That’s how crazy it is. Forget the iPad – that’s old news. The Kindle? A proprietorial dinosaur. Check this puppy out . . .

The Kobo is an open-source electronic book reader that uses cheap SD cards to boost memory. It plugs into your computer via USB, so you can carry thousands of books around at once. All nice and standard. No proprietary book format (although it reads many formats). It costs A$200 and can be bought at Borders.

Writers, Get out Your Pens

Self-publishing used to be a bad word. It was frowned upon by the chosen writers. The ones chosen to have their books put into print by publishers. People who couldn’t work in a team environment with a producer and an editor were cornered into self-publishing – and nobody would talk to them. Now they are rock stars. Brad Pitt was wrong in Fight Club. We’re all going to be famous rock-stars because we’re killing off the middle men one by one! What was it that Karl Marx said about access to society’s “means of production” being in the “hands of the few?” Not so anymore.

Now you can release your own music (like I do on Bandcamp) make your own films and upload them (like we do here at Geoffrey on YouTube). And now? . . . Now you can publish your own Kindle novelette.

Do be certain to follow this very handy guide. That’s actually a brilliant link to a list of tips for any writer. Check your work before releasing your novelette to the masses (because no-one else will).

And be sure to make it completely free.

Whaaaaaaat?

I’m sorry but your first novel is FREE

You ain’t going to get anywhere without writing and releasing your first novel for nix. If the Kobo comes with Dostoevsky’s “Crime & Punishment” pre-loaded, you’d better not charge a dime, friend. Dostoevsky is King!

So – all you people who ever wanted to publish a novel (or novelette, or short story, or anthology of poems) – now there’s no excuse. Nobody’s going to reject you. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. At least you won’t owe your publisher a penny if your book flops! And most do (keep that in mind as you write).

So what’s next? . . . Books, movies, music . . . Well. There’s a slew of computer printers that can “print” out plastic parts. It’s all in its infancy, but one day maybe even wannabe toy-makers and toolmakers can start their home-based careers. Without having to go through Hasbro or . . . Black & Decker? (I think that’s where toolmakers go).

In a Nutshell

Quick! Make a run for Borders and order your $199 Kobo. Use the SD card in your digital camera if you want to store more than 1,000 books. And get in now before third world labour becomes too expensive.

The Internet Public Library has a great list of some of the basic plots in literature, but it’s up to you and the zeitgeist to come up with something original, relevant and interesting – and yet not predictive.

Many screenplay puritans (and perhaps, more recently, The Academy itself) have spurned the film Avatar as being derivative. It borrows too much from the storylines of both Pocahontas and The Emerald Forest. Do you think it’s a bad thing that James Cameron borrowed a tired old storyline for his movie, Avatar OR are we at the point where it’s all been done before, so it’s time to do it again – only this time, with computers?

The following are some snippets from my PDA note-taking.
Some of this is my synthesis and interpretation, but I’m sure you’lll find it useful:

Films must have:
Palpable subjectivity with a thinking and feeling presence.

Conflict can also be defined in terms of the 4 C’s
• contrast
• contradiction
• context
• character (who has needs and an objective)

Showed opening of Jaws.
Note that the story has stopped when the girl gets into the water?
The love story has been “stolen” from us (to make way for the real story).

Changing of relationships. When relationships change, we get a feeling of Substance.

A film is really about
The drama of being human.

General No-No in Dialogue:
• characters can not tell Story (narratorial)
• No commentarial dialogue (characters can speak it- as their Pov.but the writer can’t write it)
• Decorative
• Q & A
• Characters should never discuss scenes they’re in.

WOVA note: Continue to film a scene after the 20 or so takes – without dialogue. Get the actor to internalise the lines and try to just think the thoughts.

Actions are
• Verbal
• Physical
• Mental/emotional

We want to watch real “people”. Thinking.

The Ontological (hermeneutic) Structure of Palpable Subjectivity

palpable subjectivity

Mystery?

