John August

Stuart

Learning from the Three Page Challenge

Stuart, Three Page Challenge

Every few weeks, Craig and I look at three or four entries to the Three Page Challenge for the podcast. But my assistant, Stuart Friedel, has read more than 500.

I asked him to write up a post discussing the patterns, problems and common themes among what he’s read.1

by_stuartFirst I want to say thank you to everyone who entered the Three Page Challenge. I’ve genuinely enjoyed reading your work, and the bite-sized, three-pages-at-a-time format is perfect for someone with my generation’s attention span.

With more than 500 submissions, it’s difficult to comment on the content in any general group sense. There were no oft-repeated themes, no heavily skewed genre distributions, nothing to be gleaned about the zeitgeist as perceived by aspiring screenwriters. Vampire and zombie submissions numbers were exactly where you’d expect.

But there’s plenty to talk about regarding presentation.

Aside from the Three Page Challenge, I don’t read submissions for John. But I have been a reader in the past, mostly reading newly represented writers looking to get hired for assignments, often their first.

So that’s the basis of comparison here: not established writers’ screenplays, but other young writers’.

In general, these all looked fine. But there were a few issues common enough that they are worth pointing out.

Content

Floweriness. It’s good when your writing is interesting, but it’s too much when flowery description obscures the intent of the sentence.

JIM, 23, floats along the sidewalk, effortless.

Wait — is he literally floating? Better might be:

JIM, 23, jogs along the sidewalk effortlessly, as if floating.

Remember: your goal is not to write pretty words; it’s to write words that clearly express a pretty scene. Colorfulness should clarify your intent, not confuse the reader.

Clumping. Pages need room to breathe. Break up long description into multiple paragraphs. Break up long runs of dialogue with short description. Use sluglines.

Write your screenplay in a way that encourages it to be read at the same pace as the movie that’s playing in your head. If the words on the page are shoved together, or if paragraphs run on too long, that’s how the reader will read the scene.

Formatting

Characters’ names should be written in UPPERCASE the first time we meet them, and only the first time we meet them.2 Most of you got the first-time-we-meet-them part of this correct, but a lot of the samples continued to put characters’ names in all caps, sometimes inconsistently.

Important sounds should also be in UPPERCASE. When sneakers crunch gravel, “CRUNCH” should be in caps, not “sneakers.”3 Uppercase should be used whenever something deserves special attention, from the reader and/or from a specific department4: an important sound, detail, or effect, a vital prop, a newly introduced character that will need to be cast, a noteworthy piece of wardrobe, etc.

Presenting characters and content

When we meet a named character, his or her age should be mentioned. This can be done naturally in the character description, or can simply be put in parentheses after the character’s name. It’s fine to say (late-20s) rather than (28).

Even a seemingly-detailed description can create an ambiguous picture if there is no mention of age. When your salt-and-pepper haired businessman flirts with the girl at the bar as he’s done at a million other bars with a million other girls, is the reader seeing a prematurely graying recent college grad who is no stranger to a night out? Or a single fifty-something who is still going through the motions but is wishing he had someone waiting for him at home?

Vary character names. As much as possible, don’t use the same first letter for multiple characters. Readers don’t sound out every word, especially words that repeat often, like character names. You can’t casually breeze past “Alvin” and “Arwyn;” every time either of them is mentioned you have to pause, interrupt your flow, and take special note of which one is speaking. Don’t make readers do this.

Give minor characters descriptive names. “Lanky Cop” and “Stuttering Cop” are more interesting, more visual and easier to differentiate than “Cop #1” and “Cop #2.” You want me to be imagining the scene as I’m reading; make it easy for me.

If something is held back from the audience, hold it back from the reader. Don’t spoil your big reveal by clueing us in early. And similarly, don’t falsely convince yourself you’ve given your audience information just because you’ve given it to the reader.

A note on the selection process

We’re getting submissions at a rate of about 15 – 50 per week. I have an email filter set up with the leagalese — if you’ve got it, you get through; if not, it’s an instant delete.

Yes, it’s called the Three Page Challenge, but I do not delete submissions for having a title page, or a blank fourth page. I do delete it if you try to cheat the system by shrinking your font, majorly fudging your margins or spacing, or anything of that sort. If you send in a second, better/corrected/proofread/etc. draft and ask me to use that one, I use that one. But please don’t send the same submission a second time just to send it; if you’re in the folder, you’re in the folder.

