Bioshock The Movie

Bioshock the movie is in production. Looking forward to seeing it, along with the Watchman movie.

The Strikes Are Down

The writer's strike is over, as of yesterday. Though I haven't been able to ascertain the exact terms of the new contract, I think it's safe to say that AMPTP made a few concessions. Now I can rely on BSG not being delayed and the season completely finishing. Oh, and the Academy Awards will still go on too.

Super Tuesday Is Done And I'm Tired

Super Tuesday, and conveniently enough Mardi Gras, has come to a close. As I write this, www.cnn.com hasn't shown all precincts in all states reporting in, but it appears that when the dust finally settles, McCain has a huge lead as the Republican nomination so far (having slightly less than half of the votes necessary). Clinton also appears to be widening the gap between herself and Obama. Though I hate to make a prediction this early, Obama is going to need a good late push to thrust himself past Clinton.

I've also sent in my application of intent to participate in ISU's ResHall Film Fest. Though I haven't done much work lately (I've been involved in quite a few personal projects), I'm going to be assigning roles and working out the logistics of getting the movie down on film, or whatever you want to call the DV tapes we'll be using.

If all goes as planned, I'll be able to get a hold of some HD camcorders the university has and make a decent film, while not hurting grades and getting plenty of sleep.

Speaking of sleep.

WGA Strike to Last Much Longer

According to a statement found on the WGA website today:

This is Larry Gelbart. In all my decades as a member of the WGA I’ve learned a few lessons about strikes and negotiations, the most important being that it’s never over ’til it’s over, no matter how much the lady singer might weigh. As fellow and sister members of the Guild, you know how important the issues are for all of our futures, and for those to whom we will one day hand our pens. Over the coming days you will be getting calls asking you to join in to continue with the picketing. I ask you to set aside all the rumors, all the second-guessing, I ask you to set these aside and pick up a picket sign instead. I cannot stress how vital it is for all of us to show our commitment to our leadership during this current round of negotiations. Thank you.

This leads me to believe that talks aren't going as well as planned and/or the the producers think the writer's will eventually cave. Especially since the producers won't feel any big loss in shorter strikes.

I think the beginning is starting to set in, with the Oscars possibly being next to nonexistent and the toll is being taken on the spring lineup of television. With many Fall TV shows being prepared with spring and summer shooting, a strike into May will definitely hurt next year's lineup.

Movie's usually have long development times and an effect on the movie industry will be quite noticeable after a six-month plus long strike.

CeltX and a Couple of Good Quotes

I remember complaining about in an earlier post that I thought CeltX couldn't put subtext in the middle of character speech. I'm not sure if this was true of the version I had, but the newest version allows you to select text, left-click and give format options, such as parenthetical. You can then copy and paste the parenthetical correctly where you want to in the script. If there's a more intuitive way of doing it, let me know.


Pulled these from the Screenwriting WikiQuote page:

[Screenwriting] is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that.
-James L. Brooks

So the writer is the only person who's taking absolutely nothing, and 120 pages of it, and dirtying it up in such a way that it's gonna gross hundreds of millions of dollars and make a lot of people happy.
- Paul Guay

So You Want To Be A Screenwriter?

From what I've read, screenwriter's (both TV and movie) should focus on three things:

1. Persistence
To be a good screenwriter, or a good anything, you need to throw all of your weight into the activity. If it's your full-time job, that means working at least forty hours a week. Whether that's brainstorming, first drafts, editing, storyboarding, put lots of quality time into it.

2. Write
Is one screenplay good enough? Probably not. How about five? Definitely a lot closer. Before thinking about selling a single screenplay, write a library of them. And polish them. Make them perfect. If you go to an agent with one great screenplay, that's a start. If you can go to the same agent and give him five quality screenplays, not only are you five times as likely to making it big, but you've had a lot of practice and you can really showcase your work.

3. Genre
Explore. Pick one. Stick with it.

Oscars With or Without the Strike

According to the Associated Press, the Oscars will be held regardless of the Writer's Strike. Of course, an Oscars with the Writer's strike will probably cost the AMPTP and the industry quite a bit of money, leveraging more weight for the writer's.

