Grubstake
grubstake: Supplies or funds advanced to a mining prospector or a person starting a business in return for a promised share of the profits.
n. Money, materials, tools, food etc. provided to a prospector in return for a share in future profits
n. An amount of money advanced to someone starting a business in return for a share of the future profits
File this under “words I wish people used in everyday conversation,” as in “lookin’ for some grubstake to get this film off the ground.”
As far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required
My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it. (The famous example of Kekule working out the structure of benzene in his sleep is well-known.)
The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.
– Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?” via Cal Newport
From the always insightful Cal Newport. Maybe as an introvert I’m biased towards the ‘brainstorming alone’ camp but my personal experience has been that a meeting room in an office is the worst place to think about anything, let alone original ideas. A good place for discussion but not for real thinking. I think of most of my ideas while alone at home, in the car, in the shower, or while watching plays/movies, reading, or in class.
No close-ups, unless we need to
Keep it real. Keep it natural. The beauty of [Elephant, Last Days, Gerry] was that one of the rules was no coverage, unless we need to. No close-ups, unless we need to. So when you have a close-up, it’s very important.
In the standard coverage, where you do master shot, medium shot, 2-shot and close-up, the crew become like robots. It’s like “Okay, got it,” then everybody starts moving, the tape measures come out… That’s not filmmaking, it’s the dumbing down of the people who make movies. And everybody’s just covering their asses, “just in case”…Instead of shooting everything and looking at it later, please make a decision. It’s hard to make movies. We don’t have money, and we have to act like the police are chasing us. So let’s try to do this with some dignity. And do it well, and have some fun. And do good work.
– Harris Savides on shooting Elephant, Last Days, and Gerry with Gus Van Sant
Via the always excellent Heidi Saman.
They don’t go to the police because it’s dull
The sheriff’s intervention comes under the heading of what we have discussed many times before: “Why don’t they go to the police?” I’ve always replied, “They don’t go to the police because it’s dull.”
– Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock/Truffaut
God I loved this book.
It doesn’t matter what the MacGuffin is
The theft of secret documents was the original MacGuffin. So the “MacGuffin” is the term we use to cover all that sort of thing: to steal plans or documents, or discover a secret, it doesn’t matter what it is. And the logicians are wrong in trying to figure out the truth of a MacGuffin, since it’s beside the point. The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents, or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters. To me, the narrator, they’re of no importance whatever.
– Hitchcock in Hitchcock/Truffaut
I was relieved to read this the other day because I’m working on a script has an object of desire that sets off the action of the entire story, but I was worried that the object was too… unbelievable. Part of that unbelievability drives the humor, but I don’t want people reading/watching the movie and thinking “yeah, that was illogical.”
It reminds me of something an improv teacher (I can’t remember who) told me a long time ago about plausibility vs. believability: that plausibility, in the storytelling context, means “would this actually happen?” Believability means “given these circumstances, are things unfolding in a believable way.”
That’s why you can watch True Blood and be interested or entertained without tossing the whole thing out on the premise that vampires could never exist. Given that they do exist in this world, are things playing out in a believable way? OK, maybe True Blood isn’t the best example1 but the point remains.
Reading this book has made me realize how much I need to watch more Hitchcock.
One reason I stopped watching that show was that the world kept changing–just one you thought you knew what the rules were, they changed, often at the precise moment that the protagonist needed them to change ↩
Screenplay feedback and accepting that something is broken
I did a staged reading of Begin, a screenplay I recently wrote. It went very well, with lots of laughs in the right places and the audience stayed tuned in throughout the 90 or so minutes of the reading, in large part because the actors nailed it so well. There are two reasons why I love doing a reading like this: feedback from the audience and feedback from the actors.
From the audience you learn where it’s working and where it stalls and where it’s funny and where the jokes land flat. And from the actors you learn if you’ve written roles that are fun or interesting to play. And you can see if the characters come to life when the words are spoken out loud, or does it just feel like someone’s reading some lines? It helps to have actors that prepare and commit to it.
