Archive for February, 2008

Please and Thank You

Friday, February 29th, 2008

In much earlier days, I queried Real Writers for help and advice. Most did not deign to reply. Of the very few who did, the initial response would be polite but curt. I thought it was something I’d said in my initial query, no matter how many hours I’d slaved over its every word. I took pains to acknowledge the time they took to write me.

I think I know now why those initial responses were curt. From the email-boxes at dfmamea.com:

Day One

Hello
  I am Keen-As Filmmaker and I am looking for someone to help finish off my short film script. The script has been writtin but has reached its final stages in the Pre-Production Development.
  I would like an experienced writer to help me finish it off and get it into Concept Development and eventually into the Storyboard Process. I would like you to help me make this script as professional as possible.
  To end this e-mail. I hope that you can see the raw passion I have for film and this creative medium we all love so much. Please see my Showreel and I look forward to your reply.


Day Two

hi Keen-As
  thanks for your email. it sounds like i can be of help.
  please can you forward your script and then we can talk. what sort of payment do you have in mind?
  look forward to hearing from you.

Day Three


Hello
  I am very greatful for your reply.
  I have attatched the script to the e-mail. Would you like payment for helping me finish the script? Its 6 pages. I look forward to discussing this with you.

Day Four

hi Keen-As
  thanks for the script. i have some questions.

  - in one sentence, what is Kick-Ass Shortie about?
  - what is the overriding theme of Kick-Ass Shortie?
  - (a bit of a silly one this, but have to ask) is the script you sent me the complete script, or a partial script? if it’s incomplete, please provide a synopsis of what happens next.

  lots more questions down the track but obviously you’ll need to decide who you want to be your writer.
  and yes, i would like payment if you’d like me to help out. how much were you thinking? what sort of contract do you have to offer?
  if you want to talk, please feel free to call me.

Haven’t heard a winkle since from Keen-As.

It’s not the rejection that gets me - it happens all the time. (Okay, most of the time.) It’s the lack of courtesy. Yes: please and thank-you are magic words.

As are, Thanks for your interest but we’ve gone with someone else.

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Work Avoidance

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

Psst. Wanna have a chuckle? And learn something? Try You Suck at Photoshop.



An hilarious collision of laughs, geekery and pathos.

(Fedora tip: Jill Golick.)

Posted in New Media | No Comments »

DateNight - The Morning After

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

After a week of jitters, it is done.

In the end, I pitched to six out of eleven producers and commissioners. Of the five that I didn’t sit down with, two were no-shows to begin with, two left before I started working my way around them (there were two rounds, as it were, and I was in the second round), and one left thinking she’d finished (or survived - understandable considering she’d just sat through twenty-plus two-minute* pitches without a break).

For me, the best thing was experiencing firsthand most of what I’d read or heard. It’s one thing to know in a theoretical sense, Don’t take it personally if they’re sitting there poker-faced, but it’s another to sit opposite someone and fight the urge to babble about your project just because they’re not leaping out of their seat, kissing you on both cheeks, and declaring the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

The most useful sit-downs were where a conversation took place. Once the logline, plot description and themes were out of the way - what else did they want to know? The remaining ninety seconds were filled up by a Q & A where I showed off the depth of my knowledge**. Whether they could do anything with the project or not was almost beside the point. It was pretty cool to talk about a project as if it had real possibilities, rather than as just An idea I’ve got for a show….

Did I like it? Yes - I rather enjoyed it actually. Even if you get an ignorant and short-sighted producer, it’s good to realise in the rush of blood to the head, I disagree with your noises of disrespect - my mistake for pitching a drama to a reality-programme maker.

Would I do it again? Yes. I have survived the gauntlet that is DateNight. Bring it on.

*  Short two producers, Mr Gannaway tried to ease the load by cutting the pitching time down from three to two minutes.
**  Except for when I was asked what target audience I had in mind. No matter how often you’re told and read that you need only write for yourself and don’t worry about the market - that’s what the producer worries about, you will be asked what target audience you have in mind for your project.

Posted in Film, Television, Scriptwriting | 2 Comments »

Housekeeping

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

I happened* across this blog in Firefox earlier in the week and saw that some of the posts are appearing alongside each other rather than in a neat and orderly queue down the page. Sorry about that. It seems to only affect the Mozilla-based browsers, including Camino and Navigator. I’ve no idea how to fix it. But I’m looking into it.

Please bear with me. Or, like me, use Opera.

* Okay: I was vanity-googling from another machine.

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DateNight Jitters

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

D minus 7 days

It’s about a jive-talking skateboard and a laidback surfboard.

D minus 5 days

It’s about a jive-talking skateboard and a laidback surfboard.

What if… a skateboard and a surfboard became friends?

D minus 4 days

It’s about a jive-talking skateboard and a laidback surfboard.