Don’t have characters that Suit their role
eg. the interpreter / cartographer at Start of Close Encounters works well because he is mis-cast.
We don’t need anyone in our film that can solve things easily.

Human beings try “to normalise” situations. eg. the pilots in the air traffic controller scene at the beginning of Close Encounters

We must experience “through” the characters – possibly by being “dimly aware that something’s afoot”.

Passive characters – this often means that your character isn’t dimly aware that something’s afoot.

“Keep your films banal” (ref, to child sleeping in Close Encounters … And the distant dog bark.)

Every character should have their own preoccupations – not those of the writer / audience. The specificity of your character’s response to what is happening is what people like to see.

Then we watched exerpt from Good Will Hunting and Something About Mary
character (will hunting – guardian/logal friend; In Something About Mary – the slimy P.I.) …

Character conflict is either
Physical / interior or intra-character or to do with the external world.
Need: To protect (GWH: why? – to prevent humiliation; SAM: – needs to beloved)
Motivation
Strategy (reveal flaws & create Misery 4 others)
Quality
Depth
Lengths (GWH: goes to far – relying on threat of violence)
New Insight (GWH: – is insecure)

Flaws (GWH)
moral (tendency to harm others)
psychological (tendency to harm self – thereby pushing people away)
Substance (flaw)

The Graduate
His fear of being inadequate makes him inadequate

At end of act 2, ice is thinnest – shit is deepest. It’s customary to begin the 3rd act with a reflection.

thin ice, deep shit

In final act.
Present main character with all antagonists, but in reverse order.
Go from general (eg. Cops in Thelma & Louise) to Specific (one cop).
It goes from Political to interpersonal to internal.

Separate main character nemesis by time and space

Sacrifice (ie. to have universal human resonance). Thereby expressing the theme of your story. Often happens at end.

Contrary to popular belief, characters don’t ”change” -they just become more integrated.

Massive subtext?
Your characters need to be talking drivel.

Exhillarating = gratuitous and dramatically justified.

It’s why we see movies.

More importantly never go into production on a script that hasn’t been very heavily criticised, rewritten, analysed, rewritten gain, ripped apart, gutted and finally … rewritten. I’m sure you can name a thousand movies with huge plot holes or character problems. Problems which could have easily been patched up with just a few bucks investment.

Criticism is not the same as rejection.

While Mum will happily read your screenplay, getting constructive feedback from industry professionals costs money. Constructive criticism is the key to morphing an ailing screenplay into a great feature film. Nothing else will do this. Unfortunately, getting anyone who’s not your mother to read your screenplay (or read beyond your synopsis and director’s notes) costs money. Even if you don’t get feedback!

In Australia, state and federal government film bodies may give you money to develop your screenplay if they like the idea and you have a producer attached. Development money usually consists of a script editor’s (or script doctor) fee, some travel money, a producer’s fee and a small pittance for the actual writer/s.

The traditional Aussie way

Here’s a run-down of how much development can cost (in Australia). I live in the West and this is roughly how an $18,000 script development budget might run:

1. Script editor $6,000 (pretty standard in Oz).
2. 3 x return airfares $2,000
3. Per diems $2,000
4. Producer fee $2,000 (coast to coast 2-3 times)
5. Writer’s fee $5,000 (split two ways)
6. Other expenses $1,000

This took us from a rough 2nd draft on one script to a 3rd draft, but I felt it needed another, so we paid David Caesar from ScriptCentral to give it another going over.

Keep in mind that in Australia – more than 60% of a film’s budget is usually government financed and getting your hands on the few million that Australia has to invest in film is extraordinarily competitive (although not nearly as competitive as in the USA). About 1 in 100 , fully-developed screenplays will get a guernsey here in Oz – and you’d better have a good director or name actor on-board . . . OR . . . most preferably . . . a great script.

The American alternative

If you have no luck competing for Aussie state or federal development money, you can get good bang for your buck feedback by entering American Screenplay competitions. Don’t even think about winning one of these comps – they have up to 3,000 entrants each year. And even though a script report can take many months to hit your inbox, the feedback is top notch.

