Why Strike III -- or Wow, That Actually Doesn't Suck

Nicely done, promo boys.



Oh hey, and this is some damn fine writing too. Marshall Herskovitz, one of Hollywood's most successful producers, explains why he's giving up producing for TV.

And Chris Kelly explains residuals AGAIN, over here. Read the comments, too.

Why Strike II

What's This All About Then, Oy?

For those of you not knee-deep in this -- John August explains it best here:

If you know absolutely nothing about the issues — or if you have to explain it to your grandmother, who’s upset that her favorite soap opera is off the air — here’s my very short summary of the situation.

• Writers for film and television are paid a small fee when the things they write (movies and television shows) are shown again on re-runs or DVD. These are called residuals, and they’re much like the royalties a novelist or a songwriter gets.

• Residuals are a huge part of how writers are able stay in the business. These quarterly checks pay the mortgage, particularly between jobs.

• There’s widespread belief that the rate paid to writers for DVD’s is too low. It was set 20 years ago, when DVD was a nascent and expensive technology. DVD’s are now cheap and hugely profitable, yet the rate remains fixed.

• Downloads will eventually supplant DVD’s. That’s why it’s crucial to set a fair rate for them now, and avoid the same trap of “let’s wait and see.”

• There are other creative and jurisdictional issues (such as animation and reality television) which are also on the table. According to the AMPTP, residuals are the major stumbling block, however.

There are certainly other issues in play -- separation of rights, etc. Craig Mazin has all that stuff covered very well, and he's certainly far more knowledgeable than I am. Just go to his site and scrawl backwards for a few pages, you'll get the whole shebang.

For a perspective from somebody who's been through a few strikes go (1) read (2) Ken Levine.

A few quick clarifications before we move on:

There is some grumbling in the press and business humans that this strike is all about artistic types "sticking it to the Man". No. Are writers "artistic types?" Sure. Every television showrunner is also the project manager overseeing a $30-50 million per year business. And if they're bad at it, they get fired. In under a month. Movie writers negotiate corporate hurdles and deadlines, not to mention shaping their product to budgets acceptable to the Mother Company commissioning the work. (Don't blame us if those crazy directors fuck it up and go over budget ...) The 'Man' will ever be there. Please assume we're smart enough to know that. It's show business, people, and anybody who's lasted longer than their first development deal knows and lives the difference.

There is some grumbling among industry types that we should have waited until SAG went out, or even at least taken a few weeks with the federal mediator. That may have made sense if a.) it wouldn't have meant even more stockpiling of material, to help blunt the threat of a strike and b.) the AMPTP was negotiating in good faith, which I don't believe it was, as I'll discuss below.

There is some grumbling among the screen-bloggers of various levels that the strike is being driven by the rich writers who can afford to take some time off work. That the middle class writer will be hosed. This is a bullshit complaint. I keep saying this, over and over again, and will restate it before the end of this post: We are all writing for the box set now. There will be no middle class of writers if we don't get a good deal on internet downloads, just as there'd be more working writers now if we'd gotten a better deal on DVD/home video back in the day. I have immense amounts of sympathy for young beginning writers who are seeing their first staff jobs evaporate, and for all the below the line people who will suffer when production stops. But we gotta do this now.

Why now? John August had a good short explanation of what it's about. The longer version, of why we're doing this now, is aptly summarized in John Bowman's opening remarks to the negotiations, which I'm going to quote in full here. From Craig's site:

"First of all, I want to congratulate our corporate partners at CBS, Time Warner, News Corp., Disney, Viacom, and NBC-Universal on what appears to be another great year for entertainment revenues and profits. Box office is up, and broadcasters are getting ad rate increases across the board, driven largely by digital content created by many of the people in this room. We are all of us very fortunate to be working in an industry that is thriving. It is thriving not only because of the content created by members of the DGA, SAG, AFTRA, and the WGA, but also because the CEOs of these companies are proving to be extremely adept at finding ways to monetize the Internet and other new technologies.

There is a real disconnect, however, between what the companies are reporting to Wall Street and what they’re saying to the talent community. Investors are hearing about the changing landscape in entertainment and exciting new markets to exploit. In contrast, the AMPTP communicates nothing but problems to the Writers Guild. Problems like-and this was mentioned by AMPTP at a recent press conference-ad skipping, even though NBC Universal had just announced a one billion dollar DVR deal. And while WGA member revenues have not kept pace with industry growth-we are a line item that is definitely under control-the companies balk at giving us a fair and reasonable share of the industry’s success.

I don’t think anyone in this room is arguing about the right of writers, actors, and directors to residuals. As collective authors of a work, we are entitled to a portion of the revenue generated by that work. But you have publicly stated that you no longer want to pay us residuals on shows that are not in profit. Here’s why that is untenable:

Writers are a cost of doing business. They have no say in production, marketing, on advertising and publicity, directors, casting, the decision to spend tens of millions of dollars advertising, etc. They can’t be expected to be paid from profits when they have no say in the costs which affect those profits. Profits are under the control of CEOs and their executive staffs.

Intellectual property has rights, just as physical property does. Management has no problem paying the person who made the DVD box before a film turns a profit; they shouldn’t have any problem paying the artists who created the intellectual experience that came in that box either. To claim that intellectual property has lesser rights than physical property is a dangerous argument for anyone in our business to make. You are making the same argument to us that digital pirates make to you.

According to Hollywood accounting, The Simpsons is not in profits. How can we trust that kind of bookkeeping? What other business but ours has the accounting term, “monkey points?”

Residuals from shows not in “profit help” support a writing middle class, and keep writers in the business until they finally create that one great thing. Do away with residuals, and you do away with late-blooming careers like Marc Cherry and David Chase - they couldn’t afford to stay in the business. Your proposal transfers money from developing, promising writers, actors, and directors who need them the most to established pros who need them the least. It’s bad for the business.

Ultimately, your complaint is not about unprofitable shows, it’s about the portfolio nature of the entertainment business. Risk is spread out among many shows, some of which are unprofitable. This economic fact will never be changed, even if writers work for free, as you propose they do on the Internet.

