loglines

Title? We don’t need no stinkin’ title!

Maximum Z Bad News Bears, Filmsack.com, hockey, Lake Tahoe, loglines, Lost In Space, movies, outlines, plot, screenwriting, story, Triggerstreet, Veronica, Walter Matthau

Okay.  I’m back from a rousing hockey tournament at Lake Tahoe, where V’s team came in 3rd out of 6, including their 2 wins with her in goal.  In fact, she was awarded the MVP puck for their 8-1 victory on Saturday night.  Overall, it was very exciting.  Cold, but exciting.

Just before we left, I was introduced to Triggerstreet.com, a screenwriting review/forum website (Kevin Spacey is one of the founders). Part of the way they work is having members review other members’ scripts.  I haven’t submitted anything yet, but plan to in the near future.

But it was the forum that especially intrigued me.  I decided to take the plunge and posted a question about my logline for LUCY.  I did that on Thursday afternoon.  By the evening, I had a few responses and something like 75 views.  What’s cool about the set-up is that you can opt to get an email notification that somebody’s responded to your post.  A lot of the drive up to Tahoe was spent checking them out.

I have to say I got some really good feedback, and even better, got what I feel is a stronger logline for the story.  I thought about posting that 3 Stooges one just to see what people think, but I’ll hold off for a little while.

Speaking of which, I sent in the old LUCY logline and the 3 Stooges one to the logline contest.  Neither one won, but honestly, I don’t really think that much of some recent winners.  I may try again with the new LUCY one.  It’s a wait-and-see situation.

-As much as I thought/hoped it might happen this weekend, I didn’t get a lot of work done on the outline.

So now that I’ve got an outline I like much better, I felt I had to start over with it, albeit with a few minor changes.  But as I was looking it over, there didn’t seem to be much I thought had to come out.  There are still a few places where I may have to make some slight readjustments, but it may not be as daunting a project as I originally thought.

And I may have stumbled onto a solution for moving the story along.  All I have to do now is figure out how to incorporate it into the story. Which I think I can do

Movie of the Moment:  A few to go over. First the original BAD NEWS BEARS. The other girl on V’s hockey team owns this, and we watched it on Saturday afternoon.  Watching it now as a parent is a lot different than when I was a lot closer to the age of a lot of the cast.  It was really weird watching Walter Matthau, especially since I’ve seen more of his work in recent years.

But the story and the writing still hold up.  Some good jokes sprinkled around here and there, but more would have been nice.  It’s also really weird to have a PG movie from the mid-70s have so much mild cursing in it.  From a writing point of view, the character development is strictly textbook, but effective.  What was also clever was that only a handful of scenes are set inside; a majority are set at the ball field.  And you get to know almost all of the kids on the team; just a handful don’t serve much purpose.  I know they made a remake with Billy Bob Thornton a few years ago, but I don’t see the point.

The other movie was LOST IN SPACE, only because it was on TV today while I was working.  I saw this in the theater back in 1998, and enjoyed it.  Not a lot, but worth the $6 for the matinee.  Incidentally, this would be a great choice for the Filmsack guys.

But looking at it today, it really drags in some places and the dialogue doesn’t really do much for me.  I still don’t understand why they didn’t just kill Gary Oldman’s Dr Smith.  He tried to sabotage their mission and they still let him live?  Ridiculous.  And don’t get me started on the cgi monkey alien.  Lame.

Akiva Goldsman, who wrote it (as well as BATMAN & ROBIN, but also A BEAUTIFUL MIND – go figure), has become more of a producer and has thankfully let his writing career diminish.  While I love the concept of the movie, this one just felt forced and could have been a little shorter.  Still, to me it’s one of the slightly better 60s-TV-show-based films, as opposed to that big ol’ chunk of cinematic Velveeta known as WILD WILD WEST.

Now just try to get that gigantic steampunk spider-tank out of your mind.

You’re welcome.

I have no excuse

Maximum Z assignment, documentary, Filmsack.com, loglines, Lucy Steele, Netflix, outlines, plot, story, writing gigs

I was really bad about posting this week.  Only once.  That’s just wrong.

Part of the problem was frustration with the outline.  While I liked it, something seemed to be missing.  It also felt as if I had written myself into a corner, creatively speaking.  I had the set-up, but not the solution, which is not the way to do it.

