A little while ago I wrote a post on patience. The idea was twofold — on one hand, I hate when people tell me to be patient and that, to succeed, waiting seems to be the key (by the way, patience does not equal inaction — you should be working daily on doing something that helps your career. Waiting patient on nothing doesn’t work quite as well). On the other hand, I must and am learning to enjoy the experience of trying to succeed because, as cheesy and irritatingly-8th-grade-English-Lit-poetry-paper as it sounds, it’s more about the journey and the adventure than actually getting there.
Except getting there would be pretty awesome too.
The last month or so we’ve (and my “we’ve” I mean my production company: Happy Little Guillotine Films) been trying desperately to get a big, big gig. It’s — you know in movies when the lawyer talks about getting that “big account” — well, this was the big account. Our competition was absolutely ridiculous — networks and companies seventeen times our size (we counted). The job would be a month long excursion, with easily over a month of pre-production and it would have a budget that is roughly 10,000% of Break a Leg.
In other words, there was absolutely no way we were getting it. We’ve had a lot of things pop up like this – a lot of maybe’s — and this was just another thing we had already mentally geared up to lose. We had two things that gave us a little bit of hope: the first, we made a video demo for the company to show them what the end result of the project may look like — which, and I say this with all the humility I can muster, we absolutely, positively rocked.
By the way, to all you fledgling production companies out there — this is the way to do it. The only way we can compete against the big guys is by being more agile than them. Throwing together full-scale video proposals instead of pitch sheets go a long way in selling our services and talents. Bigger companies can’t do this because they can’t even think about doing a video without paying their brain 50,000 dollars for the suggestion.
The second thing we had going for us is Blip.tv. I have to write a post called, “Ode to Blip.tv” because they’re easily one of the best companies around. Blip.tv is pertinent to this community. Hell, Blip.tv is one of the reasons this community is even here. This deal was through Blip, who we’ve been working with very closely in the past few months. They have a fantastic reputation and brilliant salespeople and between Blip and our talents, we had to trust that we were at least somewhat in the running.
As it turns out, patience actually kind of works. As it turns out, all the no’s do, eventually, lead to a yes — because, dear friends, we got the motherfucking deal!
It’s still hard to believe because, we’re so very used to saying, “Sigh, at least we were close…” or, “Sigh… it’s the adventure that blahblahblahs….” it was hard (and amazingly fun) to get a hold of my crew and be able to actually say, “We got the deal.”
Is it what we want to do with our film careers? Not necessarily. We want to make shows and movies and while this will be a show, it’s not quite the style of show that we’re used to. But that doesn’t matter. We love the challenge of it, we love the potential of it, and we think we can hit it out of the park.
So, wherever any of you live, whatever you’re doing, you all have to take a shot of something delicious and strongly alcoholic to celebrate with us. Okay? Okay.
I do find it funny, though. Even with this big job and the promise of future jobs coming in to match its scale, there’s still a small chance that nothing will happen after this. That we’ll make the money, do the job, and never work in film again because no one will ever hire us again. Is it likely? No. Can it happen? Sure. It’s a very weird career we’ve all gotten ourselves into.
But I digress — there’s a lesson in here somewhere, for me, for you, for anyone, and it’s — you know all those cliches that people tell you? They’re cliches because they’re right. Be patient, work hard, enjoy the journey and, the most important one, love what you’re doing more than anything else. Love what you’re doing enough to torture yourself to succeed in it, love it when you’re miserably failing and love it when you finally get some kind of break, love it in the morning, and in the afternoon, love it in the evening and down beneath the moon, love it until you can’t imagine doing anything else and then, only then, will you maybe, just maybe, get to where you want to be.
To those of you who aren’t Jews — today is the first day of Channukah. You’ve heard of it before — it’s that one that lasts 8 days, has candles and is killing Christmas.
Anyway! In celebration of the first day, I have decided to post a video we did for Channukah a few years back that takes place in the Break a Leg world. This was a favorite among our fans at the time and one of our favorites as well. Ironically, it kind of fits the writing blog below (or at least the one about being a bad writer), so, check it out and happy candle-lighting!
Pass it on!
