Is the I-Pad a New Medium?

It's easy to dismiss the I-pad and I-phone as just another way to watch traditional media like movies, TV series and even webisodes.  However, some serious and well-established filmmakers think that these devices will allow them to tell stories in an entirely new way.  One such visionary is my friend and collaborator Neal Edelstein (producer of The Ring and Mulholland Drive) who spoke to me over breakfast about why his company Hooked Digital Media is developing content that will be delivered exclusively through free apps available at the Apple App Store.  He firmly believes that I-pads and I-phones are mediums in and of themselves.

A Magic Window

First of all, he argued, people interact with the i-pad in a way that is fundamentally different than a television, a movie screen or even a computer monitor.  This was the initial challenge and opportunity for Edelstein, who has already had success in both mainstream and independent movies.  "There is a greater level of intimacy when people hold these devices in her hand like a book, touch the screen with their fingers, put on headphones, and watch content while sitting alone in a dark room." The experience is more immersive, more one-on-one between the viewer and character, especially when, as in Edelstein's project Haunting Melissa, the character gazes directly out of the screen and talks to viewer herself.  (See: "Haunting Melissa" Both Scares and Innovates)

"People carry these devices with them everywhere they go and they [the devices] become like magic windows into and out of their lives.  They're personal. They encourage people to imagine what's beyond the frame. And they create a theater of the mind."

The Storytelling App

However, the differences between I-pad and television don't really start to emerge until digital media is bundled and delivered by an app.  Far more than a simple media player, each app, as Edelstein conceives it, is designed for each particular story, and so becomes a story telling tool that is as important as cinematography or sound design.

"The app controls when the viewer gets content and creates a clean viewing environment - a kind of screening room - that is specific to the story"  It allows the storyteller to bundle a range of elements - photographs, prose, video, music, and other media - and break up and reassemble the story in unique ways.  Individual chapters of content can be any length - sixty seconds or sixty minutes - and overall projects can be open ended. "We break up the story in a way that creates excitement and anticipation for each upcoming chapter, and present it in a way that takes advantage of the technology."

This created unique challenges as the structure of the project was developed in the screenplay. (See: Writing Haunting Melissa: An Interview with Andrew Klavan)

Dynamic Story Elements

For me, "dynamic story elements" is where our conversation gets really exciting.  Edelstein is talking about "much, much more than simply cutting up a movie into pieces and stuffing it into an app."  In his first project, episodes noticeably and intriguingly change upon second viewing. In future apps, story elements (image, sound, text) could change depending on what time it is, where the viewer is, what they are doing and who they are.  A scene could be told from multiple points of view, switching every time the viewer re-watches it, further drawing her into the world. The app itself can evolve with audience feedback over the course of the series, allowing the entire project to constantly respond to viewer habits and behavior.

And, ultimately we are just talking about the state of the medium today.  With the pace of technological change, it's clear that filmmakers' projects will become more non-linear, more interactive, more dynamic and more like an alternate reality game than traditional media.  The place where these technologies and storytelling will merge is likely to be the screen that you carry with you every day, the screen on which you already spend the most time reading, watching, photographing, communicating and interacting.

The storytelling itself may remain the same, Edelstein summed up, but "the environment of an i-pad app allows storytellers a new set of tools with which to tell them."

(Download Haunting Melissa)

Writing Haunting Melissa: An Interview with Andrew Klavan

A major thesis of this blog is "Screenwriting means writing for anything with a screen." As many of you know, Haunting Melissa is a project developed exclusively for the iPhone and iPad, and unlike a movie or television program, it has been designed specifically for the way viewers interact with these devices. Its chapters and chapter fragments are released in sporadic and unexpected ways. Episodes are not the same upon second viewing. The storytelling is so inventive that many reviewers have suggested that director Neal Edelstein (producer of “The Ring” and “Mulholland Drive") has "re-invented filmmaking." (See: App-Only Horror Movie “Haunting Melissa” Challenges Traditional Storytelling)

Intriguingly for both filmmakers and screenwriters, Edelstein told Tech Crunch that his company Hooked Digital Media is funding a wide slate of these kind of projects. “We want to empower creative filmmakers to use these devices and this technology. We will help them with that and financing,” says Edelstein. “I think it’s an interesting time in Hollywood because not as many films are getting made, but people are looking for different opportunities. We’re perfectly positioned to take advantage of that.”