So even though I told myself I wouldn’t do it, I started over.  All the way back to the beginning, which in this case means the logline.

Something about it just didn’t seem to click, so I noodled around with it and came up with 2 versions.  One was a little more…intense, and one was just different.

I sent them both to writer friends and got very helpful feedback.  Then I consulted with my most valued critic, aka K.  She liked what I came up with as well.  She also said how much she likes the idea and can’t wait to read it when it’s done.

So now I need to start a slight restructuring of the story itself.  Do I keep the sidekick?  Is there a way to simplify things, but also keep them moving at a steady pace?  These and many more questions I hope to answer in the coming weeks.

-Interesting follow-up to my short-writing experience from last summer.  Apparently all the post-production is finished, so the release party is in a few weeks.  But it’s on a Thursday night, starting at 8PM, which for a creaky odl traffic reporter like me, that’s kind of late.  And it’s at a dance club-type place, which is REALLY not my kind of environment.  Highly doubtful I’ll go, but you never know.

The director sent me a note a few days ago, saying he’s going to be working on a short documentary (approximately 12-15 minutes), and wanted to know if I’d be open to writing the script for it.  And he’ll have a budget, which means $$$ for yours truly!  Actually, more like $.

I’ve never written a docu before, but I love watching them, so I have a general idea of how to go about it.  The subject matter is something completely foreign to me: DJ school.  As in club.  Not radio.  Although the latter would be kind of cool, I don’t think they have those anymore.

I’m meeting with him on Monday to discuss it, so I’ll post how that went, along with the usual LUCY updates.

-Strong recommendation for a hilarious podcast about movies . filmsack.com.  4 guys talking about what they liked or didn’t like about the movie selection of the week.  All types of genres from various decades, but the 80s seem to get the most representation.

What’s really great is that a lot of the movies are available on Netflix via streaming, so watching them isn’t too much of a hassle, provided you have the time to watch.  Even if you haven’t seen the movie in a while, it’s still a blast to listen to.

A few steps forward

Maximum Z 3 Stooges, loglines, outlines, plot, research, screenwriting, script doctor eric, story

Just a handful of scenes on LUCY today. I’m trying to work out the transition from the opening of Act One to the page 45 twist.  It’s coming together.  Slowly.  Confidence levels still pointing upward.

I was able to fix my time problem by eliminating the California aspect completely and having it all take place in .  That Denver/Rockies climax still sounds pretty good.

-I got some good feedback regarding my 3 Stooges idea from yesterday.  The story is possible, but it would be difficult to avoid having it turn into a Stooge-ish comedy.  Consider this one officially backburnered.

Movie of the Moment: Nothing right now, but I got to see the trailer for next year’s THOR movie.  It looks okay, but there’s no sense of excitement or thrills I got from the first IRON MAN.  Where’s the powerful aura of gods on Earth?  Of an ages-old story that still holds up in modern times.  It’s Kenneth Branagh, for crying out loud!  I want Shakespearean drama from an Asgardian aspect!  So far, I ain’t seeing it.

-I think I’m officially done with entering the logline contest.  I didn’t win again this time, and I haven’t been very impressed with some of the recent winners.  Besides, I’d rather focus on LUCY and my other stuff anyway.

-Got a note from the director.  He says production is wrapped, and now he’s dealing with post.  No idea when it’ll be ready.  I wonder if he’ll follow through with the release party thing.  Hope so.

Wikipedia is my sister! My daughter! My sister! My daughter!

Maximum Z Civil War, loglines, research, screenwriting, script doctor eric, story, train, Uncategorized, Wikipedia

My apologies for a lack of posts the last few days. A combo of extra hours at work, family stuff and just being busy kept me away.

Progress on the second act of LUCY has been slower than I’d like, but that’s okay. Better to take my time than constantly be fixing it later.

I got some very nice feedback from a fellow writer about Act One. He’s read some of my other stuff and was quite enthusiastic about what I’ve got so far. Although he’s not crazy about the main character being a woman, I think it makes for a slightly different approach, as well as being somewhat original.

Because I’m trying to keep this story as historically accurate as I can, I’ve been using various websites as reference guides. The Civil War, trains, and so on.

