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Writing Ruby
Monday, July 5, 2010
Although I plan to blog a great deal about Ruby Skye and share the process with you, I will not be providing a lot of detail about story. I won’t be posting outlines or scripts. We want that to be a surprise. Hopefully though, the process will be of interest.
On Saturday the 26th, Julie Cohn and I sat down to do some writing. Two scripts and a season arc were part of the IPF proposal, but now we had to take the season’s story line and break it into episodes.
Eye to Eye With Ruby Skye is a detective series and the season will be a single mystery told in twelve episodes. It’s kind of like a Murder One or 24 in that one story arcs out over the full season of twelve episodes. Each episode needs a killer cliff-hanger to end it so we’re very definitely writing to act breaks.
At this point the plan is to have episodes of approximately five minutes in length… or less. Why five minutes? It feels like the length that the story wants. We don’t have broadcast constraints to predetermine how long each episode should be. We could try to use stats, experience or conventional wisdom to choose an episode length, but everything changes so quickly in the digital space that just because it worked last week doesn’t mean it’ll still work this week. Instead, we’d plan to let the story shape its presentation.
I want the episodes to be long enough that there is an opportunity to build character. I want there to be comedy and action in as many episodes as possible. Julie and I have sketched out a story with many plot threads running through it. We are trying to hit as many of the sub-plots in each episode as possible.
Our theory is that really strong curtains on an episode will make viewers want to see the next episode. So we spent a couple of days working through the story finding the most exciting moment. These have become our episode ends. The beats between them will form the episodes themselves. The number of beats aren’t always equal and the scenes certainly aren’t going to play to the same lengths. So they won’t yield twelve episodes of the same length. In fact, they may be quite different in length. They may vary by 1 or 2 or even 3 minutes… nothing when your episodes are half an hour long, but when they are in the five minute range, 1 and 2 minute differences start seem significant.
Or maybe they won’t. We’ll see, won’t we?
When we drafted the first two episodes, they came in longer than I had expected. First drafts were about 8 pages and have ballooned up to 11 pages what with punch ups and all. But that’s a function of starting out. Early drafts are often long as you try to find the characters and the tone of the tale. By the time we’ve written all twelve and rewritten them many many times, I’m pretty sure they will be a lot shorter. I’ll keep you posted on that front.
We’re not there yet. We’ve spent a couple of days breaking the arc into episodes. At this point we have a big paragraph written on each of the episodes. Our next session was devoted to the villain of the piece. Detective series are often about unravelling the bad guy’s story. So Julie and I went through the events from the villain’s pov one more time, adding detail and colour to that story and making sure we know it very well. This will inform our writing as we set out to write the rest of the episodes and then to rewrite them as much as time will allow.
In our next session, we drafted Episodes 3 and 4. I think the pace will pick up now and we will get the next 8 episodes drafted fairly quickly.
As we go, we’re discovering a lot — emotional lines, important clues and motivations. The world feels like it’s coming to life. It’s getting to be quite exciting, but truly what I am looking forward to is the second draft. We’re learning so much about Ruby, her friends and how we want to tell this story as we go along. I can’t wait to have all the learning from a completed draft of all the episodes in mind to use in a rewrite.
Just Think About This
Friday, July 2, 2010
“…the secret to the future of all Content and its value as an investment vehicle, lays in age old tradition of compelling storytelling.”
The above quote comes from Gerson Lehrman Group. It is part of the summary of a much longer analysis; a rebuttal to an article by Ethan Smith in the Wall Street Journal about streaming technology. Gerson Lehrman’s piece is entitled Be Careful How Fast You Give Away Your IP and it…
…challenges entrepreneurs to see that the world of Media and Content need not be wholly controlled by the big Six Media conglomerates: Disney, Time Warner, Viacom/CBS/Paramount, Sony, Fox and Comcast/NBCUniversal. Their monopoly is primed to get taken down. It also infers that the secret to the future of all Content and its value as an investment vehicle, lays in age old tradition of compelling storytelling. Technology cannot take the lead, it can only be an exquisite partner to those who tell stories people want to see.
At Wednesday’s Digital Dialogue mounted by the OMDC there were a lot of calls for more capital in Ontario for the creation of digital content. This article gives investors good reasons to meet this need.
