John August

fixed

Test screening The Movie

Charlie's Angels, Film Industry, The Nines

Last Monday was the first time I put The Movie in front of an audience: thirty friends and colleagues recruited to help figure out whether the film was appropriately funny, dramatic, and comprehensible. (Answers: Yes, Yes, and Not So Much. We’re working on that last part.)

Screening a work-in-progress is just as nerve-wracking as it sounds. Going in, you know the film isn’t perfect. You’re projecting low-resolution video, with temp music, temp visual effects, and bad sound. But it’s a crucial step, because it’s impossible for filmmakers to see their movie with fresh eyes. You need an audience to laugh, gasp or murmur in confusion.

The thirty people who watched the cut were incredibly generous with their time and comments, not only staying afterwards to talk, but also filling out cards and emailing additional thoughts. They made the movie significantly better.

But as great as they were, the fact that they were friends and colleagues was a significant detriment. They had an emotional investment: they wanted to like it. They were also largely film-and-television people, hardly a representative cross-section of the movie-going public.

The obvious next step would be to put The Movie in front of a real recruited audience, i.e. strangers.

But I can’t.

The very same internet that makes this site possible makes a real test screening impossible. Or at the least, a very risky proposition.

Odds are, one or more of those recruited strangers would recognize my name, the producers, or the actors involved and decide it would be a really good idea to write in to Ain’t It Cool News or a site like it. Quite a scoop, after all, reviewing a movie where even the premise has been kept hush-hush.

Reviews of test screenings are frustrating for a big studio like Warner Bros., but they’re potentially ruinous for a little movie like ours. Keep in mind: We don’t have distribution yet. We’re hoping to sell the movie after a festival premiere. So if DrkLOrd79 trashes the movie, that sets a bad tone going in. Almost worse would be if DrkLOrd79 loved it and gushed on for pages. We’ve all experienced the disappointment that follows having our expectations set too high.

The friends and colleagues at last Monday’s screening were chosen for their insight and opinion. But more importantly, they were chosen for their discretion.

With one exception, every movie I’ve written has had a traditional recruited audience screening, with 200 or so demographically-mixed young filmgoers circling numbers with little golf pencils. After every screening, we learned important things which made the film better.

And after every screening, someone posted his thoughts on the Internet. It was annoying, but it was inevitable. For CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, I stayed up until 2 a.m. waiting for the first test screening review to show up. Sure enough, it came.

The one film which didn’t have a traditional test screening was CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE. It was fear of internet leaks that kept the studio from bringing in a recruited audience. And let me be clear about the cause and effect: Full Throttle was not untested because it was a bad movie.

Full Throttle was a bad movie because it was not tested.

The premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was the first time I saw Full Throttle with a full audience. As the lights went down, there was palpable enthusiasm, and some real residual love for the first movie. By the time the lights came back up, it was pretty clear we really should have done a test screening.

Part of me fears the same could happen with The Movie. Our fear of internet leaks may keep us from giving it the test it deserves. Lord knows, I don’t want the first time I see it with a real audience to be at Sundance or some other festival. So I’m trying to figure out some middle ground, an audience of trustworthy strangers.

As always, suggestions are welcome.

Turns out, he was busy reconsidering Tyra Banks

First Person, Los Angeles

You know how you can go months without seeing someone, then suddenly, they’re everywhere? This morning as I was getting into my little Prius, screenwriter/neighbor/inconstant blogger Josh Friedman rolled up in the Death Star Escalade to discuss our respective children’s nap schedules in anticipation of a playdate.

Yeah, I said playdate. This is how we roll in the Southside.

Of Hancock Park.

I suspect Josh was taking his family to BLD (“Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner”), the new restaurant that took over where Red used to be, and is pretty much exactly like Red but white instead, and without those Mexican Cokes.

In typing that, I realize that I’ve now lived in L.A. long enough that I expect everyone to share my specific geo-cultural references. Or, more bluntly, I’ve now lived here long enough to stop caring when they don’t. It only takes a New Yorker six months to become this jaded. Los Angeles takes a decade.

Later today, I followed a link to the trailer for Josh’s upcoming movie, The Black Dahlia. I don’t know how he got his name in red in the credit block, but from now on I’m putting that in my contract. I want red and a little box around it.

Upon checking the feeds this evening, I see Josh has finally posted something new on the blog. And while I’d like to take credit for this rare occurrence, the more pressing matter is addressing some corrections/clarifications:

  • My assistant does not bring me breakfast, though he often brings lunch. (However, I do not blog about it.)

  • In daily life, my house is light-filled like a Richard Curtis movie. However, to achieve the look of this on film for The Movie required giant lights and hard gels velcro-ed to all the doors and windows.

As Tyra knows, beauty takes work.

That’s all.

Because really, he should drive a Chrysler LeBaron

QandA, Rights and Copyright, The Nines

questionmarkMy question concerns referencing branded objects in a screenplay. I’ve read that including name-brand references should be avoided in screenplays because you would need legal clearance in order to feature them.

That being said, what if my character drives a Chrysler LeBaron? Can’t I say he drives a beat-up Chrysler LeBaron? And not just as a description, but if it was mentioned in the dialogue as well.

Understandably, name brand references wouldn’t make or break my script, but I feel it adds a nice level of depth and detail to my characters if you know they like Gucci shoes and not fancy Italian boots.

I guess my question is, what are the do’s and don’ts of brand name references?

— Aaron Murphy

In a screenplay, you can do anything. You can have Ronald McDonald shank Elmo with a sharpened Barbie over a pack of Marlboros.

The trouble comes when you’re moving from the printed word to the projected image. The corporations who hold these trademarks and copyrights don’t look kindly on other people profiting off them, even if the usage is not necessarily disparaging.

So, when you set out to make a movie, someone is generally assigned the chore of getting permission to use other people’s copyrights and trademarks. These “permission slips” are called clearances. During the summer of 1993, while I was interning at Universal, this was my job. I helped do clearances for The War and Reality Bites, mostly working on props and set decoration.

How do you get permission? You ask.

A large part of the job is figuring out who to ask. In 1993, the Internet didn’t exist in anything approximating its current form, so my fingers got very fast at dialing New York information (212-555-1212) to track down corporate offices.

Once you get the right person on the phone (or email), you explain what the movie is, why you’re asking, and if they could sign and fax back the attached clearance form. As I mentioned in an earlier article, Nolo Press’s book Getting Permission has templates for clearance forms, and a lot of information about how to handle everything from artwork to music. You can also see a generic version of what we used for The Movie here: .pdf or .doc.

My assistant Chad handled the majority of the clearances for The Movie, mostly artwork and books featured as props. It’s tedious work, but not particularly brain-draining. (In fact, I wrote my first screenplay while doing clearances.)

How do you know what needs to be cleared, and what you can just get away with using/saying?

I fall back on my standard advice: as a writer, just do what’s best for the script. If that’s Gucci shoes and Chrysler LeBarons, knock yourself out. Don’t worry about phantom problems. Rather, focus on writing the best screenplay you can.

Down the road, when your great script gets ready to become a great movie, there will be producers and other clever people to help you stress out over clearances.