Category: Scriptwriting

Posted on

Poule – Part 1 of 3

FADE IN:

EXT. BACKYARD – DAY

TITLE: Saturday

ANGLE ON GATE to the MEADOW where THREE CHICKENS’ EYES watch as --

-- a New Hampshire red – we’ll call her BUFFY – struts in front of her audience, pecking occasionally at the grass.

We hear the backdoor opening O.S.

GODDESS

(O.O.S.)

What do you think you’re doing?

Buffy looks up – too late – as THE GODDESS picks her up --

BUFFY

(low)

Booooaaahhh –

-- and Buffy is shoved back through the gate into the meadow.

GODDESS

Now if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times –

CLOSE ON BUFFY as she eyes the fence – she has to crane her neck so much she looks like a goose.

GODDESS

(cont’d)

– no. Going. Over. The fence.

(beat)

Or ELSE.

She glares at Buffy who locks eyes with her briefly before resuming her examination of the fence.

INT. KITCHEN – MOMENTS LATER

The Goddess looks up from her GLASS OF PINOT GRIS to see --

EXT. BACKYARD – CONTINUOUS

-- Buffy balances on top of the fence a moment before descending to freedom.

She looks up at the house, her eye finding --

INT. KITCHEN – CONTINUOUS

-- The Goddess, watching in silence. She carefully puts her wine glass on the counter.

GODDESS

Right. That’s it.

TITLE: TO BE CONTINUED.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Quis Custodiet – Abridged

Mr Hilton at The Editing Room has just put up an abridged script for Watchmen.

And this excerpt is for the benefit of The Goddess who wondered what the heck the story was with Bubastis the wondercat:

MATTHEW GOODE

Would you like me to explain why as I stroke my tigercatrabbit?

PATRICK WILSON

Er, actually, yeah, are you going to explain that thing at all?

MATTHEW GOODE

Who, Mr. Meowkins? He’s my pet.

PATRICK WILSON

Right. I figured that.

This link/post is dedicated to Mr Molloy.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

“To’ona’i” Audio Post

Yep, it’s been a year since the last update – running out of money will do that – and so it was only last month that I caught up with sound designer Nathan Rea who has been quietly and patiently cleaning up the audio.

REA STUDIOS – NIGHT

Credits roll on a MONITOR as NATHAN and our WRITER sit back in their seats.

NATHAN

What’d you think?

WRITER

... I have some questions.

Before I get to those questions, let me just say what a phenomenal job Mr Rea has done: it all sounded natural. That might be a bit of a queer thing to say – and you well-know what a phillistine I am about a lot of the film-making technical craft – but everything sounded perfect*.

My questions – I only had three – were to do with his use of composer Nestor Opetaia‘s score:

  • Why was there music at the beginning?
  • Why had the music been changed in this middle?
  • Why was there music at the end, before the credits?

Nathan’s answers were simple:

  • As a bookend to the music at the end.
  • No, the music had not been changed.
  • In search of a place for the end music to play over the credits, the only way to avoid crashing it in at the end was to introduce it under the final scene.

Quite a bit of discussion followed where we discussed and agreed to try:

  • Removing the opening music because, with a running time of twelve minutes, a bookend wasn’t all that essential.
  • Nathan played the pre-audio-post cut of the film and nope, he hadn’t changed the music.
  • The introduction of the music under the final scene was one of those happy, serendipitous accidents where the finished film moment became much more than the sum of its parts.

Nathan made the changes and we watched the film through again.

REA STUDIO – LATER

Credits roll on monitor as Nathan and our Writer listen intently to the soundtrack.

WRITER

What’d you think?

NATHAN

(nods)

... Yeah.

WRITER

Yeah, but what did you think?

NATHAN

It’s your movie, man.

I signed off audio post.

*  There’s a sequence in the film where the location audio was so riven with kicked drink cans and circling streetracers that some ADR was considered. Mr Rea cleaned it up so thoroughly that it completely slipped my mind for another five viewings. Nathan – you the bomb.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m in the latter stages of colour grading at the moment, which I’ll post about hopefully maybe soon.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Box Watch – Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1-4

Yeah, it took me a good fortnight to catch up to some people but some people don’t have a menagerie to compete with for The Goddess’ time.

