Slight change of plans. I billed this installment last week as “A Unit Of Entertainment”—the importance of building a conflict and a resolution into every chapter of your serial fiction, and some tips on how—but that post’s turning into a term paper, plus I want to embed some examples from a specific story, so as soon as I wrestle the word count down and get clearance to reproduce a short script I did for a friend’s upcoming book, we’ll tackle that one.Probably next week.
In the meantime, this week’s post was cued by a question from a longtime listener/first-time caller.Christine asks: “I often overdo captions, probably because the theatre bug always makes me want to monologue, and captions can be a monologue broken up over corroborating or subverting images. What are the ideal ways to use a caption as a character-revealing and/or story-telling device in a short or long comic?”
This is an awesome question, because answering it gives me license to rant about my least-favorite narrative device in modern comics: multiple narration. You might want to put on a helmet for this. But first, let’s address Christine’s questions more directly.
Captions can be a great character-revealing device when they are used sparingly. First-person narrative captions, in particular, are a great way of letting us into the characters’ heads. But—as I keep insisting—comics is a visual medium. That means the writer has to be careful not to overuse captions in lieu of showing us the story. I wrote THE FLASH for DC for ten years using captions in the “first person immediate” tense, but that was a character choice—it made sense to me that the fastest man alive would be telling his stories in the moment. The danger was always the temptation to tell more than show. It’s deceptively, temptingly easy for a writer to overwrite captions because they’re generally the easiest part of scripting (it's so much easier to write monologue than dialogue). But the comics page is all about balance—words and images working in tandem to tell a story with depth and immediacy that that neither can accomplish alone.
Here are my pocket guidelines about caption use:
One: Err on the side of paucity. You really don’t want to have more than about twenty words in a caption, max—in script terms, no more than two lines of type across the page. (This applies to word balloons, as well, btw.) Any more than that runs the risk of creating a big block of type that’s just wearisome to read. And four of those in one panel and eleven of those on one page exhausts the reader. Don't make each page a chore.
Two: Always be aware that the caption creates a distance from the story that word balloons and thought balloons do not, same as v/o narration creates a distance in film. If there’s something about your story that demands that distance, go to it. But always ask yourself if dialogue might be a better way to immerse your reader more fully into the story.
Three, and most important: Find ONE VOICE for your captions. ONE.If your captions are third-person, stay with that. If they’re first-person, find ONE narrator and stick with him or her. Do not cross the streams. Do not interrupt the reader by confusing him as to who’s talking. And for the love of God, American superhero comics, stop having five different characters narrating a scene when all I, the reader, have to differentiate their voices is caption color. This has gotta stop. Frank Miller introduced multiple narration to mainstream comics twenty years ago with BATMAN: YEAR ONE, which was narrated half by Bruce Wayne (in scratchy, handwritten journal-entry captions) and Gordon (in faux-typewriting font captions). It worked then because it was fresh and exciting and the two voices and two caption styles were radically distinct. Now it is old, tired, and easy, and as storytelling tricks go it runs the risk of creating more confusion than insight.
(This makes my head hurt worse than anything in comics today: This month’s issue of Superteam X is tag-team narrated by everyone on the team plus their android butler, and immediately, I’m lost in a narrative where the voices are all the same but I’m supposed to know—and remember from panel to panel and page to page—that all the red captions are Team Leader’s, all the orange ones are Spunky Sidekick’s, all the blue ones are Plucky Speedster’s, etc. I’m not talking about a Rashomon set-up where Each Hero says to the group, “Okay, here’s what I think happened” and then we flash back to three pages that are clearly narrated from that particular POV. I’m talking about—I am not making this up—coming across an eight-page fight sequence with so many heroes narrating it that they ran out of colors. Martial Artist’s captions were medium-blue, Subatomic Guy’s captions were dark blue, everyone all sounded the exact same anyway, and the writer got to clock out at two-thirty rather than actually have to put some effort into integrating words and pictures. Multiple narration is very hard to do well and not for beginners.)
As in TV or film or the stage, comics captions/comics narration can be used ironically, can be used to reveal character, can be used to artfully step over the dull stuff...but they should work with the story you’re telling, not in isolation. Balance, balance, balance.
Ah, Stork Job. You started as the most depressing writers' room day ever -- "Hey, let's research Eastern European orphanage scams" -- and turned into our classic Mission: Impossible homage. This is the fun of doing Leverage. Bank Robbery bottle show, high-rise rappelling, classic Sting horse race heist, saving a church ... now going to Belgrade and finding a missing boy while butting heads with arms dealers. It's our little movie every week; sometimes crime-y and sometimes action-y.
Although I always cite late 60's TV as the model for the show, my Dad recently pointed out that I spent a great deal of my youth consuming the old Bantam Doc Savages from my Grandfather's cabin. Once you look at the Lester Dent master pulp fiction plot I internalized at age 12, I think we can safely say -- we're writing pulp here, people. Juicy, old school pulp.
