Of Brainstorming, Bootstrapping and Incubation

While it looks like the entertainment industry is flying apart at the seams, in fact, what we are witnessing is a confluence of media venues becoming available and accessible to focus the audience on a given story, group of characters, or fictional universe. A Convergent Entertainment field means that writers will necessarily take control of their own careers in a way only a few media moguls have done in the past. You will be the Aaron Spelling, the Lorne Michaels, and the Gene Roddenberry of your own future. You thought it was unique to deliver your unsolicited script to an agent as a free pizza? Now you must simply think better than that. Today you should be thinking about creating an app to promote your screen stories. You should be thinking of how to make trailers to entice investment in your projects. You should be planning your viral campaign.

In another era, this was known as “bootstrapping” and this is what you’re going to be doing a lot of in the coming years. As always, the entertainment industry easily weans the weak-hearted, the lazy and the fearful away from production, but it may be the industry itself that goes through the most upheaval. Here is the thing about bootstrapping: it doesn’t favor giants at first. They move too slowly, and by the time the little person has his boots on and is running madly towards the finish line the giant has just located the boot that was sitting at his feet. True. Charlie Chaplin was a bootstrapper. He would have been fine to jump into this race. So use his gumption and simplicity as a talisman. We are back in Nickelodeon times, and I don’t mean the kids’ show network owned by Viacom.

I hate to say it but film and television is late to this party in a way. It is because the technology for it is just coming together, but if you really want to see examples of how this new convergent entertainment, confluence of media has worked you need only look at the post-Napster music industry.  Make note of Justin Bieber’s rise to fame. Look at the monetary worth of some obscure-seeming Heavy Metal band. Notice how images, samples and loops are being repurposed everyday.

Right here in Colorado, there are stock footage film and video companies like Thought Equity who are here FOR YOU. All you have to do is imagine how to tell your story with images that may have been filmed decades ago. You can make a film. I’m telling you that it is within your capabilities to create in new ways. Still, you have to write a decent story. That’s the thing. There are so many media choices out there, and if your story is boring, no matter the whiz-bang effects or celebrity attachments, no one will share it with their Facebook friends. It has to be sharp. It would be best to be funny (look to Chaplin), and having a good soundtrack is going to help.

Here’s the other thing about giants. Once they figure out their shoelaces and set out for the future, they can do it fast. One step for a giant is lots of legwork for a regular human being. If you think of the resources a studio has, once it is reconfigured into a leg, that giant can catch up pretty quick. So, this is an imperative moment. There is no time to waste on perfection. However, what can you do if you’re a writer that has been, well, writing, and not thinking about all of this?

Incubate. Find a group of friends and colleagues, who are so inclined, interested and even committed to getting in the convergent media race. Brainstorm and bootstrap and do the work to make your idea happen on many media platforms until they converge, creating a concentrated focus on your creation. That’s it. That’s what you have to do.

Alternatively, you can wait until the giant has all the rules and regulations in place, and his toe on the finish line. What’s it going to be?

Trans-Fran-Convergent Entertainment…eh, wha’?

Trying to come up with a quick and easy way to name what’s happening in the field of entertainment for writers is kind of funny, but also dead serious. I’ve seen combinations that made me think that, finally, the only people to write for are Drag Queens, because they are going to be the most popular entertainers -- a well-deserved honor, I admit, but hard to believe. The point is that the field is in chaos and there are many opportunities for writers who are paying attention and who are willing. Willing? Yes, willing for what?

In order to cross the bridge from what was to what is, writers have to be willing to take charge of their careers in ways they, perhaps, never planned on doing. Many writers are going to be pushed away from wallflower status to front and center stage in the unfolding events they will create themselves. The product is changing. The process is changing.  For goodness sakes, the format is going to have to change.

What’s a shy writer who lives in her head supposed to do? What’s a guy who just wants to write supposed to do? Well, let it go, people. The writer’s life is no longer confined to “A Room of One’s Own,” or anything resembling quiet, unless one builds some strong boundaries, high fences, or perhaps a psuedo-persona. A writer can no longer afford to cut herself off from the world around her to write the deepest stories of her soul…wait! Stop the bus, I want to get off now, thank you very much.

