Author: Maximum Z

Hard-workin’ guy

Maximum Z craigslist, Netflix, YouTube

Real quick script update: Got to page 3. Like what I have so far. Nice feedback from fellow writer/other remaining member of previous writing group.  I really need to relax and have fun while I write; helps make it an easier experience.

I can officially add a new work thing to my resume: on-camera personality.

There was a listing on craigslist around the end of May looking for screenwriters.  I applied and got an offer to come in for an interview.

Turns out it had nothing to do with screenwriting whatsoever.  They’re a small startup looking to provide short narrated videos; such potential subjects are Top 5 lists, real estate listings, the SPCA and so on.  The writing would be putting together the scripts; about 10-20 a week. A lot of work for not much pay, but I didn’t mind.

I had asked about the narration and was asked if I wanted to audition.  Sure; why not?  It could have gone better – I was faster than the teleprompter, but kept a good attitude.

Two weeks pass and I hear nothing.  Ah well. Back to combing the internets. Then I get an email congratulating me on being selected as one of their on-camera narrators!

Boy, they must have thought my writing really sucked.

A date to film some samples was arranged.  I ride out to the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. One I had heard of, but never been to.

Their studio is a converted basement in a house. Very low-tech, but work is work.

It takes me a while to get used to the iPad-based teleprompter, but it goes well.  I also learn that this is considered my second audition, and that the writing has been put on hold for now.

After that first day, I hadn’t heard anything from them for almost two weeks. I dash off a quick-yet-tactful email asking what’s going on, but hear nothing.

Is it over before it began?

Yesterday, I get an email saying my payment for the previous session had gone through. Literally five minutes later, the producer calls, asking if I’m available to come in today for another session. You bet!

I wasn’t n my A-game today. Lots of flubs, but easily corrected.

When it’s a wrap, I ask if I passed the latest round of auditions.  Most definitely is the response.  I also learn that one of my writing samples is the highest-viewed video for their YouTube channel.  (I offer no explanation for the guy reading it) My on-camera one – okay, but there’s me in all my dorkiness.

But that’s okay.  This is occasional, semi-steady work that can only yield positive results.

-Movie of the Moment – finished IP MAN. Loved it. Phenomenal martial arts sequences, complete with several jaw-dropping moments.  Slightly more inclined to watch the sequel.

-Regarding Netflix price gouge/increase. Understandable, but 60 percent?  Couldn’t 20 or 25 worked?  We’re opting for the 1-disk/streaming combo. I suspect we’ll be watching a lot more on streaming in the coming months.

That’s right, I CAN do that

Maximum Z Aint It Cool News, Dreamship, Hollywood Elsewhere, rewrite, screenwriting
One of my heroes

I didn’t have a lot of time to write today, so I made a point of finishing the first two scenes.

It may not sound like much, but I had discovered after almost finishing the first one that I had completely ignored its original intent and done a slight revamping of an earlier draft.

That’s when the light bulb went off.

I had the complete and utter freedom to write whatever I damn well felt was best for the scene this time around, and didn’t have to refer back to earlier drafts.

I erased about half the scene and started anew. I also realized I could put in, or at least hint at some exposition here, which would save me from trying to cram it all in later. I could spread it around accordingly.

It felt great. I’ll have a little more time tomorrow, so with luck I can maybe get to page 5 or so. Which would be very nice.

-Jeffrey Wells, the brains behind Hollywood Elsewhere, was in town yesterday and today to check out something at Dolby. I suspect he left earlier today, but I passed his hotel around 9:30am. Couldn’t help but slow down to see if he might be around. Given the opportunity to meet him, I’d just tell him I really enjoy his work. Nothing too overly gushy.

While I don’t always agree with his reviews, he’s a great writer about a great many other things. Definitely not one to pull his punches. One of a handful of blog/sites I check daily.

-Movie of the Moment: IP MAN, a thrilling martial arts flick set at the outbreak of WWII. I’m only 35 minutes into it, but some of the fight scenes have been phenomenal.

I heard about it through Ain’t It Cool, which is not exactly the most objective of sites. Still, I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of it. Have to think about whether or not to see the sequel.

As always, recommendations for any film, any genre, are welcome.

Off and running

Maximum Z ideas, screenwriting
Well, look what I found...

After much deliberation whether or not to keep tinkering with the outline, I opted to just delve right in.

I typed ‘Fade In’, and about half a page worth of the opening scene before having to deal with family stuff.  Better to get a little written than none at all.

I’m always guilty of too much self-editing, so I may try to just steamroll through this draft without looking back until I type ‘Fade Out’.

The key word here is ‘try’.  Sometimes I get too caught up in rewriting during the rewrite.  We’ll see.

Still feeling confident about the whole thing. Check back in a week or two to see if that’s still the case.

-I save each script on my hard drive, and have a backup on a flash drive.  I dug up the flash the previous draft was on (having since erased all previous drafts a while ago) and noticed there was a file marked ‘Story Ideas’. This was from about five years ago.  In fact one of them was five years and a day. Wow.

Each one was the super-basic outline of a different story. I remember coming up with one or two of them, but the rest were totally new.  It was amazing to see how much I had written. While one may have just been a logline and five single-word subplot ideas, another was three solid pages of potential scenes.

Again, I couldn’t remember writing some of these whatsoever.  In fact, I wasn’t even sure I was the original author of one of them (which I was).  I thought it was an outline, but it was a lot of possible scenes.

