Write Large, Think Small

I have little else to do on this my natal day, as the time when such a passage heralded the legal opportunity to drive, vote, or consume massive quantities of alcohol (though never while driving and/or voting) has long since passed.

Therefore, let us continue the discussion on Hollywood's newest darling - the microbudget movie. Shall we?

Note - if you have not already, please read Variety's recent article on Paramount's new microbudget division.

What is a microbudget film? Generally speaking,  a "micro" budget is a feature film whose production costs run under approximately $2,000,000. Or rather, that is how a microbudget used to be defined. With today's digital technology, and the age of DIY filmmaking, today's microbudgets run much, much lower - try under $100,000 in production costs (the cap for the Paramount venture).

That amount sounds miniscule, when compared to the likes of AVATAR's mind-boggling $230,000,000 price tag, or even DISTRICT 9's modest $30,000,000 budget. That being said, yes, Virginia, you can make a feature film for $100,000. If you are British wunderkind Marc Price, you can make a feature film for $100. It might even be good.

How do you do this? There are no rules. There are, however, a few suggestions from those who walk the microbudget walk:

1) Keep it simple. Contained stories. Clean plot lines. Limited locations - a mall, a building, a car, a home - and a limited cast. Actors cost money.

"I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged." - Peter Brook, The Empty Space.

When you write for micro, you don't have the luxury to rely upon boffo lighting and sound, SFX and costume. Therefore you are served well to write as few characters as possible - andt write them well. Give them conflict, make them complex, and let them Show Don't Tell to a fare-thee-well. Read OPEN WATER ($130,000 USD). Note how much is jam-packed into the first five minutes: marriage in trouble, he's irresponsible, she's addicted to work, they have money troubles ... all expressed through brief bits of dialogue, through moments of impatience, the sound of a cell phone that seems to never stop ringing. Perfectly set up and executed in minutes.

2) Be prepared to wear more than one hat. There are exceptions always, but it is doubtful that you will sell a micro script as nothing more than scribe; instead, you have to sell the whole package - and that means that you will be producing this little ditty. Enroll in a production boot camp, such as those offered by Dov Siemens or Reel Grok's Norman C. Berns. Learn how a film is made from start to finish (every screenwriter should know this anyway). Are you an actor/actress? If so, you might find yourself in the cast. Do you direct? You can join the likes of triple threat Ed Burns and his breakthrough film, THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN ($23,800 USD), Darren Aronofksy's double threat of writer/director in PI ($60,000 USD) and of course, the King himself, Robert Rodriquez and his dazzling writing/directing debut EL MARIACHI   which roared onto the screen at $7,000 USD plus post.

3) Microbudget filmmaking is the ultimate Team Sport. Enlist family, friends, employers and anyone else in your circle to help bring your project to completion. Look at Alex Holdridge's IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS ($25,000 USD), Christopher Nolan's gem FOLLOWING ($6,000 USD) and countless films by John Waters. What do these films have in common? Friends. Friends have houses and businesses that can be used for locations. Your mother might cater a meal. Your neighbor might be an assistant/wrangler (for an associate producer credit, natch). Your police lieutenant brother-in-law might act as security. Scratch their backs...and ask them to scratch yours.

4) Take inventory. In keeping with number three, ask yourself "What are my assets? What do I have at my disposal - and at no or low costs?"before you begin your Beat Sheet. Do you work in a restaurant? Check out MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (precise budget unavailable).  Do you own a purple La-Z-Boy? THE PUFFY CHAIR ($15,000 USD). An office? CLERKS ($27,000 USD plus post). A slightly altered look at the world and those who people it? ERASERHEAD ($10,000 USD). Competition is fierce; you might have to secure financing yourself. If you've done the work as described, you can provide a potential investor with an opportunity to be part of a creative process...and possibly show a nice profit as well.

5) Think outside the box. This applies to each and every facet of the process. It's easy to scare people with razor tipped hands, or starlets being stabbed in the breasts; it's not so easy to scare people with next to nothing - but it is not impossible. Think of new twists on old standards.

Outside box thinking also applies to distribution. Do you want to feed your ego, or do you want to feed your family? If your answer is the former, good luck to you on getting that big marquee and a nationwide opening. If, however, you are a forward thinker, look to downloads, to on-demand and other inexpensive ways of delivering media - and chuckle your way to the bank.

Microbudget isn't for everyone. You have to hone your skills as a writer. You must be able to evangelize your project - and yourself. You have to be fearless but not feckless; determined yet flexible, and above all, very, very organized. If attention to minutiae is not in your skill-set, time to look at the small picture. This frontier requires courage and commitment. Those lacking in focus and ambition need not apply.

~ HRH, The Princess Scribe

Darwinism in Tinseltown - Part Three

Lords and Ladies of the Court ~

Sometimes, it is the little creature that can affect us most.



If you were not paying attention to the previous blogs on this subject, will you now?

New Paramount division will think small -- latimes.com

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Flex those fingers ... write Large and think Small.

~ HRH, The Princess Scribe

THE LAST GOODNIGHTS

Tune into author John West's interview @ http://www.cfax1070.com/  

9:30 PST today; podcast available later.

About "The Last Goodnights":

A husband and wife, both medical professionals, are gravely ill. Rather than living in pain, they choose to end their lives, and turn to their son for help.

Told with intensity and bare honesty, John West's account of the death of his parents is both gritty and loving, frightening and illuminating, nerve-wracking and, even at times, darkly humorous.

