Okay, having tweaked the one-liner to the point where I think it conveys a sense of the story content, the story's inherent irony, and its primal drive, it's time to move on to the beats. I think of these as the movie's pivotal moments and memorable scenes.
Mr. Snyder has a fabulous tool to make this easy to lay out called the Beat Sheet. It not only tells you what the beats are, but when to plug them into a spec script's table of contents.
Quick side track - one of the things I love about Save the Cat is that it doesn't get caught up in any pretensions about creating a great work of art. It tells you how to write a spec script that is sellable.
Now, back to my beat sheet.
Beat Sheet
Title: Dark Disciple
Genre: Buddy Love (I'm still struggling with this because I want it to be Golden Fleece or Monster in the House, but I think it's really Buddy Love. I'll explain this in a later post.)
1. Opening image (p. 1): Night. Exterior. Busy parking lot. Porter's car pulls into the parking lot.It's LOUD and filled with mobs protesting capitol punishment. Porter gets out of his car alone.
2. Theme Stated (p 5): Someone comments to Porter, "You'd sell your soul to get what you're after." (Having trouble with the theme.)
3. Set-up (pp 1-10): Intro to Porter as a loner, despised by others for his "cover" profession as a tabloid journalist. Driven and hard-bitten. "Save the cat" moment when he protects/offers comfort to the"Pied Piper's" mother. Intro to Wells as a medical examiner. Intro to the Dark Disciple in the crowd. Walk through the execution. Porter seeing Wells capture the soul. Show Porter making glass dagger, or at least starting to in his car. Porter stalking Wells to her house.
4. Catalyst (12): Fight on Well's front porch. Wells kills Porter.
5. Debate (12-25): Wells interrogates Porter. How can they find the Dark Disciple? Learn about Necromancers. Reveal on Witch hunters. Decide they will have to work together!
6. Break into Act 2(25): They decide to work together. Porter tells Wells they'll "need some things."
7. B Story (30): Porter's world. They travel to a Witch Hunter sanctuary to get some stuff to face the Disciple.
8. Fun and Games (30-55): Wells' and Porter's "love story" as they get to know each other and become friends. We learn more about Porter and the Witch Hunters. Comic relief from some bumbling monk-types who fawn over Wells. (Nerds around the hot-chick syndrome.)
9. Midpoint (55): (False success) Porter feels on top of the world as he realizes he has a new friend and ally in the war against evil.
10. Bad guys close In (55-75): Disciple's minions attack the sanctuary. Wells and Porter go for the source. They find her and initial fight ensues.
11. All is lost (75): Fight goes poorly for our heroes. Porter is left for "dead" on the floor, looking at the Disciple's reflection in a shard of broken mirror.
12. Dark night of the Soul (75-85): Wells is being interrogated by the Disciple, while Porter lies dead in another room
13. Break into Act 3 (85): Back to Porter on the floor. We hear Wells being interrogated in the distance. Porter blinks, and rises.
14. Finale (85-110): Big fight. Glass dagger comes in handy. So does Porter's new knowledge that he's already undead. After their triumph Porter confronts Wells about being undead, and learns that she doesn't know what might happen for him next.
15. Final Image (110): Dawn breaking. Porter and Wells drive together down a quiet country highway, in silence.
This really needs some work - which is a great realization! I basically grabbed this from an email exchange with some friends a few weeks ago. Now I see how rough it is.
Back to the BEAT BOARD!!!!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Saving the Cat - Part 1
Several weeks ago my old friend Pete told me to get the book Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Now, I'm certainly no authority on screenwriting and have not yet sold a screenplay developed by Mr. Snyder's process, but I am at least a bit of a journeyman, if not an expert, about Process. From that perspective I really liked what Mr. Syder had to say, and thought it a worthwhile endeavor to try my hand at the Blake Snyder Method.
If nothing else, at least it caught my interest enough to get me motivated to try my hand at writing a screenplay. That's worth the cover price in my opinion.
As a side note - the book is a highly entertaining read.
Anyway, as an added motivator, I decided to post my progress in a place where my friends could chide me into keeping up a reasonable pace. That's where this comes in.
As another side note - I plan to post a number of other writing projects here.
So, here's the result of the first step of the Blake Snyder Method - the one liner and title:
A witch hunter from a secret Vatican order forms an unholy alliance to take down a servant of Hell before she can strike again - Dark Disciple
If nothing else, at least it caught my interest enough to get me motivated to try my hand at writing a screenplay. That's worth the cover price in my opinion.
As a side note - the book is a highly entertaining read.
Anyway, as an added motivator, I decided to post my progress in a place where my friends could chide me into keeping up a reasonable pace. That's where this comes in.
As another side note - I plan to post a number of other writing projects here.
So, here's the result of the first step of the Blake Snyder Method - the one liner and title:
A witch hunter from a secret Vatican order forms an unholy alliance to take down a servant of Hell before she can strike again - Dark Disciple
Friday, March 21, 2008
TV 2.0 Pitch
It seems easy to see where televised entertainment is going. With more and more pop-up ads on the screen, product placement, competition with dorm room videos, and the tsunami rise in popularity of online, interactive entertainment. I just want someone to make the leap sooner than later.