This episode has one of my favorite scenes of the year in it, but it's spoilery, so we'll talk about it next week. The writer of the episode, Albert Kim, is a pretty great amateur photographer, although not quite as sharp as his wife Jennie. So, instead of my blathering let's look at spiffy backstage photos -- like the one above, showing first-time director Marc Roskin going over the script with Tim. Yes, Tim's hair is funny. There's a reason. Now, what else do we have in here (all pictures reveal a high-res version when clicked)...
The episode is very Beth-centric, by the way. Oh, and those weren't her parents who lived in that house she blew up. Now whether those nasty abusive people were still in there or not ... choose the answer that you like. We're never, ever going to tell you everything about these characters. For example, you have no idea exactly who Sophie was married to at age 17, do you? Or why when Eliot said "I don't like guns" in the pilot, he added "... you know that." to Nate. Why would Nate know that?
Let's see -- writer Albert Kim enjoying the thrill of the Steadicam under the expert guidance of our A Camera Operator, the legendary Gary Camp.
Hmm ... I can't show you a picture of Gina in her wardrobe for this episode, not only because it's too spoilery, but too mind-shatteringly ... sure, Moffat got her kit off. We're the ones who put her in boots and ... anyway, here's a lovely one of the gals instead:
Who else is doing this?
Nobody, sir. And finally -- "What is Howl Force?"
I cannot tell you. You are not ready for the soul-shredding truth behind Howl Force!
For those keeping track at home, this is actually Albert's second script of the year, which shot around sixth or seventh for the production cycle. His first script was the second episode shot, The Snow Job, which airs soonish. It'll be interesting to see Snow Job in that context. We were definitely still hacking out what the show exactly was at that point, and it's a much more contained crime/con game than later episodes. Big fun fact for that episode -- that actually is how you fake out an MRI.
Right, enough pimpage, let's get to those questions from last time. Spoilers now, because you can get all the episodes from iTunes and Amazon VOD.
Antonia:So are there any behind the scenes pics of whatever DB did to, how did you phrase it? Something about steamy?
Weirdly, that's the one episode I don't have pics from. Personally, I didn't get it. Apparently, though, chicks dig DB Sweeney s a tormented priest fighting to save a church with his fists and his heart. *shrugs*
Richard Jensen:Point the Second: "Toe pick"? (Puzzled look?)
From The Cutting Edge. Have your wife or girlfriend expain. I assure you she can.
Michael:'m curious to see if you got any right wing hate mail for the episode that portrayed security contractors in Iraq as greedy, corrupt and violent.
There was a bit of a kaffuffle on the TNT boards about the reservist health care isssue, but they were quickly shut down by actual veterans showing up and saying "Yeah, that's really happening." The sad thing is, a lot of the people who posted were talking about how there are all these great programs taking care of soldiers after combat. Which is true, but like all programs conceived by fallible humans and run by the government, people fall through the cracks. A lot of Americans just don't want to wrap their head round the fact that when it comes to the men and women who serve this country, we have to try harder, and saying were not a hundred percent there is somehow implying that we don't care, we're bad, the country is bad, blah blah blah. Policies are instruments of governments, which are run by men, who are elected by the people. The entire point of the goddam country is that these men are not special. Criticism of any policy or any of those men is not inherently unpatriotic. I hope that simple, binary way of looking at things is passing.
Oh, I'm sorry, the contractors? No, nobody had any problems with that.
Mike Cane:You mentioned Hardison footage cut out of Miracle. Was it actually shot? I hope you're saving all those bits.
That, and how Parker got the FBI car in Bank Shot, and a few others. Sadly, when we're cutting for time the stand-alone flashbacks are the first things to go. They'll show up on the DVD's.
Maya:Reading about all the magic that is done with the green screen shots I was wondering if the actors really are looking at what the audience sees on the six plasma screen TVs when they're filming all those conference room scenes.
About eighty percent of the time they're looking at the actual video playback of imagery, the other twenty green-screen. We usually only green-screen those shots when the episode requires images that are shot out of order, or if the playback hinks up the actors' timing.
Casey: So what was your major reference source for the cons as far as books or docs go? And which was your favorite?
We've got the reading list around here somewhere ... ugh, too late in the evening for me to dig it up. Start here and branch out, you can't go wrong. We wound up with a bookshelf of criminal biographies, tech hacking manuals, and the like we took pieces from as they amused us.
rrwood:One of the greatest challenges you, as the creator/writer, face in creating episodic television is the fact that we, the audience, know that things are always going to work out-- that the hero is always going to be back next week, and that deep, fundamental changes to the formula of the show are not going to happen. This means that the easiest tools you'd use to crank up the dramatic tension in say, a movie, are locked up and off limits to you, and you guys have to work your butts off to keep us interested. And in addition to the can't-kill-the-heroes straight-jacket, you guys have a number of other pretty obvious restrictions, given the nature of the show ...
Which is why all TV shows are really about the evolution of the characters' relationships. You don't know how that's going to turn out. Hell, Nate and Sophie wound up unspooling differently than we anticipated.
