4thWall

For the first time, I got to work on a project that I may actually get to see on TV.  Most of the projects have been internal corporate videos, but we shot commercial spots for Neumann University in Pennsylvania.  I’m not sure whether they’ll air on television or simply be on the Neumann website.

All of the shots were outside, which in my small student film mind generally made setup easier, especially on sunny, clear days like the ones we shot on.  They set up a large scrim to diffuse the sunlight around the subject of the interview, and would use bounce cards and other reflectors to add fill or key for the subject.

Every shot they had used a dolly.  The cinematographer gripped that it wasn’t a very good dolly, but I was pretty impressed.  It had the ability to run either on tracks or on the ground, and they had both straight and curved tracks.

My job was to hold the cords running to the monitor, where the producer were watching the shot.  It was a very hot couple of days, as the temperatures got close to 100 degrees (especially the first day, when they told us not to wear shorts).

Here’s a picture of the dolly they used:

Stephen King famously writes at least 2,000 words a day. One of the things I heard over and over again this past year from a host of different teachers, advisors and professional writers was, “Keep writing.” And though this seems rather unremarkable at first, now I’m starting to appreciate why it’s such important advice and not simply duh-you-idiot pseudo wisdom; for even as an unemployed student who sits at his apartment all day working on a writing mentorship, it’s been hard to keep writing. Networking, applying for jobs, and bugging my mentor about our next meeting can often feel like they require more urgent attention than opening a notebook or fresh Word document and writing a couple hundred words. Oddly enough, this blog has provided me with a required daily writing time that I might otherwise miss. In my last couple posts I championed keeping a notebook or journal with you to record random thoughts and observations. Now I resolve to return to the pages of my diary and expand on those random thoughts. To hold myself accountable, practicing now for when I actually have a job and no longer have this blog, I will set aside a few minutes each day to write a paragraph or two, to develop a character sketch, to add to a script. I will keep writing! Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I do nothing but write, but that writing’s usually oriented toward some larger project or looming deadline. But now I’ll set a daily deadline for myself. I’ll start with one tenth of Stephen King’s quota: 200 words a day. Fortunately, this post is at 277, so it’s time to eat some lunch.

For the first part of this two-part series on the merits of carrying a notebook see my last post, “Little Blue Book.”

Unfortunately I spilled a Starbucks “frappuccino coffee drink” on my dining room table this morning and the expanding brown puddle touched the pages of my blue diary. (Indeed it was this event that inspired me to write about my little blue book.) Now some of the pages wear coffee-colored borders, and the first time I opened the diary after the spill it crackled as bonds of caked coffee broke. But now my blue book has more character, I think. It looks like I actually use it.

After crackling it open, I started to review some of the things I’d written over the past few weeks, following my conversation with Jon. They included such profound and un-profound observations as, “I’ve got no principals but plenty of vices” (a vice-principal joke!), “all the great presidents wore glasses, like Benjamin Franklin,” and “even the ugly people on TV are good-looking.” I found questions like, “What kind of wine did Jesus turn the water into at Cana? A 1979 Napa Valley Cabernet? A 1612 Sicilian Bianco?” I found a number of hastily-jotted ideas for films and TV shows. I found pages I’d used to write character sketches and outline scripts. The bits that turned up in my search varied in terms of insightfulness and usefulness. But one nugget of gold stood out above the rest, immediately erasing any ambivalence I still maintained, making it clear that this practice of writing down the things I see and/or overhear is absolutely worthwhile.

The following conversation took place at a dinner party between my girlfriend’s grandparents, two wonderful people who come from a generation that’s not nearly as concerned with political correctness as ours. The dialogue has not been embellished.

PHYLLIS:  (talking about Turkish neighbor) He’s the nicest man you’ve ever met.

JACK: He’s a Muslim.

PHYLLIS: He loves Honey (their dog). He’ll just pick her up and take her for a walk when we’re not home.

JACK: That’s what Muslims will do for you. They’ll walk your dog.

PHYLLIS: But his wife’s not a Muslim.

JACK: What? (didn’t hear)

PHYLLIS: I said his wife. She’s not a Muslim.

JACK: I know. She doesn’t walk my dog! She’s a Lutheran.

I will use that in a script one day, probably verbatim.

