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An hilarious collision of laughs, geekery and pathos.
(Fedora tip: Jill Golick.)
DateNight – The Morning After
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.
Housekeeping
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.
DateNight Jitters
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....
DateNight Prep
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.
Point & Click
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!
Point & Click
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).
DateNight 1.1
The Writers Guild, along with the directors’ guild and the producers association, are putting on Date Night 1.1 Auckland (1830, Thursday, 21 February at the Classic): ‘a speed-dating-format networking opportunity for writers and directors to pitch to producers’.
I missed out on DateNight 1.0 last year but I was okay with that (a large portion of that being relief from avoiding the stress and pressure). So when I got the email last week, I made a snap-decision and quickly replied with a count me in before I gave it too much thought and chickened out.
But now that my registration has been confirmed, I’m burning with questions like what have I done? and ua a la ‘ia?*
Self-pity aside, a rather pressing question is so, what do I have to do?. A synopsis is bad enough. But pitching?
Some research, I believe, is in order.
I may be some time.
* Ua a la ‘ia? – Samoan, loosely translated as ‘what did you expect?’; peculiar to Samoans, it is a character-building parental response to a child in tears, whether it was their fault or not.
Meeting Other Writers
When you spend lengthy periods of time in a cave, wrestling mightily – nay, epically (?) – with your caffeine addiction current project, the idea of temporarily abandoning your lair to meet another screenwriter can seem a daunting prospect. Who wants to spend a potentially awkward half-hour with someone you may only have swapped emails or forum-posts with?
Yes, that’s a risk. But a big reward for meeting other writers is the reminder that You’re Not Alone. You both know the agony of creativity. You’ve been through the horror of development. And if you’ve been rewritten and can – after some mourning or therapy – talk about it, you’ll find a camaraderie not often seen outside the armed forces.
One other thing you share – though you may not acknowledge it at first – is how your prior experience of meeting writers at parties and funerals and such has fashioned your approach to such encounters. My own meet-and-greets have fallen into two very general categories:
- those who do; and,
- those who don’t.
Those Who Don’t
A contact with this type of writer requires a lot of patience and concentration. And tact.
ENTHUSIASTIC WRITER
– and then Ben – the hero, I mean protagonist – he opens the door to the other dimension, with his Broomstick of Power in one hand –
ME
So he decides to do something about his life?
ENTHUSIASTIC WRITER
What? Yes. Anyway, Ben, he’s got his broomstick and he’s going to look for Charlene –
ME
Charlene?
ENTHUSIASTIC WRITER
The woman he met at the party! The one who kissed him, like, totally unexpectedly –
ME
Charlene who represents a goal – that there is more to Ben’s life than beer and parties?
ENTHUSIASTIC WRITER
(‘whatevs’)
Yeah. He’s got a hard-on for her and so he steps through the other-dimension door-portal...
(etc)
SOME TIME LATER...
ME
That’s... quite a story. What draft are you at?
ENTHUSIASTIC WRITER
Oh, I haven’t written it!
(taps their temple)
It’s all in here.
I applaud the enthusiasm – I really do.
Those Who Do
These encounters are just as demanding but much more stimulating.
ME
So. Whatcha working on?
WRITER
A little bit of this, bit of that – know what I mean?
ME
(not really)
‘Course, ‘f course.
WRITER
What are you working on?
ME
Ohhh... nothing much.
And so this crab-like dance continues as antennae probe gently, not forgetting anything, each word and/or pause wrung of every possible, potential subtext.
Once the conversation moves onto more neutral ground of influences, styles and the nuts ‘n’ bolts, it becomes heaps of fun (“Who would win in a knock-down, drag-out fight between Buffy and that Heroes cheerleader chi- no, wait: the stripper mom?”).
Meeting a fellow writer is an opportunity to share about the craft, the industry, and general gossip. We can’t just write in our caves, sending out for BK, Mac’s Gold, and chocolate, churning out The Word until it’s soiled by producers, directors, actors and editors alike. We’re all in this together.
So go out there. Hug a writer.
(We’re in me oul’ home-toon a’ Wellington visiting my side of the family. In between sightseeing and catching up with friends and family, Benedict Reid and Leonie Reynolds very kindly treated The Goddess and I to coffee on Cuba Street. It’s a favour we look forward to repaying, and continue our conversation about writing in New Zealand.)
(And which category did the coffee with Ben and Leonie fall into? The Do Be’s, of course.)
Where Themes Come From
November 2007
IN-LAW: Wow, you got funding, you must be so pleased.
ME: Yes, I –
IN-LAW: Tell me – what’s your film about?
ME: Uhm. It’s about a brother and sister, and they talk in a car the whole film.
IN-LAW: Oh.
December
ACQUAINTANCE: I hear you’re making a short film.
ME: (stunned look that word would actually be spread)
ACQUAINTANCE: What’s it about?
ME: It’s about a couple of siblings trying to deal with their older brother’s death.
ACQUAINTANCE: What else you working on?
January 2008
FELLOW WEDDING GUEST: What’s your movie about?
ME: It’s a film about loss and love. And life.