Once there’s a healthy backlog, I drag the files one at a time to my desktop, and change the file name to whatever name you indicated you want to be called.5 I appreciate the kind notes, but it doesn’t help you get picked; by the time I read the submission, it’s far removed from your email. Similarly, as stated on the submission process page, I’m not reading loglines or synopses or explanations of where we are in the story. Ideally the pages can stand on their own.

John and Craig allow for you to submit any three pages of your screenplay for consideration, not just the first three. And while I don’t favor first-three-pages submissions, by their very nature they usually make more sense than out of context middle-of-the-script submissions. The first pages are written with the intent of introducing readers to the world.

I also don’t judge you negatively if your submission is fewer than three pages, but why give us less to work off of? I’m looking for competently written submissions with a clear intention, where something happens, and there’s something to talk about.

So keep ‘em coming.

  1. One of Stuart’s early observations was The Mystery of the Js; there seemed to be a disproportionate number of entries from writers whose names begin with J. I think it’s less mysterious than it appears. Once you account for our demographics — a lot of men born in the 80s and 90s — it’s within the range of coincidence. ↩
  2. You’ll find exceptions to this rule, particularly in some TV formats that use uppercase every time. But for screenplays, the first-time-rule is almost gospel. ↩
  3. Although, to be fair, there are instances where “SNEAKERS” should be in caps, too. Like if those specific sneakers later turn out to be the detail that gets the bad guy caught. ↩
  4. It’s almost always both. If something’s important enough that you want to call the reader’s attention to it, it’s important enough that it will be someone’s job to make sure it makes it into the film. ↩
  5. Pro tip: It helps if you just name your file this in the first place. ↩

In which Stuart reads the Save the Cat! books and tells you what he thought

Books, So-Called Experts, Stuart

I don’t read how-to books on screenwriting, but Stuart does, so I occasionally ask him to write up his impressions. For this round, he tackled the three Save the Cat! books by Blake Snyder.

tl;dr version: Stuart liked them. While I don’t endorse any how-to gurus, it sounds like these books are better than most.

by_stuartWhenever screenwriting books or gurus are mentioned on John’s site, it is with near death-or-taxes certainty someone will bring up the Save the Cat! series in the comments.

Blake Snyder’s resume is offered as a counter-example to the “those that can’t do teach” complaint. Snyder, who passed away in 2009, was an actual screenwriter, having written Blank Check and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. You can debate the merits of those credits, but those are two credits more than most screenwriting gurus can offer.

Over the years, I had sat down with the first Save the Cat! a few times, but had never managed to get past the first chapter, where Snyder repeatedly cites the brilliance of Four Christmases, which at that time was nothing more than a title and logline. Still, multiple people whose opinions I trust had assured me StC is worthwhile. I started to feel like someone who was having trouble getting past the first few episodes of The Wire. “You’ll see – it’s great.” “It’s worth it.” “You’ll get it soon.”

And they were right.

Getting the lingo

Save the Cat! has become a sort-of brand of its own. The books now have companion software for both computers and iOS devices, a blog that offers advice and film analysis through the StC lens, and seminars that have continued since Snyder’s death.

StC has its own vocabulary. “Save the cat” refers to the idea that our hero should win over the audience from the outset by doing something likeable the first time we meet her, like saving a cat. “Pope in the pool” is the name given to distractions used to disguise exposition.

There are a lot of these — some specific, some general, all helpful. But most people can discuss first acts even if you haven’t read Syd Field. To speak StC, you have to speak StC.

The books’ basic argument is that well-constructed, emotionally satisfying movies can be broken into 15 essential beats, which Blake outlines on his BS2 (Blake Snyder Beat Sheet):

  1. Opening image (page 1)
  2. Theme stated (5)
  3. Set up (1 – 10)
  4. Catalyst (12)
  5. Debate (12 – 25)
  6. Break in two (25)
  7. B-story (30)
  8. Fun and games (30 – 55)
  9. Midpoint (55)
  10. Bad guy closes in (55 – 75)
  11. All is lost (75)
  12. Dark night of the soul (75 – 85)
  13. Break into three (85)
  14. Finale (85 – 110)
  15. Final image (110)

For those of you who have read other screenwriting how-to books before, this may feel old hat. This is Snyder’s version of the formula that is the backbone to all of these.