At the end of each of our sessions, I’ve gotten into the habit of asking Jon questions that don’t relate directly to the project we’re working on: questions about inspiration, process and the life of a writer. At one point I said something like, “I know I had more questions, but now I can’t remember them.” Jon gave some very simple, commonsensical advice that applies not only to questions but also to character ideas, jokes, concepts and storylines: write it down. “I carry a notepad in my car,” Jon said. It sounds like a great idea. When I was in LA over winter break I bought a tiny notebook in Little Tokyo that boasted, “Premium Paper Quality: Best Writing Features,” but now I can’t find it. I had planned to (and did for a week) carry it on my person and record every brilliant little spark of inspiration I divined or encountered during my day. Ideas, interesting images and bits of dialogue all went in. But after losing my Japanese recorder I went without a replacement until my conversation with Jon. Since talking with him I’ve been employing a blue diary in its place, one my girlfriend got when she was in Argentina. (Apparently I can only use foreign-made notebooks.) It’s a bit bigger than my petite Japanese friend—too big to carry in my pocket but the perfect size to toss in a backpack. Like a trusty assistant, it sits next to me on the dining room table as I work during the day. Whenever something strikes me, I peel back the cover and jot it on a crisp, white page. (Despite the incumbent’s advertisement, I think this new diary has better writing features.) Now I have a place to store those fleeting questions and spontaneous ideas.

To read some of them, see my next post, “Little Blue Book Cont’d.”

Below, find some observations on web series content, a continuation of my last post, “Web Series Trends.”

Content: Several trends became apparent as I watched through more webisodes. For lack of better words, I’ll name them comedy, sex and self-reflexivity.

Comedy. Comedy, like horror, seems to lend itself to low-budget production. Watching through a batch of the better-reviewed web series, a plurality, if not majority, were comedies. Perhaps a connection with viral videos helps explain this. People with limited time to watch something on the web would rather see something funny.

Sex. The Internet, which is even less regulated than cable, provides a place to explore more risqué subjects. At least, that’s a nice way to put it. An honest assessment might say that online-only shows provide an outlet for excessive swearing and private-part jokes. Sex attracts, especially online, so shows centered on dating/relationships, stripping, the porn industry, etc. (Young American Bodies, Tease, Blue Movies, respectively) are easy to find and hard to miss. Ironically, the actual content of these shows is fairly mild compared to what you find if you look anywhere else on the Internet.

Self-Reflexivity. Web series love to talk about themselves, whether in referencing TV, the Internet, or the creative process (see Agents of Cracked). There are web series about struggling actors (Star-ving) and even web series about the making of web series (Twisted Night). Also prevalent are references to videogames and online culture, however bizarre—Nerd Reflexivity. (See The Legend of Neil and The Guild.) All shows in this category serve as rich wells of niche allusions and inside jokes.

Deeming it an appropriate activity for my internship, I decided to take a half a day and survey the landscape of online-only series available for free viewing on the Internet. After all, once I do write/produce something, I need some way to get it noticed, and researching what’s already out there could serve to inform me of what works and what doesn’t as a web series. (Plus I need something to do while I wait for my mentor’s schedule to free up.) Indeed I plan on taking my writing to the web. (Look for Tip Your Tour Guide, a production of Pure Genius Pictures, a John Morgera-Eric Lee project, coming sometime later this year.) Check out this link for a list and summary of some of the better series the web has to offer:

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/mondo_extra/web_series_to_watch_out_for.php

After taking a look for myself, some trends emerged.

Structure: Episodes tend to be shorter than those of network and cable TV shows, ranging from roughly 3½ minutes to 11 min, though some special episodes (e.g., the series finale of The Legend of Neil) run over 20. Often they play as self-contained, single-act stories with a strong serial connection to the preceding and proceeding episodes; conflicts were rarely resolved completely by the end of the episode. Put three together and you don’t get a three-act, 24-minute episode, but you don’t get three episodic stories; you get something in between.

Budget: Present were a range of budgets that all fit in the lower end of the greater budget spectrum. Some shows, e.g., Hulu’s Tease or Koldcast’s Tyranny, look sharp and well produced, while others, even those from reputable channels (see IFC’s web series), don’t. But all the good ones made use of what budgets they had, keeping locations to a minimum, substituting clever editing and audio for visual effects, and sometimes parodying their own cheaply-constructed sets and props.

