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Spike

Spike

Here is the fist page of my one polished screenplay. It's gone through many many tweaks and this, finally, seems right.

https://www.keepandshare.com/doc30/114597/mts-open2-pdf-30k?da=y


EBA5C40C-0BB3-44B1-B4F3-5B22A34B1E9C.jpeg
Mars.
 
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Yup, Nate, you're probably right. Although my sense is that there is room for some individual style, here. For example (and I posted this after looking at this) Here is a screen shot of the first page of William Goldman's "All The President's Men" script.

1687023230159.jpeg


And here's what appeared on the screen. It's pretty close to Goldman's original vision. The only differences are, he imagined the sound coming in before the scene changed, and saw the transition as a "bleed away" where it ended up a hard cut punctuated by the carriage return, and the actual Nixon footage was different.. But pretty cool, I think.

 
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I agree, but keep in mind that when Goldman wrote All The President's Men (which is one of my all time favorite movies btw), he was already an established screenwriter who wrote one of my other favorite movies, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And he won an Oscar for that.

People at that level can do things that we just can't.
 
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Yup. Goldman was a novelist as well, a real writer, and it shows in his scripts. (And any time I try to write anything, my working assumption is that it will get to "that" level, lol; afterwards I can't believe it, but it gets things done :) )
 
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Spike said:
Yup, Nate, you're probably right. Although my sense is that there is room for some individual style, here. For example (and I posted this after looking at this) Here is a screen shot of the first page of William Goldman's "All The President's Men" script.

1687023230159.jpeg


And here's what appeared on the screen. It's pretty close to Goldman's original vision. The only differences are, he imagined the sound coming in before the scene changed, and saw the transition as a "bleed away" where it ended up a hard cut punctuated by the carriage return, and the actual Nixon footage was different.. But pretty cool, I think.

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yeah, that's an interesting example. Kind of weird to see a post sequence in the script, but it works.

In yours, you are directing the camera in the script, and you seem to have a pretty good understanding of how to use framing creatively for dramatic presentation. You might actually want to consider cinematography as well as writing. It was the same in your other project, you wrote visual descriptions that showed an understanding of effective camera movements, visual reveals, etc. Go watch some festival films, and you'll notice that the camerawork in your scripts is actually better thought out than that of many actual director/cinematographers. Really understanding dramatic framing is a skill in and of itself, and maybe I'm wrong, but just reading your work, I feel like you might be a natural.

I wrote an entire thread once about staging visual reveals with camera framing, and basically no one seemed interested in the technique, but in your work, you are just constantly using it as though it comes naturally, showing a good grasp of visual language.
 
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Spike said:
Very kind of you to say so, Nate. What I was trying to do, what Goldman does, is to just describe, exactly, what it is that is seen.
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Lol, just saying, now that I'm an animator I have a cine camera for sale. I'll give you the whole kit for 50 grand, then you just need to buy a gothic cathedral, dig a canal, and build a life size replica of mars in your yard, and you're set for both films! Jk, lol.

I do think your script work will stand out a bit though. It's a bit more vivid than most.
 
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Having watched a lot of your animations, i consider any "compliments" not to be empty. But it is a little more economical, for me right now, to sit in bed with my ipad :)
 
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And, by the way, have you noticed this "AR wall" thing they're using on the new Star Trek stuff? In Discovery, I think, and now on Strange New. Worlds? It's amazing, as is, to me, what is done inside the computer.

 
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Totally off topic, but this is how I've been writing test narration recently. I row this kayak around costa rica and dictate notes to a speech to text algorithm. I'm aware nobody except me is into this, but it's really interesting just hanging out on a holodeck in the middle of a junge full of firelies at midnight and coming up with ideas. Here's a camera feed of that simulator program from a headset, in case you're curious.

 
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Spike said:
And, by the way, have you noticed this "virtual wall" thing they're using on the new Star Trek stuff? In Picard, I think, and now on Strange New. Worlds? It's amazing, as is, to me, what is done inside the computer.
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oh yeah, Mandolorian also. That's UE5, the same software SP and the labyrinth use for the base layer. Virtual production is the wave of the future, and it's going to really allow some amazing things to be done at unprecedented budgets, as soon as they quit pretending that it costs 20 million dollars to shoot an hour of the Mandalorian. Honest to god, if you understood the system their using, it's so powerful that you could shoot a Robert Heinlein novel for 1 million dollars. In case people don't get that reference, they had to severely nerf Starship Troopers, because the way he originally wrote it would have cost the GNP that year to film.
 
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Well, to clarify, I didn't build the kayak sim, that's a commercial product with millions in funding. But I can do your SFX at a level well beyond that, so if you win the lottery and want to produce these films, consider me a lock for Viz supervisor! Actually wouldn't mind a DP role on that Historical piece either. I would have a blast flying my epic on a skycam platform through Venice.

I'm just kidding, no person with an IQ over 70 has ever won the lottery. They rig it that way so the money gets back into circulation within the year. If they had ever given a genius the powerball, or the presidency, even one time, we'd have universal internet, electric cars, civilian spaceflight, cheap modular housing, reusable rockets, advanced polymers, brain interfaces, nano medicine, and giant tunneling machines for some reason.

Someone in my town won the lottery once, and now we have a bowling alley that serves whiskey!
 
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Good start ... where's page 2? :D

My only quibble would be this phrase: "a small mid-20th century style residential subdivision"

Given that styles are intimately linked with place as well as time, and the place in question is Mars, how do we know that this martian style dates to the mid-20th century?
 
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thanks, Celtic. I imagined something like this--absurdly anachronistic.


1CC056A5-29DE-4122-A780-940B0171A809.jpeg

This, by the way, is the project i wrote about in one of my first posts here:

screenplay - I know, but I did it anyway.

Hello, I have, over the years, read and re-read a particular writer, have done academic work on him, and have, I believe, some non trivial knowledge, understanding, and maybe even insight, into his work. And so, several years ago, wanting to write something, I started a screenplay, an...
indietalk.com indietalk.com

It's gone through enough tweaks that I think it is, now, as good as i can get it. And still, one plus year later, I have done nothing. It exists, it seems, to remind me of how much of a spineless feline I am. Oh well. I do appreciate that, after page one, you would ask about page two :)
 
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