10PTT: 23 Minutes by Trevor Mayes

[Jawbreaker]

Now for the bad cop...

I wouldn't keep reading after the first 10.  Why?  The slow-motion idea is distracting/derailing the story.  You don't really know how to slow the image down on the page.  I kept reading it in real time like Pitch.  That's how it's written.  You write in quick, punchy fragments -- which you sorta have to do for the reader's sake -- but you are losing the visual.  And slowing down the read will not help your cause.  You gotta find the in-between.  The sweet spot.  We also gotta know what Steve is seeing.  Is everything in Steve's world slow motion?  Do we go into real time when he uses his power?  Do we go from slow motion to super fast?  Or do we go from slow motion to ultra slow motion?  None of this is clear on the page.  There should be a distinct tonal shift on the page to differentiate the power from the rest of the script.

But anyway, you really need to ask yourself -- does the slow-motion idea enhance the narrative and characters?  I call it the Zack Snyder test.  The "speed-up/slow-down" effect he puts on all of his fights sequences (and in regular scenes) are generally unnecessary and distracting.  They don't help tell anything.  You already know how I feel, of course.  Like I said before, I wouldn't keep reading after the first ten pages. But I don't think it's impossible to do a story like this.  You just gotta be more creative and precise with your visuals and words.  This is my small stab at the concept:



And I gotta give ya props for the interesting idea.  If you're going to fail, do it big!  Swing for the fences.  Each failure is bringing you closer to that next home run.

[Pitchpatch]

Everybody will see it differently on the page.  The only way to understand how the slow-mo multi-level device works or fails is to shoot tests.  I hope Trevor sees merit in doing so.  It'll confirm he's got something.  Or not.  Doing a no-budget test shoot might require simulating the slow-mo in post-production software, but no matter.  (550Ds are cheap and do 720p 48/50 fps.)  The effect will work or it won't.

But, Jawbreaker, you nailed the thing I was asking for in the opening scene: a visual way to show we're at the Voldeck Office tower.

[Jawbreaker]

The only way to understand how the slow-mo multi-level device works or fails is to shoot tests.  I hope Trevor sees merit in doing so.  It'll confirm he's got something.  Or not.  Doing a no-budget test shoot might require simulating the slow-mo in post-production software, but no matter.  (550Ds are cheap and do 720p 48/50 fps.)  The effect will work or it won't.

I couldn't disagree more.  It's our job to show proof of concept on the page.  That's on us.  We gotta show what cool shit could be done -- and more importantly, how the story could be enhanced -- with such an idea.  Just look at Inception.  It's our job to inspire the reader and make them want this script.  "What the fuck?  How did I not think of this?  Guys, did you read this?  Holy shit, that was insane!  People will go nuts for this!"

What you are saying/doing is waving a giant surrender flag.

Everything here feels half-baked.

Feels like a first step.

See, for example, the car crash.  Trevor merely describe what's happening.  That's not enough.  If Steve sees every agonizing detail, then show us every ... agonizing ... detail.  That's the sort of thinking that should represent Trevor's whole approach -- he should be amplifying.  It's not enough to take things one step further.  He should crank this bitch to 11.  After all, Steve's experiencing the death of his family -- in slow fucking motion.

And I don't say this to discourage.

I want Trevor to rise to the challenge.  The further you put the target out there the more you have to step up your game to hit it.  That's how it works with all of us.  The idea isn't impossible.  You don't need to do fucking tests -- you just need to better execute the idea.

[Pitchpatch]

Capture it on the page.  No contest.  That's what we strive for.

BUT... I'm talking about selling the script and making the movie.  How many pre-viz script packages have sold these past few years, thanks to cheap consumer video production?  It pumps the buyer's confidence seeing something real, something beyond words on a page.  It nudges a concept over the threshold into reality.  Holy shit, that looks cool versus Wow, that sounds [reads] cool.

In a perfect world, in purest form, yes, the script should sell itself.  It should be a complete, easy-to-follow blueprint for building a film.  Only the best screenwriters achieve that.  There's no shame in the rest of us doing what we can to compensate for what our scripts lack.  Packaging a known name, making a pre-viz, cross-promoting via another medium (turning your unsold screenplay into a graphic novel, for example).  WHATEVER IT TAKES.