For a breakdown of web series content, see my next post, “Web Series Trends Cont’d.”

I’m taking a break from “Conversations with a Pro” today to talk something that’s becoming an important and increasingly marketable medium as well as a source of opportunities for beginning writers: web series. My mentor followed a more traditional route to break into screenwriting. He wrote a Law and Order spec script that got produced, and he was eventually brought on as a staff writer for Law and Order: SVU. But young writers may want to pursue the online path as well as, or sometimes instead of, the traditional. If offers several advantages; for example, you can produce your own online content (you don’t need a production company or studio), you can do it from anywhere (you don’t have to be in LA or even New York), and you can do it on a low budget. (Some good online series are produced for an inspiringly small amount of money. Consider IFC’s Dead and Lonely). One thing is doesn’t offer is a whole lot of money, though that may be changing. Now, as advertisers grow more attracted to online audiences, some creators make a living solely from posting videos on YouTube. However, money may not be as important as recognition when it comes to developing online-only content, for in web series, appearing now to act like short films at festivals, there exists the potential for content to be noticed, picked up for distribution, or bought and expanded for a broader TV audience (Childrens Hospital is an example). Because web series are now relevant to professional writing, because they relate to my mentorship (Jon and I have discussed online-only content), and because I recently applied for a job writing for web-exclusive series (and need to know my stuff should I get an interview), I decided to talk half a day to survey the web series landscape and record some observations. See them in my next post, ”Web Series Trends.”

In one sense it’s encouraging that my mentor is extremely busy. I often hear of the anxious time spent searching for employment or the desperate jobless waiting that even professional writers must regularly undergo. Jon doesn’t appear to be one of those writers. Soon after leaving Law and Order: SVU he got a new staff job writing for A Gifted Man (CBS this fall). As I’ve talked to him, he’s also been hurrying to finish a book he’s writing. “This chapter’s way past deadline. I’ve gotta get it done before the publisher puts out a hit on me.” Unfortunately this leaves him with very little time to talk. We’ve been able to squeeze sessions into the cracks in his full schedule. Though meetings have come less frequently than I’d hoped they would, knowing how busy Jon is makes me really appreciate the fact that he agreed to work with me in the first place and that he’s given me the little time he has.

I aspire to be as busy as Jon is, and I aspire to be busy in the same way he is, busy in the best way—busy working. However, I’m keeping occupied. Developing ideas, character sketches, storyline summaries, and beat sheets takes most of my time. I split the rest between networking and applying for jobs. This internship has been a nice glimpse into the life of a writer, both because I get to see what it looks like in Jon and because I get to live it (partially) through my daily activities. Aside from the absence of a writer’s room, my life during this brief three-credit endeavor feels much like that of a professional writer, although it’s a simulation—the student version. Here’s to hoping that I won’t wait too long experience the real version and to feel this again in the professional world.

My internship is technically a “writing mentorship” that comprises six meetings with a professional screenwriter. My mentor, Jon Greene, is a Syracuse alum who wrote forLaw and Order: SVU for eleven years and is now working for a CBS drama premiering this fall, A Gifted Man:

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/a_gifted_man/video/

Under Jon’s guidance I’m attempting to develop a pilot for a new, hour-long high school dramedy. We talk once a week via Skype (although this ends up being more like once every week and a half because of Jon’s busy schedule). He’s in LA, and I’m living in, entertainment capital of the world, Lancaster, PA. Hopefully we’ll get to meet in New York later on, as this is where his show shoots, but thus far our relationship has been largely virtual.

Jon’s depth of experience was obvious from our first meeting. I didn’t need to ask any penetrating questions. He didn’t need to give any lectures. Rather, over the course of our conversation he let little bits of wisdom slip out even when he wasn’t trying. It was instructional just to observe the way he thinks. I was thinking character and story. He was thinking character, story, setting, series arcs, show longevity, actors’ ages and more. The things that never crossed my mind were his first concerns. The questions I never thought to ask he rattled off automatically. Eventually his insight disrupted my carefully calculated plans. “Maybe this should be set in high school instead of college.” And though I resisted some of his revisions at first (mentally if not verbally), the logic of his suggestions always prevailed, and, by trusting his seasoned instincts, my work has gotten better and better.