Little hiatus never hurts a writer

I'm taking a hiatus from screenwriting at the moment for my brain's sake. I was diagnosed with a benign meningioma back in October, and have been having a heck of a time with getting on the right medication for surgery. After a lot of fits and starts surgery is tentatively scheduled for mid-February. Unfortunately, it means I miss this terrific event: Boulder International Film Festival

I highly recommend that you check it out and see what independent filmmakers are up to right now. In storytelling and movie making it is all about staying present with what is going on in front of your eyes, right? So get thee to some films, and let me know what you see.


Meanwhile, if you're interested in my story, it begins here: http://kosmicegg.blogspot.com/2011/10/head-long-into-health.html


And, also I've been working on some projects that don't require such a long attention span here: http://kosmiceggtarot.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/ought/, and here: http://kosmicegg.tumblr.com/

Essential Screenwriting Craft

You've been thinking about a film script forever, it seems. You've even written some scenes, but, darn it, you keep getting stuck. Life takes over and leads you away from that dream. It seemed so easy in your head to see a full movie, but now that you want to put it on paper...argh! What a mess!

EVERY SCREENWRITER GOES THROUGH THIS AT SOME POINT.

Screenwriting is a craft first and an art form second. It is a business venture. When you are in business, you learn skills that will support your business. This means you can learn the bits and pieces that you need to know, and you can practice the craft until you become its master. You want to become a master crafts person so that you can succeed. Once you are a master crafts person, then your work is so indelible and unique, it becomes art.

I have been teaching screenwriting for more than half a decade. I have seen it all. The big resistance I get almost every single class is the idea that "formula" is a bad thing. "Damned rules! I became a writer so I don't have to follow rules!" Ehscoose mi? sense win deed righting stup folouching roools? The "formula" behind a screenplay is so ancient that it precedes celluloid. The fact is that we start training in it beginning with the first fairy tale we see performed by puppets. It is ingrained in our expectations of every genre that certain milestones happen when we watch a story unfold. The rules allow us to participate as an audience, and to experience catharsis. As a writer, you want to move people, right?  All, I am doing is cluing you into the hidden structure beneath every successful story you have ever seen.

My class is chock full of insight and technique, and will make your brain explode with helpful lessons. I am not just saying that. I've seen the light bulbs turn on in front of me in the bright-eyed and renewed enthusiasm of my students. I love teaching this information, and I want nothing more than for my students to be wildly successful screenwriters.
I mark that success in many ways:

• You get out of your head and onto the page
• You understand the hidden structure of film writing
• You are more excited to share your story
• You have a holistic, beginning-middle-end plan for writing your script
• You are ready for the next step

There are a few spaces left in my screenwriting class that starts Monday. Go to the Events for Screenwriters tab and click on it to sign up! See you there.

Beginning again....at the end

Writing movies is a sometimes harsh and mystifying process, and why would you do that to yourself if you didn't want to see your script actually become a film? Yet, it seems as IMPOSSIBLE to get from here to there, as it does to write the story down. As with the story itself, there's a beginning, middle and end to breaking into an industry that thrives on nepotism, and insider information.

The problem is that writers are often so daunted by learning how to write a screenplay that they cannot see the forest for the trees. Just like any hero, the vague feeling that they've gotten themselves into a pickle only happens when they've actually committed themselves to the process. It comes as a total surprise, for instance, that making movies is a BUSINESS proposition. It's not only about making a beautiful, entertaining story into a charming film that is highfalutin' and award-winning. In fact, the real reason for wanting to win awards has nothing to do with art at all. It has to do with distribution, sales propositions, and ROI.

Argh! What's a creative writer to do? Think about it to begin with! Take a moment to consider your personal end-game before you start. Who will your audience be? Is your audience actually going to the movies regularly??? Maybe your audience is more likely to watch a TV movie? Maybe your audience is more likely to watch free YouTube clips? Don't be afraid to look at films in similar genres that have been successful. Take what's been done as nourishment rather than as competition. Take what's been done and twist it into something new.

