SAMPLE PAGE

Here is a sample page from the BLOOPS CEREAL commercial. Written in the spirit of the early Jay Ward CAP'N CRUNCH commercials we all know and love.



It's interesting how out of place a page can be when it is removed entirely from it's context of what comes just before and just after.

OH YEAH, THE OUTLINE...

Oopsy...in my excitement of the Andrew Stanton presentation I realized that my next post was supposed to be about putting all of this together into an outline. My bad.

As you can see to the right I have completed the outline. It came out to around twelve pages. Not bad. It's a quick read with enough information to get across story, plot, character etc. I have read a bunch of outlines and for the most part they can be boring. Lots of information. I try to make mine a fun read. Give a sense of the tone of the movie but not so much detail and frills that it takes away from the purpose of the outline: Executive Approval.

After I was satisfied with where the cards were on the big board I sat down in front of it with my laptop and started to write. I don't want to say transcribe, because that would mean that everything on the board was perfect. Far from it. While I write I try not to look at the board. Instead, I just write from memory. This serves me two purposes. One, it allows me to write in a more story telling fashion and not so "card to card" feeling. And two, if I am writing and forget a card but the story still works it tells me that maybe that story point or idea wasn't necessary to the movie. So out it goes. Kind of a natural editing process. Granted, it could be my terrible memory and I forgot to write an important plot point or character arc, in which case, I review all the cards once I am done and double check cards against outline.

The outline, like a script, will go through many rewrites. My first pass is just to get all of the information out. Then, I can go back through paragraph by paragraph and line by line. I might look at a paragraph and see if there is a more entertaining way to get the point across or perhaps tell the same information in less words.

I like to give my outline act breaks as well as a mid-point header and also number each scene or sequence. I also try to break up paragraphs into short chunks so there is more white space on the page much like one might only have two or three lines of description in a screenplay. Makes it open and airy and less daunting and less dense of a read.

The screenwriting team of TERRY ROSSIO and TED ELLIOT have a great website called WORDPLAY. It has a bunch of great columns on screenwriting and also one on WRITING TREATMENTS AND OUTLINES. I recommend checking it out and maybe even printing out the columns and including them in your arsenal of "how-to" material.

Until next time,
Chris

NEXT UP (AGAIN): COMIC CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

THE CATCH 22 OF OUTLINE/CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

I had been having trouble with my main character and his involvement in the plot of the story I sweated so much in creating. Every trait I gave him seemed to negate my story. It was like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. He was also less interesting and less funny than the secondary characters. I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure this out and then I had the serendipidous opportunity to attend a presentation by the amazing ANDREW STANTON of PIXAR fame!

Andrew said a lot of amazing things (if you ever get a chance to go to his presentation or even get a DVD of the event I highly recommend it!), but the one thing that stood out to me since it was foremost on my mind was regarding character and story. He spoke of the story and plot giving you information on who your main character should be. I was feeling pretty good because that's exactly how I was working mine. Then he said some interesting things about developing character. Most of which I was doing as well. I was two for two with this guy. Then he said something that floored me. He said that developing and getting to know your character will ultimately change your story and you have to be willing to throw away all those amazing scenes that you created if your character doesn't fit in them. LIGHTBULB!!! I realised that I was so married to my story that I didn't allow my character to inform me on how the story should change.

Needless to say I went home and reworked my main character without considering the story. I am happy with how he is coming out and even more happy as to how he is changing the story. I am sad to see certain scenes go away because they don't fit anymore but conversely i am extremely happy that the scenes that stayed as well as the new scenes are character driven and not driven solely by the plot. And isn't that what we are all after?

So, the catch 22 is that developing your story will inform you of who your main character is and developing your main character will tell you that your story is wrong.

Best,
Chris

NEXT UP: COMIC CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

INDEX REDUX

As I stated in the previous post this index card process makes it easy to take a step back and look at your entire movie. It also makes it easier to rework it. It is much easier to take a sequence (a few cards) and shuffle it around on the board to a place where it works better. You can even remove a few cards and see if a sequence or scene is even working within your movie. If you don't miss the cards then it probably doesn't belong in your story. A helpful tool is to use different colored cards. You can use one color for emotional beats, another for plot and another for scene headings, etc. I used different colors like a revision mode on Final Draft. One color for every time I sat down and made changes. I started with blue, moved to white, then pink, green and purple. As you can see from the picture in my previous post, there was a lot of of different colors and not much blue left, but that's okay because it is so much easier to write a few words on a card than a few paragraphs of an outline/treatment or worse yet, many pages of a script. Better to get it right now than wrong later. I really do recommend trying this out.

