Slight change of plans. I billed this installment last week as “A Unit Of Entertainment”—the importance of building a conflict and a resolution into every chapter of your serial fiction, and some tips on how—but that post’s turning into a term paper, plus I want to embed some examples from a specific story, so as soon as I wrestle the word count down and get clearance to reproduce a short script I did for a friend’s upcoming book, we’ll tackle that one.Probably next week.
In the meantime, this week’s post was cued by a question from a longtime listener/first-time caller.Christine asks: “I often overdo captions, probably because the theatre bug always makes me want to monologue, and captions can be a monologue broken up over corroborating or subverting images. What are the ideal ways to use a caption as a character-revealing and/or story-telling device in a short or long comic?”
This is an awesome question, because answering it gives me license to rant about my least-favorite narrative device in modern comics: multiple narration. You might want to put on a helmet for this. But first, let’s address Christine’s questions more directly.
Captions can be a great character-revealing device when they are used sparingly. First-person narrative captions, in particular, are a great way of letting us into the characters’ heads. But—as I keep insisting—comics is a visual medium. That means the writer has to be careful not to overuse captions in lieu of showing us the story. I wrote THE FLASH for DC for ten years using captions in the “first person immediate” tense, but that was a character choice—it made sense to me that the fastest man alive would be telling his stories in the moment. The danger was always the temptation to tell more than show. It’s deceptively, temptingly easy for a writer to overwrite captions because they’re generally the easiest part of scripting (it's so much easier to write monologue than dialogue). But the comics page is all about balance—words and images working in tandem to tell a story with depth and immediacy that that neither can accomplish alone.
Here are my pocket guidelines about caption use:
One: Err on the side of paucity. You really don’t want to have more than about twenty words in a caption, max—in script terms, no more than two lines of type across the page. (This applies to word balloons, as well, btw.) Any more than that runs the risk of creating a big block of type that’s just wearisome to read. And four of those in one panel and eleven of those on one page exhausts the reader. Don't make each page a chore.
Two: Always be aware that the caption creates a distance from the story that word balloons and thought balloons do not, same as v/o narration creates a distance in film. If there’s something about your story that demands that distance, go to it. But always ask yourself if dialogue might be a better way to immerse your reader more fully into the story.
Three, and most important: Find ONE VOICE for your captions. ONE.If your captions are third-person, stay with that. If they’re first-person, find ONE narrator and stick with him or her. Do not cross the streams. Do not interrupt the reader by confusing him as to who’s talking. And for the love of God, American superhero comics, stop having five different characters narrating a scene when all I, the reader, have to differentiate their voices is caption color. This has gotta stop. Frank Miller introduced multiple narration to mainstream comics twenty years ago with BATMAN: YEAR ONE, which was narrated half by Bruce Wayne (in scratchy, handwritten journal-entry captions) and Gordon (in faux-typewriting font captions). It worked then because it was fresh and exciting and the two voices and two caption styles were radically distinct. Now it is old, tired, and easy, and as storytelling tricks go it runs the risk of creating more confusion than insight.
(This makes my head hurt worse than anything in comics today: This month’s issue of Superteam X is tag-team narrated by everyone on the team plus their android butler, and immediately, I’m lost in a narrative where the voices are all the same but I’m supposed to know—and remember from panel to panel and page to page—that all the red captions are Team Leader’s, all the orange ones are Spunky Sidekick’s, all the blue ones are Plucky Speedster’s, etc. I’m not talking about a Rashomon set-up where Each Hero says to the group, “Okay, here’s what I think happened” and then we flash back to three pages that are clearly narrated from that particular POV. I’m talking about—I am not making this up—coming across an eight-page fight sequence with so many heroes narrating it that they ran out of colors. Martial Artist’s captions were medium-blue, Subatomic Guy’s captions were dark blue, everyone all sounded the exact same anyway, and the writer got to clock out at two-thirty rather than actually have to put some effort into integrating words and pictures. Multiple narration is very hard to do well and not for beginners.)
As in TV or film or the stage, comics captions/comics narration can be used ironically, can be used to reveal character, can be used to artfully step over the dull stuff...but they should work with the story you’re telling, not in isolation. Balance, balance, balance.
Ah, Stork Job. You started as the most depressing writers' room day ever -- "Hey, let's research Eastern European orphanage scams" -- and turned into our classic Mission: Impossible homage. This is the fun of doing Leverage. Bank Robbery bottle show, high-rise rappelling, classic Sting horse race heist, saving a church ... now going to Belgrade and finding a missing boy while butting heads with arms dealers. It's our little movie every week; sometimes crime-y and sometimes action-y.
Although I always cite late 60's TV as the model for the show, my Dad recently pointed out that I spent a great deal of my youth consuming the old Bantam Doc Savages from my Grandfather's cabin. Once you look at the Lester Dent master pulp fiction plot I internalized at age 12, I think we can safely say -- we're writing pulp here, people. Juicy, old school pulp.
This episode has one of my favorite scenes of the year in it, but it's spoilery, so we'll talk about it next week. The writer of the episode, Albert Kim, is a pretty great amateur photographer, although not quite as sharp as his wife Jennie. So, instead of my blathering let's look at spiffy backstage photos -- like the one above, showing first-time director Marc Roskin going over the script with Tim. Yes, Tim's hair is funny. There's a reason. Now, what else do we have in here (all pictures reveal a high-res version when clicked)...
The episode is very Beth-centric, by the way. Oh, and those weren't her parents who lived in that house she blew up. Now whether those nasty abusive people were still in there or not ... choose the answer that you like. We're never, ever going to tell you everything about these characters. For example, you have no idea exactly who Sophie was married to at age 17, do you? Or why when Eliot said "I don't like guns" in the pilot, he added "... you know that." to Nate. Why would Nate know that?
Let's see -- writer Albert Kim enjoying the thrill of the Steadicam under the expert guidance of our A Camera Operator, the legendary Gary Camp.
Hmm ... I can't show you a picture of Gina in her wardrobe for this episode, not only because it's too spoilery, but too mind-shatteringly ... sure, Moffat got her kit off. We're the ones who put her in boots and ... anyway, here's a lovely one of the gals instead:
Who else is doing this?
Nobody, sir. And finally -- "What is Howl Force?"
I cannot tell you. You are not ready for the soul-shredding truth behind Howl Force!
For those keeping track at home, this is actually Albert's second script of the year, which shot around sixth or seventh for the production cycle. His first script was the second episode shot, The Snow Job, which airs soonish. It'll be interesting to see Snow Job in that context. We were definitely still hacking out what the show exactly was at that point, and it's a much more contained crime/con game than later episodes. Big fun fact for that episode -- that actually is how you fake out an MRI.
Right, enough pimpage, let's get to those questions from last time. Spoilers now, because you can get all the episodes from iTunes and Amazon VOD.
Antonia:So are there any behind the scenes pics of whatever DB did to, how did you phrase it? Something about steamy?
Weirdly, that's the one episode I don't have pics from. Personally, I didn't get it. Apparently, though, chicks dig DB Sweeney s a tormented priest fighting to save a church with his fists and his heart. *shrugs*
Richard Jensen:Point the Second: "Toe pick"? (Puzzled look?)
From The Cutting Edge. Have your wife or girlfriend expain. I assure you she can.
Michael:'m curious to see if you got any right wing hate mail for the episode that portrayed security contractors in Iraq as greedy, corrupt and violent.
