A New Approach for my Blog

Monday last week, Stacy Parks of Film Specific put a post on her blog about blogging for filmmakers.

I made a comment about some of the challenges of writing a blog and she suggested that if your film has a particular target audience, that posts about their interests would be a good idea. As I commented back, I should have thought of that myself.

However, when I started to look at the projects I have underway, I realized that it isn’t always easy to follow that advice. In part, I find it difficult to articulate who my audience is, and what kind of posts would attract them.

I started to think over how I could approach this with some of my projects.

The Doorman’s Sacrifice

A man’s fascination in a series of books leads him to the dangerous cult like following that has grown up around them.

There many books, TV programs and movies that develop a cult following. Many of these people could be interested in a story like this. I haven’t been involved with this sort of thing myself, so I would need to learn more about it.

My Detective Story

A troubled police detective is targeted by a nasty villain.

This would be a problematic story to target. Not so much that there are not a lot of people who are interested in detective stories, but because there are so many other detective stories around for them to watch. I think I do have a unique perspective, but it is only revealed at the end. The initial premise isn’t distinguishable from a lot of other detective stories.

Bright Freedom

A young lawyer seeks justice for abused women, but then has to face a past she thought she left behind.

I see potential to explore aspects of the story in a series of blogs. Certainly I know that I need to know more about these issues if I want to create a good story. It would be too easy to go badly astray.

Then the Phone Rang

A politician threatened with blackmail struggles to save his relationship with his wife.

I don’t see anything that sets this story apart from many others of the same ilk. The story needs something more. I could develop the project to be more about how the private lives of politician affect their political careers.

The Crying Woman

A chance meeting between two people leads one of them to confide in the other.

I want this story to be about building trust and learning to listen. I am fascinated by the idea of putting one’s own interests aside and devote time to listen, and there by help, someone else. I’m sure that there are others who would find it interesting too.

I only have a preliminary outline for this story. I don’t think I am quite ready to write it. I did cannibalize parts of it for Then the Phone Rang, so I need to either scrap one of the two stories or come up with new elements of the story to replace the ones I used.

Transportation Planning Story

I spent a long career as a transportation planner, so if I “write what I know” that would be the subject. I wrote one short story, The Glencoe Project, about transportation planners. So far as I know, this is the only story about transportation planners ever written.

Most people I met over the years had strong opinions on transportation plans and planners. So I think that discussions of these issues and how I incorporate them into a story could attract a lot of interest.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

“The Doorman’s Sacrifice” Reviewed on Amazon Studios

This week I finished my changes to The Doorman’s Sacrifice and uploaded it to Amazon Studios. http://studios.amazon.com/scripts/show/2171

So far, I’ve had three people download the script and two people posted reviews.

One controversy about the site is that writers are worried about people stealing their ideas. When I did a quick check today, they had about 1,500 projects. Of those, over a fifth hadn’t had anyone download the script, another fifth had only one download. With just three downloads, I have had more than 60 per cent of the projects. If nobody reads your script, nobody is going to steal your ideas.

Another controversy about the site is that some people are getting friends and family to post five star ratings for their films and scripts. My friend and family gave me three stars, so no one can accuse me of stacking the reviews. ;-)

"The Doorman’s Sacrifice" Posted on Amazon Studios

I finished my changes to The Doorman’s Sacrifice and uploaded it to Amazon Studios: http://studios.amazon.com/scripts/show/2171

Please have a look. You need to sign up, but it is free. Don’t feel obligated to read it or comment on it, but I would appreciate your support if you did.

When I did a quick check through the script before I submitted it, it struck me that some readers might see the story as a political allegory. I have worked on this story since 2005 and never noticed that aspect of the script before. Maybe it resonates with recent political developments. I didn’t want to have a political thriller, so I tried to shift the script away from that interpretation.

As I read through of the script, I fixed some typos and removed references to events that I had cut out of the script earlier. I changed the last line of the script in line with my empty apple juice can motif. Today I decided that it went too far, so I switched it back.

Script Preparation for Amazon Studios

Over the last week, I prepared my script The Anger Trap to submit to Amazon Studios. I’m not quite done yet, but I’m close. It was much more work than I thought it would be.

To start, I converted the script from MS Word to Celtx. In MS Word, my script ran to 93 pages, but in Celtx it came out at 80 pages. Amazon Studios won’t accept a script under 85 pages, so I had to expand the script.

I had planned to do just a minor reformat, but in the end, I made quite a few changes.

• Changed the title back to The Doorman’s Sacrifice.


• Changed the names of nine of the seventeen characters and added three new characters.


• Restructured the first half of the script. One nice thing about Celtx is that it is very easy to move scenes around.


• Added three new scenes,


• Expanded a few scenes,


• Split one scene into two scenes and


• Split another scene into three scenes

The revised script came in at 86 pages.

When I checked out the submission requirements in more detail, it turned out that they want the script as a Rich Text Format file. Celtx doesn’t output an rtf file. I didn’t want to go back to MS Word again, because I thought the template I used didn’t reproduce the standard script format. I tried a couple of other script writing programs, Page2Stage and Scriptmaker. They both output rtf files, but I couldn’t import files from Celtx.

I downloaded a script from Amazon Studios and studied the format they used. That convinced me that MS Word was the way to go, but I wanted to develop my own template. I found several “Official” script format descriptions on the Internet, none of which agreed with any of the others. I picked one that gave me a 93-page script.

Steve Hanon told me I use too many “ing” verbs in my writing, so I replaced most of them. I noticed I use “anything” and “something” a lot. Maybe I should change some of those too. I reformatted some “hidden” shots, into the proper shot format. When I went through the script, I fixed a few other minor problems I spotted. The script is 94 pages now.

Amazon Studios wants a synopsis and a log line that I still need to prepare, but I think I should have the whole package ready to post in a few days. Of course, that is what I thought last Sunday.

Should I Submit “The Anger Trap” to Amazon Studios?

Amazon has started a movie studio called Amazon Studios http://studios.amazon.com/ . Their idea is to crowd source scripts. People post their scripts on-line and then other people try to rewrite them to win prizes. They expect that eventually they’ll get a script they can make into a blockbuster.

I read a good discussion of the issues with the plan at http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/on-the-amazon-film-thing . Many professional writers think it is a dumb idea that won’t work. Over all, it doesn’t sound too promising.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean it won’t be worth my while to try it out. For example, I don’t think I’ll go back to The Anger Trap script and I certainly don’t plan to make it. If I submit it, there is the possibility that I’ll win a prize. I may also generate some visits to my website, which could help me gain some followers.

I haven’t decided to go ahead with a submission yet because I do have some ideas for the script. I could turn it into a short novel/novelette. I also have notes for changes to the script.

If I do submit it, I’ll need to decide if I submit it as it is, or if I do some revisions before I do. At the least, I want to switch the title back to the original The Doorman’s Sacrifice. I want to move at least one scene, and I want to split up another. Some of the dialog would embarrass me now, so I want to fix that.

I don’t want to make too many changes, and I don’t want to cut out too much. The script runs 97 pages now, and the minimum to submit is 85 pages. That does give me the opportunity to cut out some material.

Earlier I created a Celtx file of the script, but I see now that I only have the first four scenes formatted. That is out of 69 scenes. It may take quite sometime to get it ready to submit. Maybe I’d be better off if I worked on other projects.