If the script expresses only half of what's in Trevor's head then a test reel or demo teaser COULD get him a sale on that promise alone, script as is, a sale that otherwise might be a pass if it crossed a reader's desk only.  This script lives and dies on the slow-mo.  Why leave that to chance?  Your argument, Jawbreaker, is: get it on the page and then you're not leaving it to chance.  That's a persuasive argument.  But what if you, the writer, can't quite get it on the page?  What if the guy who can greenlight 23 MINUTES can't get his head around 'the look' despite your best writing?  My argument is: What if first he watches the three-minute promo, then he reads the script.  Is he not perfectly primed to visualize how things play out on screen?

IMO, best case scenario is, Trevor does another pass and gets the slow-mo device working on the page.  We agree it needs tweaking in this draft.  Then he pulls together the resources to make a short test/promo.  (Trevor knows the importance of packaging.  See his one-sheet in the first post in topic.)  Do the visuals work as hoped?  No?  Back to concept.  Yes?  Get that script + video package in front of buyers.

A creator who figures out a new way to tell a story would be nuts to not test it first.

James Cameron has revealed that he shot early test footage for Avatar with Lost star Yunjin Kim.

Speaking to Popular Mechanics, the filmmaker said that he convinced studio 20th Century Fox to spend $10 million so that he could film the scene where protagonist Jake Sully first meets Na'vi alien Neytiri.

"We shot a five-minute scene," Cameron said of the early prep work. "I hired two actors, turns out one of them is now quite well-known - Yunjin Kim who is in Lost. There was Yunjin and a guy named Daniel Best. I took these two young actors and just did the scene. From that we took 40 seconds, because that's all we could afford, and had [visual effects studio] ILM take it through to a finished product."

Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington went on to fill Kim and Best's roles when the sci-fi blockbuster eventually went into production.

[Jawbreaker]

Do I agree that you should do whatever you can to help get a sale?

In a word: Yes.

But you're comparing apples and oranges.

Cameron was shooting with completely new tech.  He needed to see how his precise facial scanning process worked in real world shooting.  He was doing something never done before.  That's not the case here.  Trevor is just mixing visual styles that we've seen a dozen times.

But yeah, I would only do the above as a last resort -- and if I thought I couldn't achieve said visual on the page.  But like I said before, I think this concept is totally doable.  That brick wall is there to test how bad you want it.

[Tom & Jerry]

Just from reading the little bit of the script on here.  I do prefer the way Jawbreaker explains the visual as compared to scriptwrecked's version.  Of course just my opinion.  And like jawbreaker, I think the concept is an interesting one but a tough sell as well.  The higher the concept, the better your chances of being noticed so it's hard to argue with that concept in that way.

[Pitchpatch]

More clarification.  In an email discussion Trevor mentioned:

The Voldeck Oil point. In the opening scene, I don't want the audience to be aware of where Steve is. It's not relevant at that point. It's a mystery to solve as the movie progresses. The audience will organically catch up with the fact that he's at the Voldeck Oil Building through the unfurling story.

Which moots my in-topic comments about showing we're at the Voldeck offices in the opening scene.  Trevor wants it to play as 2+2 -- let the audience connect the dots.  That's something I must watch out for when doing 10PTTs: the natural desire to join the dots within those ten pages, forgetting that plot points can build and build and pay off much later in the story -- which I knew to be the case with the keychain tool.

Also, huge congrats to Trevor for winning the annual on-the-spot scene writing competition at Great American PitchFest this year.

[Pitchpatch]

How to encode on the page the idea of time slowed down, of slow-motion cinematics?

This is what Trevor grappled with after getting his 10PTT feedback, amid ongoing feedback from his friends and colleagues.

Jawbreaker from this forum had some ideas.  He saw a path forward where the writing itself constantly holds the reader in the slow-mo moment, like the regularly spaced blips on a heart monitor.  Jawbreaker's run at the opening page is here.



Zero in on the words Jawbreaker precisely selects:

slow
blurred
suspended
flutters
streams
waving
billow

And the phrases:

"moves like seaweed underwater"
"suspended in mid-air"
"tears struggle down her face"
"her hair streams out, waving gently"
"curtains billow"

All of it working to constantly remind the reader about the exquisite slow-mo visuals.

This approach is a smart bet.  It has a languid, literary feel that lulls the senses.  Poetic.  Hypnotic.  Like a dream.  Form and function in harmony.