I'm always on the lookout for ways for screenwriters to get their stories told. But how does one write the screenplay for an App? 

Andrew Klavan

In order to find out, I spoke to the screenwriter of Haunting Melissa, Andrew Klavan. Andrew, also known by his pen name Keith Peterson, is an writer of mystery novels, psychological thrillers, and screenplays for "tough-guy" mystery films. Two of Klavan's books have been adapted into motion pictures: True Crime (1999) and Don't Say A Word (2001). As readers of Genre Hacks know, I encourage writers to work their craft in a variety of mediums, whether novels or teleplays, blockbusters or webisodes.  Andrew is in many ways the model of a writer successfully adapting to radical changes in the entertainment business and emerging technology, so I had A LOT of questions for him:

You have written novels, screenplays and teleplays. How was writing a serialized story for an app different?

It was very different. For one thing, it used elements from all those forms, but was identical to none of them, which was pretty interesting right there. So, for instance, you had the time for character development you get in television but, because the story was more compact and had a definitive ending, you also had the coherent character arc that's more common in a novel or a film. Because the episodes were sometimes relatively short, you had the kind of story density you get in movies, but the overall story was again more novel-like in length. Then, of course, you had those fragments and what Neal calls "dynamic story elements," things that actually changed within the story. That wasn't like anything else I can think of, but I tried to incorporate them into the plot so they'd have story-integrity, and not just feel like add-ons.

There are elements in your screenplay for Haunting Melissa that one would never find in traditional TV or movies…the recorded phone messages and web-chats in particular. Why did you decide to include these?

The intimacy of the medium mostly. You have someone sitting there with his iPad or iPhone - it's a very intimate experience. It's still something you watch, like TV, but it's just more like the experience of reading, just you and the story one on one. It sometimes made me nervous to do things that weren't strictly visual or film-like, but under the nervousness, I was pretty sure it would work because of the close relationship between the viewer and his device. Plus it gave us new ways of scaring people, scares no one had ever really used before. You know, a haunted social media feed - that's pretty cool. You can't really do that as well anywhere else.

Sound design is extremely important to the experience of Haunting Melissa. To what extent did you consider sound while writing.

Only a bit of that was me. As far as the writing goes, again, I depended on the intimacy for sound effects. I figured people would be wearing earphones and so on, so I knew I could do pretty subtle things: the whispering under the music and static and so forth. But so much of the sound stuff is down to Neal and his tech magicians too. I mean, this is true in any scary movie - sound is fifty percent of the effect - much more than the average audience member realizes - and that's not something a writer can supply. Neal was endlessly creative in providing a frightening sound atmosphere and he could take even ordinary moments and make them nerve wracking. I remember visiting him in the editing room, seeing how hard he worked on that stuff - it was amazing. I'll take some credit for the plot points that depend on sound, but that overall ambience was created after my role was largely over.

In what ways did fiction writing inform the way you conceived and structured Haunting Melissa?

It might piss some people off for me to say it, but it's just true: novel writing is far and away the hardest form of fiction writing and the one that, done well, requires the greatest number of skills and the greatest depth of skill. With the possible exception of cheap, jump-out-at-you boo-scares (although actually Joe Hill does those brilliantly in his novel Heart-Shaped Box), almost everything that's in film is or can be in novels, and there are some things in novels that don't appear anywhere else. Sure, some people can't translate their novel-writing skills to the various visual forms because they just don't get the structure or can't make the leap from read dialogue to spoken dialogue or whatever. But if I can say this without sounding too much like a pompous ass (maybe just a little like a pompous ass!) if you can write a good novel, you have a lot of tools with which to build any other story well.