Let’s go back to the title of this blog post and break it down. The “Trans” part stands for “Transmedian Writing,” which is a new word that is not in your spell check. Writers Boot Camp® told its alums yesterday,  "'Transmedia' is one of those buzz words that may evolve into another term soon, but it definitely means a lot today.“ Bottom line is that you had better not write a feature film without a plan to work it on many different levels and directions – such as the internet short features, television, and apps. Apps? Yes, apps. OMG. It is hard enough to write a friggin’ feature film, right? Am I right? But, I have to say only this, “So what?” Get out of your back alley and come into the light. This is the beginning of your thrilling career!

“Fran” stands for what I know a lot about – The Franchise. I worked on the jewel in the crown of franchises for many years on a “transmedian” level. As a publishing consultant for the STAR TREK franchise, I really get that the future has finally arrived. For writers, this means when you’re thinking of writing a story think about how it could be built into a franchise. A franchise is the “braided money tree” of the entertainment industry. It exists on multiple levels going in multiple directions and unfolding in seemingly endless possibility. Think about it this way…the Original, classic STAR TREK series with Kirk, Spock and McCoy became popular in a flash, and then died or so the studio and network thought. The fans loved it though. So the studio, Paramount Pictures, made it into a movie, when it turned out there was an audience for Sci-Fi after all. That movie bred five more, and also gave birth to STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION; six more movies; STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE; STAR TREK: VOYAGER and STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, and further movies and shows, I promise you. Not only that, STAR TREK became the king pin of licensed products from games to cereals, magazines to action figures, bars to ring-tones, DVD box sets and more, so much more. Did Gene Roddenberry, STAR TREK’s creator, know when he went to the network and pitched “A Wagon Train to the Stars” show idea that this is what would become of it? I doubt it. It was an organic process then, but it led the way for all of us. We must pay attention. Study it. Know that it is possible.

I like the term “Convergent,” though it has been used by probably the MOST boring of outlets: the business website. The idea is to bring video into websites to convey information in a way that clients, trainees, and employees themselves will relate to and understand. However, the word itself, convergent, means so much more. It is an adjective used by biologists to describe the adaptive evolution of superficially similar structures. The word also suggests a confluence, such as the convergence of two rivers. It also means the coming together of focus, such as two eyes converging on a hawk flying above. To me this is what is happening in the field of writing entertainment: We are having a convergence of superficially similar products (i.e., television, film, on-line streaming, publishing and all stories franchised) focused on a singular entertainment continuum. How’s that for high-faluting?

Very exciting times. Get to work!

Sticking My Neck Out

I've been teasing you to think about screenwriting differently than most teachers. Instead of focusing solely on your story, your structure, your product, I've been asking you to think about the fortune of film itself in the digital age. A few weeks ago, I pointed out that while we may love film, we screenwriters are as guilty as anyone else is of killing the movies because we, too, partake in the wonderful world of digital entertainment. It would be like a photographer going on and on about the importance of 35 millimeter film and using a smart phone to take pictures of her kids. And, yet, that happens all the time, I bet. So, let's admit that we're joining the attrition crowd to read blogs, to join in Facebook discussions, to watch YouTube.com videos, and to play games in a million different ways. Let's wonder about the loss of books, and films that tell stories classic to our understanding of humanity itself, and let's not think of gimmicks to save them but of re-purposing those big stories for the audience.

For a few thousand years we have depended on books to help us interpret the meaning of life. Now, we are looking at the end of paper publishing. Really and truly. In a decade libraries will be on-line more than they'll be places for pimply-faced kids to make too much noise in while they're supposed to be researching their report for history. What took 10 hours for us to research 10 years ago, takes kids today 10 minutes, and pretty soon it will be 10 seconds, and there is nothing, short of blowing up satellites, that we can do to change that. The same things are happening in films. My daughter, aged 14 made a 10- minute documentary that would have been a monumental task for me to do in junior high school. When filmmakers can so easily make films, and it is sure to get even more accessible, and easier to do more amazing things than simply editing a home video (for instance, on-line greenscreens, special effects and stock-footage dramas) how is the industry going to stay in business? Who are the future arbiters of content if any script can be made by a teenager on their PC or iPad or Smartphone? When will the industry's efforts to stay technologically one or more steps ahead of the home filmmaker finally be fruitless?

