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Sundance

Story is free

July 1, 2010 Indie, Story and Plot, Sundance

One of my frustrations with independent film — and in particular, micro-indies of the past few years — is a lack of narrative ambition.

Flip through the catalogs of any festival and you’ll see movies with fascinating characters and rich settings in which *nothing really happens,* as if the filmmakers took a Dogma vow to avoid plot.

My hunch is that it’s actually a consequence of thinking small. If you’re making a movie on a limited budget, it may put real constraints on your locations, schedule and cast size.

But that frugality doesn’t need to limit your story. Story is free.

Waiting around for things
——

I spent last week at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, working with writer-directors on their next projects. I don’t want to single out any one script — I’m eager to see all of these movies made. These filmmakers are very talented.

But I often found myself pausing at page 45 asking “What’s happened so far?” and “What am I curious about?” And too often, the answer was *not much.*

Some of my red flags:

* Are characters waiting around for something?
* Do they take half-steps, then retreat?
* Do major events (death, abortion, incest) happen off-screen, or before the movie begins?
* Do people talk about food?
* Could you swap a scene from page 10 and page 34 without changing much?

A few of these projects would fall within the loose borders of the mumblecore movement, stories that focus on the sputtering interactions of a few well-educated characters. This is no ding on the genre; I like my Humpday just fine.

But I wonder if filmmakers are looking to mumblecore movies as an excuse for underwriting and avoiding character conflict.

A lot of story can happen even when you’re constrained to a few locations. Hamlet takes place in a few rooms. So does The Usual Suspects. Both Go and The Nines pack a lot into each of their three-part sections. And while Sex, Lies and Videotape might seem low-plot, the story keeps forcing characters to make choices and face the consequences.

In meeting with the screenwriters at Sundance, I challenged them to look for scenes in which characters were talking about things and show them doing those things. Often, the omitted scenes weren’t more expensive than what they would replace — but they were more difficult to write. The beginning of an affair is trickier than showing it mid-course. A trapped child is uncomfortable to write, but compelling to watch.

The writing is always going to be the least expensive but most challenging part of the process. Making a low-budget movie is a study in compromises. Story shouldn’t be one of them.

Don’t make the feature version of your short

April 28, 2010 Genres, Go, Sundance

I had coffee today with a writer-director whose acclaimed short film got him many awards and meetings all over town. And deservedly: it’s terrific, a labor of love that took several years to make.

He said he was finishing up the screenplay for the feature version. I told him to focus on something else instead. You shouldn’t make the feature version of your short.

This seems like terrible advice. After all, it’s easy to think of several acclaimed filmmakers who expanded upon their short films, including Neill Blomkamp and George Lucas.

But having worked with many emerging filmmakers through the Sundance Institute and other programs, I’ve encountered a lot of [silent evidence](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/silent-evidence) that suggests it’s a pretty bad idea. ((Silent evidence: You’re only seeing the movies that got made and released, not the ones that didn’t.))

1. **Great shorts are great and short.** The perfect haiku isn’t improved by rewriting it as a sonnet.

2. **You will burn out on the idea.** Having already made the short, do you want to spend several more years making it again?

3. **Show what else you can do.** A career isn’t one movie, or one idea. Even if you make the movie and it turns out great, you’ve still only told one story so far in your career.

4. **Safety is paralysis.** It’s less intimidating to expand on something familiar. But you need to push against your boundaries.

Your first feature project should ideally be in the same class or genre as your acclaimed short, but not a retread. If you made a charming short about blind leprechauns, write a feature about kleptomaniac crows. Let the connection between projects be your ambition and sensibility, not a single storyline.

Go was originally written to be a short film — but we never shot it. Had the short version been made, I can’t imagine going back to write the full thing. I would have been too hamstrung by my original choices, and the scenes that had already been shot.

Worse, I wouldn’t have felt the same things the second time through. You don’t get your first kiss twice.

One Too Many Mornings

January 12, 2010 Indie, Sundance

My friend Leo pointed me towards [One Too Many Mornings](http://www.onetoomanymornings.com/), a really truly indie that’s playing at Sundance this year. As it turns out, I know the director (Michael Mohan) through his work at the filmmakers’ lab.

The movie looks great in its lo-fi simplicity, but what interests me even more is how the filmmakers are approaching distribution.

In the wake of The Nines, I’ve written [several](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/nines-post-mortem) [times](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/hard-indie) about how getting a movie made is substantially easier than getting a movie seen. The mythical Sundance experience — fierce bidding wars to land the next indie smash — are over. Most films don’t sell, and the few that do struggle to reach even a tiny audience.

Some filmmakers like Todd Sklar have [opted to self-distribute](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/self-distributing-an-indie-feature), essentially taking the indie band approach and touring theaters around the country. That’s great if you enjoy being in a van.

The Mornings team is doing what I would try: skipping theatrical altogether. The day after the premiere, you can [download their film](http://www.onetoomanymornings.com/store/) or get the DVD. You can even buy a piece of the set, or buy the filmmakers lunch.

They’re not going to make a lot of money, but my hunch is they will be able to get a lot more people to see their movie this way. That should be the main goal of any indie.

The labs, day four

June 24, 2009 Sundance

hikeTwo meetings, a good hike and a chocolate shake made for a good day at the Sundance lab, my last full day before flying home tomorrow afternoon.

[John Gatins](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0309691/) made a good point today about his work and his job. “His work” is writing, and “his job” is all the attendant meetings and drama it takes to get his work on the screen. It’s a helpful distinction, one I often make between the craft of screenwriting (the words on the page) and the profession of screenwriting (making a living at it).

As part of a partnership with YouTube, a crew has been shooting interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff with the filmmakers. I’ll be putting up those links as they come.

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