Best,
Chris

Next up: Putting it all together into an outline.

INDEX CARDS...

I certainly didn't invent this technique and I am sure a lot of people use it. Before I go into this process I want to back up and describe how I got to this point. As I said in the previous post there are loads of books out there on the craft of screenwriting. Believe me when I say I have probably read most of them. I think a lot of it was out of procrastination but some of it was to gleen little bits of information. I recommend having at least the basic overall story in your mind when reading these books because as you read something in the book it might spark an idea or direction you hadn't thought of. There are two books (not really books since I got them off the internet) that helped me the most.

The first of the two was THE EIGHT SEQUENCE STRUCTURE. I found that this book really helped in the overall structure of my story. It helped me keep the plot focused and it also put a 90 minute screenplay into 8 bite-sized chunks or as Chris Soth puts it: "mini-movies." Having worked in television animation for many years I got used to working/writing 11 minutes at a time, so his book was perfect for me. 8 eleven minute cartoons equals an 88 minute movie! This is not to say that each "mini-movie" is exactly 11 minutes long. A trick I realised was that if you make your first sequence the longest (it is the most important one since this is where you set up the plot of your movie and all of the main characters) and gradually make the subsequent sequences shorter you get a built-in pacing that becomes more frantic by the end of your movie. Chris' book is well written and easy to read. Again, with my story in mind, I took notes as I read, writing down any ideas that his chapters may have sparked.

The other "book" that I found the most helpful was THE HERO'S JOURNEY. We are all aware of Joseph Campbell's amazing work, but I found Kal Bashir's version very helpful and almost magical. Again, with story in mind (with help from Chris Soth), I was able to follow his "journey" of the hero and apply it to mine. Anywhere I was having trouble I found that this work almost always answered the call. I felt like I was cheating sometimes, like I was looking in the back of my math book for answers. But if you go through any great story you will find the same steps. And even though the steps are exactly the same, it is up to the writer (as well as the rest of the visionary team) to make them different, fresh and exciting.

Okay, now back to those index cards. Once I had my story figured out I set about putting them up on my big board. To help things I divided the board into eight equal parts (mini-movie sequences). On an index card I wrote down either a story point or scene heading or character action (usually to do with their introduction or arc) and placed them in order on the board until the board was full. I didn't put down any real detail, but if I came up with an interesting bit I just wrote it down in my notebook to save for the outline. I find that doing this technique allows me to look at the entire "movie" at once and also kind of see the pacing as well as the overall arcs of the characters. On the above picture (click it for a larger version) you will see that that is my entire movie. There are also holes where cards used to be. This is a picture of the board after I started refining the story. I will talk more about that in the next post. I hope this post was helpful in some way.

Until next time!
Chris

WRITING!

Whoever says writing is easy is either lying or a hack. Writing, for me, is THE hardest (and loneliest) part of creating a cartoon. I've been drawing since I could pick up a pencil so I am relatively, and I stress relatively, comfortable with that, but I have only been writing in a real "script" format for a few years now. Granted, working on shows llke Dexter's Laboratory or The Powerpuff Girls I was techically writing but, to me, that process of writing/boarding is a different and more appropriate way of "writing" a cartoon. I think that my years as a storyboard artist has helped me in thinking visually while writing a script which is comprised solely of words and no pictures to help sell an idea. Much like storyboarding, I try to put timing in my writing so that the reader will get a sense of how the scenes and sequences play out. I've read a ton of books on writing and a ton of scripts to "learn" the craft of writing, some of which I will share with you, but nothing teaches you more than just DOING. Over the next couple of months I want to document this process of "doing." There won't be much in the way of art to look at, but I hope that these posts are, nonetheless, an entertaining look at the process.

Best,
Chris

Next up: The process of using index cards to help plot your story.

Hi, Hun! I'm Home!

Since posting here is oh-so-slow, I thought I might share with you all some of my other work. All my life I wanted to have a comic strip in the newspaper. It's where I learned to draw. A few years ago I started putting together a strip for submissions to the syndicates. I abandoned it before I sent it out for various reasons. Anyway, It's called "Hi, Hun! I'm Home" and it's about the henpecked homelife of Attila The Hun. Click on the title of this post to check 'em out!

Until next time!
Chris