Pittsburgh: 3 Rivers Screenwriters' Conference · 7:42pm May 23rd, 2016
I just got back from the 3 Rivers Screenwriters' Conference in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. It would've been a lot more useful for me to have posted this before the conference, but I didn't find out about the conference until it had already started, so I only had time to pack up and drive down there. I'm on the screenwriting panel at Bronycon (run by GaryOak), so I ought to learn something about screenwriting. 
This was the first time they held this event. They hope to hold it again next year. Students got in for half-price ($110 for the weekend). Click on the link above and sign up to be on their mailing list to be informed next year. I recommend it. It was a small event; I'd guess there were 20 guest speakers and 100 attendees. I hope they didn't lose too much money.
It was a lot of 1-hour panels (2 panels in parallel every hour) from 9AM to 5pm, and lunches and a party. Do try to have lunch and dinner with somebody else if you go. If you eat alone, you'll probably fail at screenwriting. Some of my notes below, but just a few, bcoz, man, just this took 43 minutes to type out.
You don't have to attend conferences to learn a lot of this stuff, though--just listen to the scriptnotes podcast.
Writing for the Web: Folks producing various web video series (Epic Rap Battles of History, Pittsburgh Dad, Mercury Men, Sorella Sisters) talked about how they did it. They spoke as much about production as about writing, since the audience of writers was more worried about production than about writing. My take: Producing your own web series is too much work unless you have an inherently viral concept.
Using Technology to Fast Forward Your Writing: Software for writers. Talked about
- WriterDuet, a very cool scriptwriting program that's primarily advertised as a Google Docs-like way of letting multiple writers work on the same project simultaneously, but has lots of other features (like reformatting PDF, searching revision history, animating the creation of an entire document), and is a whole lot cheaper than Final Draft
- Fountain, useful for importing/exporting formats
- Courier prime
- in fact just everything John August creates, though unfortunately he doesn't link to them on his website, so I don't know how to find or even list them all
- the screenwriting forum on reddit
- the importance of twitter (ugh)
- readthrough.com, a website that will produce a reading of your Final Draft script
- blacklist.com, a place where you can see what scripts people are buying or talking about
- stage32, "facebook for the indy movie industry"
- Hart Chart, a 2D idea mapper
- simplyscripts.com/ is a site where you can get scripts from
Understanding the Current Indie Film Landscape:
- You can't get a film picked up at Sundance anymore, because the big studios are taking their films to Sundance, and nobody picks up indy films anymore.
- You can get big-name actors for small fees if you give them interesting parts that they can't get in Hollywood
- but you need a casting director who knows people to do that for you
- sometimes big-name actors are more trouble than they're worth, especially ones like Will Ferrell or Tom Hanks who are notorious for rewriting their parts
- avoid the play-or-pay clause that leaves you owing them money if you don't make the movie
- Shooting on an iPhone is not cheap; it's cheaper to shoot on a real camera because post-production is cheaper
How to Take a Meeting
- Always say "Yes" to everything
- If you have to say "No", find a way to phrase it as "Yes, and..."
- A meeting about a script might not really be about that script. Try to get other assignments.
- When people give you bad notes, try to figure out what they really wanted. Eg., one guy had a bank heist script, and got a note asking, "What if the criminals were cowboys?" He figured what it really meant was that the criminals weren't distinctive enough.
Writing for TV: A lot of this was advice on how to get hired as a staff writer for a TV show. The "usual" path involves moving to LA and being a scribe or writer's assistant for a couple of years. Those are scutwork positions that pay $15/hr (barely enough to survive in LA) but keep you in touch with writers. It's weird that they're the track to writing, because they involve things like getting coffee, buying donuts, and scheduling meetings. What I found from talking to writers throughout the conference was that there is no "usual" path; the people I talked to all had lucky breaks or connections. Sorry. There is a weird disconnect in the industry, in that half the time people are saying "If you write a strong script, you'll break in, because everyone is desperate for a strong script," and the other half of time they're talking about the random lucky personal connections they had that let them sell a script. Every success story anybody had was due to some random, freakish social connection to somebody important. So I don't believe the "strong script" myth. Nobody in Hollywood really believes they can identify a strong script. That's why they're always looking at each other & trying to do whatever everybody else is doing.
The Craft of Scene Writing by Jim Mercurio: This was a great talk. Jim presented a number of principles for scenes which may be overly restrictive, but not by a lot.
- A scene is the smallest unit of change in a story.
- If nothing changes, it isn't a scene and shouldn't be in your script.
- Highlighting the change means heightening the contrast by building up to the scene and ending at max contrast.
- This is a bad joke: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side of the road." The part in red kills the joke because it drags on past the contrast in expectations.
- Highlight the change by changing many things at one time. E.g., in a movie, at the moment of a reversal, the movie, camera angle, lens effect may all change.
