THOUGHTS ON REMOTE COLLABORATION

By Olga Agafonova

Over the last year, I’ve used miscellaneous tools to keep in touch and work on a screenplay with my co-author and I’d like to share some observations about that experience.

First, I want to point out that Cheron and I met in person two years ago through a mutual friend. We would not have known about each other or be comfortable enough with one another without that real, physical connection. I have seen online invitations for screenwriters to work together remotely and that is too much of a shot in the dark for me. There is a lot we do when we begin getting to know someone: we appraise someone’s character and establish trust with that person.  With writing, of course we must also consider if our writing styles mesh well together.

This brings me to my second point: Cheron and I took time to discuss her vision for the screenplay and what she wanted the characters to be like. We negotiated the number of primary characters and then I briefly outlined what I thought each character was going to do throughout the film. This was sufficient to begin writing the first draft. 

We kept in touch every few weeks by email and via WhatsApp, which gives us more immediate access to each other throughout the day than email. Initially, we used different free programs to work on the screenplay but eventually converged on Final Draft. At $249.99 per license, this was expensive but since we both plan on writing screenplays in the future, it is worth the investment. Critically, Final Draft has a simultaneous collaboration feature where multiple authors can work on the same version of the draft in real time. The auto-formatting features for dialogue, action and other screenplay parts have been indispensable as well.

Would I have preferred a weekly get-together in a café to go over the details of our work? Absolutely. Listening to someone’s feedback, their tone of voice and the language they choose, being able to read their body language – all these things are important to good communication. By that standard, however, I could not have participated in this project. Cheron lives on the West Coast and flying out there regularly is of course out of question for financial reasons.

So, would I recommend writing with someone remotely? Yes, if you feel comfortable with that person and your ideas about the work are compatible. For me, that means meeting the person in the real world first and seeing what they are like. Others may be more adventurous but the bottom line is the same: you must be comfortable with one another as people to begin and sustain your collaboration. 

THE EXPERIENCE

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

                                               

We were editing a film last week when aliens took over the brain of my cinematographer, Lynn Cornfoot. She started to lean toward being the director and forgot that I wanted the footage of my film to be messy – not professionally perfect the way they taught her to do in the film department. But as the director I developed the concept and I wrote the script, which puts me in control. If I want the film to be messy, it will be crazy messy. My vision will govern the final product. That’s what it means to direct.

Tomorrow I will begin writing a book about writing and directing my current indie film “The Disease Detective Looks at Sarcoidosis.” I intend this memoir to be both a comment on the digital age and an exploration of how art helps me sort out the world.

Filmmaking, especially the independent kind, puts people on an even playing field. Because we’re all dealing with the same tools – scripts, cameras, lighting, sound, friends-as-actors, music – the hipsters and the grandmothers get along. Even men and women can work together on these projects if they can overcome the men-traveling-in-van-must-talk-about-sex-and-farting barrier. Women just want to get the job done. We don’t care about personal behavior in hotels, and we enjoy bawdy conversations in the van.

Last year I attended the Long Beach Indie Film and Music festival in Long Beach, California. They’ve shown my films for the past three years. I love this festival, because it highlights diversity in every way. At the first awards ceremony I attended (where “Queen of the Road” won the award for the best TV pilot), I sat next to a woman my age who had entered the student category because she was attending a film program at one of the universities in Long Beach. My excellent table also included a German filmmaker, a gynecologist who specialized in film music, and a career actor from Los Angeles.

At Long Beach I met 20-something director Martin Barshai who had two films entered at the festival. I saw them both and they were excellent.  “Light on Her Feet,” the story of a ballet dancer, is poignant and worth watching. Martin and I discussed music problems. He had scored one of his films with popular music and later had to re-score it. I explained to him that I always begin with local, original music. Finding music is the second step in making any indie film – after coming up with the concept.

Martin and I hit it off. Our meeting will be a highlight of my memoir.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD NOVEL?

By Bonnie Stanard

Much of my reading is to research background for a story I’m writing so I joined a local book club to force myself into reading current fiction. It comes as no surprise that my taste in books is often at odds with that of many of the members. This is a rambling way to get to the point that the definition of a good book is as varied as there are people who read.