Now let’s turn to your proposal that we do a three year study before bargaining about the Internet. Your reasoning is exactly the same as it was in 1985. Models haven’t emerged, the environment is uncertain, we’ll take care of you later. Well, we know what happened then. Home video and DVD sales soared, and nobody got taken care of later. But this isn’t 1985, when TV writers didn’t envision that their shows would someday end up on DVDs, and they’d get stuck with a .3% return. This time, TV writers can see how important the Internet is - our shows are already there. And, unfortunately for your argument, positive economic events are daily giving the lie to your doomsday scenario.

But if you insist on a study - I used to do studies for a living - I’ll give you one now. The Internet is a distribution channel with no major fixed costs, no media costs, no shipping or handling costs, and margins that are the envy of even the cigarette industry. Though you lose your monopoly on distribution, you have a strategic advantage that nobody else has: strong relations to the talent community. Above all else, nurture this relationship. If you don’t-if, for instance, you insist that members of that community not get paid for three years, or get paid, at most, a .3% residual rate, what possible incentive would they have to work for you? What incentive do they have to help you fight video piracy, when they’re only getting .3%? If you don’t pay them someone else will-Yahoo, Youtube, who knows? It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen, and very quickly indeed, if you bargain so unreasonably that you force talent to go elsewhere for a fair deal. Of course this study is flawed, but then all studies are - you can make them come out any way you want to.

I can imagine an NBC-Universal Wall Street press conference, 18 months from now. Revenues are down, profits are down, due to a work stoppage which you, the AMPTP, collectively, forced. Shareholders are restive. They ask the company this: “Your industry paid 84 million to fire Tom Freston, 300 million to invest in “Last FM.” Yet at a time when it was absolutely crucial that we establish a presence on the Internet, you chose to alienate content providers, the best strategic advantage you had. And you made this catastrophic decision over how much money?"

Today you’ll receive our proposals. They are designed to help writers keep up with the overall growth of revenues in our business. Our operating principle is simple: if you get paid for the reuse of our material, we get paid. So let’s now back away from the edge, get real, and get to work. Studies and profit-based residuals are not serious proposals. They have no legitimate basis in the economics of this industry. They are non-starters for this committee and membership. Our response to such proposals will be a polite “no thank you.” But there are serious issues to discuss, issues that come directly out of our real relationship. Those issues are:

How we will share new media income

How we will produce material together for new media

How we will deal with the non-union shell companies that you’ve created to avoid paying the talent, especially on reality and animation

How talent will get a fair share of home video money

How we will work together on issues like piracy

How we will work together to make sure that new technologies are a boon for all of us

These are real issues. Writers and the talent community deserve to keep up and we have not been. All of our proposals will be focused on that central fact. Writers have to keep up with the industry growth that we help create. It is simple and fair. We look forward to your response, and thank you."

That is one smart sonvabitch. Now, to my monkey ramblings ...

We Set A Bit of Context:

One of my favorite jokes, just a lovely piece of writing, is Chris Rock's bit about the time one of Siegfried and Roy's tigers mauled Roy.

"Everybody's mad at the tiger. 'That tiger went crazy!' That tiger didn't go crazy ... that tiger went tiger."

This is how I feel about corporations in general, extended to the Studios in particular. There are those who rail at the AMPTP for being profit-maximizing heartless, soul-less bastards as if that were a bad thing. It's not.

A corporation's job is to make money, and if necessary fuck you in the process. Just like a tiger's job is to eat, and if necessary kill you in the process. I'm okay with that. I like capitalism. A lot. I like tigers. A lot. That doesn't mean I trust corporations not to try to screw me and everyone next to me when negotiating. Nor would I trust a tiger not to attack me in the wild. Nor am I personally offended when they try.

All this to say that the Studios have not been negotiating in good faith, nor probably did they ever intend to. Why? They went tiger.

How Did We Get Here?

The negotiations started like this:

Writers: "We want residuals in internet downloads, let's start at a 2.5% for a negotiating point, an increase in our DVD residuals from .3% to a nominally less pathetic .6%, and a bunch of other bullshit that's on the table for negotiating purposes."

Studios: "How about ZERO PERCENT, not only of the new stuff but we also redefine existing residuals so that you won't get any of those, either? Oh yeah, and here are some other rollbacks, all financially punitive and some actually morally objectionable!"

Tiger.

Right before the strike, when the Studios realized that the Guild was actually serious this time and was about to announce the results of a Strike Vote, they took the residual revamps off the table. (Pardon me for referencing Artful Writer all the time, but he is indeed the best, most thorough commentator on the subject on the Web right now.)

This is one of the points where I respectfully disagree with Craig. Some people took this as an offer to negotiate. I, like many others, saw it as "Fine, we won't rape and murder you. We agree only to murder you. Now, it's your turn to give up a deal point."

Yeah. Let me get right on that.

Tiger.

(Sidebar: Craig is generally a conservative, by the way, and this reminds me of my maxim on American politics: "Liberals have an irrational childlike faith in the government. Conservatives have an irrational childlike faith in corporations. Libertarians have an irrational childlike hatred of both.")

Then, at the last minute, after the Guild yanked a bunch of its proposals off the table, the AMPTP made it plain that they weren't going to budge at all on the one issue driving the entire strike, the internet download issue. That they would, indeed, go tiger over it.

The Studios Cannot Be Completely Off-Base Here, Can They?

The Studios' position on internet streaming is patently ridiculous. It is not "promotional" to show an entire episode, with commercials. Trailers are promotional. Clips are promotional. An entire episode, and again son, pay attention heah, with commercials --

-- with commercials --

-- WITH. COMMERCIALS. --

-- is a frikkin' rerun.



The Studios' position on "studying" the new media is equally as ridiculous, if only a wee less obviously so. They would like to take a few years, figure out how they're going to monetize the internet download system, and then come to a deal. As John Bowman reminded us in his opening remarks, that's exactly how we got hosed on DVD's. And the bitch of it is, we cannot let a bad deal on internet downloads become institutionalized as "facts on the ground", because once it is it is almost impossible to change. Even Craig -- not to demonize him -- but even a union stalwart like Craig considers the DVD increase a nonstarter because we've eaten the current rate for so long.

