CBS/Paramount sues to stop Axanar 2 - Electric Boogaloo-Fanboys gone WILD-too many hyphens

[Sgt_G]

I kind of went thru something like that recently. I sent a document to someone to read. Just READ. He started editing it as he went, slowing his reading progress. Once he got to the end, late the second day, he said he didn't like it and wouldn't use it without major changes. My thought was: why did you spend several extra hours editing it and not just skim-read it once through first?? {sigh}

 

[Maurice]

I kind of went thru something like that recently. I sent a document to someone to read. Just READ. He started editing it as he went, slowing his reading progress. Once he got to the end, late the second day, he said he didn't like it and wouldn't use it without major changes. My thought was: why did you spend several extra hours editing it and not just skim-read it once through first?? {sigh}

Editing is its own step. I always read through once first and maybe make a few notes about what my gut reaction is at particular moments in the story, because you can never have that first experience a second time and I want that to get back to the author. It's only on the subsequent read (if there is one) that I do the extensive notes.

 

[Matthew Raymond]

@Maurice, how would you edit a script that's too long yet everything in a script appears to be relevant to the plot?

 

[Maurice]

@Maurice, how would you edit a script that's too long yet everything in a script appears to be relevant to the plot?

You start by making sure every word matters.

For instance, my personal goal is to make every scene do at least two of the following things, and ideally all of them:

1. Contain some kind of conflict
2. Advance the story events (plot)
3. Illustrate or counterpoint a theme
4. Reveal or reinforce something about one or more of the characters

By doing that you often end up with one scene doing the work of what otherwise would take two or more.

You also do it by figuring out how to really tighten the dialog. There's an art to screenwriting where you need to write conversations which sound naturalistic, but, by dint of the medium, aren't really. People in movies and TV are much more succinct. So you "sum up" and make the lines shorter and snappier. Characters don't tell each other things they both know. And you as the screenwriter never tell the audience the same thing twice.

You also get rid of all the procedural stuff, especially when it's meaningless techno-nonsense. This why TOS used shorthand like "standard orbit" or Blake's 7 used "standard by 7" as a velocity because you get the idea in a few words instead of twenty. We could only wish that TOS's spinoffs were as spare with the technical jargon as the original was. "You can't mix matter and antimatter cold!" says "we're screwed" a lot more convincingly than a bunch of doubletalk about dilithium matrices and plasma conduits and rerouting the etc. etc. etc.

And you figure out where the actors or the action can sell something without talking.

FInally, you just keep the scene descriptions spare and don't stuff the script full of parenthetical directions for the actors like...

KIRK​

(puzzled)​

Why is this script so bad?​

...when...

KIRK​

Why is this script so bad?​

...is just as clear.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Shouldn't it be...

KIRK
WHY... is this SCRIPT... so BAD?!?

 

[Bixby]

@Maurice, how would you edit a script that's too long yet everything in a script appears to be relevant to the plot?

You look at all your characters and if you can simply delete one supporting character and his side shenanigans or merge his best parts with another character, then you do it.
Say you just wrote Die Hard and you have a cute side bit with John McLane having bought a large teddy bear for his estranged daughter and the original story kept going back to the teddy and that bit dangerously tips your story into slapstick territory when the film is supposed to be a serious action film with occasional humour, then you condense all the teddy bear parts into one meaningful bit. That would probably cut 2 to 3 pages from your script.
If your script is deemed too long by you (BTW there is no law that says your film needs to be 90 minutes long. If tightly written it can be 120 or more also), then you have to check your ego at the door and apply the scissors to whatever you judge as superfluous.
You can easily find movie scripts online and if you're very familiar with the finished product you can see what got cut out or made the grade, either at the script stage or later on at the editing bay. Basic Instinct is a film I like and apart from a few bits here and there Paul Verhoeven was pretty faithful to the shooting script. However I also found Zombieland and they must have done an entire rewrite because it was very different from its final form. But looking at it you can see how it was strengthened by the re-writers (the recurring "rules for surviving Zombieland" was a fun addition)

 

[Maurice]

Shouldn't it be...

KIRK
WHY... is this SCRIPT... so BAD?!?

Joke aside, that's exactly what you don't do because you're indicating delivery for the actor.