Basically, this was a quite a nice surprise I had provided for myself. When I’m not working on pages, I’ll have to remind myself to put together a folder of hard copies of the ones worth keeping.

No Movie of the Moment today, but I finished EATING RAOUL. Loved it.

That’s almost that

Maximum Z Dreamship, Eating Raoul, Fido, Movie of the Moment, outlines, rewrite, screenwriting, zombies

Except for a few tweaks and added-in details, I think the latest outline is done. Still not entirely sure the last few scenes are a little rushed, but for the most part, I like what I’ve got.

Looking at all that text makes me wonder if I tightened this thing up that much, if at all.  But my initial overall feeling is it’s better than it was before.

I’ve also been wondering about some of the set-up scenes; are they good enough?  Do they explain enough? Will the reader be able to follow along?  I’ve been guilty of writing with information the reader may not have, so I’ll have to be careful about that.

Because I think it may be time to move on to the next level:

Pages. Which I’m pretty excited about.

My s.o.p. in the past has been at least 3 pages a day. Seems doable.

Ideal situation – done by the end of August/Labor Day. Again, seems doable.

Into the abyss.

Movie of the Moment  – K and I watched FIDO, a much better-than-expected zombie flick from about 5 years ago. Imagine WWII was against zombies, and they lost. Now the living dead are outfitted with collars inhibiting their flesh-eating tendencies, so now they function in society as a kind of subservient, manual labor.

This particular story is about a loser kid who at first treats the family’s new zombie as a pet (hence the title), but soon kind of sees him as a sort of surrogate father.

Set in a well-presented 50’s setting, the film takes the subject seriously but adds equal amounts of camp.  Not as gory as you would think, but an interesting take on a subject near and dear to K’s heart.

Added bonus – comedian Billy Connolly in the title role.  He never says a word, apart from the standard grunts and growls, so his acting is all expression. Very impressive.

-I started watching EATING RAOUL, which I remember Siskel & Ebert reviewing way back when on Sneak Previews, which aired on WHYY in Philadelphia.

I knew Paul Bartel co-wrote and directed, but had only seen clips, and even those were a long time ago.

Even though I’m about halfway through, everything so far has been freakin’ hilarious. Extremely dated, especially with the whole swingers lifestyle subplot, but just a smart little comedy that still generates laughs.  Can’t wait to finish it.

-Still don’t know if I’ll get to X-MEN or SUPER 8 in theatres. I’ll try, but looks like they may be sentenced to Netflix while HARRY POTTER and CAPTAIN AMERICA get closer.

Benefit of working ridiculously early hours – catching the first show of the day at the local AMC theatres. ticket price – $6! Makes my bought-at-Walgreens-and-smuggled-in M&Ms taste that much better.

Didja miss me?

Maximum Z Dreamship, Green Lantern, rewrite, screenwriting, travel
Nice to travel, nicer to come home

You never realize how much you miss writing on a semi-daily basis when you don’t get to do it for a while.

But I’m back home and ready to tackle my assorted projects.  Actually, we’ve been home since early this week but I’ve had practically no time to work on the outline or on this blog.

The time away was nice. It’s always pleasant to visit the in-laws, but eating and big meals are a constant part of these trips, so I feel like I gained about 5 pounds.  Lots of carb-, sugar- and sodium-heavy stuff. But now that I’m home, I can eat things my body is used to. Like vegetables.

As expected, I didn’t get a lot of writing done during this trip. The closest I came to anything like that was during the flight out. K took a look at what I had so far for DREAMSHIP. She liked it. Good enough for me.

Problem now is I need to take care of Act Three, but I don’t want to rush through it. I want to make sure everything works the way it’s supposed to.

I did the midday traffic shift yesterday and was frustratingly blocked.  I like to think it’s my subconscious saying “For crying out loud, don’t mess this up!”  Or at least hope that’s what it is.

Hoping to get the outline done this coming week, fine-tune it as necessary, then start on pages.  Fingers firmly crossed.

-Movie of the Moment.  Never got around to seeing SUPER 8 or X-MEN in theatres, so will probably catch ’em both on Netflix.

The day after we returned, I took V to see GREEN LANTERN. What a disappointment!  I’d tried to not read too many spoiler-laden reviews, but the one thing I kept hearing was “lame second act.” And that really applied.

When you’re watching a comic book/superhero movie, you should not be thinking “why isn’t the main character doing more superhero-ish stuff?” Hal should not have returned to Earth. I wanted to see him really learning what it took to be a Green Lantern.

It didn’t help that it took Carol telling him something like “you don’t need to be fearless; just have courage to face your fears” for him to complete the character arc.  Just awful.

Why would you make a movie about a space cop and keep him on his home planet for most of the time?

I didn’t have a problem with the cgi/ring effects.  I thought they were pretty good, and there should have been more of them. After all: that’s what the ring does.

And that mask?  Ugh. I was really worried they were going to go the ‘can’t recognize him ‘ way, but was pleasantly surprised they didn’t.

In summary” First act: pretty good. Second act: terrible. Third act: good for what it was, which isn’t saying much.  I feel bad for Warner Brothers, but you should make a good story to appeal to all moviegoers. Not just the fanboys. They’re never happy.

I hadn’t realized it until the other day, but this summer movie season seems to be going on forever.

I’d still like to see CAPTAIN AMERICA and COWBOYS & ALIENS, but those don’t come out until later this month.  And CAP would have been an appropriate open for this weekend, but I suspect everybody was already suffering from comic book movie fatigue.