I've been blogging here about how we can change the public perception into a respect for Romance in general, and the cross-genre Romance forms in particular.
In exploring that issue, we've examined the whole publishing field and much of the screenwriting world, the writer's business model, and even the esoteric roots of human emotion. But we still haven't solved the problem.
On a #scriptchat focused on the difference between plot and story and how you as a writer can use that difference in screenwriting, there was a quick side-exchange among writers regarding why they are not enchanted with the "romcom" or Romantic Comedy in film.
Today, you can get Romance onto the Big Screen, but usually only in comedy form. Once upon a time, the Adventure-Romance was popular (AFRICAN QUEEN and various WWII flicks, even ROMANCING THE STONE).
Once upon a time, you could get SF onto TV only in comedy form (MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, LOST IN SPACE). Then came STAR TREK and changed all that, and then changed what kind of SF you could get onto the Big Screen and even get Oscar attention.
We're looking for the key to how to achieve that kind of shift in audience size for a serious Romance, dramatic, and preferably mixed-genre Romance.
As I pointed out many times,TV and Big Screen are big budget and therefore involve the whole business model of the fiction delivery system -- how much it costs to make vs. how much you can reap from the audience which depends entirely on audience size.
Today Romance is stuck in a very thick-walled ghetto of small-audience-size. It's a very big audience in the printed-book market, and huge in the e-book market, but those markets are tiny compared to TV or Film markets.
To grab those larger markets we have to look closely at what elements in Romance are turning off folks we know would love this stuff if only they didn't bounce out of it because of some surface detail that annoys or repels a wide variety of people.
Love is universal. Romance is the state of mind in which love first becomes possible -- First Love is a kind of loss of virginity, a baptism of fire. Romance is fun - love is infinitely rewarding, the very purpose of life. How could any living being refuse exposure to that?
The truth is, I don't know. I've been writing SF-Romance since the beginning. Recently, a woman who had read my first award winner, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER when it came out and just recently read it again discovered that it is (and always has been) Science Fiction Romance -- but at that time, there was no such genre. Now she's looking for more books like that.
Here's her blog post about it.
http://lovecatsdownunder.blogspot.com/2010/05/rachel-needs-book-advice.html
See what you can recommend to her.
So I've been thinking about this genre for a long time. I discussed why we love romance here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-we-love-romance.html
That short post is about how the differences between mundane Romance genre and SFR or PNR mixed genre actually open the genre to vast possibilities and a truly vast audience.
But the marketing hasn't developed the reach the material merits.
So I continue to puzzle over it. That's why this side-exchange about romcom on #scriptchat on twitter caught my attention.
SO WHAT IS #SCRIPTCHAT?
Here in the words of one of those who devised this weekly meeting on twitter, is a description of it #scriptchat.
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Scriptchat was created for the purpose of bringing new and seasoned screenwriters together to learn and grow. We have two chats every Sunday. Mina Zaher (@DreamsGrafter) leads the European chat at 8pm GMT, and Jeanne Veillette Bowerman (@jeannevb) moderates the USA chat at 8pm EST. The same topic is discussed at each chat, which provides an invaluable global network of ideas and philosophies on writing. Just since last October, we have gathered close to 400 screenwriters in our little circle of world domination.
The scriptchat "treefort" consists of Jeanne, Mina, Zac Sanford (@zacsanford), Jamie Livingston (@yeah_write) and Kim Garland (@KageyNYC). The behind-the-scenes details are almost as fun as the chat itself. The team relies greatly on each other to keep topics fresh and the ideas flowing as fast as the tequila. Speaking of, there's only one scriptchat rule: Leave your ego behind and bring your tequila.
Our blog is full of incredible resources for all levels of screenwriters: www.scriptchat.com
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You can read this whole #scriptchat posted as a web page here (along with links to all kinds of writer's resources.)
http://scriptchat.blogspot.com/2010/05/story-vs-plot-may-23-2010.html
As you may remember, I have done a long post on "plot vs. story" on this blog. You can find my take on the subject here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html
That post is about what part of a composition is plot and what part is story -- and how theme interacts with those parts -- and how to tell the difference.
So while I was watching these excellent writers (about I think 400 people follow #scriptchat ) explain plot and story in 140 characters or less, I saw the following exchange flow by me.
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Here's how to read this layout.