There was a bit of a kaffuffle on the TNT boards about the reservist health care isssue, but they were quickly shut down by actual veterans showing up and saying "Yeah, that's really happening." The sad thing is, a lot of the people who posted were talking about how there are all these great programs taking care of soldiers after combat. Which is true, but like all programs conceived by fallible humans and run by the government, people fall through the cracks. A lot of Americans just don't want to wrap their head round the fact that when it comes to the men and women who serve this country, we have to try harder, and saying were not a hundred percent there is somehow implying that we don't care, we're bad, the country is bad, blah blah blah. Policies are instruments of governments, which are run by men, who are elected by the people. The entire point of the goddam country is that these men are not special. Criticism of any policy or any of those men is not inherently unpatriotic. I hope that simple, binary way of looking at things is passing.
Oh, I'm sorry, the contractors? No, nobody had any problems with that.
Mike Cane:You mentioned Hardison footage cut out of Miracle. Was it actually shot? I hope you're saving all those bits.
That, and how Parker got the FBI car in Bank Shot, and a few others. Sadly, when we're cutting for time the stand-alone flashbacks are the first things to go. They'll show up on the DVD's.
Maya:Reading about all the magic that is done with the green screen shots I was wondering if the actors really are looking at what the audience sees on the six plasma screen TVs when they're filming all those conference room scenes.
About eighty percent of the time they're looking at the actual video playback of imagery, the other twenty green-screen. We usually only green-screen those shots when the episode requires images that are shot out of order, or if the playback hinks up the actors' timing.
Casey: So what was your major reference source for the cons as far as books or docs go? And which was your favorite?
We've got the reading list around here somewhere ... ugh, too late in the evening for me to dig it up. Start here and branch out, you can't go wrong. We wound up with a bookshelf of criminal biographies, tech hacking manuals, and the like we took pieces from as they amused us.
rrwood:One of the greatest challenges you, as the creator/writer, face in creating episodic television is the fact that we, the audience, know that things are always going to work out-- that the hero is always going to be back next week, and that deep, fundamental changes to the formula of the show are not going to happen. This means that the easiest tools you'd use to crank up the dramatic tension in say, a movie, are locked up and off limits to you, and you guys have to work your butts off to keep us interested. And in addition to the can't-kill-the-heroes straight-jacket, you guys have a number of other pretty obvious restrictions, given the nature of the show ...
Which is why all TV shows are really about the evolution of the characters' relationships. You don't know how that's going to turn out. Hell, Nate and Sophie wound up unspooling differently than we anticipated.
That said, the pulp model applies. We want you to be hooked enough on how they'll solve THIS problem that just popped up, and then the next ten minutes later ... our complications are varied enough, too -- not a medical mystery or straight crime procedural -- that at the very least the obstacles probably aren't ones you've seen before. Commenter kinesys actually answered this question pretty well in the original Comments.
Kathryn: One question about The Bank Job (based on the sneek peak): Elmore and Leonard? Was that a nod to the author, because that was my first thought when I heard the names. But then, being a Supernatural fan and the fact they use aliases based on rock music performers, I may just be trained to think that way.
Hardison chooses the aliases for all the fake ID's they have. They tend to have some significance to the heist at hand.
gwangung:Ha. Then you'd love a friend of mine's theatre in New York. He specializes in battle choreography theatre; every single one of his shows features multiple battles (10, 12, 15 at a time), spanning all sorts of disciplines. Why, yes, he also does shows for the NY Comic Con. Why yes, he almost always features female protagonists (dressed in skin tights, very popular with said Comic Con). One show was a Shakespearean zombie/kung fu pastiche....
Personally I disapprove -- aw hell, just post the damn website address.
Tal:Do you ever wish you had more time to devote, or the budget to devote existing time to different cons? Because some of the cons that seemed really interesting to me (getting the assistant to confess, modifying the text of a Congressional bill) seemed tossed off as asides.
Every week, kiddo. Every week. 42:30 is a bitch. I think by about halfway through the season, we finally found the right balance.
Daiv: Am i mistaken? Or is that a fridge full of Jones Soda (with Real Sugar) that Elliot is pulling from in the beginning? (though he clearly did not get a bottle of Soda).
Hardison has a thing for orange soda. Jones was nice enough to provide some delicious beverages. Everyone wins.
Anonymous:Love the show -- it's definitely my current favourite! Had a question though -- who pulled the switch with the pizza box and the briefcase at the end of 'The Bank Job'? Hardison was talking to the judge the whole time, Nate was shot, Sophie was tending to Nate ...
That's just how good they are.
Yes, that's the answer. Now walk away.
Seriously, though, that's both one of the bits cut for time, and one of the times when the physical layout of the bank, didn't match exactly what was needed for one of the switch moves (the counter is on the wrong side of the actors) . So sometimes, you let this stuff go. We had a similar issue in The Snow Job and even Two Horse had a bit which was much more convoluted and involved the outside walls of the entire stables, not stalls. Choreography on location sometimes just doesn't want to cooperate.
R.A Porter: (Bank Shot) was my favorite episode to date, with great scene chewing from Michael O'Neill.
He's a villain, baby. With a skinny tie! Seriously, this episode was pitched as "This is our Western." Michael absolutely nailed the big Western villain tone.
EmanG:OK, not a flame but a serious question. Why does Burn Notice get to keep shooting in Miami yet Leverage has to move away from Chicago to LA? I may be in AZ these days but I'm still a firm believer in/member of the Chicago production scene and I know that this show would be that much better in a place other than LA. I want to see a regional cinema. Stories from and set in Cleveland, Portland, Chicago, Kansas City. LIfe doesn't just happen in LA, a place stories and characters go to die in the sameness. Damnit, give me a livable wage in Phoenix and a writer that can live on the same and I'll give you programming about not just the characters, but the place they live in. And too many of us live in places not at all like LA not to have our stories told, our visuals sold. To not to at least try to have that represented, no?
Unfortunately shooting in a city requires much more than just actors and the willingness to work there. A certain level of infrastructure is needed to do a series as opposed to a short, one off movie, and Chicago just didn't have what we needed at that short notice and on our tiny, tiny budget. The fact that we were all clustered around the Doghouse post-production facility is to a great degree what allowed us to shoot the show independently. Even for bigger studios, shooting in other cities is often prohibitively costly as far as physical production goes. Remember, TV shows bleed millions of dollars while they shoot, and recoup almost none of it until foreign sales and DVD. LA is streamlined to keep those costs down.
Burn Notice "gets" to keep shooting in Miami because they get heart-stopping tax breaks and have a very good relationship with the city. (One of my favorite shows, btw)
That said, one of the main points of this blog, and why I always write about emerging technologies, is that I firmly believe we're at the point where people can begin to make local entertainment of the same technical quality as we shoot in LA. We still need to lick distribution -- hell even we haven't licked that problem entirely -- but there's no reason, if you think your city has stories to tell, you can't go get cameras and tell those stories.
Richard:Whoops. Hit post too quickly. One question: How plausible do you guys want the cons to be? Because my only real problem with this episode is the miraculous image editing. As someone who uses Photoshop professionally ...
As plausible as the medicine in House. Take that as you will. :P
kinesys: Oh. And how long before we discover that Hardison knows this weird chick named "Aleph"?
You came thisclose to an episode this year where Aldis got romantically involved with Aimee Garcia. You know Aimee, right?
And the reason I knew Chris Kane was because he was the guy who came thisclose to playing Sean Ronin on GF.
I fully expect to see Leverage/GF crossover fanfic by Friday, people. Chop chop!