Screenwriters are used to writing in tradition three-acts for movies, or 4 Acts with a teaser for hour drama. Haunting Melissa seems to explode those conventions. How did you structure Haunting Melissa?

Man, that's a smart question. I hate those! Make it stop! No, seriously, that was the thing that required the most thought: the structure. It wasn't TV and it wasn't film and it wasn't a novel, so how do you orchestrate the highs and lows, the climaxes and exposition and so on, at the same time drawing it out while making every moment compelling? I finally settled on an extremely modified three act structure with each act containing several inner acts like Russian boxes or like the spiral structure of some of those old epic poems. But then, because I knew the act movements would be so stretched out, I tried to attach each one to an idea, you know, so the audience could keep something in mind as we moved toward it. Neal had come to me with the idea of a girl in a house with a locked door, so I used that: Each act is keyed around the opening of a door, and each door leads us deeper into the mystery. I'm really proud of the structure, since I had to invent it and I love inventing stuff! But that said, I've got a totally new structure to use next time out that's much more complex and, in my humble O, even cooler.

How many pages was the Haunting Melissa script. How did the time and effort compare to writing in other forms (feature, TV, novel, etc.)

I can't remember what the page count was on my last draft - 130? 140? Something like that. The draft before that was much longer because I wanted to make sure there was enough material, then I slashed it back because it was just too long. It was harder to write than a movie, because of the length but also because of the thought that had to go into the structure. It wasn't as hard as a novel. Nothing is as hard as a novel. Calculus. Brain surgery. Climbing Everest using only your teeth. A novel is harder than all of them. So this was a bit more difficult than a regular screenplay, but easier than a novel. About the same as brain surgery - at least the way I do it!

How specifically does Haunting Melissa exploit the genre conventions of horror?

Well, this is the part about it I love. If Neal had come to me and said, "I have this idea for an app, and it goes beep when you press this button and bleep when you press that one," I would've been completely uninterested. But Neal loves ghost stories as much as I do, and his idea was that this was a way to tell a traditional ghost story in an original, non-traditional way. I mean, between the intimacy of the medium and Neal's innovative ideas for story delivery and dynamic elements, it was almost like we could turn your ipad into a haunted device, so you wouldn't just hear the story or see it, you'd almost live it. Neal and I also both share a love of a certain kind of eerie atmosphere, the shadow in the hall, the thing you see out of the corner of your eye. We're both less interested in shock and gore and boo-scares (though we'll use them if they work) than we are in things that are scary to their core, you know, ideas so scary that even when you just describe them, they make your flesh creep. Neal and I have worked on several projects together, and sitting around with him saying, "This is scary, this isn't, this is fresh, I've seen this before, how can we push this envelope?" is always one of my favorite parts of the job.

Would you write another app? What kind of story do you would best match the platform?

In a heartbeat, sure. I would say the platform lends itself most readily to genre, but then I'm a genre writer. Still, ghost stories, mysteries and eerie science fiction seem to me the best way to take advantage of a genuinely new technology, you can see the way the new elements can become a part of stories like that. Drama, romances, sweeping adventure — not so much, you know. But then, if a writer sets his mind to it, who knows? It's a brand new medium. It could be boundless.

Haunting Melissa is available for free download the Apple App Store. Watch the teaser below...

What if they all did it like Amazon?

For all of you interested in writing TV or developing TV, this is a very interesting development from Roy Price and Amazon.com. What would happen if all networks and premium cable allowed their audiences to choose their pilots?  Would that be a good thing?  How would you feel if YOUR pilot was chosen by an audience instead of executives and focus groups?

