Master of Your Domain, or Another Approach to No-Permission Storytelling

It's a bit of a cliche in Hollywood that screenwriters are frustrated people. We have relatively little power and influence. We tend not to be household names. We're easily and frequently replaced, and so on. The list of complaints is endless. But they all spring from one inescapable fact:

Screenwriters don't make movies, we make screenplays.

That is to say, a screenplay is not a finished product. It's merely one of many required components of a finished film (some wouldn't even call it a requirement, but rather an optional step). So, the screenwriter pours his guts onto a page, revises it until his eyes bleed and, eventually, finally, at long last, gazes upon the fruits of his labor -- a half-inch stack of paper with thousands of little black runes printed on it. Pages. With words. It's quite a feat, when all's said and done.

But it ain't a movie.

It won't become a movie until you add one director and a couple of stars, stir in a generous amount of financing, bake for about a year and a half, and then glaze with domestic and foreign distribution deals. It's bad enough that most of these ingredients are on the endangered species list. It's even worse when, in the end, the finished film bears little resemblance to the screenplay.

In other words, a screenplay has to pass through a lot of hands before it becomes a film. That's a lot of complicated layers between the screenwriter and the audience -- most of them well beyond our control. And let's not forget: most screenplays -- by a breathtaking margin -- never make it past the stack-of-paper phase. You stay up nights and weekends writing your masterpiece, call in every favor trying to get People in Power to read it, and then try not to let them see you cry when they say, "Loved the script. What else you got?"

What else have I got? WHAT ELSE HAVE I GOT? Why you self-involved little prick --

I'm sorry, where was I going with this? Oh, right.

So, the screenwriter's lot in life in inherently frustrating. That's why it behooves us to look beyond the Hollywood landscape to find other means of getting our stories in front of an audience. Writing novels is one way, and there are a number of screenwriters who routinely bounce back and forth between scripts (where they are peasants) and novels (where they are kings).

Another route -- and one that has really become much more viable in recent years -- is to write a comic book. And I have several friends who've done exactly that.

Steven Barr and Danny Grossman co-wrote a screenplay a few years ago called Devil Water, an action/western/horror/comedy, but never managed to sell it. Recently, Steven saw an opportunity to repurpose the story as a limited series of comic books. The first issue of Devil Water is out now, through King Tractor Press.



Another friend of mine, Sam "Stormcrow" Hayes, has just seen the release of his manga-style graphic novel, Afterlife, through the Tokyo Pop imprint (not that you'd know, from the scant bit of marketing they do for it on their own freakin' website -- not even an image of the cover? WTF?).



The book will have to fight for attention in the crowded marketplace, but it's already getting some pretty stellar reviews.

The payoff with the comic book route isn't complete autonomy, since the writer must rely on an artist to interpret their work (although the writer might be responsible for chosing an artist, and can have approval authority over the artwork). But, in the end, the writer has something tangible to show for their efforts -- a finished book on store shelves. The layers between storyteller and audience have been largely eliminated.

And there are other benefits as well. Both Steven and Sam got to attend this year's San Diego Comic-Con in a professional capacity, as opposed to mere fanboys. And there is still the possibility that the stories they've written can find their way to the big screen -- as an adaptation. By publishing the story in comic book form first, these writers are attempting to create what Terry Rossio calls Mental Real Estate. In fact, as a result of the publication of Devil Water, Steven and Danny have recently optioned their original script, which would otherwise still be sitting on a shelf.

Bravo, boys. Best of luck.

SoCal Film Group: "BlondeStar" Casting Notice

We're looking for the lead in an on-going series titled, "BlondeStar". We hope to cast a classic ditzy blonde with a squeaky-cute voice in her early to mid-twenties. Think Marilyn Monroe, Joan Blondell, Jean Harlow , Judy Holliday.... um, somebody from today? How about Jessica Simpson or Paris Hilton?

We're going to do a series of BlondeStar comedy shorts that will be broadcast over the Internet, so this will be a recurring role.

Copy, meals, and credit. Filming will be in Los Angeles, more than likely on a weekend. Email headshot & resume to clark@socalfilm.com (or provide a link to your site!)

Pictures Worth a Thousand Scripted Words?

So how do you know, if you're the writer of a show, whether or not it's any good? Well, sometimes your crew can communicate their feelings.

This was discovered on the Paramount lot.

Ouch.

CHARACTER ARCHETYPES: The Moral Compass

Short films can be really good character studies, about unique people doing individual things. Sometimes the character changes and grows (which is often referred to as a character-based story); sometimes they don't (which is often referred to as a character snapshot). Along the course of their story, they usually meet other unique people doing individual things, and they are all beautiful individual snowflakes.

Those kinds of short films can be brilliant examinations of human nature. Those kinds of short films can be stupifyingly dull. Those are the kinds of short films that typically win Oscars.

For the purpose of this series of posts, I'm not going to talk about those kinds of short films. Maybe one of the other SoCallers will talk about them - but me? I want to talk about short films where things happen.

I'm going to talk about short films in which a person has a concrete goal, and encounters obstacles to achieving that goal (which is often referred to as a plot-based story), and eventually either achieves the goal or fails. The person who is trying to achieve the goal almost always has to interact with other characters, and in a short film you typically don't have a lot of time to fully establish those characters as the living, breathing, three-dimensional beautiful snowflakes that they are.

You gotta use archetypes.

(What's the definition of "archetype"? It's "a stereotype that doesn't suck.")

Some of the archetypes I want to talk about are Moral Compass Guy, Enabler Guy, Authority Figure, Comic Sidekick, Evil Genius, Mentor Man, Love Interest, and Super Exposition Man (with his sidekick Technolo-Guy).