Here's an example: If you know your story is about a 45-year old woman and it is not riddled with sex and violence, then it is unlikely to be able to stand alone as a film business proposition. That doesn't mean you don't write it. That means that you work the story and build an audience as you go. Write your outline and look at what you've got. If you like the story, and you feel it could be award-winning, then write a novel first and ePublish it. Send that novel out to everyone you know who will like it and ask them to read it and recommend it. Get it reviewed on Goodreads and Amazon. Build the audience whilst you are developing that screenplay. Or write it as a play, and get it produced and reviewed, and take it to Broadway. When you've got the attention of an audience, then send that screenplay query letter to an agent and include your numbers. That will get you some attention.

It's not that Hollywood doesn't want to make movies about 45-year old women in crisis. It is that they want to make movies that have a likely return on investment. It's that simple. If you're going to be a screenwriter, you have to think of the business end of things right from the beginning.

Writing is not merely about "art," it's about a willingness to work really hard. So, what's your end-game and how are you going to make that happen?

Give up the Obvious

I have spent the last several months exploring all kinds of interesting options for screenwriters and filmmakers.

Starting with a broad idea that SOMETHING has to give in the world of movie making and movie distribution to bring the audience back, I have been interviewing people in different disciplines in the industry and related industries to get a handle on what the thinking is today, and what the possiblissities are tomorrow. My beef is that spending $100 on a mediocre experience is not something I want to repeat over and over again just because I think I love the movies. The number of times I have left a cinema thinking, "Wow, that was just not worth that much money," are countless and embarrassing. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice or maybe 30x and shame on me. You know?

In a world where technology drips from the rooftops like a rainy day, going to old-time, linear, flat screen experiences with no interaction are just...boring. I am a huge HUGE believer in story. But, the STORIES ARE BORING and redundant to the point of having always two movies out that seem to have the same story (i.e. "No Strings Attached" and "Friends with Benefits"). The presentation is BORING. The theaters are BORING. Yeah. 3-D worked for about a minute.

People in Hollywood! What are you thinking?

Well, I suspect the economy has been used as an excuse for lack of vision by more executives than just President Obama. It's like we've been playing a game of "freeze tag" and they didn't get the message that they can move. So, I'm saying they're out of the game for a while.

But, I have observed some movement on television that I find intriguing. They have those silly scan squares now popping up here and there, Jon Stewart, CBS shows, and I've followed a few of them with some curiosity. So far, nothing to write home about, but it gives me hope that there may be a shift happening. What Hollywood is missing is this very simple thing: the AUDIENCE can be as entertaining as the show.

I interviewed a lovely guy who has worked with a large cable network as a strategic development Senior VP person with visionary ideas. It seems that Hollywood wasn't quite ready to jump on board, and that is a shame because he had some very cool projects in the tube of development. In the end he ended up deciding to pursue the more avante guard world of film festivals where new experiences can be tested with less risk, and a more devoted audience. He told me that in the UK there is a preview show at some theaters where the audience in three different theaters "drive" race cars via motion control cameras in the theater. The three theatres each have their own vehicle, and one of them "wins" the race because the audience caught on to how to move to manipulate their assigned car. Then the winning theatre gets a concession coupon texted to their smart phones. Cool, huh? Ah the possiblissities!

I've interviewed web designers, app designers and programmers of all sorts to see how this magnificent idea engine of the internet and smartphones can be integrated into a cinematic experience. It turns out that it isn't really that hard to imagine accomplishing it in a short time. OMG.  All I have to do is raise about $35- $55,000 to develop some kind of interactive app that we could be enjoying in a year or so with some brave Hollywood and Cinema Distribution people on board.  Somebody give me the money!

To this end...and to other ends...I am experimenting and hoping to raise funds for another creative project that has been near and dear to my heart for a long time. It may seem to have nothing to do with film, however, give up the obvious on this one folks. I love Tarot. I'm not the only screenwriter and screenwriting instructor who does -- John Truby has a whole development program using Tarot on his website. I could wax poetic about how they're linked in story, in character, in the way symbolism and allegory communicates, but that would miss the real point. The point is I am raising funds for a creative project to write and illustrate about Tarot on Kickstarter called The Kosmic Egg Tarot Project and the thing is that I really want to finish this piece of work as much as I want to do all of the other creative projects I have up my sleeve. I need financial support to start getting my ideas out into the world where you all can experience them! This is my first foray into the world of Kickstarter, but if it works, I promise you that I will be bringing an experimental cinema experience project before you within the next  6-12 months. Ah the possiblissities!

Kosmic Egg: Ah, the Possiblissities™!

