The Connor Wars Writer’s Room 18 – Tumbling Down the Vlog

Another video blog about the on-going “The Connor Wars” fanfic project that is meant to be a serious attempt at a season 3 of Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Circumstances have required me to shift how I was doing the vlogs. This is the first to be hosted at YouTube. Because of YouTube’s requirements, the vlog is in sub-ten-minute parts (7 in this case) that, hopefully, will string together automatically if you just let it play. Once the bugs are worked out, I’ll go back and retro-post the prevous vlogs over the coming days and weeks.

4 Responses to "The Connor Wars Writer’s Room 18 – Tumbling Down the Vlog"

TheSqonk says:

September 10, 2009 at 12:52 am

It’s sad to hear of the attitude towards the writers in TV Shows and such. I’d be interested to know your thoughts on where you think the whole structure of how they make shows and the way they sell them is going. It really doesn’t sound sustainable.

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CJ says:

September 10, 2009 at 2:04 am

There’s long been a joke among screenwriters: Screenwriters are the worst-treated people in Hollywood…except for the actors.

Actually, it’s betting in TV than it is in movies for writers. In film, the director is as a god; in TV, it’s not uncommon for the director to be a hired gun. So in films, the writer is often marginalized and taken advantage of. On TV, the writers (especially the show runner) has the lion’s share of the creative power.

On a baser level, let’s talk money. At present, the minimums for a WGA original screenplay for a theatrical movie range between $60,523 and $113,626. Seems like a lot until you remember that most screen writers sell only 1 script every few years, and that 10% of that money will go to an agent, often another 5%+ to a lawyer, more to any other professionals, and taxes will take out about 40-50%. So, that low of $60 thousand is closer to $25-30 thousand. Not so pocket-lining as it seems at first.

For television (say for an hour-long show like I’m spewing forth here) is minimum per script: $13,048 for story only, $21,513 for script only, and $32,700 for story + script. That means, if I’d been paid guild minimum for each of the 10 scripts I’ve posted so far, that would be $327,000. Is it no wonder that the people who can write at TV’s unrelenting pace fight tooth and nail every year to get a writing position on a show? (To be fair, on most shows even the popular writers only pen at most a half-dozen scripts a season.)

So, it comes down to a simple equation for writers: TV = good; movie = not as good. Thing is, most screenwriters, especially fresh screenwriters, have trouble writing the quantity of scripts that H’wood demands. TV writing is long hard hours for 3/4s of the year.

For movies, the money is made by working on other people’s scripts. Odds are pretty good your name won’t survive the inevitable arbitration that will result in your name actually getting on the credit roll, but hey, at least you’re getting some needed ducats.

So, where is this all headed? I’m tempted to say that if I knew that, I’d be rich. But honestly…I’d just know it. I’m not in a position to do the “get rich” thing.

The traditional, over-the-air networks are the ones suffering the most. They have hours of content to fill and not enough dollars to profit well from it. Cable networks have it easier, making only a handful of limited run shows. I think this sort of boutique content creation will be what sustains.

And the Internet? With examples such as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and The Guild, it’s clear that there could be an opportunity with a new wave of low-budget non-studio content creators. Still, it’s tough to find a good model for monetization. I know it’s possible, just difficult. The paradigm is definitely shifting, but we won’t know exactly how until after it has done so (funny, that).

As for writer’s power. This isn’t just a H’wood thing, but permeates much of the creative culture in the U.S. and is getting worse. In Hollywood, you aren’t going to make money unless you give up the rights to the material (or make it yourself). That’s the way it’s been. In more narrative styles, “all rights” is becoming more common as the only rights a publisher is willing to buy. I’ve written before that we need an overhaul of Copyright law to shift the balance from corporate IP assignees back to those who actually have the ability to create new things.

I’d like to see writers have more clout in the theatrical world. For some reason the director as “auteur” model has taken hold. Let me relate an anecdote from “old Hollywood”:

The story is told of director Frank Capra, who was asked in an interview to explain precisely how he achieved that sqpeical quality known as “the Capra touch.” For page after page he rambled on about this technique and that one. At great length he discussed how he had lent “the touch” to this film and to that one. And in all of these pages nowhere was mentioned Robert Riskin, who had merely written the films.

The day after the interview appeared in the press, there arrived at Capra’s office a script-sized envelope. Inside was a document very closely resembling a screenplay: a front cover, a back cover, and one hundred and ten pages. but the cover and pages were all blank.

Clipped to the “script” was a note to Capra from Robert Riskin. It read: “Dear Frank, put the ‘Capra touch’ on this!”

–Richard Walter Screenwriting – The Art, Craft, and Business of FIlm and Television Writing ©1988, p.4 ISBN 0-452-26086-8

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TheSqonk says:

September 10, 2009 at 7:08 am

Thanks for that, it’s interesting getting an insight into what goes on behind the scenes. It seems similar to other industries where one party simultaneously over-states their role in the venture while under-stating the role over the other party (a good example would be the divide between someone who creates a product and someone else who has ‘the connections’ and sells it).

I can’t help but wonder if we’d get more quality shows if a little more love and value was shown to the original story & script writers, with a more freedom given to not just try different things but also do things properly. From what you describe it certainly sounds like job satisfaction suffers some what, which I can personally relate to when you create something and someone else in the company starts requesting all manor of changes, and the original concept or design is all but lost. Of course (from an outsider’s point of view) I’d say there are multiple problems with the film industry right now, but hey – every element counts.

In regards to dogs barking: It’s an interesting puzzle trying to work out when they do bark and when they don’t. I kind of like the idea that you can’t have any metal showing if the cyborgs want to trick them but I wonder if that is only reason.. It’s testing my memory a bit but I seem to remember in episode 1 you had Weaver fooling the dogs by working out that it was the sound being made by some of the endo parts that was aggravating them, that would certainly make sense to.
One extra little anecdote I have which may or may not be of interest is some of the dogs my friends have are all very very friendly towards me, but when I don the full motorcycle gear (black boots, leather pants and full padded jacket) their nature changes completely, they suddenly become very aggressive and defensive, until their owner tells them off. My interpretation of this, in this specific circumstance, is their reaction to me is more than likely just based on what they see, which would be a larger bulkier figure.

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CJ says:

September 10, 2009 at 3:13 pm

Screenwriting is definitely not for the faint of heart. You earn your scars. But you learn.

I do want to be clear that the metal-showing necessity is an exclusive T0K thing. All other T-6xx and T-8xx just have to be in a dog’s proximity. Like Cameron, Weaver is an advanced case. If she devotes effort, she can be undetectable by dogs (and apparently TDEs)…but it also so handicaps her that movement is very limited. What she did is desensitize the dogs at Zeira to her presence over time.

Why does the metal annoy dogs so much? Probably a hearing and smell thing. As with vacuum cleaners, it just annoys them. Partly it’s because they can hear the mechanics, partly it’s due to something intrinsic with
powered-on hyperalloy or MPA that resonates with them much like that 15kHz whine used to bug me whenever I passed by most TVs and CRTs (thank goodness for flat panel displays…my aural world is less annoying).

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The Connor Wars Writer’s Room 18 – Tumbling Down the Vlog

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