Trevor could go this route.  It's perfectly respectable.  The script would read well and go places.  Heads would nod agreeably and hands would be shaken affably and smiles would be smiled.  No readers would kick back their chair and leap on the desk and bellow, "Oh no you fucking didn't!"

Well.  Trevor didn't.  He saw another way.

It's a riskier route compared with the generally agreeable approach above.  Trevor's approach could polarize his readers.  Some will love it; some will hate it.  Few will hold no opinion because this approach makes it hard not to.

It's not a new approach, mind you.  Scriptophiles will recognize it and know the screenwriter (and the screenwriter before him) who made it his signature style.  But I do believe it's the first time this technique has been wed so perfectly to the concept.

Let's wind back about a week to the day Trevor's idea took hold.  He emailed me a new draft with a couple of layout changes.  He explained:

Basically there are only two differences.
 
1) I used double spaced action stacking.
2) When more than one sentence appears in the descriptions, I put four spaces between them.
 
Maybe the subtle reminder of the spacing is enough to remind the reader that it's slow motion. But at the same time, this thought occurred to me -- if the Director does his job correctly, there should be times where the viewer forgets about the slow motion.

Remember, this is Trevor noodling over how to conveying visual slow motion on the page, because lazy readers like me tended to mentally slip into realtime mode every couple pages, robbing the script of its coolest feature.

Four spaces.  Trevor could've told me he was considering "switching off the internet for the weekend as a, you know, bit of an experiment," and I'd say, "Oh, you mean like unplug your modem?" and he'd say, "No, I mean switch off the internet.  For everyone.  Everywhere.  I can do that now," and I'd be just as horrified.

Hey, read for yourself.  Here's the email I shot back:

The thought of it turns my blood cold.  You know readers and studios HATE format gimmicks other than typical whitespace techniques.  My gut says do not, but I'll confirm or refute later today.  "Double-spaced action stacking" on the other hand sounds FUCKING AWESOME.  Whatever that is, Michael Bay approves.  Looking forward to it.

I was quick to RTJ on the experimental four-space sentence ends, or as the thing came to be named: the quadrispaces aka the quadraciraptor.  That last one was Trevor's, and do we really need to dig into the paleontology books to know why that breed fizzled out long before an asteroid extincted quadraciraptor's dinosaur buddies?  Oh, RTJ = Rush To Judgement.  But yeah, after seeing quadraciraptors on the page, my RTD was definitely a confirmed TIMK-RTFM.  That's a Thing I Must Kill (dash) Right This Fucking Minute.

I wrote Trevor:

The quadrispaces are distracting and make the text look fully justified in places.  Whitespace flows down.  Never across.  NEVER ACROSS!

But of course words are weaksauce when you need something killed RTFM.  So Trevor received this:



Which surely removed any doubt he held about the professional nature of the advice I was giving.

So quadrispaces/quadraciraptor was out (I hoped), but the 'double-spaced action stacking' looks great on the page, leaves generous whitespace, and goes hand in hand with the slow-mo visuals.  That had to stay.

Turns out it didn't take much convincing for Trevor to axe the quadrispaces.  He wasn't really sold on it either.  But -- and finally we get to the real point of this post -- he needed to try it on the page to see if it worked or if it nudged the search for a suitable style in a new direction.

Many (most?) writers are too scared to try things on the page, to experiment within the ruleset.  They fear looking like an idiot.  You know who else is an idiot?  Not Jim Cameron.

NASA has this phrase that they like: "Failure is not an option." But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration, because it's a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. So, that's the thought I would leave you with, is that in whatever you're doing, failure is an option, but fear is not.

-- James Cameron, TED talk, 2010

There you go.  Jim Cameron just gave you permission to fail -- but only if you do it fearlessly.

Scaling those grand sentiments down to the level we're at, it means don't be afraid to experiment with your writing when you think it suits the script and the story.  It can mean framing your story with beautifully styled and toned language -- read THE LOW DWELLER by Brad Ingelsby.  Or, as here, it can mean tooling your layout to better match your story device.

I'll add the unspoken caveat that you can't fundamentally change script format.  If you're Cormac McCarthy you get away with it.  Your weird-looking script gets fed to the nearest office shredder.  Industry format exists for several hundred excellent reasons.  But screenwriters do have some leeway.  We play chess on the same game board as everyone else, but how we get to checkmate is up to us.