Oh, and by the way guys — feel free to follow me on Twitter (@YuriBaranovsky) — it’s where I update everyone about new blogs and try to be very funny about things in my life. Very, very funny.
So, you’ve bought all of your How-To books, you’ve structured your idea, you’ve consumed thousands of cups of coffee while busily writing your notes and now… now you have to write a script.
So, it’s probably time to give up.
The fact is, the hardest part about writing is the writing part. Anyone can lay out a strong structure for a script — but it takes talent, patience and a little bit of insanity to actually write something good.
It also takes time. You have to learn through trial and error, and you have to figure out what tricks work for you. I’ve been doing this whole writing thing for a while now, and while I don’t pretend to be any kind of writing guru, I am trying to get my writing guru license.
Which is why I have compiled a list of writing tips that I have known to be right and true. I have, because I am, like a writing Buddhist monk, humble, I have titled it simply: TheGreatest Scriptwriting Tips You Will Ever Read.
Here we go.
1.Write.A lot.
This one seems simple, but it isn’t — fact is, much like most art, you need to be in a mood to write and sometimes these moods are few and far apart. This, however, is no excuse.
You should write every single day – it can be the script you’re working on, it can be other scripts, it can even be fan fiction for your favorite romance novel (“She ran her fingers through his sensually curled chest hair…”) but you need to write at least a page a day. Why? Because writing is a lot like playing a sport. If you play every day, you’re going to get better, you’re going to have the rhythm and timing of the game become reflexive so you can play it at its highest level without thinking. Writing is similar. You want to get into a rhythm, a frame of mind, you want your brain to be ready to open the creative gates and let the writing flow.
So write, write, and write again — it’s what writers do.
2.Don’t Edit Yourself.
I mean this in two very important ways.
The first: It’s very easy to imagine your mother or father watching the production of your script and recoiling in terror at the sexual innuendo and nude scenes that you’ve stuffed in there for plot development (and to see your actors naked). It’s even easier to imagine your friends all hating you when they recognize your characters’ odd ticks as being their own — but don’t. In fact, stop caring right now. Art can’t be censored, and if what you’re writing is good you have to be faithful to the work and ignore the consequences of it. Frankly, if you want to be a writer, the work is what’s important, and once the work is finished, then you can deal with your parents asking you why it was necessary to title your script, ThePenis.
The second: My brother is a great writer — but it can take him a week to write two pages because he tries to craft the perfect script page by page by page. A lot of good writers do that, and it not only kills any love you have for the idea, it also is about as fun as chewing out your own veins. Finish your script then edit. Life is so much easier when you’ve got a beginning, middle and end. It can be awful, it can be the worst thing you’ve ever read — but you’ve got something to work with and it’s much easier to mold awful into amazing when you at least have awful.
As I would say if I was a sassy black woman — baby, if you start with nothin’, you ain’t gonna have nothin’ to work with.
So finish, then mold.
3. Torture Your Characters.
A script is the time in a character’s life when something extraordinary happens. It’s the part in their life when they say, “Everything was normal until…” A script is also a time in a character’s life where they learn something, something that changes everything. How do you do this? You torture the hell out of your characters. As long as it matches your plot and idea, there’s no limit to the awful things that you can’t have happen to them. Beat them down, beat them until they’re lost, beat them until they’ve given up, beat them until every decision they make is about life or death (either literally or just to them) — beat them until they are forced to grow and change and struggle and finally, in the end, grow to a point where they can defeat Darth Vader.
4.Find a Writing Space.
Every writing book mentions this and I used to think it was one of those silly suggestions that they all have, like, “Write a note to yourself saying how proud you are of your own script!” …but finding a writing space is really good advice. I write best when it’s raining, jazz is playing and I have a cup of coffee sitting proudly in my Break a Leg mug. I also write well in coffee shops, but they have to be a particular kind of coffee shop — brick walls, good music, a generally cozy feeling. I learned to write from Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, et cetera — so, that might be the reason why my brain begs me to recreate New York in the winter time for the perfect writing environment.
Whatever space makes you feel writer-ey try to recreate it. It seems like fluff advice, but it makes a huge difference. It’s like you’re giving your brain a comfortable therapist chair where it can safely tell you all of its crazy.