The top line is the twitter handle of the person posting, then it gives the time, date and the software used to post the comment. The items with # in front are called hashtags - you use them in a search command to sort all the comments on the thread out of the general stream of tweets. You can then see comments by people you do not follow, and they can see your comments in the hashtagged sort. Where @ precedes a word, that word is the twitter handle of someone who is being answered. A comment without an @ in it is an original comment others may answer.
jeannevb
12:55pm, May 23 from TweetChat the whole story vs plot concept I think is why I'm not a huge rom com fan. They're all so predictable #scriptchat
Bang2write
12:57pm, May 23 from web @jeannevb that's what I used to think... But the MANY variations of the same thing in the Rom Com - that's what's masterful. #scriptchat
DreamsGrafter
12:57pm, May 23 from web @jeannevb re rom com, that's a genre issue hon. Rom coms is one of the most prescriptive genres. #scriptchat
ambigfoot
12:59pm, May 23 from mobile web The whole mushy sentimentalized sick inducing slushiness is why I ain't a fan of the romcom @jeannevb oh and fucking hugh grant #scriptchat
jeannevb
1:01pm, May 23 from TweetDeck @ambigfoot mushy predictability makes me barf ;) #scriptchat
DREAMSGRAFTER clarified thusly in a series of tweets to me (@jlichtenberg) the following day:
@JLichtenberg my point was tht rom coms are most prescriptive of genres. room for variations in other genres but >>> (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
@JLichtenberg w/ rom coms conventions r restricted boy meets girl etc. So it's difficult to find brand new storylines (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
@JLichtenberg In a way the genre defines the storylines unlike horror/thriller for example. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
@JLichtenberg That's just my perception & looking @ history of rom com, there seems to be trends to reflect society (@jeannevb @ambigfoot).
@JLichtenberg There are exceptions such as Sleepless In Seattle and You've Got Mail but >>> (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
@JLichtenberg How many other ways can you keep boy and girl apart? (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
@JLichtenberg Whereas thriller/horror are about emotions: thrill/fear. More scope for storylines there. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
@JLichtenberg Hope that helps. We shld definitely discuss genres in #scriptchat. So important re selling script. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
DreamsGrafter
10:15am, May 24 from Web@Jonathan_Peace @JLichtenberg Will work out w/ #scriptchat #treefort when we can do genre. (@jeannevb @zacsanford @KageyNYC @yeah_write)
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So eventually we'll probably have a #scriptchat where the subject is genres. That should be interesting.
Go back to Bang2Write's comment above - and note that a mind was changed by studying the romcom genre.
Now remember my two posts on THE HURT LOCKER, about how the Indie Film industry unleashed by tech advances in recording devices and audience building services like YouTube is changing the face of film making.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv_18.html
The Indies, with smaller audiences and lower budgets, are able to explore and invent genres, gather and build audiences - and today, even win major awards. THE HURT LOCKER is very tightly focused war-drama, the story of the effect of war on one man's psyche.
Remember Blake Snyder's identification of classic film "genres" he defined in SAVE THE CAT GOES TO THE MOVIES - none of them identical to publishing genres.
http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/ -- to find the list of genres and films that are examples of those genres get the pdf file at the top of the /tools/ page. A glance through it will tell you all you need to know for the moment, but you really need Snyder's books if you want to learn to write blockbuster film scripts.
One thing you learn from scrutinizing that list of films divided into genres -- genre is not LIMITING, but LIBERATING
The beatsheet formula the genre formula does not limit a writer's ability to tell a story.
When you have a story in your mind that you want to tell, you want others to have as much fun with it as you are having.
Like a delicious buffet dazzles the eye with food-art and makes the mouth water, the genre formula art dazzles the emotions and raises the appetite for a repeat of a prior enjoyment, but all made new again.
Hollywood wants "the same but different" for that reason.
No two buffet displays with ice scuptures are alike, but if you've enjoyed previous buffets, the mere sight will set your stomach rumbling.
So the writer looks at the story inside the writer's mind and looks at the genres being enjoyed currently, and figures out which genre her story actually belongs to.
You don't change the story to fit the genre, you figure out what genre it is in.
They say, "write what you know" -- and this is how to apply that maxim. Write the genre you read.
Of course, the problems then arise when the story in your head does not fit an extant genre - and you have to be one of the inventors or popularizers of that genre.
The Romance genre (along with many others) has reached a point in development where it is spinning off new sub-genres.
The cinematic RomCom, however, appears to the writers in #scriptchat to have stagnated.
The cinematic RomCom needs SFR and PNR to liberate the underlying message.
