Editing: Structure

Posted on October 13, 2016 by D Standard 1

So you’ve gone through and tightened your plot, strengthened your characters, confirmed that the dialogue is realistic, and shaped your world until it was so tangible you forgot you didn’t live there. Congratulations! You have a solid second draft! Feels good, doesn’t it?

Charlie dancing

Now it’s time… to create the (drum roll) THIRD DRAFT. We know what you’re thinking: wait, shouldn’t I be taking a break? Reconnecting with Netflix and friends? Or just Netflix?

editing-structure-netflix

Sorry, but no. You’re on a roll and you need to keep rolling.

Editing requires discipline and momentum. Whether you’re working on it eight hours a day every day, or during your forty-five minute lunch break Monday through Friday, or grabbing 20 minutes before your commute every day, you’re doing some serious work. Don’t stop now.

Serendipitously, your third draft will be all about momentum. Does your story have it? Is there a pace and/or structure that’s keeping the reader turning the page?

This is where you have to make some hard decisions about the structure of your story. Are you going to follow the classic formats (three act structure, eight point arc, etc.) or follow your own? Are you going to have a change in narration or setting with each chapter/break? Are you going to have one chapter flow into the next, or end each break on a cliffhanger, so when your reader says they’re just going to read one more chapter before bed, they wind up finishing the book at three in the morning — loving and kind of hating you when their alarm goes off the next morning?

While it’s tempting to fall back on classic structures and forcing your story into a mold, we recommend reading through what you have so far first. Chances are you’ll see some kind of structure already peeking through. It may be close to a classic format or it might be something completely new. Do what feels right for the story. The key is that it’s consistent throughout. Once you decide on your structure, make sure the work follows the shape from beginning to end. You shouldn’t ask your readers to fight to stay in your story — especially at three in the morning.

Once your story has a firm shape, like everything in life, it’s all about the details. You’ll need to go into every arc, scene, act and/or chapter and make sure they each achieve something that furthers the plot — whether it establishes an aspect of the setting, a facet of your character(s) or moves the action forward. Break down your story into smaller stories and make sure that they are essential.

If they aren’t essential, you have to either give them more depth, or cut them loose.

edit-structure-rose

Just remember, if you really love a scene and desperately want to keep it, chances are it’s trying to say something but isn’t quiet there yet. Work on it, find its meaning and let it shine through.

Your number one task is to be brutally honest with yourself, though; if you can’t make it work, no matter how much you love it and how good it is on its own, it will only hurt the whole piece. Chocolate is amazing, but not on a steak. So if a scene doesn’t fit, even if the writing is impeccable, cut it. But paste it to a new document.

Who knows, it could be the pivotal ingredient to the second course/sequel!*

*Finish what you’re working on now first though!

Making It Big In Shorts (and other books to read)

Posted on October 8, 2015 by D Standard 1

While you’re thinking about making a short, or as you’re writing one, but definitely before you get into postproduction, it’s a good idea to get to know the world of short films. While you can find a ton of info online, there are some books out there that provide very useful looks at the short film industry and ecosystem.

Two we’d particularly recommend are —

Making It Big In Shorts, by Kim Adelman (2009):

Making It Big In Shorts

And Short Films 101, by Frederick Levy (2004):

Short Films 101

Some of the practical info they discuss is out of date, sure — some of the websites they mention no longer exist, and technology is already WAY ahead of when the books were written. Like, so far ahead. Like Star Trek level. There are chapters on negative cutting and film processing, for example, which likely just won’t apply to you anymore, with your digital camera or iPhone and Final Cut. (Somewhere, Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan are weeping)

However, both books are JAMMED with fascinating, insightful stories into how many different directors made their first few shorts, and translated them into movie careers. Inspirational!

Both books also contain immensely practical guides to writing, casting, preproduction and shooting short films, as well as ways to budget effectively, editing, and, of course, submitting to festivals. Well worth checking out.

More generally, we’d also recommend a couple of other books just for sheer getting-it-done inspiration. First up, Robert Rodriguez’s brilliant classic, Rebel Without A Crew. It’s the story of how the filmmaker, now known for Sin City, From Dusk Til Dawn, and the Spy Kids movies, went out and made his first movie, El Mariachi, pretty much on his own, for $7000 (worth noting: that’s a lot less than some of the shorts mentioned in the other two books!). It took Sundance by storm, and made his career.

Rebel Without A Crew

The book really gets into the nitty-gritty details of how Rodriguez took matters into his own hands, worked out what he could film that was around him, who he knew that he could cast, and what equipment he realistically had access to. Pretty much everything he says can apply to you as you work out what your short will be, who will be in it, and how you’ll shoot it. It’s a great example of how to think practically, and make something for you. For more on Rodriguez and his super-practical approach to just getting out there and making movies his own way, check out his interview on the always inspiring Nerdist Podcast right here. It’ll get you fired up!

