Love You Jack!!

Normally I'd put this on my other blog, but I can't take it seriously enough to do that. Jack Nicholson is hysterical. And that last quote has to be one of the most sexist endorsements I've ever heard in my life. RFLMAO.

Again with the Random Musings...

I've spent the last week or so figuring out what I'm going to do with myself if there is a strike. I have a few ideas for reality shows so I'm developing those and will see where that takes me if and when the time comes to put that iron in the fire. From what I understand networks will have banked enough episodes of things to get them through November sweeps, then it's winter hiatus, then back with some mid-season replacement stuff that is shooting as you read this and if there is no strike, back to business as usual, but if there is a strike it will be wall-to-wall reality. I think anyone working at those big reality production houses has their fingers crossed right now. I know most studios learned from their mistakes last time around (2001) and have plenty of options in case things get nuclear around here. Including putting executives on leave and not renewing contracts. I had a clause like that in my deal, but, fortunately, it never came to that.

Last time around, just like this time, agencies took advantage of the strike to trim their client lists and cut loose anyone who was under-performing or just plain troublesome. I had a few friends who were "fired" by their agencies and it has been a long road back. First the year of depression and humiliation, then the year of spec writing and humiliation and depression, then the year of the comeback, and bitterness and depression.... :-) Anyway, I credit that last major trimming with consolidating the position and power of managers in this town. There were tons of very talented people suddenly at loose ends, desperate to get back in the game, willing to write on spec who were accessible, some for probably the first time in a very long time.

I'm also developing a series of webisodes that a couple of girlfriends of mine and I have been kicking around since May. One of my friends recently landed at a new internet entertainment site and they are desperate for content. She is lucky enough to be hooked up at a place that is the daughter of a highly trafficked site so they need content more than anything right now. I doubt it would cover more than the cost of producing the actual work, but considering that we were going to do it all for free, this seems like a good way for me to get a little directing under my belt before I attack my short film.

If any of you (Will?) have suggestions for the approach one should use when shooting for the itty bitty screen I'd love to hear them. I read a post over at Complications Ensue about Mobisodes that really started me thinking about how to do this. We don't really envision this thing ever getting off the internet and onto a phone screen, but I am really concerned about the screen ratio of that YouTube box. I've shot some stuff for TV before (just news footage when I was a wee-little Diva still delusionally thinking I wanted to be a hard-hitting journo) and it seems to me that the "readable" portion of the screen is the same -- meaning lots of close-ups and medium shots. I actually like movies that take advantage of depth of field (I'm thinking about TOKYO STORY here), so I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts about that, specifically. I haven't seen too much stuff produced for the web that uses depth of field in any meaningful way and I'm not sure if that's the constraints of the medium (resolution and bandwidth interrupting the impact of long shots that rack focus and/or feature fore, mid and background action) or just that the medium hasn't matured enough for folks to be exploiting it that way yet.

Anyway, back to the reality stuff. I have a close friend who I kick ideas around with, talk story, gossip, etc. She and I have been trying to find a way to spend all of 2008 out of the country. Preferably not working, but we will take what we can get. I'll keep you posted. I still have to get to my cheese tour of England and France....

RANDOM MUSINGS

It's too hot in my little cottage to do much thinking and I refuse to abandon the dog and head to Starbucks. Last summer we only had about 10 days of really heinous weather, but this entire month has been on-again/off-again heatwave after heatwave. Not to mention the single-digit humidity that's making my eyes dry out and th dog's fur feel like straw. Poor puppy. I rearranged the house a few weeks ago and he refused to sleep in the room where I moved his bed to. He went back in the other room, curled up under the furniture that was now occupying where his bed used to be, and stayed there until I finally gave in, moved the cabinets back where they were, put the old carpet back down and put his bed back on top of it. Stubborn dog....

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The director just emailed me to let me know he's picture-locked and is sending the film off for scoring and a sound mix. He's calling in all his big favors for this, so I think there may be a sound stage visit at some point. If there is any interest I could blog about that at some point.

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For me, I'm working on my book (more these last few weeks, sorry for the no posting), finishing up that outline I started so many weeks ago, and tweaking my spec pilot. One of my friends was staffed on a show that is new this fall, very exciting. She's been telling me all the good stuff about how the writers' room works on her show, and her boss loved 2 of her pitches, so she's probably going to get something aired this season. She rocks.