In my conversations about increasing DVD residuals and also even doing Direct to DVD TV series, I've had perfectly rational friends of mine look me right in the eye and say "Well, sure, the DVD business was booming for a while, but now DVD sales are flat" as an explanation to why asking for an increase now is unreasonable.

So let me understand this. Back when the income flow was expanding beyond everyone's wildest dreams and money was raining out of the sky (even though it took a while for those numbers to be reported), maybe then we would have been justified in asking for an increase. But now that DVD's are nothing more than a relatively steady income flow, growing at a mere 4% a year, generating a measly $16.4 billion (with a b) a year, we're insane to try to strangle this dying media format in its crib by asking for an extra .3%.

The appropriate response rhymes with "Snow me."

But this is the way it is, has been for a decade, and perfectly reasonable people shrug and want to move on. Because, hey, facts on the ground. Let me promise you: if we don't get a good rate on the next delivery industry, the same types of people will be shrugging twenty years from now at our poor share in the billions in downloadable content and insisting that we can trust the Studios on this new quantum brain transmission system. Let 'em study it for a few years ...

What's more, the whole "study the situation" tomfoolery doesn't resemble anything I've seen work in the free market. They have stated that they need they need the flexibility of not paying residuals in order to experiment with digital models. Why are they "experimenting"? Well, in theory, to find the digital model that is the most efficient and most profitable. Aces. A system that will work flawlessly even though they've developed it without a chunk of its operating costs in place.

Remember the EEBC? The Everyday Extrapolated Bullshit Comparison? That is, if an exotic situation properly translated into the same context in your everyday life seems like bullshit, it is bullshit. Now, if your brother said he was going to open a bar and see how it went without paying for any alcohol or hiring bartenders or figuring out the cost of a liquor license, and then if that succeeded he'd add the booze and personnel and get the paperwork nailed down, you'd rightly think he was an idiot. Studios say the same thing annnnnd ...

Now, are billion-dollar multi-national corporations idiots? Generally, no. The alternative is ...

... Tiger. "Go ahead, human pal, look over there for food. We're just chilling over here in the petting zoo. No, no, nothing going on. We promise if there's any meat to be found, we'll share it. Honest."

Or to reference our previous metaphor: the cake is a lie.


In Which I Agree With the AMPTP

Now, there is one place in which my geekery allows me to fall into step with the AMPTP's general attitude toward electronic sell-through. They stated:

…no further movement is possible to close the gap between us so long as your DVD proposal remains on the table. In referring to DVDs, we include not only traditional DVDs, but also electronic sell-through — i.e., permanent downloads. As you know, we believe that electronic sell-through is synonymous with DVD.

First off, notice the conspicuous absence of streaming, or broadcast on the web, in there. The one place they are making advertising dollars, they don't want to go defining that, quite yet ...

Anyways, some people freaked. After all, "DVD" is an acronym with a literal meaning. It means discs. Physical production of said discs. Overhead. Internet distribution has an entirely different economy --

-- that we should ignore. Because, frankly, tying residual deals into the specific economies of distributive technologies is demonstrably dumb. It's what got us into the mess with DVD's, as a matter of fact. The actual economics of the original specific home video delivery technology -- VHS originally -- were hazy, so we took a flier on the supposed profit margin. As technology advanced, overhead dropped, profits grew, we got hosed.

I, nothing more than an avid hobbyist, can reach into my internet community of smart folk and industry insiders and pull out a half-dozen nascent delivery systems, any one of which might not fall under "home video" technically, or "broadcast", or "internet download" as they are precisely defined. What about kiosk-sold video tied to an updating branded hardware platform? Is something an "internet download" even if it's tied to a physical download location using wifi? What about a 4 Gig flash drive holding 13 episodes sold in stores? What if that 4 gig flash drive can be traded for other flash drives or even content switched on a subscription model? How about a "six episode" subscription model based around streaming, or if Comcast combines its cable modem with its pvr and then goes to an a la carte pay per episode fee, but the episodes and movies are dumped directly onto your pvr hard drive ....

A chunk of those aren't financially feasible, by the way, nor even work quite the way they're described, but you get my point. We're all writing for the box set now. Substitute "unimaginable near-future delivery tech" for "box set", and the statement is universalized. Although I know nothing about the inner workings of the studios, I can certainly see why, knowing what they know about tech, they went for the controversial definition:

1.) Writers have a shitty deal on DVD's, the current home video tech.
2.) Permanent downloads would be the new home video tech.
3.) If we define old home video tech = new home video tech, then
4.) Old Shitty deal = new shitty deal!

Bonus round:

5.) In the future, state every new tech = old tech, therefore
6.) Every new deal = old shitty deal! Forever!

If I were a stockholder in one of those companies, I'd actually appreciate that.

I say -- and this ain't gonna happen, but what the hell, everybody else is Monday-morning QB on this one -- I say we accept that definition. Go platform free as long as we stay profit free -- that is, we do not tie residuals to profit, which is a dangerous precedent undermining our rights of authorship. Sure, we'll come way, way down from our original 2.5%. What's the halfway point between 2.5 and .3 ... 1.4% let's say we open at 1.2%. We cut our demand more than in half, for chrissake. Come on, that's more than reasonable. It's just that, since we're platform free, and you're the ones who argued DVD's are the same as sell-through, you also have to bring DVD's up to that number. No? Come one, how about you come up not even halfway to that point on DVD's, say %.5 or .6%? and we'll even notch new tech down to a nice round 1%?

Without a DVD bump of at least that much, by the way, I wouldn't make a deal. No. This puts me in the minority, but I'm a geek and in the same breath I can point out the multiple funky techs coming down the pike, I can also remind you that new technology is adopted slower than you think. 2006 was the first year DVD players outnumbered VCR's in America. 2006. And DVD players were really just a technological variant of the same viewing habits put in place in the 80's by VCR's. In the same way, although the iPod revolution seems shocking, it's conceptually not a big jump from Walkmen and mix tapes, just with different mediums. It was the technological culmination of entertainment habits evolving over twenty years, not some paradigm shift.