You look at all your characters and if you can simply delete one supporting character and his side shenanigans or merge his best parts with another character, then you do it.

I was so tired last night I forgot to address this. You can often combine roles into one character and make one better (and more attractive to a good actor) part out of three bit parts.

If your script is deemed too long by you (BTW there is no law that says your film needs to be 90 minutes long. If tightly written it can be 120 or more also), then you have to check your ego at the door and apply the scissors to whatever you judge as superfluous.

Running time is an issue because every minute of running time adds to the budget because it means paying for cast and crew for more days.

On the feature I mentioned they keep asking for the script to get cut down to 100 pages or less, and right now it's 117. But it's a heist movie and the running time of those tends not to conform to the 1 page = 1 minute formula. The script for Ocean's 11 is 148 pages, and the film runs 115 minutes, which means that script clocks in at TV norm (~45 seconds per page) instead of the movie standard. Some comedies are even crazier, especially the screwball type with rapid-fire dialog like What's Up Doc?, which also has a 148 page script yet the film only runs 94 minutes, so it's blasting by at a wild 38 seconds per page.

An hour-long TV script for broadcast with commercials ought not to exceed 54 pages first draft, and one for a non-commercial network (like Netflix) ought not exceed 62. The pilot I just wrote I kept at commercial network length because I want to be able to shop it anywhere, and it's easier to add material than cut it (I killed a lot of darlings, but am keeping the best ones in a jar just in case).

 

[dmac]

Oh yeah. I use this feature all the time in Final Draft because I can hear all kinds of problems my eyes tend to skip over. I just did this two weeks ago on a producer rewrite done on a feature scxreenplay I rewrote god knows how many times so I could fix all the typos and catch all the loose ends she created in her version. Anyway, after all that, things went pear-shaped and they've reverted to my version of the script after 9 months of this detour. Ah... development Hell. It ain't for the timid.

I use it because of Audio Drama. In film you have a director who should be making sure one actor's head is pointed to whichever other actor they are talking to... well we can hope.... lol
In audio Drama you have to paint mental pictures for each scene and I don't care for the conventional all knowing Narrator tool. It interrupts the flow of the story.
If you lose your listener for one line, you probably lost them for the entire story.
A text reader is like doing walk through filming. especially it you have several different events in the same script.
I believe, at least for me, it's the difference between getting played on National Radio or hanging lifeless on a webpage. Going into Dragoncon and coming out with a Parsec or simply a finalist.
I like Balabolka because it's just drag and drop, plus I hate learning new software when I should be writing.

 

[Maurice]

I use it because of Audio Drama. In film you have a director who should be making sure one actor's head is pointed to whichever other actor they are talking to... well we can hope.... lol
In audio Drama you have to paint mental pictures for each scene and I don't care for the conventional all knowing Narrator tool. It interrupts the flow of the story.
If you lose your listener for one line, you probably lost them for the entire story.
A text reader is like doing walk through filming. especially it you have several different events in the same script.
I believe, at least for me, it's the difference between getting played on National Radio or hanging lifeless on a webpage. Going into Dragoncon and coming out with a Parsec or simply a finalist.
I like Balabolka because it's just drag and drop, plus I hate learning new software when I should be writing.

I'm a big fan of OTR (Old Time Radio) and the better shows rarely did narration. I love Gunsmoke but I'm never thrilled when Dillon does his "Marshal's Log" entries where he sums up and prefer when the info is conveyed in conversation.

 

[MikeH92467]

My first job in Starship Excelsior was to play "The Narrator", after a couple of episodes we realized the problems both with the story flow and technical production were way too much trouble. To this day when we are asked what happened to "The Narrator" I say "we shoved him out an airlock." Just one of many things we had to learn the hard way.

 

[dmac]

My first job in Starship Excelsior was to play "The Narrator", after a couple of episodes we realized the problems both with the story flow and technical production were way too much trouble. To this day when we are asked what happened to "The Narrator" I say "we shoved him out an airlock." Just one of many things we had to learn the hard way.

That's Brutal !

