John August

Video

I talk with my hands

Film Industry, Follow Up, Resources, Video

Back in March, I was a panelist on a [Writers Guild Foundation](http://www.wgfoundation.org/) forum about publicity — specifically, how film and television writers should approach promoting themselves and their work through the media. As I [wrote at the time](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/publicity-101), it seemed to go pretty well.

This afternoon, I was ego-Googling and discovered that clips from the seminar are [available on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQsLCqho8_o):

The audio’s not terrific, and so you’ll probably need to turn your speakers up. This is the main section with me; there are two [other](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rNu3rAlCUc) [parts](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV473Sbo2og) focusing on other panelists, which you can find if you click through to the main YouTube site.

Chris Day, the head of publicity for UTA, references a memo I wrote around the time of [Big Fish](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319061/). You can find a .pdf of that [here](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/pub_goals.pdf).

Hello, Residuals

Film Industry, Video

When the Apple [iPhone](http://www.apple.com/iphone/) commercial began airing, my first thought was that I wanted one. My second thought: How much will I get in residuals for the one-second clip from the first [Charlie’s Angels](http://www.imdb.com/Title?0160127)?

The answer came yesterday in a [big green envelope](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/big-green-envelopes): $86.50.

UPDATE:

Because you asked, here’s the original scene as written:

Her cell phone RINGS. She answers it.

NATALIE

Hello?...Pete, hi! How are you?

INT. HOTEL KITCHEN – DAY

Pete is on break from another catering job.

PETE

I’m good. I just -- You said you wanted me to call.

INT. TOWER OFFICE – DAY

Natalie keeps checking the shelves, looking for a secret switch.

NATALIE

I did. I do. I mean, thank you for calling.

A Thousand Roads lead to this

Video

About a year ago, I took a Final Cut Pro class at UCLA Extension. It was a mixed success. I already knew too much for a beginner class, but wasn’t proficient enough for a more advanced session. So I ended up having a lot of extra time to fiddle around with the test footage that comes with the FCP tutorial — in this case, from [A Thousand Roads](http://imdb.com/title/tt0407254/), which is apparently a movie about the Native American experience.

One lesson I learned from the first Charlie’s Angels: when characters are speaking in foreign languages, the subtitles can say anything.