A paradigm shift, though, is what it will take to get people to completely merge their internet presence and their TV viewing. I've talked about this before, but for the majority of houses in America the TV is over here, and the computer is over there. The concept blurs for younger generations, but it's not gone. Add to that the less than stellar broadband penetration in the US, factoring in that the fat pipes necessary for a broadcast-like experience for many Americans just isn't there ... I'll leave out some black swan event like XBOX or Comcast waking up and realizing they could run entertainment, and make the fairly safe guess that it'll be ten to twenty years before fully digital downloadable material completely, culturally replaces DVD. I lean toward twenty, but let's say technology runs rampant, the US government get serious about building infrastructure (heh heh heeee), oh, I'll spot you tennish. Say twelve.

You want to eat that shitty .3% DVD deal for the next twelve years that DVD's still the fat pipe? For the medium that will increasingly be the one paying your bills? Good for you.

What Will Probably Happen?

We do indeed settle for that .3% and get a not-too-horrible deal on internet downloads. After at least four months of lost lives, blown mortgages, bankruptcies, and network television probably losing another 10% of its viewership. But there's a reason that studio entertainment system is rotting away, and decisions like this -- forcing a strike out of short-sighted greed -- are symptomatic of larger problems. If and when things do indeed get really desperate for these guys, rather than just "not as insanely profitable as expected, but still more so than last year", then you'll really see the blood and marrow on the streets.

That's why some of us talk about new distribution channels, open source film-making, new financing models ... but for those who just write, whose gift, craft and years of hard work allow them to tell stories to the audience, take viewers away for that little sliver of time ... they deserve fair share of the fruits of their authorship. Residuals pay their bills, their mortgages, and allow them to continue writing, continue striving to create the successes which in turn create more jobs for other writers, below-the-line workers and even suited humans.

Moral issues aside -- fair residuals mean more working writers, more working writers mean more product, more product means more physical production jobs, media sales, corporate profits and shareholder value. That's what we're striking for.

Why Strike?

Because the cake is a lie.

The cake is a lie.

I am ridiculously sad that this is actually the perfect explanation of the situation, yet only nine of you will get it.

More tomorrow.

Edit:



Jonathan Coulton, of course, wrote the damn thing. Lord I love his stuff.

LEVERAGE: "Weekend" and Production Day 7

Apologies for the delay. I came right back from the shoot and right into trying to solve a clusterfuck on my movie I'm going to direct AND closing down all other miscellaneous business before a possible strike. Which is now an actual strike. So there you go.

Weekend: We're shooting two six-day weeks. So the seventh day is the "weekend." Ordinarily this day involves sleeping in as much as possible. As I didn't want to pay $4.00 per sock to have my laundry done at the hotel, I instead load up my carry-on, Google "laundry" and set off down State St. in Chicago like a homeless person.

Later, we get together at Tavern on Rush and screen the new movie Saul Rubinek has directed -- it's pretty damn great, by the way, and I'll be discussing it more later. The Tavern takes damn fine care of us, and I cannot recommend it enough. I'm still exhausted at this point but there's food, and it's the first time since Gina hit that the cast has been able to get together and get to know each other without being spread all over the set. So we hang about for a few hours. I then beg off and go crash, leaving when the tequila hits the table. Or about an hour thereafter. It was very good tequila.


Day 7 Roll-in -- 5:45 am

Ah, the clock is reset -- thank you, "weekend", and we're back on the early calls. We're at the Hilton Hotel for a the whole day, doing four different scenes. The first where Saul Rubinek recruits our bleary-eyed drunken protagonist, Tim Hutton, see below --



-- shot on the dreaded circular track. There are also three flashback scenes -- Beth doing a bad pickup in a bar, Tim and Gina's "meet-cute" eight years ago involving guns, and then Aldis' flashback to the time he pretended to be the Rolling Stones -- the whole band -- and grifted the penthouse in a luxury hotel. Among other things. Once again, creative use of the entire hotel saves is the dreaded company move.

Tim and Saul are friends, which allows a certain level of trust in the scene. "Trust" meaning that they can feel free to fuck with each other enough to keep things interesting. Dean also has an interesting tool in his directing toolbox. Every now and then he'll ask an actor to give him a take where they play the subtext as text, and really try to surprise the other person in the scene. It is interesting that as writers we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to bury the emotional beats -- nobody in real life talks their subtext, etc. etc. --- but actors, when given full range to just say what the characters mean, often make that simple declaration far more interesting. It's like they can truly tee off on the moment. And since you should always shoot in singles (coverage is your friend, people) you can mix and match reactions.

At one point, Saul is nice enough to turn to me and say "Do you mind if I change this line?" Jesus. I know all writers are different, but as long as the actors land in the same zip code as the line, I'm perfectly happy if it brings out a genuine performance. This is a tricky transition for some writers. You spend hours parsing rhythms just so, and sometimes you really need the scene "as is" in order for it to get all the jobs done you need covered in that it of screen real estate. However, to be blunt, if your priority is your precious words, then become a novelist. The interpretive nature of scripted performance is a blessing and a curse. For me at least, an actor finding the one thing I never would have come up with in a million years greatly. outweighs the occasional "Never quite got that the way it is in my head" factor.

This is part of accepting that the script is not the movie. Hell, even the shot footage is not the movie. Only the final edited version is the movie. At some point during the week Saul tells me something Tom Hanks said. This is from memory, but the gist is: "You have to make a good movie three times. You need to write a good script. Then you need to shoot good performances. Then you need a good edit. You need all three. If any one of those three things fails, then the movie's not good."

Everything goes according to plan, including the day player getting his finger snapped, the squibs for the shootout, and the "party girls" dressed like Princess Leia. Not the most technically difficult day of shooting, but it did lead to the following exchange on the phone.

Tyrone: Princess Leia outfits? Sure, had to have a bunch of white girls --
John: Yes. Actually, we had one black girl who was very funny --
Tyrone: WHAT?
John: ... we, um, had a black Princess Leia.
Tyrone: Did you get a picture?
John: You know, one of the things they teach you at showrunner school is "Don't take pictures of the day players."
Tyrone: A gorgeous black woman in the Princess Leia outfit is the holy grail for black geeks.
John: Yes, that's the entire point of my television career. Introducing obscure fetishes to minority groups so that they, too, can become as emotionally stunted as the white geek population. Wait until my three episode arc on Hispanic furries.