Now look at the tweet from @ambigfoot
ambigfoot
12:59pm, May 23 from mobile web The whole mushy sentimentalized sick inducing slushiness is why I ain't a fan of the romcom @jeannevb oh and fucking hugh grant #scriptchat
That reaction is very widespread.
So we have two objections to the cinematic romcom "formula"
1. "sick slushiness"
2. Limited # of ways to keep boy and girl apart
Both of those could apply equally well to most general Romance genre print fiction today.
Indie producers with budgets under one million dollars are still looking for RomCom scripts. A HURT LOCKER success is possible with a Romance.
But to achieve that, the two major objections "slushiness" and "cliche plot" have to be solved in a very low budget way.
One innovative line of thinking may lead one of you to solve this problem and sell such a screenplay.
The basic theme of "Romance" produces both the slushiness and plot-cliche problem.
That theme is Love Conquers All
You can't change that theme and still have a Romance genre Work.
But the theme is the source of the problem.
"Slushiness" comes from Love not having a very hard time conquering All -- the two get together, and they just fall all over each other despite themselves, and then talk about their feelings as if nothing else in the world matters, their inattentiveness generating no consequences of note.
"Plot Cliche" comes from the genre requirement that the PLOT is the sequence of events leading Boy to Girl, and thus the only possible main conflict in a Romance is "Love vs. X" where X is whatever is keeping them apart.
So the THEME is what the major portion of the potential audience objects to, but you can't change it and still have a Romance.
So what do you do? How can you possibly popularize Romance to Big Screen proportion audiences?
Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me the solution.
The solution is to challenge the theme, doubt the thematic statement.
Most themes that work for fiction are, for most reader/viewers, unconscious assumptions about life. They are unexamined, taken for granted, "truths" about normal reality.
GREAT FICTION EXAMINES THE UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS OF THE AUDIENCE
The Comedy forms have always been the thin edge of the wedge into commercialization of one of those challenges to the unconscious assumptions of a culture. The romcom, stradling the line between romance and comedy has powerful dramatic potential.
Marion Zimmer Bradley taught me (most especially while I was writing UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER) to use the plot, the characters, the story, and the worldbuilding (most especially the worldbuilding) to DISPROVE THE THEME and thus examine those unconscious assumptions of my readership -- the adolescent male SF reader the publishers market my adult-female fiction to.
Illustrate, she taught me - show don't tell - the opposite of what you are trying to say.
In this case, "LOVE CONQUERS ALL" becomes "LOVE CAN NOT CONQUER ALL." That would knock it out of the genre, so keep working.
Gene Roddenberry taught me a technique that can work for TV and film too.
Most novels state the theme as a statement, as illustrated above. But stated themes lead to cliche plots and slushy characters, and they alienate the audience segment that holds the opposite unconscious assumption, as well as the segment that disagrees consciously.
So instead of merely stating the theme, Gene Roddenberry taught that you must formulate the theme as a QUESTION, and DO NOT ANSWER THAT QUESTION. Force the viewer to wrestle with that question, but don't tell the answer. Show the question, don't tell the answer.
All audience segments - those that agree, those that disagree, those that hold unconscious assumptions, and the undecided, will feel that their viewpoint is represented fairly.
All segments will be engaged by the question.
And here we come to what @DreamsGrafter said:
@JLichtenberg Whereas thriller/horror are about emotions: thrill/fear. More scope for storylines there. (@jeannevb @ambigfoot)
Think about that.
The signature of the horror/thriller is the hairraising QUESTION raised and never totally answered about the nature of reality and the nature of Evil, all expressed in the worldbuilding.
@DreamsGrafter was simply saying that RomCom films DO NOT ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE THEME.
And that's true. In Romance genre, the theme is sacrosanct.
And that's dramatically unsatisfying, and very limiting to the writer.
Interesting drama is generated by slaying the sacred cows.
Classic Literature always bears the hallmark of being "disturbing" on some level. A good book, a memorable book, a quotable film, will always hang on or turn on a very disturbing image, motif, character, fate.
The antidote to "slushy" is poetic-justice, very disturbing poetic justice.
The antidote to "cliche plot" is the Thematic Question.
The key to all that is worldbuilding, which I've noted in many posts is the weakest skill in the Romance Writer's toolchest.
That weakness shows up in Romance writers only when they venture into SFR or PNR where they must build a world from scratch rather than research a historical period.
"Reality" comes pre-formulated with all the pieces already illustrating (fairly screaming) LOVE CONQUERS ALL -- because it does. Gather enough historical datapoints and you can't help but see how Intimate Relationships (and hatreds) drive historical events.