This experience, I say to you, screenwriters, in all seriousness, isn't that far away from today, and so I want you to begin removing from the equation that there is only one way to be a successful screenwriter and that is the Hollywood way. The future is in the hands of the storytellers who can honestly reach the audience and touch their hearts in such a way that the audience shares your story with their friends. Success for filmmakers and screenwriters will look much the same as it does for book authors in a few years. As we have print on-demand, and uploaded eBooks from a myriad of sources, as we get our music from YouTube and iTunes and Amazon Cloud, so will we get films virally. I'm not talking about 5 minute YouTube Videos, I'm talking about full-fledged feature films and episodic programs. The more Hollywood worries about the stuff I was trained to worry about - intellectual property rights - the more they will take themselves out of the equation. When you write and make a movie, expect it to be pulled apart by a Digital Jockey somewhere in the world and re-purposed into another story you never dreamed of and how in the world do you make a living that way?

One way for certain is to be recognizable and unique. For instance, Tim Burton is going to be fine, as is Christopher Nolan, because when we see their work, even cut up, we'll know they made it. So that, even pirated, their film work will be in demand and that demand will create protection. There's going to be tons of up front work for actors and writers, but royalties...I don't know if they'll survive. Royalties are the backbone of the industry as it exists now. They make it possible for the artists who create film to be compensated for the repeated use of their work, and for the use of their work in other products (i.e.; games, toys, t-shirts). If everyone is just freely "borrowing" filmed content, then royalties can't be calculated and paid. Are there enough lawyers in the world to chase after everyone who downloads a video and uses some bit of it for something else? Did the dissolution of Napster return the music industry to the way it used to be? Without royalties, how will the studios, networks, agents and guilds survive? I don't know how they can survive. Although, yes, there are travel agents still, there certainly are not as many. There are not as many realtors. Bookstores who resisted eBooks in favor of the tried and true way, are now declaring bankruptcy.  There are not as many music execs who can sit in a glass building and arbitrate a deal that will make money for years to come. So, people will still make a living, but who and how is the question at hand.  I think also distribution channels and theater releases are in big trouble. The filmmaking world has got to come up with something better than 3D to keep people paying exorbitant prices to leave their flatscreens and iPads (where they can now even purchase 3D). I rarely use a DVD, much less a Blu-Ray, even if I have the capability because I don't want to go out and get it during my already overbooked time. Theaters?

Gimmicks are not going to save the movie theater. What is going to save the movie theater? That's our problem as screenwriters as much as it is a problem for distributors. Let me use another metaphor: I suppose we could stick our heads in the sand, like Ford and their engineers did with Lincoln Continental and Buick and hope that the big swishy car is going to be popular again because of some gimmick, or we could invent the electric SUV and mini-van. Do you get what I'm saying? Our limitation is not the audience. It is ourselves. A new interior design is not the gimmick that is going to save a big, swishy sofa of a car. A re-purposing might save it. It is not the story itself. The world still needs big cars for some purposes, but for what, but for why? The world still needs big stories but for what and for why?

Check out my "Videos" tab for other ideas....

Sticking My Neck Out

I've been teasing you to think about screenwriting differently than most teachers. Instead of focusing solely on your story, your structure, your product, I've been asking you to think about the fortune of film itself in the digital age. A few weeks ago, I pointed out that while we may love film, we screenwriters are as guilty as anyone else is of killing the movies because we, too, partake in the wonderful world of digital entertainment. It would be like a photographer going on and on about the importance of 35 millimeter film and using a smart phone to take pictures of her kids. And, yet, that happens all the time, I bet. So, let's admit that we're joining the attrition crowd to read blogs, to join in Facebook discussions, to watch YouTube.com videos, and to play games in a million different ways. Let's wonder about the loss of books, and films that tell stories classic to our understanding of humanity itself, and let's not think of gimmicks to save them but of re-purposing those big stories for the audience.