Robert Emerson:One of the things I like most about how Christian Kane's fight scenes are ... not linear, but multi-directional and adaptive.
This ep was the first time I dragged my heel across the dirt, laying out "the fight line", just like Jackie Chan explained to me ten years ago. Main axis for shooting and choreography, with alternate actions happening off-axis to open up the fight space.
Now granted, Charlie Brewer has been doing fights and blowing shit up since I was in a bad prom tux, but he tolerates my obsession and even occasionally listens to me. For which I am forever grateful.
Denita: I also have a question. Which episode does Sam Anderson (Holland Manners from Angel) appear in? A few of us on Whedonesque have been wondering.
The abovementioned The Snow Job. With Danny Strong, as the co-villain.
Whew. That was a helluva mailbag. A new open thread tomorrow, and thanks as always for watching and spreading the word.
Oh, and if we get more people on Facebook than Closer, their co-exec has to buy me dinner. So feel free to spam the bastards.
Use these Comments for Stork thread business. Comments and questions.
One of the most difficult things I've had to learn how to do as a professional writer is deal with criticism. It's a very important part of the job and is absolutely essential in making one a better writer. But if you have an ego as gargantuan, fragile, and as in desperate need of validation as mine (and honestly, don't ALL writers?), it can either send you dancing naked through the streets or leave you weeping in the fetal position while you nurse the remaining drops of whiskey from the bottle clutched in your trembling hands.
I think the trick to dealing with criticism (aside from growing a very thick, impenetrable skin) is to learn which criticisms to take to heart, which to accept with a grain of salt, and which to just simply ignore. At first, my default rubric for accepting or dismissing criticism was usually binary. If the criticism praised me and my work, I accepted it. If it didn't, I dismissed it. That approach made sleeping at night a bit easier, but it didn't help me use those criticisms to better my writing.
Criticism that comes from my colleagues is the kind I quite often take to heart. Editors, fellow writers, teachers, professors, etc. usually have an understanding of what makes writing and/or story telling good (this is not true in all cases, obviously--there are hacks, dolts, and saboteurs in every walk of life). But another thing these people all have in common, other than experience with the written word, is that they genuinely wish to see me succeed. They want to help me write the best story that I can by telling me how I can improve. I'm fortunate to have befriended a group of professional and freakishly talented writers who have no problem telling me where I'm falling short. And that's the key. They're honest. Brutally honest. Yes, it can be heartbreaking when a person whom you respect and whose work you admire tells you that your latest attempt is, well, garbage. The nice thing is that they're willing to tell you WHY it's garbage and help you find a solution. Mind you, not find the solution for you, but guide you to finding the solution yourself. Teaching a man to fish and all.
The criticisms that I find myself taking with a grain of salt are the ones that come from friends (outside of the entertainment industry) and family. Their opinions are almost always suspect. My parents' opinions seem to fall into one of two categories: 1) Lukewarm praise or 2) I still don't understand why you didn't go to medical school (holiday dinners tend to be a bit awkward--"Stop encouraging the boy and tell him he needs a backup plan!"--raise your hand if you feel my pain).
My friends, however, are always positive. Always. No matter how ass-tastic I know the story is. This is nice whenever I'm feeling down and need an ego boost, but if I ever need help improving a story, there isn't much they can offer other than unconditional support.
But the criticisms that I find most difficult to deal with are ones that come in the form of reviews. Especially BAD reviews (and I've had my fair share of them. My absolute favorite bad review came from a reader who said that money spent on my comic was money better spent on a taco--a TACO!). It's never fun having someone tell you that you are suck incarnate, no matter how colorful their criticism might be (I've been told time and time again to never EVER read reviews, but I just can't help myself).
The difficulty comes in determining if the review has specific issues with my writing or if it's just angry rambling over my epic suckitude. For the longest time I never even saw a difference. I was so blinded over not being viewed as the greatest writer in all of space/time that I sneered a "What do they know?" before drowning myself in a vat of cheap grain alcohol.
But over time I've learned to differentiate between reviews that are deliberately caustic and those that might have legitimate reasons for being negative. The caustic ones never have anything constructive to say nor any insights as to where the story may be falling short. So I try to ignore those zero-calorie rantings (which can be very hard as the urge to hunt some of the meaner people down and stuff their esophaguses to bursting with rat feces can be quite overwhelming). However, if a reviewer complains that my story is difficult to follow, I'll look to see if other readers have the same comment (even if those comments are nasty). If there are then it's most likely an issue of poor story telling and something I should keep in mind when writing my next story.
Granted, you can't write for critics. You have to write for yourself. But sometimes even the meanest comments can be illuminating and helpful in their own way. There's definitely a heirarchy when it comes to which criticisms carry more weight, but quite often the most painful criticisms are the most beneficial. Certainly not always, but it's a good idea to look for faults in your story before looking for them in the reader.
... Two out of two writers named Mark Waid and John Rogers agree: Young Sherlock Holmes is worth a second look.
... "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon." - The Last Good Kiss.
James Crumley was precisely as good as everyone says he was. I'm working through the back catalogue now.
... The 2008 Doctor Who Christmas Special was a helluva thing.
... Hey Far Cry 2: I'm an hour of my life into the game before I actually start playing, and then my character starts collapsing intermittently from malaria? Usually in the middle of firefights when I've managed to find something resembling fun? SCREW. YOU. I would like you to meet my friend Gears of War 2. He is not clever. His world is not a sandbox of delights. But he has given me an automatic rifle with a frikkin' chainsaw on it, and allows me to use it to my heart's content. And so I love him.
... And while we're talking gaming, spawning ahead of the Survivors and then jamming forklifts in the elevator door or at the end of the warehouse -- that is punk shit. Seriously.
... And while we're talking Survivors, that first season ending is precisely why I prefer closed season storytelling. Call out SPOILERS in the comments if you wish to discuss.
... I don't know why I didn't pimp it hard enough first time out, but Kevin Church and his 18 year old artist (Jesus Murphy) Michael Dake are doing great work in their serialized graphic novel Waimea. I love, love, love that clean art style. Which is my hint for them to make some sample images for bloggers to post. Ahem.
Welcome to the New Year. As my Grandfather used to toast: "May the best you've ever seen be the worst you ever see."
In the Comments: the book/comic/movie/TV show/song/band you kept annoying your friends with during 2008.
This week, we backtrack a little bit. The responses and e-mails I’ve been getting about these blog entries are very gratifying and very illuminating (also a little tame; I worry that I’ve apparently not yet said much worth arguing over. How does anyone post two thousand words about anything on the internet and not get flamed by someone?), but I realize, for the benefit of those newer to or outside the comics biz, the terminology is a touch “inside” and I maybe should have laid more groundwork about How A Comic Is Created. Hence:
Comics stories start, like most everything else dramatic including half the breakup conversations I have ever had, with a script. Unlike the standardized screenplay format, there is no existing template for comics scripts. That’s primarily because comics is a uniquely collaborative medium. Some writers are their own artists and work it all out in the drawing; some writers break their scripts down panel-by-panel with dialogue; some describe simply the basic plot to the artist sans final dialogue, then add the actual words and captions once the art’s produced. I’m sure that last method sounds spectacularly backwards to our film and TV brethren—like crafting and looping in dialogue only after a scene’s been shot—but that’s the way many of the most classic American comics of all time were done. More on why this is in a moment.