I thought it ended in grand fashion: personal stakes, of course, were high; characters made decisions where I truly cared whether they lived or died; and there was a cool space battle with ultra-high-risk tactical gambits and shit blowing up.

And then as various farewells were worked through, I felt a twitch in the back of my throat*: we’d been with these characters for over 80+ hours of television, spread over four years. It was okay to blink and swallow manfully, grateful that The Goddess’s back was to me.

As the camera pulled back, and pulled back, and pulled back, I sighed with contentment… and then there was a title card… and an epilogue which I thought totally and utterly naff. Which brought up unwelcome questions like:

  • So who – or what – is Starbuck?

  • Who – or what – is Gaius Baltar if, as the opening credits showed every ep, he was caught in a thermonuclear blast on Caprica?

  • What happened to all the mythology/religious/destiny/determinism schtick that really pulled the first two seasons together?

Aw… whatevs.

It was great television. It went places, and I’m not meaning geographically. It told stories, a lot of them familiar, and told them well. And I cared.

Thank you, Mr Moore.

*  A twitch that was definitely absent during the dutiful but interminable farewells in The Return of the King.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Plug

Goodness gracious: Radio New Zealand will be broadcasting a little something I adapted for radio last year, and which was recorded earlier this year.

So if you’ve an hour to spare this Sunday 5 April, between 3pm and 4pm, try out some Kiwi-made drama.

Thanks again to producer Jason Te Kare who was very patient with all my ummm‘s and ahhh‘s to his questions, engineer Phil Benge who put up with my exclamations of I keep expecting someone to run in there between takes and polish the mike!, voice actors Jerome Leota, Sopa Enari, Shadon Meredith, Natano Keni, Rob Lloyd and Eteuati Ete who made the recording day a hoot to watch hear, and big ups to the House of Ash and Fi who very kindly put me up for a couple of nights whilst I was in Wellington.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Point & Click

A bit of a backlog of a collection, attributions for which I can’t remember, sorry – though a pretty good bet would be the sidebar, but.

    • There are such things as happy endings for screenwriters in Hollywood – just ask Robert Mark Kamen.
    • Thanks, I suspect, to Nick Grant of Onfilm, I have discovered The A.V. Club‘s excellent The New Cult Canon series, in particular this article about the commentary between The Limey’s writer Lem Dobbs and director Steven Soderbergh.
    • Another Kiwi screenwriting blog! Lyse Beck gives us Birds With Nuts. There’s a nice thread about Watchmen here.

And speaking of the Minutemen, after all my build–up, The Goddess and I went to see Watchmen a week or so ago. She enjoyed it; I hankered for some interpretation rather than faithful replication. Thanks to Mr Slevin I’ve read people who can say what I’m thinking much better than I could here, here and here. (And no one’s mentioned it’s been two whole decades since Tim Burton gave us Michael Keaton as Batman – didn’t that kickstart the mainstreaming of comic-book adaptations?)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Dem Wires

Hah made you look: I’m not posting about The Wire.

The other day I had to connect a video camera to a television. The end-user wanted to be able to record some actors he was working with, with live feed or playback on a nice big screen. It looked straightforward enough: a 29-inch television and VCR, both around five years old, each with external AV inputs out front. They worked, and they talked to each other. The camera’s battery was fully charged and I got a picture in the eye-piece. I’ve connected dozens of handycams and digital cameras to TVs in my time. How hard could it be?

Connecting the camera to the television gave no signal. It didn’t matter if I used the AV inputs out front or in the back (all four sets).

Connecting the camera to the VCR, with AV cables from the VCR to the TV, gave no signal. The VCR had three AV inputs in total. I worked through all possible combinations between the TV and VCR’s inputs.

I took a breath. Maybe… I tested the cables I was using: the VCR sent pictures and sound from both television and VHS-tape sources flawlessly to the TV. Not the cable.

Half an hour had passed. Time flies when you’re having fun.

