John August

Video

Lessons from God

Go, Projects, Video

Over the weekend, I revamped my [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6WIWaqaAHgfES_7nY7BYhA) and uploaded a bunch of videos, including my 1998 short film God, starring a [young Melissa McCarthy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d314AWqNeM&feature=share&list=PLa3qqbMuNy-oewVooX9-RlbUpMb7H_IGb):

Melissa’s amazing, and always was. I’ve loved watching someone so talented and so deserving become a star.

We shot this film after Go, but it was actually finished first.

I wrote the part for Melissa, who absolutely killed her single scene in Go. Over the next few years, I’d cast her in anything I could. She played a recurring character in my WB series D.C., and had cameos in both Charlie’s Angels. I wrote a part for her in Big Fish, but her role on Gilmore Girls kept her in Los Angeles.

Nine years later, Melissa would play her character from God again in [The Nines](https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-nines/id274169170) opposite Ryan Reynolds. ((The short is a bonus feature on the US DVD.)) Her husband Ben Falcone has a small part in the movie as well, and starred in another pilot I did called [The Remnants](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQFv0Le2DyI&feature=share&list=PLa3qqbMuNy-oewVooX9-RlbUpMb7H_IGb&index=1).

God was shot on leftover 35mm from Go, using a lot of the same crew. That’s my old apartment, my old couch, my old answering machine.

I had no particular career goal in making it; it just seemed like fun. We never submitted it to festivals. Rather, it got passed around a lot on VHS, and would often be brought up in meetings. (Casting directors in particular loved it.)

Although I had already directed second unit on Go, this was my first real directing experience beyond crappy Super-8 films in school. I learned a lot, including:

* Using metaphors to explain what you want. I told my DP that I wanted the light to feel like a breath mint. I told the hair stylist that I wanted Hot-Topic Wiccan.
* The challenges of late-90s opticals. That “god” title in the opening shot, which would be three seconds of work today, took about a week of back-and-forth approvals at a lab.
* How expensive music is. The rights to “Walking on Sunshine” cost more than the rest of the budget combined.
* How much of a homebody I am. God started a trend of my writing movies that take place in my house.

Some of the best things that came from this short were relationships with people I keep working with: Melissa, producer Dan Etheridge, composer Alex Wurman, cinematographer Giovanni Lampassi, and editor Doug Crise. They’re all still part of my life and career, which is a remarkable gift.

The Origins and Formatting of Modern Screenplays

Video, Words on the page

In [this 15-minute video](http://vimeo.com/67418669), John Hess gives a terrific overview of the history of the screenplay format, and how changes in the film industry changed the way the words are arranged on the page.

I could quibble with a few things.

First, the modern screenplay has an obvious analogue in the stage play, and didn’t develop in a vacuum. Second, Hess gets a little proscriptive at the end of the video, and conflates screenwriting software with the format. (Which is part of why we made [Fountain](http://fountain.io), to untangle the writing from the formatting.)

But his overall point is worth making: the screenplay format *is* what it is, and it’s a fool’s errand to try something wildly different.

Eric Goes West

Video

In addition to all the design work Ryan Nelson does for this site and our various apps, he’s also a bona fide Movie Person.

He and his wife Amy produced a terrific short called [Eric Goes West](http://ericgoeswest.com) that played Slamdance last year as part of anthology called Holiday Road. The short is now available on its own:

(You can [embiggen it](http://vimeo.com/29244588) over at Vimeo.)

I love that Ryan, Amy and director Dee Austin Robertson simultaneously followed and ignored the standard advice for filmmakers:

1. The used what they had. They’re sailors, and they had a boat. That boat became the set, and the centerpiece of the story.
2. They shot on open water, which is a terrible idea. And yet it gave them tremendous production value. It looks expensive, but it was actually just really difficult.

After you’ve had a look, be sure to tweet [@ryannelson](https://twitter.com/ryannelson) to tell him what you thought.

Making and Remaking Karateka

Karateka, News, Video

Karateka began its life on personal computers — the Apple II, in fact — and completes the cycle with its launch on Steam today. (And it’s [on sale this week](http://store.steampowered.com/app/217270).)

To commemorate the making and remaking of the game, [Earl Newton](http://earlnewton.com) shot a terrific series of how-we-did-it videos, the first two of which are embedded below.

In the first video, I love the dust cover Jordan Mechner’s mom made for his Apple II, complete with cord flaps. In the second video, check out the Super-8 footage Jordan used for rotoscoping. Watching it, you realize how handmade digital things can be.

In some ways, these videos feel like a Kickstarter campaign for something that’s already available in the world. You don’t have to pledge for a dream. You can get it today on Steam and Xbox, and very soon for iOS and PS3.

### Part 1: Inspiration

(link: [Inspiration: Making and Remaking Karateka](http://www.youtube.com/embed/QDaFte42odA))

### Part 2: Animation

(link: [Animation: Making and Remaking Karateka](http://www.youtube.com/embed/Wnutf4XObWk))