The Rough Draft

Yeah, there’s a reason I don’t go on the writer / screenwriter forums… It’s like reading the comments section from AOL. Oh I get that it’s a big money grabbing pile of utter crap out there but come on people, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, just admit it. There’s no shame in not knowing something. You can find things out, you know… learn a thing or two. Pontificating from a point of ignorance doesn’t help anybody.

The Internet is not going to sell your script. It’ll help you send it off to an interested party but that’s about as far as it goes. The dirty little secret of the WGA (and any other script registry) is that your $25 is funding their retirement package. Nobody wants to steal your script and if they do, you’re already in the industry and can sic you’re own team of lawyers on their ass. Every script gets sued at some point so how is that registry helping you anyway?

And for Pete’s sake, read a book or two about screenwriting or better yet take a couple of classes. This will help you out of the, “Looking like an idiot,” box when you open your mouth and ask questions about your script. If you are dumb enough to ask, be prepared to take it hard and without lube. My days are short and I don’t know or like you well enough to give a shit about your feelings. Trust me, this’ll help you when you have to work with a real producer, cause they couldn’t give a shit about your feelings either. If you can’t take it now, piss off and quit clogging up the filters.

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, this is an industry based on relationships. Write all you want but if You don’t have a couple of cool shorts under your belt and a decent relationship with some up coming directors and producers, it simply ain’t going to happen. The only questions I ever get asked are.

What was your last thing?

How did it do?

What’s next?

And…

What else you got?

You see any navel gazing slated in there?

You’re not working for this film, you’re working for the next one and the three after that.

If that ain’t for you, I hear Fish Farming is the next big thing.

No it’s not another post about Bernie Madoff’s shenanigans.

It’s about the eternal writer’s concern of people stealing your work. Well any artist I suppose, especially photographers, which you can sort of understand because you tend to live or die by your stock book. This tends to leave you with an image stamped with a watermark so huge, you can’t even see the original image.

In other words, it renders a cool image worthless.

Nothing you have is worth stealing. Nothing you write is worth the legal hassle of theft.

If your work is good, they will give you something for it. They will carry the ball forward. Oh it’ll be the absolute minimum of what they need to give you. It’s a business after all and writers are the furthest point from production. Essentially, we’re story scouts waaay out on point. We find the target…

It’s not that anybody want’s to steal your target. It’s that a lot of them are shooting for the same thing. Now the target might be the same but there’s an infinite number of ways to get there.

Welcome to the zeitgeist.

I’ve signed more deals on scripts that went out with no release than those that have needed all that crap.

Now the contracts are a different issue but we’ll cover that later.

I love this sign. If it’s not a metaphor for writing I don’t know what is. That’s right people, keep your small children away from writing, it can be dangerous.

So, what rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem this week? I’m told that there’s a big financing meeting coming up in the next few days. Here’s hoping it’s a go and we can secure the rest of the assets needed to get us in the pipe for an August / September shoot (and more to the point, a payday for yours truly). Casting got pushed a week I’m assuming because of this finance meeting. I’m still waiting to hear about a possible rewrite gig but again, that was dependent on funding for the rewrite from the source suppliers. It wasn’t a lot of money but it was enough to make it worth my while for the short time the job would take.

Rewrite passes especially on low budget stuff that you didn’t write usually has between a two and four week turnaround. The only exception is when the production puts a bunch of story roadblocks in your way and it takes a bit of Rubik like thinking to get around them. As a rule I love these fast rewrites because it’s a good way to flex your muscles and show them why you are who you are. Yeah, it’s a lot easier to see the flaws in other’s work than your own – Sad but true.

So that’s where we’re are guys. So close I can smell it but far enough that it could all still slide into a bucket.

Definitely no place for small children.

Apparently Harlan Ellison still has a mouth and he can scream.