My husband would probably say a good book is one that keeps him guessing about “who done it” until the last page. My friend Miriam, who loves Harry Potter, might say a good book is one that sweeps her away to a world of suspense and wonder.

MY FAVORITE GENRES

The variety of tastes can be somewhat organized by genres: sci-fi, romance, mystery, fantasy, etc. Wikipedia lists as many as 24 common fiction genres. From this list, I find two that I’d put at the top of my list—Historical Fiction and Realistic Fiction. However, this doesn’t mean I only like books that fall into these categories. (I loved Bridget Jones Diary.)

SOARING PAST THE TITLE PAGE

A good book is first of all entertaining. So what is entertaining? I can only answer from my perspective. With that caveat, I like strong, unpredictable characters. Good guys often sabotage a good plot, for seldom are they unpredictable. An exception to this is the nice guy in the novel Empire Falls by Richard Russo. From a writer’s perspective, I find it far more difficult to create an engaging story with an ordinary protagonist. Toibin’s Brooklyn seems a pedestrian tale, but it’s told with such grace and affection I couldn’t put it down.

If you Google popular novels, you may notice that many protagonists depend on abuse, illness, accidents, political oppression, drugs, or other crutches to gain our interest. Remove these issues and you’ll get a better idea of the strength of the writing.

IS IT FUN BUT A WASTE OF TIME?

A good book provides information about unfamiliar places or sheds light on human character. There are so many entertaining books that open our eyes to planet earth and our human condition, why spend time with those that reflect what we already know? Here is a sampling of books that have changed the way I think: Constellations of Vital Phenomena by A. Marra;  The English Patient by Ondaatie; The Known World by E. Jones; Memoirs of a Geisha by A. Golden; Middlesex by J. Eugenides; Palace Walk by N. Mahfouz; Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow; Shogun by J. Clavell: and Watership Down by Richard Adams.

DOES THE AUTHOR KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EFFECT AND AFFECT?

I stop reading a novel upon encountering errors in word usage or grammar. However, I like books that send me to a dictionary occasionally to look up a definition. Complex sentences are fine as long as they aren’t as long as those of William Faulkner. “Simplistic” as a deliberate writing style can be entertaining, but not when done by a simpleton.

Using Actual Events in Writing.

By Rex Hurst

In my current writing project I am using a lot of history. Not ancient history, at least not to me, but a decade not that long ago, where the younger generation would have only the dimmest of memories- if any memories at all. The 1980s. The book is called Satanic Panic and deals with the hysteria epidemic dealing with Satanism and Satanic Ritual Abuse cases, which popped up all over the decade- from hypnotically recovering repressed memories, to “satanic” heavy metal music, to people receiving jail terms for “satanic” activities in day care centers.

In my investigation, I have come across actual murder cases and other forms of abuse that have been linked to a various “occult” activities such as a very real cult in Matamoros who indulged in cocaine trafficking. Now with this dynamite material, I am face with the quandary, how closely to the facts of these cases do I adhere to in the text?

While many of participants are dead- the drug ring in Mexico ended with a police shootout and a building catching on fire- there are many who still are alive and have been negatively affected by these events. One of the cases involving a murder of teenage girl took place in my hometown and I know members of her family. How much should I use?

Changing the names is the easiest part. The easiest way to avoid litigation, at least. But often enough, the events of the story are so close to reality that one cannot help but make connections. Thus how much do you want to change it? The second easiest method to distance text is to change location. 

While a move from one large city to another might, say, New York to San Francisco, might not make that big of a difference. If you change the local from the urban to a rural one (or vice versa) you might get surprisingly good results.

One odd thing I’ve run across is that often people will think events from real life sound “too fake”. That coincidence which actually occurred where too far out to actually happened. That dumb decisions a person made was far too stupid for a real person to make (Never underestimate the ability of people to make idiotic decisions under pressure). One thing that springs to mind is The Contest episode from Seinfeld, where the gang bets on how long they can go without committing the sin of onanism. While sounding completely ridiculous, it is apparently based on an actual contest that co-creator Larry David participated in.

This leads to my final though on the subject. Don’t let the actual facts prevent you from telling a good story. If everyone is telling you that a plot point sounds ridiculous, change it. Even if it actually happened. Don’t let reality keep you from writing a great tale.