That said, the pulp model applies. We want you to be hooked enough on how they'll solve THIS problem that just popped up, and then the next ten minutes later ... our complications are varied enough, too -- not a medical mystery or straight crime procedural -- that at the very least the obstacles probably aren't ones you've seen before. Commenter kinesys actually answered this question pretty well in the original Comments.
Kathryn: One question about The Bank Job (based on the sneek peak): Elmore and Leonard? Was that a nod to the author, because that was my first thought when I heard the names. But then, being a Supernatural fan and the fact they use aliases based on rock music performers, I may just be trained to think that way.
Hardison chooses the aliases for all the fake ID's they have. They tend to have some significance to the heist at hand.
gwangung:Ha. Then you'd love a friend of mine's theatre in New York. He specializes in battle choreography theatre; every single one of his shows features multiple battles (10, 12, 15 at a time), spanning all sorts of disciplines. Why, yes, he also does shows for the NY Comic Con. Why yes, he almost always features female protagonists (dressed in skin tights, very popular with said Comic Con). One show was a Shakespearean zombie/kung fu pastiche....
Personally I disapprove -- aw hell, just post the damn website address.
Tal:Do you ever wish you had more time to devote, or the budget to devote existing time to different cons? Because some of the cons that seemed really interesting to me (getting the assistant to confess, modifying the text of a Congressional bill) seemed tossed off as asides.
Every week, kiddo. Every week. 42:30 is a bitch. I think by about halfway through the season, we finally found the right balance.
Daiv: Am i mistaken? Or is that a fridge full of Jones Soda (with Real Sugar) that Elliot is pulling from in the beginning? (though he clearly did not get a bottle of Soda).
Hardison has a thing for orange soda. Jones was nice enough to provide some delicious beverages. Everyone wins.
Anonymous:Love the show -- it's definitely my current favourite! Had a question though -- who pulled the switch with the pizza box and the briefcase at the end of 'The Bank Job'? Hardison was talking to the judge the whole time, Nate was shot, Sophie was tending to Nate ...
That's just how good they are.
Yes, that's the answer. Now walk away.
Seriously, though, that's both one of the bits cut for time, and one of the times when the physical layout of the bank, didn't match exactly what was needed for one of the switch moves (the counter is on the wrong side of the actors) . So sometimes, you let this stuff go. We had a similar issue in The Snow Job and even Two Horse had a bit which was much more convoluted and involved the outside walls of the entire stables, not stalls. Choreography on location sometimes just doesn't want to cooperate.
R.A Porter: (Bank Shot) was my favorite episode to date, with great scene chewing from Michael O'Neill.
He's a villain, baby. With a skinny tie! Seriously, this episode was pitched as "This is our Western." Michael absolutely nailed the big Western villain tone.
EmanG:OK, not a flame but a serious question. Why does Burn Notice get to keep shooting in Miami yet Leverage has to move away from Chicago to LA? I may be in AZ these days but I'm still a firm believer in/member of the Chicago production scene and I know that this show would be that much better in a place other than LA. I want to see a regional cinema. Stories from and set in Cleveland, Portland, Chicago, Kansas City. LIfe doesn't just happen in LA, a place stories and characters go to die in the sameness. Damnit, give me a livable wage in Phoenix and a writer that can live on the same and I'll give you programming about not just the characters, but the place they live in. And too many of us live in places not at all like LA not to have our stories told, our visuals sold. To not to at least try to have that represented, no?
Unfortunately shooting in a city requires much more than just actors and the willingness to work there. A certain level of infrastructure is needed to do a series as opposed to a short, one off movie, and Chicago just didn't have what we needed at that short notice and on our tiny, tiny budget. The fact that we were all clustered around the Doghouse post-production facility is to a great degree what allowed us to shoot the show independently. Even for bigger studios, shooting in other cities is often prohibitively costly as far as physical production goes. Remember, TV shows bleed millions of dollars while they shoot, and recoup almost none of it until foreign sales and DVD. LA is streamlined to keep those costs down.
Burn Notice "gets" to keep shooting in Miami because they get heart-stopping tax breaks and have a very good relationship with the city. (One of my favorite shows, btw)
That said, one of the main points of this blog, and why I always write about emerging technologies, is that I firmly believe we're at the point where people can begin to make local entertainment of the same technical quality as we shoot in LA. We still need to lick distribution -- hell even we haven't licked that problem entirely -- but there's no reason, if you think your city has stories to tell, you can't go get cameras and tell those stories.
Richard:Whoops. Hit post too quickly. One question: How plausible do you guys want the cons to be? Because my only real problem with this episode is the miraculous image editing. As someone who uses Photoshop professionally ...
As plausible as the medicine in House. Take that as you will. :P
kinesys: Oh. And how long before we discover that Hardison knows this weird chick named "Aleph"?
You came thisclose to an episode this year where Aldis got romantically involved with Aimee Garcia. You know Aimee, right?