I've got some major stuff brewing, but it's slow-boil stuff, so no big announcements yet, if the attorneys get involved I'll share. It's book-related not screenplay or TV stuff, but still very exciting for me. I have a few minor things published, but I'd love to have a big fat unapologetic credit on my resume. When I started the novel, I was looked at it as a creative outlet. I can't imagine it will sell a million copies and by my dream house, but if I sell it and get enough to buy a writing shack in the forest somewhere that would be amazing. Fingers crossed that the slow-barge to publication doesn't get hung up on a sandbar (and, no, the metaphors in my book are not this bad).

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With this writers' strike looking more and more real, deal-making around town is stutter-stepping. It's business as usual, except it really isn't since writers are paranoid there won't be work at the end of the year, and studios and networks aren't buying at the same pace. Not to mention all the agency blood-letting going on. Feels like it's almost time for a game of musical chairs. All it takes is the strike, a few bad movies, and a couple of moguls on the loose to upset the applecart.

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I was reading all of Nikki Finke's coverage of the Ed Limato madness over at ICM, and I can't help but feel like she's being spoonfed her coverage (big surprise). I remember a few months back reading about another (much more junior) agent's job-hopping and it read like a press release. Note to tipsters: when calling in favors to spin your firing, do not include personal details that only you would tell someone else, but that no one would ever gossip about. First sign of an amateur, and a surefire way to mark you as a big-mouthed narc to friends and foes alike. Just saying.

Anyway, back to the Limato-nightmare. Hollywood is the kind of town that you can except to get jacked in at any time. Especially when you get old. There aren't too many old guys who are sacrosanct around here, and the few who are still know how to administer a beat-down. I don't know Mr. Limato, or the other gentlemen involved personally, so I can't comment on that situation, but the rule of thumb around here is keep attacking. Especially if they don't know you are. Unless they can strip him of his clients, the only thing they can hope to do is keep "servicing" them until one of them decides to defect. I can't see that happening since his clients are known for how loyal they are and Ed's swung for the fences for them for, literally, decades. And those guys still work. I hope he ends up someplace he's respected, with great directors and a solid drama writing list. I hate to see folks disrespect their elders.

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OK, I'm going to workout, then I have to meet a friend for dinner. Have a great weekend. Requests, comments and tips are always welcome. But no spam. Unless it's fried.

First Cut

I'm going to see the first cut of the short film I worked on last month. The director wants to cut about 10 minutes. Before I see a first cut, I'm always hoping the film will be close to being finished. Like, if you know you want to cut 10 minutes, cut 10 minutes then invite me to see it. :-) Seriously, for a filmmaker, the process of going through successive cuts can be overwhelming. You're watching the film everyday, you've already lived with the script and the actors for months and months (in this case way too many months) and now you've got to find cuts you didn't know existed.

I both love and hate this process. It's hard to watch the film and decide what you don't need, especially when you are seeing it with someone who has watched it for hours and hours before you got there. My favorite method is to watch it all the way through, make notes at the end, then re-watch it with a notepad, compare the two sets of notes and then watch it a third time with that compiled set of notes in hand to see if I agree or disagree. This way I have a couple of impressions: the average viewer impression -- I have ADD so that more than makes up for any "expertise" I might bring to my first viewing :-)~ -- the critical observer impression and, most important, the informed critique impression. Every cut is different, so from that point on it sort of tailors itself to the situation. I have a lot of experience with editing myself, so I really enjoy this process. It's not as frantic as production, and there's plenty of time for rational discussion.

The light posting is going to continue while I finish this freelance gig. I love to get paid, but then you have to do the work!!! Aargh!! I want to finish my spec!! OK, enough of the complaints. Suck it up and get back to work, lady!

MANAGER-AGENT ARTICLE

The WGA website has a great, lengthy article on the agent-manager thing. I recommend it for anyone trying to wrap their brains around the byzantine layers of representation in Hollywood. It's at least as good as the one I wrote way back when *snark*, but not as entertaining as John Rogers'.

