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Ground Hog Day’s Scribe Danny Rubin’s 10 Rules for Screenwriters

Screenwriter Danny Rubin shares his 10 rules for screenwriters.

The comfort of rules can be very important to a writer’s motivation because telling them the truth (there are no rules and nobody knows anything) is for most people not useful and a little intimidating.

Here’s my list. It’s designed for screenwriters writing screenplays, but all kinds of dramatic fiction and nonfiction can be invigorated by the same rules. Or not. Equally.

1. Writers write. And rewrite.

Everybody’s got a great idea for a screenplay. “All I need is someone to write it down for me,” says my neighbor, my barber, my UPS guy. Nope. Coming up with great ideas is part of the job, and I certainly spend a portion of my “writing” time on the sofa and in the shower; but most ideas tend to look fully formed and perfect until you actually try to write them down.

If you are a writer, you are actually writing things down. And then we rewrite. Getting to the end of a 120-page feature film is huge, and I often print it out and spend the rest of the day just picking it up and feeling its heft. I did that! Yes I did! But getting to the end is not the same as finishing. Most writing takes place after the initial basecoat is laid down.

2. Show it, don’t tell it.

Anybody can create a character who opens his mouth and tells us everything that’s on his mind, and some people can even make those words funny or poetic or heartbreaking. But movies are first and foremost a visual medium, and the strongest screenplays take advantage of that. What can a character do to show us how they feel or what they are thinking about? What scenes can you create and in what order can you arrange them in order to show us a routine or an intention or a memory? Dialogue is most amazing and powerful in a movie when it is not forced to carry the burden of exposition. Concentrate on showing and the telling will take care of itself.

The Daily Beast | Read the Full Article

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My Life as a Screenwriter You’ve Never Heard Of

Well now you’ve heard of him: Justin Marks has written over 20 movie screenplays and seen his TV pilots greenlit — but as he explains, the life of a Hollywood scribe is far more lows than highs if your name isn’t Aaron Sorkin.

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Here’s a day in the life of a writer that you don’t always get to hear about.

It was 5 p.m., and I was playing Call of Duty. Why? Because I wanted to. The phone rang; it was a producer with whom I’d just spent the past two years laboring over a cable pilot, a time-travelly science fiction thing. We’d delivered the final cut to the network, and we were awaiting The Call — the one where you hear that your show, which tested well, is being picked up, that your life is about to change.

But the producer had That Voice. Any experienced writer knows That Voice. Because That Voice means one thing: The network passed. “Hey,” the producer said, “we fought for it till the end. We’ll find something else.” I agreed. And that was that.

Probably not three minutes had elapsed in my game of Call of Duty. Two more minutes to go upstairs and erase my now-dead pilot’s name off the list of projects on my dry-erase board. Two years of effort gone in five minutes.

As I wiped the board clean, I saw another project listed below. Kind of a back-burner thing — I was busy at the time — but I owed the producer a call. So I picked up the phone. Told him I was in. By the next morning, I was back at the keyboard, as if yesterday’s pilot had never happened.

And that, my friends, is what it means to be Just Another Working screenwriter.

During the past decade, I’ve been paid to write just shy of two dozen screenplays. Some scripts get made, but most don’t. My name has only remained on one. I’ve been lucky enough to write originals and adapt comic-book properties (Green Arrow) and popular toys (He-Man, Voltron). I make a decent living, but it’s not all glitz and glamour. My wife and I live in a comfortable house in Los Feliz. I drive a Prius, a car they might as well hand out with WGA cards.

The Hollywood Reporter | Read the Full Article

Via Go Into The Story

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Saying No To Jobs And Getting Paid

Andreas Bergmann explores some of the business aspects of being a photographer which can also be applied to work for hire filmmakers. Should you work for free, and should you accept under paid jobs?

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One of the hardest lessons to learn, and not only learn but accept and incorporate into your way of doing things, is that sometimes you just need to say no to jobs. For your own sake, for your client’s sake, and for your career’s sake. I think this is proportionally harder the earlier you are in your career as a photographer, and making these decisions can feel like walking a tightrope, but I sure would have benefited from someone sitting me down and telling me this a looooong time ago. So today we’re going to talk about saying no to jobs, and getting paid.