Once a script is approved by an editor, it’s given to an artist who’ll illustrate it on (almost always) Bristol board. Some artists do finished, ready-for-print work; sometimes, to speed production, they work only in pencil and an inker comes behind them to add textures and shading and background detail with India ink to get the art camera-ready. Whether he’s doing finished work or just pencilling, however, the artist turns the writer’s words into pictures, and that is much harder to do well than most writers realize. Not only does a comics artist have to be able to draw anything from a herd of horses to a county fair to a Betelgeusean starship, all the characters have to be consistently on-model in every shot without fail, the storytelling has to be clear, and the images have to be dynamic. Tall order; some of the most phenomenal illustrators I have ever met are wizards in their own areas of expertise but cannot begin to juggle the multiple tasks of a comics artist.
This is why I say that artists are not helper monkeys; they’re not in it to visualize “your” story, because it stopped being “your” story the moment you engaged in a collaborative medium. From here on in, it’s also the artist’s story, and if you’re working with an illustrator who’s any good at all, you as a writer have to tamp down any control-freak tendencies you suffer under and relax into the process. Chances are, the artist isn’t going to draw that submarine hatch exactly as you’d envisioned it or angle that close-up exactly the way you saw it in your head, but as long as the story’s being told effectively, that’s okay. That’s what artists are paid to do: bring their own storytelling skills to the table. If they’re experienced, then more often than not you can give them a detailed story outline with first-draft dialogue, then craft your final draft around their drawings to add nuance, characterization and exposition, and there’s going to be an energy to those pages that’s present because the artist felt engaged and not simply dictated to. I always put my phone number and e-mail address on the first page of every script I write and encourage my artist to call me with questions, observations, or insights, particularly if they read a scene description and can suggest a clearer or more dynamic way of illustrating it. Again, it’s not “my” story anymore; it’s OUR story, and at some near-future date, we’ll go into specific examples of how my artists have improved my scripts immeasurably.
Beyond that, coloring is its own craft. Most comics artists work strictly in black-and-white line drawings, then scan the physical artwork so gifted artists-slash-technicians-slash-specialists can use Photoshop (industry standard) to add color. The letterer likewise uses his computer (alas, the days of hand-lettering are all but gone) to lay in the captions, balloons, sound effects and titles using (by and large) Adobe Illustrator. The coloring and lettering, once an editor has reviewed them for errors and corrections, are then wed into high-res EPS files and FTP’d to the printer. A few weeks later, printed comics are in stores. Rinse, repeat.
There are as many ways of mixing and matching these creative components as are mathematically possible. There are plenty of artists who do their own coloring and/or lettering. There are letterers and colorists who also write. Or draw. There are no union lines to cross. What’s important is that everyone’s telling the story.
Still too inside? If so, forgive my lack of perspective and feel free to ask questions.
Well, let's crunch a recap and a preview post together over the holiday weekend. We'll answer some questions, and offer an open thread after this week's ep answering anything you ask in the Comments here.
Speaking of thise week's episode, it is not The Wedding Job. It's The Bank Shot Job, and the preview is here.
This was the first episode actually shot, written by our infamous co-producer Amy Berg based off a pitch from Dean Devlin and directed (in six frikkin' days) by Dean. Yes, it is a lovely little cosy shop we have, and yes, it is better than the old way of doing things. Anyway, it's way, waaaay outside the usual format, but it's one of the TNT suits' favorites, so it got bumped up in order. The ratings have been pretty promising, so they seem to want to really push while nobody else is producing new material.
The first-season-order-shuffle is always a mixed bag. On one hand, I think the chumminess the characters evince in Two Horse and Miracle -- two episodes written to be mid-season -- kind of jump the gun on the emotional arcs seen in this broadcast order. On the other hand, the Nate/Sophie scene in Miracle really belongs that early in the season, and I'm glad we got Sterling introduced early in Two Horse. Again, luckily, we wrote these intended to be primarily stand-alones, and the order pretty much settles in as intended for the rest of the season. Oh, yeah, and we got an entire season of 13 guaranteed. Unlike every other rookie show on the air. So, you know, aces.
For what it's worth, the upcoming Chris Kane fight scene in The Bank Shot Job is my favorite. Well, this and the one in Wedding. Oh, and Mile High ... never mind. (Yes, I have a fight obsession, to the point of being mocked by my own staff.) It was the first one we shot and it sets the standard for the rest of the season. The fight in Miracle is more of a conceptual fight. The gun-waistband bit in Miracle is stolen from ... ahh, it's too painful. Let's just say the movie will never be made, and we use all the parts of the animal.
One thing about Miracle: I've seen a few comments about how Hardison's morality seems to be ... flexible. It is indeed. He rationalizes like a sumbitch, and the one thing cut from Miracle I miss badly is the flashback to a teen Hardison with braces, rocking the Kid n' Play look, while he adapted his Nana's moral code to hacking the Bank of Iceland. Once the suited humans have returned to their offices in January, I may try to pry that footage loose. Also -- DB Sweeney gets the ladies steamy. The shoot had a constant background hum of whispered "toe pick!", strangled giggling, and the scurry of footsteps off to dark corners.
Big congratulations to Christine Boylan, also a staff writer, also her first produced script. Another East Coast Catholic like myself, she took a ridiculous amount of care on the sermon. Yes, we atheist sodomite Hollywood-types spent hours laboring over our episode about faith. I assure you, we ran right out and had some gay socialized medicine afterward.
Right, questions from the last post, and we'll tackle any from this post in the open-thread post for Tuesday. Bloody hell, that confused even me.
Mike Cane:>>>There are 116 green screen set replacement shots. OK, you just managed to con ME. I just watched my time-shifted copy two hours ago (working on pimpage post) and didn't notice ANYTHING like that. I can usually spot them too! Is this seamlessness due to: 1) HD vid? 2) Dir of Photo? Both?
Having Mark Franco, our visual effects ... honcho? Guru? Resident genius? ... available to come and call angles for the best greenscreens is the key, and Dave Connell of course has a major hand in it. Shooting digital makes a big difference in the workflow for vfx -- which I have Mark buttonholed to explain here on this site sometime soon. We have guys basically inventing ways to do quick 'n dirty greenscreen shots at Electric.
For example, the church in Miracle? Never more than half full with extras.
Alon: Only semi-on topic, but just FYI, I cannot get the episodes that are up on the TNT website to play. Every time I try, it crashes my browser, regardless of which one I try to use. When I first went to the page in Firefox, it said I needed a plug-in, so I downloaded and installed ...
and
Anonymous: commenting late on this, but: you talk at length at various points in your history about 4th Generation Media and so forth, but still, when I try the options listed by you of how to watch this show (which I want to watch) and also send some money in the direction of the people that made it, I have no chance to do so because I happen to live outside the US. Utter stupidity again. So we return to the age-old saying: piracy, the better choice, or, as in so many cases, the only choice.
And really, I _wanted_ to view it legally. I have no moral qualms about downloading something when I'm basically told: you live elsewhere, so fuck you.
First, piracy is wrong. Wroooong. Look, everyone currently reading my blog with a law degree who also works for one of the large corporations with whom I do regular business, piracy is wrong!
Well, fair points all, but this is the nature of evolutionary change. It's already a bit mad that we have no studio. Distribution comes with a whole other set of issues. TNT (rightfully) gets the streaming window, and it's up to their fine web humans to rock that out. They pay a license fee, and nicely enough broadcast and promote the hell out of us. The foreign sales network people demand their windows for broadcast, or they won't buy the series, which means that we'll take way, way longer to be in profit. Which will curtail our ability to make more wonderful TV shows. Television is cash flow, something Dean could explain to you in exruciating detail while dabbing the fine sweat from his forehead.
