A Co-operative Video Website?

I have been mulling an idea for a while now.

Video websites like YouTube have been very successful financially by selling advertizing. Meanwhile, most of the people who post their videos on the sites get little or no money for their contribution.

I thought about creating a website for my own videos, where I would get all the money from advertizing. Doing this would be a challenge with my level of internet programming skills.

However, I think the biggest problem would be finding an audience. People go to sites like YouTube looking for videos to watch. They are not likely to go wandering the internet in search of my films. It makes a lot of sense to be on a video website with lots of other videos. People drawn to other videos may very well find yours as well.

I think one way to get around that is to create a co-operative video website.

The website itself would just provide a common front end, links to the videos and a search function. Members would provide their own video, while the co-operative would provide them with templates and advice on setting up their own sites. Members would pay to be on the website, or could volunteer to help run the site instead.

With a co-operative, no one member would need to have all the skills to set up and run the site. There are many details to work out, but I think this could work.

Do I Have the Right to Say What I Want to Say?

I’m one of those people who always thinks of a good comeback, the day after the conversation. One of the nice things about doing a blog is that you can talk about what you would have said.

About nine years ago, I did a workshop talking about my films. In the workshop, I wanted to explain what I was trying to accomplish with my films and what I learned from making them.

With the workshop, I wanted to encourage people to try to make films. I had started to make films in High School, but then stopped when I was in University. I didn’t try to make any films for another 14 years. The main reason I stopped was that I had reached a point where I felt I couldn’t go any further unless I felt I had something to say that people would listen to.

This was a big barrier to my creativity, and I got stalled on several projects because I was worried if what I had a worthy of sharing. I was able to overcome these fears and complete several films. This was one lesson I wanted to share in the workshop.

When I was talking about the struggles, one of the people taking the workshop interrupted me. They told me that I shouldn’t let that stop me because everyone had a right to say what they wanted to. I wasn’t an experienced public speaker and their comment caught me by surprise. I wasn’t sure how to respond, and so I just continued with my talk.

Looking back on this incident, I see that the person did not understand the point I was making. As I recall, some of the others in the workshop did react in a way that made me feel they had understood.

What I wish I had said was to point out that, I had in fact gone on to complete several films.

I would have liked to point out that I felt that if you don’t at some point in your filmmaking question if you should be saying what you are saying, then you are not pushing yourself to your limit. When I talked to Steve Hanon about this issue, he agreed that questioning if you should say what you want to is a necessary part of being creative.

I got thinking about this episode after I posted a comment to a LinkedIn forum on script writing.

I read that Alfred Hitchcock was asked why he remade "The Man Who Knew too Much". His reply was that a talented amateur made the first version, while a seasoned professional made the second. What I keep in mind was that when he made the first version he had already made over 20 features and many people saw him as one of the best movie directors in the world.

If Hitchcock was only a talented amateur after 20 films, then I need to be much more humble about how good my work is. Several other posts agreed that the really good filmmakers and writers are always worried if their work is good enough.

This is another good reason to worry that your work is not worthy. That fear will drive you to higher goals. Someone who never worries if their work is good, will always be just a hack.

Detective Story: Creating my villain

I was reading Sue Grafton’s book T is for Trespass and noticed similarities between the villain in her story and the one I created for mine.

I suppose that I really should not have been too surprised. When I started to create my villain, I didn’t want to base it on anyone I knew. None of them was villainous enough. Instead, I drew on some of the characteristics identified in the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist

This list is comes from a test psychologists use to identify psychopaths. In particular, I used three traits from the list.

• Grandiose sense of self-worth,


• Cunning/manipulative, and


• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

My villain is entirely convinced of his own superiority. This leads to him over estimating what he can do, and under estimating what others can do. Most normal people do get upset when they make mistakes. Sometimes this is fear of others labelling them a failure. In this villain’s case, exposure of a mistake strikes much deeper, since his whole sense of self worth comes from his view that he is never wrong.

In order to cover for his mistakes, my villain relies on his skills at manipulating others to avoid. One of the reasons he is so skilled, is that his hubris over the years has often resulting in situations where he had to be manipulative to escape.

His need to maintain his sense of self worth leads to his refusal to accept responsibility for his own actions. Rather than admit that he has made a mistake, he finds ways to blame his failings on others. In the story the link to the person he blames is very irrational, but in his need, he overlooks this minor detail.

Taken together, these traits make my villain a dangerous person to deal with. Especially since few people would be able to spot those traits. On the other hand, though, they also make him vulnerable, since his is not omnipotent. He makes mistakes. He underestimates others.

I know I wouldn’t want to meet this guy in the real world.

Detective Story – First Draft Done!

I got the first draft of the script done today. It came in at 71 pages. That is still too short for a feature. When I do the next draft, I will see what I can do to enhance the story to make it a feature.

I had skipped a couple of scenes part way through because I wasn’t happy with my original ideas for them. I got back to them today and came up with a couple of scenes that I think are better than average. Both of them were a little longer than what I had been doing. That makes me think that when I do the second draft it will turn out longer. I started to feel I was getting into the writing more than I had been.

I plan to put the script aside for a while, maybe two weeks, and then do the second draft. I haven’t decided what I’ll work on next. I am sure that I will be working on the recut of My Most Difficult Case, but there are several stories and articles I would like to pick up on too.

