Didn’t dig the title.  But the story was kinds neat. It fit a certain mold I was looking for — fast, few characters, few locations, a new twist, and, of course, producible.

I worked with the author, Joe Hart, and we knocked it out pretty quickly.  You can click on the link over there to the left and read the whole damn thing. We’ve renamed it ‘Love Does Funny Things.’

If you get time, check out Joe’s book on Amazon:

M A R K

After you write your first draft (or any draft, actually…) look back for these in your action lines:

• that
  just
  stand
  begins to
  starts to
  appears to
  seems to
  of the
  very
  both
  is
  are
  the
  then
  walk
  sit
  stand
  look
  of the
  really
  turn
  the phone
  some
  still
  the room
  his face / her face
  her way / his way
  both
  -ly
  -ing

If you find them, fix them. They’re probably not the right word choice and there might be able to make your action lines POP with better word choice.

There are many people who discount this idea / approach. They can give examples of major writers who use selections from the list, sometimes copiously.

And by all means, use them if appropriate.

Once you re-write a few lines after replacing, say, “is” you’ll see the impact.

Shelly is sitting in the recliner.

Shelly lounges in the recliner.

He’s singing in the shower.

He sings in the shower.

After a while, the idea of writing in active tense just becomes natural and the list becomes non-consequential.

It just is.

See what I did there?

M A R K

Osiris, as you probably (do not) recall was one of the first scripts I ever wrote. Basically, a deep space tanker gets pegged by a rogue meteorite, the crew has to abandon in the middle of nowhere in a small shuttle, and they eat each other as they drift towards what might or might not be an inhabited planet.

Bockscar, as you recall (or not) is about a future war where the good guys (“us”) get the ultimate weapon and contemplate using it to end the war.  As the warship Bockscar heads to deliver the bomb, they may (or may not!) have a traitor on board.

I’ve written about Osiris here over the past few months, the challenges of moving it from theatrical to found footage, so I won’t rehash. Just know that the  120 page theatrical version is now a 106 page found footage version.

What happens, though, is that as we discuss the different properties, we also begin to discuss selling them. Who can we approach? Who might be in the market for this sort of script? Who already has something just like this?

And then the financials. Does it make sense to make a 220 million dollar movie NOT based on a franchise? Probably not.

Will a studio get in bed with a movie about space cannibals? Probably not.

So you have to figure out how to take your good idea and make it producible.

In the case of Osiris, that meant toning down the cannibalism angle and sfx.

In the case of Bockscar, that meant beefing up characters, toning down sfx, and making sure our characters are relatable.

So, even with good ideas, there’s compromise and business considerations.  Before you write your 310M robot dinosaurs attack Earth, make sure you’re writing something that at least has the chance of being produced.

M A R K

M A R K

A metaphor is where one thing IS another.

Simile: The sun, like a diamond in the sky.

Metaphor: The sun, a burning match in the sky.

In screenwriting, you have to often describe things that are blah. Remember, it’s all about an economy of words. Getting the biggest emotional and visual impact with the fewest words.

Now, you might say “But Mark, the words are your choice, don’t make them blah. It’s JUST that easy.”

But it’s not.

In an action script set in our time, say a car chase on a downtown street, EVERYONE knows what that looks like. So you could get away with something like “They blow through the intersection. Cars and PEDESTRIANS scatter” and maybe that’s enough. It depends.

But if you’re world-building, taking the reader to a place he or she has never been and introducing things that are not of this world, you have to paint the picture with words AND tie an emotion to that image. You don’t want to run the risk of making your reader wonder what you meant.

For instance.  Here is a functional description of the first image of Bockscar, my hero’s ship, a sort of multi-crew functional bomber of the far future:

That’s not bad. It just isn’t great. It sounds like I’m describing a flying box, right? It basically IS a flying box, just like the WW II bomber’s that Bockscar is based on.

NOW we’re getting somewhere. Just by adding the simile, I’ve created an emotion and an image in YOUR head. It would take me several lines to describe what a charging bulldog looks like, but with just a few words, I’ve taken the BLAH and made it BREATHE.

So if you’re stuck with flat writing, think about how a simile or metaphor can bring it to life in just a few words.

M A R K

Sure, you have OBVIOUS conventions. Generally, one of the characters has a camera. Generally, all of the characters die at the end.

The camera almost becomes part of the story. How it’s placed. What it captures. What it doesn’t capture. Those are obvious.

But less obvious is the required shift in tone and the need to NOT over-direct using slug lines.

SHIFT IN TONE

In a theatrical script, characters talk in movie-speak. In a found footage script, characters have to talk in people-speak.

