Also, that video is all still shots of people talking. Your very first scene has two people interacting, with closeups to products and whatnot.
Also, that video is all still shots of people talking. Your very first scene has two people interacting, with closeups to products and whatnot.
Which as I've already said I can get on a TFP basis. It's in the thread, presumably lost among all of the utter shite around it.Originally Posted by Pepe
Far from it, but it would be helpful if you read the things I have already worked out and posted about.
It has no close up to products or whatnots. It does have two people interacting...and?
It doesn’t have to go straight to video, really. Most of BBC’s stuff started as radio. You could cobble an audio equivalent whilst you figure out the finer points of TV production. At least you get a handle on how the dialogue sounds.
The official trailer now has 54 views #progress #life4lyfe
Alright, fucking hell, I was only trying to throw some helpful ideas around.
I'll do sarcastic sniping instead from now on then.
That is a cracking idea. I'd thought about a TTH run through already. Baz can play a mental health first aider.
How many POVs does your first scene have? You probably want to think of things like that. Or not, I am sure that phonics got you covered.
You seem to have taken that far worse than it was meant. It was just a deferential explanation of why I don't think teaming up with a script writer would work.
Now available in 8K too.
I'm a twit
Thank you.
I think that scene can be filmed from one angle though.
This is true. On the Hour was basically The Day Today in radio format.
Having read Yev's script, however, I'm not sure how well something like this would translate to audio only. But what the fuck do I know?
I wouldn't do it as a radio show as I've no interest in that, but at some point I need to hear how it sounds and that point needs to come well before I start attempting to actually organise anything.
Just keep in mind that absolutely anything would sound awful in Baz's accent.
I would love to see a clip of Baz explaining how he got to be a mental health first aider and what that entails. I don't know whether I could work it in but I think it could be un-intentional comedy gold.
I can't get past Jamie Carragher saying "so I just tell them to keep their chins up" in the TV version.
In my mind it's Baz parroting what he's been told, but getting bits of it wrong because he doesn't believe in any of it and is only doing it because it led to a pay-rise, but he can't say that so he's behaving like it's life and death stuff/seriously important.
I'm starting to think you must have been in some of the monthlymeetingsforums.
I'm a twit
I told Yev I would give him some feedback so I might as well do it here so he doesn't have to dig through his PMs for it. Scene 1.
His script in the spoiler.
Toggle Spoiler
Now, I should start by saying I don't know anything about screenplays or TV production or anything like that, so I'm not going to come at it from that angle. I'm going to come at it from a pure storytelling angle, which I do know a bit about as I have read a lot in my life and also done a fair bit of experimental writing on my own for fun (I have no illusions of ever doing it professionally on any level).
So after we zoom in from the moon to the co-op (which is a bit of a cliché, by the way, unless being used ironically for comedic purposes, which I can't quite discern from this script if it is the case. Hasn't it been done in Shaun of the Dead?) we have a guy trying to buy vape juice. First of all, 'Please can I have'. We don't need this unless the guy is going out of his way to be especially polite, or unless we are trying to show that he is a very polite person. I don't think we are.
Then we have a sort of semi-farce that goes on for quite a long time, with the cashier unable or unwilling to identify the vape juice that the guy is asking for. We spend a good 20 seconds doing that. Then we have a second similar dispute about number of items required, followed by a third regarding price. You don't need three unless it's a scene that is long and drawn out for comedic purposes (in a Stewart Lee sort of way) which in Episode 1 Scene 1 you haven't yet earned the right to do.
My question is what this scene is trying to establish. I'm getting two possibilities:
1. The cashier is a dickhead
2. The cashier is terminally useless
We have spent a good two minutes establishing one of these things, neither of which appear to matter to the story, and not a lot else. The protagonist doesn't seem to be doing a lot other than being reasonably patient in the face of this dickhead and/or useless cashier. So in the first two minutes of this thing, I have learned that the cashier is a dickhead/useless, and the person who turns out to be the protagonist vapes, is fairly polite, and reasonably patient.
I don't think that's great bang for your buck in terms of the first introduction for a character that the audience needs to either love, hate, or at least care about in some way.
If you want to open up with the protagonist having a scene buying vape juice from a useless/dickhead cashier, you need to have something faintly unusual happen OR you need the antics of the useless/dickhead cashier to be a quick (20 seconds) gag in keeping with gags to come. Then you need to set David moving fast towards a setting where we're going to learn a lot more about him. If you're going to linger on this vape juice buying escapade, David needs to actually show some character traits that teach the audience something about him. Maybe he'll lose his shit and swear at the cashier. Maybe he'll continue being needlessly polite. Maybe he'll cower away like a child and accept a different vape juice from the one he wanted, to avoid confrontation. In all of those scenarios, you have learned something about him. In the draft presented above I'm not sure you have.
'It's a cold, but sunny day - he's not dressed appropriately'. How do we know this? Are the people he is saying hello to all dressed in hats and coats, while he's in a vest? If the fact that he's not dressed appropriately matters in terms of getting to know him, which presumably does, then you need to demonstrate it starkly. If someone's under-dressed on a cold day, it tells me either that he can't afford warm clothes (which seems unlikely as he's just paid 15 quid for some vape juice and beers), or is too lazy, or doesn't feel the cold (i.e. is impervious or depressed), or is a bit mental.