A few more quotes:
If there’s a bet to be made by entrepreneurs in the Content space, it would be to invest money directly into the hands of storytellers and create transparency in their backend upside. If you do that you control Content that people want, and then they have to come to you to experience it.
The upside of entrepreneurialism is in the looming million “channel” world the Internet resides in and controlling the Content for the ravenous nature of those URL’s that are available. The mistake, more a byproduct of limited technology to date, is to think Content for the Web only comes from User Generated uploads, niche topics or pornography consumed in 30 second to 3 minute bites. The phenomenon of those has been more a byproduct of an audience impatient with the sketchy viewing experience they are subjected to on the myriad devices they view their Content on. Because of those inconsistencies, Content has been relegated to short windows of expression and therefore has little, if any upside value for the suppliers.
Content is still king and the final stages of pristine streaming technology will auger the end of the television networks as we know them, forcing them to be more facile with Content and more streamlined with their infrastructure while creating opportunities for thousands of new “networks” to emerge.
For the first time, Private Equity, Venture Capital, institutional investing or just opportunistic monied people will have a shot to create true ROI in the Internet space because they will no longer be reliant on someone else saying “yes” to their ideas. They can now dream, commit funds, build a production apparatus, shoot their Content, Post it on a Mac and Upload it at a fraction of the cost of traditional Content. That doesn’t’t mean it should be cheap, because cheap Content is disposable. It means redefining what Premium Content, streamed pristinely and for 15-30-60 minutes at a time will cost. The x-factor related to what the true cost of Premium Content will be is the level of talent associated with that Content; the greatest game changer in terms of who decides what gets made.
Enough quotes. Go read it for yourself.
Ruby Skye Production Journal
Friday, July 2, 2010
We got the good word on Friday June 18, 2010; an email from Andra Sheffer, Executive Director of the Independent Production Fund, informing us that Eye to Eye With Ruby Skye would receive funding from the IPF. Yay, yay and double yay!
On the following Tuesday, I sat down with Kerry Young and Karen Walton, my RS producing partners. We talked through our production plan in broad strokes, but really, production is the easy part. All of us have enough experience producing film and tv that a little web series seems pretty simple. The hard parts will involve putting the business plan into action and also activating our web marketing plans.
Part of the marketing is using the social media as much as we can to promote the series from word go. Word go was back on Friday June 18th and I did tweet it but that is just the beginning. I hope to document the entire process and getting a Ruby Skye web site up ASAP is near the top of our production list. Until then (and maybe afterwards too), I’ll be putting the production blog right here.
My niece Suzannah, an experienced blogger and a junior at Tufts was visiting from Boston and joined us for the production meeting. She volunteered to be an intern on the project, although she will have to do most of her interning from China, where she is spending her fall term.
(We’ll be needing a few more interns for the project. Although there’s no money to offer volunteers, I can promise a rich experience. I will put out a call for interns soon, but don’t be afraid to jump the gun and drop me a line now if you’re interested in helping out.)
What was abundantly clear at this first production meeting is that we need a complete set of scripts. Without them, we can’t finalize a budget or a schedule. So down to writing.
CTV’s Web Series
Friday, June 25, 2010
I was quite interested when the press release from CTV mentioned original web series.
Only at CTV.ca can viewers also find new webisode series BLOOD CELL, ERIC THE TRAINER, THE LAKE, and PUSHED.
I clicked through to take a look; I didn’t get to the web series. The original links from the release are preserved above although although they do not lead to the web series on CTV.ca. After clicking on every link in the press release I did eventually find all the series on CTV.ca except The Lake, which I did eventually find on the CTV site too, but not easily.
I’m really very happy to see original web content. That said, I am now going to whine and complain.
“Only at CTV.ca“? Actually “only at CTV.ca in Canada” might be more accurate. Blood Cell turns out to be a fairly old piece of work, an 18-part horror series starring LonelyGirl13’s Jessica Bell and produced by the now defunct 60Frames and originally released in about March of 2009 by WB.com. Which raises the question, why is CTV.ca displaying a Canadian flag next to it like it’s CanCon?