Afterwords, we did a Q&A, where I was asking questions of the audience to get their feedback on some of the story and theme issues that I’ve been struggling with — mostly things that were pointed out as weaknesses by Blcklst readers.
I asked the audience: “I’ve gotten some feedback that said that the reader was not clear about what the theme or the point of the story is. Do you agree with that comment and why” And I saw many heads shyly nodding.1.
A lot of the feedback was related to the main character, about why he was making the choices he was making and how it seemed like things were happening to him, very funny things, but things that didn’t necessarily relate to his larger arc or the theme of the film. This type of feedback is invaluable because it provides another data point, more evidence that this is in fact a problem, not just something one reader had an issue with. But it’s also a bit strange to me, because I know exactly what the theme is, and in my head it’s so obvious that I was worried that it would be too obvious.
But when 20 people nod their heads in unison, it’s hard to ignore. I tried to communicate something and I failed, as much as I wanted to believe that everything was working well. And now that I’ve accepted that, I can begin the work of addressing those issues and with some luck, take it from “a funny movie” to “a really good movie that’s also funny.”
I used to have this feeling, like a fear of putting stuff out into the world because I wanted everyone (or the people I care about) to just say “this is great, I love it, it’s perfect,” so I wouldn’t have to change a thing. But I’ve been braver lately and try to seek out critiques from people that will be honest about the issues in what I write, so that I can make my work better.
It’s really hard to do that and admit that something I love is broken, but I don’t know if there’s another way to improve as a writer (along with practicing a whole lot). And getting there required changing my mindset from “making something good” to “continuously improve as a writer.”
After receiving zero response to my first question, I remembered that I had to tell them that they had permission to say negative things, which opened things up quite a bit ↩
Hitchcock on plausibility and dullness
“In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is the god; he must create life. And in the process of that creation, there are lots of feelings, forms of expression, and viewpoints that have to be juxtaposed. We should have total freedom to do as we like, just so long as it’s not dull. A critic who talks to me about plausibility is a dull fellow.”
– Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock/Truffaut
Doing two important things at once improves the quality of procrastination
Doing two important things at once improves the quality of procrastination. I don’t mean actually doing two important things at the same time, but having two important things you’re working on.1
This is what I’ve noticed. Usually I have a few projects going on. I’m writing something, editing something else, and maybe doing something that would fall under the realm of ‘producing’, i.e. booking a location and scheduling actors. So when I wake up in the morning to work on something or when it’s late at night and I can’t sleep because I didn’t work on anything that day, I have to pick one of the three to tackle.
If I’m feeling brave, I tackle the most difficult one (usually producing, which is not my favorite thing to do). If I’m not feeling brave or if I’m just not in a good mood, I’ll procrastinate on the difficult thing and write or edit instead. So I’m procrastinating but I’m still working on something important. If I get blocked on one thing, I have something else I can work on, which to me is the big advantage of working on multiple things at once. The disadvantage is that I’m splitting my subconscious free space among several things.
I don’t know which way of working is ultimately better, but I suspect that the marginal value of another project depends on whether or not it utilizes a mental state not already engaged by one of the existing projects. So if you’re writing one screenplay, starting a second one before the first is finished will hurt you more than it helps you.2
Why not just procrastinate by doing the dishes or surfing the web? I think I don’t because I trained myself through brute force (willpower) into working on something important every morning.
And I’ve convinced myself that I will go insane if I don’t at least write a page or two per day. This guilt comes in handy when I can’t sleep. It’s the type of anxiety that moves you forward rather than holding you back, so in a way I found a way to harness my anxiety for good.
I hope that writing all this down will allow me to stop thinking about it so much.
Pre-production, resistance, and finding the antidote
Yesterday I had a thought, which I tweeted: the pre-production phase of filming feels like waking up every day to find I’ve been poisoned while sleeping and have to find the antidote.