Roll-in -- 11:00 pm

On Day 8, I confront my greatest fear and Chris Kane kicks four guys' asses.

LEVERAGE: Production Day 6

Yeah, we're a little behind posting. A bunch of 15 hour days in a row'll do that to you. We'll catch up.

Rollout -- 11:00 am


On today's schedule, the Frank Gehry designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park is the background for a couple menacing phone calls and escapes.

There are two problems -- well more than two, but two that haunt you continually rather than just jumping out and kneecapping you at random -- with shooting outdoors. Weather and daylight. If you're shooting outside and it's raining, you are SOL, kiddos. The soul-deadening same-ness of the Los Angeles climate is one of the reasons the film and television industry wound up based there. Constant light and rain-free weeks at a time of 76 degrees make a shooting schedule happy.

The weather on this pilot is not only excellent but confounding. Chicago continues to toss freakishly warm weather at us on our outside days.

The insatiable, unstoppable bitch goddess daylight, on the other hand, is our issue today. As mentioned, productions must give X number of hours off each night for turnaround, before you can have the crew and actors back on the set. Up to this point, going a bit late each night is easily compensated by just pushing call an hour or so every day. The dominos, however, have brought us to a twelve noon call

But here, the cumulative effect is brutal. We're shooting outside, so we need as many hours of daylight as possible. However, pushing the call on the previous days have forced us to a twelve noon start. Ordinarily we'd have scheduled outside shooting early in the week to avoid this issue, but scheduling issues forced us into this arrangement. As a result the day starts at a full run. Tick tick tick, every delay, every time a tourist waves in the back of a shot, every time a camera battery goes down, every fire engine siren and hovering helicopter, precious daylight burns that just ain't coming back. Doesn't matter what your budget is, how much money you have to spend -- you can't buy daylight at an exterior location.

This is one of the little truisms I toss at younger TV writers who are not yet tired f my pedantic nature: "There's no reason to panic until you're burning daylight." Then, frikkin' PANIC.

What's particularly nasty in this location are the buildings in the background. You can light the hell out of people standing outside as evening hits, and after color correction and some futzing the scene will read as bright as noon. Problem is, after a certain hour the lights come on in the buildings in the background. See?


Once those are on, it's impossible to pull the trick. As bright as you make your scene, you can't hide those lights. Not to mention, none of the footage you shot earlier in the day will match. Often, even if you angle the shot low enough to dodge buildings, you still need to deal with the city's streetlights.

And Chicago's streetlights come on before sunset.

By the time magic hour creeps in, we are well and truly toast. We get almost everything, with the last missing piece easily transferred to another location. Skin of our teeth. Of course, moving that piece to another location creates headaches for the 1st AD as he makes the schedule. But that's his thrill.

Once dark hits, we break for lunch. (first meal's always called lunch, no matter the time) The company moves to a local Irish bar -- Chief O'Neill's Pub.

By the way, if I lived anywhere within a hundred miles of Chief O'Neill's pub, I would drink there every night. Just saying. The DP Dave Connell and I damn near wound up trying to buy the place.

Nearby is a theater where the team recruits its last member. Most of the actors are released for the night, leaving only Chris Kane to do his flashback sequence. The Irish bar doubles for a flashback moment, standing in for a seedy underground bar in Belgrade.


Add a couple Eurotrash ponytails and some nine mils, the atmosphere is complete. After a nice bit of cool-guy thrashing, the place is riged for a lighting effect. Standing outside in what is now a steady downpour, we watch as the lighting department wires the windows to create the illusion of interior gunfire. This is trickier than it sounds. How fast is gunfire? Too slow, it looks like nothing is happening. The last thing you want is desultory violence. Too fast and it's unbelieveable.

After we wrap, the owner gives us a pint. That'll hep me get to sleep, because I'm bloody wired and it is --


Roll-in -- 2:00 am

Farm Fetish Follow-up

In a sign that modern discourse has gone somewhat mad, famous economist Paul Krugman has linked to my old Farm Fetish post. On his New York Times blog.

In this post I simply point out the ridiculousness of certain politicians, and most of the media, constantly referring to rural small-town Americans as "REAL" Americans (in the cultural sense), considering that according to the US Census and Department of Labor, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore, and roughly 2 million Americans farm for a living. I do this by mentioning that there are more World of Warcraft players in the US than professional Farmers.

Of course, some people have missed the point completely.

There are the comments that farmers produce, while WoW players do not. That farm living has more intrinsic value. That I'm stating urban voters and computer geeks are more "real" Americans, that city dwellers are "out of touch" (with what, for chrissake?)...

Blah blah frikkin' blah. Separated from the context of a discussion of culture, the statistic is indeed meaningless. The point I was making is that in the US many people, including the dominant political commentators and pundits, use as the defining cultural identity for America a cultural identity held by less than 1 in every five citizens. That this is, when given a moment's thought, ridiculous. Any definition of culture which automatically excludes roughly 240 million out of the nation's 300 million citizens is, one would think, inherently ridiculous.

I was using the most opposite identity group I could think of -- computer gamers -- to make my point. Of ridiculousness.

Also -- orc joke. I believe that is the first orc joke ever linked in the New York Times, and I am taking my win and going home.

LEVERAGE: Production Days 4 & 5

Quick note -- all filming for Days 4 & 5 was done in a private residence. Out of respect for the owner's wishes, I won't be posting photos from those days.

DAY 4

Rollout -- 10:00 am

The more astute of you will notice the roll-out time is slowly creeping forward. This is because of turnaround. All the unions and the actors' contracts have a required time they must be allowed between the time they leave a set and they time they return and are officially at work the next day, traditionally 12-ish hours. Anyway, as we creep longer and longer -- as almost every shoot does -- you need to keep pushing the crew call back farther and farther, starting later and later in order to maintain that mandated downtime. Assuming you haven't completely shagged the pooch, you should be okay for when your "weekend" (on a pilot that's one day) comes around and you reset the clock. As we started on a Wednesday, our "weekend" is Tuesday.