JAWS THEATRICAL: We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

JAWS FOUND FOOTAGE: JESUS CHRIST!

There’s really no room in found footage for lines like “Stay alive no matter what occurs, I WILL FIND YOU!”

These sorts of changes have a deep ripple effect as you basically need to re-tool all of your dialogue. ALL OF IT.

DIRECTING IN SLUG LINES

We’ve already discussed the loss of emotional impact in some other blog article. That stuff’s gone, man. Gone. There is very little nuance that can be captured by a camera that is fixed.

Take, for example, the scene(s) from Paranormal Activity 3.  The camera set up near the kitchen sweeps left and right… left and right… left and right. Sure, it’s building up intensity because you know the bad guy is about to show up. But what it doesn’t do is to allow the babysitter (sitting at the table) to react emotionally to the scene. She just reads. Just like a normal baby sitter. Reading is boring.

Now consider that same scene done theatrically. We see her cut her eyes. We see her get up to investigate. We see her bite her lip. We see her reach for the door handle. We see her hand fly to her chest as she reacts to a jump scare. We see her call “Is anyone there?”

The idea here for the writer, director, and actor is to convey the emotion of the scene.

The trap I ran into, and the trap I strongly suggest you DON’T run into, was trying to use the cameras (via scene headers) in such a way as to force them to catch the emotional significance of the scene.

I did this in two ways…

1) I liberally sprinkled cameras in my locations.

2) I switched between the cameras to catch the emotion of the scene.

The result was my 119 page theatrical script became a 129 page found footage script (really, you should shoot for 94 – 105′ish). There were WAY too many scene headings. Perhaps a hundred too many (really). While my intent was to keep the emotion of the theatrical version, the reality was a script that was now way too long, and a script that was a very tedious read.

HOW DID I FIX IT?

I worked with my buddy Alex to come up with a very small number of fixed cameras and we came up with a set of rules as to when to use which camera. This really forced the script into the found footage genre. Forces the work onto the director and cast. They’re going to have to figure out how to convey emotion within those constraints. This cut down the number of scene headings by about 90% and cut the length of the script significantly.

Then, I went back and re-wrote the dialogue with the idea that it’s real. Not a movie. No John McClain’s. No James Bond’s. No Dutch. Just like people talk. Gritty. Choppy. Interruptions and non-sequiturs abound.

So there you have it. Don’t make the mistakes I did.

M A R K

Nice teeth!

M A R K

Ten Best Director’s Cuts

So these are MY opinions on what makes a good short screenplay.

1) Get in and out.

Trust that a director can fill in some of the blanks.  This is always dangerous (someone else interpreting your intentions) because they might do it entirely bass-ackwords. But rest easy knowing that, no matter WHAT you do, it’s not really going to be yours unless you exec produce and/or direct yourself.

2) Leave them wanting more.

If your short leaves people with GOOD questions, that’s OK. That’s the nature of the short. GOOD questions come from people that are really thinking of the world — they’ve engaged. BINGO!

BAD questions come from (among other things…) unclear motivation and unclear description: I don’t understand why this happened? There’s no way a bird can pick up a truck!

Interestingly enough, a bird CAN pick up a truck. Just like a house can float away on balloons.

The difference is engagement.  If your reader is engaged in your world (and that’s entirely on YOU) than anything at all can happen and be completely plausible within your world.

3) Almost more important than character arc is to leave them wanting more.

There are certain concessions in shorts. Obviously, it’s tough to do EVERYTHING in 5 or 10 pages — craft compelling characters moving through intricate, well-crafted plots — but you want to leave a good impression. What happens next!?

4) Don’t be pretentious, that’s for directors and cinematographers. MOST shorts are simply calling cards for above-the-line folks.

4b) Try to get a producer credit. It never hurts to ask. Since (usually) there isn’t much money in shorts, credit is easier to come by.

5) After you write the 5 or 10 page version, imagine the 90 page version.

6) Terse. Short. Visual. You have to be a near-master at space-management.

Want an exercise? Five pages, one location. Story has a beginning, middle, and an end, clear character progression, and a commercial hook.

Try it!

M A R K

I wrote it for a few reasons…

1. I ran out of non-encumbered shorts;
2. The topic was near-and-dear to my heart;
3. I wanted to do a proof-of-concept for a feature.

I like it, because there’s a lot of bang for the buck. We cover a lot of ground in 13 pages. I can see the character going through an arc. It evokes emotion.

My main problem with it is tone. I mean, what is it? Drama? Dramedy? Moral tale? Twilight zone gotcha? Sci-fi?

I don’t know.

Anyway, with the usual pain of birth, it’s done. For now.

M A R K