And the reason I knew Chris Kane was because he was the guy who came thisclose to playing Sean Ronin on GF.
I fully expect to see Leverage/GF crossover fanfic by Friday, people. Chop chop!
Robert Emerson:One of the things I like most about how Christian Kane's fight scenes are ... not linear, but multi-directional and adaptive.
This ep was the first time I dragged my heel across the dirt, laying out "the fight line", just like Jackie Chan explained to me ten years ago. Main axis for shooting and choreography, with alternate actions happening off-axis to open up the fight space.
Now granted, Charlie Brewer has been doing fights and blowing shit up since I was in a bad prom tux, but he tolerates my obsession and even occasionally listens to me. For which I am forever grateful.
Denita: I also have a question. Which episode does Sam Anderson (Holland Manners from Angel) appear in? A few of us on Whedonesque have been wondering.
The abovementioned The Snow Job. With Danny Strong, as the co-villain.
Whew. That was a helluva mailbag. A new open thread tomorrow, and thanks as always for watching and spreading the word.
Oh, and if we get more people on Facebook than Closer, their co-exec has to buy me dinner. So feel free to spam the bastards.
Use these Comments for Stork thread business. Comments and questions.
One of the most difficult things I've had to learn how to do as a professional writer is deal with criticism. It's a very important part of the job and is absolutely essential in making one a better writer. But if you have an ego as gargantuan, fragile, and as in desperate need of validation as mine (and honestly, don't ALL writers?), it can either send you dancing naked through the streets or leave you weeping in the fetal position while you nurse the remaining drops of whiskey from the bottle clutched in your trembling hands.
I think the trick to dealing with criticism (aside from growing a very thick, impenetrable skin) is to learn which criticisms to take to heart, which to accept with a grain of salt, and which to just simply ignore. At first, my default rubric for accepting or dismissing criticism was usually binary. If the criticism praised me and my work, I accepted it. If it didn't, I dismissed it. That approach made sleeping at night a bit easier, but it didn't help me use those criticisms to better my writing.
Criticism that comes from my colleagues is the kind I quite often take to heart. Editors, fellow writers, teachers, professors, etc. usually have an understanding of what makes writing and/or story telling good (this is not true in all cases, obviously--there are hacks, dolts, and saboteurs in every walk of life). But another thing these people all have in common, other than experience with the written word, is that they genuinely wish to see me succeed. They want to help me write the best story that I can by telling me how I can improve. I'm fortunate to have befriended a group of professional and freakishly talented writers who have no problem telling me where I'm falling short. And that's the key. They're honest. Brutally honest. Yes, it can be heartbreaking when a person whom you respect and whose work you admire tells you that your latest attempt is, well, garbage. The nice thing is that they're willing to tell you WHY it's garbage and help you find a solution. Mind you, not find the solution for you, but guide you to finding the solution yourself. Teaching a man to fish and all.
The criticisms that I find myself taking with a grain of salt are the ones that come from friends (outside of the entertainment industry) and family. Their opinions are almost always suspect. My parents' opinions seem to fall into one of two categories: 1) Lukewarm praise or 2) I still don't understand why you didn't go to medical school (holiday dinners tend to be a bit awkward--"Stop encouraging the boy and tell him he needs a backup plan!"--raise your hand if you feel my pain).
My friends, however, are always positive. Always. No matter how ass-tastic I know the story is. This is nice whenever I'm feeling down and need an ego boost, but if I ever need help improving a story, there isn't much they can offer other than unconditional support.
But the criticisms that I find most difficult to deal with are ones that come in the form of reviews. Especially BAD reviews (and I've had my fair share of them. My absolute favorite bad review came from a reader who said that money spent on my comic was money better spent on a taco--a TACO!). It's never fun having someone tell you that you are suck incarnate, no matter how colorful their criticism might be (I've been told time and time again to never EVER read reviews, but I just can't help myself).
The difficulty comes in determining if the review has specific issues with my writing or if it's just angry rambling over my epic suckitude. For the longest time I never even saw a difference. I was so blinded over not being viewed as the greatest writer in all of space/time that I sneered a "What do they know?" before drowning myself in a vat of cheap grain alcohol.
But over time I've learned to differentiate between reviews that are deliberately caustic and those that might have legitimate reasons for being negative. The caustic ones never have anything constructive to say nor any insights as to where the story may be falling short. So I try to ignore those zero-calorie rantings (which can be very hard as the urge to hunt some of the meaner people down and stuff their esophaguses to bursting with rat feces can be quite overwhelming). However, if a reviewer complains that my story is difficult to follow, I'll look to see if other readers have the same comment (even if those comments are nasty). If there are then it's most likely an issue of poor story telling and something I should keep in mind when writing my next story.
Granted, you can't write for critics. You have to write for yourself. But sometimes even the meanest comments can be illuminating and helpful in their own way. There's definitely a heirarchy when it comes to which criticisms carry more weight, but quite often the most painful criticisms are the most beneficial. Certainly not always, but it's a good idea to look for faults in your story before looking for them in the reader.