You can ask the crew and actors to ignore their mandated downtime and come in earlier, or force the call. This gets you into some nasty financial penalties, however. Also ... crankiness from exhaustion from all involved, actors and crew. Many times actors will let you force the call and not make a big deal out of it because, hey, we all want the shoot to succeed. But it's tricky.

The location we've found is uniquely useful, thanks primarily to the cunning of our 1st AD and our Production Designer. Our 1st actually found this place, a huge condo apartment, on some rental website. Craigslist or Lofts.com or something. A good trick for the toolbox.

The condo is hedge-fund magnificent and has multiple branching corridors and rooms The main room will serve as the heist gang's homebase. Our Production Designer, Lauren, has turned one spare bedroom into the interior of the white trash home we blew up a few days ago. Another bedroom becomes Tim Hutton's hotel room. The main bedroom becomes a suburban living room with the addition of some overstuffed couches.

Four "locations" in one physical location. I need to give someone a big wet kiss on the mouth.

My joy stems from the fact that the intrepid Bob and Lauren have spared us the monstrous time-suck that is the company move. As noted before, there is an obscene amount of heavy machinery and electrical equipment necessary to make a film. Unpacking and setting up all that equipment is naturally-time consuming. So is packing it up when you're finished with a location. This is manageable at the beginning and end of the work day, but when you change locations in the middle of a work day, the company move knocks a good hour or two out of your shooting schedule. You're burning daylight, losing hours which may force you to go longer and have to force a call, breaking momentum -- generally awful. So four script locations in a single place for two whole days of shooting, is nothing short of golden.

We bang out a flashback sequence in the white trash house. Then we get four of our fve principals in the living room for the "team-up" sequence. As is par for the course, a hellaciously complicated four-hander. There's a reason they stuck the ducklings in chairs while they only let Hugh Laurie wander around the set in that House diagnosis room ... The scene's blocked, then the actors are sent to their trailers to study the dictates of the homo-Jewish conspiracy running Hollywood (they are QUIZZED DAILY, people!) while the DP sets up lights and prepares the first camera shot. Like any scene, there will be multiple camera shots for coverage. Figuring out the most efficient way to cover a scene and still get some interesting camera moves, is one of the challenges of directing.

End of day we shoot Tim waking up hungover in the hotel room, getting yelled at by Saul Rubinek. Tim mentions the authenticity of the tone of the scene. Particularly the bit about waking up and hearing the tinkle of mini-bar bottles hitting each other in the sheets of the bed. Lovely -- another unpleasant habit from my stand-up days moves from "the "shameful memory" to "useful writing tool" column!

End of day, Chris and I have a pint at Dublin's. 12 midnight on a school night, the place is packed and they're cooking sandwiches and fries for people to help them suck up the booze. Good Lord I love this town.

Roll-in -- 12:00 am

DAY 5

Roll-out -- 11:00 am

Ah, finally we get our fifth principal -- who I also cannot name quite yet. Christ this is annoying. Anyway, Gina XXXX shows up and for the first time the show cast, what will be the team from this day forward, is complete. This will be the first day we get the whole cast chemistry. The first shot's a group scene, too, so this is the real test.

Annnnd ... phew. Gina's a hell of an actress, and the timing clicks in. I'm genuinely happy here, and not just because they're saying the lines. Hell, I'm happy if actors land somewhere in the same zipcode as the lines, as long as they're interesting. No, it's just that every writer works a different way. I always hear my dialogue. More then that, I can hear a metronome in every scene, tick-tick-ticking away through the dialogue and action. Directors I've worked with have occasionally been annoyed to see me "watching" the camera feed with my eyes closed, tapping my foot softly.

Why aren't I worried about the visuals? It's Dean Devlin directing for chrissake. The man's movies have made roughly the GNP of the Pacific Rim. He knows how to shoot the hell out of a TV show. In that regard, I'm an occasionally cunning appendix, nothing more.

As I've said, I wish I had the well-honed toolbox other writers carry. I can only write one way, and that's by hearing the scene in my head. It's visceral. So when I hear the actors fall into the rhythm, that's the money for me. That's the whole show.

When we shoot the last scene of the day, it's the last scene you'll see in the pilot. Tim does a speech locking in how the team will work. What the show will be about. It is a speech, too, one of the big bastards I foist on actors. It's just the rehearsal, but as Tim launches in, I can hear it. Tick, tick, building -- when he tosses off the last line with a little head tilt, I actually start hopping up and down silently in the back of the crowded room. The crew turns and laughs as I hop out of the room, punching the air. I could hear it, there, in the speech, the running bass-line for every episode. Hear it for the first time from someone else. My reaction must not be unlike a composer hearing a master pianist play through a solo for the first time ever.

They don't pay me to do this. I'd do this for free. They pay me not to punch executives in the neck.

But after 18 or so years in the entertainment business, that little junkie thrill is what keeps you going.

Roll-in -- 1:30 am

LEVERAGE: Production Day 3

Rollout -- 9:00 am

I have got to say, Chicago is one town not afraid to look the American Cardiologist Association in the eye and spit. At the Original Pancake House today, my western omelette was the size of a hubcap.

"I think," said Chris Downey, sawing through a palm-width slice of bacon, "that's actually a nine egg omelette." This was after three days where every craft service, order-in and restaraunt meal was beef or pork based. In Chicago, pasta is a vegetable.

First stop today, a scene in a store's personnnel office, overlooking the shop floor. The only problem -- the store in question doesn't actually have an office. Solution? Just build one in the corner:


This was a fairly simple scene between two men. A master, a couple overs, grab some singles and we're out. No explosions, sadly.

On to an abandoned floor in an office building, where one of our characters is doing surveillance. We're at the Chicago Federal Building, on an abandoned floor. Now, here's a question -- why does the Federal Building have an abandoned floor filled with old computer monitors?


My conspiracy junkie nerves are a-tingle.