5.Don’t Be Afraid to Kill Your Babies.
This isn’t so much writing advice as it is an important life lesson… kill your babies.
Hear me out.
When I wrote my first full-length play, I put it up at my college and my drama teacher (not Carla Zilbersmith, but a gruff, old man who everyone worshipped but who I thought was a terrible, terrible director) gave me the only good piece of advice he ever gave: “Don’t be afraid to kill your babies.” Just smash their skulls against a rock.
What he meant was, don’t fall in love with your jokes, your precious moments, your plot points — anything (at least I assume that’s what he meant, he could’ve just thought I’d have ugly babies). I’ve found myself thinking of ways to wrap my script around a single scene that I love — only to find out that the script was in fact far stronger when that scene was cut. I’ve written around jokes because I thought they were too brilliant to get rid of. I’ve stuck with a plot point because I thought it was perfect only to realize that, in the end, it was the main problem with the script. Every time I have stubbornly fallen in love with a piece of my own writing at the sake of the rest of the story, I’ve been shown the error of my ways. Namely, the script is far weaker because of it.
Just remember: There’s no joke that is too funny to cut. There’s no moment too good that you can’t find a better one. There’s no line too powerful that it’s worth hurting your script for.
Kill your babies.
6. When Creativity Fails, Get Life’s Help.
Life tends to be way more interesting than art — if your brain freezes, look at life for help. Read stories, talk to friends, randomly Wikipedia things, go out and watch people. Let your brain wander and look for motivation and ideas in life — it is, after all, your muse.
7. Talk it Out.
If you’re stuck, talk to someone you trust about the script. I tend to go to my brother when I’m stuck on a script point — there are very few things that he and I can’t brainstorm through. Sometimes, you get stuck in your own brain and it becomes increasingly hard to solve a problem in there. Talk it out. Even if it’s telling people who could care less — it might get your brain working. I find homeless people are perfect for this — they’ll tell you about ‘Nam, you tell them that you’re not sure how to get the two lovers together, and somewhere in the middle, you’ll both figure out the answer to your questions. Which will generally be, “We need more crack.”
8. Know When To Give Up.
You should never give up… on writing. But, sometimes, your idea is just… well, bad. You think it’s great, you think that it’s going to change the world and you’ve already imagined the flock of women/men surrounding your limo, begging for you to sign their breast/testicle — but, somewhere in the middle you may realize that, no… your idea is just terrible.
Don’t give up immediately of course. Write different drafts, show it around, try and change what you’re writing, shake up the story, whatever. Try everything. But in the end, if nothing works — stop. Just… stop.
There are bad ideas. Not all art is art, some art is garbage (and not in that artistic way that people use garbage). So, trash the idea and start over. Perhaps, the genius moments in this script will be even better if used in a new idea, a new concept, a new page. Or maybe not.
If you’ve learned how to kill your babies, you should also learn to drown your full-sized children.
But don’t actually do any of that because it would be murder and stuff.
9. Don’t Edit Forever, Know When To End.
Because brevity is the soul of wit, because you can tinker with a script forever, because it’s only appropriate that I end this article with this simple idea:
Know when to end.
Fin.
Blackout.
Fade Out.
Whatever.
(…if you have any questions, email me or leave a comment, I’ll gladly answer!)
So, I swear, I’ll have a post that isn’t a video or a non-sensical rant really, really soon. I’m working on a few but we’ve been busy with some actual paid gigs and I’ve been running around trying to get everything done.
Not that I put you, my dear readers, last on my list of priorities, it’s just that I put you, my dear readers, last on my list of priorities. I joke, I joke — I mostly love each and every one of you. I just don’t have any time, never any time!
That aside — Temp Life, the show I wrote along with Wilson Cleveland, has released the first two episodes of its latest season run.
So, without further ado, here it is:
and..
There’s a line in one of the videos (I won’t tell you what) — that’s almost directly from Break a Leg. Who can find it?
Posted by Yuri Baranovsky on Oct 20, 2009 in film shoots
Here’s a very, very important lesson in film: don’t pick a location where local militant lesbians do their laundry.