Next question: why does the video player want so badly to show you the most recent episode instead of the first? Could it be because the episode synopses give away the entire plot of the episodes so that watching them is entirely redundant?
Of course, the episodes aren’t embeddable (otherwise how could they be “only at CTV.ca?”) and I couldn’t find any deets about the series (not even credits) over on CTV.ca so I’ll embed the trailer below. It dates back to 2008.
Next, I clicked through to The Lake which strangely took me to an August 2009 post on StarPulse.com — an interview with with Cannuck Jason Priestley about directing this web series for the WB. This is particularly odd since the first two episodes are up on CTV.ca. I’m not sure why the press release links to the interview instead of the episodes. The Lake is a teen drama which may have been written as an hour long series originally since four episodes equal about 40 minutes.
Pushed got a brutal review from Tilzy.tv back in February 2009. It’s a thriller about a model.
Which brings us to Tony the Trainer which is not drama. It’s an exercise series in which a trainer named Tony offers gems like:
Make sure you drink a lot of water. Water is incredibly important.
Tony is based in LA and New York and has a ton of stuff to sell you on his web site if you’re so inclined.
Maybe I’m wrong in thinking a Canadian flag next to a video means it’s Canadian. Maybe what it means is that it’s not Canadian because the Bold and The Beautiful, The Colbert Report and Grey’s Anatomy have them too. My mistake. Sorry.
So, on the one hand, good for CTV for making some web only content available on their site. Nice step forward. Wish it was a little newer, a little more Canadian and a perhaps somewhat easier to find on their site… but hey, it’s a start.
Show Run Away With Me
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The first people I ran into when I got to the Banff Television Festival last week were the participants of the Canwest Showrunner Training Program. Barb Haynes is one of my favourite people, a must-read-tweeter and the author — along with partner in crime and life Brent Piaskoski — of I Do Already, the blog and Twitter feed. As soon as I laid eyes on her I knew I had to get her to write something for this space about the showrunner training program and the Banff experience. And she has and it’s great. Read on:
As I come down from my Rocky Mountain High and wean myself off great quantities of caffeine, booze and delicious gamey meats, I’m left with the fuzzy afterglow of an incredible week. I was lucky enough to be selected for the Canwest Showrunners Program at the Banff Television Festival. Together with four other writer-producers, I got a crash course in the many facets of running a show.
We spent our days in a hotel room, sequestered like monks – well, rare monks who’d convinced the friar to ditch all that chanting and praying, and let us worship at the altar of good TV instead. We scribbled in notebooks as line producers, broadcasters, casting directors and agents spoke of their wishes and challenges in putting together a series. Getting such a varied perspective on one thing was valuable and hugely appreciated, but I’ll be honest, the flat-out thrill of meeting top showrunners from series you adore was the high point of the program.
James Manos (Dexter), David Zucker (The Good Wife), Peter Murietta (The Wizards of Waverly Place), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) and Bill Prady (The Big Bang Theory) were all passionate and engaging storytellers. Despite the differences in personalities and shows, however, they all said the same thing in one form or another: communicate and be kind. Thinking back, I guess this means my nana would’ve been a great showrunner.
Communication: Have a strong vision of the show you want, and communicate it as clearly as possible. Don’t assume anything. If you don’t understand, ask. In the words of Peter Murietta, “give yourself every opportunity to succeed.” Pay attention, notice details, and act on them.
Kindness: Treat people with respect and recognize that making a show isn’t a solo venture. You need a lot of people to turn your vision into reality, so don’t crap on them along the way. Every showrunner had a story of that brilliant writer with the great script who couldn’t get work. Why? One word. Rhymes with gas pole. (I don’t know what a gas pole is either. I’m just trying to be polite.)
Vince Gilligan and Bill Prady also advised hiring your mentors – enlist people smarter and braver than you. And they both stressed that listening to notes didn’t necessarily mean taking notes. A note means you missed a piece in your story telling, so it’s your job to make it clear. Heed the note; ignore (if you can) the proposed solution.
They stressed the need to create real, deep characters whose behavior makes sense. Prady went further and talked about the difference between (some) Canadian comedies and US comedies: comedy is rude and Canadians are not. (Psst: I can be rude! The word I meant earlier was asshole.)