Four of the more high profile competitions are:

1. Bluecat Screenplay Competition
2. Nicholls Fellowship (the Oscars)
3. Austin Screenplay Competition
4. Slamdance

Several comps do script coverage

1. Slamdance sample script coverage
2. Bluecat sample analysis

Australian film authorities no longer give written assessments because readers are expensive. The government bureaucracy can take 6 months to send through a pro-forma rejection letter!

In that light – the US comps are a great way to get feedback and develop your screenplay further. And for a little extra ( maybe as little as AUS$50) some will send additional notes from one of their many professional readers.

Entry fees are up to around AUS$100 – but the notes you get are absolutely excellent value for the money when compared to the Aussie way.

I usually go both ways and like the US take on writing. It’s refreshingly different to ours.

What should one do with all this feedback?

It’s taken 5-6 months and you’ve finally received feedback on a draft that was binned early in the year. How does one make sense of all these belated notes, feedbacks and analyses?

Once you have your script reports, you can carefully abide by these rules;

1. Read it through once.
2. If you are a beginner writer (not used to criticism) – wait 2 days before reading it again. You’ll be amazed by what you think they wrote.
3. If one person tells you something about your script – take it on board, but treat it as subjective criticism and look for the constructive bits – things that you are willing to do / change.
4. If two (non-colluding) professional writers/directors identify a problem – give it some serious consideration. You don’t have to kill your main character or change genre – she is probably just undeveloped.
5. If three or more independent, professional analysts tell you that something particular is wrong with your script – believe it! . . . Something is wrong.
6. Ignore words like “genius”, “well done” and “masterfully crafted” (unless you didn’t pay for the feedback). These people are going for repeat business.

You could go into production on your movie right now. But unless you work with constructive feedback and tightly hone your script – you are probably – like most filmmakers – wasting your time on a poorly written story.

Feedback will fine-tune your screenplay and eventually turn into a film with a big audience and a long shelf-life. Heck – you may even get to do it all over again.

I originally wrote a narrative screenplay – but actually sticking to it for the doco format – was tricky. We really had to go with other things that happened on the day (as one might expect). We managed to capture the essence of the screenplay, however, and some of the scenes are very moving and emotional.

Technical

I shot 1.5 hours of HD with a Sony HDV camera throughout one day. What a lovely, easy-to-use camera. We literally switched it on and started shooting. I had to ride the exposure and focus a little, but the automatic functions allowed me to, literally, interrupt what the camera was doing by touching a dial and going manual – something like cruise control on a car. I was worried about sound (we used a simple RODE directional mic. and camera sound) but it came out nicely and the images are lovely.

I am very humbled to think that the films we make for DADAA are copyright “the subject” (ie. the person we are filming) and I can’t wait to see what the various editors and musicians do with the finished film.

All in all – it made me realise that I really do love filmmaking. Sometimes you lose track of why you are doing such a difficult thing. And then it hits you. Like it did for me on Tuesday.

After submitting BTS to the AFC and Bluecat, I started struggling with a sci-fi no-budget screenplay, Yellow. I was scheduled to shoot in Feb / March, but the script wasn’t exactly writing itself.

Then. Life took hold.

Cancer in the family and a new job writing screenplaysfor DADAA saw Old Father Time disappear.

Last week, I had coffee with a mate of mine who says, “I’ve got a really good idea for a film”. He saw the irritated look in my eye and backed down. But I needed the distraction and, two sips into a strong long machiatto, heard myself say “Go on.”

It was a beauty. Story, character, locations – everything. He told me a riveting story about something that happened to a friend of a friend. It had a complete screenplay structure – turning points, mid-points, Voglerian call to adventures – everything! On a plate.

I wrote an outline with my mate in about two hours and we’re shooting it at the end of the year. I’m already saving money.

The AFC makes decisions about this year’s Indivision projects on May 3rd. I refuse to wait by the phone.

I can hardly believe it’s over. To some degree. Phil and I are happy with it, but we’ve yet to involve distributors, actors etc.

