Everyone, this is just me screwing around making my own notes. Move along.
box. net test
web address Leverage post
direct link Leverage post
Note, web address includes preview options in something called Scrib'd, while direct link goes straight to a download.
Also, iPaper/Scrib'd allows one button page turn (see section in Notes on intuitive interface). pdf reader Preview works off right&left arrows. CHECK FOXIT AND ADOBE
But also, dumb info works/reproduces simply in both formats. Text good reading size -- could use dividing line between columns. Check how to do in PAGES or even better OPEN OFFICE/NEO OFFICE.
revised version web address
Revised version direct link
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Conspiracy Theory #2479
Right then. A day before the CA supreme court decision allowing gay marriage to move forward --
I believe we all know where I stand on this. But f I may indulge in some good old fashioned conspiracy mongering on a late night:
Gov. Paterson, as a child, often stayed with a gay couple who were dear friends of the family. As a result, he was immunized against the oogies and so decided (rightly) to honor the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution. (Or at least that's his legal excuse, in case "being a decent human being who understands how separation of church and state works" isn't enough) This sort of action on the part of other states is crucial in legitimizing the legal underpinnings of gay marriage, even as gay marriage itself struggles in Gray America. It's part of the accretion process, as it were. And having New York be a leader in this regard is particularly valuable.
Now, stay with me. We all knew when this court decision was coming down. At the same time, Gov. Spitzer supported gay marriage but had accumulated so many enemies in the state house, he had no political capitol. His own gay marriage bill went nowhere, and he probably would have been too politically damaged to be able to make this move.
So the Homosexual Agenda arranged for Spitzer to take the fall for his prostitution habits, installing Paterson -- who was inclined to aid the cause of gay marriage but was not the political pariah Spitzer had become in Albany by this point.
Check and mate. Nice move, Evil Gay Geniuses. Well played.
(Congrats to everyone who's got a ceremony coming. Hop to it!)
Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada. (link)
I believe we all know where I stand on this. But f I may indulge in some good old fashioned conspiracy mongering on a late night:
Gov. Paterson, as a child, often stayed with a gay couple who were dear friends of the family. As a result, he was immunized against the oogies and so decided (rightly) to honor the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution. (Or at least that's his legal excuse, in case "being a decent human being who understands how separation of church and state works" isn't enough) This sort of action on the part of other states is crucial in legitimizing the legal underpinnings of gay marriage, even as gay marriage itself struggles in Gray America. It's part of the accretion process, as it were. And having New York be a leader in this regard is particularly valuable.
Now, stay with me. We all knew when this court decision was coming down. At the same time, Gov. Spitzer supported gay marriage but had accumulated so many enemies in the state house, he had no political capitol. His own gay marriage bill went nowhere, and he probably would have been too politically damaged to be able to make this move.
So the Homosexual Agenda arranged for Spitzer to take the fall for his prostitution habits, installing Paterson -- who was inclined to aid the cause of gay marriage but was not the political pariah Spitzer had become in Albany by this point.
Check and mate. Nice move, Evil Gay Geniuses. Well played.
(Congrats to everyone who's got a ceremony coming. Hop to it!)
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Greatest Generation, Indeed
Just ... ahhh.
And so it's not a snark-only post.
Senator Obama's issues page.
Senator McCain's issues page.
Vote the goddam issues.
And so it's not a snark-only post.
Senator Obama's issues page.
Senator McCain's issues page.
Vote the goddam issues.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Pulp Synchronicity
Right.
Right.
I just had a seriously creepy moment.
For years I've mentioned an old book I read back when I'd left university, a book about writing in the pulp style -- not consciously pulp, but the author was plainly an old pulp writer, and there was a great letter from one of his editors that he quoted at length. A book I read 20 odd years ago, with not a chance I'd ever recall the details. Just mentioned it again, as a matter of fact. A few days ago. Hadn't really thought of it for ages, before that post.
Now, stay with me. When one buys a book from the Writer's Store in Westwood, they often throw in some free CD's of writers' lectures. Freebies with the related books. I'd picked up a book maybe a year ago to review for this site, and promptly tossed the accompanying CD's into a drawer.
Doing a little cleaning today, I decided to put one of the CD's into the XBox 360, see if there was anything interesting. Didn't recognize the name on this particular seminar, kind of tuned out ...
The old guy on the CD was reading the letter.
The old guy on the CD wrote the goddam book.
And he's been dead for 16 years.
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend buying the book. It was written in 1965. The fictional writer he lampoons is nicknamed "Fred Friggenheimer." It's corny and simplistic and everything's stated with a broad enough brush to paint a barn in one stroke.
And yet ... but yet ...
An abridged version of letter from his editor, copied by hand as he reads it on the CD. It'll delight Bill and JDC to no end:
So in the spirit of good old Dwight Swain, a link to the fine fellows at Astonishing Adventures, who are now on the third issue of their great experiment.
Right.
I just had a seriously creepy moment.
For years I've mentioned an old book I read back when I'd left university, a book about writing in the pulp style -- not consciously pulp, but the author was plainly an old pulp writer, and there was a great letter from one of his editors that he quoted at length. A book I read 20 odd years ago, with not a chance I'd ever recall the details. Just mentioned it again, as a matter of fact. A few days ago. Hadn't really thought of it for ages, before that post.
Now, stay with me. When one buys a book from the Writer's Store in Westwood, they often throw in some free CD's of writers' lectures. Freebies with the related books. I'd picked up a book maybe a year ago to review for this site, and promptly tossed the accompanying CD's into a drawer.
Doing a little cleaning today, I decided to put one of the CD's into the XBox 360, see if there was anything interesting. Didn't recognize the name on this particular seminar, kind of tuned out ...
The old guy on the CD was reading the letter.
The old guy on the CD wrote the goddam book.
And he's been dead for 16 years.
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend buying the book. It was written in 1965. The fictional writer he lampoons is nicknamed "Fred Friggenheimer." It's corny and simplistic and everything's stated with a broad enough brush to paint a barn in one stroke.
And yet ... but yet ...
An abridged version of letter from his editor, copied by hand as he reads it on the CD. It'll delight Bill and JDC to no end:
“... I’ve got an assignment for you, keed. I want 25,000 words a month - one story - that is ACTION! The type of yarn, for instance, where a group of people are marooned in, say, a hilltop castle with a violent storm raging and all the bridges out and the electric power gone and the roof threatening to cave in and corpses falling down the stairs and hanging in the attic and boards creaking under somebody’s weight in the dark and COULD THAT BE THE KILLER? and flashes of lightning illuminating the face of the murderer only the sonuvabitch is wearing a mask that makes him look even more horrible ... Do these stories in the style Burroughs, old Edgar Rice Burroughs of TARZAN fame, used to use. You know, take one set of characters, and carry them along for a chapter, putting them at the end of the chapter in such a position that nothing can save them. Then take another set of characters, rescue them from their dilemma, carry them to a helluva problem at the end of the chapter, then switch back to the first set of characters, rescue them from their deadly peril, carry them along to the end of the chapter, where once again they are seemingly doomed. Then rescue the second set of characters, and so on.
Don’t give the reader a chance to breathe. Keep him on the edge of his goddam chair all the way through! To hell with clues and smart dialogue and characterization! Don’t worry about corn! GIVE ME PACE AND BANG BANG! Make me breathless, bud!”
So in the spirit of good old Dwight Swain, a link to the fine fellows at Astonishing Adventures, who are now on the third issue of their great experiment.
Testing
Experimenting with Amazon Associates, as I do tend to link like mad to useful/geek-interesting products.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Leverage - Week 6 Questions
From last week. Also, the link to the discussion of opening credits is so great, I'm promoting it to the front page -- follow it here.
Tom Galloway: I'll pass along the bit about using Google Calendar to its tech lead (no longer at Google myself, but after 4.5 years you get to know a fair number of folk there).
That said, if you're passing along info -- the lack of WYSWIG on that word processor is CRIMINIAL If not for integration with my other Google tools, I'd be on ZOHO instead if only because of this flaw.