... Two out of two writers named Mark Waid and John Rogers agree: Young Sherlock Holmes is worth a second look.
... "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon." - The Last Good Kiss.
James Crumley was precisely as good as everyone says he was. I'm working through the back catalogue now.
... The 2008 Doctor Who Christmas Special was a helluva thing.
... Hey Far Cry 2: I'm an hour of my life into the game before I actually start playing, and then my character starts collapsing intermittently from malaria? Usually in the middle of firefights when I've managed to find something resembling fun? SCREW. YOU. I would like you to meet my friend Gears of War 2. He is not clever. His world is not a sandbox of delights. But he has given me an automatic rifle with a frikkin' chainsaw on it, and allows me to use it to my heart's content. And so I love him.
... And while we're talking gaming, spawning ahead of the Survivors and then jamming forklifts in the elevator door or at the end of the warehouse -- that is punk shit. Seriously.
... And while we're talking Survivors, that first season ending is precisely why I prefer closed season storytelling. Call out SPOILERS in the comments if you wish to discuss.
... I don't know why I didn't pimp it hard enough first time out, but Kevin Church and his 18 year old artist (Jesus Murphy) Michael Dake are doing great work in their serialized graphic novel Waimea. I love, love, love that clean art style. Which is my hint for them to make some sample images for bloggers to post. Ahem.
Welcome to the New Year. As my Grandfather used to toast: "May the best you've ever seen be the worst you ever see."
In the Comments: the book/comic/movie/TV show/song/band you kept annoying your friends with during 2008.
This week, we backtrack a little bit. The responses and e-mails I’ve been getting about these blog entries are very gratifying and very illuminating (also a little tame; I worry that I’ve apparently not yet said much worth arguing over. How does anyone post two thousand words about anything on the internet and not get flamed by someone?), but I realize, for the benefit of those newer to or outside the comics biz, the terminology is a touch “inside” and I maybe should have laid more groundwork about How A Comic Is Created. Hence:
Comics stories start, like most everything else dramatic including half the breakup conversations I have ever had, with a script. Unlike the standardized screenplay format, there is no existing template for comics scripts. That’s primarily because comics is a uniquely collaborative medium. Some writers are their own artists and work it all out in the drawing; some writers break their scripts down panel-by-panel with dialogue; some describe simply the basic plot to the artist sans final dialogue, then add the actual words and captions once the art’s produced. I’m sure that last method sounds spectacularly backwards to our film and TV brethren—like crafting and looping in dialogue only after a scene’s been shot—but that’s the way many of the most classic American comics of all time were done. More on why this is in a moment.
Once a script is approved by an editor, it’s given to an artist who’ll illustrate it on (almost always) Bristol board. Some artists do finished, ready-for-print work; sometimes, to speed production, they work only in pencil and an inker comes behind them to add textures and shading and background detail with India ink to get the art camera-ready. Whether he’s doing finished work or just pencilling, however, the artist turns the writer’s words into pictures, and that is much harder to do well than most writers realize. Not only does a comics artist have to be able to draw anything from a herd of horses to a county fair to a Betelgeusean starship, all the characters have to be consistently on-model in every shot without fail, the storytelling has to be clear, and the images have to be dynamic. Tall order; some of the most phenomenal illustrators I have ever met are wizards in their own areas of expertise but cannot begin to juggle the multiple tasks of a comics artist.
This is why I say that artists are not helper monkeys; they’re not in it to visualize “your” story, because it stopped being “your” story the moment you engaged in a collaborative medium. From here on in, it’s also the artist’s story, and if you’re working with an illustrator who’s any good at all, you as a writer have to tamp down any control-freak tendencies you suffer under and relax into the process. Chances are, the artist isn’t going to draw that submarine hatch exactly as you’d envisioned it or angle that close-up exactly the way you saw it in your head, but as long as the story’s being told effectively, that’s okay. That’s what artists are paid to do: bring their own storytelling skills to the table. If they’re experienced, then more often than not you can give them a detailed story outline with first-draft dialogue, then craft your final draft around their drawings to add nuance, characterization and exposition, and there’s going to be an energy to those pages that’s present because the artist felt engaged and not simply dictated to. I always put my phone number and e-mail address on the first page of every script I write and encourage my artist to call me with questions, observations, or insights, particularly if they read a scene description and can suggest a clearer or more dynamic way of illustrating it. Again, it’s not “my” story anymore; it’s OUR story, and at some near-future date, we’ll go into specific examples of how my artists have improved my scripts immeasurably.
Beyond that, coloring is its own craft. Most comics artists work strictly in black-and-white line drawings, then scan the physical artwork so gifted artists-slash-technicians-slash-specialists can use Photoshop (industry standard) to add color. The letterer likewise uses his computer (alas, the days of hand-lettering are all but gone) to lay in the captions, balloons, sound effects and titles using (by and large) Adobe Illustrator. The coloring and lettering, once an editor has reviewed them for errors and corrections, are then wed into high-res EPS files and FTP’d to the printer. A few weeks later, printed comics are in stores. Rinse, repeat.