Basically, we're pushing the envelope, but we're beating one problem at a time. We got "how to make a TV show based out of one old dog hospital in East Hollywood" out of the way. Next up is "being utterly independent of the distribution chains television has relied on for the last fifty years. " But we'll get there.
Emily Blake:am enjoying the show and particularly Christian Kane and , but I was wondering something. If I remember correctly, Hustle also did a racing horse switch episode. Do you guys watch Hustle? Do you think about ways to prevent your stuff from being too similar or do you just do what you do and not worry about it?
I watched the first two season, and then bailed. (I met Adrian Lester on an unrelated project. Great guy.) A fair chunk of my staff has seen every season. We have killed a couple ideas because they did something similar on that show. But at some point you just shrug your shoulders and say "Every caper show is going to have a card game/horse race gag/Big store/etc etc." It's a bit like working on Without a Trace and wondering if your "The wife you thought was dead is actually the killer" crosses over with any of the CSI's or Law & Orders. There are genre conventions, but the shows have a different tone, gang make-up, a difference in the number of explosions (advantage: us), and moral center - they are, as far as I can tell, never helping anybody, while that's our raison d'etre.
Toxic Frog:Love the show - I just introduced it to my family (we're all fans of heist/con shows) and everyone involved approves. I do have some questions and comments, though: - How did you get Gina Bellman on board? You didn't talk much about the casting, and when Sophie was introduced both my parents went "Oh my god! Her!" and are now pestering me to find out.
There's a little behind the scenes on casting up at TNT now. Which, conveniently, discusses Gina...
cont'd: ... - My parents wish to inform you that the circular-track camerawork in the opening of the pilot made them nauseous, and that you should stop it :)
You hear that Dean? You're hurting innocent MOMMIES AND DADDIES!! (sorry, private joke)
Vicki:BTW, is anyone planning to sell those nifty "Leverage" latte mugs anywhere? I need to have one.
... hmmm. I wonder if I can finance my day players with tchockes ... we'll see.
Kid Sis:Wow. This is all getting very Star Trek convention. You going to start yelling at bloggers to get a life and move out of their mom's basement??
I'm going to let it run until I see the Comic-con booth for "The Black Kings" next to the Browncoats, where Nate/Sophie shippers start throwing punches at the Sophie/Parker slashers. Then and only then will we blow the ref whistle.
lummox: BTW Leverage is a pretty decent show. Once it's either out on DVD or there's some other way us non-Americans can buy it, I'll be happy to do so.
I hope I didn't give a false impression earlier -- it will be broadcast, and soon, in most countries. Within a few months, unless I'm high or mistaken. You shouldn't have to wait for the DVD's.
Rght then, that's the mailbag for now. Toss any Miracle-oriented , or hell any other questions, into the Comments, and we'll get to them next week. As always, thanks for watching, recapping, and forum-posting. In the modern television landscape, we can't do it without you.
As we drove up Route 1, Lovely Wife dialed Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' on the iPod. This is not a song on my usual playlist. I was enjoying the flashback to junior year until the third chorus arrived:
I Said You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' I Said You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' It's Too High To Get Over (Yeah, Yeah) Too Low To Get Under (Yeah, Yeah) You're Stuck In The Middle (Yeah, Yeah) And The Pain Is Thunder (Yeah, Yeah) It's Too High To Get Over (Yeah, Yeah) Too Low To Get Under (Yeah, Yeah) You're Stuck In The Middle (Yeah, Yeah) And The Pain Is Thunder (Yeah, Yeah) You're A Vegetable, You're A Vegetable Still They Hate You, You're A Vegetable You're Just A Buffet, You're A Vegetable They Eat Off Of You, You're A Vegetable (copyright Michael Jackson)
"... You're a Vegetable"?
I'm sorry, what?*
This has consumed me. Four days in the Big Sur mountains, and I cannot stop thinking about it. I was humming the tune as I watched deer frolic. All because of this chorus. Please, in the name of God, someone explain this. Or, at least, add your own bizarre lyrics in the Comments. Bonus points for the 80's factor.
*You'll note the recent Akon remake seems to lack the "vegetable factor."
If you’ve set your sights on writing an original novel or a prose piece, you can generally type to your heart’s content. There’s no hard-and-fast space limitation. American comics, on the other hand, tend to be 22 pages. It’s a totally arbitrary number; since their invention in the 1930s, comic book stories have been as long as a hundred pages and as short as one. In the early 1980s, industry leaders DC Comics and Marvel Comics, factoring profits versus creative costs, arrived at 22 as their standard page-count, and other companies settled in at about the same, give or take. (As the E-I-C at BOOM!, I allow 22 pages for first issues and 21 for ensuing issues, leaving room for a “what has come before” text recap after the opening scene.)
Twenty-two pages is not a lot of space. Believe me. Having written a bazillion comics, I still find myself more often than nine pages into a script and realizing to my horror that I’m only about a quarter of the way through the story I wanted to tell, and the next thing you know, I’m making fresh coffee and tearing up the floorboards to rewrite.
The best tools in a comic writer's toolbox serve the cause of Economic Storytelling. Your foremost task is to convey the maximum amount of story in the minimum amount of space. Don’t misunderstand; “story” is not the same as “plot,” and I’m in no way suggesting that every page you write be weighted down with a hundred lines of dialogue feeding me more exposition than I can possibly digest. But a plot, as I’m gonna presume you already know if you’re reading this, is simply what happens. A story takes a plot and adds emotion, timing, style and mood, and as loudly as I rail against comics that spend an entire page showing a character filling a glass from the kitchen faucet, I’d still rather read a story that was involving but breezy for 22 pages than one that was dense but dull and unmoving for eight.
Shorter comics stories are even more of a bitch to script. Eight pages, six...regardless of length, you still need to show me a conflict and a resolution or else it’s not a story, and there is no time to screw around. At BOOM!, I get a l-o-t of eight-page scripts that, for no good reason, burn up the entire first page with a slow zoom into a New York restaurant kitchen. This makes me homicidal. If your story is about a chef and geography is incidental, just show me the damn kitchen. Tick, tock. I love RESERVOIR DOGS, but if you handed me a comics script that began with four pages of gangsters debating the merits of Madonna, I would not only reject it, I would break your keyboard.
In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying (a) something I already know, (b) something that’s a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or (c) something I don’t need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft. Comics are expensive. Don’t make me resent the money I spend buying yours. Every single moment in your script must either move the story along or demonstrate something important about the characters—preferably both—and every panel that does neither is a sloppy waste of space. This is one of the reasons why Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ WATCHMEN is so revered; it’s a tour de force example of Economic Storytelling because there’s significance to every word and every image.
Truman Capote said that he was like a semantic Paganini, that he could just throw words up into the air and they would come down in the perfect way.
Must be nice, huh? Like most mortals, I toss my words into the air only to struggle with them for hours after they've tumbled haphazardly across the page. I guess that makes me more of a semantic Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Even so, I learned how to consistently write well. Not brilliantly, but well. I have a sense of rhythm, cadence, and can usually put words on paper in interesting ways. My high school teachers and college professors always told me so, so it had to be true ('cause they would never lie). So, armed with the confidence they instilled in me, I spent those nomadic years following my college graduation writing numerous short stories and one very epic, very unfinished, novel. Yet, no one wanted to publish them. I couldn't give them away. So what was the problem? I knew how to write, had a decent grasp of English grammar, and knew how to operate the spell check. So why the hell wouldn't anyone publish my stories?