Snyder explores the idea in more specific detail by defining the ten basic stories all movies tell, and demonstrating the way the formula applies to each. Those stories are:

  • Monster in the House — Of which Jaws, Tremors, Alien, The Exorcist, Fatal Attraction, and Panic Room are examples.
  • Golden Fleece — This is the category of movie best exemplified by Star Wars; the Wizard of Oz; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Back To The Future; and most “heist movies.”
  • Out of the Bottle — This incorporates films like Liar, Liar; Bruce Almighty; Love Potion #9; Freaky Friday; Flubber; and even my own little kid hit from Disney, Blank Check.
  • Dude with a Problem — This is a genre that ranges in style, tone, and emotional substance from Breakdown and Die Hard to Titanic and Schindler’s List.
  • Rites of Passage — Every change-of-life story from 10 to Ordinary People to Days of Wine and Roses makes this category.
  • Buddy Love — This genre is about more than the buddy movie dynamic as seen in cop buddy pictures, Dumb & Dumber, and Rain Man — but also every love story ever made!
  • Whydunit — Who cares who, it’s why that counts. Includes Chinatown, China Syndrome, JFK, and The Insider.
  • The Fool Triumphant — One of the oldest story types, this category includes Being There, Forrest Gump, Dave, The Jerk, Amadeus, and the work of silent clowns like Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.
  • Institutionalized — Just like it sounds, this is about groups: Animal House, M*A*S*H, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and “family” sags such as American Beauty and The Godfather.
  • Superhero — This isn’t just about the obvious tales you’d think of, like Superman and Batman, but also includes Dracula, Frankenstein, even Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind.

The second book, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, is dedicated to breaking down movies that exemplify each of these stories’ sub-categories. And his blog continues to offer breakdowns of current movies.

The first book goes on to offer methods for constructing your own stories quickly and efficiently once you’ve accepted these basics. Snyder lays out plans for an easy and well-organized 40-beat note card board (ten each for acts 1, 2a, 2b, and 3), ways to organize said beats so they work together emotionally and build towards a whole, and ways to break down the beats into manageable chunks.

Snyder makes the whole task of writing a screenplay seem downright doable.

The first book is also full of advice about loglines, titles, pitches, double checking your story, adding weight — all the standard fare, discussed thoroughly and simply. And the third book, Save the Cat! Strikes Back, is more of the same, although it focuses on addressing common questions he heard from people who have read the first two books, and discusses some after-the-writing questions, like how to dress for a pitch or how to handle your first meeting.

The three add up to a fairly comprehensive overview of a screenwriter’s career, and really work well as complements.

What’s not so great

This is not to say they are without issue, however. When discussing the problems with screenwriting books, people often point to Save the Cat! as the ones that get it right. But really, the StC books are not essentially unique. They fail in the same places most other screenwriting books do.

At times, and increasingly as the books go on, Blake writes as if he is leading a seminar. I found the self-helpy tone annoying:

And while so many other screenwriting schools focus on the can’ts, that’s how Strike Back U. is different.

Because we know you can.

In this case and others, this tone does no good. It is both belittling and falsely optimistic, as it presents an optimism that is based on nothing. It implies that this isn’t just a course for beginners, but a magic key that will unlock the secrets to screenwriting success.

Snyder is also a little too unapologetically commercial. While I praise him for not giving into critics who fault his mainstream taste, he eschews defenses when defenses are warranted. He will make passing mention of how his breakdowns can be applied to less-commercial movies too, but more often than not it almost feels like he’s taunting his critics.

Snyder tells writers to get through writer’s block by thinking, “Here’s the bad way to do this,” and then doing it. He points to Four Christmases’s 22% Rotten Tomatoes score as something we should find encouraging. And on some level, the very nature of the exercise feels like one of imitation.

Frankly, I think the StC series is the best of the how-to books I’ve read, but they’re not fundamentally different. Sure, they are written by somebody with a little more experience. But if you disagree with the thesis at the heart of this class of books — the idea that there is a formula, and you can learn it — the Save the Cat! books will not change your mind.

But if you’re okay with the notion that there is a universally and emotionally pleasing cadence to movies and you are looking for some help mastering it, the Save the Cat! books present these ideas clearly and manageably without forcing it. The books offer a lot of simple and well-thought-out tips to make your movies better, and they present Hollywood in a realistic (yet painfully optimistic) way.

Bottom line: The StC books are not the Holy Grail counter-example they’re often purported to be, but from what I have read, they are indeed the best how-tos being sold.

The Screenwriter’s Bible

Books, Stuart

by_stuartWith its thorough coverage of basic tenets, some of which are so painfully obvious that giving them attention can do more harm than good, David Trottier’s The Screenwriter’s Bible stays true to its namesake. It is a solid, comprehensive resource for any screenwriter’s bookshelf, but it’s a lot to take in at once.

It is broken up into six “books” (read: sections), so let’s tackle each one individually.