Detective Story Week Ten

This was a very good week for my script. I finished 34 scenes and I have 6 or 7 left to do. At one point I thought I would have the script finished this week.

I’m debating if I should replace two scenes that aren’t working with a single scene. I skipped those two scenes for now. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with them. Maybe I can just drop them altogether. Another possibility is to expand then into a longer sequence with a little more meat.

The script is 61 pages now, and I think I will end up with about 70. That is too short for a feature, but I think that when I rewrite it will end up longer.

My scenes were a little longer this week. I think that as I get more into the rhythm of writing the words flow easier. I got over 6,500 words written this week.

I had some trouble with my blog this week. At one point, I thought I had lost everything. Something was wrong with my host’s server. They got that fixed and everything is good now.

Getting Feedback for your Movie Script

After I have finished the first draft of my detective script and polished it a bit, I want to get someone else to read it. I know that I have my blind spots when I go over my own work, and I suspect that there are not many writers who don’t. Hearing someone else’s opinion is a valuable reality check.

I also need some kind of audience response to my work. That tells me when I am connecting.

One time I paid to have a professional reader review my script “The Anger Trap”. It was more money than I wanted to pay, and I felt a little disappointed by the review. It was fairly positive, but it didn’t have a whole lot of advice on what I could do to improve my script.

Another issue with a hired reviewer is that they are looking at the script from the point of view of getting it accepted by a reader at a big studio. Since I am looking at making my own film, I am not sure that I need to convince a reader to recommend my script.

Another time I sent “The Anger Trap” to one of those script competitions. The reviewers didn’t like it, but their comments were even briefer. One of the comments made me realize that the reviewer had never read past the first 10 pages. I couldn’t use any of the comments to understand how to improve my script.

Mostly though, I have friends review my scripts. They tend to be very supportive, which is a double edged sword. While some of my friends had some valuable advice, I do think I need to have broader input. I do think my friends are more likely to react the way a real audience would.

What I am thinking about now is to find other people writing script and get them to do a script review swap. I would review their script, and they would review mine. Now all I have to do is find people willing to do that. I did review one script for someone and I found it helped me see problems with my own script.

"Line of Taxis" Article Posted

I wrote and posted an article on my movie Line of Taxis this week. In it I talk about what inspired me to make the movie and how I developed these ideas.

You can read it at either of these two sites:

http://cinemaroll.com/cinemarolling/making-a-movie-about-the-fear-of-losing-a-job/

http://www.bukisa.com/articles/284215_making-a-movie-about-the-fear-of-losing-a-job

Detective Story Week Nine

I was making good progress the script this week but other things came up later in the week that distracted me.

Most of the work I did was restructuring the script. I replaced one scene, but I think I can use the original scene somewhere else. I am about a third of the way through the script, based on the number of scenes. I had created a new scene last week, and this week I got I sketched out and written. Working out the background took a while.

I got almost 1,900 words written, but that makes this my least productive week so far. I’m finished 20 scenes and 23 pages. My scenes are still running short.

Priming the Audience

Recently I watch a TV program about some psychological research where they mentioned something they called “priming”.

The gist of the idea was that getting a person to think about something in advance of making a decision would affect that decision. Usually the person is unaware that the priming had anything to do with the experiment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_%28psychology%29

One experiment they mentioned got me thinking about how this might be important for filmmakers to know. In the experiment, they primed some people to think about their own mortality. They found that people primed to think about death were less willing to be charitable to others than people who were not primed.

At first, this sounded a lot like Subliminal Seduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bryan_Key, which is highly questionable. But when I looked at it closer, it looked legit.

In the script I am writing I have someone killed on page 2. I want the audience to care about people later in the story, which would be harder if they have shifted into a more self-centered frame of mind.

I would certainly want to check out this claim further before I start revising my script. Maybe it is just that I am not an experienced fiction writer (yet). Maybe more experienced writers are already aware of this, even if they don’t think about it consciously.

Detective Story Week Eight: Restructuring and Short Scenes

The week started out well. I started in on writing the script. Monday I got six scenes written. My current outline has 59 scenes planned. Tuesday I got three scenes done and Wednesday I got four more done.

Thursday I ran into a snag though. I realized that I needed to move one of the scenes I had written to earlier in the script, and add another scene in its place. The move wasn’t too hard, but I haven’t worked out what I want to happen in the new scene.

Right now, the new scene is there to put some space between two other scenes that can’t go back to back. It needs to be more than that. It is the next scene I was going to write, so that is stopping me from going ahead. I think I may skip over that scene and come back to it later.


The scenes are coming out shorter than I thought they would. Most books I’ve read on script writing suggest about 3 pages per scene. The average length of the first 14 scenes I wrote is 1.1 pages. If that average holds, the whole script will be about 66 pages, which is too short to be a feature. The average scene length in The Anger Trap was 1.4 pages.

I haven’t decided what to do about the scene length. One possibility is to add more flourishes to the character’s behaviour to make the scenes longer. It may be better to add some more twists to the main plot so that I have more scenes. I could also add more scenes by adding a subplot or two.

I plan to continue writing the script, then deal with the problems in the second draft.