There was a great turnout at the Tower Theater tonight for the film screening. Kyle Mallory held the premiere for his short film "Death Rides the Nine". Also playing were Murray Triplett's "Ignoble", Greg Johnson and Brandon Smith's "Scout's Honor", and Scott Halford's "Hero to Me".
I don't know what the actual ticket count was, but I would guess it was over 200, and by the show of hands before the movies began, most of the audience had not worked on any of the films.
The blogosphere has some great screenwriting contributors. In my previous post I talked about trying out a pitching technique I took from an article on Terry Rossio & Ted Elliott's site Wordplayer .
I want to mention a couple of other blogs I really enjoy. John Rogers, The Kung-Fu Monkey , puts up some great information. Read his recent entry about how to write action sequences . Josh Friedman, The Infinite Monkey , is another definite winner. I just have to be careful to set down my drink before reading his entries or his ascerbic posts would have me constantly squirting Gatorade out my nose. Read his story about breaking into the business .
I practiced pitching a screenplay to the Utah Screenwriters Group tonight. I divided my story into 18 major sequences, put them on index cards, and pinned them to a cork board. Actually, it took two cork boards.
I was really happy with the way it turned out, and I feel better about my structure after having broken it down this way. I can look at it and tell the structure works.
I got the concept for pitching with the bulletin board from Terry Rossio's website Wordplayer . Terry's column on pitching has some great advice.
Last night Scott Halford screened the premiere of his film "Hero To Me ", which is the first film I worked on after moving to Utah earlier this year. A good-sized crowd turned up and the film was well-received.
Next week the film is off to the Hollywood DV Festival. Good luck, Scott.
Leah Leach has an entry in her blog about her early attempts to make it in Hollywood.
At the fresh young age of 18 I packed what ever I could into my little Chrysler Neon and headed from the Midwest to California to become the next Quentin Tarantino. I had one really bad script but most importantly I had passion.
Her story is a common Hollywood tale. Lots of people follow that path and end up with nothing to show for it but a drug habit and self-destructive behavior. Luckily it sounds like Leah walked away with richer wisdom and her head squarely on her shoulders. She even still pursues her artistic habits, but now she does so in a smart way.
I found that timing wasn't everything. Preparation was. I wasn't ready to be in Hollywood. I didn't have a clear definition of who I was and what I wanted to put out into the world. I had passion but I didn't have vision. The vision came when I was ready.
There are piles of success stories that involve someone who was in the right place at the right time and got a lucky break. What people tend to ignore is the time the "lucky" person spent perfecting their talent for years before they were in the right place at the right time.
As for the "it's all who you know" theory, I think we are all closer to the people we need to know than we realize. You already know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who knows the person who could give you your break. One big mistake people make, though, is to try to hit the big time when their skill level is still small time. That ends up closing doors that might have been open if you had truly been ready to walk through them.
Here is my prescription:
I fully believe that anyone who approaches their work this way, will not only have people take notice, but their work will always continue to be personally rewarding.
We finished principal photography for Passing Season today. We shot the initial scenes 5 weeks ago when there was green grass and brightly colored leaves. Today we went back to the same places and filmed with barren trees and frost on the ground for a wonderfully bleak, cold tone that perfectly fit the scenes.
I don't know how Brandon Smith and Greg Johnson get so lucky to have perfect weather on their production days, but it was a clear day with perfect frost on the ground and no wind. They must be doing something right.
How much do you love the concept you are working on for your next script? In a great post, C-47 talked about falling in love with his idea. I identified so closely with his thought I had to post about it here.
when a great idea for a movie hits you and you get excited about it, it's like meeting someone new and becoming instantly infatuated with them. you start to form a crush on them. the same with the idea--you start to think about it all the time and smile knowing that no one else in the world feels the way you do about that idea. with a person, your friend might see you smiling for seemingly no reason and ask, "why are you so happy?" to which you might reply, "oh, i met this girl." it's the same with a great movie idea. though instead of telling your friend about the girl you met, you say, "oh, i have this great idea for a film."