If Google Docs had proper page formatting tools, I'd use it as my default word processor. As is, I always have to make a clean-up pass with PAGES or OPEN OFFICE.
JoeNot Charles: Holy shit, you're the "fat irishmen plummet" guy! I got so sick of that clip in college when I had nothing to do but sit around and watch the Comedy Network all day.
Um ... thanks?
Berg: "...I decide to write the outline of 105..." I gotta call BS on this one, Rogers. With a side of hubris. Were you drinking on the private jet?
Absolutely right. The entry has been rewritten to indicate how you wrote the outline for 105, and I only rewrote the ending. We will discuss in a further post how a production arbitrates the credits when a writer's been removed from a script for snarking on her boss's blog.
Juancho: John- I'm someone who hated teachers who wrote their class notes in outline form. While I understand how it's used in the film/tv biz (and all creative writing, for that matter), what exactly are you putting in there to get 20 pages per ep? How do you differentiate between a pitch/treatment/outline, and how do you write each accordingly?
We're really writing treatments. They started as outlines, but when you break an episode all the way down to the sluglines, plus one or two choice lines of dialogue per scene (comedy/heist show, so you need tone beats), you wind up with 20 odd single spaced Courier 12 pages.
One of the beauties of Movie Magic is if import outlines into it, the program will aggressively format that text as a script and you can begin writing right off the previously accomplished work. You could in theory even do the outlining we're doing on MM's built-in index card system, but we don't have the big-screen display for everyone to see.
Otter: You know what I'd love to hear? WotC's reaction to your description of the playtest sessions. :-) And yes, let me join John in asking for your thoughts on 4E once the books come out.
The playtest feedback process is actually pretty dry. The only real back and forth we did was about healing and hit points -- they're not really "hit points" anymore, more like the Vitality in Vitality/Wounds, or a separate "Endurance" pool , but ... sacred cows, etc. That said, I like the new mechanic and really dig about 90% of the work done on the system, from soup to nuts. There's an underlying logic to the system that was always lacking before, and they've stripped out a lot of defined action choices in order to, counterintuitively, give you more freedom. No more looking up quirky rule 1101-A -- the GM can wing it easily and logically and consistently.
That said, although I love what they've done with the basic mechanic -- static save defenses, etc -- I still slightly prefer True20 and the powers system of Mutants & Masterminds from a pure design standpoint.
caseyko74: Nuts and bolts question, when do you start getting into full pre-pro and filming? How long after is it from you folk knocking out stories in the room?
As noted in this week's post, we started writing farther out than is normal. We start shooting in mid-July, with official pre-production starting 5-6 weeks out from filming. That's not to say we're not already having meetings, hiring humans, etc.
anonymous: Can you point me to any place where I can see examples of [ed: the old pulp writing technique]? I'm doing a lot of pulp these days (I've had a story in every issue of Astonishing Adventures to date, entirely due to you blurbing the mag lo these many moons ago) and this sounds like an incredibly useful technique.
When I quit university to "find myself", one of the thing I did was go to the Taunton Public Library and find an old book on novel writing, which had the old two-column pulp style described within. As that was twenty years ago, I have not a clue who wrote the book or if it's even still in print. Please note that I wound up working on a natural gas pipeline and soon decided I could just as easily "find myself" back at university, not breaking concrete and getting blown up.
The main value to the technique, throwing its particulars aside, is something that came up in the pitching this week. Causality. When you can track causality, all the way up from individual actions through major story beats, you can more easily stay on beam in your own writing, and in particular it's easier to pitch. You won't get lost, as the next beat is the only logical, inevitable one following the previous beat. You can pace your pitch better, not be afraid to engage the audience, take little breaks, throw out a neat couplet without worrying about getting lost. Keeps you from getting a bad case of the "and then's" too.
It's also easier to see when you've just thrown in a complicaiton for the sake of a complication. Causality is linked to motivation, so a wrinkle for the sake of a wrinkle just sits there like a turd in the outline.
Right then, hope you had a good long weekend. See you all later this week.
Tom Galloway: I'll pass along the bit about using Google Calendar to its tech lead (no longer at Google myself, but after 4.5 years you get to know a fair number of folk there).
Although instead of Google Groups, you might want to look at Google Docs, which can be used for collaborative documents over the Web (and worked on offline). There's also spreadsheet and presentation web-based software. The Help Center with links to intros and the like is at http://docs.google.com/support/?hl=en
Thanks for passing the compliment along. I use Google Docs myself (wrote the WOTC stuff on it) and I dig it, but I wasn't sure I was comfortable enough with it back when the staff fired up to be able to force it on the other writers and then be able to handle any questions. A month or two later, though, and now I actually wouldn't hesitate to make it the show's default outlining tool. We're just a bit far in to start. (On the other hand, I've turned a batch of my co-workers on to the whole suite.)That said, if you're passing along info -- the lack of WYSWIG on that word processor is CRIMINIAL If not for integration with my other Google tools, I'd be on ZOHO instead if only because of this flaw.
If Google Docs had proper page formatting tools, I'd use it as my default word processor. As is, I always have to make a clean-up pass with PAGES or OPEN OFFICE.
JoeNot Charles: Holy shit, you're the "fat irishmen plummet" guy! I got so sick of that clip in college when I had nothing to do but sit around and watch the Comedy Network all day.
Um ... thanks?
Berg: "...I decide to write the outline of 105..." I gotta call BS on this one, Rogers. With a side of hubris. Were you drinking on the private jet?
Absolutely right. The entry has been rewritten to indicate how you wrote the outline for 105, and I only rewrote the ending. We will discuss in a further post how a production arbitrates the credits when a writer's been removed from a script for snarking on her boss's blog.
Juancho: John- I'm someone who hated teachers who wrote their class notes in outline form. While I understand how it's used in the film/tv biz (and all creative writing, for that matter), what exactly are you putting in there to get 20 pages per ep? How do you differentiate between a pitch/treatment/outline, and how do you write each accordingly?
We're really writing treatments. They started as outlines, but when you break an episode all the way down to the sluglines, plus one or two choice lines of dialogue per scene (comedy/heist show, so you need tone beats), you wind up with 20 odd single spaced Courier 12 pages.
One of the beauties of Movie Magic is if import outlines into it, the program will aggressively format that text as a script and you can begin writing right off the previously accomplished work. You could in theory even do the outlining we're doing on MM's built-in index card system, but we don't have the big-screen display for everyone to see.
Otter: You know what I'd love to hear? WotC's reaction to your description of the playtest sessions. :-) And yes, let me join John in asking for your thoughts on 4E once the books come out.
The playtest feedback process is actually pretty dry. The only real back and forth we did was about healing and hit points -- they're not really "hit points" anymore, more like the Vitality in Vitality/Wounds, or a separate "Endurance" pool , but ... sacred cows, etc. That said, I like the new mechanic and really dig about 90% of the work done on the system, from soup to nuts. There's an underlying logic to the system that was always lacking before, and they've stripped out a lot of defined action choices in order to, counterintuitively, give you more freedom. No more looking up quirky rule 1101-A -- the GM can wing it easily and logically and consistently.
That said, although I love what they've done with the basic mechanic -- static save defenses, etc -- I still slightly prefer True20 and the powers system of Mutants & Masterminds from a pure design standpoint.
caseyko74: Nuts and bolts question, when do you start getting into full pre-pro and filming? How long after is it from you folk knocking out stories in the room?
As noted in this week's post, we started writing farther out than is normal. We start shooting in mid-July, with official pre-production starting 5-6 weeks out from filming. That's not to say we're not already having meetings, hiring humans, etc.
anonymous: Can you point me to any place where I can see examples of [ed: the old pulp writing technique]? I'm doing a lot of pulp these days (I've had a story in every issue of Astonishing Adventures to date, entirely due to you blurbing the mag lo these many moons ago) and this sounds like an incredibly useful technique.
When I quit university to "find myself", one of the thing I did was go to the Taunton Public Library and find an old book on novel writing, which had the old two-column pulp style described within. As that was twenty years ago, I have not a clue who wrote the book or if it's even still in print. Please note that I wound up working on a natural gas pipeline and soon decided I could just as easily "find myself" back at university, not breaking concrete and getting blown up.
