This is what my bedside table looks like. I have not read each of these cover to cover, but I’m slowly working my way through them. The Route 66 books on the bottom? Research. (I heart you Tulsa County Library) And I thought about wedging War and Peace in there to make myself look all ‘learn-ed,’ but decided to be truthful and put Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in there instead.

I’m sure I’ll go into more detail on a few of these in the future, especially Save the Cat! and Stephen King’s On Writing, the two that I’ve found to be the most helpful so far.

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In my free time I should be working on my script. Or on the other projects I’m editing. Or reading up on screenwriting. Or watching pertinent genre films and studying their structure.

But sometimes I procrastinate. And when I do, I’ll tell you about it. Because, more likey than not, whatever is sucking away at my time is something that you might be interested in wasting time with as well. (have you figured out yet that this is just a mildly clever way to blog about stuff other than my movie?)

This week my Procrastination Enabler is Bioshock for the Xbox 360.

First person shooters usually take place in one of two places: some futuristic sci-fi landscape or WWII. Bioshock is set in a 1950s underwater art deco utopia that went to hell in a handbasket. Which is wholly unique.

But the most fascinating part of Bioshock is the moral quandary it forces you into. To progress in the game you need to become more powerful (and that power is addictive - you can shoot lightning out of your fingers or launch swarms of insects from your veins), but the only creatures who possess the energy you need are called Little Sisters. That’s a picture of one up top riding the big dude in the metal diving suit. However, when you find a Little Sister you’re given a choice: you can let her go free and receive a modest amount of power, or you can ‘harvest’ her and get the maximum dosage of energy.

The first time I was offered that choice I started sweating. It literally took me minutes to decide.

Much to my wife’s chagrin, I decided to go to the darkside and get as much power as I possibly could. Now everytime I ‘harvest’ one of the Little Sisters, my wife screams at me from the other room: “You’d better be saving that little girl!” I tell her that I need more powerups. So she comes out and whacks me in the head, using my full name - “Evan Curtis Derrick!” - the way you do when a small child is in trouble.

What can I say? I like the power.

If you own an Xbox, you owe it to yourself to pick up this game. And if you’ve already played it, tell me: did you choose to harvest the Little Sisters or save them?

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This scene looks much more exciting than it actually was.

Previously I had written that when tackling a screenplay, you should absorb as many of the great films in your chosen genre as possible. But over the weekend I learned that watching bad genre examples is equally important, if not more so.

Frantic, Roman Polanski’s 1988 “dread filled thriller” (to quote the marketing blurb), is about a doctor (Harrison Ford) visiting Paris with his wife for a medical conference. Minutes after they check into their hotel room, he takes a shower and she disappears. The rest of the movie involves Ford desperately trying to find her. Not a bad setup, right?

Apart from the fact that the film is dated within an inch of its life (Ennio Morricone, composer of such unforgettable scores as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, phones it in with some nasty ’80s synth), it possesses numerous problems that sabotage the effectiveness of the story. Since Project Echo shares some DNA with Frantic (my main character’s daughter goes missing), it was enlightening to look deeper into the film’s inner workings.

1. The audience needs to care about the main character’s motivation.
   After 10 minutes Ford’s wife exits the picture and remains absent until the end. This is not enough time for the audience to care about her, and Polanski is too busy having Ford chase around Paris to remind us why Ford’s chasing around Paris. With no emotional attachment, we could care less if he finds her or not.
2. The bad guy needs to be really really really bad.
   In these types of films, where an ordinary individual is forced to take drastic measures in order to save someone he loves, the villain needs to be scum-suckingly nasty. Think Alan Rickman in Die Hard. In Frantic the villain doesn’t even show up until the 90 minute mark, and even then he’s as impotent as a piece of rotting plywood. Watching Ford save his wife becomes dull and tedious when his adversary is a couple degrees less dangerous then Big Bird.
3. Pacing is everything.
   Frantic is probably one of the most un-frantic films I’ve ever seen. It holds your interest for a little while, but once Ford goes about the business of actually finding his wife, things slow to a snail’s pace. He goes to the cops, the embassy, the yada yada yada. When you give the audience a mystery like a missing loved one, you have to work hard to keep the intensity up or they’ll get bored.

Lesson for the day: watch just as many bad movies as good ones. They have a lot to teach you.

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There are a lot of different screenwriting ‘rules,’ but the key idea is to write in such a way that you paint a vivid picture of the film in the reader’s mind. That doesn’t mean describing all of the camera angles verbatim (a big no-no, actually), but using enough descriptive language that the director/producer/potential investor who’s reading your screenplay can picture the film in their mind.

I wrote the following scene the other morning. It’s not terrible (well, maybe it is), but it’s not great. Then I began reading William Goldman’s screenplay for Marathon Man. And there, in the opening scene (a car chase that doesn’t end so well) was a completely different way to write action. So I went back and revised my own scene based on the style I had seen in Goldman’s work.

Below are the two examples: my first stab at it and my subsequent revision in the style of Goldman’s work. Take a gander, if you have a moment. Which reads better? Which paints a better picture of the action in your mind? I realize the scene is out of context, but is this a moment that you would want to actually watch? Or perhaps there is a 3rd, better way to write the scene? I know that some of you have actual honest-to-goodness “I’ve written screenplays before” experience, so throw down in the comments section. Don’t be afraid to hurt my feelings - my skin is made of leather, baby.

