found Compound Clips to be incredibly useful.

Often when editing, you have a section that’s working nicely and want to make sure you don’t mess it up while working on other things. In FCP X, just select the relevant pieces of audio and video and make it a Compound Clip. Everything sucks down into one filmstrip. It’s logical and works. ((One exception: If you pin something to the outside of a compound clip — a sound effect, for example — it’s likely to slide around if you change something inside the clip. The sound effect only knows its position relative to the entire clip, not any component inside.))

In the Runner video, all the opening stuff with Amy typing lived as a compound clip.

I did all the titles and graphics in FCP X. I found one bug: the final tagline “Now on iPhone and iPad” wouldn’t animate properly unless I added spaces to the end.

On the whole, I like FCP X. Most of what’s missing I honestly don’t miss, because I never used it.

It takes a while to get used to the new interface, but I can’t imagine needing to take a class to understand how to use basic features. And while I still have FCP 7 on my hard drive, I doubt I’ll need to open it again.

Stuart’s impression of FCP X is far less favorable.

[Read more…] about Final Cut Pro and Con

Cinematic geography and the problem of genius

Directors

A few weeks ago, Shay from Jerusalem wrote in:

> I’m researching about Big Fish’s textual references to other auteurs or to the film canon in general. At first, I noticed the 8½ style ending, then the freeze scene reminded me of Scolla’s “We loved each other so much” exposition. Further more I thought Calloway’s character interestingly resembles a crossbreed between Dr Caligari and the Tramp.

> Also lots of visual cues of circles which it think refer to Chaplin’s “The Circus”, that do not appear in the final script.

> Have I overestimated your script/Burton’s directing? Blindly missed?

I don’t know if “overestimating” is a polite way to put it, but no, none of those references were in my head for Big Fish. And while I never spoke with Tim about the specifics on how he chose to shoot things, I’d be very surprised if those other films were conscious aspects of his process.

Academia teaches us to ask questions like Shay’s — and generally, to answer them ourselves. So we find parallels and influences that make sense on paper without worrying too much about whether they’re actually true.

To his credit, Shay tracked me down and asked his questions. I probably ruined the thesis of his research paper by answering honestly.

I was reminded of my email exchange with Shay by a video [Daring Fireball](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/26/shining-spatial-impossibilities) linked to this morning:

[The Shining — spatial awareness and set design](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sUIxXCCFWw).

(The video continues in [part two](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfJ8rK7eJeQ&feature=related).)

Rob Ager’s analysis of spatial impossibilities in The Shining is entertaining but naive, the video equivalent of Shay’s unwritten paper:

> These blatant design anomalies would not have occurred by accident. Set designers would have noticed them and brought them to Stanley’s attention at the blueprint stage. The only way they could occur is if Stanley wanted them there.

I’m sure there is a more official name, but let’s call this situation the genius fallacy. We start with a god-like figure such as Stanley Kubrick, well-known for his [exacting attention to detail](http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/06/test.html).

Ager’s thesis seem to be: Since Kubrick was a perfectionist, anything that seems like an error in Kubrick’s work *must not* be an error, but must instead be a deliberate choice.

Yes, that sounds like fundamentalism.

Ager does have logic to support his narrative. After all, the Overlook Hotel is meant to be vast and confusing. The movie features a hedge maze as a major component. Kubrick is clearly playing with themes of disorientation, both physically and mentally. So it makes sense his choices would emphasize these aspects.

But —

The windows are there for light.

The walls are placed to best frame the scenes.

The big hedge map was moved because he didn’t want it in the shot. (Or, more likely, it was moved *into* the shot when he wanted it.)

In his analysis of cinematic geography, Ager is ignoring a tremendous amount of silent evidence. Namely, *every movie ever made.* Any film subjected to the kind of scrutiny applied here will reveal moments of spatial impossibility.

Here are just three reasons why:

**Cinematic geography is largely transient.** The audience pays attention to where things are within a scene, which is why we worry about camera direction and [crossing the line](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_degree_rule). But the minute you cut to another scene, our brains safely discard the perceived geography.

**Sets are designed to do things real locations can’t.** Walls move, giving the director the choice (and decision) how much to bend reality in order to position a camera where it couldn’t physically be.