And of course I'd love to get a check out of it.
So here's my pitch.
You've got a TV show. You've got actors and writers and sets and all the things that make look just like something else that's successful.
Now let's make it different.
Your scene is moving along. The drawn-out romance between buff-doctor A and hot-soccer-mom B steams the screen. What line will fall from Doctor A's ruggedly sculpted lips?
Let's poll the real-time survey running in the lower right hand corner and see what the audience is frantically typing away while Hot-soccer mom's blonde hair ripples across her shoulders, neck arching, cheeks flushing --
HEY! t00b_b0t378's suggestion is flagged -- it flashes bright crimson on the scrolling window -- on the live set it appears in the teleprompter and Doctor A utters the words his long sought love has longed to hear!
"Damn, I wish I were a man."
Well, maybe not, but now the actors spin into a frenzy of improv for the next 45 seconds, before the pre-recorded segment saves them from the bedlam t00b_b0t378 and random timing caused.
But it doesn't stop at randomly selected dialog posts. The show polls for which "prop" to be used in the next live scene - will it be a can of Red Bull, the spiffy new phone from Verizon wireless, or a Hot Pocket? Who knows? Who cares? The audience cares because the ticker across the bottom of the screen and on the website are telling us the next live scene is a police prisoner interrogation, or in a confessional, or a steamy romance scene.
The audience's power extends past dialog twists though. The show polls for which character dies in the plane crash, or left the positive pregnancy test on the bathroom sink, or knows the truth about buff Doctor A's plumbing. The audience interacts with the story, drives it, tweaks it, directs it.
Sure, there are writers. There has to be continuity, and you can't do the whole show live.
Sure, there are commercials. But there's also product placement that not only advertises the product, and two or three others, at the same time, but also forces the audience to ponder each product before voting to have Soccer-Mom B pull it out of her pilates bag.
But then there's the audience, sitting on the other side of that forth wall, and shouting suggestions through it.
The only question is - what kind of show can make this leap?
You can't make it strictly a comedy -- too hard to make it funny all the time.
You can't make it strictly a drama -- too hard to keep the continuity.
But there is a perfect genre for this, where any twist of plot can be untwisted. Where any apparently odd slip of the tongue can be explained away in next week's episode. Where dramatic pauses are normal, and can cover for that actor checking the teleprompter and deciphering the line "ur 2 hot!" before he speaks...
Prime Time Mexican Soap Opera.
That's what I want to see. Beautiful people of all ages having their strings pulled by millions of viewing puppeteers, and having the mayhem of this week's episode be sorted out next week, or compounded with interest.
Bring it on!
And of course I'd love to get a check out of it.
So here's my pitch.
You've got a TV show. You've got actors and writers and sets and all the things that make look just like something else that's successful.
Now let's make it different.
Your scene is moving along. The drawn-out romance between buff-doctor A and hot-soccer-mom B steams the screen. What line will fall from Doctor A's ruggedly sculpted lips?
Let's poll the real-time survey running in the lower right hand corner and see what the audience is frantically typing away while Hot-soccer mom's blonde hair ripples across her shoulders, neck arching, cheeks flushing --
HEY! t00b_b0t378's suggestion is flagged -- it flashes bright crimson on the scrolling window -- on the live set it appears in the teleprompter and Doctor A utters the words his long sought love has longed to hear!
"Damn, I wish I were a man."
Well, maybe not, but now the actors spin into a frenzy of improv for the next 45 seconds, before the pre-recorded segment saves them from the bedlam t00b_b0t378 and random timing caused.
But it doesn't stop at randomly selected dialog posts. The show polls for which "prop" to be used in the next live scene - will it be a can of Red Bull, the spiffy new phone from Verizon wireless, or a Hot Pocket? Who knows? Who cares? The audience cares because the ticker across the bottom of the screen and on the website are telling us the next live scene is a police prisoner interrogation, or in a confessional, or a steamy romance scene.
The audience's power extends past dialog twists though. The show polls for which character dies in the plane crash, or left the positive pregnancy test on the bathroom sink, or knows the truth about buff Doctor A's plumbing. The audience interacts with the story, drives it, tweaks it, directs it.
Sure, there are writers. There has to be continuity, and you can't do the whole show live.
Sure, there are commercials. But there's also product placement that not only advertises the product, and two or three others, at the same time, but also forces the audience to ponder each product before voting to have Soccer-Mom B pull it out of her pilates bag.
But then there's the audience, sitting on the other side of that forth wall, and shouting suggestions through it.
The only question is - what kind of show can make this leap?
You can't make it strictly a comedy -- too hard to make it funny all the time.
You can't make it strictly a drama -- too hard to keep the continuity.
But there is a perfect genre for this, where any twist of plot can be untwisted. Where any apparently odd slip of the tongue can be explained away in next week's episode. Where dramatic pauses are normal, and can cover for that actor checking the teleprompter and deciphering the line "ur 2 hot!" before he speaks...
Prime Time Mexican Soap Opera.
That's what I want to see. Beautiful people of all ages having their strings pulled by millions of viewing puppeteers, and having the mayhem of this week's episode be sorted out next week, or compounded with interest.
Bring it on!
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