There are as many ways of mixing and matching these creative components as are mathematically possible. There are plenty of artists who do their own coloring and/or lettering. There are letterers and colorists who also write. Or draw. There are no union lines to cross. What’s important is that everyone’s telling the story.
Still too inside? If so, forgive my lack of perspective and feel free to ask questions.
Well, let's crunch a recap and a preview post together over the holiday weekend. We'll answer some questions, and offer an open thread after this week's ep answering anything you ask in the Comments here.
Speaking of thise week's episode, it is not The Wedding Job. It's The Bank Shot Job, and the preview is here.
This was the first episode actually shot, written by our infamous co-producer Amy Berg based off a pitch from Dean Devlin and directed (in six frikkin' days) by Dean. Yes, it is a lovely little cosy shop we have, and yes, it is better than the old way of doing things. Anyway, it's way, waaaay outside the usual format, but it's one of the TNT suits' favorites, so it got bumped up in order. The ratings have been pretty promising, so they seem to want to really push while nobody else is producing new material.
The first-season-order-shuffle is always a mixed bag. On one hand, I think the chumminess the characters evince in Two Horse and Miracle -- two episodes written to be mid-season -- kind of jump the gun on the emotional arcs seen in this broadcast order. On the other hand, the Nate/Sophie scene in Miracle really belongs that early in the season, and I'm glad we got Sterling introduced early in Two Horse. Again, luckily, we wrote these intended to be primarily stand-alones, and the order pretty much settles in as intended for the rest of the season. Oh, yeah, and we got an entire season of 13 guaranteed. Unlike every other rookie show on the air. So, you know, aces.
For what it's worth, the upcoming Chris Kane fight scene in The Bank Shot Job is my favorite. Well, this and the one in Wedding. Oh, and Mile High ... never mind. (Yes, I have a fight obsession, to the point of being mocked by my own staff.) It was the first one we shot and it sets the standard for the rest of the season. The fight in Miracle is more of a conceptual fight. The gun-waistband bit in Miracle is stolen from ... ahh, it's too painful. Let's just say the movie will never be made, and we use all the parts of the animal.
One thing about Miracle: I've seen a few comments about how Hardison's morality seems to be ... flexible. It is indeed. He rationalizes like a sumbitch, and the one thing cut from Miracle I miss badly is the flashback to a teen Hardison with braces, rocking the Kid n' Play look, while he adapted his Nana's moral code to hacking the Bank of Iceland. Once the suited humans have returned to their offices in January, I may try to pry that footage loose. Also -- DB Sweeney gets the ladies steamy. The shoot had a constant background hum of whispered "toe pick!", strangled giggling, and the scurry of footsteps off to dark corners.
Big congratulations to Christine Boylan, also a staff writer, also her first produced script. Another East Coast Catholic like myself, she took a ridiculous amount of care on the sermon. Yes, we atheist sodomite Hollywood-types spent hours laboring over our episode about faith. I assure you, we ran right out and had some gay socialized medicine afterward.
Right, questions from the last post, and we'll tackle any from this post in the open-thread post for Tuesday. Bloody hell, that confused even me.
Mike Cane:>>>There are 116 green screen set replacement shots. OK, you just managed to con ME. I just watched my time-shifted copy two hours ago (working on pimpage post) and didn't notice ANYTHING like that. I can usually spot them too! Is this seamlessness due to: 1) HD vid? 2) Dir of Photo? Both?
Having Mark Franco, our visual effects ... honcho? Guru? Resident genius? ... available to come and call angles for the best greenscreens is the key, and Dave Connell of course has a major hand in it. Shooting digital makes a big difference in the workflow for vfx -- which I have Mark buttonholed to explain here on this site sometime soon. We have guys basically inventing ways to do quick 'n dirty greenscreen shots at Electric.
For example, the church in Miracle? Never more than half full with extras.
Alon: Only semi-on topic, but just FYI, I cannot get the episodes that are up on the TNT website to play. Every time I try, it crashes my browser, regardless of which one I try to use. When I first went to the page in Firefox, it said I needed a plug-in, so I downloaded and installed ...
and
Anonymous: commenting late on this, but: you talk at length at various points in your history about 4th Generation Media and so forth, but still, when I try the options listed by you of how to watch this show (which I want to watch) and also send some money in the direction of the people that made it, I have no chance to do so because I happen to live outside the US. Utter stupidity again. So we return to the age-old saying: piracy, the better choice, or, as in so many cases, the only choice.
And really, I _wanted_ to view it legally. I have no moral qualms about downloading something when I'm basically told: you live elsewhere, so fuck you.
First, piracy is wrong. Wroooong. Look, everyone currently reading my blog with a law degree who also works for one of the large corporations with whom I do regular business, piracy is wrong!