Today, we're on Moral Compass Guy.

Here are some examples of Moral Compasses --

Pinocchio's friend Jiminy Cricket;
Yogi the Bear's friend Boo Boo;
Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon;
Morgan Freeman's character in ... well, just about every movie he does;
Tim's wife on Home Improvement;
Ray's wife on Everbody Love Raymond;
Doug's wife on King of Queens...

(Actually, now that I think about it, The Wife on pretty much every domestic sitcom ever is a Moral Compass Gal. And they say men run Hollywood.)

The primary archetype of Moral Compass Guy characters is that little angel who perches on people's shoulders and argues with the little Devil on the other side.

Moral Compass characters exist to be the voice of reason, the voice of caution, the voice of the moral high ground ... and they ALWAYS get ignored. But they need to be there to establish the "norm," which can then be trashed in favor of more exciting stuff.

Some of their best lines: "If you go out there, they'll kill you!" "Why don't we just give them the money?" "Make sure to wear a warm coat." "I don't think [Authority Figure] is gonna like that..." "Maybe we can just TALK to them." "It's only a game." "Is this really worth dying for?" and "Maybe we should think about this."

These sort of lines are usually followed by the Reckless Hero dashing out of the room to do exactly the opposite of what the Moral Compass suggested.

It's like Pavlovian reaction - "Don't be foolish" [DING!] and the hero does something foolish [drool].

There you go: The Moral Compass Guy.

So, okay, let's say you've pulled your WISE GRANDMA or FUNNY IRISH PRIEST or GAY BEST FRIEND out of your toolbox -- now, with any archetype, how do make sure the character doesn't become an annoying stereotype?

I think the key to using an archetype without in becoming a stereotype is in contradictions.

Pull the archtype out of your toolbox, dust him or her off ... and then twist them until they don't seem like the stereotype but can still do the job they need to do.

And that shit can be tough. But it's worth it when it works.

Remember, you don't have time to fully explore every character in a short film (hell, you don't have time to do it in a feature or a miniseries!), so archtypes can be your friend. Just make sure they don't suck.

Among Brothers (Worldwide Release)

AMONG BROTHERS, AWARD-WINNING FILM SLATED FOR WORLDWIDE RELEASE

August, 2006 (Los Angeles, CA) – SoCal Film Group member, John Schwert’s chilling modern dramatic thriller Among Brothers is now available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Best Buy and Blockbuster. After the producer/director sold the home video rights to Vanguard Cinema, Oasis International acquired all foreign and other market rights for an August 29th worldwide release. You can contact your local library, video rental house and retail store to request that they carry Among Brothers.

Since premiering at the Palm Beach Film Festival in 2005, Among Brothers went on to play 15 international film festivals winning awards and collecting great reviews along the way. Although the names have been fictionalized for the film, the true story behind Among Brothers begins with the murder of a college girl during her last semester of school.

On November 9th, 1994, Jennifer Matthews, a senior at Bergan State University, was found dead in her burned down apartment. The police informed her family that it appeared to be an accident. Two days later, the autopsy revealed that there was no presence of smoke in Jennifer’s lungs- her death was no accident.

Jennifer’s brother, Tom dedicated ten years of his life to putting the pieces of this unsolved murder together and compiled his original story. The story was adapted, produced and directed by Schwert, his first feature-length motion picture.

The film takes the actual events and speculations of a tragic event and creates a unique character study of how far “brothers” will go: fraternity brothers and the brother of a murdered girl. Horrifying, because, it might have happened this way. Sad, because the truth is that one life-cut-short inspired the tale.

Visit http://www.amongbrothers.com/ more details.

On making QUIET

Marshall McAuley and I were impressed with Michael Gilvary's DUST DEVIL, and we wanted to do something along similar lines - tense and frightening, while working with the assets we had at our disposal.

At first we thought we would do a horror movie, and we spent some time talking about what made horror movies effective. Horror movies usually create their visceral scares by limiting the audience's perceptions, to give them a sense of unease because they don't know where the danger is going to come from.

Unless you're a big fan of smellovision, movies only utilize two senses - hearing and seeing. And for some reason, horror movies focus almost exclusively on manipulating the sense of sight - scenes are dimly lit or out of focus, things jump out at the viewer, and monsters might always be just out of frame.

The trouble is, makers of horror movies have played games with the audience's sense of sight so often, the audience has become desensitized to visual tricks. We have been trained to not believe our own eyes.

On the other hand, most filmmakers use sound to tell what's really happening, and we decided to take advantage of that. We decided we would do a movie that would be brightly lit and not play most of the visual tricks audiences are used to. Instead, we'd try to create strong visceral reactions by playing games with the only other sense that movie audiences have at their disposal - their sense of hearing.

This quickly led us to the central premise of our movie - our protagonist would go deaf, and the audience would go deaf at the same time. The only things we would be able to hear would be Lindsay's breathing and heartbeat, and other "sounds" that are as much tactile as they are aural.

We spent several months working on the narrative framework in which we could exploit that premise, and some of the stories we came up with were pretty damn complex. But eventually we realized that simpler was better in this case, and we created a simple structure that would give us plenty of time to get to know our heroine, and then beat her up.

We shot the whole movie in about six days (four of which were in a house with one bathroom and one pregnant lady, which unfortunately didn't get to interact as much as they would have liked). The sound design process, on the other hand, took roughly 20 times as long as principal production.

The first major screening of QUIET was at the Arclight as part of the Silver Lake Film Festival. It was a great pleasure watch the people in the audience gasp and cringe and squirm in their seats -- because if audiences have been trained to not believe their own eyes, they still think they can believe their own ears.