The main value to the technique, throwing its particulars aside, is something that came up in the pitching this week. Causality. When you can track causality, all the way up from individual actions through major story beats, you can more easily stay on beam in your own writing, and in particular it's easier to pitch. You won't get lost, as the next beat is the only logical, inevitable one following the previous beat. You can pace your pitch better, not be afraid to engage the audience, take little breaks, throw out a neat couplet without worrying about getting lost. Keeps you from getting a bad case of the "and then's" too.
It's also easier to see when you've just thrown in a complicaiton for the sake of a complication. Causality is linked to motivation, so a wrinkle for the sake of a wrinkle just sits there like a turd in the outline.
Right then, hope you had a good long weekend. See you all later this week.
LEVERAGE Week 7
Above, the writer's room. The hose in the back leads from Bessie, the air conditioner Chris brought in to combat the effects of the late-afternoon sun beaming in through the window-wall to our left.
I'm going to just stop apologizing for the posting delays and assume you know why I'm a bit pokey. And to recap:
Leverage: Lessons from the Script Pile
Leverage Week 1
Leverage Week 2
Leverage Week 3
Leverage Weeks 4 + 5
Leverage Week 6
One of these days I'm going to have to go back and finish that production diary. I stopped primarily because I was convinced it might have been considered promotional, and therefore against strike rules. Got my notes around here somewhere.
Week 7: We tweak the outlines for 105 and 106, send them into the network. At the same time the network calls -- no real notes on 103 and 104. Albert is launched on 104. He now has roughly two weeks to turn in a first draft to the room.
Sidebar on how the final writing schedule worked out. We've got four outlines approved by TNT. Every Monday from now on, we launch a new writer to tackle his/her draft. That means two writers out of the room at all times as they overlap. Or, taking into account the various loose elements Chris and I tossed together while we were working and reading the scripts, this is the pre-season:
Showrunners read scripts & hire writers: 6 weeks
Showrunners only screw around with ideas: 2 weeks (and some back in the previous segment)
Writers break stories: 6 weeks
Writers off writing before shooting: 10 weeks, but 5 of these will overlap with actual pre-production.
The writers are off working on this staggered schedule
Writer 1 Week 1
Writer 1 Week 2 / Writer 2 Week 1
Writer 2 Week 2 / Writer 3 Week 1
Writer 3 Week 2 / Writer 4 Week 1 etc.
Somewhere around where Writer 3 or 4 goes out, I should head back in to TNT with the next batch of four outlines. The cycle repeats.
There are a few "room days" built into every script's development cycle, plus some "reset" weeks where we look at both the new outlines as they fit into the season and take a last look at the final drafts before they're sent to directors for prep and shot. Taking all this into account, with safety factors in place, buffers, etc, we should (should-should-should) have 6 scripts plus the pilot written by start of shoot.
Is this the normal schedule for television? Absolutely bloody not. One of the advantages of working for a studio that's never done a television show before --
I'm sorry, I have to put a cold rag on my forehead for a moment. Back in a bit.
-- right, one of the advantages is there's no entrenched methodology. Dean started (I'm paraphrasing here) this process with: "Okay, what's the one thing every show you've ever been on has done wrong, that you swore you'd never do when you ran a show?"
"They all start the writers too late."
"Go forth, hire writers, and start 'em when you want."
Now to be fair, most network shows can't do this, because 22 episodes takes you from July/August through April-ish, and more times than not you have no idea if you're picked up again until mid-May. In addition, you must often spend a few of the remaining weeks rebuilding your staff, depending on who got deals, was fired, etc.
The longer hiatus is one of the benefits of doing 13, which is both a profitable and creatively fulfilling number of episodes to produce for a televisions show. Being able to fully take advantage of the longer hiatus is one of the benefits of doing this indie style.
Right, back to the workweek.
On Monday, the staff writer team of Reider and Mrs. Glenn present us with a document summing up all their research into the world of their episode. Some very, very cool stuff -- the sort of process geekery and "Hmm, I didn't know that" that made Michael Crichton a very rich man. They also have a good victim and villain, and the rough ideas of a plot. The room dives in, pulling down ideas off the wall and kicking around ways to make sure at least one of our characters has a strong emotional arc through the episode.
Nicely enough we've been talking about a backstory episode for Chris Kane's character. The ep involves horses, the setting fits the loose backstory for Eliot's character, I know Chris can ride ... okay, this one is Kane's. That's not to say the other characters disappear into the background, but story physics of ensemble shows work best if you've got at least one character who really digs in on the plot o' the week, particularly since we don't have B-stories. And man, no B-stories... that's some hardcore plotting thrills right there.
The room plows ahead for Tues/Wed as Dean and I head to New York for Upfronts. The upfronts are traditionally where the broadcast networks present their new shows to the advertising buyers. Dog and pony show, lots of talk about "brands", the stars of the shows come out and say a few words while clips and trailers play on a giant screen behind them. A show business business show, you could say. The quirk this year is TNT and TBS (the linked cable nets) plowing in during the ABC/FOX/NBC/CBS network week and doing their upfront at the same time. It's a shot across the bow of the "networks", and me likey.
TNT has been nice enough to charter a jet for all its talent. There's a lot of talent on TBS and TNT (I'm contractually obligated to say that), so our jet's basically an old Korean airliner -- not kidding, the seatbelt sign lettering is hangul -- some charter outfit's ripped the seats out of and replaced with first class all the way back. Head out for the airport for 7:45 am, and by 9 am this is the view:
That's Beth Riesgraf, who's playing our thief Parker. The seats filled in before we took off. But before that, in the terminal I see a guy using one of the Flip videocameras to grab footage of the departure.
"Showrunner?" I ask.
"How can you tell?"
"The actors are the good looking skinny ones, the execs are the skinny ones in suits. You and I are both slightly overweight guys in untucked blue button-down shirts. It may as well be a uniform."
Turns out he's David Feige, the co-creator of Raising the Bar, Steven Bochco's new show for TNT. A couple hours into the flight, we're having a chat. I ask if it's his first upfronts. He answers, "No, first televison show. Ever."
David is the former trial chief of the Brooklyn public defenders. He wrote a book two years ago called Indefensible, about tragicomic life in the public defender's office -- the corruption, the racism, the insane judges, the politicization of the prosecutorial process, and more. He then ignored several film options and sent the book to Steven Bochco. Mr. Bochco then calls him, invites him to LA. Six months later David's learning to write television from Steven Bochco and his show is picked up for 13. He pauses as I just stare at him.
"That is an amazing story," I say.
"I know, it's crazy." He's actually laughing, boggled.
"An amazing story you must never, ever tell any other writer in Hollywood."
We circle Newark for a day and half, head into NYC, arrive at 7:30 pm. Straight from the hotel room to the hospitality suite to do the network and actor thing -- first time I've seen the actors since the shoot. (Aldis Hodge brought his mom. Good kid.) Meet all the promo people, the advertising people, reconnect with the execs, and back to the room for 11:30. Of course, it's 8:30 LA time, so I'm awake until 3 am EST. (Where do you think I got the time to write last week's blog post?)
6:45 wake-up because we need to be at the Hammerstein Theater for 8 am. Upfront's at 10, lasts 81 minutes -- then straight back into a van to Newark. We're delayed by an hour as all the actors and execs go through an ad hoc security screening on the runway -- because, of course, you never know when Holly Hunter's just going to lose her shit and torque an airliner into the Capitol Building -- and then we're in the air. As we land back at LAX I have the jarring realization that I've spent 14 hours in NYC without actually ever setting foot on a street in NYC. We get in early enough that I can go to the office for a few hours after getting in from the airport. My staff reacts with such amazement when seeing me in a suit that I'm a little disturbed at the prospect of precisely how ramshackle I must appear on the regular workdays.
(There's a fantastically embarrassing photo of me snoring on the flight that Aldis is sending me. I will post it just to make sure nobody's under the illusion this is a tale meant to bedazzle with glamor.)