Well, fair points all, but this is the nature of evolutionary change. It's already a bit mad that we have no studio. Distribution comes with a whole other set of issues. TNT (rightfully) gets the streaming window, and it's up to their fine web humans to rock that out. They pay a license fee, and nicely enough broadcast and promote the hell out of us. The foreign sales network people demand their windows for broadcast, or they won't buy the series, which means that we'll take way, way longer to be in profit. Which will curtail our ability to make more wonderful TV shows. Television is cash flow, something Dean could explain to you in exruciating detail while dabbing the fine sweat from his forehead.
Basically, we're pushing the envelope, but we're beating one problem at a time. We got "how to make a TV show based out of one old dog hospital in East Hollywood" out of the way. Next up is "being utterly independent of the distribution chains television has relied on for the last fifty years. " But we'll get there.
Emily Blake:am enjoying the show and particularly Christian Kane and , but I was wondering something. If I remember correctly, Hustle also did a racing horse switch episode. Do you guys watch Hustle? Do you think about ways to prevent your stuff from being too similar or do you just do what you do and not worry about it?
I watched the first two season, and then bailed. (I met Adrian Lester on an unrelated project. Great guy.) A fair chunk of my staff has seen every season. We have killed a couple ideas because they did something similar on that show. But at some point you just shrug your shoulders and say "Every caper show is going to have a card game/horse race gag/Big store/etc etc." It's a bit like working on Without a Trace and wondering if your "The wife you thought was dead is actually the killer" crosses over with any of the CSI's or Law & Orders. There are genre conventions, but the shows have a different tone, gang make-up, a difference in the number of explosions (advantage: us), and moral center - they are, as far as I can tell, never helping anybody, while that's our raison d'etre.
Toxic Frog:Love the show - I just introduced it to my family (we're all fans of heist/con shows) and everyone involved approves. I do have some questions and comments, though: - How did you get Gina Bellman on board? You didn't talk much about the casting, and when Sophie was introduced both my parents went "Oh my god! Her!" and are now pestering me to find out.
There's a little behind the scenes on casting up at TNT now. Which, conveniently, discusses Gina...
cont'd: ... - My parents wish to inform you that the circular-track camerawork in the opening of the pilot made them nauseous, and that you should stop it :)
You hear that Dean? You're hurting innocent MOMMIES AND DADDIES!! (sorry, private joke)
Vicki:BTW, is anyone planning to sell those nifty "Leverage" latte mugs anywhere? I need to have one.
... hmmm. I wonder if I can finance my day players with tchockes ... we'll see.
Kid Sis:Wow. This is all getting very Star Trek convention. You going to start yelling at bloggers to get a life and move out of their mom's basement??
I'm going to let it run until I see the Comic-con booth for "The Black Kings" next to the Browncoats, where Nate/Sophie shippers start throwing punches at the Sophie/Parker slashers. Then and only then will we blow the ref whistle.
lummox: BTW Leverage is a pretty decent show. Once it's either out on DVD or there's some other way us non-Americans can buy it, I'll be happy to do so.
I hope I didn't give a false impression earlier -- it will be broadcast, and soon, in most countries. Within a few months, unless I'm high or mistaken. You shouldn't have to wait for the DVD's.
Rght then, that's the mailbag for now. Toss any Miracle-oriented , or hell any other questions, into the Comments, and we'll get to them next week. As always, thanks for watching, recapping, and forum-posting. In the modern television landscape, we can't do it without you.
As we drove up Route 1, Lovely Wife dialed Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' on the iPod. This is not a song on my usual playlist. I was enjoying the flashback to junior year until the third chorus arrived:
I Said You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' I Said You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' It's Too High To Get Over (Yeah, Yeah) Too Low To Get Under (Yeah, Yeah) You're Stuck In The Middle (Yeah, Yeah) And The Pain Is Thunder (Yeah, Yeah) It's Too High To Get Over (Yeah, Yeah) Too Low To Get Under (Yeah, Yeah) You're Stuck In The Middle (Yeah, Yeah) And The Pain Is Thunder (Yeah, Yeah) You're A Vegetable, You're A Vegetable Still They Hate You, You're A Vegetable You're Just A Buffet, You're A Vegetable They Eat Off Of You, You're A Vegetable (copyright Michael Jackson)
"... You're a Vegetable"?
I'm sorry, what?*
This has consumed me. Four days in the Big Sur mountains, and I cannot stop thinking about it. I was humming the tune as I watched deer frolic. All because of this chorus. Please, in the name of God, someone explain this. Or, at least, add your own bizarre lyrics in the Comments. Bonus points for the 80's factor.
*You'll note the recent Akon remake seems to lack the "vegetable factor."
If you’ve set your sights on writing an original novel or a prose piece, you can generally type to your heart’s content. There’s no hard-and-fast space limitation. American comics, on the other hand, tend to be 22 pages. It’s a totally arbitrary number; since their invention in the 1930s, comic book stories have been as long as a hundred pages and as short as one. In the early 1980s, industry leaders DC Comics and Marvel Comics, factoring profits versus creative costs, arrived at 22 as their standard page-count, and other companies settled in at about the same, give or take. (As the E-I-C at BOOM!, I allow 22 pages for first issues and 21 for ensuing issues, leaving room for a “what has come before” text recap after the opening scene.)