- A story is a hierarchical organization of changes. Each change is depicted in a scene, but some scenes are there to support a bigger, more-important change in another scene (e.g., the big change at the end of Act 2).
Heroes & Villains: One of the guys who wrote Thor and X-Men: First Class was here. He said smart things, like saying that they based the whole movie around depicting the split between Prof Xavier & Magneto. That made me wonder why I didn't like X-Men 1st class better. I reviewed the plot after getting home. I think the answer is that, while he was conscious of the importance of that relationship, it got, like, I don't know, 10 seconds of screen time. The story was all this stuff about fighting Shaw, and then at the end, the "we must fight the humans / no, let's not" plot got tacked on suddenly. Screen time was not proportional to professed importance.
- Villains think they're heroes
- Both should have their own "hero's quest" path thru the story
- The hero-villain relationship is the most important thing in the story
Visual Writing:
- Avoid still-life descriptions. Unless there's a verb, don't put it in the script. (This is unique to movie aesthetics.)
- Don't say "Joe smiles." Show emotions by action.
- If your character wouldn't act out her emotions, she might not be a good movie character.
Pitch Finale: 3 finalists in the pitch competition gave pitches for their scripts, & had them (their pitches, not their scripts) critiqued.
Complete list of panels:
Family Films
iPhone Filmmaking
Writing Horror -- A Conversation with Eric Red & Alvaro Rodriguez
The Art of Pitching
Adapting the Novel for the Screen
Producers Panel
Independent Filmmaking: Directing and Producing Your Own Script
"Improv"ing Your Writing
Editing: The Last Rewrite
Story Structure
The First 30 Pages
Writing for the Web
Using Technology to Fast Forward Your Writing
The Three Cs -- Concept, Character and Conflict
Special Effects & Animation
Understanding the Current Indie Film Landscape
Documentary Filmmaking
How to Take a Meeting
Independent Filmmaking on a Shoestring Budget
Writing for TV
Writing Dynamic Dialogue
The Craft of Scene Writing
Twists, Turns & Ticking Time Bombs: Writing Action & Suspense
Pitch Competition -- Top Ten
Working with Actors
Heroes & Villains
Directing Your Own Script
Writing Partners, Teams and Groups
The Value of Pre-Production
Producers Panel
Visual Writing
Writing for the Stage
Comedy Sketch Writing
Women in the Industry
STAGE 32 Panel
Pitch Finale
I don't even care about screenwriting, and that all sounds fascinating.
3965836 Seconded, and sending to my Brony friend who does care about screenwriting.
Wow, what a treasure trove of info. Thanks!
For an alternate approach, here's how Michael Bay rewrites everything he directs...
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Seconded. Have you ever read Robert McKee's Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting? I'm not fussed about screenwriting, either, but it's just crammed with advice on storytelling.
This.
That bit about a scene being the smallest unit of change sounds like something that'll work for non-screen writing, too. :D
3966263 Seconding both concepts. The phrase "A scene being the smallest unit of change" made me flash immediately to one of my works in progress and a not-scene in the middle of it that I had been angsting over. It's the exact reason I was uncomfortable with it. There is no change, or information passed to the reader, or progression of the plot in it. Time to get out the chainsaw.
Pretty much all success is due to some personal connection, or at least, includes it as a necessary stage at some point, this is true for every creative industry that includes any kind of gatekeepers, and many not particularly creative ones. The "strong script" myth applies to an astounding number of other things, and is the way everyone convinces themselves that it was their skill and/or talent rather than luck that got them in. I've been there something like three times, myself... :)
Paradoxically, the scutwork positions are often how one gets those personal connections. Unfortunately, unless one is sociable in a particular way, they don't have any positive effects.
I asked a screenwriter here in Australia how he got his start. He went on about the strong script myth and finished with;
"But honestly, for me, it was because I optioned something out to Mel Gibson by sheer luck."
Beautiful.
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I laughed when I saw this, but you know? I've often felt that Luck is being in the Right Place often enough for the Right Time to take hold and offer the Chance You've Been Waiting For.
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Yeah, it isn't really luck if there's a 5% success rate and you try 20 times.
3967103 By your statement: assuming everyone else is also trying 20 times. Also keeping in mind that we're speaking about luck, not whether someone is inherently best (and rewarded as such) for the job at hand.
In terms of the strong script vs. connections debate... I mean, it's probably both.
I know at least twenty really good writers on this site alone, off the top of my head. If we all wrote really strong stories or novels, what are the chances that we're all going to get them published? Probably not good. But the ones who made good connections are the ones who will definitely get them published.
But the reason the "strong script myth" sticks around is that I've learned from experience that no one wants to be told they need to make connections or network. It feels fake and mercenary, even though (as I tried to point out in my blog post on the subject) it's just a more business-like way of putting advice we all know well: Make some friends.