Once back on Thursday, Chris and the room present me with an almost entirely finished story. Wow. I add a few tiny things and suggest that Reider and Mrs. Glenn go off for Friday to get their outline together to pitch to Dean. We'll take Friday to work on 107.
As soon as I say it, I can feel Berg staring through my left temple. (It should be noted that our co-producer has more one-hour experience than Chris and I added together) End of day, she cheerfully and rightfully points out that having baby writers pitch an episode outline to the studio is considered by most shows to be, well, insane. They've never done this before. Hell, they've only ever even seen one other writer -- Chris -- do this. Once.
"Hey, they have to learn sometime."
"Are you going to tell them this is not normal?"
"What, and freak them out? Nah."
And I think that's where we'll leave it for Week 8. As always, drop any questions you have in the comments. This post is already too long, so I'll tackle last week's Comments questions in a separate entry.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
LEVERAGE Week 6
... written from my hotel room in NYC, at the upfronts. Hope to catch up this Friday.
Right then, this is the week we killed a story. Always sad, of course, but it happens. Welcome to televising.
First off, things are getting complicated. We have no picture yet (this week) but the cast members to this little drama are:
Rogers - exec producer and loudmouth
Chris - the other exec producer
Berg - co-producer
Boylan - staff writer
Albert- staff writer, although wrote for 20 years in other mediums.
Reider & Mrs. Glenn -- staff writers
Filthy Assistant - filthy assistant
First things first. Dean has come up with the quasi-insane idea of himself, Chris and I going in to TNT on Thursday and live-pitching the episode outlines to the Beloved Suits. By which he means me. I, reasonably, believe he's mad. Networks, after all, have a process...
But his argument is compelling. We are, in the end, a very complicated heist comedy show. We want to make sure both the plots -- usually consisting of two separate scams per ep -- and the jokes land. Why not go in and pitch everything out, answer questions in the room, and then the outlines are just reference documents rather than cold dead things which, by their nature, betray our baby joke chicks?
Okay, so not only do we need to get the remaining outlines in shape, they have to be in good enough shape for me to pitch live without making an ass of myself. Huh. That's with one approved, two needing fixes, and one hopelessly snarled.
The hopelessly snarled script -- currently 106 in the order -- came back with pretty dire "I don't think this is our show" notes from our studio (Dean and Marc)... and to a certain degree, we agree. It was the first episode broken, before we really had the rhythms of the show down. The end is super, the beginning is great, the victim is great, the villain's a Classic Douchebag ... but they don't match up. The road from the great villain and victim in the opening is far too logically convoluted to get to our admittedly spectacular ending. It's a bit of a dog's breakfast, as even the writer assigned the episode argues when I mention the structural flaws.
(She actually chews me out a bit and notes that only her superior writing skills carried the ep outline this far. Now, we have a card up on the wall, asking the eternal question vis a vis certain story choices. That card reads "HUBRIS ... or MOXIE?" This qualifies as moxie, at least for me.)
We put that aside for a bit and focus on the other episodes. This is part of a showrunner's job -- to see when the room's energy is being dissipated, and to steer it over to constructive issues. As early as we've started, each moment we spin our wheels is a moment stolen from prepping a script from production. Over Mon-Wednesday, we hammer out the issues on one episode.
Let's get into detail. There are two issues with the ep we'll call 104. First, we need to develop some sense of escalating threat throughout the episode. When you have a team of expert thieves, making sure there's some room for failure is always challenging. Second, the choreography in the final three-stage heist in act five is tricky. What exactly are our guys trying to accomplish, how does it play out, and how do we surprise the audience.
As often happens, the writer of the ep (Albert) tumbles the escalating threat, and the room builds the act five choreography out of the addition of that threat. The solution comes only when we back up and strip the episode right back to its roots: What does Nate Ford (the protagonist) want to accomplish? What are his obstacles? And, since we're a heist show, how does he use those obstacles in unexpected ways in order to accomplish what he wants? At one point I actually go back and diagram out in the old pulp school style.
This style is an old writing trick from the pulps. It's meant to create an inexorable forward motion in prose. You actually write the story in two columns. Left column is where you write the action paragraph . Right column is the result paragraph that leads logically to the next action, bing bing bing bouncing between the paragraphs, letting, well, story gravity draw you along.
That solved - and hey, it's always a good day when you solve a problem -- we let Albert go off and retool the outline to 104 as the room tackles the other less-troubled 105. We wrestle that fifth act to the ground (most of the ep is untouched) and then take on 106, the crippled story, head on.
Finally, we ask around the room. "What do you like about this story?" Multiple answers, all solid, come back. "And how do we fix this story?" ... ah. Crickets. It's never pretty, but finally Chris and I exercise showrunner's privilege and put a mercy bullet in the outline. We switch over to 107 (the episode I was supposed to write) even as that new story Chris and the room broke last week slides into the now-vacant 106 slot.
Thursday arrives, and this is where we stand. The position of 102, the first ep after the pilot, doesn't seem to fit any of the broken stories. Dean suggests that we write 102 together as a "reset" pilot, covering all the pipe necessary for the episode-to-episode series and re-introducing the concept of the show and the cast. Okay. 103 is the outline that was approved last week. Everybody loves that one. 104's outline is turned in, spiffy. I decide to (NOTE: edited) rewrite the final act of the outline of 105 -- as we finally get a good solve on the very day it's to be pitched -- while Chris knows the new 106 (former 107) like the back of his hand. He'll pitch that while Berg grinds out the writing outline. We've got a good handle on what's now 107 -- which the writer of the crippled story, Boylan, calls dibs on -- but it's not really in outline form yet.
So with the written outlines of 103 and 104 and the promise of written outlines for 105 and 106 to be delivered the next day, we go in and pitch TNT on Thursday with outlines that are, on the average, 20 pages long. Each.
Two pretty good hours later (I pitch 3, Chris takes the one he broke with the writers), we've got a lot of laughs, minimal notes, and I've sweated out five pounds. Not to suck up to the Beloved Suits at TNT, but this is genuinely the best experience I've had in 13 years of television. TNT execs don't just pee on an outline to mark it. Their notes are not just "look at me, I'm contributing" notes --
-- pretty common type of note, by the way. I mean, if you're an executive who's paid to give notes to production, how many times can you say "I like it, I don't really have any notes" before somebody in a more expensive suit and office begins to ask themselves "What exactly are we paying this guy for, anyway?" Execs are motivated to give unnecessary notes by the very structure of the the studio/network system.
So, we'll hear back on the leave-behind outlines on Monday. Friday is our last freelancer day. Chris and I take pitches while the room is off doing assignments and researching the next batch of stories. The Baby Writers, Reider and Mrs. Glenn, will present the bones of the episode they've been researching on Monday of Week 7. Be aware, staff writers are never guaranteed episodes on their first job -- these kids are fighting to get a script credit in their first year, against all the ideas the rest of the staff have put together, all the ideas Chris and I brought to the table in pre-season prep, and all the ideas Dean has tossed in. Not to mention a pretty spiffy freelance pitch from last Friday. Can they pull it off? We'll see on Monday ...
Also this week, we cook up a rough writing schedule to coordinate with the production schedule. Some of you may be amused to know that I'm tracking script assignments and outline deadlines on Google Calendar. We may move to a Google Group to coordinate all the documents, outlines, and notes. The writing staff of a professional television show is using great gobs of free online software. If there were a production-ready screenwriting program we'd consider trying it, but the simple fact is revision tracking during production is monstrous. Many programs that can handle a first draft fold up as soon as you move into production rigor of multiple drafts. Movie Magic it is for scripts, then, but it's worth mentioning our use of Google software. (and, hey, if they want to help out on production costs, I have no problem writing a testimonial or three thousand ...)
Week 7 coming up -- the Baby Writers pitch, and Adventures in New York. Now, let's see what questions we had from last time.
eleanor: Hi John, I find this whole process fascinating.