Foreword

I don’t know what my booze bill was for that time, but I’m sure it was big. I had a good reason, though: I had to kill my parents. They asked me to. Actually, they asked me to help them with their suicides, and I did. And if that doesn’t justify throwing back an extra glass or three of Jameson’s on the rocks, then I don’t know what does.

My father was Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West, MD, a world-renowned psychiatrist and former chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, age seventy-four. My mother was Kathryn “K” West, PhD, a respected clinical psychologist at the West Los Angeles (Brentwood) Veterans Administration Hospital, age seventy-five.

Jolly and K were wonderful people–brilliant, academic medical professionals, highly cultured, and well-rounded. Neither was at all religious, but both had deep insight into the human condition. They knew what was what. And they knew what they wanted.

So when they made their wishes clear to me, I wasn’t about to argue. I respected my father and mother, and I loved them. And I believe, as they did, in freedom of choice, the right to personal privacy and self-determination–which includes reproductive choice (as the law now recognizes, although it didn’t used to), the right to refuse medical treatment (as the law now recognizes, although it didn’t used to), and the right to choose death with dignity (as the law does not recognize–not yet–although a few states are getting close).

My father’s desire to end his life did not shock me, especially since his newly discovered cancer–a particularly vicious type–was literally eating him up and would take him from playing tennis to lying dead in just five months. Should Jolly have been forced to endure a few more days or weeks of agony just to satisfy some people’s notions that death should be “natural”?

And what about my mother? K had midstage Alzheimer’s disease, plus osteoporosis and emphysema. Should she have been forced to deteriorate into a walking vegetable, soiling herself, wandering into traffic, hunched over like a crab, and coughing up blood, just because some people say that’s how it’s always been and always should be?

Jolly and K said no. And I agreed.

Darwinism in Tinseltown - A Post Script

Grabbed from the headlines, a prime example of where DIY can lead the budding scribe:

Panic Pushes Hollywood Buttons

And the video that started it all:



What's left to do? Easy Peasy.  Just Add Story.

~ HRH

Darwinism in Tinseltown

"Well!" thought Alice to herself, "after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs!”

Navigating the ever-changing landscape of the entertainment industry these days is less a road trip in unchartered territories and more like a trip down the rabbit hole. Hollywood itself seems poised on the brink of a great upheaval usually reserved for a Roland Emmerich style apocalypse.

I was having coffee with a writer/producer last week, with a string of blockbuster credits that would turn the average scribe green with envy.

He took a long sip of his macchiato, and squinted at me. “You know what I would do, if I were a new screenwriter today?” he growled.

“No,” I said, leaning in to catch every pearl of wisdom cast straight towards me. “What?”

He took a long pause.

“I’d get the hell out of town, give it up and get a life.”

His pessimism does not come without reason. A-list writers are finding themselves swimming in the schools of the much smaller fish. There was a time when a pitch would seal them a deal; today, they are forced to write specs, pitch their completed scripts and slog it out with the rest of us – at a time when the spec sale is at a mind-boggling low.

Such a reversal in a career can cause a cataclysmic response to the artist who is much more used to being coddled than the rest of us. Many of them simply don’t know what to do. I had another conversation with another writer who bemoaned the fact that she was going to have to work on rewriting old specs. Why, I asked, don’t you just start something new?

“You mean start a whole new script?” she said, panic clearly present in her eyes. “It’s so much work, and I don’t get paid for it. What am I supposed to do?”

Ah. Let me direct you to an excerpt from an amusing little publication:

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”

~ Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

The times, they are a-changin’ my friend, and this is a time to evolve.

Last week, I interviewed scribe Jim Hemphill, and published this interview on the Blake Snyder website. Jim is a brilliant man, a kind soul … and a survivor. Like Lloyd Kaufman, he made his own damn movie - he took control of his career - and his life.

Generally speaking, two kinds of scripts are making their way into production – tent-pole epics and micro-budgets. Studios are not about to throw hundreds of millions of dollars towards an untested scribe; therefore, logic and the glut of affordable technology suggest that it’s time for writers to evolve, to stop dreaming the pipe dream of the big sale and the walk down the red carpet, to put up or shut up and make their own damned movies.

Don’t take my word for it – look at the focus of this year’s AFM Conference Schedule. Independent financing, independent filmmaking and DIY distribution – using the new technologies of video on demand, online streaming media, mobile devices, social networking and marketing.

While you're at it, take a look at CA's new(ish) tax incentives, giving indie filmmakers here even more reasons to shoot local. For once, it's cheap.

DVDs? Fuhgeddaboudit. They’re so 2009, as discussed on Monday’s edition of “The Business”. Pay close attention to the new distribution catch phrases, and how studios are already cashing in on the Brave New World. Plus, hello - landfill fodder?

So, what do you plan to do to survive the ever-changing landscape? Have you planted your feet on the so-called terra firma, loudly proclaimed that you will weather the storm, and clicked your heels thrice while dreaming of Kansas? Do you go the way of the Dodo … or you do you evolve?

Me? I’m making my own damn movie.

Now, you’ll understand my absence. Thanks for hanging on.

~ HRH

Sneak Peek

Dear Lords and Ladies~

HRH is on a writing hiatus for the next few days. Until then, a few treats for the court.

Today's treat - at long last! A sneak peek - nay, a free download of Chapter 3 from Book 3 in the Save the Cat! series of books - Save the Cat! Strikes Back - More Trouble for Screenwriters to Get Into - and Out of!

Writers Face the New Economy on KCRW's "The Business"

The Business - KCRW

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