It's because they weren't stories.
They were, as one kind editor told me, just book reports. There was nothing there. Every rejection slip I received (that wasn't a simple form letter) said the same thing: you can write, but you can't tell a story.
At the time, for the life of me, I thought that they they the same thing. I mean, aren't they? Isn't that what writing is, telling a story? Obviously, the answer is an emphatic "no." It would be like someone claiming to be an architect when all they know how to do is drive a nail into a board with only three hits of a hammer. A good skill to have, but that doesn't mean you can design a bridge.
Most of you might be thinking to yourselves, well, duh. But for me hearing this was like a slap to the face. It never even occurred to me that writing and story telling were two totally different things. But now that I knew that they were, I had to ask myself a very horrifying question: "Do I even know what a story IS?" Again, the answer was an emphatic "no." Turns out, that when it came to telling a story, I couldn't write my way out of a wet paper bag with a needle-sharp number two pencil. I mean, what is this "conflict" you speak of? You're telling me that all my stories have to have fist fights? I was clueless. All the things that go into making a story were nothing but vague, abstract concepts to me. All those years my teachers and professors were teaching me how to write, no one bothered to teach me how to tell a story.
Fortunately, I've had some wonderful and patient people sit down with me and explain the basic elements of story telling. Now, I won't go into what makes a story here because, honestly, I'm still learning myself and there are others much more qualified than I who can give you a better understanding (you're reading KFM, so chances are you've already got a head start). But it's just something to keep in mind when you're slaving over your world building or fine tuning the description of your antagonist's handlebar mustache. Good things in their own right, but is there a story? It doesn't matter how detailed and well-crafted your world is, if there's no story, no one will care.
In which we answer your questions. And I think it'll be Thursdays. Want to give Waid a whole day of posting to himself.
Let's see what's in the mailbag ...
Red Dawn: I tried to watch the production videos but it requires a windows PC. Any chance TNT will make your show more accessible to mac users?
Working on it. I have to admit, they must be pretty sick of my geekery by now. There is, however, now a YouTube Channel for the show now. As a matter of fact, the next sneak peek is up ...
... hmm, a bit more serious than our usual sneaks. More clown killing, less baptisms! I hope more will be up there soon.
Joshua James: If you've told us already, my apologies, but can you make Leverage scripts (those shot and shown) available for readers?
Working on it. People get tetchy about copyright and stuff.
Matt: Good episode, but I've got to ask: was there any hesitation about using the "stall number switch" so soon after the "container number fakeout" in the last episode? While the mechanics of the scam were a little different, they both rely on people's tendency to not quite remember physical locations if they're given a numerical identifier.
There was a lot of hesitation -- which is why a.) this episode was originally scheduled to be broadcast five eps after The Homecoming Job, and b.) that's not how the original scam worked.
Welcome to the realities of physical production of television. The original scam involved a much more complicated bit of business utilizing the outside of the stables/stalls. Once we got to production, we wound up getting our locations for a very limited amount of time, and therefore had to use the interiors, and adapt the scam to that reality.
That episode? We were on the track for precisely one day. There are 116 green screen set replacement shots.
Even funkier, this one was written and shot before Homecoming, so I was essentially raiding our own kitchen when I used a similar gag in that episode. Now, what's weird is, in the scripts the numbering doesn't seem to be a big deal at all, it's a pretty minor part of the scam. But when you hear numbers spoken aloud, and they're the focus of the shot, they resonate.
All to say we were nodding and saying: "Yeah, they kind of overlap, but it's not like they'll be broadcast right next to each other."
Sigh.
It's also a lesson we learned along the way -- the final scam is the one everybody remembers. In Homecoming, we had a.) a three-person pickpocketing gag and b.) voice-controlled lock gag after which we c.) conned the opponents into hating each other by d.) stealing a bill on the floor of Congress on the way to e.) revealing a money-laundering scam which we ended by f.) not stealing most of the money using a number/location trick and g.) framing the contractor and Congressman with their own security devices on the way to h.) delivering a truck full of money that appears empty.
This is why television is the most fun. Evolves as you shoot in ways a self-contained story just can't.
Commish: One question concerning Ep 2... I understand now the process of thought that led to using a private hospital for this gi-normous anonymous donation, but wouldn't it still seem fishy since they're housing a vet who was "accidentally" shot by the contractors who just publicly revealed that they were trying to launder billions?
DON'T STOP THE FUN TRAIN!
(NOTE: Tongue is firmly in cheek here. That's an inside joke in the writers' room.)
Wait. That didn't come out right ... Let's just move on.
Jim Kakalios: And I love Sterling. I am already looking forward to the season finale, as I know that there will be a huge triple con that will deal with the crisis du jour, and finally resolve the Sterling issue simultaneously.
You don't resolve Mark Sheppard. Can you resolve the wind?
What I'm trying to say is, I seem to be stuck with the bastard until Javi writes another show and takes him off my hands.
adc1966: I hope you will make a recurring thing out of Parker's bizarre childhood memory flashbacks. All while holding that big stuffed bunny. And more Parker+Sophie. That scene last week with the zip-line in the stairwell was adorable. :-)
There's more Young Parker kicking around. And Mr. Bunny is still out there. Waiting.
Parker and Sophie do have tons o'fun coming up, although they tend to be working in different locations in the scam because of their different skillsets. That said: Hey, look Ma, we pass the Bechdel test!
Mary Sue: Rogers! When can those of us with no desire to hook up to the cable TV cash drain get to watch the show?! I'm chomping at the bit over here!
Available on Amazon the day after, and iTunes a week after that.
Joe Helfrich: Got to admit, this was my least favorite episode so far. It just felt like it tried to cram too much--horse racing information, character backstory, and a complicated con--into 44 minutes. Plus, until the tag, Badger (he will always be Badger) didn't seem the sort to have a long term plan. Before that, he just seemed like a petty guy who wanted to screw with his old co-worker. Did you write the tag, Rogers? Because it was a completely different feel.
Runtime's actually 42:30, sport. Welcome to the new age of television. And yes, sadly, there's a bit more Sterling plotting going on in the original script ... somewhere in the other ten pages that were cut. We definitely took a big chunk of the year figuring out how to pace these things. The kids wrote the tag, if I remember correctly.
someBrad: Did you film THJ in an actual hospital? What was the process to decide what medical equipment to use, if it wasn't just "We're in the hospital so we use what they have"?
That's a real hospital in Long Beach, in a real rehab room, with real vets in rehab. Jake's the only one in the scene who's not actually in rehab.
Keith: Gina Bellman does a perfect southern accent, too. That's not easy. Being from the South, I can pick out a fake yokel accent a mile away and hers was so good, I wanted to ask her what church her family went to.**If you're from GA, you get this. If not, well. it's not that important.
Weirdly this was the one where Gina was worried. Chris was around for some pointers, and we soon discovered the linguistic links between Southern and British accents ... as usual, she worried for no reason. Even got the Mandarin down, too.
Ugh, post-production calls. Thanks for the questions. I'm on vacation for a few days, so bug Waid and Mike, and I'll see you next Tuesday.
Novelist walks into my office. Relatively famous, not as famous as Aforementioned Screenwriter, but a multiple award-winner in his genre nonetheless. And he’s immediately on my bad side because the comics script he has handed me is the dullest thing I have ever read, and I used to be a legal secretary.