**Even when movies use real locations, they are often assembled from various pieces.** The exterior of the Overlook Hotel is actually [The Timberline Lodge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timberline_Lodge) in Oregon. And yes: the rooflines and windows don’t match closely with Kubrick’s sets.

But what would Ager have Kubrick do? Should an infallible genius director build a new exterior to match his vision of the interior, or should he alter his vision of the interior to match the realities of the exterior?

The fact is, Kubrick doesn’t have to do either. Audiences easily accept that the two locations are the same, not because Kubrick has perfected some form of cinematic spatial disorientation, but because that’s how movies work.

When Shelley Duvall is crawling out the window, what matters that we believe it’s the same window inside and outside — not whether it’s a corner apartment. Kubrick isn’t performing some amazing psychological trick here.

He’s getting away with cheating a location. That’s what directors do.

Filmmaking is essentially the art of sustaining the suspension of disbelief: from shot to shot, scene to scene. On location scouts, we talk about “selling” and “buying” and “reading.”

DIRECTOR

I’m not buying this as an upscale Miami restaurant. It’s reading very Dennys-in-Topeka.

FIRST A.D.

It fits on the schedule. We can’t change the schedule.

LINE PRODUCER

Bring in some white tablecloths, some palm trees to sell Florida. Done.

DIRECTOR

Maybe a flamingo could walk through the shot.

LINE PRODUCER

We can’t afford animals.

DIRECTOR

I was being sarcastic.

LINE PRODUCER

We can’t afford that either.

The Shining is a great movie. Kubrick was a great director. At the end of the second video, Ager focuses on a few points well worth highlighting, because they are very deliberate and very effective demonstrations of Kubrick’s skills.

Notice how the camera tracks Danny as his tricycle loops around the hallways — and how that ties into the final set piece in the maze.

Observe how Kubrick isolates his characters by placing them in vast sets and landscapes.

But don’t obsess about which way the freezer door swings. By making too much of too little, you miss out the bigger picture.

FDX Reader, now on iPhone

FDX Reader

[FDX Reader](http://fdxreader.com), our app for reading Final Draft files on the iPad, is now a universal app with support for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

It’s [available on the App Store](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fdx-reader/id437362569?mt=8) today. It’s a free upgrade.

We developed the iPad version of FDX Reader first because the larger screen is such a natural fit for reading screenplays. We took inspiration from readers like iBooks and Kindle, flipping virtual pages. It’s been great to see it get such a positive response, both among screenwriters and the tech press.

But in some ways, I think the iPhone version serves a more crucial need.

Up until now, reading screenplays on the iPhone has been terrible, even with PDFs. The small screen simply isn’t friendly to 8.5 x 11 sheets of 12-pt Courier. You end up pinching and zooming and straining your eyes to see anything.

While it was technically possible to read a full script on the iPhone, you’d never want to.

Now, you just might.

Our design choices were driven by the smaller screen. The iPhone is nothing like a printed script, so we felt free to break from screenplay conventions. We sliced margins. We stopped flipping pages. We picked a font that worked great at smaller sizes.

The iPhone version of FDX Reader takes its inspiration from non-book apps like [Instapaper](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/instapaper/id288545208?mt=8) and [Reeder](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reeder/id325502379?mt=8). We focused on the text, not the area around it.

We kept two of the best features of the iPad version. The page popover lets you skip right to a given page, scrolling the text as you go. The type button gives you five choices of size — since people hold iPhones closer, you may find yourself going much smaller than you think.

And to maximize screen real estate, we dismiss the header with a center tap.

FDX Reader was made by the same team of Nima Yousefi, Ryan Nelson and me. Many thanks to all our beta testers for their suggestions and bug reports.

As with the initial FDX Reader launch, I’m sure we’ll find some unexpected situations as we expand support to additional devices. ((Previous issues that have come up: A4 paper, locations files, TV act breaks, non-Final Draft .fdx files.)) If something’s not working, [tell us](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/support/fdxreader). We’ve been able to iterate so quickly — five releases in seven weeks — because our users help us.

If you’re new to FDX Reader, check out the [demos and videos](http://fdxreader.com) on the site. If you’re already a user, the new version should show up in your Updates immediately.