Any chance you can satisfy my geek Brit need-to-learn-this-stuff osity and (sometime when you're allowed to?) post all the different card types, notes, and the finished script for one episode, so we can all see exactly how it's done? HAVE TO KNOW! Pretty please?
Our Filthy Assistant keeps all the cards. We will, someday, post it all. Probably not soon, but we'll see what we can do.
alan scott: Also (proceeding tangentially from comment on your pitching style): Is there any audio or video footage of your old stand-up comedy act? What would one have to do in order to obtain such footage?
Footage of my appearance on the Just for Laughs Showtime special and Comedy Central appearances are still kicking around on cable, while my Canadian Comedy Central specials, including the first Comedy Now ...
huh.
Well, if you're in Canada, enjoy. You may also find my CBC special, in which I appear briefly in a wedding dress. Otherwise, I may someday post a few minutes of my failed sitcom pilot -- if I lose a bet.
anonymous: I've got a question for you--Who works on the opening credits sequence, and when? Most seem hacked together at the last minute with random images, but some ("Dexter", "Dead Like Me") are truly works of art in their own right. Just curious.
The opening credits sequence is rapidly becoming a lost art. Usually they're cut while doing pre-production on the first episode, but can be honed well into shooting. I'm not an afficianado, but my commenters handle this question adroitly. Go back to the last blog post and follow the discussion there.
tuckpendleton: What is "prosumer"? Does that mean the camera is only available for pros, or that I could theoretically buy it if I wanted, as a consumer, but only by paying "pro" prices? Also, can you explicate: "they don't take primes" -- as I assume it's not about mathism.
"Prosumer" means high-end consumer, at amateur prices but producing a level of quality acceptable for many professional works. "Primes" are the prime lenses, the focal lengths that we all know and love -- the 50mm, the 30, the buck twenty. With a standard camera, you change the shot by changing the lens. The Sony XDCam, at least the current version, has a digital zoom.
warren ellis: "Have I told my fanfic story? It involves Michelle Forbes and Warren Ellis and booze ... hmm next time if I have't already."
NOOOOOOO!
Oh, come on, you come across as devilish and charming. As usual.
michael clear: (RE FANFIC) If I'm allowed to use British television then I'm tossing in Sally Sparrow from the "Blink" episode of Doctor Who and the Michelle Ryan and Gina Bellman characters from Jeckyll.
Sally Sparrow -- criminally underutilized.
pretty shaved ape: senor rogers, you might be pleased to find that there is a way by which your beloved sony can shoot with primes. redrock has a flipping amazing system that i am currently lusting over for my canon xha1. hell, redrock will even outfit my canon hv20 (which i might add is a freaking stunning little camera, i was shooting without lights in st. mungo's crypt in glasgow cathedral the footage is ridiculous. where the sensors dealt with the low light by producing what looks like cine noir film grain. for the money there is no better camera anywhere.oh and the next gen, the hv30). anyway, a friend of mine outfitted himself with the redrock system for his panasonic and the footage is sick. all the clarity of high def and the depth of field of primes using your 35mm camera lens. oh toys, how i love toys.
To which Dean replies "Good device and useful in many ways, but it's still glass-on-glass and therefore often a soft image. Too soft for our purposes in many situations."
See, we educate as well as insult here.
john: Somewhat off-topic, but our beloved Kung Fu Monkey can add another notch to his belt: He's listed in the playtester credits for 4th Edition D&D.
(...Waiting for June 6th when my preorder will ship...)
For what it's worth, I also just wrote the Feywild entry for the new Manual of the Planes. Game design may pop up here a bit more in future posts. I'll also do a special geeks-only D&D post on release day, spoiling my feedback on the system.
kid sis: ... Also, that "Kalifornia" scene where unbathed Pitt is in Juliette but drooling and eyeball screwing Michelle? Hot.
My wife, for years, could drive me to madness simply by mimicking Juliette Lewis's singing in that movie. All potential hotness is ruined by "Iiiiii wiiish ... Carrie was haaaappy ..."
Stay safe, and we'll see you soon.
Right then, this is the week we killed a story. Always sad, of course, but it happens. Welcome to televising.
First off, things are getting complicated. We have no picture yet (this week) but the cast members to this little drama are:
Rogers - exec producer and loudmouth
Chris - the other exec producer
Berg - co-producer
Boylan - staff writer
Albert- staff writer, although wrote for 20 years in other mediums.
Reider & Mrs. Glenn -- staff writers
Filthy Assistant - filthy assistant
First things first. Dean has come up with the quasi-insane idea of himself, Chris and I going in to TNT on Thursday and live-pitching the episode outlines to the Beloved Suits. By which he means me. I, reasonably, believe he's mad. Networks, after all, have a process...
But his argument is compelling. We are, in the end, a very complicated heist comedy show. We want to make sure both the plots -- usually consisting of two separate scams per ep -- and the jokes land. Why not go in and pitch everything out, answer questions in the room, and then the outlines are just reference documents rather than cold dead things which, by their nature, betray our baby joke chicks?
Okay, so not only do we need to get the remaining outlines in shape, they have to be in good enough shape for me to pitch live without making an ass of myself. Huh. That's with one approved, two needing fixes, and one hopelessly snarled.
The hopelessly snarled script -- currently 106 in the order -- came back with pretty dire "I don't think this is our show" notes from our studio (Dean and Marc)... and to a certain degree, we agree. It was the first episode broken, before we really had the rhythms of the show down. The end is super, the beginning is great, the victim is great, the villain's a Classic Douchebag ... but they don't match up. The road from the great villain and victim in the opening is far too logically convoluted to get to our admittedly spectacular ending. It's a bit of a dog's breakfast, as even the writer assigned the episode argues when I mention the structural flaws.
(She actually chews me out a bit and notes that only her superior writing skills carried the ep outline this far. Now, we have a card up on the wall, asking the eternal question vis a vis certain story choices. That card reads "HUBRIS ... or MOXIE?" This qualifies as moxie, at least for me.)
We put that aside for a bit and focus on the other episodes. This is part of a showrunner's job -- to see when the room's energy is being dissipated, and to steer it over to constructive issues. As early as we've started, each moment we spin our wheels is a moment stolen from prepping a script from production. Over Mon-Wednesday, we hammer out the issues on one episode.
Let's get into detail. There are two issues with the ep we'll call 104. First, we need to develop some sense of escalating threat throughout the episode. When you have a team of expert thieves, making sure there's some room for failure is always challenging. Second, the choreography in the final three-stage heist in act five is tricky. What exactly are our guys trying to accomplish, how does it play out, and how do we surprise the audience.
As often happens, the writer of the ep (Albert) tumbles the escalating threat, and the room builds the act five choreography out of the addition of that threat. The solution comes only when we back up and strip the episode right back to its roots: What does Nate Ford (the protagonist) want to accomplish? What are his obstacles? And, since we're a heist show, how does he use those obstacles in unexpected ways in order to accomplish what he wants? At one point I actually go back and diagram out in the old pulp school style.
This style is an old writing trick from the pulps. It's meant to create an inexorable forward motion in prose. You actually write the story in two columns. Left column is where you write the action paragraph . Right column is the result paragraph that leads logically to the next action, bing bing bing bouncing between the paragraphs, letting, well, story gravity draw you along.
That solved - and hey, it's always a good day when you solve a problem -- we let Albert go off and retool the outline to 104 as the room tackles the other less-troubled 105. We wrestle that fifth act to the ground (most of the ep is untouched) and then take on 106, the crippled story, head on.
Finally, we ask around the room. "What do you like about this story?" Multiple answers, all solid, come back. "And how do we fix this story?" ... ah. Crickets. It's never pretty, but finally Chris and I exercise showrunner's privilege and put a mercy bullet in the outline. We switch over to 107 (the episode I was supposed to write) even as that new story Chris and the room broke last week slides into the now-vacant 106 slot.