It isn’t a bad story. To the contrary, the conflict is clear and intriguing and the plot moves along at a good clip. But the Ambien on the page comes from the fact that the writer’s a novelist. He’s accustomed to introducing his characters by writing hundreds of riveting words describing how they view the world, what their hopes and dreams are, and what’s going on inside their heads from moment to moment. But there is no room for that on the comic book page, so he just left it out, and now I’m holding a script starring a bunch of plot puppets who are indistinguishable from one another, who don’t reveal themselves through action, and who are interesting only in the writer's head.
Comics is a visual medium. That means the writer has to find a way to externalize the conflicts--literally or, with practice, symbolically--and not leave them locked inside the protagonist. I’m not saying punches have to be thrown--not every comic is or need be about Spider-Man--but if comics is the avenue through which you want to tell your story, it had better be a story that is, in its telling, visually interesting. If it isn't, you have chosen the wrong medium. I have been in awe of E.M. Forster's talent since I was fourteen, but I can imagine nothing more tedious than a graphic novelization of A Room With a View.
It sounds absurdly obvious, but I am so continually confronted with writers so in love with their dialogue that I'm going to say it again: comics is a visual medium. Bring every important character on stage by having him or her doing something--spinning a basketball, operating an electron microscope, taking a fistful of vitamins, anything--that instantly tells us something about them. When there's conflict, find a way to make it visual. Witty dialogue and clever repartee are priceless, yes, but probably more than in any other medium outside of, oh, mime, comics depends on the writer showing rather than telling. So give your artist interesting things to draw. Can this dramatic revelation happen in, say, a planetarium rather than in a hotel room? Can this confrontation happen on a Ferris wheel instead of a generic alleyway? Can these characters be acting rather than reacting?
One last time: comics is a visual medium. Use that. I am a huge, huge believer in page one of any comics story of any genre having an unusual image that will grab the reader and draw him in. It doesn’t have to be “super-heroey”--in the right story, a shot of a woman looming over an empty crib has just as much impact as, I don’t know, Superman punching a meteor--but by now, any comic book that opens up with four pages of guys in business suits standing around a generic boardroom is just death. D-E-A-T-H. Every issue, we have twenty-two pages, give or take, to tell readers a story that they paid good money for, so as a writer, I get very nervous opening with (or, once I’ve opened, spending more than about two pages on) something you can see on TV every day for free, without my help. Always think visually. Always, always look at your scenes once they’re drafted and ask yourself if they have more visual impact than two guys in business suits standing around a boardroom. If not, rewrite.
Chris Downey and I were marveling over the Madoff Ponzi scheme yesterday. Insanely, the biggest financial fraud of the decade is something we never would have used in the show, because it was too damn easy. A frikkin' Ponzi scheme? Our audience would figure that out in a second. The sad thing is, for every unbelievable con we pull, there's a real world parallel that we'd never have the stones to try to get past an audience.
Note that it's always "Ponzi scheme" as opposed to "Ponzi plan" or "Ponzi con.". No idea why.
Mike's recent post on "where do you get your ideas" gave me the idea -- my, that's recursive -- to do a short post on broadcast day about the genesis of that episode's crime plot. Not the overall inspirations for the show, but the eps. I won't go into anything not revealed in "next Week's Scenes" or the teasers on TNT.
To catch up briefly --
"The Nigerian Job" -- was inspired by a magazine article on Ryan Air and my own personal hatred of how every con show does The Sting con. If you look at the ending of the pilot, it specifically refutes that choice. The innocent bystanders really are innocent bystanders, and the cops really are cops. It's a con payoff that depends on everyone actually being who they claim to be. The law that Victor Dubenich is arrested for breaking is real, down to the relevant language. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is a bitch.
"The Homecoming Job" -- This sort of moved backwards as Dean and I broke the story. We wanted to do something a little bigger for the second episode, with some serious heavy opponents. I had the Vanity Fair article about the missing billions in my notes for a while, and the image of pallets -- pallets -- of cash somehow resonated with my teenage job in a supermarket, unloading pallets of groceries. It was a very tangible sense memory that hooked me into the idea.
The scarcity of cash came from another old aborted project, although I wound using an old 2000 estimate of $500 in cash for each American as opposed to the current estimate of a couple thousand dollars per American. Bizzarely, that research paper is by the father of David Feige, creator of TNT's Raising the Bar. It's a weird world.
Corrupt Congressmen plus contractors gave us two pretty big, unstoppable power centers to throw at our protagonists for their maiden voyage. The rise of small-amount donors in modern elections gave us a good intersection for cash + Congressmen, which brought us to our money-laundering scam. The hopper is real, too. Although I was so proud of us discovering that through research, only to have everyone I told about it answer back, "Yeah, I saw that in Legally Blonde 2."
The interesting thing was, we got to the victims last. We wanted someone who'd been in Iraq who could have seen the wrongdoing, who'd then been shot up by the contractors ... okay, wounded vet. Seeing as veterans' care is a personal priority of Dean and I, we dove in. Our representative corporal has a need, our guys are going to fill it.
But that led to a whole different set of writing hurdles. The Walter Reed scandal is the most notorious story of soldiers not getting the care they needed -- but (what most people get wrong) Walter Reed is an Army medical center. There was no way we could fiddle a big payout to that sort of infrastracture.
The next logical choice is a Veteran's Affairs Medical Center. Problem again -- the VA system is maybe the best medical system in America. They've done wonders dealing with the structural challenges of this war, despite not getting nearly enough funding. If we were going for versimiltude, a VA hospital would just be, well, wrong. If Corporal Perry is at a VAMC, he's getting the best health care in the country.
At this point we were considered jettisoning that version of the story, but I reached out to some KFM readers who are either serving or just back, and some family members. That's when the challenges of the reservists dealing with private hospitals came up. There are serious transportation issues for some reservists when it comes to getting to their nearest VAMC for long term care. Not the fault of the VA, of course, but an unexpected result of having so many National Guard people serving. The Army pays benefits to private hospitals for injured soldiers who can't get to a VAMC -- but those benefits run out after X months, depending on the case, and the difference between what it costs the hospital to do this sort of rehab, and what the VA can do it for, is substantial. Despite some great programs being place being run by truly dedicated humans -- like any system designed by man and administered by the government, some people were falling through the cracks.
Ahh. A private hospital. The sort of place that can take a large, anonymous donation. Maybe not as large as we were planning on making in the script ... but close enough, and relevant to the real-world problems of our representative victim. Done, sir.
All that to create the framework for a good old-fashioned "eff" "uh" "keh" joke. I can't even imagine the crap House writers go through.
"The Two Horse Job" -- Which leads us to tonight's episode, written by the Wonder Twins, Rieder and Glenn. Unlike a lot of the episodes this one didn't start with a villain or vic, it started with the setting. Melissa Glenn is a horse-racing enthusiast -- well just a general sports enthusiast, actually, as are Albert Kim and Chris Downey, who were both at earlier points of their careers sports writers. It gets very jock-y down that end of the long writer's table. My end is all Doctor Who and WoW, so we balance out.
While R&G went and lived at a race track and hung with a trainer for a week, the Room pulled an old scam -- which you'll hear explained tonight -- off the wall of ideas. When they brought back their research and laid out the ins and outs and the revenue streams of horse-racing and breeding, we glued the two concepts together. R&G went off and knocked it out of the park. First produced script, too.
This is one of my favorite episodes because it does the job most of my TV favorite shows do: it takes the audience into a world they probably don't know much about, explains the intricacies of that world, and then exploits its pecularities for the plot.