Amazon creates online streaming TV with new production arm

Amazon has recently released 14 new pilot episodes on its website created by its Amazon Studios unit and the e-commerce site wants viewers to choose which previews the company should turn into full-on, season-long shows. The 14 offerings range from well-known Hollywood entities, like the Sony spin-off Zombieland, to lesser-known creations a la the comedy Those Who Can't, which was generated from an online submission entry.

What's the creative process behind these pilots? How did ideas get the green light? How has response been so far?  Listen to Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios: HERE

"Haunting Melissa" Both Scares and Innovates

First watch the trailer...

Haunting Melissa is a new kind of viewing experience.  It's not a film (although it was created by the producer of Mulholland Drive and The Ring.) It's not a TV series (although it is serialized, appearing over the course of days, weeks and months.) And, it certainly is not a bundle of webisodes (though it is delivered by an app made exclusively for the I-pad and I-phone.)  Watching Haunting Melissa doesn't feel quite like any of these things.  It's something innovative, exciting... and very, very scary.

Now go download the free App:  Haunting Melissa

As a friend, collaborator  and  filmmaker with a burning interest in new technologies and new distribution models, I had a chance to observe Neal Eddlestein conceive, create and deliver Haunting Melissa.  Over the next couple days I will be interviewing Neal, and blogging about what this project could mean for independent filmmakers looking for new ways to tell stories, reach audiences and monetize their content.

As a fan of the uncanny tone and intensity of David Lynch as well as the surreal supernatural horror of The Ring, I couldn't be more drawn to the story itself.  I was able to get a sneak peak at some of the later sequences, and they truly have the unsettling quality of both a hazy nightmare and a decent into madness.

Interviews, discussion and analysis to come.  Stay tuned...

Melissa Herself

Original Filmed Content For Apps

This could very well be a brand new storytelling medium, and an opportunity for both film and TV writers/producers/directors to reach audiences in an entirely new way. My friend, collaborator, and fellow Quora contributor Neal Edelstein is leading the revolution. Check out the link below...

Hooked Digital Media Launches; Will Produce Original Filmed Content For Apps

Tickets to Visionfest

I have a limited number of free tickets for this year's Visionfest to give away to fans of my blog, Genre Hacks. If you'd like to go this Tuesday night (link below), please contact me at genrehacks@gmail.com

                                            2012

 

2012 will be our 15th year of VisionFest, Filmmakers Alliance annual screening and celebration bringing together the best of LA’s independent film community!

The evening begins with the presentation of the VISION AWARD to an established filmmaker whose artistic ambition and consistent filmmaking excellence provides artistic inspiration to emerging filmmakers all around the world.  Past recipients includeMIke Figgis, Terry Gilliam, Wim Wenders, Allison Anders, Alexander Payne, David O. Russell, Werner Herzog, Mark and Michael Polish, Kevin Smith, Ted Hope, Nicolas Winding Refn and last year's recipient, Christine Vachon. 

This year’s Vision Award recipient is Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon.

If you don’t know him then you certainly will very soon courtesy of Hollywood (Kim Jee-woon is currently working on his first English-language project with Arnold Schwarzenegger called “Last Stand”); you may know him from “A Tale of Two Sisters,” which Terrence Rafferty of The New York Times calls “one of the best, and most heartbreaking , weird-girl horror movies ever made.” Rafferty also states that it “is so cunningly constructed-it’s as tricky, in its way, as Alain Resnais’ ‘Last Year at Marienbad.’”

Although Kim Jee-woon’s cinema does include the shocking and horrifying, his list of credits also includes comedy, noir and even the western. “I want to work with a wide range of genres because it gives each film a different cinematic energy,” Kim states.

Jee-woon’s eclectic oeuvre never fails to thrill and enthrall. His is an unfailingly distinctive vision that expresses itself in every frame of every genre he’s tackled...or mixed genre he’s created. FA is honored to be a part of his introduction to mainstream American audiences.

 

 

The presentation of awards will be followed by a program of some of the best short films produced in the previous year. This year, we opened up submissions to filmmakers nationally. Ironically, the theme that emerged from the films selected is:

"THE LA LIFE!"