I spotted a quaint coaxial cable lying around. What if -? I wondered, not that it really mattered: I was desperate.

I set up the camera as follows:

video camera to VCR with AV cable

VCR to TV with coaxial cable

I didn’t stand back in triumph. I was grumpy. It should never have taken that long.

But sometimes a script won’t go the way you want it to, no matter how much you curse and pray and cheat and steal. It works the way it works because it just does.

Take the win.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Lateral Thinking Instance #215

EXT. BACKYARD – SOMETIME LAST YEAR

THE GODDESS and our WRITER look at the fence separating the backyard from THE CHICKENS’ MEADOW. Even though the gate to the meadow is closed, The Chickens are on the wrong side of the fence, and are buck-bucking through The Goddess’ GARDEN.

THE GODDESS

Either I increase the height of the fence or...

The Writer considers the fence: it’s about waist-high. A height he can no longer consider vaulting at his age and weight, but a height that is obviously no obstacle to the fowl nearby.

WRITER

Or?

THE GODDESS

Or I’m going to have to clip some wings.

He looks at Her, knowing how loathe She is to tamper with nature.

WRITER

You could glue some broken glass and bent nails along the top of the fence.

She looks at him.

Off Her look, he goes inside the house.

Sometimes a little lateral thinking just isn’t welcome.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Box Watch – Blue Murder (UK)

After Men Behaving Badly and, in particular, Life Begins, I’ll watch almost anything Caroline Quentin appears in.

Blue Murder follows the work and life of newly promoted DCI Janine Lewis (Quentin) as she juggles the fallout from her recent marriage break-up with the full-on investigation of a brutal murder. The Goddess and I watched the first season (all of 2x60min eps) earlier in the week.

INT. LOUNGE – NIGHT

Credits scroll upwards on a TELEVISION, WRITER and THE GODDESS on the COUCH stretching and remembering forgotten cups of tea.

WRITER

Um. What’d you think?

THE GODDESS

It was a bit... pedestrian.

BEAT as our writer tries a long gulp of long-cooled english breakfast.

THE GODDESS

And what did you think?

WRITER

Eye-wateringly boring.

That’s one of the many things I treasure about my relationship with The Goddess: she’s compassionate, polite and humane while I am just intolerant.

Intolerant of things like —

— our detective heroine being given 48 hours to clear the case or else be replaced —

— our detective heroine and her team being the only cops available to respond to dramatic turns in the investigation —

— and the grinding exposition, absolutely stultifying with sequences like:

INT. INTERVIEW ROOM, POLICE STATION – DAY

DETECTIVE HEROINE and NERVOUS SUSPECT have a silent, tense moment.

DETECTIVE HEROINE

Why don’t you just let it all out so we can have tea and kippers?

Suspect makes pained expression.

NERVOUS SUSPECT

Oh, alright: I’ve been holding out on you all this time.

(licks lips)

The gardener did it.

DETECTIVE HEROINE

The gardener. Right. With the electric carving knife.

NERVOUS SUSPECT

Yeah. To throw you off the scent.

INT. CORRIDOR, POLICE STATION – SOON AFTER

Detective Heroine and her MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS travel down the CORRIDOR –

MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS

You have forty-eight hours –

DETECTIVE HEROINE

Yes, you said.

MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS

– so you better have something to show for it.

DETECTIVE HEROINE

Well, actually, I just came out of an interview with Nervous Suspect.

MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS

Yes?

DETECTIVE HEROINE

And she dobbed in the gardener.

MALE CHAUVINIST BOSS

But an electric carving knife was used.

DETECTIVE HEROINE

Yes. It was to throw us off the scent.

Besides mentally screaming at the screen, I’m like, Whoa – I’m the audience and I was there: you think I forgot already?

I certainly appreciated the portrayal of Quentin’s character trying to balance work and family. There were some moments between her team-members that entertained and spoke volumes about their personalities.

Maybe I should approach this as more of a relationship drama than a procedural. Maybe things tighten up in subsequent seasons (it’s up to season five).

And maybe I should get around to trying some Prime Suspect.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share