For a few thousand years we have depended on books to help us interpret the meaning of life. Now, we are looking at the end of paper publishing. Really and truly. In a decade libraries will be on-line more than they'll be places for pimply-faced kids to make too much noise in while they're supposed to be researching their report for history. What took 10 hours for us to research 10 years ago, takes kids today 10 minutes, and pretty soon it will be 10 seconds, and there is nothing, short of blowing up satellites, that we can do to change that. The same things are happening in films. My daughter, aged 14 made a 10- minute documentary that would have been a monumental task for me to do in junior high school. When filmmakers can so easily make films, and it is sure to get even more accessible, and easier to do more amazing things than simply editing a home video (for instance, on-line greenscreens, special effects and stock-footage dramas) how is the industry going to stay in business? Who are the future arbiters of content if any script can be made by a teenager on their PC or iPad or Smartphone? When will the industry's efforts to stay technologically one or more steps ahead of the home filmmaker finally be fruitless?

This experience, I say to you, screenwriters, in all seriousness, isn't that far away from today, and so I want you to begin removing from the equation that there is only one way to be a successful screenwriter and that is the Hollywood way. The future is in the hands of the storytellers who can honestly reach the audience and touch their hearts in such a way that the audience shares your story with their friends. Success for filmmakers and screenwriters will look much the same as it does for book authors in a few years. As we have print on-demand, and uploaded eBooks from a myriad of sources, as we get our music from YouTube and iTunes and Amazon Cloud, so will we get films virally. I'm not talking about 5 minute YouTube Videos, I'm talking about full-fledged feature films and episodic programs. The more Hollywood worries about the stuff I was trained to worry about - intellectual property rights - the more they will take themselves out of the equation. When you write and make a movie, expect it to be pulled apart by a Digital Jockey somewhere in the world and re-purposed into another story you never dreamed of and how in the world do you make a living that way?

One way for certain is to be recognizable and unique. For instance, Tim Burton is going to be fine, as is Christopher Nolan, because when we see their work, even cut up, we'll know they made it. So that, even pirated, their film work will be in demand and that demand will create protection. There's going to be tons of up front work for actors and writers, but royalties...I don't know if they'll survive. Royalties are the backbone of the industry as it exists now. They make it possible for the artists who create film to be compensated for the repeated use of their work, and for the use of their work in other products (i.e.; games, toys, t-shirts). If everyone is just freely "borrowing" filmed content, then royalties can't be calculated and paid. Are there enough lawyers in the world to chase after everyone who downloads a video and uses some bit of it for something else? Did the dissolution of Napster return the music industry to the way it used to be? Without royalties, how will the studios, networks, agents and guilds survive? I don't know how they can survive. Although, yes, there are travel agents still, there certainly are not as many. There are not as many realtors. Bookstores who resisted eBooks in favor of the tried and true way, are now declaring bankruptcy.  There are not as many music execs who can sit in a glass building and arbitrate a deal that will make money for years to come. So, people will still make a living, but who and how is the question at hand.  I think also distribution channels and theater releases are in big trouble. The filmmaking world has got to come up with something better than 3D to keep people paying exorbitant prices to leave their flatscreens and iPads (where they can now even purchase 3D). I rarely use a DVD, much less a Blu-Ray, even though I have the capability because I don't want to go out and get it during my already overbooked time. Theaters?

Gimmicks are not going to save the movie theater or possibly television. What is going to save the movie theater? That's our problem as screenwriters as much as it is a problem for distributors. Let me use another metaphor: I suppose we could stick our heads in the sand, like Ford and their engineers did with Lincoln Continental and Buick and hope that the big swishy car is going to be popular again because of some gimmick, or we could invent the electric SUV and mini-van. Do you get what I'm saying? Our limitation is not the audience. It is ourselves. A new interior design is not the gimmick that is going to save a big, swishy sofa of a car. A re-purposing might save it. It is not the story itself. The world still needs big cars for some purposes, but for what, but for why? The world still needs big stories but for what and why?

Willing to be Wrong

Often when writing a screenplay, I have reached a moment in the script where I really want my hero to be right, but if I follow that path then I'm sure to have a gazillion rewrites to work on down the line trying to figure out where I went wrong. Attachment to being right is a human frailty and kills a screenplay faster than anything else kills. This human frailty of righteousness does more to undo progress in the world than, I'd venture to say, anything else does. Think about it for a moment. If we are right, then there is no reason to change. If there is no reason to change, then we've reached that "happily ever after" moment. We might as well implode on the spot.