Lastly, we must recommend Felicia Day’s WONDERFUL book, You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost):

You’re Never Weird On The Internet (Almost)

Did we mention it’s WONDERFUL? Not only do you find out how she became the awesome nerd/geek/gamer legend that she is today (it’s basically her origin story), but there is also a huge amount of detail about how she motivated herself to write and shoot The Guild, the epically brilliant online series that truly set her career in motion (it’s had 300 million online views to date!). She made her own destiny by writing the perfect script for her strengths as an actress, but also one that could easily be shot on an almost nonexistent budget in her own house. The story of how she wrote and made 70 episodes across six seasons of The Guild alone makes this worth buying. Luckily, there’s a whole lot more inspiration where that came from, making this book indispensable for any kind of creative person. Buy it! And then watch The Guild if you haven’t already!

Outside of these books, of course you need to hit Google. Look for interviews with filmmakers about their early experiences, look for blogs from people who have made shorts (oh wait, like this one — go you!), and do your research. Even though most of what you’re going to learn will happen during the process of making and editing your short, the more you know going in, the better.

How to make a short movie: The Real Quinn Hardy

Posted on September 17, 2015 by D Standard 1

This summer, we wrote, directed and edited a short movie called The Real Quinn Hardy, about an aspiring singer-songwriter who thinks she’s about to make it to the majors. When it all goes wrong, she digs deep to write a song that she hopes will change everything.

It all started back in April, in Nashville, at the Bluebird Cafe, where inspiration struck in the middle of eating a black bean burger, forcing us to actually stop eating (damn it though the burger was SO GOOD, the muse does not respect the burger) and start scribbling the first few ideas, beats and lines of dialogue.

Later that night (after an AWESOME Bluebird set by the way — shoutout to Jessica Roadmap!), we pretty much had a first draft. We spent a month polishing and rewriting it, because all writing is really rewriting, then a month in preproduction where we cast our brilliant and wonderful actors (Rachel Keefe, Ana-Lisa Gunn, Brian Gallagher and Brittany Kleban), storyboarded it, designed the sets, and wrote the song too (which our fantastic lead actress Rachel also sang!).

Then, yikes! We shot it. D went full Spielberg, while A basically ran the set. It was awesome.

Two kick-ass actors: Rachel Keefe and Brittany Kleban

Two of our kick-ass actors: Rachel Keefe and Brittany Kleban

11 hours, 3 scenes, 70 shots later…

…it was time to edit.

So, we edited. And edited. And edited. And six weeks later (glossing over Apocalypse Now levels of insanity), we had a short movie.

Like, we made a thing, guys. It’s real!

We learned SO MUCH from this experience.

The most important, practical thing? Write what you can reasonably shoot with the resources that you have. Think about who you might be able to cast (friends, family, nonunion local actors, your super famous A-list third cousin), what kind of props you can scrounge together, where you can shoot, and then base your story around that. Yes, spaceships would be cool. Couple of dinosaurs? Obviously awesome. Superheroes who can fly? Hell yeah. But, realistically, it’s more likely to be people drinking coffee. Which is FINE –two people talking in a room can be beautiful, epic, hilarious, devastating… As long as you write it that way!

No less a filmmaker than Judd Apatow summed up his entire filmography as exactly that — people sitting around talking. You could say the same thing about Cameron Crowe (the brilliantly mind-bending Vanilla Sky aside).

It’s all in the HOW, not the WHAT.

The what is “people talking.” The how is the kind of people, the subjects they talk about (and around), and where they’re talking. Are they in a cafe, on a space station, arguing about comic books, dealing with an alien invasion (you know, the usual short movie topics).

The question you need to ask yourself is how can you make your people talking interesting? What’s the hook? What’s the thing about your story that is purely you. The thing only you could do in that moment? Because there is something — you just need to find out what it is. Felicia Day was a hardcore gamer when she started writing her groundbreaking web series The Guild — it’s people talking, but the hook was gamers talking about gaming.

In our case, we love music, and we write music, and we were SUPER INSPIRED by the awesomeness that is Nashville. So we based our story around a songwriter.

Rachel Keefe as Quinn Hardy

Also important!! Don’t worry about whether you have expensive cameras, a crew, or access to all your dream locations. In the end, you have to find a way to make it happen on your terms, with what you have in front of you. If you can’t shoot in a real cafe, dress a room to look like one. If you don’t have RED cameras, use a regular camera, or even your phone. Make whatever you’re using work for you in the context of the story. Write the scene or the movie, find some actors, feed them, let them do what they do best while you point your camera at them. Then edit it together and…

Over the next few months we’ll be posting regularly in a lot more detail about every stage of making a short, from concept to script to preproduction to shooting to postproduction and beyond.

But for now, we’ll leave you with this. We didn’t want to sit around thinking about why no one has offered us the next Star Wars movie (side note: Lucasfilm, please offer us the next Star Wars movie) — we wanted to make something — so we made something.

And you can too.