And of course, Wikipedia. I’ve gotten a lot of very helpful info from it so far. It is truly invaluable.

Throughout the events of the story, I’ve been establishing that several of the characters will end up in California. This includes the love interest and the villain, who has also stolen Lucy’s train. I pictured a big finale taking place IN California. Sounds awesome, right?

The story starts in the East just as the Civil War is ending, then gradually heads west. That means the trains would need to make their way across the country, which would be 1865.

I wanted to make sure this was plausible, but Wikipedia informed me the driving of the Golden Spike in Utah was the birth of the Transcontinental Railroad. In 1869. Which is 4 years AFTER this story takes place.  Which means I need to CHANGE SOMETHING!

Either I move the time of the story ahead, which destroys that whole “end of the Civil War” aspect, or I change the locale of where the story ends.  As much as I hate to do it, it’s easier to go with the latter.  One of the many rules of writing is “kill your darlings,” so it looks like I’ll being committing murder-by-author in the next few days.  Like I said, it would be great to have the showdown in California, but it just won’t work.  Time to dive back into Wikipedia and find out where gold was plentiful before the railroad.  Denver might work.  A showdown on railroad tracks through the Rockies has potential.

I was originally hoping to be done with the outline by the end of the year, but that ain’t gonna happen.  I’ll be happy if I get to the midpoint by then.

-I sent the scene rewrite back to the director a few days ago, and have heard nothing back.  I don’t know how he feels about it, and he said he wanted to shoot the remaining scenes tomorrow (Sunday).   As always, I wish him the best of luck.

-Even though I thought I was done with it, I sent the logline to NORTH POLE NOIR to the logline contest yesterday. I don’t know what kind of a chance I have; I’ve entered it before, but with no results.  This time he seems to want more Christmas-themed ones, so maybe this time.  Fingers crossed.

Just…a little bit…more!

Maximum Z adventure, characters, loglines, outlines, radio, story, writing group

As I’ve stated before, one of the great things about where I work is that sometimes there’s so much downtime between reports, I get to work on non-radio stuff.

Especially scripts.  I don’t know why, but more often than not, I’m more productive in the studio than on my couch or at the desk in the home office.  Crazy.

Since the past two days were holidays, I worked the 5am-noon shift.  Amazingly, there isn’t a whole lot of traffic during the morning of major holidays, which means I had a lot of time to work with.

Which is what I did.  Oh boy, did I.

I was able to bring my laptop in yesterday, with the intent of getting something done with LUCY.  I like how the first act is developing, but it feels like it’s >this< close to being where I want to be.

Earlier in the week, I had worked on inserting the sidekick angle. So far, not too bad.  Still need to work on that opening sequence though.

But I was able to expand a bit on the first ten pages, fleshing out Lucy and the sidekick a bit more.  Based on suggestions from the writing group, I slightly altered what happens at page 10, and was able to edit out some extraneous scenes between that and page 17 (or at least what’s supposed to be there).

The rest of the first act also came together.  While I like the way it’s going, I worry that the sidekick doesn’t have enough to do.  But everything is still in the early development stage, so there’s still lots of time to fix this and that.

My goal today was to try and venture forth into Act Two (which I have a good idea how it’s going to start out), but there were two things bothering me:

-what happens if Lucy fails?  It has to be something really big.  Something majorly important. I have a few ideas, but nothing that really says “this is it!”

-While I have a connection between Lucy and the main antagonist (thanks again, writing group!), I need something in there so logical to allow/enable Lucy to go after him, that there’s no doubt that’s what she needs to do.  This is quite an obstacle, but I bet I’ll come up with something sooner than I think.  I’ve done it before.

In the meantime, I may start working out the next sequence or two, just to see if I can make things connect smoothly.

Besides, I’m doing the midday shift two days this coming week, so you just know I’ll get results.

-Going against my better judgment, I entered the logline contest again, this time with an entry I’ve never tried before.  I have my doubts, but you never know.

Right after I did that, I looked at my logline for LUCY and realized it’s just okay.  It doesn’t grab you.  That’s something else I’ll work on this week.  I want it to be so kickass you can’t help but think “that sounds so AWESOME!”

So for now, the toil and drudgery continues…