Thursday arrives, and this is where we stand. The position of 102, the first ep after the pilot, doesn't seem to fit any of the broken stories. Dean suggests that we write 102 together as a "reset" pilot, covering all the pipe necessary for the episode-to-episode series and re-introducing the concept of the show and the cast. Okay. 103 is the outline that was approved last week. Everybody loves that one. 104's outline is turned in, spiffy. I decide to (NOTE: edited) rewrite the final act of the outline of 105 -- as we finally get a good solve on the very day it's to be pitched -- while Chris knows the new 106 (former 107) like the back of his hand. He'll pitch that while Berg grinds out the writing outline. We've got a good handle on what's now 107 -- which the writer of the crippled story, Boylan, calls dibs on -- but it's not really in outline form yet.
So with the written outlines of 103 and 104 and the promise of written outlines for 105 and 106 to be delivered the next day, we go in and pitch TNT on Thursday with outlines that are, on the average, 20 pages long. Each.
Two pretty good hours later (I pitch 3, Chris takes the one he broke with the writers), we've got a lot of laughs, minimal notes, and I've sweated out five pounds. Not to suck up to the Beloved Suits at TNT, but this is genuinely the best experience I've had in 13 years of television. TNT execs don't just pee on an outline to mark it. Their notes are not just "look at me, I'm contributing" notes --
-- pretty common type of note, by the way. I mean, if you're an executive who's paid to give notes to production, how many times can you say "I like it, I don't really have any notes" before somebody in a more expensive suit and office begins to ask themselves "What exactly are we paying this guy for, anyway?" Execs are motivated to give unnecessary notes by the very structure of the the studio/network system.
So, we'll hear back on the leave-behind outlines on Monday. Friday is our last freelancer day. Chris and I take pitches while the room is off doing assignments and researching the next batch of stories. The Baby Writers, Reider and Mrs. Glenn, will present the bones of the episode they've been researching on Monday of Week 7. Be aware, staff writers are never guaranteed episodes on their first job -- these kids are fighting to get a script credit in their first year, against all the ideas the rest of the staff have put together, all the ideas Chris and I brought to the table in pre-season prep, and all the ideas Dean has tossed in. Not to mention a pretty spiffy freelance pitch from last Friday. Can they pull it off? We'll see on Monday ...
Also this week, we cook up a rough writing schedule to coordinate with the production schedule. Some of you may be amused to know that I'm tracking script assignments and outline deadlines on Google Calendar. We may move to a Google Group to coordinate all the documents, outlines, and notes. The writing staff of a professional television show is using great gobs of free online software. If there were a production-ready screenwriting program we'd consider trying it, but the simple fact is revision tracking during production is monstrous. Many programs that can handle a first draft fold up as soon as you move into production rigor of multiple drafts. Movie Magic it is for scripts, then, but it's worth mentioning our use of Google software. (and, hey, if they want to help out on production costs, I have no problem writing a testimonial or three thousand ...)
Week 7 coming up -- the Baby Writers pitch, and Adventures in New York. Now, let's see what questions we had from last time.
eleanor: Hi John, I find this whole process fascinating.
Any chance you can satisfy my geek Brit need-to-learn-this-stuff osity and (sometime when you're allowed to?) post all the different card types, notes, and the finished script for one episode, so we can all see exactly how it's done? HAVE TO KNOW! Pretty please?
Our Filthy Assistant keeps all the cards. We will, someday, post it all. Probably not soon, but we'll see what we can do.
alan scott: Also (proceeding tangentially from comment on your pitching style): Is there any audio or video footage of your old stand-up comedy act? What would one have to do in order to obtain such footage?
Footage of my appearance on the Just for Laughs Showtime special and Comedy Central appearances are still kicking around on cable, while my Canadian Comedy Central specials, including the first Comedy Now ...
huh.
Well, if you're in Canada, enjoy. You may also find my CBC special, in which I appear briefly in a wedding dress. Otherwise, I may someday post a few minutes of my failed sitcom pilot -- if I lose a bet.
anonymous: I've got a question for you--Who works on the opening credits sequence, and when? Most seem hacked together at the last minute with random images, but some ("Dexter", "Dead Like Me") are truly works of art in their own right. Just curious.
The opening credits sequence is rapidly becoming a lost art. Usually they're cut while doing pre-production on the first episode, but can be honed well into shooting. I'm not an afficianado, but my commenters handle this question adroitly. Go back to the last blog post and follow the discussion there.
tuckpendleton: What is "prosumer"? Does that mean the camera is only available for pros, or that I could theoretically buy it if I wanted, as a consumer, but only by paying "pro" prices? Also, can you explicate: "they don't take primes" -- as I assume it's not about mathism.
"Prosumer" means high-end consumer, at amateur prices but producing a level of quality acceptable for many professional works. "Primes" are the prime lenses, the focal lengths that we all know and love -- the 50mm, the 30, the buck twenty. With a standard camera, you change the shot by changing the lens. The Sony XDCam, at least the current version, has a digital zoom.
warren ellis: "Have I told my fanfic story? It involves Michelle Forbes and Warren Ellis and booze ... hmm next time if I have't already."
NOOOOOOO!
Oh, come on, you come across as devilish and charming. As usual.
michael clear: (RE FANFIC) If I'm allowed to use British television then I'm tossing in Sally Sparrow from the "Blink" episode of Doctor Who and the Michelle Ryan and Gina Bellman characters from Jeckyll.
Sally Sparrow -- criminally underutilized.
pretty shaved ape: senor rogers, you might be pleased to find that there is a way by which your beloved sony can shoot with primes. redrock has a flipping amazing system that i am currently lusting over for my canon xha1. hell, redrock will even outfit my canon hv20 (which i might add is a freaking stunning little camera, i was shooting without lights in st. mungo's crypt in glasgow cathedral the footage is ridiculous. where the sensors dealt with the low light by producing what looks like cine noir film grain. for the money there is no better camera anywhere.oh and the next gen, the hv30). anyway, a friend of mine outfitted himself with the redrock system for his panasonic and the footage is sick. all the clarity of high def and the depth of field of primes using your 35mm camera lens. oh toys, how i love toys.
To which Dean replies "Good device and useful in many ways, but it's still glass-on-glass and therefore often a soft image. Too soft for our purposes in many situations."
See, we educate as well as insult here.
john: Somewhat off-topic, but our beloved Kung Fu Monkey can add another notch to his belt: He's listed in the playtester credits for 4th Edition D&D.
(...Waiting for June 6th when my preorder will ship...)
For what it's worth, I also just wrote the Feywild entry for the new Manual of the Planes. Game design may pop up here a bit more in future posts. I'll also do a special geeks-only D&D post on release day, spoiling my feedback on the system.
kid sis: ... Also, that "Kalifornia" scene where unbathed Pitt is in Juliette but drooling and eyeball screwing Michelle? Hot.
My wife, for years, could drive me to madness simply by mimicking Juliette Lewis's singing in that movie. All potential hotness is ruined by "Iiiiii wiiish ... Carrie was haaaappy ..."
Stay safe, and we'll see you soon.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
LEVERAGE Weeks 4+5
Sorry for the long downtime -- my posting day was consumed with travel last weekend.
Right then. Last we left you as we entered Week 4, four writers were submitting outlines to Dean Devlin, who is our studio, kind of. When there's no studio building, no automatic door closers and no bottled water, I'm not sure it's actually a studio. But he's it.
Dean is at the time on location shooting a web-series on the dead sexy Sony XDCAM. Having now seen this footage, even untweaked, I can say with some assurance that this camera is king of the prosumer cameras. Besides being light and fast, they shoot ridiculously well at night, thanks to a design hink in the chip. Storage is rock solid -- they never lost a shot in 12 days of shooting -- and the workflow's a breeze. They don't take primes but you can do a hell of a lot with them.
While Dean was reading the outlines out on location, the network did testing on the series name. Now, you'd think that a show's title is pretty locked up from Day One, but actually many TV titles wind up coming back from the testing bin. (For example, Pushing Daisies was originally called Murder Mysteries In the Vividly Chromatic Land of the Ambiguously Gay Zombie-Making Twee Lord) This is one of the few times I don't mind testing -- you only get one impression in today's insane media marketplace, and we don't want people thinking "You know, I'm in the mood for a funny heist action show, but unfortunately all that's on is this 'LEVERAGE', which I'm going to assume is some sort of home mortgage drama." Click.