In order to grow an industry, then the industry has to assume it is wrong about something and start trying new things. Uhm. That is not happening very often these days in the movies I've seen. Case in point, just in the past few days I heard radio arts commentator, Bob Mandello (NPR) noting that in just the last eight months Hollywood put out four movies that are about the same theme - messing with our perception of reality. Okay, this is one of my favorite topics, but looking underneath the appeal, it makes me wonder why so many of the same stories are made year after year. Like remember when all the baseball films were made? Alternatively, how about the bunch of films about ants in a single year? Really? Ants? Not to mention the requisite kids at a haunted house or abducted by aliens stories. Hollywood has started making satirical films about these genres in a desperate attempt to find something new to say.

Now, I am going to go out on a limb and tell you my point of view, and I may be very wrong, but I think Hollywood is stuck in a righteous rut. There are reasons I think this is true. One of them is that some of the more interesting films I've seen over the past decade were not made in Hollywood. Another reason is that I know it is hard for Hollywood to make its way through the 50,000 plus ideas that land in its lap every year in any way that is objective. People in Hollywood want to have lives, really they do, and so like it or not, they go the easiest possible route to making a living -- tried and true. That means writers who have credits get looked at much more seriously than newcomers, and that the better revenue a writer's film makes for the producers and studios, the more likely it is that they'll get opportunities to do it again. Now, then when writers get the opportunity to repeat their own glory, what are they going to do but return to what they know and have done before? It would be crazy not to. There are very few successful screenwriters who push beyond their earliest successes in a substantial way, even if their first films did push the envelop of righteousness a bit. They tend to fall into "niche" writing, and we pretty much get what we expect. This works when a filmmaker is totally committed to their vision, and it doesn't work when a filmmaker or screenwriter is not sure why one script made it and another didn't. For a film to work, the filmmaker must know himself finally. See the movie "Nine" if this confuses you. In fact, see both movies called "Nine". They were released the same year, and they're actually very different. Grin. 

Who are the ones I think push at the envelope still...? I'm willing to be wrong on this but I do believe the people willing to flop, and to tell the story of their hearts have it. They are the ones who make the films from which I can't be distracted. Sometimes these are documentary filmmakers who have a passion about a subject. Sometimes these are comedians, who, loving the human condition of wrongness, make truly funny films. Sometimes the writers, who found something to grab onto in a comic book series when they were young, fight the urge to lighten it up and strive to tell the dark vigilante tales they remember and loved. Sometimes it comes down to a writer's willingness to state a point of view about touchy subjects like dying, or power, or sex, and going against the grain of the majority opinion they grab onto an evolved truth. Keep in mind that Hollywood doesn't generally feel comfortable going beyond where its audience is currently, and so the argument made in a script must be super compelling. Sometimes the distraction factor is destroyed by a filmmaker who creates indelible worlds that are unique and complete that the audience wants to discover. In all cases, all cases, the stories are about characters that do the wrong thing, who haven't figured everything out by the time the credits have rolled and who are in for a hell of a bumpy ride. These are films about discovery, about falling flat and getting back up. These are stories about failing before succeeding because this is the human story. 

It comes down to story always. Moreover, it doesn't have to cost $200 million to tell a great story. Furthermore, it requires your full investment.

The advice I got upon arrival in Hollywood was to write the biggest, epic film I could imagine. Then within a few years’ movies like "Sex, Lies & Videotape," and "Reservoir Dogs," both painfully intimate, small movies, came out. So, then it was write small personal films. Then it was write Sci-Fi, and then it was write family films. Whatever it was, it was already too late. Writers! We cannot write film scripts to match the trends of today. It is already too late for that. We must be the visionary writers who write film scripts that address tomorrow's audience even when Hollywood is afraid.

There are only a few ways to do this.