Before we get started tho, the subject require a disclaimer. I’ve spent a lot of time talking this over with photographers from my own local network, a whole bunch of photographers way up the food chain from me, and I’ve arrived at some thoughts I believe to be useful for most photographers, especially new ones. But, obviously this isn’t always true for everyone, so don’t take it as a recipe for success, take it as a bunch of thoughts and ideas you can build on and draw inspiration from in your own life as a photographer.

“That isn’t in our budget”

Imagine the following: Your price for doing a commercial shoot that will be published in X countries, in Y media over the next Z months is say… 2000 space bucks. It is completely irrelevant what any actual price would be, so we’re going with “space bucks” as the currency since I’m a sci-fi dork. Your client informs you that the budget for this shoot is only 500 space bucks, and eagerly awaits your reply. I’ve been in this type of situation more times than I can count, and the first myriad times it happened I was so dazzled by the fact that someone actually wanted to hire me, that I just said yes. I was sure that the next time the client had more money they’d come to me again, happy to be able to actually pay my actual salary this time. I was equally certain that the goodwill I had generated would really pay back over time. Unfortunately neither of those assumptions tend to be true.

DIY Photography School | Read the Full Article

 

 

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Pages from the Official Star Trek Writers’ Guide, 1967

Take a look at a few pages from the original guide from 1967 explaining how each Star Trek episode was to be written:

Trek guide1

Trek guide2

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Doug Richardson on the Writer’s Nightmare

Doug Richardson details the Writer’s Nightmare and the complex relationship between a writer’s words and an actor’s delivery.

I’d just typed FADE OUT for the umpteenth time in my short career. The draft was neat and a tightly wound one hundred and fifteen pages of thrills and chills. It felt bulletproof and as close to perfect as anything I’d yet fashioned. Once it was bound by three brass brads and a cover page, had you gently flicked it with a fingernail, I would’ve bet a dinner at Spago that you’d have heard it ring like Waterford crystal.

Then into the batter’s box stepped actor Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman. We weren’t more than acquaintances, but there was a period when Paul would occasionally swing by my tiny studio office to seek refuge amongst my guitars and silly desk toys. On this day he flopped into the chair across from me, humming a tune in his head while finding a sudden interest in the freshly minted screenplay I’d just culled from the printer.

“Ooooooh,” said Paul in a rare, non-paid detour into his Pee Wee Herman persona. “New words.”

“Hot off the printer,” I proudly said.

“Ever hear of Writer’s Nightmare?” he asked.

“Uh… no.”

Paul released a laugh channeled directly from Hades. He fanned the pages of the new screenplay like a deck of cards.

“Need to pick a random page,” he said. “Tell me when to stop.”

“Stop,” I said.

“And let the Writer’s Nightmare begin.” The actor grinned as he stopped thumbing pages and from the very top left of the clean sheet, began reading my screenplay aloud. “Exterior. Theme park entrance. Day…”

Now, if you’ve ever imagined a talented actor reading your work aloud and hearing the musical notes of a heavenly chorus, this wasn’t it. This was a talented comedian who, with certain glee, was hell bent on initiating me into a select club of word-jockeys who’ve been through the nightmare and lived to tell. That’s because Paul Reubens, choosing to orate sans anything remotely resembling his famous alter ego, switched into his best staccato and read my chosen page with the flattest and undramatic affect imaginable. Sure. The action description sounded dry, like a Christmas toy instruction manual read by a robot low on battery power. It was when he came to the dialogue that I felt the first stab of pain.

Doug Richardson | Read the Full Article

Tropfest NY 2013
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Chimpanzee’s Photographs Set to Fetch Over $100,000 At Auction

This is how it begins. James Franco was right. They are rising!

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Having photographs sell for more than $100,000 at a world famous auction house is no small feat, and it’s one that will likely soon be accomplished by a photographer who gives new meaning to the term “chimping” every time he snaps a frame. The photographer is Mikki, a chimpanzee.

Mikki received his basic photography education from well-known Russian conceptual artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, who work as Komar and Melamid. The duo spotted the ape some time ago while at the Moscow Circus.

Peta Pixel | Read the Full Article

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Comparing the Canon 5D MkIII Magic Lantern Hack to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Here is a side by side comparison of the two cameras shooting in Raw Mode:

This is how we hacked the 5D: c5d.at/1o4

Today we already published a test video of the impressive Canon 5D mark III RAW module enabled by the Magic Lantern hack and a guide to get it working yourself.

Here’s a side by side comparison of the 5D mark III with 14bit RAW 1080p together with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera with 2.5K RAW so you can see how the two cameras differ.

What we did:

We went out with a Canon 5D mark III that had the Magic Lantern RAW module hack on it and shot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera in RAW mode alongside.
We used the Canon 24-105mm lens on the 5D while we used the Tokina 16-50mm on the Blackmagic. Native ISO on the Blackmagic is 800 so we used that.

We tried to get similar shots. It’s not so easy, in fact it was easier to get the shots on the 5D as the Blackmagic is just not a very easy to use camera in many regards. Wrongly interpreted zebra indicators had me fooled several times and the internal battery almost died.

Post processing
After a lengthy process of getting the RAW files converted into something usable we graded both to match more or less. We didn’t do a very sophisticated grade, working with RAW files like that is time consuming.

What became clear is that both cameras provide very similarly capable RAW files. You can adjust everything and everything is possible. You can get similar details out of the sky and set all you like in post. Color temperature, tint, dynamic range, no problem. The 5D is just as strong as the BMCC, providing maybe a bit more dynamic range.

Where the cameras differ in terms of RAW is one big thing: Noise. The 5D mark III can shoot indoors at ISO 1600 and there’s almost no noise while the Blackmagic starts to get ugly at this point.
The noise from the BMCC is also apparent when raising the blacks in a shot.

Moire and aliasing is another big big issue on Blackmagic and there is very litte of that on the 5D RAW. The cleanness of the shots of the 5D RAW in general is extremely pleasing and jumps at you when you sit in front of the RAW images. Check some of the dng’s yourself in our other post.

Conclusion

The 5D RAW has the clear advantage of a large sensor and never before seen ISO performance on a RAW camera. It’s intriguing and soon a stable version will probably be ready for real usage.
On the downside the 5D RAW has a little less detail than the Blackmagic or an Alexa, but a lot more detail than the 5D had without the RAW hack.

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Behind the Scenes of SNL’s “Djesus Uncrossed”

SNL’s Digital Shorts DP Alex Buono discusses in depth the tight schedule and production of the controversial Quentin Tarantino spoof “Djesus Uncrossed” (Watch the Sketch on Hulu)

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I’m reading the script for the first time, thinking – “We’re supposed to shoot all of this…TOMORROW?”  The script was written by Zach Kanin and Colin Jost – two of my favorite writers at the show – and the scale of the spot was massive.  It was essentially: Ancient Rome and the Holy Land, to be shot in New York City with a few hours of scouting.  On top of that, it was a mashup of Tarantino movies, starring Tarantino’s own Oscar-winning regular and Host of the show, Christoph Waltz — which adds another layer of complexity (and fun!).  Tarantino’s cinematographer is Robert Richardson, ASC – one of my all-time biggest influences.  For me, this was a crazy challenge that I couldn’t wait to take on.

Step One was breaking down the script with director Rhys Thomas and the team, trying to get our heads around how to approach so many locations.  We considered finding a Donald Trump-esque ornate interior that could double as the Roman interior sets but quickly decided that we’d be left SOL for all the other locations.  Our only move was to build most of the locations on stage.  However, we knew that if we could shoot a few scenes outside it would really upscale the whole spot.  We set out to find exterior locations for the Pontius Pilate / Roman Balcony location as well as the Basterds / St. Peter sequence.  Rhys had the inspired idea to check out the Brooklyn Navy Yard – which includes a whole hillside of disused WWII barracks that, after years of abandonment, look strikingly like a bombed-out European town, a la “Inglorious Basterds”.  The huge coup was in finding a grand old Admiral’s office building featuring stone columns that – with a bit of a clean-up and set dressing – could be turned into Pontius Pilate’s balcony.  Not only was the Brooklyn Navy Yard a pretty remarkable “this is definitely NOT New York” exterior, but it was a stone’s throw to Steiner Studios – one of the premiere sound stages in New York, where we could build our sets.  Boo-ya!

Alex Buono | Read the Full Article

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