Sorry I've been out of pocket. I took on a freelance gig and have to finish up the rewrite in the next week. I have a couple of posts I've been dawdling over that I hope to get out this week. One is about film commissions (and a belated h/t to Jim Henshaw for this information he gave me which I do not know how to post... maybe I'll ask Unk if he can host some pages for me?), and the other is about post-production since I'm due to see the second cut of the short film at some point this week. I'm really keen on empowering as many people to make their own films as possible -- that's the keystone of my evil plan -- so, I hope you all are being productive!

Day One

We wrapped our first day of shooting early. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it means the director's not getting enough coverage. Today it was a good thing. We had a great crew, including some college-age volunteers who showed up for four-hour shifts and ended up staying for the entire day. The worst thing was that we couldn't book any walkies for the weekend, so the ADs were miffed and had to use their outside voices inside (not that ADs have inside voices, really).

We had a smoke effect guy for today and he was awesome, helped with the load-in, blew some incredible dense smoke, dealt with the b.s. of having to shout through a door over a loud fan because of the no walkies situation, and the footage looked really scary. I'm happy. The only thing that went over was craft service. :-) My DP was happy, the Gaffer looked a little peeved because we had a problem with one of the lights. It actually shorted out all over the floor. Scared the heck out of me, but, of course, the guys just kicked the sparks out of the way and started hacking away at the light with little metal screwdrivers....

This Thursday we're shooting the stuff in the moving car, then Friday, Saturday, Sunday we are back in the location we used tonight. I'm trying to rest up for Sunday which is the day we have the firetruck, ambulance and cop car and shoot until 3am. I'm going to bed now. I've been up since 4AM, not counting all the startles I had making sure we didn't forget anything major. I'm crashing now, so I'll write more later this week.

I See Kinos...

Went to pick up the equipment today, very exciting. I'm off to buy expendables tomorrow and to strong arm some volunteers. In order to get a break on our location fee, we agreed to split the shoot into two pieces. We shoot one day on Sunday which requires a full load-in and load-out of all the equipment and props, then we are off for four days, we shoot the interior of a moving vehicle, then we're back in the location for three days. The last day we are doing a small "company move" from interior to exterior.

The "company move" for folks who haven't worked in production is exactly what it sounds -- the entire production from craft services (food) to video village (director's chair, video playback monitors) moves to a new location. In our case we will be moving from the nice cozy inside of a loft to the parking lot below. To save money on the shoot, we agreed to vacate the interior by a certain time (not that the owner could rent it out anyway, but he's a skinflint with high hopes).

OK, I've got stuff screaming to be done (namely the dog needs a walk). Ciao.

The Diva and the 3-Ton Truck

We start shooting on Sunday. Today I finished putting in our equipment order. The woman who runs the equipment house has been an angel and gave us everything we wanted on a 1-week rental (even though it is technically a 10-day period) for 40% off and then rented us a 3-ton truck for cost. This is why movie-making in Hollywood got me so excited when I first moved here. Below-the-line folks are very work-product oriented. Sharp contrast to executive types who are much more concerned with prestige and having a nice trailer. And that's no exaggeration. I once worked with a producer who told me he considered "set work" to be blue collar and that the real work of producing happened "in town" putting the films together.

I can't deny that there is a lot of work you must do before you get to set, but, for me, the work of making a movie is in... the work of making a movie. Picking your crew, pulling together insurance, making deals for the location, chatting up the guy who owns the firetruck so he'll throw in extra axes and gear.... I do miss blowing up helicopters though, but some day I'll make another film that costs more than my car. :-)

The reason we were able to get such a great deal is that our DP had a great relationship with a Gaffer who knew a Best Boy (Girl? She's a woman) who had opened a rental house. He treated her well, we treated him well, and, through the transitive property of Hollywood friendships, we get to enjoy her largess. Oh, yeah, one catch. This is a short film, so, no teamsters. I'm breaking out my trucker cap and getting ready to haul ass across town. If you knew me better you'd realize how truly frightening this is... for other drivers. Just a little warning if you find yourself in front of a 3-ton being driven by a gal with a cell phone plugged into her head.

No Gaffer? No problem!!

We are five days out from our first day of production. I've been nailing down disparate details left and right. Yesterday I booked a firetruck that comes with three firemen, and tomorrow I'm getting an ambulance and a police car. My brain is mush, so I won't embarrass myself by trying form any coherent thoughts here. My newest headache is that the DP emailed me to say the gaffer bailed. Oh well, at least I've got my firemen to console me. :-)

UPDATED: OK, I was a little slap-happy last night, I did NOT mean to post that pic twice (although it was nice to see....)

