Personal View site logo
Personal View Feature Film Collaborative project
  • 536 Replies sorted by
  • Wow guys!

    Thanks a lot. Having my concept chosen by people like you feels like a prize in itself. How about something like this for the next stage?

    1) Interested writers submit a 1000-2000 words treatment and a couple of scenes (possible deadline: March 1)

    2) We choose our favourite treatment via a new poll (possible deadline: March 15)

    3) The writing process begins and at the same time we start securing assets like directors, editors, etc

    By the way, I'm interested in writing this motherfucker. So, if you let me, I'll submit my treatment, or whatever we decide the potential writers should do, along with the rest of them.

  • As for suggestions, S t o w a w a y is only very loosely traced out; it is nowhere nearly as developed as two of the others that were in our top five. Perhaps that was its appeal? One senses the potential in it. Our imaginations run wild with the potential. I think that the story needs to be clearly delineated before any attempt at a screenplay. It is like a well-crafted, crystal bottle that plays with the light and makes its contents look exquisite and appealing. We still need to agree upon the wine (the contents) that fill that piece.

    imo... we should got by RRRR's recommendation and settle on two or three writers, (and yes, even an editor, and probably a "show-runner" type to act as chief producer to oversee all the stages, departments, and total story development and execution. As for the writing, imo, we should (1st) pick those roles and get the writers to work on their own webpage, to agree on story amongst that group; (2nd) get the core writing team to agree on an outline to present to the total group; (3rd) after unanimous approval, move to drawing out definable beats to the story; (4th) upon group approval, move to write it out as a treatment (i.e. a short story); (5th) upon approval, reform that story into a rough-draft screenplay; (6th) upon that approval; develop a 1st draft screenplay. At this point, as feedback continues to come in from the total group, the two or three writers can keep refining the screenplay into second, third and final drafts. Perhaps hiring out professional proofreaders would be advantageous at this point. Meanwhile, once we have a 1st draft -- the show-runner and the directors can start to plan out the how-to process. (This could be done now, at this pre-screenplay stage, but I think (a) story must be king and (b) whereas the details of the participants must always be considered -- such as ability, access to budget, or not, experience, geography, etc. -- this should not necessarily dictate story: story should be crafted only with those things in mind, not the other way around).

    I think the power of this project comes from its (nearly) sheer originality, from its democratic process and from the zeal of its participants. We should protect that to see this through to the end and to maintain or enhance its inherent appeal. Nevertheless, I think to elect a show-runner will be necessary to keep this ambitious project from unraveling and to ensure that it remains coherent and unified enough to be competitive in the motion picture marketplace. To avoid the (fear of a) show-runner evolving into megalomanic that derails this, a sound choice as to who that person should be can be tempered with a group commitment to keep the story as king (as opposed to any one person being in charge just for the sake of being in charge). That show-runner would have to be accountable to the story. The story would have to dictate all of his/her choices. And all along, the group is agreeing on the story.

  • Sorry, atticusd. I didn't mean to bypass your message. Yours came in while I was writing mine, and so appeared to follow yours when I hit "post reply."

  • Don't worry @paginate! This things happen all the time in the forum world. ;)

    I like your approach. I only fear that with so many stages (not so many for a conventional project but maybe too many for an online collaborative thing like this) the project will get stuck in development hell at some point. In any case my suggestions for choosing the writer (or writing team) were probably too simplistic anyway. Maybe an intermediate approach would be the right thing to do. I don't know. Let's hear what the rest of the guys have to say.

  • I think March 1st is a good cut off date to vote on a number of potential plot outlines. The vote should only be a week max... March 8th.

    As to the format of the treatment, leave it up to the writer as long as it covers the main plot points of the story. I prefer to outline my stories in beat sheets and then write a more detailed treatment once the plot points are hammered out.

    I would suggest to collaborate on each others stories and pass notes back and forth on each others stories as to make each one as strong as possible before the vote. Google docs seems to work well, it lets each reader make individual comments on particular words or sections. We could also have a place just where random idea, images or music tracks can be written down or uploaded to add to the creative flow as some of these stories are being thought through.