Book I: How To Write a Screenplay — A Primer covers the basics of story, character, and dialogue. It is the section that has the most overlap with other popular screenwriting books, but it is also where The Bible is at its best. Information other books take hundreds of pages to present is distilled down to just over 90, and nothing is left out.

The first book does a great job of explaining instead of just telling, often providing examples that are truly helpful.

In the opening pages, Trottier demonstrates what is different about telling a story on screen versus other mediums. He presents an example scene of a robber breaking into a house in which a babysitter watches over children. On the stage, the conflict comes from dialogue; in the novel version, the focus is on thoughts and inner-monologue.

The film version is about the visual and emotional aspects:

The scissors penetrate one of the paper dolls. The doorknob slowly turns. The babysitter doesn’t notice. […] A figure slides in through the shadows. His knife fills the screen. […] He looms over her. His knife goes up. The dog barks louder still. She suddenly becomes aware, turns, and impales the man with the scissors.

The first book goes on to cover plot structure, introductions, transitions, character and character roles, and more. It’s a worthwhile read for any new writer, and the sort of refresher that can help a veteran writer regain momentum, or remember basics easily forgotten.

Book II: 7 Steps to a Stunning Script — A Workbook is The Bible’s second-strongest section. It breaks down the writing process into checkpoints, and provides worksheets to help navigate them.

Whether or not you choose to follow Trottier’s path, there are benefits to having it shown to you. It lays out a way — or an alternate way — to approach breaking story, which may be all you need to get over a hump. And blank worksheets are almost always less intimidating than blank pages.

But the borderline over-thoroughness of his checkpoints are the first warning sign of what is to come.

Book III: Proper Formatting Technique — A Style Guilde is a valuable resource, but — as expected — a dry read from beginning to end. Still, it cleanly spells out the answer to both common and uncommon questions, like the difference between V.O. and O.S., or how to format telepathic dialogue.

This is the book that makes The Bible a good long-term purchase. It will be valuable to pull off your shelf for quick answers.

Book IV: Writing & Revising Your Breakthrough Script — A Script Consultant’s View is where the book starts to get a little lowest-common-denominator. Since Book I, Trottier refers to the reader as “The Next Great Screenwriter.” Book IV is where that rhetoric begins to feel belittling.

Trottier provides flawed sample scenes and asks you to rewrite them, which is an exercise that doesn’t translate well from classroom to page. Trottier’s constant reminders of how well you’re doing are like pronunciation compliments from the absent professor of a learn-a-language audio tape. His repetitive reinforcing of the idea that you are, of course, The Next Great Screenwriter eventually forces the reader to confront the thought that maybe the lessons contained in Book IV are in fact innate to The Next Great Screenwriter and can’t be learned from a book.

If followed and expanded upon, there could be value to the lessons in this section. It just may take patience to find it.

Book V: How to Sell Your Script — A Marketing Plan takes even more patience. This is the “career of a screenwriter” book in beginners form — query letters, writers groups, etc — and it does address a few interesting questions and answer with some true wisdom.

But as John and Craig point out in episode 2 of Scriptnotes, a lot of those questions are all-but unanswerable.

Trottier’s struggle to get something on paper results in his hiding the good among a lot of maddeningly basic bits of advice — the sort of advice that makes one feel underestimated and defensive, and makes it more difficult to take anything else that person says without a grain of salt.

An example, from his list of potential ways to start a writers group:

In classes, ask the instructor or seminar leader to put your name and phone number on the board because you’d like to start a writers group. That way, interested writers can call you.

If you can silence your inner-rebellious-middle-schooler and look past the above, for instance, he makes a lot of strong points about the value of writers groups.

Book VI: Resources and Index is an afterthought section that lists other places to continue your screenwriting education.

This section is far from thorough and feels outdated.1 For example, there’s a section called “Internet Sites,” which just rings wrong,2 like a term from a generation that never existed.

While The Screenwriter’s Bible is not my favorite read, I can recommend it as a worthwhile purchase for novices, and possibly veterans as well. For the former, there is a lot to be gained from reading this cover to cover, as long as you can get through the dry spells and ignore the sometimes-annoyingly-and-misleadingly-friendly tone. For the latter, it is thorough enough that it would have been a great book to have as a resource in a pre-Internet world. Now, if you prefer books over Internet Sites for this sort of thing, there may still be value in owning a copy.

  1. This fifth edition was published in August 2010. ↩
  2. Does “rings wrong” count as onomatopoeia? Is there a word for example-onomatopoeia? ↩

Final Cut Pro and Con

Software, Stuart, Video

Final Cut Pro X has been controversial 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:

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.1

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

  1. 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. ↩