So the room cooks up a half-dozen or so more titles and tosses them into the test bin. This is always tricky, as each title has to be one you could conceivably live with for 100 episodes without wincing. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, however, the results come in -- we're still LEVERAGE. Thank God, because I already had the crew underwear made ...
Also while waiting, we attack another story -- one of mine to script. As soon as the strike was over and we heard we got picked up, I went to a pub with a pad of paper, had myself a Guinness and crisps, and wrote down every idea I could come up with. No censorship, no limits. Just bang on, in two categories : "Scenes I Want to See" and "Things They Can Steal". Four Guiness and an equal number of pages later, I tuck my 80-odd scribbles into a briefcase and leave them until March, when Chris and I are reading the 210 scripts. In order to stay sane we pull out our respective Idea Lists, take a few breaks poring over ideas and soft-breaking a few stories. (By "soft break" I mean just the bare bones plot idea, the act breaks, and the big turn). These were filed until we had writers quorum, and at the very least primed the pump.
I can't go into much detail, as it is a "twist" show, so hopefully we'll have some good stuff for the podcasts. It may illustrative, however, of the creative process to track at least the nub of one idea: I'd written "Scandal in Bohemia" on the List, and was transferring it to an index card when Chris asked what it meant.
"Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes pretends to be a minister, starts a fire during a wedding to figure out where blackmail letters are hidden."
Now, I'd been thinking about the specific mystery mechanic, but then Chris said, "You know, Tim Hutton would be pretty funny as a minister or priest." Hmm, I had a wedding note in my files, just a scam but with no plot ... but spot-welding Chris's sideways take on Scandal with my unrelated note, we wound up with what's already one of our favorite scripts of the year.
Midweek Dean calls with the notes. We shelve my ep, run the notes past the writers, and we turn them loose to work. Again, the point is to keep the documents in their hand as much and as long as possible. I wind up on a plane Friday, and then it's Week 5.
Interestingly, Dean pitches an episode nugget while I'm wheeling my luggage through the Toronto airport. The room loves the high concept idea and Chris runs with it, breaking the story with the other writers. Since I'm already a day behind by the time I get back, we divide labor -- I'll tweak the three writer's outlines we have in, standardizing them in tone and structure, while Chris and the room continue to break the story. The fourth outline is put on a shelf for a week while we try to figure out how to make one specific change.
This outline rewrite is a brutal test of my Asshole Threshold. You have to understand, there's always an enormous amount of arrogance involved with writing. Writing, as I've said before, is the art of making choices* Empty page. Nothing but infinite choices. And after X number of years, you have to be pretty confident in your choices -- insanely so, actually -- or you simply can't function as a writer.
So, once you're the showrunner, with nigh-infinite right and power to rewrite every other writer who crosses your desk ... gaaaaaah. Even when the writing is as good as these outlines were, it's still not precisely the cadence, the jokes, the structure that's ... anyway. Many showrunners rewrite every script, and while I can certainly understand the urge I know that part of doing this job is learning to let go and trust the process and the people I hired. As I mentioned these outlines were already all pretty close, which helps me resist the dickish urge to pee on the documents excessively (somewhere, my hard-done-by staff is sorting in derision).
The docs go back to Dean. While Dean rereads, I go back in the room and find out what they've been up to. Chris has got the show broken down into Sequences -- what I'd call the orange cards, but the room uses some sort of bastardized semi-detailed pink cards ... I swallow my horror, hear the pitch and enjoy it immensely. It's neat hearing a story when you've not been in the sausage factory with it. Probably the closest I'll ever be to an actual viewer.
Along the way we have a production meeting: figuring out candidates for the UPM, briefing the other department heads on script status, talking physical production and distribution and editing and publicity ... show business, folks.
Dean bounces back after that with notes on the newest revisions of the outlines. He then goes down to hear Chris pitch out the new story. Chris, frankly, then knocks it out of the park. Another interesting thing about the room: seeing all the techniques. I pitch like a stand-up -- fast, hit the jokes, rely on the timing, lots of judgement calls on what's needed and not. Chris used to be a lwayer. He presents the episode almost like a brief or summation. Still funny of course, but concise, bullet-points off typewritten pages. His rhythm is more a steady boom boom boom leading you from beginning to end in a very low, confident tone.
Dean signs off, and a writer picks up the story to bring to outline. One of the three revised outlines passes with flying colors, the other two need just one more tweak before heading off to network. Those outlines are tabled for Monday, as we're now at Friday, or what Chris and I have determined is Freelancer Day.
We're not taking open pitches -- not this year anyway. With luck, next year. Most of these pitches are people we almost hired, but just didn't fit into the cable money/room size matrix. We hear a half-dozen writers pitch story ideas in varying detail. Neatly enough, there's some duplication. I take this as a good thing -- if the same emotional beats and relationships ping with separate writers, that means they're well-established enough in the pilot for the viewer to attach themselves.
Meanwhile, the writer's room takes the day to break that newest episode down to fine scene detail, all under the command of our ranking writer. I know, I know, "command' is a silly word for it, but that's just part of the bit ... because. my friends, our staff is so damn geeky, that when I leave the room to work on other stuff, I cannot help but announce "I'll be back in an hour. Berg ... you have the bridge."
All these outlines, putting them down and picking them up a few days later, etc. all seems a bit mad, but it's crucial to keep your scripts flowing. As every script has its own development tempo, there's going to be a lot of overlap. We keep the script status straight on a whiteboard with four categories carved out.
"First Base: story idea to be broken
Second Base: broken into scenes/sequences
Third Base: writer outlining
Home Run: writer out to script"
The scripts move through this cycle at their own pace. One story fell into place in one day. Some have been hammered out over two weeks. Some will stall somewhere, stranded on base.
Right then, that brings us to the end of Week 5. Even leaving out the arbitration I'm embroiled in because somebody out there doesn't want to share their $4.58 cable MOW residual check, it's been a bit busy. As always drop any questions you have inthe Comments, and I'll do my best to give you a constructive answer in the next week's post. Let's see what I missed from last time ...
Michael: Is it net-acceptable yet to write a crossover fanfic where the female characters of Leverage get it on with Boomer from BSG and Claire from Heroes? Let me know so I can set aside some time to work on it.
Throw in Torchwood -- but the 1918 version - and I'd say you have an obligation, sirah.
Have I told my fanfic story? It involves Michelle Forbes and Warren Ellis and booze ... hmm next time if I have't already.
Jason Mitchelitch: " I mean, come on, what sentient being can ride in a Hummer limo and not be cognizant of their karmic debt?"
Is this really such a rare thing out there? I feel like I see them all the time. Of course, I'm from Northern VA, where hummer limos are what the rich kids take to the prom. I imagine there are a fleet of them in employ in Dallas, TX at any given time, as well.
Yes. Some rich kids do take them to the prom. And those rich kids are douchebags. Don't make me break out the Venn Diagram.
Mr. Glenn (spouse of baby writer): I say YES to the video blog idea. Then I can see my "sugar momma" all day!
Don't pull your FLDS cult discipline crap on my show, mister. She's out from your Svengali influence in the room and it will continue to be a safe place!
Ahhh, newlyweds.
I hope to have a few interim posts up this week. Take care, all. It's getting a bit freaky out there ...
* Oddly, this is the central idea of the movie Wonder Boys, which I didnt see until years after I'd already cooked up my half-assed theory. Great movie, by the way.
Right then. Last we left you as we entered Week 4, four writers were submitting outlines to Dean Devlin, who is our studio, kind of. When there's no studio building, no automatic door closers and no bottled water, I'm not sure it's actually a studio. But he's it.
Dean is at the time on location shooting a web-series on the dead sexy Sony XDCAM. Having now seen this footage, even untweaked, I can say with some assurance that this camera is king of the prosumer cameras. Besides being light and fast, they shoot ridiculously well at night, thanks to a design hink in the chip. Storage is rock solid -- they never lost a shot in 12 days of shooting -- and the workflow's a breeze. They don't take primes but you can do a hell of a lot with them.