But! If you’re going to have a rude character, for God’s sake make sure he’s in pain. Otherwise he’s just a jerk we don’t care about. Give him a childlike sensibility, some vulnerability, then set aside manners and decorum, reach deep into your own pain, and you’ll create something funny. Not quirky or cute, but actually funny. This piece of advice was the highlight of the week for me, so once Prady admitted he shares many characteristics with his creation Sheldon, I may have been floating off the floor.
The program is a terrific tool for a country that’s still figuring out what a showrunner is. If you’re lucky enough to get a group like I had, it’s even better:
- Dennis Heaton, a man who never walked a straight line the five days we were there. Not because of booze, but because everyone, everywhere, wanted to talk to him.
- Russ Cochrane, stylish, gracious, kind and confident, he proved every day why he’ll be a speaker on this program in five years or less.
- Adam Barken, a guy whose easy smile, sense of humor and wealth of experience made all of us a little braver and a little more relaxed, and
- Craig David Wallace, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met with the craziest, most out-there and awesome show, a combination he shares with Vince Gilligan
So big thanks to Canwest and our group’s lovely, fearless leader Brenda Greenberg. Here’s to the next generation of Canadian Showrunners!
Find Barb all over the web: on Twitter, I Do Already blog and Twitter.
IPF Web Series Pilot Program Recipients
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Independent Production Fund’s Pilot Program will support 11 web drama series with an $1.2 M equity investment.
This unique funding program was created to support the exploration and potential for high quality, story driven drama for web audiences. The selection process required the evaluation of 166 applications which were short-listed to 26 web series from production companies across the country. The Board evaluated projects based on content, production styles and processes, formats, business and promotion models and audience potential.
And the lucky recipients are:
11 Règles
(11 x 4 minutes)
Whimz Studio
Producer: Steve Kerr Writer: André Gulluni Director: Yan Lanouette-Turgeon
Buddy Bunnies
(15 x 5 minutes)
Periscope Pictures
Cheryl Wagner, Harmony Wagner
Eye to Eye with Ruby Sky
(12 x 4-8 minutes)
Story2.OH
Jill Golick (me!)
Fabrique-moi un conte
(8 x 5 minutes)
Jimmy Lee & Sid Lee
Producers: Richard-Jean Baptiste, Marie Michaud
Directors: Ricardo Trogi, Stéphane Lapointe, Podz, Mariloup Wolfe, Robin Aubert, Jean-François Rivard, Miryam Bouchard, Jean-François Asselin
Fair Play
(10 x 8 minutes)
Lifeforce Entertainment Inc.
J. Michael Dawson, Chantal LeBlanc-Everett
Writer: Reece Crothers
Guidestones
(40 x 3 minutes)
iThentic / 3 O’clock.tv
Jonas Diamond, Jay Ferguson
Juliette!
(10 x 4 minutes)
Les Productions Passez Go inc.
Producer: Vicky Bounadère
Writer: Yvan De Muy Director: Marie-Claude Blouin
Moderation Town
(6 x 4 minutes)
Stitch Media
Evan Jones, Victoria Ha
Papillon
(15 x 4 minutes)
duopoly & Farmhouse Productions
Catherine Tait, Kent Sobey, Paul Quarrington (Concept)
Writer: Mark Steinberg
Tights & Fights – Ashes
(180 x 3 minutes)
GopherX Productions
Scott Albert, Christopher Guest, Courtney Wolfson
Yoohoo.tv
(6 x 10 minutes)
Groupe 33
Producer: Julien Roussin Côté Writer: Alexandre Champagne Director: Laurence Morais-Lagacé
I can’t wait to find out more about all of these projects.
The press release from the IPF says:
The IPF provides funding for drama series for web platforms as well as projects for traditional television broadcast.
And it refers to the above projects as the first recipients. To me that sounds like there will be more funding for web series to come. This is a huge step forward for a developing industry. Funding is exactly what we need.
Deadwood, Digital and Interdependence
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Banff, Alberta. The festival is gearing up around me, old friends reunite, little groups clustered around table talking intensely, pitches in the air, the ever presented Rockies in sharp relief against a blue blue sky.