Some Changes Around Here

I'm sitting here surrounded by paper, covered in paper cuts, watching a crappy movie that is being remade for waaaay too much money. I took a freelance gig with this director to pay back some of my Hawaii debt. So, instead of doing my work I'm blogging. Figures.

I finally went through and added links to some folks who link to me, put up some of the resources I refer folks to and that I use myself. I hope you all like them. Feel free to drop a comment in the box if you have a question, objection, etc.. I will link to folks who link to me, I just may not be entirely aware of who you are, so please give a shout out. I've been thinking about changing the look of the blog and going with something more like kottke.org.

The short film just got a kick in the pants. We are scheduled to start shooting in the next month because the location we want to use has an opening. They are raping us on the location fee, but because it's full service we decided the better part of valor was to lay back and think of England. At this point, we are having our first full production meeting on Friday. All the department heads are set, most of them are pros/semi-pros (meaning they've worked on a few projects, but may not have actually run a department). I'm left with some crappy work -- like getting the catering together, finding out how much this is actually costing us (I've got ten thousand emails that have to be added up and stuffed into an excel spreadsheet), and then herding all the cats into the center of the room for the next three weeks.

We've gone over the shooting schedule ad nauseum. The director is doing a production rewrite in preparation for the shooting script. The biggest issue is that we have to hurry up all of the equipment rentals and gathering of the free props and set dressing items. Details, details, details!!! Production marches forward on deadlines and details. And I haven't even gotten into the smoke effect we are planning to use on the set.... Ugh, did you know fire marshalls in LA get paid $120 per hour and you have to hire them for an eight-hour minimum!!!

I like to break down my production work in sections. Right now I'm trying to finish everything that requires expenditures of money. That means I have to finish up the budget, make the calls about the catering, and figure out how the heck I'm going to smoke up this hallway and then later have a firetruck, an ambulance and a cop car with full lights strobing at night without having to hire a cop to babysit the set. These things can take on a life of their own, and I don't want them to take over the show since, rightfully, they are there to set the stage and to allow the director to have a piece that has high production values.

Enough stalling. I have to get back to stripping off pieces of my soul so I can make my rent at the end of the month....

Agency Pitches

I'm back in Los Angeles after two weeks in Hawaii. I had a great time, got some writing done, browned a bit, ate a ton of tropical fruit, and started planning for my next big trip sometime this summer. Don't know where it will be, probably Italy since I haven't been there yet. ANYWAY....
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she mentioned attending an agency pitch session. Agency pitches are meetings in which executives and agents play speed dating with writer/director/actor careers. Basically, the agency comes over en masse to meet with all the executives at a network/studio and they "pitch" clients for various open assignments. These meetings typically take place monthly for film studios, and roughly quarterly for television.

In the case of a film studio (although it works exactly the same in television), the head of the studio and the head of the agency talk in advance about what projects are a priority. Then, the agents all come to the lot, sit down and pitch their clients. If an agency doesn't have a strong client list, then the meetings are icily polite. For the A-list agencies, the biggest agents don't typically show up with all the minnows, but they will send a number of senior level agents over to play footsie. When the agents come, they bring some kind of resume book with each client's credits and sometimes a short bio (especially for less established talent).

That part is pretty dry, but the real purpose of these meetings is to get good gossip: Who is dating whom, who just got divorced, which writers/directors/actors are recovering from drug addictions. Assignments do get filled this way, an executive makes a comment, an agent remembers a client's words in passing about a love of ballooning, or time spent as an arctic explorer and the next thing you know... summer home in Crete! A girl can dream....

Sorry for the sparse posting. I got back from Maui and have been immersed in putting together information for the short film I'm producing which is finally SHOOTING in two weeks. I can't wait!!! I'll blog about the process this month starting later today!

First post: herding cats aka how to get disparate folks on the same page during production. Mmm, producer fun.

Mincemeat and Stilton

So, Day 9 in the UK and I'm finally waking up before noon. For someone who is used to waking up at sunrise, the last week has really kicked my butt, especially because sunset here is around 4:30-5pm.