What if… a skateboard and a surfboard became friends?

Meet Sammy J and Johnny T - ‘boards for hire.

D minus 2 days


D minus 1 day

Picture this: Sammy J and Johnny T are cruising the streets….

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DateNight Prep

Saturday, February 16th, 2008

A pitch is where you, a writer, a person used to working long hours all by yourself, a person usually socially awkward with bizarre idiosyncrasies, a person who chose writing for a living because you can’t express yourself in words, a person who is the furthest and farthest thing from any type of salesperson, must now sell your idea.

- Murderati

Never have a meeting. Always have a conversation.

- Tim Clague (emphasis added)

Less than a week to go until DateNight 1.1, and the familiar tendrils of fear and self-loathing plait my intestines.

I’ve searched my archives for articles and posts on pitching. Recommended reading: from the US, Kay Reindl and Murderati; from the UK, Danny Stack and Tim Clague.

I’ve drafted leave-behinds. Single-page distillations of the project*, not only do they succinctly describe the project (’It’s a situational comedy about a jive-talking skateboard’), they’ll be a crutch for whatever I end up blathering (’Did he just say it’d contain coarse lang- whoa!‘), and will quite handily include my contact details.

I’m practicing smiling. I’ve been told that I come across as rather serious and unsmiling. I’m looking to strike a balance between confidence and humility (’Yeh, shucks - I so rock’) that won’t unnerve people.

Which leaves the spiel. An interesting observation: instead of writing to be read, I have to write to be heard. And as with dialogue writing, it’s not just content I have to worry about (the leave-behind is a big help there), I need to ensure that I provide sufficient motivation:

PRODUCER
… A jive-talking skateboard.

ME
Called Samuel L Jackson.

PRODUCER
Called -.

Producer can only blink rapidly, momentarily struck dumb.

ME
And his sidekick, a laid-back
surfboard. Called John Travolta.

The Producer leans forward:

PRODUCER
(leans forward)
Tell me more.

* Despite my complaints about synopsising, those hateful little documents have been quite helpful.

Posted in Scriptwriting | 2 Comments »

Point & Click

Tuesday, February 12th, 2008

Prrretty busy this week.

  • After several months of having just eight members and a total of nine posts (four of them by my own hand), the New Zealand Writers Guild forums is getting some traction with sixteen members and forty-two posts as of today. Go ask a question or something.
  • Over at the Beeb’s Writers Room is a rather informative Q&A with Casualty writer Mark Catley. The Writers Room seems to be a great resource for television writing. (Ooh! It’s got Q&A’s with Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass, and Hu$tle and Life on Mars co-creator Tony Jordan.) (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)
  • And Break cinematographer, Matt Meikle, recently won the 2007 Australian Cinematography Society Gold Award for Cinematography on Hawaikii. Congratulatoriations!

Posted in Film, Television, Point & Click, Scriptwriting | No Comments »

Point & Click

Friday, February 1st, 2008

Yay, we’ve been back home a week, back in our own beds, eating the kinda food we usually eat. And even though I’m long overdue to explain how/why The Boy and I hobbled Amit in a friendly game of front lawn-cricket (he did it to himself) (he did) (and then we made him dinner), instead I offer some scriptwriting-related distractions:

  • Across the ditch, Lynden Barber’s Eyes Wired Shut blog has a great series of posts about why Australian films have been lacking lately (the scripts suck). And he just might have put romantic comedies back on my viewing list. (Fedora-tip: Canberra Rob, friend of the recently-wed webmistresse DeborahK.)

  • American public radio station KCRW provides two must-download/listen podcasts: Claude Brodesser-Akner’s The Business is a witty and acerbic look at Hollywood; and former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell scores some of the coooolest interviews in The Treatment. Download. Listen. Enjoy. (Fedora-tip: Leonie who requested that I share.)

  • Seeing that Rambo IV has just hit theatres in the States, it looks like the Kimbo film will have to be pushed back even further (not that it’s going anywhere anyway, but I thought I’d work it in). (Yes. Rambo. IV.) As critics review it with tongue in clenched cheek (and, possibly, NRA memberships secretly renewed), James Berardinelli summed it up rather nicely: If what you want from a movie is a lot of Stallone looking morose and pensive before suddenly going apeshit and slaughtering a bunch of people, then Rambo is your kind of experience. Guess where I’ll be heading when that opens in New Zealand?

  • And here I was thinking I’d cornered the local blogging-scriptwriting market (being the youngest of five, I was uh, doted on a little more than the other rabble siblings): Stephen Hickey, writer of Hopeless and Love Bites, has been blogging since 2004 at multi-dimensional. He’s quite open and generous about his writing process - and has just set up a wiki. (Fedora-tip: Leonie).

Posted in Film, Point & Click, Scriptwriting | No Comments »