Wrote a couple of silent scenes for Kunal Sigtia, who posted a message in the Wasatch Film Group looking for suggestions. Kunal has an assignment to make two silent short films about 3-5 minutes long each. One of the films has to be completely edited in-camera.
I told Kunal that if no one responded with silent scripts I would be willing to write a couple. We exchanged a couple of emails off message board, and I sent over some story suggestions.
I suggested that one silent film could be a scene where no one talks because they are trying to be sneaky about the things they are doing. Since there is no dialogue, I just wrote it as a story outline, and I didn't bother putting the story in standardized screenplay format.
An office.
Character (A) is getting some papers off the printer. He looks around for something, but doesn't find what he's looking for. Character (B) is facing away from his desk, and (A) sneakily picks up (B)'s stapler and walks away stapling his papers.
(B) turns around with some papers of his own and reaches for the stapler, but it's gone. He looks around the office, and spots it on (A)'s desk while (A) is not there, so he takes it back and walks away very satisfied.
(A) comes back to his desk and notices the stapler is gone. He immediately knows what has happened. He goes back to (B)'s desk and starts to walk away with the stapler, but it won't budge. He looks closer and the stapler is duct taped to the desktop. (A) looks frustrated, but then he smiles with an idea.
(B) comes back to his desk and looks down, shocked by what he sees. The duct tape is flapping ribbons where the stapler has been cut free.
(A) returns to his own desk, looking very happy. He looks at the stapler and smiles, then he kisses a pair of scissors and puts them away. As he is putting the scissors away, he sees something else in the drawer that gives him an idea. He pulls out a bottle of super glue and smiles an evil grin.
(B) walks back to (A)'s desk when no one is there. He spots the stapler on the desk and tries to snatch it, but it won't budge. He pulls and pushes with no luck. He gives it an almighty tug with all his strength and . . . comes away with the top half of the stapler, while the bottom half is still firmly glued in place.
(A) comes back and finds (B) with the broken stapler in his hands. They both look at the pieces of the stapler, then look at each other.
Just then, character (C) walks by and smiles at (A). (A) watches him go, and then he gets an idea and looks back in the direction (C) just came from. (A) looks at (B), and they both rush off toward (C)'s desk to swipe his stapler.
I referred to (A) and (B) as "he" throughout the story, but they could just as easily both be women, and it might be even funnier, because everyone loves a good catfight.
For Kunal's second short film, there is no editing allowed, so any edits must be done in camera. I suggested taking the challenge one step further and not having any edits at all, like Alfred Hitchcock's film "Rope".
I suggested the story surround one item that we could follow as it moves through several people's hands, like for instance a teddy bear.
A young girl sits at the breakfast table with a teddy bear. She pretends to feed it cold cereal with a spoon. Suddenly her older brother steps in and grabs the teddy bear to taunt his sister. She tries to get it back from him but he holds it up out of her reach. She starts to push him and he dances off out of the kitchen, keeping it away from her. The camera moves ahead of them, watching them as they go from the kitchen to the front room. The camera moves all the way out the front door until the fighting children are framed in the doorway. When the camera is in position, the boy runs out the door at lightning speed and tosses the teddy bear into a trash can before his sister can get outside to see what he has done with it. When she gets outside, he pretends he is holding something behind his back, and runs off pretending he still has the bear, but the camera stays by the trash can.
Just then, the trash man comes. He throws the trash can's lid open and starts to haul it away, but all the while he is talking on a cell phone. He gesticulates wildly, in the middle of a heated argument. He lets go of the can and shouts into his phone, punctuating every word with a finger he waves in the air. He finishes his phone call with with a wild arm wave, hangs up his phone with a violent button push, and throws his phone off into the distance. He storms off camera and leaves the can where he set it down.