Kosmic Egg: Ah, the Possiblissities™!: "It's my perfect word of the moment: possiblissity, and it conjugates, too, possiblissible, possibliss. It's possibliss. You may not have kno..."

Bringing the Audience: Why Hollywood is Addicted to Adaptation

Heavy sigh. Another book or two bites the dust at the movies, and still Hollywood insists on adapting books, GREAT BOOKS into movies. You know what I think. I think that they are simply terrified to make original movies anymore because it rarely pays off. Why is that? Because original movies don’t have audience. Well, original movies by new artists don’t have audience. Original movies by the old guard, Spielberg, Nichols, Brooks, Scorsese and Copola still have audience, but even that is not a sure thing. Tarantino sort of kind of has audience. Rodriguez kind of sort of has audience. Uhmmm. Spike Lee anywhere to be found?

Who are the original new artists getting funding for their films anymore? If you go to the influential group “New Directors/New Films” http://newdirectors.org/ for their top 40 film presentations, you’ll see lots of familiar names at the beginning of the list starting about 1980, but as the list becomes more recent the last filmmaker who has continued making films that have audience is Christopher Nolan, 1998. Uhmmmm. So the ones that follow, besides the brilliant filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, who made “Pi,” I have never heard of since. Since 1998.  The films post 1998 are sparse. Why is that? No audience.

What happened in 1998 to take the audience away from the movie theater? Hmmmm. Well, I for one have a perfectly good excuse: I had two babies. Surely though there must have been something else going on besides all the moviegoers my age staying home from the movie theater to watch videos at home on their big television screens. Home video burst onto the scene in the 1980s in a big way with VHS surging ahead of Beta in this country. When I worked on The STAR TREK Fact Files I had an entire room with wall-to-wall shelving to accommodate every single STAR TREK episode and movie on video for quick replay. I was actually dreading the advent of shows after the third season of ST: VOYAGER because I didn’t know where I’d put the dang video tapes. Video tapes meant for me that I could work at home with my baby in her swing, but that was work. What it meant for the audience was that a person could be reasonably entertained without going out.

A friend gently pointed out to me that losing movie theaters is not like losing the banks on Wall Street. They are not too big to fail. They can be shown the door from the entertainment industry, but I will tell you that until the dust settles from their demolition, Hollywood is not funding new, untried, high-risk ventures often, if at all, because the business model does not yet exist.  The audience is shrinking from first run releases. The first run release success is how second run success is predicted. Straight-to-video films have generally not done well at finding their audience. Therefore, what we will see is films that come from someone or some creation that already has audience.

That means we’re going to see adaptations of popular, well-loved books, even when they NEVER really work.  We’ll see films based on other franchises like SNL, or any given science fiction show, ahem, and don’t be surprised if they try to figure out how to make movies about Real Life Housewives, American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance. It is not to insult the audience’s intelligence. Really it isn’t. It is trying to guarantee an audience will fill the theater. I mean they make successful first run weekend movie releases on movies based on theme park rides, and board games for shitsake just because we want to see how they try to pull it off. We are into gimmicks like 3D and IMAX. The age of the sequel is so deeply ingrained that there are now Academy Awards going for THIRD sequel releases. Thank goodness, for comic books because with their audience and from their very conception as essentially storyboards, they make pretty good movies. All of this is simply to guarantee an audience (YOU) will come into the theater, and buy licensed products like apps and games. It comes down to this fact: Audience = Money. Money equals a return on investment.

Collaboration: It’s Not All about Me

Here’s a real screenwriting bloggety-blog for those of you still committed to seeing your work played out by the great actors of our time on the big screen….

Writers have to be somewhat egotistical to pull off anything. We have to believe that our story has some importance, some meaning, in order to slog through the work it takes to produce it as a script, a poem or a story of any sort. Honestly, the merit of writing a tale that is meaningful to others is our craving. Defending our point of view becomes a major part of the work of writing, of each story, and yet it is only when we become as confident of our point of view, as a ballerina is confident of her pirouette, that the writing begins to shine on its own and attract an audience.