Preparing for Battlestar Galactica Season 4

In preparation for the Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica (coming in March), I'm re-watching all of the episodes to freshen up. After watching it over for a second time, the tightness of the storylines, character development, dialogue is all beautifully done.

I'm very impressed by the screenwriting and overall visuals of the series. And of course, the screenwriting is the most important aspect of creating the series. Hopefully the writer's strike didn't push back the deadline for this series. It being the last one, I can't help but guess what will be coming up.

Since I'm not up to snuff on where the series ended, here are the guesses I'[m giving for Season 4:

1) They will find Earth
I know a previous interview (unsourced) stated that they will never find Earth, I think they will eventually come upon it.

2) Cylon Fracture
I believe that some of the Cylons will defect and eventually fight the factioning Cylons and live on Earth together. Or such factioning will weaken the strength of Cylons, leading to their destruction.

I'm not going to say much more without spoiling some of the information given in later seasons.

The Peculiar Fate of the Ames Strangler

I have named my movie for the Res Hall Film Fest for 2008. All that's left now is for me to get to filming it. I'm a little sad they didn't update the site with last year's entries, but here's the site for the Res Hall Film Fest. If you're in the Ames area, come check it out.

Usually only students go, but I've never seen them turn anyone away. Also, the crowd gets to vote for favorite movie. I'm sure the competition will be pretty fierce this year, as I know a couple of different people are doing pretty good films.

I'll get around to posting up the script later, probably after the movie is shot. This way I don't ruin it for anyone.

WGA Resumes Talks

The WGA and the AMPTP have went into unofficial talks today to try and settle the strike. The last talks between the studios and the writers was on Dec. 7th, 2007.

Read the full AP Story here.

Res Hall Film Fest 2008

Today and last night, I've spent a good amount of time writing the screenplay to a currently untitled movie for the Residence Hall Film Festival at Iowa State University. Making this process easier is proper screenwriting software. A lot of people use Final Draft and the software is, as far as I can tell, an industry standard. I however am a big fan of CeltX.

CeltX is open source screenwriting software compatible with Mac, Win and Linux OS. There are a few things that's hard to do in it (like add speech subtext in the middle of dialogue), but for the most part does a high quality job. Collaboration servers can be set up for use in collaborative writing and I used this software through my screenwriting class. The importer was good enough to pull in plain text versions of poorly formatted Microsoft Word screenplays.

I suggest looking at the CeltX Wikipedia page to get a little more info if you're unsure what software to use. Otherwise, you can download the software at www.celtx.com.

Mechatronic Defense Systems Are Go

For the a student film festival last March, I wrote a short screenplay, filmed, and edited the movie. The movie was nominated for Best Soundtrack and Best Movie and won Best Visual Effects. I wrote it with a DV camcorder and edited the video with iMovie HD.

Below is the movie:



I mention this as news because I'm working on the screenplay for the next film festival coming up in two months. I will put up excerpts soon and add the film when it's finally shot.

Screenwriting and Engineering, Closer Than You Think

Becoming recently involved with screenwriting (around a year) and interested in the mechanics and form of the craft, I came across a surprising article in IEEE's Software journal. The article is Screenwriting for Requirements Engineers (Norden, Barbara, "Screenwriting for Requirements Engineers," Software, IEEE , vol.24, no.4, pp.26-27, July-Aug. 2007).

This article draws a remarkably accurate parallel between writing scripts for a screenplay and writing use cases for software requirements.

If you're interested more in screenwriting and want to dive into the craft, I'd suggest getting a copy of Syd Fields Screenplay : The Foundations of Screenwriting.

Another great resource is A Crash Course in Screenwriting (PDF).

Directors Won't End WGA Strike

Speculation that the Director's Guild of America contract renegotiations could turn into collective bargaining for the Writer's Guild of America doesn't look promising. The director's have tentatively accepted the offer from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Full story here

Looks like the writer's strike will continue for the time being. Take a look at the cost counters on the AMPTP website. With the boycott of the Golden Globes costing an estimated $60,000,000.00 and with over $212 million of writer's income lost, I can only hope the AMPTA is hurting more than the WGA.

Edit: The DGA strike may have given the writer's some leverage. The WGA may go into unofficial talks with the AMPTP soon.

Full story here