·        First is to write films that express your very personal vision and truth. Whether it is a small person-oriented drama, or an animation of fishes going through a human-like emotional adventure. It is the point of view that must be steady. If you write these kinds of films then you had better be prepared to find a way to get the film made yourself because these are the ones that sit in years of "development hell". ("Black Swan," "The Kids Are All Right," "Toy Story")

·        Second is to extrapolate and understand where we may be heading in the future. Seek what may be important in three, five or ten years and what stories will be ahead of that. If this is what makes your heart beat, as it did for the four or more writers who worked on the films Bob Mandello made notable last week, then you'll really need to understand what's changing in the world and extrapolate as any futurist does when predicting future trends. ("Inception," "The Adjustment Bureau," "Tron: Legacy")

·        Third is to adapt classic and historic stories that are relevant and truthful to today's audience. This requires either acquiring rights to adapt, or assuring yourself that the work you're adapting is in the public domain. Then you must be meticulous to the truth of that story while also connecting it to the audience's perception. ("Jane Eyre," "The King's Speech," "The Social Network")

In all cases, it requires good, hard work to make a good, hard screenplay. No gimmicks will help you at all without accepting that the hero is super wrong about something that is essential.

There is one last way to look at the rut, and I've touched upon it a little bit in previous posts. This is the hardest work, but the most rewarding path potentially. That is to reach beyond film itself, as we know it now. Look at the entertainment that folks have available to them on their smart phones and iPods. It's kind of thin and amateurish still. There is room, more room than I can say, for evolution there. Think about how you could use that medium to entertain and engage an audience. Think about whether you believe your story will pull millions out of the world in the palm of their hands or whether it would better fit there instead. Is it possible that new forms of entertainment, not just games, are just as rich and valid as film? Are you willing to be wrong about that? This is how we evolve people. 

Why is the Wrong Choice the Right Choice?

I may be one of the only writers who ever worked on a "live-action" CD-Rom game. Yeah...way back in the day. I wrote scenes for the CD-Rom upgrade game of "Sim-City" which had live actors playing the first person and secondary characters. It turned out not to work so well. For years I wondered why computer gaming necessarily had to go away from live-action, away from movies themselves. Certainly, there was plenty of talent to go around. Big studios bent over backwards to forge relationships with gaming companies, to license their intellectual properties to gaming companies, and even to merge with gaming companies. So, why didn't it follow that movies merged with games?

The assumption that somehow there will be games on the big screen is flawed for a very good reason it turns out, and it is so very simple. In games, we are rewarded for making good choices. We get to new levels of challenge and opportunity by making good choices. Bad choices lead to one conclusion: Game Over. In drama, comedy or tragedy, action or romance, the audience is rewarded with entertaining moments because the hero makes the wrong choice over and over and over again. Only when the hero makes the right choice, which is even sometimes really a wrong choice in the right moment, do we experience "the end," and have that elusive experience we go to the movies for: catharsis.

Nearly twenty years ago I went to an experimental game environment film with high hopes. The audience chairs were outfitted with clickers to choose the actions and outcome of the movie en mass. Oh boy, was that ever boring! The majority of the audience was so smart they always made the "right" choices which led to the reward of getting to the next bit of story. I learned nothing from the experience except that film and games were a bad marriage.

You see games and films are diametrically opposed. In film the tension created by the hero making one stupid mistake after another is what makes a film exciting and moving. We identify with the hero making mistakes. We identify with him or her landing in pile of proportionate doo-doo and scrambling for redemption, because that is what life is all about.

This is the reason studios will never reach their dream of a first person shooter game-like experience on the big screen, because gamers expect to be rewarded for the right decision, and that is boring for everyone to watch. When a hero makes all the right choices a drama ends up being flat, lacking conflict and fails to hook us into emotionally identifying with that hero. Villains in that scenario are completely over-blown and have no nuance of empathy or even superiority. We know that the hero will overcome infinite scenarios with them because they can be so one-dimensional at each level, and because it is set up that he or she can figure them out somehow. While that's fun for the person figuring it out we know it is possible, probable even that it will be figured out, and how many of you have enjoyed an afternoon of watching someone else play? In a movie we don't really know that the character we love is going to finally figure out what we've known all along, and that is where the poignant beauty comes into any film.

Does this mean that there is not a hope in the world of bringing interactivity into the cinema? Hardly. Yet it must be done with the knowledge that screenwriters really do know what they're doing. Grin. I can hardly wait.