Next up he's gone into his house and is putting beers under the shower and putting shower gel on the top. Now I am presuming these are the actions of some kind of mental case. OK - a character who has lost his mind or is incredibly eccentric in some way. If I have derived the correct conclusion from his actions with the beers, how does this tally with his reasonable and patient actions in the Co-op? At this point I'm a bit confused as to who he is. At this point, rather than seeing his arse (every conceivable character has one of those), I need more information. Why is he putting beers under the shower at 7.45am? Even a mental case has motivations. And the last thing I need is for you to cut to another timeline.
If I'm correct in my assumptions and the point of this scene is to demonstrate that your character is a reasonable human being on the outside but actually somewhat heads-have-gone unhinged, I need that transition to happen in a much more fluid way. He needs to spend the first minute or so doing a series of quick everyday things. The cashier thing can take 15-20 seconds. It's 7.45am, maybe on the walk home he can pick up a teddy bear for a passing child who has dropped one. When he passes the people dressed up warm, you might spend 10 seconds giving some detail on the small talk. "Morning, Trudy, how are you?" Maybe she engages briefly, or maybe she just smiles and walks on if she knows he is unhinged. Then he can transition from this to his beer-shower gel madness smoothly, in such a way that it is quite funny and also tells you that all is not well upstairs. All this can take a minute or less. That way you don't have to blow 2-3 minutes buying vape juice and can get the same or better information across.
If I'm not correct in my assumptions about the point of the scene, then I don't know what the point of the scene is.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 26-07-2021 at 02:31 PM.
That is absolute Gold Jim, thank you very much.
When I'm done with work for the evening I'll respond to the points raised and what I was trying to get at in an effort to work out how I can better achieve that.
Last edited by Yevrah; 26-07-2021 at 02:32 PM.
And you absolutely could write professionally, there's no doubt about that.
That is brilliant.
Nice touch to do it as a released DVD rather than a torn up script too.
Yev, I know you don't care for it but drop a tenner on Bob Saenz's That's Not The Way It Works screenwriting book. It's not an epic tome, you could get through it pretty quick and it has a lot of good stuff about formatting and similar to Jim's stuff about subtext and exposition.
Here is a good example (admittedly not sitcom) of subtext:
I do think there's a point where it becomes a paint by numbers exercise if you go by formulaic rules all the time.
Change the game, Yev. Throw the rulebook out the window and create something truly groundbreaking and paradigm shifting. Don't listen to these squares.
You don't have to go with formulaic rules but you do (absolutely, in every case) have to engage your audience.
First two scenes of episode 1 of Peep Show are a great example of how to introduce a protagonist (or two, in this case). 45 seconds each and you feel like you know them.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 26-07-2021 at 10:26 PM.
Yev could make the next Eraserhead
I guess he could make one of those French films from the 70s where an ugly middle aged man sits smoking a cigarette in silence for 15 minutes and then a naked woman enters and says: "Pain?" "Non." Then another 10 minutes.
Can't throw out the rulebook out of the window if you don't even have the rulebook in the first place.
We can only hope.
I bet Citizen Kane wasn't made using guide books.
The big budget mr plow advert the agency makes.
I watched the Czech film daisies which was a bit like that. I like arty and weird but that was too much for me.
By the time Citizen Kane was made, Orson Welles had been doing theater for decades. I am sure that he knew a thing of two about the fundamentals.
I'm being facetious. It's humbling to one's ego to think that there a rules to follow, but yeah...there are.
That said, Yev could be the one who made it on his own and be an inspiration to all of us join the dots simpletons.
He really could, you just never know.
Genuine question here, are you judging that on the script or the finished product? If it's the latter, would you have felt the same only reading the script?
Nevermind me, then.
Of course he could, but it is always foolish to think that you will be the special one that will get to skip the grind.
It's like thinking that you should drop college because both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did. Well, sure, but how did dropping out turn out for the other thousands that did?
You be the judge:
http://sotcaa.org/editnews/peepshow_pilotscript01.html
Tough to now as I can't read it without seeing the scene exactly as it is. The level of description of events is very useful to see though, it's not as much as I expected.
Yeah, seeing the formatting should help.
The thing with screenwriting (which I think others have mentioned already) is that the director will just use your script as a guideline and then do whatever the fuck he wants.
27 year old Orson Welles had been doing theatre for decades? Legend.
You can buy books of the first 4 seasons of Peep Show
Yep, which is why I need to direct this too.
Not sure what you read, but there are some pretty significant differences between that script and the finished scene.
Alright, decade?
The pilot or the entire thing?
As for Jim's post, comments below. Tried to avoid making this a multi-quote fest, hence why it's just musings, so hope it makes sense.
"Please can I have?" definitely needs to go.
Vape scene is too long and I don't have anywhere near enough description of stuff in there. It's in my head, but not on the page
The scene itself was trying to establish that there are things in life that fuck David off, that being one of them, but lack of description of his reaction means it doesn't do so enough
He's definitely not mental, but wanted the audience to think that in the first 10 minutes, so job done and now I just need to get them to care.
The detail isn't that important, as you can see they have crossed out multiple versions, and even the one there is a long way from what it ends up being on screen. What matters, and what stays the same, is the A to B and why the scene exists.
In this case, Mark just saying 'I am the Lord of the Bus said he', having just successfully run for a bus in the first few seconds you meet him, on its own gives you a great idea of the character before anything else has even happened. It's an example of good, concise writing. The rest of the scene is then setting up future plot as much as anything and can do more or less as it pleases because the audience immediately have an idea of who they're dealing with.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 26-07-2021 at 11:08 PM.
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