Each film, directly and indirectly paints a small portrait of daily life in Los Angeles. See if you recognize your own story among them.

We are pleased to announce the following films:

Future Days (10:00) Directed by Clay Zimmerman

Mayfly (24:25) Directed by Aimee Graham

The Gaskettes (14:00) Directed by Jason House

Another Bullet Dodged (13:11) Directed by Landon Zakheim

Also, the program will be preceded by a special music video presentation:

A House A Home (07:00) directed by Daniel Fickle.

Total program length: 69 mins.

The evening finishes with a high-energy party in the Egyptian Theater courtyard catered by some of Los Angeles' best restaurants.

PARKING INFO:

The Egyptian no longer validates for the Hollywood & Highland complex parking lot or any other lot. There are several area parking lots nearby that charge various amounts.

Read Meter signs carefully. Parking regulations have changed and much of the parking is one hour only and meters are enforced until 8pm or later on side streets near the theatre. There is also free street parking on Selma (south of Hollywood Blvd.) and other area side streets.

Cherokee & Selma (south of Hollywood Boulevard).

South of Hollywood Blvd. there are attended Grant & Classic Parking lots on McCadden Place and on Las Palmas. Parking is $8-$20 flat rate maximum. They do NOT offer validation to Egyptian Theatre customers. There is often $5 parking in area lots a block east of the Egyptian. Always verify if you are paying a flat rate or hourly before parking.

Take Metro!

Metro provides Bus and Rail transportation to the Egyptian Theater located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, walking distance from the Metro Red Line Hollywood/Highland Station. For your best route or more info, visit the Metro Trip Planner or call (323) Go Metro or (323.466.3876).

VISIONFEST 2012 SPONSORS INCLUDE:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you say to a friend when you don't like his or her screenplay?

This question and answer was originally posted on Quora.

Usually, in any screenplay there are at least a few elements - a character, a sequence, a particular line of dialogue - that you do like.  Begin with those and give them special emphasis. Then give a few simple reasons why the screenplay wasn't for you.  Don't give too many specifics unless asked for more detailed feedback.  It also helps to emphasize that your's is just one opinion.  Perhaps you just aren't a fan of that particular genre.

In the end, its best to be honest but gentle.  Don't say, "I didn't like it because..." Instead say "it didn't work for me because..." Frame your response around the work itself, not the writer.

If your friend is a professional screenwriter he or she may want more detailed feedback.  A professional should be able to take negative feedback, and if you sugar coat it, you're doing nobody any favors.  Tell them specifically which elements you didn't like.  Perhaps you didn't care about the main character.  Perhaps you didn't find certain parts funny (or scary, or dramatic) in the way s/he intended. Be as specific as possible.

Above all, don't try to pretend you liked it by using slippery phrases. Personally, I know readers didn't love my work when they say things such as...

1. "It's interesting." Have you ever seen a blurb on a movie add that read, "IT"S INTERESTING!" Film is an emotive medium. "Interesting" means I've failed.

2. "The writing is really good." This tells me that the reader enjoyed my grammar, sentence structure, and descriptions of sets.  Unfortunately, they didn't like the story, characters or theme.

3. "We have something just like it in development." This is what studio executives say when they are passing on my script. "Something just like it" could mean they have a project that also features a young male protagonist who lives in the United States.

4. "Great work! Thank you so, SO much." Danger! This is what your employer says when you are about to get replaced by another writer. Beware sincere praise of your work ethic and heartfelt gratitude for your efforts.  They are about to get rid of you.

How do I know when somebody genuinely loves the script?  It's easy.  You can see his or her eyes light up. They recount parts of the story they liked best, in the same way they recount their favorite moments in a great film or a fantastic TV episode. "I really liked the part when..!  

When studio executives like my work they say, "I LOVE it!!! I just have a few notes..."