    Who all wants to be writing outlines for this next phase? or at least want to collaborate and give notes?

    I dont think a writer or team can be chosen until the story outline is chosen.

  • Well, I for one will take a crack at it.

  • Guys, may be us eother approach. Write first complete script for short trailer (30-45 sec) and make it from start to finish. After this is all goes good use same poeple and tachniques for whole thing?

  • So, we have at least 2 now who will work on it. I think one or two more should suffice!

    And yes, I agree with @atticusd that we can't have the script writing process too complicated.. IMO we should give free hands to the writer and editor (whoever it is) to develop the whole thing as soon as we have decided on a particular writer or team of writers. I suggest that if there are someone who wants to collaborate and write as a team (I have bad experiences with "forced" collaboration), they should start now at this point to create the treatment together..

  • Philip Whitcroft, Martin Lancaster and myself will attempt to submit a beatsheet/treatment each for the March 1st deadline. As soon as I have some solid Ideas ill post an invite to a google doc if any of the other writers have some ideas to add or comments. In my case I have the time to work on an outline and assist with writing notes for and giving feedback to other writers but I wouldn't have the free time in March April to put in the hours that will be necessary for that first draft.

  • That sounds good, Imaginate.. I remember @thepalalias offering to be an editor.

    IMO; once we have selected the script to go forward with (the writer, and then the editor) we should give the writing team a couple of months at least to go as far as they can with the script - and maybe then open up for comments rather than more voting.

  • I like Vitaliy’s trailer idea. It would give us something tangible at last. Only problem I see is that it would be complicated to have every director involved in a trailer. For something narrative there’s not enough seconds to have everyone involved.

    In any case, if we go with the treatment approach to choose the writer, we should, by all means, establish some rules: Format of the treatment, maximum and minimum lenght, extra material (ie.: a couple of scenes, etc),...

  • I offer myself as a proofreader / collaborator type -- for the writer team to use me as a first-wave second opinion (throughout all the stages of pitch to final draft). I recommend Google Doc for this process, so we can see other's comments and comment on comments, etc. Great initiative, Imaginate, to get you three going on a beat-sheet and treatment before March 1st! I'm not opposed to that and lend my vote to you, Philip and Martin going ahead.

  • Personally, I like the idea of a trailer, but think it should be made naturally out of the main project, and not necessarily as a first, alternative project. I recommend that the beat-sheet be one paragraph for each of the 14 to 16 beats (beginning to end) and the treatment be 25 to 40 pages, reading like a short story narrative, if we can agree on presenting that first, before a rough draft screenplay. The treatment can allude to some backstory or technical items (about teams and specialized locations, limitations that a screenplay might not) and give snippets of dialogue as really necessary, imo.

  • I agree that beat sheets and treatments are both important. Perhaps we could move beat sheets up to the week before March 1, and have treatments due on the 1st as suggested. This will allow for others to chime (unofficially) in a bit early.

  • @paginate 25 pages is too much detail for march 1st, that level of detail is what needs to be done as your working on the first draft. Some writers would skip a detailed treatment like that altogether and just hammer out the first draft or "vomit draft" as some like to call it. Maybe Martin or Phil and chime in on this. If you have a paragraph on 14-15 main beats of the story, you're going to have a pretty focused idea on what the story is and what is going on with the characters.

    I agree with @B3Guy that the beatsheets or treatments should be up before March 1st so we can play with them a bit and get some input before everyone votes.

  • As Imaginate said, 25 pages is just too much. We have less than a month and we haven't yet agreed on what we should do next. Besides it would be more work for the people involved having to read 25xN pages, being N the number of potential writers. In my opinion we should keep it short and simple. A beat sheet or a really short story (2000 words or so) and maybe a couple of scenes should be more than enough to see what kind of writer we'd be talking about and whether people would want the movie written by him or not.