While Dean was reading the outlines out on location, the network did testing on the series name. Now, you'd think that a show's title is pretty locked up from Day One, but actually many TV titles wind up coming back from the testing bin. (For example, Pushing Daisies was originally called Murder Mysteries In the Vividly Chromatic Land of the Ambiguously Gay Zombie-Making Twee Lord) This is one of the few times I don't mind testing -- you only get one impression in today's insane media marketplace, and we don't want people thinking "You know, I'm in the mood for a funny heist action show, but unfortunately all that's on is this 'LEVERAGE', which I'm going to assume is some sort of home mortgage drama." Click.
So the room cooks up a half-dozen or so more titles and tosses them into the test bin. This is always tricky, as each title has to be one you could conceivably live with for 100 episodes without wincing. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, however, the results come in -- we're still LEVERAGE. Thank God, because I already had the crew underwear made ...
Also while waiting, we attack another story -- one of mine to script. As soon as the strike was over and we heard we got picked up, I went to a pub with a pad of paper, had myself a Guinness and crisps, and wrote down every idea I could come up with. No censorship, no limits. Just bang on, in two categories : "Scenes I Want to See" and "Things They Can Steal". Four Guiness and an equal number of pages later, I tuck my 80-odd scribbles into a briefcase and leave them until March, when Chris and I are reading the 210 scripts. In order to stay sane we pull out our respective Idea Lists, take a few breaks poring over ideas and soft-breaking a few stories. (By "soft break" I mean just the bare bones plot idea, the act breaks, and the big turn). These were filed until we had writers quorum, and at the very least primed the pump.
I can't go into much detail, as it is a "twist" show, so hopefully we'll have some good stuff for the podcasts. It may illustrative, however, of the creative process to track at least the nub of one idea: I'd written "Scandal in Bohemia" on the List, and was transferring it to an index card when Chris asked what it meant.
"Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes pretends to be a minister, starts a fire during a wedding to figure out where blackmail letters are hidden."
Now, I'd been thinking about the specific mystery mechanic, but then Chris said, "You know, Tim Hutton would be pretty funny as a minister or priest." Hmm, I had a wedding note in my files, just a scam but with no plot ... but spot-welding Chris's sideways take on Scandal with my unrelated note, we wound up with what's already one of our favorite scripts of the year.
Midweek Dean calls with the notes. We shelve my ep, run the notes past the writers, and we turn them loose to work. Again, the point is to keep the documents in their hand as much and as long as possible. I wind up on a plane Friday, and then it's Week 5.
Interestingly, Dean pitches an episode nugget while I'm wheeling my luggage through the Toronto airport. The room loves the high concept idea and Chris runs with it, breaking the story with the other writers. Since I'm already a day behind by the time I get back, we divide labor -- I'll tweak the three writer's outlines we have in, standardizing them in tone and structure, while Chris and the room continue to break the story. The fourth outline is put on a shelf for a week while we try to figure out how to make one specific change.
This outline rewrite is a brutal test of my Asshole Threshold. You have to understand, there's always an enormous amount of arrogance involved with writing. Writing, as I've said before, is the art of making choices* Empty page. Nothing but infinite choices. And after X number of years, you have to be pretty confident in your choices -- insanely so, actually -- or you simply can't function as a writer.
So, once you're the showrunner, with nigh-infinite right and power to rewrite every other writer who crosses your desk ... gaaaaaah. Even when the writing is as good as these outlines were, it's still not precisely the cadence, the jokes, the structure that's ... anyway. Many showrunners rewrite every script, and while I can certainly understand the urge I know that part of doing this job is learning to let go and trust the process and the people I hired. As I mentioned these outlines were already all pretty close, which helps me resist the dickish urge to pee on the documents excessively (somewhere, my hard-done-by staff is sorting in derision).
The docs go back to Dean. While Dean rereads, I go back in the room and find out what they've been up to. Chris has got the show broken down into Sequences -- what I'd call the orange cards, but the room uses some sort of bastardized semi-detailed pink cards ... I swallow my horror, hear the pitch and enjoy it immensely. It's neat hearing a story when you've not been in the sausage factory with it. Probably the closest I'll ever be to an actual viewer.
Along the way we have a production meeting: figuring out candidates for the UPM, briefing the other department heads on script status, talking physical production and distribution and editing and publicity ... show business, folks.
Dean bounces back after that with notes on the newest revisions of the outlines. He then goes down to hear Chris pitch out the new story. Chris, frankly, then knocks it out of the park. Another interesting thing about the room: seeing all the techniques. I pitch like a stand-up -- fast, hit the jokes, rely on the timing, lots of judgement calls on what's needed and not. Chris used to be a lwayer. He presents the episode almost like a brief or summation. Still funny of course, but concise, bullet-points off typewritten pages. His rhythm is more a steady boom boom boom leading you from beginning to end in a very low, confident tone.
Dean signs off, and a writer picks up the story to bring to outline. One of the three revised outlines passes with flying colors, the other two need just one more tweak before heading off to network. Those outlines are tabled for Monday, as we're now at Friday, or what Chris and I have determined is Freelancer Day.
We're not taking open pitches -- not this year anyway. With luck, next year. Most of these pitches are people we almost hired, but just didn't fit into the cable money/room size matrix. We hear a half-dozen writers pitch story ideas in varying detail. Neatly enough, there's some duplication. I take this as a good thing -- if the same emotional beats and relationships ping with separate writers, that means they're well-established enough in the pilot for the viewer to attach themselves.
Meanwhile, the writer's room takes the day to break that newest episode down to fine scene detail, all under the command of our ranking writer. I know, I know, "command' is a silly word for it, but that's just part of the bit ... because. my friends, our staff is so damn geeky, that when I leave the room to work on other stuff, I cannot help but announce "I'll be back in an hour. Berg ... you have the bridge."
All these outlines, putting them down and picking them up a few days later, etc. all seems a bit mad, but it's crucial to keep your scripts flowing. As every script has its own development tempo, there's going to be a lot of overlap. We keep the script status straight on a whiteboard with four categories carved out.
"First Base: story idea to be broken
Second Base: broken into scenes/sequences
Third Base: writer outlining
Home Run: writer out to script"
The scripts move through this cycle at their own pace. One story fell into place in one day. Some have been hammered out over two weeks. Some will stall somewhere, stranded on base.
Right then, that brings us to the end of Week 5. Even leaving out the arbitration I'm embroiled in because somebody out there doesn't want to share their $4.58 cable MOW residual check, it's been a bit busy. As always drop any questions you have inthe Comments, and I'll do my best to give you a constructive answer in the next week's post. Let's see what I missed from last time ...
Michael: Is it net-acceptable yet to write a crossover fanfic where the female characters of Leverage get it on with Boomer from BSG and Claire from Heroes? Let me know so I can set aside some time to work on it.
Throw in Torchwood -- but the 1918 version - and I'd say you have an obligation, sirah.
Have I told my fanfic story? It involves Michelle Forbes and Warren Ellis and booze ... hmm next time if I have't already.
Jason Mitchelitch: " I mean, come on, what sentient being can ride in a Hummer limo and not be cognizant of their karmic debt?"
Is this really such a rare thing out there? I feel like I see them all the time. Of course, I'm from Northern VA, where hummer limos are what the rich kids take to the prom. I imagine there are a fleet of them in employ in Dallas, TX at any given time, as well.
Yes. Some rich kids do take them to the prom. And those rich kids are douchebags. Don't make me break out the Venn Diagram.
Mr. Glenn (spouse of baby writer): I say YES to the video blog idea. Then I can see my "sugar momma" all day!
Don't pull your FLDS cult discipline crap on my show, mister. She's out from your Svengali influence in the room and it will continue to be a safe place!
Ahhh, newlyweds.
I hope to have a few interim posts up this week. Take care, all. It's getting a bit freaky out there ...
* Oddly, this is the central idea of the movie Wonder Boys, which I didnt see until years after I'd already cooked up my half-assed theory. Great movie, by the way.
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