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In writing a film, it is crucial to have an excellent grasp of the genre you’re working in. How could you hope to write an effective romantic comedy if you’ve never seen Annie Hall or You’ve Got Mail? And how weak would your supernatural horror script be if you’d never seen The Exorcist or The Shining? Not only is it important to understand the structure of the genre - how the plot flows, common character traits, even shooting styles - but it’s also crucial to identify what works, what doesn’t, and where the cliches are. You want to take the best of the genre and leave the worst. My chosen genre is the psychological thriller (that is a genre, right?). Edit: According to Wikipedia, it IS a genre, or at least a sub-genre.

Thankfully, I’ve watched an obscene amount of films in my lifetime, as well as spent a year heavily writing about them, so I have a good foundation from which to work. Films that I’ve identified that share similar traits with Project Echo are Memento, The Game, The Machinist, Jacob’s Ladder, North by Northwest, Stay, The Lookout, Oldboy and Quid Pro Quo. I’ve seen almost all of those films before, but I plan to rewatch them and take copious notes.

So I’m looking for films that contain either 1) confused everymen caught up in conspiracies or 2) main characters with psychological handicaps. Ideally (as in the case of Memento), I plan to incorporate elements of both into Project Echo.

I need additional suggestions! Have any films I should add to the list? Have I missed some incredible psychological thriller that will give me deep insight into the creation of my own screenplay? Sound off in the comments section - I need as much input as I can get!

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Well, not quite. Today is June 15th, the halfway point between when I set the deadline for my first draft and when it’s actually due (August 1st). I should have at least 60 of the 120 pages done. I don’t. Not quite. But i’m not discouraged, as I’ve been solving plotting issues left and right and managed to bang out 12 decent pages over the weekend (no small feat with two small children to take care of and important video games to be played). I’m confident I’ll still have my 1st draft, in all it’s cobbled-together glory, done by August 1st.

That's no stock photo - that pic is REAL. That's right, I am hardcore old-school! Now where's my abacus...

Project Echo is, I believe, coming together nicely. At least it is in my head, the only place it currently resides. Once I let it out into the bright, garish light of the real world, however, it might not be quite as amazing as I hope it is.

And if you haven’t already, sign up for my RSS feed. That way you can follow every single one of my little narcissistic posts. It’ll make me happy.

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Early this morning I broke the story for Project Echo. I’d been writing scenes without an outline or an endgame in place, so it’s nice to finally have a destination in sight.

For some of you it might seem crazy to write without an outline. How do you know what the story is? How do you know where you’re going? How do know if any of it is going to make sense? Aren’t you supposed to come up with an outline first thing?

Well, yes and no. In my personal experience, outlines paralyze me. They’re dull, tedious, and sap all the creative energy out of my soul, leaving a withered husk that keeps wondering why it wants to write screenplays. It was a revalation when I realized I didn’t need an outline; that I could make it up as I went along. That might seem kind of obvious, but to me it was a thunderbolt. It also made writing fun. When I sat down at the keyboard, it was an adventure, not a tedious exercise in filling in the blanks.

So, this morning I managed to solve my endgame.  I don’t have an outline, but I do have a destination now. I have no idea what will happen in the middle - the exciting part of writing is figuring that out - but I know where I’m going.

This all comes with a caveat, of course. In writing this way, my first draft is likely to be a bit hodge-podge, a Frankenstein monster who’s deformities are quite obvious. That is OK. Once I have the story down on paper, I can go back through and see which scenes work, which ones need retooling, and which ones are pure tripe (I expect a lot of those).

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My good friend Ryan Dunlap just completed the first trailer for his feature length film, “Greyscale,” and I thought I would share. Ryan has been quite the inspiration to me because, you know, he’s actually made a movie. No small feat.

Hey, is that me standing next to Doug Jones, looking totally awesome?

Before he began production, I was able to offer some helpful suggestions, and he was gracious enough to take some of my advice when revising his script. But now he knows way more than I do about filmmaking, so I’ll certainly be digging as much advice out of him as I can. You hear that, Ryan? I have you on speed dial.

The film stars Doug Jones (of Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and Fantastic Four fame) and Tim Russ (Star Trek: Voyager, Samantha Who?) among others (hey, even I have a small part! Spoiler: it doesn’t end well for me). It’s a twisty little neo-noir about a private investiagtor who can only see in black & white, and Ryan hopes to release it within the year.

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Well, not really, but a show that I’ve worked on for the past few months is. It’s called 360 Life and it airs on the Trinity Broadcasting Network at 7:30 PM Eastern and 6:30 PM Central. Now, while I normally would not reccomend Christian programming to you (I certainly don’t watch it), this show is actually pretty good. It does have some preaching in it, but it also has loads of style. From custom animation to personal stories to narrative mini-films, there’s a lot of good stuff, and yours truly was the editor.

If you’re still skeptical and don’t believe me, check out one of our animations below. See? That’s pretty daggum awesome, isn’t it?

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