This bit of business is cool. Tim Hutton is standing at the window, looking out at his target. We would like to shoot him from the outside, but inconveniently we are ten stories up. What the clever production humans do is build a false front of three windows that exactly match the exterior windows, but then place that false front just inside the real windows, with room for a camera in the gap. This way, when we shoot looking inside, we get a view of the room, properly lit. But when we remove the false windows and shoot from inside looking out through the real windows, all the perspectives still work and we don't have to change too much of the lighting.

However, when shooting looking in from that gap, we've dropped lights in to dramatically pick up Tim's face as he steps forward. How do we dupe that light -- meant to be read as street lights -- from the outside when we shoot looking out? With a conveniently placed Condor.
That crane is ten stories up, with some poor bastard sitting in the booth at the end of what appears to be a terrifyingly overbalanced crane arm. The wind kicks the hell out of him, too.

This scene is one side of a four-way conversation between characters in three different locations (those of you familiar with my previous work know I have a tendency toward such foolishness). Tim's running through his side of the five-page conversation, with an actor just offstage reading the rest of the parts. The pleasure here is shooting digitally with an actor who likes to take advantage of it. Tim knows there's no way to blow another actor's cue -- he's alone. So he'll be performing his lines, and suddenly stop and then rapid-fire deliver five great variant readings, like a musician running through a phrase of music again and again but transposing key and rhythm on the fly.

There was a moment, too, when I came into Video Village ... all right. for this shot, we're loose, with Tim prowling around a twenty square foot area, the camera in one position but picking him up dirty as he crosses in and out of the various bits of light and dark, all agasint a very intricate background wall pattern. Getting good shots in this process is damn near random, but it gives you a very cool energy. So as we're setting up, I saw him idly watching the display, while the camera crew pulled focus on his stand-in. On the next take, in the middle of five pages of dialogue, he delivered a line as he stepped forward -- then stopped without warning. He took two steps back to reset just that line among dozens, and said it again on the move. But this time, he shifted about eight inches to the right and on the step-in landed not just perfectly into a glorious foreground light, but with slightly better framing of the intricate background for the complete shot composition.

He'd been watching his stand-in to memorize the light layout and composition from camera view, and then used it to map out his moves within inches to give us the best shots. All while slamming the performance home.

That is, to be blunt, pretty goddam sick. That's how the grown-ups do it, kids. Next time you rush off the set as soon as the director calls "cut" so you can text your agent on your Razor, keep that in mind.

We're wrapped in that location. Tomorrow our last performer -- who just arrived hours ago -- will get fitted for wardrobe, while we shoot a nice simple four-hander in a penthouse apartment. At least this time they're all in one room. Which may or may not be easier.

Roll-in -- 11:30 pm

LEVERAGE: Production Days 1&2

DAY 1

Rollout -- 6:00 am

You know, the whole point of my stand-up career was to avoid getting a day job. Yet here I am in scenic Chicago strolling down Michigan Ave at 5:45 goddam am to catch a ride on the van picking up Dean Devlin at his hotel.

Here's the short of it. Last spring Chris Downey and I wrote a pilot for Dean Devlin's company and TNT called LEVERAGE. In it, a crew of high-tech thieves decide to rip off bad guys in entertaining and surpising ways. TNT saw fit to order us to pilot this fall. Even more insanely, Dean has seen fit to make this his directing debut. After a somewhat truncated pre-production prep, we're now shooting the pilot episode (for you virgins, the first, example episode meant to sell the show) in Chicago. Hell of a city, by the way.

Somewhere along the way we hired -- and these actors have all been announced publicly -- Tim Hutton, Chris Kane, Aldis Hodge and Beth Xxxxxx (NOTE: she'll be making a formal announcement, so I've dropped the name for now until it's cleared.) They are all very charming and ridiculously talented. Nothing like having Tim Hutton read my words to help me realize I should have written a much better script.

On Day 1, we're shooting a scene in an abandoned warehouse, where our teams arrived to hash out the details of a crime. Assembled up in another section of the same warehouse is the interior of a 40th story office building. This is not uncommon. The most time-consuming part of shooting is moving the company, and setting up lights in order to film. By constructing sets near one another, you save time. Sometimes you can even break off a spare camera and crew -- called the "second unit" -- to shoot some footage even while the first unit is working.

So the idea is we shoot the four-hander, then move over to the high-wire break-in through the window of the fortieth floor office. Oh, and somewhere along the line we'll blow up that very warehouse we're all standing in.

That surely seemed like a better plan at the time.

Filming in the morning spins into gear like a jet engine. As always, I'm amazed on the first day to be reminded of just how many goddam people we need lifting, welding and carrying heavy shit in order to make television. The crew here is sharp as hell, and we do just fine. Six odd hours of filming with the new spiffy Panavision Genesis cameras flies by. Setup, rehearsal, shoot, "once again", shoot, "once again" as necessary, "moving on", "check the gate". Repeat.

At noon, we haul everyone outside. There are a ridiculous number of safety talks, and then we're moved behind the fire line. Chicago's finest stand by just in case the crazy Hollywood people set fire to more than we're officially allowed. The "blow", as is called, goes off in two steps. I believe I promised you coverage, so by further crappy treo powers --



If you squint you can see wee stunt people running just ahead of the explosion. Our actors -- particularly Kane, who's quite the shitkicker - feel cheated that we're not letting them run in the explosion. Not wanting to deprive them of all the fun, we then put them in front of a real fireball, shoot them with a long lens (someone in comments will explain why) and get footage of them escaping from the inferno. Nothing like a little heat blast and that OOOMPH of the air compression wave to help them appreciate the value of the fine stunt community.

We close out the day by returning inside the smoldering warehouse -- to be fair, only bits of it are smoldering -- and shooting some exciting fleeing/running footage. Beth gamely hangs upside-down while cutting through the glass of the faux office. That's pretty damn tough, actually, but she never hesitates to work in a rig even the stunt people are having a tough time controlling. I try to ignore the possibility of one of our leading actors throwing a brain clot and focus on the playback screens.