So periodically I sign on to the odd writer’s forum. The current one I’m checking out is Absolute Write Water Cooler. I don’t know why I do it, I suppose I have some sick internal need to share knowledge. Which leads me to the realization that what I really need to do is teach a class in this stuff, not blab about it online. Mostly because a class would net yours truly some much needed money.

Because the truth be told online forums for writing are a complete and utter waste of time. Oh they might be okay for the beginning writer but for the most part they just become a forum for whose dick is bigger. It’s all this posted worry about money and ownership of the idea etc, etc, etc, and contracts, they’re very big on contracts (well I am too). They do tend to miss some of the other points though.

This business of ours is about relationships.

You can have the best idea in the world but if you’re a complete horror show, it’s going to be no dice – ever. You want your rep to be pristine. You need to be seen as the person they can trust to get the job done and done well, with a minimum of drama. Be the solution not the problem and you will go far.

Consider every idea thrown your way.

Consider it, you don’t need to execute it or if it’s unclear you can question it (before you bin it) but don’t be dismissive. The people you work with want to be taken seriously (even the crazy ones (especially the crazy ones)) as do you.

Money’s a nice way of keeping score but you’re in this for the long haul.

Listen I know it sucks not getting paid (much) for a gig but sometimes you have to weigh the future against the present and by that I don’t mean create some fantasy where you’re walking off stage clutching an Oscar to you chest. Take a good hard look at the project before you. Who is involved with it? What have they produced? What other benefits open up with this? Will it be on TV will it hit festivals? Will it get your name out there. Is it good enough to go on a reel - your reel? All those are important considerations.

This ain’t a sprint, it’s trench warfare baby!

If you’ve been doing this a while you might notice that the field you started with has thinned a bit. Only the strong and the lucky survive. The rest just fall away. Sure there’s younger people hitting the boosters right out of the gate but they tend to burn bright and vanish just as fast. There are old soldiers and bold soldiers but there are no old bold soldiers. Hone your craft and knuckle down, press the flesh, you’ll get there in the end.

Contracts, contracts, contracts

Always get a contract. No tickie, no workie. More importantly, always maintain a, “Chain of Title,” as it’s the definitive record of who did what and where they’ll go first in arbitration. A little money is better than no money. Even a few hundred dollars in your pocket keeps you a whore and not some word slut giving it away for free. It also sharpens the attitude of the producer as now they’re invested in your script regardless of the outcome. Make sure everything has a completion date and that if you generated the idea and everything, it all reverts back to you. If they won’t pony up the cash or a contract and you still want to continue. You create a contract giving them the right of first refusal (with a term of only a couple of weeks) but the ownership of the script falls right back to you so you can shop it elsewhere. This also tends to keep the producer on their toes.

So just remember.

You’re in this to win, not to place in the end all you have is your work, make sure you keep ownership of it as much as you can.

Stay safe, it’s a jungle out there.

I’ve got a running hate, hate, hate relationship with our current Govt. here in the frozen north. Mostly it’s because they’re very sneaky about cutting programs to the arts. Not that I like using these funds myself. I find the hoops you need to jump through ridiculous and the end products weak from too much interference. I just hate that these weak kneed fuckers won’t man up and come out in public when they decide to take a program off the table. They just weasel it through and wait for the fall out.

No sense of honor but what do you expect from a politician? If there’s one thing I hate is some faceless entity that just likes to hide in the shadows and chip away at your flanks. With the current bunch of chimps we have in parliament (on all sides of the aisle) right now. I’m embarrassed to say I’m a Canadian.

See the full article below.

Film industry outraged by cut

By ALTHIA RAJ, NATIONAL BUREAU

The Conservative government is killing a small program for Canadian documentaries as it spends $40 billion to stimulate the economy.

The move to cancel the $1.5-million program that helps fund thousands of projects has sparked outrage in the film industry.

The government has ordered the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, which helped get the popular documentary The Corporation off the ground, shut down on March 31.