I’m honestly surprised this isn’t taught in film class.
We were filming this weekend and one of the locations called for a laundromat. The laundromat we chose was in the Castro — it was bright yellow and just damn pretty. The problem with laundromats is that, a. there’s no obvious workers in most of them, b. we didn’t really feel like calling the owner because it’s a simple shoot and that’s just how we roll.
We set up shop at the laundromat, set up our camera inside one of the machines and even shot the beginning of the scene.
I’m not sure what did it. Maybe it was one of us saying, “excuse me” to the local clothes-washing lesbian. Maybe it’s because we were standing near the machine where her clothes were and when we asked if we were in her way, she muttered it was fine (but secretly called us something racist). Or maybe, maybe it was Dustin (Mint, in Break a Leg) taking off his shirt and putting on a bra (FOR THE SCENE, FOR THE SCENE!) that got the lesbians all hot and angry but…
Here’s how the conversation went, generally:
Lesbian: (yelling angrily) “I’m sorry, but do you guys have a permit or something because I know the owner and you need to leave!”
Justin: (calmly) “We don’t have a permit, no, but –”
Lesbian: (angrily) “Uhhuh, yeah, yeah, you don’t fucking have one. You’re in our way, okay?! You need to LEAVE!”
Justin: (calmly) “Sure. We’ll pack up –”
Lesbian: (one eye popping out in hatred) “Yeeah, yeah, okay, sure. Sure. You need to GO!”
Justin: (calmly) “You can stop repeating that, we’re going –”
Lesbian: (head cracking open from sheer fury) “Yeah, yeah right, yeah — that’s it! I’m calling him! I’m calling the owner!”
Yuri: “…we’re leaving. I think you need to relax and sleep with a man (I didn’t say the last part, but it would’ve been HILARIOUS [I apologize to all non-angry lesbians, but come, it'd be funny, right?]).”
Then they burned. They burned with the fires of a thousand suns. They burned with the hatred of angry, middle-aged San Franciscans who tell everyone they know how much they love and support art but only go watch transsexual theater because it’s right, and appropriate and really, really bad.
But I digress.
They fumed. As we put away our stuff (and thanking them kindly for being so nice: “YEAH. YEAH YOU’RE WELCOME” [oh god, the hatred]) and headed to another location. A location where hippies (and tourists) still roam, where San Francisco became San Francisco, and where nobody gives a damn if you film in the corner of their favorite laundromat.
We went to the Haight.
We got the scene.
And it was good.
So remember: always hippies, never militant lesbians.
I’m going to go ahead and make a rule for all of entertainment:
It is not a “shoestring budget” if you’ve ever said the following things on set:
-”Okay, let’s go ahead and move the crane over there.”
-”But how fast will our city-block set on Lot 23 be ready?”
-”I don’t know. How about we get Nathan Fillion?”
Where the hell are people buying their shoestrings?!
The term, “shoestring budget” has always elicited thoughts of, say, a boom pole made from a broom with the microphone poorly tied to it (ideally with shoestring). A shoestring budget has always made me think of… well, our own production:
So, where the hell are these celebrities buying their shoestrings?
There’s been a lot made of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and one of the main comments about it is, “wow, Joss Whedon made this on a shoestring budget!” A shoestring budget?! A web show with a full city block set, a recording studio for their music and props that cost more than the entire run of Break a Leg is not made on a shoestring budget, unless they’re solid gold shoestrings that whisper the words of God directly into your feet.
You may say to me, but Yuri, and I’d say, yes? and you’d say, you’re just jealous!
Well, of course I am! I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have money. Quite the opposite, I fully embrace a budget. A budget would, for example, buy me a new pair of pants or, say, let our almost-bankrupt-director-of-photography be able to afford a taco. It would also let me actually pay my actors instead of rewarding their amazing dedication and talent with bagel dogs and insults. Budgets are fantastic. I don’t think you’re a sell out if you get paid, I think — great job!
…but don’t tell me you made something on a shoestring budget. I will accept, “It was made cheaper than bigger budget Hollywood films.” That makes sense to me. What doesn’t make sense to me are the constant success stories that come out of festivals and events that market these “little independent films” made on a “tiny shoestring budget” — and that star little actors like “Steve Carrell.”