It's also a favorite because it's the first appearance of Mark Sheppard as Nate's old rival Sterling. Some people, after the pilot, wondered how we would challenge such a (ridiculously) talented bunch of characters. Well, we wondered too. The recurring role of Sterling, the guy even Nate worries about, was introduced for just this purpose. And hey, when you've got a character required to deliver two and a half-page speeches in a mesmerising manner, you choices in television are essentially a.) Mark Sheppard and b.) Mark Sheppard.
This episode really lays out the template for the show going forward (although it wasn't written first. But that's the story for another time ...) -- They start with Plan A. Plan A goes wrong/requires Con B. Con B doesn't quite work out, or instead is really Con C disguised as Con B. At the same time this keeps our guys on their toes, it also set up one of the primary challenges of developing the show: we need to eat two or three heists/con jobs a show. Never mind the pain in the ass the five act structure is for this type of show.
That said -- man, is this a fun job. In the Comments, any process questions about the last few episodes, or your feedback on tonight's after you see it.
(NOTE: This is damned hard to do this without spoilers. Maybe we'll move it to the Wednesdays after)
I find Dawkins a bit of an asshat generally, but always a pleasure watching Derren Brown. Dawkins, for his documentary, interviewing Brown in six parts (h/t io9):
All six parts are on YouTube. My favorite Brown bit is actually this one:
I was 13 when I knew I wanted to be a writer. My dad had just finished reading Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords trilogy and passed it on to me, thinking that I might enjoy it. So while I was shuttered inside the house during a long Chistmas break, I sat by our wood burning stove and read all three books in the space of a week (for a hyperactive teen with ADD, three books in a week was a miracle).
It was the first time I had ever really noticed the magic of language and how clever turns of phrases made interesting and exciting scenes that much more magical. It was as if a light bulb inside my head was slowly beginning to glow. But it wasn't until I read the very last sentence of the third and final book of the trilogy that the light truly came on and it all finally fell into place. The first sentence of the first book and the last sentence of the last book were the same.
I remember grabbing the first book and opening it up to the first page and holding the two books side by side, examing the words. They were practically identical, yet the journey from point A to point B had given them completely different meanings. It was such a profound moment that I knew in that instant that THAT was what I wanted to do. I wanted to affect people the same way Saberhagen had affected me.
And I like to think that someday I will.
Yet of all the writing and storytelling techniques I've learned since that day, the concept of bookending still fascinates me the most. I always get excited when I see it. Alan Moore used it in Watchmen with the drop of red on the smiley face and again in "The Killing Joke" with the drops of rain falling in a dark puddle. The images or words may be identical, yet it's the story in between that gives each a separate meaning. It's the story that defines them (and I'm sure there are numerous other examples out there other than just these three).
As for my own writing, I've only used it once, with Fall of Cthulhu. Since it has been my longest ongoing series, I thought it fitting to use bookending as an homage to the story that infected me with the writing bug.
Which makes me curious about my fellow monkeys. At what moment did you know that you wanted to be a writer (or a musician, accountant, whatever)? Let's hear about it in commments.
Hello all. My name is Michael Alan Nelson and, as John mentioned in an earlier post, I'm the writer of the comic series Fall of Cthulhu, the upcoming Hexed, and the online novel Dingo (it's free so go ahead and give it a look). He has been kind enough to let me play here in his dojo and share some of my thoughts on writing, tech, and anything else that may be of interest to my fellow monkeys.
I figured I'd start out by discussing one of the most common questions I'm asked at conventions, during interviews, and even from beginning writers looking for some inspiration.
Where do you get your ideas?
It's a damn good question. I even find myself asking me that question from time to time. Where DO I get my ideas? I just wish I had a damn good answer, or at least a better one. Unfortunately, the only answer I have is EVERYWHERE.
Not exactly a mystical pool of creative enlightenment, is it? Sorry. But it's true. Don't get me wrong, there are tiny hidden vaults filled with the seeds of ideas scattered about that can jump start my imagination when I'm facing a wall, but I prefer to grab my ideas from what I see around me.
For example, the idea for the scene at the end of Dominion came to me while I was walking through downtown LA. Across the street were two well dressed men having a heated argument. Nothing violent, but they were clearly angry with each other. They continued their argument as they walked through the front doors of a nearby office building, their arms and hands waving in angry gestures as they disappeared behind the glass. As I stood at an intersection waiting to cross the street, I kept glancing toward the upper floors of that office building half expecting to see them in one of the upper offices still shouting at one another. I remember thinking that it wouldn't surprise me if the two men came to blows and tackled each other through the window, so angry with each other that they'd still continue their fist fight as they plummeted down the side of the building.
Then the idea of two men fighting and falling, completely oblivious to their impending doom, got stuck in my head. It was then just a matter of finding a place to use it.
I've come to learn over the past few years what most writers probably already instinctively know; much of writing is about observation. Ideas usually don't come to us in a vacuum. However, writing can be a very solitary existence so it's very important to get out of the house, interact with people, see and experience new things. You have a much better chance of generating ideas when you aren't staring at the same four walls day after day.
This past week, I visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology. It is...interesting (and admittedly, a little horrifying). The first display I saw when I walked in was a stuffed fox head accompanied by a recording of its howl. In and of itself, this wasn't terribly creepy (your definition of creepy may vary). But underneath the howls, I heard another recording coming from the far side of the room. It was a woman's voice saying, over and over again...
I was unfamiliar with bee lore so I had never heard this before. And even now that I do know the origin of the saying, I still find it unsettling. Which makes it a perfect idea. It's a good bet that you'll be seeing some iteration of this in one of my future stories.
Usually, though, ideas don't come to me quite so dramatically. I also find that when I do think of an idea while I'm out and about, I often forget it by the time I get home. So I've started carrying a moleskine notebook with me everywhere I go. That might not work for everyone, but I highly recommend keeping some sort of writing device with you at all times: notebook, cellphone, blackberry, etc. Anything that you find interesting: a line of overheard conversation, a sketch of an eye-catching view, write it down. It's a good idea to build your own warehouse of wonderful things. You may not use everything you collect or use it in the way you had originally planned, but it's nice to have a resevoir of ideas at the ready when you need them.
Hollywood's favorite unproduced screenplays of 2008 are listed, including, to my extreme delight --
... THE HOW-TO GUIDE FOR SAVING THE WORLD by BenDavid Grabinski “A loser discovers a book on how to stop an alien invasion and is thrust into action to stop a real one.”
BenDavid is another up-from-the-fandom screenwriter who I originally met in the blogworld. He's from Iowa. Iowa.
-- Episodes of Leverage will stream on TNT eventually, and be available for download on both Amazon (which means Tivo purchasing!) and iTunes within days. I believe the premiere's already up on Amazon. No word on Hulu or XBox.
-- Michael Alan Nelson will be joining us as our third team blogger. He's been writing the excellent Fall of Cthulhu series for BOOM!. I'm genuinely a fan of Nelson's work, and the recent trades of his run are well worth picking up. (Love the size of the BOOM! trades, btw). His new book Hexed manages to somehow be Juno meets Hellblazer meets Epic Win. I figured a horror/indie writer is a nice way to round out the team.
--Leno to 10pm? There goes another 40 or so writing jobs. The economics make sense, but if NBC was going to focus so much on talk shows, then I personally would rather see Chelsea Handler take The Late Show than Jimmy Fallon. Break up the White Dude Chorus Line a little, fer chrissake. The Lovely Wife introduced me to Chelsea's show last year, and now I'm hooked. But we both agree -- cut the bangs, Chelsea.