I recently saw some notes for this script dated 1992 and almost none of the same characters were in it. I dunno what to say. Fifteen years.

A pass?

A pass is when a writer goes right through the screenplay again. It’s not a spell-checking session. Usually it’s a fine tooth comb looking for; structural problems, character inconsistencies and other believability issues.

Phil read my pass and we’re going to podcast about it next week. Once we’re totally happy with the script, it goes off to our producer (who has already targeted actors and possible financiers etc.) and the rolling stone tries to gather some moss.

So – barring a few minor fixes – Beware the Stingray (final draft) is finished and shoot-ready. Carmelo (of CM Films fame) just gotta raise the $2m now . . . Easy ;)

Which leaves a great vacuum. Y’know the one. You’re all apace and then … nothing but the sound of wind whistling through the trees. The anticlimax is followed by a real Alexander (Downer).

WASA Screenwriting Awards

In this down time, I will work on Yellow (another low-budget sci-fi script) and read other people’s screenplays. 47 of them to be precise. I’m one of three judges for the WA Screen Awards Best Screenplay.

Reading screenplays – good or bad ones – is the best way to learn how to write features (there are heaps right here). You may get your technical skills by emulating the author’s style, but actually writing screenplays is the only way to get inside your character’s head. If you are there for the entire script – and you’ve got some character empathy – there’s a good chance the reader won’t yawn and get to the last page of your script without breaking for a coffee.

Character Empathy

Character empathy is a hard one. Why do we care about your main character? Do they reflect something that is human in all of us? Have we gone deep enough? It’s what I’ll be looking for as a judge – a writer who really immerses themselves in character. Character is plot. Paste that baby above your writing desk. It’s a doozy.

Here’s mine.

Hi, this is Phil Jeng Kane,
I asked Mr Trivia (now M. Le Trivia for some reason) for a bit of space on this blog to provide a lightning sketch of Edwin Lynch.

Yes, true to his last posting, Edwin is indeed a jock-wearing, shut-in weirdo who constantly peers through peepholes looking for a Godot-like postie. But he’s also a writer-director who studies performance and screenwriting; he networks with actors and filmmakers and has always kept up with filmmaking technology; he has a strong grasp on filmmaking skills, like how to break down and choreograph a scene.

Why the resume? Because it occurred to me that his self-portrait was an ATOMISED version of Edwin Lynch the writer and director. I probably wouldn’t work with Underpants Man and yet, in reality, I have worked with Ed for more than a decade.

Filmmakers are great storytellers. I realised recently that I’ve learnt to take most of what film people say, with a grain of salt. Not because they have lax moral or ethical standards, but because they see reality through an imaginative lens. They’re fantasists, embroiderers, hyperbolists, analysers, searchers-for-truth, attention-seekers, spin-doctors, entertainers and sometimes complete bull artists.

Filmmakers spend their lives looking to create a world, through writing, performance, directing, editing and post-production. After this process is complete, they might have a behind-the-scenes story to tell and this becomes part of the creation myth that they then use to publicise the film.

So there’s before-the-film, behind-the-film, during-the-film and after-the-film. Filmmakers will use all of it to persuade you to see that film and this will help them to make their next one. They love to tell a story.

There’s a line in the 1987 movie OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE (not to be confused with the very funny New Zealand soap on Network Nine that SPAA protested against.) The 1987 film is an odd-couple pairing between Bette Midler and Shelly Long. Long plays a pretentious actor and to get under her skin, Midler’s character says “Actors are just bullshitters who get paid.”

All filmmakers need a bit of the bullshitter in them. And with any luck one will get paid. It’s not considered an adult occupation because it calls on all the skills and imagination you used in order to play when you were a child. And therefore its not fully respectable until you get paid. But who wants to be respectable anyway?

Phil Jeng Kane
C/- Mr Trivia

P.S. Of course, I’m an unreliable narrator, myself. I often use a pseudonym and don’t even reveal as much in print about myself as Edwin does. But one day I just might.

Until then I have ventriloquism and my addiction to prescription painkillers to sustain me.