In screenwriting, and perhaps playwriting, the moment we are confident of our point of view, we begin to understand that our writing is part of a collaboration of points of view. Wait. What? Yes, I am saying that just when you think you’re done, the real work of a screenwriter begins. We’ve developed our writing skills necessarily, up to this point, to work independently, but that’s not all. There is more. Upon reaching a success plateau, say having your script optioned, or getting ready to make a short video with a group of like-minded souls, you are now volunteering to let others into your work circle and actually welcome their additional points of view, and if you're lucky you've been paid to let go of the reigns.  They’ve chosen your script because it struck them as “true” at some level, but now they have opinions about it as well. You go from being confident that your screenplay is perfect as it is, to being asked to consider the necessity of change (locations, for instance) or improvements (i.e.; stronger villains).  Screenwriters do sometimes whine about being left out of the process, once their work is in the development process.  Everyone wants to make a mark on the writer’s former territory, and it can be heart-wrenching to the unprepared.

Most of the working world works in collaboration with others, but writers often believe that they have sole ownership of their efforts. Most likely, they became writers because they have a tolerance for working alone that many do not share. I know that was true for me, but I also know from experience that screenwriting is different. Whether you start alone and then join a team of producers, actors and crew, or you start with a writing partner or even a team, when you type the words, “the end” on your script, a new level of work begins.

You may see this as an argument to be loosey-goosey with your point of view, to be a panderer to anyone who will give you money for your work, but let me be clear: NO! No that is not what I’m arguing for in the least. If anything, I will argue that you must carefully build up a confidence in your point of view before you will be ready to open up to other people’s perspectives with any grace at all. Additionally, only when you have begun writing your own take on a story will it have the cohesiveness it must have to attract others to want to collaborate and bring it to the screen. Why? Because a director or producer or agent will sense the weakness of a premise without a point of view, and will know that a writer submitting such mumbo-jumbo is not ready for the rough and tumble world of collaboration.

Collaboration is THE process of filmmaking. Imagine an architect with the hubris to believe that the grand temple he has designed will be built with his own hands. Um, it has to be a very little building, or maybe the ONLY building he will build in a lifetime then. If you are a writer who wants sole ownership, then consider that screenwriting may not be where you want to focus your storytelling gifts. If you can imagine how the dynamic of teamwork will enhance your work, then you are in the right place.

There are tried and true methods for building strong teams, and, unless you also want to become a director, you don’t really have to pay attention to all of them. In fact, a production team is most often an organic expansion of talented people who more or less share a point of view. Famous writer/directors like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese have worked with a tight knit group of talent for decades. That said; there are things you can work on as a writer to ready yourself for the collaborative process:

• Story confidence building. Being confident of your story, knowing it inside and out is the first step towards being ready to work collaboratively. You must be ready to answer any question and defend any story point throughout your script. This is not about bullshitting. This is about knowing your material inside and out.
• Prepare yourself to compromise. I have a screenwriting friend, who had set a scene in a grocery store, but the production company couldn’t get a grocery store to agree to be the location, and so she had to rewrite the scene for a hardware store. These kinds of things have happened everyday in filmmaking since the golden age. Flexibility is a great asset any screenwriter can bring to the table.
• Don’t take it personally. When you’ve worked on a script for a year or sometimes more, remembering that it isn’t just yours is difficult to say the least. Is it possible that you’ll be working with insensitive, egotistical people in Hollywood? Are you kidding? Make like a duck in a rainstorm and let it roll off your back, as my wise grandmother would say.
• Keep your eye on the prize of a whole career of writing screenplays rather than investing all of your creative self-belief in one project. At the beginning of your career, accept you are on a learning curve. As your films find an audience, you’ll know more and more how to handle “the development process.”
• Use your skills! You’re a writer! Keep notes of why those changes were made and when. Write out reasons for defending your preferences before exploding on the scene with demands and defenses, shooting from the hip of emotion. Use your skills to work out the best choices, and when you can’t find a meeting place realize that sometimes compromises are not win-win, but you can live and write another day if you can work with others and do your best.
• Combine survival and celebration. Enjoy each step of the experience of seeing your idea come to life with others help. Enjoy the additions that enhance your idea and the scramble to get it all done. Enjoy the changes you disagree with for what they are: a learning experience.

I will say that the learning experience is sometimes hard and not apparently enjoyable for many writers. I have seen some writers spin themselves into addictions and worse because they were asked to give up something they didn’t want to give up. Unfortunately, I have not seen these writers’ work back up on the silver screen since. That’s the truth. Collaboration is not about one person, and making movies is all about collaboration.