Twenty-two pages is not a lot of space. Believe me. Having written a bazillion comics, I still find myself more often than nine pages into a script and realizing to my horror that I’m only about a quarter of the way through the story I wanted to tell, and the next thing you know, I’m making fresh coffee and tearing up the floorboards to rewrite.
The best tools in a comic writer's toolbox serve the cause of Economic Storytelling. Your foremost task is to convey the maximum amount of story in the minimum amount of space. Don’t misunderstand; “story” is not the same as “plot,” and I’m in no way suggesting that every page you write be weighted down with a hundred lines of dialogue feeding me more exposition than I can possibly digest. But a plot, as I’m gonna presume you already know if you’re reading this, is simply what happens. A story takes a plot and adds emotion, timing, style and mood, and as loudly as I rail against comics that spend an entire page showing a character filling a glass from the kitchen faucet, I’d still rather read a story that was involving but breezy for 22 pages than one that was dense but dull and unmoving for eight.
Shorter comics stories are even more of a bitch to script. Eight pages, six...regardless of length, you still need to show me a conflict and a resolution or else it’s not a story, and there is no time to screw around. At BOOM!, I get a l-o-t of eight-page scripts that, for no good reason, burn up the entire first page with a slow zoom into a New York restaurant kitchen. This makes me homicidal. If your story is about a chef and geography is incidental, just show me the damn kitchen. Tick, tock. I love RESERVOIR DOGS, but if you handed me a comics script that began with four pages of gangsters debating the merits of Madonna, I would not only reject it, I would break your keyboard.
In a 22-page comic, figuring an average of four to five panels a page and a couple of full-page shots, a writer has maybe a hundred panels at most to tell a story, so every panel he wastes conveying (a) something I already know, (b) something that’s a cute gag but does nothing to reveal plot or character, or (c) something I don’t need to know is a demonstration of lousy craft. Comics are expensive. Don’t make me resent the money I spend buying yours. Every single moment in your script must either move the story along or demonstrate something important about the characters—preferably both—and every panel that does neither is a sloppy waste of space. This is one of the reasons why Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ WATCHMEN is so revered; it’s a tour de force example of Economic Storytelling because there’s significance to every word and every image.
Truman Capote said that he was like a semantic Paganini, that he could just throw words up into the air and they would come down in the perfect way.
Must be nice, huh? Like most mortals, I toss my words into the air only to struggle with them for hours after they've tumbled haphazardly across the page. I guess that makes me more of a semantic Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Even so, I learned how to consistently write well. Not brilliantly, but well. I have a sense of rhythm, cadence, and can usually put words on paper in interesting ways. My high school teachers and college professors always told me so, so it had to be true ('cause they would never lie). So, armed with the confidence they instilled in me, I spent those nomadic years following my college graduation writing numerous short stories and one very epic, very unfinished, novel. Yet, no one wanted to publish them. I couldn't give them away. So what was the problem? I knew how to write, had a decent grasp of English grammar, and knew how to operate the spell check. So why the hell wouldn't anyone publish my stories?
It's because they weren't stories.
They were, as one kind editor told me, just book reports. There was nothing there. Every rejection slip I received (that wasn't a simple form letter) said the same thing: you can write, but you can't tell a story.
At the time, for the life of me, I thought that they they the same thing. I mean, aren't they? Isn't that what writing is, telling a story? Obviously, the answer is an emphatic "no." It would be like someone claiming to be an architect when all they know how to do is drive a nail into a board with only three hits of a hammer. A good skill to have, but that doesn't mean you can design a bridge.
Most of you might be thinking to yourselves, well, duh. But for me hearing this was like a slap to the face. It never even occurred to me that writing and story telling were two totally different things. But now that I knew that they were, I had to ask myself a very horrifying question: "Do I even know what a story IS?" Again, the answer was an emphatic "no." Turns out, that when it came to telling a story, I couldn't write my way out of a wet paper bag with a needle-sharp number two pencil. I mean, what is this "conflict" you speak of? You're telling me that all my stories have to have fist fights? I was clueless. All the things that go into making a story were nothing but vague, abstract concepts to me. All those years my teachers and professors were teaching me how to write, no one bothered to teach me how to tell a story.
Fortunately, I've had some wonderful and patient people sit down with me and explain the basic elements of story telling. Now, I won't go into what makes a story here because, honestly, I'm still learning myself and there are others much more qualified than I who can give you a better understanding (you're reading KFM, so chances are you've already got a head start). But it's just something to keep in mind when you're slaving over your world building or fine tuning the description of your antagonist's handlebar mustache. Good things in their own right, but is there a story? It doesn't matter how detailed and well-crafted your world is, if there's no story, no one will care.