Roll home -- 8:00 pm

Day 2 Rollout -- 7:00 am

The location for the next set of scenes is a hospital. A suburban hospital's offered us a closed wing to work in. We drive out for an hour in the transport vans. This would ordinarily allow a bit of extra sleep, but there are phone calls to make and schedules to re-examine ...

... screw it, I nap.

... when we arrive, Dean starts outside and works in. We bang out a parking-lot scene, then move indoors. Forty odd crew -- at least -- cram into the narrow hospital corridors around an abandoned nurse's station. We shoot in two adjacent hospital rooms. Now, there's traditionally one set of playback monitors set up for the director to use when composing shots and watching the filming in progress. The monitors are on a wheeled dolly which is constantly relocated for convenience. This assembly's known as Video Village. After the first rehearsal, I seek out where Video Village will be living for today.



That's ... encouraging.

We shoot the morning out in one of the two hospital rooms. Dean's job here is to both do some creative shooting and also get coverage -- enough footage so that the editor is never stranded when putting together an episode sequence. Every director has his own system, but for you newbies you can't go wrong with the Master Shot Method. Start with a wide shot - a "master" -- that establishes the geography of the room for the audience. A "moving master" is considered standard now. That's a master shot combined with some simple but interesting camera movement to engage the eye.

Then move into coverage. Doubles and singles of the each off the actors as they run the scene multiple times. Put all this footage together, and you'll never lack for a shot when editing. Now, this method's out of vogue right now because of extensive storyboarding. When you storyboard a script, anticipating how you're going to cut, it's tempting to just shoot the bits you know you're going to use. In my limited experience though the time you save is often bought back threefold in the editing room, when you realize you don't quite have what you want int he close-up, or you need to re-establish the dynamic of the shot, but you don't have anything to cut away to. Also, sometimes actors find nice moments in shots that theoretically aren't focused on them.

Right before lunch we drive out to an abandoned house and blow it up for a flashback sequence. Those of you interested in action may be heartened to hear so many "blowing up" references. I assure you, your desire for explosions and larceny shall not go unrewarded if you favor us with your attentions. There's also banter and some damn fine acting, buuuut .... you know. Explosions don't hurt.

Afternoon, we move to the other hospital room. We finish out the day and enjoy the rush hour traffic back to Chicago. This evening my co-writer Chris Downey flew into town. He'll be working with us for the next few days, aiding in the rewrite and polish process.

Roll home -- 9:30 pm

That's Day 1 & 2. as always, post questions in the comments, I'll try to get to them. Will do my best to pass on anything usefull to the tourists or Spec-Monkeys.

Post-Production: Day 14 through ... errr, 30-something

As mentioned, a fair bit of the last three weeks are simply off-limits. Agents and talent do not care to have their intrigues discussed, nor do I think it wise to reveal some of the unsavory mechanizations by which I have availed myself of fine acting humans. Also, unlike a show in active production, pilot pre-production's an odd bear -- the director does an enormous amount of feature-quality location scouting and storyboarding, while the script's already been polished within an inch of its life. In Chicago, Dean is insanely busy while in Los Angeles I am busy primarily arguing with people on the phone and then watching actors say lines. And yet still filling 12 hour days with this nonsense. For a better look at Prep of a show in production, go to Denis' blog here and backtrack.

That said, there are some interesting bits in the process. I had the usual thrill with clearances. The clearance process is when the legal department checks out your script and sees where it may cross with actionable coincidences in the real world. For example , in my script a children's toy named "Mr. Flopsy" is brandished by a drunk dad. Nothing more than a funny name. The Legal Department informs me, in all seriousness, that there is indeed a Mr. Flopsy-brand bunny rabbit doll, and we need to change the name.

They also check character names, according to some arcane ruleset that after ten years I still have no real grasp of. For example, in the Global Frequency pilot, I had to change the detective's name from "Sean Ronin" to "Sean Foley", because there were thousands of Sean Foleys in the US, there were only a few Sean Ronins in the San Francisco area where the show was based. Therefore, there was no chance a viewer could legitimately believe we were basing our Sean Foley on any one Sean Foley in the real world, but they could be misled by the rarity of the original name into believing we were specifically parodying or targetting a real-life Sean Ronin. The name "sean Ronin" was too rare. While my Deputy Phelps set in un-named state is plainly not meant to be any one Deputy Phelps, as soon as I mentioned the city "Chicago" casually in dialogue one could reasonably believe that we were referring to a Deputy Phelps of the Illinois State Police -- who is real and therefore ineligible as a character name.

Yes, it's as mind-numbing as it sounds. And there are paaaaages of it.

We also took actors to the network tests. These are the final auditions for actors, the pass before the executive humans at the network. After winnowing our choices down to three or four for each role, we arrange a network test session. At this audition, the actors go in one after another, bang out auditions to a half-dozen network execs sitting five feet away from them, totally unreactive. This sounds harmless and straightforward but for two issues. First, Network Tests are always tightly stackedtime-wise. So the actor is sitting in the lobby, waiting to be called in for the final audition which may mean millions of dollars, and they are staring at a lobby full of other actors who are essentially incrementally different versions of themselves. No, not unnerving at all.

Second -- before actors can go into the network test, they need to have signed test deals. These are the contracts setting terms of employment just in case they get selected to star in the show, and that show then gets put on the air. As a producer you want these deals in place before the actor reads, because if you're negotiating with an agent who already knows you want their client, you're fucked. At the same time, agents know they have you by the nuts on a test deal, as you want to hire their client, but you have no legal hold on the client until the test deal closes. They can't even audition for network until the contract's closed. If your actors don't sign their test deals, you are left with a bunch of network executives wondering why you scheduled a session with no actual actors auditioning. It's the sort of mutual blackmail lawyers love, and almost always you've wrestled on these terms right up until the actors are signing their contracts while sitting in the lobby waiting to go in and audition. Again, magnificently stress free.

All said and done, though, we have an excellent cast, I'm in Chicago now (flew in Monday night), and we should be able to jump in quickly tomorrow with actual production notes, documents, and maybe even the occasional crappy Treo video.

Again, feel free to ask any questions in the comments, and I'll see what I can do about answering them. As to what we've got planned for first day of shooting -- a preview via crappy Treo cam: