.
.
“As long as we’re making shit up, let’s go hog-wild”
Bill Hicks, Rant in E Minor.
.
.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes dreams have set-ups and pay-offs? I had one last night in which I was doing something or other when I saw a small group of people that looked like a cross between Devo and a diver from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou – they had these coloured breathing apparatus on. They didn’t serve any real function in the rambling story of the dream – they were just there. I noticed them and moved on.
So the dream continues and I’m trying to outrun something. Anyway, I get to this cliff-edge and I have to jump off into the water. But guess what? I can’t because the group of divers are down there swimming around in the water!
So what’s going on here? If the story was being constructed by my brain, then how come I didn’t know that the divers were a set-up when I first saw them? It was like I was watching a story constructed by someone else and they wanted to establish that these divers exist in the world so that later on in the climax they could use them as an obstacle for the main character - me. See what I mean? It was good storytelling. Bad storytelling would have had the divers just appear in the end as deus ex machina.
But who is setting this stuff up? How come I experienced the story for the first time even though I had made it up? How did I not know that the divers would come back later? How can my brain be one step ahead of… my brain?
Well, I’ve been beavering away for a year or so on a script that I’ve not talked about in any detail on this blog (or anywhere online), but yesterday a friend pointed out that the synopsis is up on the Film Victoria site, so it seems there’s no point sitting on it any longer. Might as well put it out into the world.
It’s called Tinyband. I love it. Here’s the synopsis:
“Two rock musicians move to LA to make it big, only to find themselves mysteriously shrunk to the size of Ken dolls and thrust into the spotlight as the weeny-pop sensation, Tinyband. One falls into in denial that he’s tiny. The other falls in love with a normal-sized woman. The record company uses them as a promotional machine. Groupies use them as human dildos. It’s Spinal-Tap meets Step-Brothers, all reduced to the size of Chipmunks.”
I’m about to start a new draft, so hopefully I’ll have it done by mid-year. Then it’s really time to go into labour. Woot!
So my favourite comedy writer, Chris Morris, has just premiered his first feature film at Sundance. It’s called Four Lions and it looks shit hot.
I posted a clip from the film on Videosift and it shot to number 1. So hopefully that gives the film a weeny bit more buzz.
Yesterday I listened to an interview with Chris Morris in which he talked about making the film. As a comedy writer, I was particularly into his comments on staying with the funny:
“If the writing gets too far away from sitting around trying to make each other laugh then you’re in trouble. So I think that’s where you keep forcing funny ideas into the centre of the room. You can have a very rambling run-up to that point, but as long as that’s what you keep trying to do then you’re heading in the right direction”.
I totally get this. It’s so easy to get so caught-up in theme and structure that you lose the funny. It’s a fine balance, and I think it’s what makes writing comedy so difficult. You have to be aware of all of the intricate elements of good drama, PLUS it has to be funny!
But that’s not to underestimate the importance of craft. The “rambling run-up” Morris mentions refers to research and outlining. For me it’s important to get things sorted in my mind and in an outline so that when I start writing the script I can let go and have fun with it. If it keeps me laughing then I keep it going, but always with an eye to the spine that I’ve set up in the outline.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to tracking the progress of Four Lions.
Chris Morris
Freelance copywriting subsidises my masochistic obsession with screenwriting. For a long while I’ve justified it by focusing on how writing copy benefits my screenwriting craft.
Copy and screen writing are similar in that you’re always presented with too much information and it’s your job to find the spine of the thing. In both forms you need to whittle infinite possibilities down to a sharp point. But I recently realised another similarity between copy and screen writing that I think is pretty interesting - it’s got to do with tone and character.
The other day I was writing some copy for the Mitre 10 hardware and the biggest challenge was getting the tone right. How does Mitre 10 speak? How does Mitre 10 behave when engaging with the world? This stuff has to be clear because a brand is more than a business, it’s something people have a relationship with, and like our human friends and colleagues, a brand should have a way of speaking and acting that is consistent and identifiable. Your mum acts differently from day to day, but underneath there are fundamentals to her character that remain fairly constant. Same goes for a brand.
In the advertising world the character of a brand is kept on track through the “style guide” — a document that outlines key words, colours, fonts and designs that should remain consistent. It’s not too dissimilar to a script outline.
One of the quickest ways to fuck up an early screenplay draft is to go charging in before you’ve got your characters figured out. So a thoughtful writer will create an outline (and perhaps character breakdowns) that establishes who their characters are before they start making them interact with an imagined world.
Creating brands is like creating characters.
So while I’d rather be writing for the screen everyday, I can see how writing copy can inform and hone my screenwriting skills. So if you’re a writer wrestling with the perennial dilemma of whether you should take a job at the periphery of the film industry as a way in, or take something outside the industry but vaguely writing-related, then I’d consider the merits of the latter. At least that’s how I’m justifying the precious hours I have to burn in order to afford to sit down and write for the screen.
I’m in the midst of outlining another high-concept magical-realist type screenplay, and I’m starting to see a pattern emerging with the things I write. I’m drawn to the “what ifs”. You know, what if a pineapple on a waterski shot you with a blowdart? Well, that one’s not really what I’m talking about, but I did do it in a short film once.
I’m too paranoid to use examples of the actual things I’m writng. I’m sure that’s retarded of me. Anyway, you know what I’m talking about — what if you found a portal into John Malkovich’s mind? What if you had to live the same day over and over?
Those are kind of stories I’m drawn to write, so I really enjoyed coming across this Aristotle quote recently (I’d heard it before, but it didn’t stick):
“A poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities”
Isn’t that nice?
There’s more to be said on this idea, but I’m off to dinner now. I’ll come back and expand on it another time.
I met with a fantastic producer yesterday to discuss my next script. She was excited by the idea — so we’re away!
I started outlining properly this morning and already I’m getting those rushes of excitement as the story starts to crack open in front of me. I love this shit. Here’s to hoping we can find some development money in the new year so I can sit down and get the script out.
I forgot to mention the way to make accessing the highlighter in Final Draft a little easier. I’ve been using this shortcut for ages in version 7.
Go to: View > Toolbars > Customize > Keyboard.
In the “Commands” section enter CTRL + H. That way next time you want to highlight something you can use the CTRL H command as a shortcut to get you to the “Format” menu. Then it’s just a matter of choosing a colour from the drop-down box and clicking OK.
Come on Final Draft people! You bring out version 8 and there’s STILL NO HIGHLIGHTER!!!! You can put little machine-voiced people in there to read my dialogue back to me (who actually uses that function?), but you can’t get it together to save me from going through three menus to get to a highlighter?
What’s with that?
Surely it’s a simple thing to do. Surely you understand that being able to quickly and easily highlight text is a very useful thing for a writer. Surely you’re embarrassed that your software doesn’t pack a freakin’ highlighter tool! Come on already!
I hear version 8 has a text highlighter that works on macs. That doesn’t help me, Final Draft people. I’m on a PC and last time I checked we still outnumber mac users by a fair way.
I’m writing a reality TV comedy at the moment, so I’ve been watching a lot of reality TV lately. One series I can highly recommend is “BLACK/WHITE” (2006).
But the series itself isn’t really why I’m writing this post. I’m writing because I wanted to share something that one of the characters said. In explaining how her traumatic upbringing had helped her poetry, a young girl said “before you can have a story, you have to have a storm”.
I’d never heard that before. I just love it in terms of the need for a writer to have lived before they can write effectively. But I also love it in narrative terms. Before our scripts can have a story, they have to have a storm. Rain javelins on your characters. Give them a storm so they may have a story.
If we thought of inciting incidents or first act turning points as storms, then maybe we’d be more apt up to the ante. Anyway, that’s all. Just a thought-worthy quote from a noteworthy TV series.
Black family goes whiteface. White family goes blackface.