I don’t know if that’s the perfect metaphor. What I do know is that trying to schedule cast, crew, and locations (for the web series I’m making) at the same time drives me to a new form of anxiety that I’ve never experienced.1
It’s not even that it’s not going well–it is going well. For the most part, the actors I want to work with are available and so is the crew. But every time I look at my scheduling spreadsheet I feel a wave of resistance, like this thing, making it happen, is impossible in some way.
And then I step away from it. And I don’t think “I wish this would go away” or “I want to give up.” I just think “oh god, I have to finish this, why can’t I finish it?” I think that it’s the multiple moving parts that are getting to me. Normally, if there’s something I want to do, but don’t particularly enjoy doing, like a boring project at work, I just sit down and force myself to plow through it. It’s boring or it sucks for a few hours or a few days, but then it’s over and there’s relief.
With this, I can’t just plow through it. I have to send an email to an actor and then follow up if they don’t respond. I have to wait a few days for people to respond. Then I have to talk to someone at a location to ask if we can film there. Then I have to make sure the actor is available that day. If something doesn’t line up, I have to go back to one or more people to ask if they can shift to a different time.
So while the actual work of it might only take eight hours or so, those eight hours are spread over weeks. And that’s why I feel like every day I have to go out and find the antidote to my poison. But each day, there’s only a little bit of the antidote. It takes three or four weeks to get it all. And then it’s done and I feel good again.
I think that this pre-production stuff, the arranging and scheduling, it’s just a fundamentally different muscle than writing–partly because it relies on other people (not that I don’t enjoy collaboration–I love collaboration on the set for instance). But it’s not something that I enjoy and would much rather have a producer to handle it. There’s no flow state in scheduling. There’s no joy in it, only the recognition that the pain of not doing it is greater than the pain of doing it.
I’m writing this out for two reasons: one is to just let it out of my system and think through it. Two is to show my appreciation for producers (and project managers in other realms of work) for the work they do, I’m truly in awe and I think they tend to be under-appreciated.
What!? A new form of anxiety!? Guess I’ll have to update my almanac of anxieties. Let’s see, I think I’ll call it “the anxiety of multiple unknowns,” which is really just a sub-category of “the anxiety of a future project going unrealized” and in this case is mixed with “the anxiety of creating something that may prove to be foolish and stupid.” ↩
BEGIN: a staged reading of my screenplay at the Annoyance Theatre
Well the four month screenwriting class I took with Michael McCarthy has just wrapped up and as part of the class, we’re doing staged readings of our screenplays at The Annoyance. I finished the latest draft a few weeks ago and this is a chance to get some feedback and see how real people respond to it.
I put together a solid cast of actors to read the roles and it should be a fun event. Plus it’s free. When I finished this latest draft, I uploaded it to The Blcklst, which is a site that allows you to purchase evaluations of screenplays from readers that work in the actual film industry and I already got some great feedback:
The appropriately titled BEGIN is a rather fascinating dervish that excels at delivering great absurd humor to its reader. Tonally the screenplay is firing on all cylinders and it appears as though it will work well in the low-budget indie space. While a number of directors in this genre generally write their own fare, this script alleviates that burden and a filmmaker that enjoys working with comedic talent in the independent world will delight in this piece.
It has to be said that the writer really embraces absurd and hilarious comedy. He approaches the material with a brash and brave angle that assures the reader right from the get-go that Tim will be confronted by any number of astonishingly bizarre scenarios. The comedy set pieces in this script are especially well meted out in the third act. The showdown between Jay and Tim against Karl and Jerry is probably the best beat in the whole piece and the writer is encouraged to continue to build out these action moments as far as he is able.
The build among the strange occurrences works well and the reader can easily understand the fact that Tim first starts to question those around him, before confronting his own dwindling sanity. The writer is great at piling on the chaos and assuring that these strange beats bleed collectively into one another.
Here’s a link to the Facebook event if you’d like to attend. Contact me if you’d like to read the script.