Join Me Next Monday at Colorado Free University

Let's talk about what you need to know before you start writing that screenplay idea of yours.

I'll pose the questions you need to consider, if you aspire to a career in Hollywood, and give you some grounding in the realities of a difficult business. There is hope because the landscape of the entertainment industry is shifting as fast as the coast of Japan right now. Opportunities that could have only been considered with a private fortune in the past are opening up now. The walls of exclusivity around the heart of Hollywood may not yet be tumbling, but the territory around the margins is quickly becoming populated with new neighborhoods of entertainment that can benefit from the craft of screenwriting.

In this introductory class, we'll explore:

• reasons why screenwriting is a unique craft in creative writing,
• how knowing this craft can support any writing or filmmaking career
• how long & why it takes so long to perfect 
• how knowing the ins and outs of the craft itself will support your efforts to tell emotional, visual and entertaining stories for a large audience. 
• gaining an appreciation for the writers of our favorite movies

I look forward to answering your questions about writing movies in 2011.

Write about the truth...puh-lease

Another Sidney Lumet Film:

This is how you deal with prejudice...

"12 Angry Men"

Good Screenwriting Example

RIP Sidney Lumet, who died overnight. He directed extraordinary films that had the gumption to tell it like it was and ELECTRIFY US. Here's a scene that I love: "Network". That's what I'm talking about!

Dealing with the Hollywood Hippo

Now that we’re sitting between the way the entertainment industry looked before the advent of every last distraction known to man, and the way the entertainment industry is already beginning to become, a side-lined art form of yesteryear, what can we do as writers to increase our chances of success? There are folks who have thirty-year resumes in this business who are regularly ignored, so how is someone new going to break through the very thick walls of this exclusive club? Do we want to get into that club if it already shows maintenance issues? Any honest job hunt advisor will tell you, you’ve got to look directly at the pain of a company or an industry and come up with palatable, potential solutions to offer them…just Ask Liz Ryan.

How would you solve Hollywood’s Hippopotamus problem? How would you solve the dilemma of shrinking market share in spite of their best efforts to attract audiences with wiz bang special effects, exciting stories and celebrity devotion? Especially think of the fact that all Hollywood studios are now completely invested in gaming, web presence, and social networking themselves. They are burdened by out-moded copyright and intellectual property investments that prevent them from jumping into the steady stream of open-source creative material, and thus none of those protected properties will see the light of day in new media loops. Case in point “Thirty-Something,” a great show, but have you seen clips of it on YouTube.com lately? This is about it. Their business model is as challenged now as the music industry’s business model of a decade ago was challenged by Napster. Dare I say, “Piracy?” And, Hollywood loves the idea of pirates but hates the effect of piracy.

As a writer, can you possibly find a way to tell a story on film that is different, unique, and particularly tasty, than what has been told before and over and over again? Why does an audience need to spend two hours of their time and a hundred bucks of date money on your story? I, personally, have found myself more offended by the expense than entertained by the story lately and I have had a very long marriage with movies! These are the questions that every agent and producer has floating around in their head when they get your script in the mail. How does your take, your point of view change everything? You've got to up your ante, understand what is at stake, if you're going to enter the Hollywood dilemma. You've got to hit the hippo right in the heart to hook the audience's attention, garner loyalty and begin to put a salve on that pain. "Bigger than life" has always been Hollywood's motto, but now that the world is in the palm of our hands that dream may have to be even bigger, or it may need to be ever smaller. Think about that for a while before you write, "FADE IN:".

Does this mean there is no hope for screenwriter/filmmakers? Ask yourself if there is more opportunity or less opportunity for writers today than there was twenty years ago. If you really think that the demise of paper books, covered with cardboard, or newsprint that leaves your hands filthy is the end of writing this must be the first blog you've ever read. Grin. In fact with the advent of blogs, self-published eBooks, publish-on-demand and the many social media forums there are more opportunities for writers to reach an audience than ever before. If you really think the demise of the album is the end of music then you've possibly never heard of Justin Bieber or any given Metal Band, or the Vitamin String Quartet. Bigger Grin. What lies ahead for screenwriters and filmmakers is in your hands...how will you shape that future?