Two teenage girls walk by with school books in their arms. One girl does a double take as she realizes there is a teddy bear on top of the trash in the can. She pulls the bear out and shows it to her friend, who is equally surprised. The girls walk on, taking the bear with them. They pass it back and forth, inspecting it. One girl hugs it. She smiles and begins acting silly, pretending the bear is kissing her, which makes her blush and titter in mock giddiness. She looks around to make sure no one is watching, and then pretends to give the bear a deep, passionate make-out session, which sends her friend into fits of laughter.
Just then, the girls pass a homeless woman sleeping in a shop doorway. Their mood immediately turns somber and they stop walking. They look at the homeless woman, then at each other. The funny girl hands the bear to her friend and motions for her to give it to the homeless woman. Her friend agrees and quietly sets the bear down next to the sleeping woman. The girls walk away, leaving the bear there.
After they leave, the homeless woman opens one eye and checks to make sure they are gone. She is surprised to see the bear in front of her. She sits up and picks up the bear. As she looks the bear over, her expression melts from apprehension and confusion into a smile. She brushes the bear's fur with her hand, and presses its softness against her cheek. She lays back down and closes her eyes again, hugging the bear tightly.
Shooting a story like this would require a lot of preproduction planning, and serious rehearsing, because every person would have to get all their blocking and gestures choreographed and executed perfectly in the same take, and that includes the cameraman. The lighting would also pose a serious concern because you would be moving from room to room, from indoor to outdoor, and down the length of a street all without stopping the camera or changing settings.
On the other hand, taking on a project this serious would be an impressive move, and I think it would be graded highly.
Kunal seemed happy with the stories. I will be interested to see how they come out on film.
Castle Park in Provo made a great setting for a Jedi temple. I brought along two of my own kids to be part of the younglings class. They thought that was a real treat.
Helped Murray Triplett with his Star Wars spoof film "Rehash of the Chlorians". The script is farcical and quite funny, but Murray also included some ambitious challenges with his special effects.
We filmed the scenes that take place on the Jedi starship against a bluescreen, and the ship interior will be composited in during post.
Sleepy, little Eureka, Utah started as a mining town. I don't know if the Tintic Mining District has much action anymore. There are still people living in the town but the little strip down Main Street looks like something that was abandoned decades ago.
The cemetery has a great collection of old headstones, and a good number of them have obviously been updated because the stones are in new condition even though the dates inscribed say the person died almost a century ago.
Spent a very cold evening filming with Norman Barton and the gang from Something Different Pictures at the cemetery in Eureka. Why am I always filming in cemeteries?
For a graveyard it was a pretty lively place. The whole time we were there, we had to deal with hunters in their bright orange hats and jackets driving circles around the graves. One look around the cemetery and the reason was obvious. The place was covered in deer droppings. Poor Logan Crannell had to stumble and fall in the turdfield.
Project will be a music video for an electronic piece by Diesel120.
Thanks to everyone who came out for the screenwriters event.
Barnes & Noble was chaotic and crowded. Imagine our surprise when we arrived to find there was an author there for a book signing, and a convention of gamers playing the board game "GO", all on the same night as our event.
Still, everyone was able to find a quiet corner and write some clever scenes. We met some great new people, wrote some funny scenes, and had a good time.
Here are some of the scenarios writers had to choose from:
Today my to-do list has a long string of last-minute details to make sure every base is covered for the Screenwriting event tomorrow.
We received a great response, and it looks like the event will be well attended. Our list of scenarios for assigning out includes some challenging tasks, some settings I'm excited to see played out, and some that keep me chuckling just thinking about them. Of course, each group will get to pull a couple of scenarios and choose the one they want to write.
I'm looking forward to some fun tomorrow.
Brandon posted a quick montage of some of the footage we got this weekend. Looks great.
Saturday morning we shot at the Kaysville cemetery. When the hearse driver had to leave and take the casket with him we still needed some shots of the family with the flowers on top of the casket in the foreground, so Chad did some work as the casket's stunt double.
Friday we shot some scenes in the middle of the night at the Creative Memories warehouse in Salt Lake City. Craning down with a forklift is smooth in the middle of the camera move, but pretty bumpy at the start and finish.