So Trevor demonstrated he's unafraid, and Jim Cameron approves.

Moving along.

The double-spaced action stacking was good, but something was missing.  I urged Trevor to keep exploring, keep pushing that stacking a little more.  Rather than stretching out the thoughts/shots/sentences across the page, per Trev's slyly dangerous quadraciraptors, what about marching them down the left half of the page?

Trevor kept pushing himself.  He tried some things and quickly settled on a style and word flow that he felt did justice to the story device (the slow-mo).

New pages arrived in Pitchpatch's inbox.  Pitchpatch read the new pages.  And as the Good Book tells us, he saw that it was good.  Then God spake unto Pitchpatch: Knock off that third person crap RTFM, asshat.

Here's where we start dividing folks.

I love the style Trevor went with.  You might not.  That's okay.  Pages RTFM so you can decide for yourself.

Page 1:



and something you haven't seen.  Page 24:



Summing up: A lot of the time you have to cross the line to discover where it lies.  So long as you can step back from the brink, where was the harm in it?  Do not fear failure; fear not trying.  If you try and fail nine times and stop then more the fool you, because winners take it to ten.  And beyond.  To a hundred, to a hundred thousand.  TO INFINITY AND --  and as this post jumps the shark, I bid you farewell.

PS -- Seriously.  Don't be a timid pussy in your writing.  Me, I'd rather look like an idiot nine times in a row if on the tenth time I get the job done, and as God is my witness, one day I WILL get the job done.

Meantime, buckle up for more of me being an idiot.

[Jawbreaker]

I'll give Trevor this -- the action lines are lot more readable and crisp.  Kudos for that.  But -- there's always a 'but ... ,' isn't there? -- we still get no fucking sense of motion.  That can only be conveyed with words.  I can't stress this enough.  Fucking around with structure is a waste of time.  I mean ask yourself this: If a person got a version of your script without the notes and premise, do you think they'd pick up that it's all slow motion?  Honestly, do you think they'd pick it up?  No they would not.  Do think they'd get the idea with my version?  Yes.  Yes, they would.  It's your writing.  Stop fighting it.  You're gonna have to change your action lines.

[Pitchpatch]

we still get no fucking sense of motion.  That can only be conveyed with words.

In our discussions it was clear right away Trevor wanted the opposite: less words and in fast flowing spurts of description.  No bogging down in verbose slow-motion language.

Like I said, it's a polarizing choice.  I see merits and risks with both techniques. Maybe there's a middle ground.  I'm not the author so I don't have to worry about these things :-)

I've read the full script now and I like it.  It's a fast read for a fast action movie that goes into ultra slow motion in the final sequence (nod to the Matrix) and somehow loses none of its kinetic mayhem.  I wanted more from the central relationship, but maybe the movie playing in my head wasn't the balls-to-the-wall action flick Trevor wants to make.  Anyway, I take it as a good sign when I read a script and want it to keep evolving.  The bad scripts get dunked and drowned in the gene pool for the good of the species.

[Pitchpatch]

Trevor's making a movie!  Not 23 MINUTES, n'awww, but this new one could end up 23 minutes long -- which would be an awesome achievement in frivolous synchronicity.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/triple-time-short-film

Trevor's new project is TRIPLE TIMe.  I read the script.  I laughed silly.  And now I understand how Trevor will achieve the complicated ORPHAN BLACK-like visual effects.  Watch the proof of concept...



All this on a tiny budget of $4K.  The funding campaign is three-quarters done as I write this, which is fantastic news.  There's still time to throw some love Trevor's way and support micro-budget indie film-making.  Be in the first audience to watch the finished movie or pick a bigger, tastier contributor perk if you're feeling extra hungry.

For those who want to make movies but can't quite believe it's possible to do something clever and exciting and visually amazing on a tiny budget, this is a ride you'll want to get aboard.

[scriptwrecked]

Wow, been a while since I've seen this thread. Tons of genuinely insightful comments and ideas here about 23 MINUTES. Thanks, everyone!

And Mr. Pitchpatch, I really appreciate the shout-out for TRIPLE TIMe. So far the enthusiastic response has been both wonderful and surprising. I can't wait to shoot this thing. It's going to be EPIC!

If anyone has any questions about the short, or just wants to remind me that I have a face for radio (and a voice for silent film), please drop me a note!