I haven't traveled around too much, the friend I'm visiting has alternately had car trouble, baby trouble and stomach trouble, but I have managed to eat a few cheeses, some mincemeat pies (taste great with Blue Stilton!), these really great sausages made by The Black Farmer (apparently the only one in England, he even has a TV show wherein he trains and selects two apprentice farmers from a group of inner-city black youths), digestives, genuine lamb stew (with the fatty bits on, ugh, but the stew was delicious), tons of coffee, tea and every bit of bread I've come across, a crazy fruit from Israel called a Sharon fruit ("The sweetest persimmon in the world!), Cornish pasty (Steak and Stilton!), fish and chips, HP sauce, and at some point this week, I'm supposed to be headed to the town of Cheddar. Oh yeah, baby. I can't wait. After reading this list, it looks like it was a stroke of luck that I've had to walk everywhere....

Had to nix the trip to France since the dollar is doing so poorly (I knew I should've exchanged money the week before I left!!) it will literally cost me about 30% more than I've budgeted. I guess I'll have to do that as a separate trip. Darn. :-)

Anyway, in writing news, I'm pushing through on the drama I started a few weeks ago. I've been writing ahead, then reaching back and tweaking the first act as I refine the concept. I've been trying to use this SAVE THE CAT! software, but my brain rejects some of the terminology he uses (not because I don't believe in his structural outline, I just learned it under different names). It does look promising for anyone who outlines and plots with story cards and the demo version I have allows me to save and print to PDF for the outline I've started. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

One book that has been a tremendous resource for this is Linda Seger's classic MAKING A GOOD SCREENPLAY GREAT. I'm not afraid to reference a writing book, especially for craft information. No one can write your story for you, but there are definitely some nifty tricks to keep in mind along the journey. I haven't read any of her other books, so I can't recommend them. Please feel free to suggest away in the comments section.

In fact, I meant to ask folks to recommend their favorite craft books. I'll start a separate post with links to all the books on my shelf. Please include reference books as well, if you don't mind. I would never dream of asking anyone for their obscure reference materials, (you know, the one you found in a discard bin that is a first-person narrative outlining some completely mind-blowing life experience/job/time period/lifestyle), that would make me feel guilty and like a hustler -- I hate when writers steal my reference materials and write something better than me. :-)~

Anyway, it's nighttime here, and I'm trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour. My fingers are blue from the cold, even though the heat has been turned up to indulge the Southern Californian. I feel too guilty to complain, thank God I have my laptop to heat up my legs, my nose is colder than the dog's.

And the short film has been pushed AGAIN. The rock star DP isn't available until February cuz... he's a Rock Star DP. But, because it's been so long, the cool actor the director is enamored of (okay, it's really me, I'm enamored of him) has become available once again and is still interested. One good thing is that I have a lead on a location that will let me hang a rig (and an operator) out of a window and simulate flames and smoke. Heh, heh, heh. My own short film is waiting patiently for me to rewrite it. I went a wee bit astray starting this feature spec because I just woke up one day with 50 full-blown pages in my head and couldn't turn away from that (right, right?? I need validation here, people!). I am supposed to be rewriting the pilot, updating my SHIELD spec, speccing another current (prob RESCUE ME) and submitting all of this to the Agent and manager type folks I've been teasing for the last few months. Ugh. Back to the grindstone. I'm giving this drama another week's worth of work, and then returning to my "to-do" list of work. Promise.

Mystery Solved

Today when I signed onto Blogger I bothered to read the log-in page. Apparently, in my rush to be ahead of the tech-curve (damn me for being an early early adopter!), I didn't realize I would lose all ability to comment on non-beta blogs and to mobile blog. The only good thing I can say about this development is that it's kept me off the internet long enough to get through two books and a couple of scripts over the last week. Now I remember what I did before I got dsl.

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One of my short films is inching closer to production. I'm staging a read-thru in three weeks or so (still waiting for word on the theatre and actors), but I heard from the director today and he is ready to go! I've been racking my imagination for a way to include the Shark Sub in my story, but, I only have 2 days of shooting and the story has absolutely NOTHING to do with submarines (not even through every stretch of my insane imagination). Oh well, I'm going to put in a dialogue reference and see if we can't do something about that on the day we shoot just in case a couple of hours free themselves up....


P.S. This is from one of my favorite goof off sites.