The Hippopotamus at the Table

In the past two decades our choices for entertainment have exponentially increased along with our population. That has caused, however, a reduced market share for the traditional venues of television and movies. The days when network TV was the only choice for an evening of entertainment have long past. Now, there is cable. Not only is there cable, though, there is TIVO, On-Demand, and Internet Streaming entertainment. There are games. There are hand-held games, on-line games, on-demand games, Nintendo, X-box, Wii games and Kinnect Games. There are games on your smart phone. 

Then there is social networking. The fifteen hours the average Facebook user spends on Facebook are fifteen hours away from television and film viewing. It’s isn’t going away. It’s getting bigger. When Facebook announced they would stream Warner Brother’s “The Dark Knight” and it looked pretty much like nothing happened, it made me wonder what the future of film and television really can be? I rarely am so enraptured by filmed entertainment that I willingly shut off my Facebook checking.

There are about 40,000 people getting film degrees in the world, and yet the market for film and television is suffering from attrition. So, as a screenwriting teacher, it is a daunting task to find some modicum of hope that I can share with my students. Sure Hollywood has successfully promoted the idea of the “overnight success” but in truth, it is a slog to get there no matter how you slice it. Moreover, getting “there” is perhaps a questionable goal. Blasphemy! I am supposed to be cheering you on to “make it big” in Hollywood, right? Wrong.

Hollywood has now entered the phase of its life in the Universal Marketplace where it is becoming “niche” entertainment. (shhhh! The Hippopotamus is eating!) It is not all of entertainment anymore, and it never will be again. There are just too many options for the consumer to ignore. Therefore, if you want to get into that niche, you’re really going to have to figure out how to write what they produce – The Hollywood Movie. It is what they do best, and they are not looking to break out of that mold, at least for now.  Rather it seems clear they intend to hang on for dear life against the winds of change.

If you bristle against that status quo, then I suggest you stop looking towards Hollywood as your answer to the age-old questions of the artist – How do I get seen? How do I make a living? How do I get discovered? Stop assuming that the only way to get your film made is the traditional way. You don’t have to do it their way anymore. That said, it is time to notice the Hippopotamus sitting at the table with us.

“The Hippopotamus” is always an assumption that everyone makes at certain times of our lives that we strive to avoid noticing. We would like to pretend that the Hippopotamus is a figment of our imagination. We are ripe for blissful ignorance, and hope that it is having no influence on the dinner at hand. Of course, a hippo at the table is a messy thing to pretend about. Have you ever smelled a pachyderm’s house? So, that’s the kind of stinky assumption we’re dealing with, and it needs to be acknowledged and put in its proper place.

The Hippopotamus we have at the entertainment industry dinner table is an assumption about what the future of entertainment looks like. It’s a multi-tiered assumption that, in my opinion, is dangerously avoided or ignored. Let me introduce you to the unspoken thoughts that fuel fear in my industry:

• We assume that movies are going to exist as marginalized entertainment, much as theater has over the last one hundred years. There I said it.
• We assume that games and social networking will dominate the entertainment industry eventually, and that barring a few break out, technologically inventive film events, like “Avatar”, most people will eventually view all movies on their iPads, or internet televisions. There, I said it.
• We assume that an “interactive movie” is more like a game than a point of view story created by a master storyteller. In fact, the story is so hackneyed by now, it hardly matters as long as you have a celebrity that has box-office attached. Yeppers.
• We assume that people will stop wanting to leave their homes to gather for entertainment’s sake except at astronomically high prices for “important” Academy-sanctioned films. We assume that film, like theater, is going to exist still but be less important to our collective conscience and more elitist in the future. So there.
• Like libraries and books, like big box stores, like heirloom seeds, the world of big movie theaters and even multi-plexes take up too much room, require too much electricity, and will become unnecessary. There, I said it.
• Even DVDs and BlueRay disks take up too much room in our lives to exist for very long in a world of apps the audience can download for free.
• Even Television will be a hand-held app on Facebook, Amazon or Google before the end of the decade and living rooms will look more like office cubicles. There, I said it.

This Hippopotamus belies our hope that somehow people will continue to want to go to the movies, and watch television when they have so many other options in life to live adventures. Because the truth is this: we’re married to our hope, and we’re having a wild and lustful affair with the Hippopotamus.