Frankly, it’s mildly insulting and takes away credit from the actual independent filmmakers. The ones who really don’t have any money. The ones who use ingenuity and sheer talent to create art with literally nothing.
You know how people say, “I made this from scratch?” That’s what a shoestring budget film is. It’s made from scratch and it tastes better than anything you’ve ever had.
I appreciate you, celebrities. I appreciate your work, I appreciate your movies and I’m a big fan of all of you (except you, octoplet family that everyone knows about except me) — I just want you to please stop taking away the only thing we independent filmmakers have: the ability to say, look — we did this, and no one helped us and it came out damn near magical.
Posted by Yuri Baranovsky on Sep 18, 2009 in film shoots
Sorry for the long delay in posting — this has been the busiest week in a long time for us and I’m delightfully surprised that we survived it.
Aside from submitting all of our materials to the mysterious network (done!), finishing up the Twitter videos (almost done!) and writing a draft of the Temp Life script (draft 1 done!), we also had another job this week.
We are taking photos and shooting a promo video for a company called Green Horizon — they create “on-demand, self-sustaining housing solutions.” In other words, they make these amazingly ingenious housing units that fold up to fit on a truck and then automatically unfold to be a house. It’s for situations like, say, Katrina, where you need quick housing immediately. They run on solar panels, batteries, have water, electricity, I think even cell and possibly internet service.
Also, each unit comes with someone naked (anyone, your choice). It’s really pretty amazing.
Anyway, we were filming in their factory last night in Stockton, CA. Stockton, by the way, is what I fondly call “Murder City.” It’s 2 hours outside of San Francisco but takes even longer because of traffic on the Bay Bridge and because of all the dead bodies that block the road on the way there.
We had to go to Murder City — the Port of Murder City, to be precise — to a location, I swear to God, is called: “Rough & Ready Island.”
Yes, we also apparently film gay porn (come, spam bots, come!)
The shoot was in a warehouse at the port where one of these units are held. We set up a bunch of lights, chatted with the good folks who created the thing, and put Justin, our camera guy, up a forklift 30 feet above ground.
Oh that’s right.
So, here’s how dedicated we (Justin) are to getting a shot. We needed to get high up above the unit, and we ask them if we can climb up something to do that.
“Well, we’ve got forklifts.”
“Can we get on a forklift?”
“Sure.”
So, one of the women drives a forklift up, and Justin gets on each individual metal bar, holds on tight, and they lift him, high, high up in the air (footage forthcoming) as we joke around him falling to his death.
“You guys have insurance, right?”
“Uh-huh, yeah, tons of it.”
So, anyway. Justin’s in the hospital… No, that’s not true. Though, at one point his head did almost meet the very heavy factory lights.
It was fun. It’s interesting to work with people in an entirely different field. The housing is ingenious and everyone there was very bright and interesting. Also, their soap had rocks in it. Or something. It was to scrub the dirty factory off your strong factory worker fingers but to our weak filmmaker hands, it only felt like hurt.
At the end of the shoot, while driving back, we got to really see an example of the beauty that is Stockton — as six gangbangers (drabbed in all red and everything) were getting a firm talking-to by the police.
Oh, Murder City, how I love thee.
Filmmaker Notes:
I’ve decided to add these to each of these production blogs for any of you curious as to our set up. We used a D90 still camera to take high-res photos and we actually shot video with it. The video quality is damn near amazing, so, I suggest looking into these babies.
We also had our HVX200 (what we shot Break a Leg on). We rented 2, 2,000 watt ARRI lights and placed them around the unit, making sure the lighting was even and pretty and all, and then we got some standard shots. Footage of us panning across the thing, footage of it unfolding, and folding and, of course, footage from 30 feet above it while Justin dangled from his life.
Let me know if you have any questions.
I’ll have video of the shoot soon. I’m also going to start a whole How-To thing next week, so, stay tuned!
So, you’ve bought all of your How-To books, you’ve structured your idea, you’ve consumed thousands of cups of coffee while busily writing your notes and now… now you have to write a script.