  • How about Beat Sheets plus a rough draft up to the break into two (or whatever you want to call it . . . the part after the inciting incident when the main character makes a decision)? ROUGH DRAFT, mind you . . . this part of the film should really happen within 8-10 pages, and it is the critical part of the film that either hooks the viewer or does not.

    This way, we can decide based on seeing all the film "hooks". We can pick a story that draws us in from the very beginning.

    I for one would not mind reading 10 pages for each one, especially not script pages. Script pages are not like novels or research papers. There's a lot of white on a script page.

  • I didnt get to vote on the poll but im thumbs up on atticus idea, i like the concept of the supernatural power on the backround and the character conflict being the main force.

    im affraid tought, of two things if i may say so:

    • spectators dont understanding whats going on.
    • looking too much like the movie jumper (please no offense)

    also im concerned with no using the strengh of our global team and locations.

    anyhow seems we can pull this out, please dont let anyone excluded, too much hollywood like production may make it harder for some!

    Cheers.

  • Do not worry, I'll soon have more free time, I hope. And will add my own project that'll be about other stuff and will be focused on complitely different things to not compete with really good progress made.

  • Ok, does my proposed plan sound good to everyone? Let's make something official before the weekend.

  • Seems like there are various personal offers/ proposals (not including my suggestion(s) for others) that are not necessarily the same. Seems difficult to say "this" is the official plan to give thumbs up to.

    Personally, I'm all for atticusd, imaginate and B3Guy to collaborate together, as our "Story by" people, over the weekend, and come up with a beat sheet of 14 - 16 milestones in the story, with one narrative paragraph summarizing (1.) the set-up, (2.) the conflict, (3.) the surprise, (4.) the change and (5.) the complication (for next beat) for each of those beats. If you three can agree on that, then show us for a yay or nay vote from the group proper. (Say a "yay" vote from each concedes that 75% of the 14- to 16 beats, and 60% of what is going on in each of them.)

    A "yay" majority moves you three into a 12- to 15- page short story treatment. For a new vote. With majority "yay" on that, then into rough draft screenplay. If we hit a "nay" majority along the way, then back to revamp that stage. Etc. How's that sound. Explicit and reasonable enough?

    Say... Feb 13th for first round beat sheet to be presented for voting. Vote concluded three-days later, and so forth? (With a one- or two-week window for each stage, or re-stage)?

  • I think the layout of how the treatment is made is up to the individual writer - let's just decide on some limits, like 3000 words maximum including script pages and beat sheet.. (equals about 3 semi dense a4) and restrict all imagery to stills (maximum of 10) at this point. This should be enough to provide a clear vision.

    And if the deadline for the writers is moved a week ahead, that should not be a problem.

    (sorry for bumping in, but I think we can keep it simple in terms of presentation guidelines and voting).

  • @RRRR I agree. Let's just establish some simple guidelines like maximum length and work on the concept as it is. Then we'll take one treatment and take it from there.

    @paginate That sounds great but unfortunately it's too much democracy for our own good. We gotta keep the process as simple and straightforward as possible or else we'll get stuck in preproduction hell really soon.

  • Ok. For the sake of time, here is the official skinny. Anyone putting themselves forward as a potential writer should submit before the 25th of February up to but not exceeding 8 pages of wonderfulness, which should include a beat sheet and some script pages. We need at this point to get into full concrete beats/plot outlines, and we need to see examples of each person's script writing capabilities.

    If the writer feels compelled to include more than just script pages and beat sheets, that is fine. But those two things I think we need to see for sure. 8 pages should be more than enough space for a good writer to capture an idea and give us a taste of their talent.

    I will just ask, is there anyone who ABSOLUTELY can't get with this plan of action? If not, we will move forward. Speak now or forever hold your lunch.

  • @B3Guy 25th of February seems too soon (maybe I was unclear above, but IMO I would not mind if the writers had until, like - the 5th of march), but other than that I think the deal is clear.

    Edit: I think it might be important also to point out that any discussion about deadline does not affect that writers can get to work right now. :)

    So we can at least conclude that the deadline will be feb 25th at the earliest.