 

[JD]

You look at all your characters and if you can simply delete one supporting character and his side shenanigans or merge his best parts with another character, then you do it.
Say you just wrote Die Hard and you have a cute side bit with John McLane having bought a large teddy bear for his estranged daughter and the original story kept going back to the teddy and that bit dangerously tips your story into slapstick territory when the film is supposed to be a serious action film with occasional humour, then you condense all the teddy bear parts into one meaningful bit. That would probably cut 2 to 3 pages from your script.
If your script is deemed too long by you (BTW there is no law that says your film needs to be 90 minutes long. If tightly written it can be 120 or more also), then you have to check your ego at the door and apply the scissors to whatever you judge as superfluous.
You can easily find movie scripts online and if you're very familiar with the finished product you can see what got cut out or made the grade, either at the script stage or later on at the editing bay. Basic Instinct is a film I like and apart from a few bits here and there Paul Verhoeven was pretty faithful to the shooting script. However I also found Zombieland and they must have done an entire rewrite because it was very different from its final form. But looking at it you can see how it was strengthened by the re-writers (the recurring "rules for surviving Zombieland" was a fun addition)

If anyone is interested in checking out movies scripts, here's some I found to purchase recently.
A whole bunch of Alex Garland's scripts have been officially released, and are available as paperbacks, and Google, Kindle, ect, e-books.
Disney also released a bunch of last year's movie scripts on WaltDisneyStudiosAwards.com around award season, but they've since been pulled. The site is still active, so it looks like they might be posting more stuff later this year/next year.
There are also a whole bunch of Quentin Taratino scripts available, and when Harry Met Sally.
James Gunn also posted the GOTG Vol. 2 script online for free a while back
To go back to the lawsuit from the game developer, I didn't realize that was still going on. I first saw stories about that back around the time Disco started, and I had assumed things had been resolved since then.

 

[jespah]

The Abdin case is still struggling to get out of the starting gate. They sued the wrong entity so the right entity has not yet even been served with process. And one of their lawyers didn't send in his required NY State Bar Association Registration and dues (I did mine - it's not that hard, folks).

 

[Admiral2]

The Abdin case is still struggling to get out of the starting gate. They sued the wrong entity so the right entity has not yet even been served with process. And one of their lawyers didn't send in his required NY State Bar Association Registration and dues (I did mine - it's not that hard, folks).

So right off the bat they're the gang who couldn't shoot straight.

Crushed like a bug, I tellz ya...

 

[Maurice]

The problem with most scripts in books is that you rarely get the actual shooting script. Instead you often get the script that’s been conformed to the film. I always try to find copies of the actual scripts. The actual script for Star Wars is amazingly different than what was reproduced in book.

 

[MikeH92467]

The problem with most scripts in books is that you rarely get the actual shooting script. Instead you often get the script that’s been conformed to the film. I always try to find copies of the actual scripts. The actual script for Star Wars is amazingly different than what was reproduced in book.

I would imagine that comparing the two would give a lot of insight into the film making process. Especially if there was some sort of annotation explaining why something was changed.

 

[Maurice]

I’ve rarely seen any shooting script that was annotated, outside of one of those book reproduction, which almost never show you the actual script. Catch-22.

If anyone wants to see the actual StarWars shooting script, complete with Luke and Co. doing two trench runs (hence the "They're coming in much faster this time" line) I'll be glad to share it (albeit it might be a few days before I can get at it since I just moved).

 

[Firebird]

I’ve rarely seen any shooting script that was annotated, outside of one of those book reproduction, which almost never show you the actual script. Catch-22.

The most recent one I can think of was a book on Welles' film of The Magnificent Ambersons which featured the original script, detailing what was cut and what was later reshot, but even that was transcribed from the original shooting scripts.

As for the most recent publication of the actual shooting script from the production, I believe it was Superman Returns, which still surprised the hell outta me that Warner Bros allowed it to be published in full.

 

[KennyB]

I was on a Set last month where a whole scene was pretty much reworked in 30 minutes because the actor/producer that was in it decided a conversation didn’t fit for her character. Camera set up was still good. They reworked dialogue and we spent the rest of the day shooting, but shows just how shit can change at the LAST moment.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I was on a Set last month where a whole scene was pretty much reworked in 30 minutes because the actor/producer that was in it decided a conversation didn’t fit for her character. Camera set up was still good. They reworked dialogue and we spent the rest of the day shooting, but shows just how shit can change at the LAST moment.

And then it can always change in editing.

Movies are written 3 times. As a script, on set and in editing.