Over breakfast I was reading an old New Yorker profile of David Milch by Mark Singer. It was written in 2005 while Milch was shooting the second season of Deadwood. I’ve fallen a little behind on my reading.
The article quotes the preacher’s eulogy for Wild Bill:
St Paul tells us from one spirit are we all baptized into one body whether we be Jew or Gentile, bond or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit. For the body is not one member but many. He tells us: The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of thee. Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble… and those members of the body which we think of as less honorable-all necessary. He says that there should be no schism in the body but that the members should have the same care one to another. And whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it.
Singer paraphrases :
Which is Milch’s way of saying that, though a lawless existence at the edge of the frontier has its attractions, collective survival requires human being to learn to function interdependently, and in that way communities become single organisms.
Imagine going into the network and pitching that as your series premise.
But it is a profound and interesting thought and truly relevant as the festival begins here.
For the first time, the Banff Television Festival and NextMedia are one festival combining TV and interactive/digital. With changes in the Canadian funding formulas we are beginning to think of these two separate industries as one. To Milch’s point, this is the way to collective survival.
TV is mature. The pathways to development, production, distribution, financing and profiting are clear. And as you can’t help but notice as you walk through the Banff Springs’ lobby, there is an elaborate infrastructure in place and many many highly skilled and experienced people.
Digital, not so much. Funding is just beginning to trickle in and remains tricky. No one really knows how to make a buck. Every project takes its own route to the marketplace. There are plenty of familiar faces representing the developing interactive industry, but their bodies of work are counted in projects and years, not decades.
People often call the whole digital space the wild west making Milch’s point all the more poignant. I have a very collegial and collaborative relationship with many people working in the digital space. We know that the only way we can build this industry is by collaborating, sharing information, working cooperatively; working together.
As digital and television merge, we have the opportunity to make profound changes to the evolving industry. Ultimately the industry is a single organism. And we are diverse parts with different needs, agendas and points of view. Writers see it one way, producers another. Distributors, actors, editors, directors, broadcaster - there are a lot of different stakeholders here and everyone legitimately wants what they want.
There is no doubt that there is gold out here in Deadwood. And yes, there will be blood shed and a whole lot of cussing. But it is a place of great excitement and creative satisfaction. And if we are to profit and create in this space, we are going to have to think of ourselves as one organism, the success of which depends on the health and well-being of all the parts.
CwF + R+B
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
What the heck? A business model actually:
Connect with Fans (CwF) and give them a Reason to Buy (RtB). CwF+RtB=$$$.
techdirt is trying out with price points ranging from $5 in return for their gratitude and a badge for your profile to $1,000 for which you get to hang out with Mike Masnick and the Techndirt staff for a day, have breakfast and lunch, come to the techdirt offices, get a t-shirt and more. Techdirt goes so far as to consult their community about what promotions to offer as part of the CwF+RtB initiative.
Jack White of the White Stripes has tried the model too. His label, Third Man Records, has an online subscription service called The Vault that gives fans exclusive access to the artists. They get first dibs on tickets, exclusive videos, photos and more.
But Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznick are really the masters of this technique. Here’s a great video featuring Mike Masnick presenting a case study on Reznick’s business models. Reznick applies this to music, but it can apply to any content.
Update on Women Writing in LA
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Back in March I posted a piece about women screenwriters in LA mostly cribbed from Where Have All the Women Writers Gone? a post by Nealy Swanson in Research Wrap. As Nealy pointed out there aren’t a lot of writers on staff at the top rated US series.
Suddenly this weekend, the post got a flurry of hits and comments including this one:
Indeed Hart Hanson, showrunner of Bones, had mentioned the post in a tweet and that seems to have been what stirred up the new interest in the post.
I took the opportunity to conduct a mini-Twitter interview with Hart — my first ever Twitter interview btw.
(Can a tweet be off the record? I think not.)
The point of all this is that there is still a bias against women writers, that is clear. But there are a growing number of showrunners, who like Hart, have no problem finding qualified women to write their series and find good reasons to hire them. It seems insane and inane that we are still dealing with this in 2010. I think it’s great that Hart is proud of his record and wants it acknowledged. I hope his peers are paying attention.