“It is an immense loss,” said Betsy Carson, a Vancouver producer and vice-chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada. “For the small amount of money they have, they kick start an enormous number of really, really valuable educational films that would not otherwise be made in Canada.”

DEMORALIZED

The fund’s director, Robin Jackson, was demoralized.

“It just seems like such an injustice,” she said.

Jackson took her case to Parliament Hill hoping to save the 20-year-old fund. She said the Conservative government has never explained the closure and is refusing to pay $100,000 in closing costs.

“We have to pay to get out of our lease,” she said.

Deirdra McCracken, a spokeswoman for Heritage Minister James Moore, said the department identified the CIFVF as an “ineffective or underperforming” fund.

But supporters say it generates more than $20 million in activity and has helped launch the careers of hundreds of Canadian documentary filmmakers.

Mark Achbar said his documentaries Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media and The Corporation would not have been possible without the support of the fund.

SUCCESS

“And both those films became, each in their time, the top grossing feature documentaries ever made in this country,” he said.

Montreal producer Eve Lamont made her first feature-length documentary with a $20,000 subsidy from the fund. “Without this fund, my career would never have taken off,” she said.

New producers often have a difficult time getting their foot in the door because they need a broadcast licence to get money from big organizations.

But television broadcasters are rarely interested in making educational documentaries, said Nicole Hubert, a producer and member of the CIFVF’s board of directors. “They’re looking for projects with commercial value,” she said.

Liberal Heritage critic Pablo Rodriguez said the cut is an example of the Conservative government’s “distrust of the artistic community".

“It shows what we already know, that they don’t understand culture,” he said.

You can read the original article here

Well before I go off on this oncoming rant, I’d just like to say that I got in a nice two hour motorcycle ride today. I was hoping to get some photography in but the sites I had picked out for today didn’t work out. Then I got stuck behind a big crash on the QEW (which I passed on the way in) which pushed a ton of traffic on the the alternate route out of the downtown I was using. Which is why my one hour ride turned into two. Still on the positive though… The new Gel seat really was more comfortable than my regular stock seat even with my other gel pad and my 04 Suzuki DL-650 performed flawlessly even on the little bit of ice I encountered down by the docks. I just can’t say enough good things about that bike.

Other humans? Well we can be much harder on them.

We recently passed a law in Ontario banning the use of cell phones while driving, unless you have a hands free device. Trouble is, people are cheap and it’s a pretty hard law to enforce. Still I support this law because when you’ve almost been mowed under from the side by an SUV for the fifteenth time that day and yeah, they’re on a cell phone. It gets irritating. There must be a secret rule, the more expensive the SUV, the worse the driver.

I had somebody say to me that I needed a helmet with bluetooth so they could reach me on my cell. Now I travel with my cell on a bike, of course I do, it’s a very handy tool in case of a breakdown or an accident but the last place I want to talk to somebody is when I’m riding my bike. It’s my urban space ship. That helmet is my reprieve from the bullshit for the few hours I get to ride without life butting in.

I had another friend remark that riding a bike looked too involved, what with the multiple levels of clothing ad gear required. I had a bit of a think about that one. I think deep down inside those of us who ride, like all the gear. We like the prep and the look. Fetishist? Perhaps but it beats a skin graft. I like to gear up when I play paintball too. Half the fun is getting your marker ready. Today I got to try out a new seat and a new breath guard in my helmet. They both worked well, which makes them money well spent.

The first ride after months of Winter is always a bit dodgy, you need to get back in the headspace. You need to remember that, “Yes, every cager is trying to kill you.” That your bike can accelerate faster than most cars but on cold pavement, even with warm tires, it has some stopping issues. I wish more people rode bikes. It would clear up rush hour. Let’s face it most of these cars only have one person in them anyway. It’d be more fun to go anywhere and bottom line it would make the cagers better drivers because they’d be on the lookout for bikes.

Oh yeah, and it’d make it very hard and very costly to talk on a cell phone, while you rode.

Well in my perfect world.