Love causes the most collosal failures as well as the most spectacular successes. That's reality.
But when you must build a world from scratch, it's much harder to get the bits and pieces you create in your imagination to fall together into a pattern that readers/viewers will recognize as "real" while it obviously isn't.
So the temptation is to borrow this bit from here and that bit from somewhere else, and the result is that the pattern does not come clear to the reader/viewer.
Interesting and dramatically useful background bits don't always go together to make a pattern, or an artistic whole, just because they're interesting.
We must find, or train, a Romance writing circle who can worldbuild with a proficiency that allows them to pose the LOVE CONQUERS ALL theme as the greatest challenging question, the most disturbing question, a question which is not articulated anywhere in the characters, story or plot but glares at the reader/viewer from the background.
That's essentially what I did in UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER - many conflicting loves, and a price to pay for the choice, but the question is entirely within the worldbuilding.
"After you've lost so much, are you really so very sure that love has any value in life?"
Ask some of those questions yourself, the unthinkable questions, the insufferable questions, the not-quite-sane questions.
Find the right question to disturb the quiet certainty of that majority audience out there, and you may be on the way to formulating a High Concept film that is actually a Romance.
@DreamsGrafter read a draft of this post and elaborated on how the cinematic romcom has developed over decades in terms of asking those hard questions and provided this:
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- Re rom coms, this was a genre that pose thematic questions and also questioned the society around us. Looking back in history the rom coms of the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's were defined by their decade and women's role in society. You just have to look at the difference between Katherine Hepburn and Doris Day ... very different on the surface but they both aggressively satisfied their sexual roles.
Actually, even in the 80's questions were being asked. But since the 90's and especially in this millenium, we don't have any questions. That might be more to do with women's role in society. On the surface, we don't have to fight as hard as women from previous decades. And that's why the slacker rom coms such as Knocked Up come in. Fact is we have stopped asking questions but so has music and art: apparently, the students coming out of art colleges don't aren't driven to ask questions such as Hirst or Emin.
- On a creative level, I've tried writing rom coms but they always turn out into horror. I think that's because I like to explore the darker side of human nature. But I think that's just a personal thing.
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THE HURT LOCKER move over, here comes something bigger and more powerful than war and bomb-squads.
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Maybe you'll find your Thematic Question here.
Harlequinn has a new website devoted to Paranormal Romance - Once Bitten, Twice as Hungry
http://www.twiceashungry.com/paranormal/
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Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com -- current
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ full bio-biblio
Showing posts with label The Hurt Locker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Hurt Locker. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The Hurt Locker, Indie Films, Financing TV Part II
I've cut this long post into two parts again as an experiment. Part I was posted Tuesday, May 11, 2010 here.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv.html
Now for Part II.
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Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is Part I, a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by Part II, how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
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Part II
Today, a similar revolution is going on in film to what has happened in SF/F book publishing under the pressure from an exploding fanfic marketplace (and other sorts of pressure we're not talking about this time).
As fanzines were originally produced and distributed at a huge loss to the publishers, eventually publishers learned the business of publishing applied to fanzines as well. And the best fanzines became break-even.
That's right. They weren't allowed to make a profit, but they could break-even, that is cover the expenses with the price of the 'zine. If it were legal, they soon saw, they could indeed make a profit.
The fiction delivery system I've been talking about in these posts is a business model, and it can operate at a profit - if it's legal.
Hence, the pressure on the copyright system that makes it illegal to turn a profit on material copyrighted by others unless you pay the owner. Society is looking for a new model for the ownership of art by its creator.
The Indie Film community is meanwhile, tapping into Indie Writers, first-time screenwriters selling their first script. It's become a voracious market for scripts that could be filmed for way under a million dollars.
Use the LOOK INSIDE feature on Amazon to read the intro to the screenplay of THE HURT LOCKER.
http://www.amazon.com/Hurt-Locker-Shooting-Script-Newmarket/dp/1557049092/rereadablebooksr/
I have the book itself (it's good) and the end-notes or Production Notes at the end tell the story of how this film was funded.
As Indie film makers climb the ladder, they are able to attract investors and increase budgets to where those "fanzine" type flaws can be avoided. It's all about budget.
Really study how THE HURT LOCKER was created, and you'll see something very important is happening.
Now think about this. TV shows (long a product only of big studios) are now searching for and finding "independent financing."
Read this article in Daily Variety:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016724.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1&query=%22by+Michael+Schneider%22+%2B+Leverage
The TV Show Leverage is looking to leverage some financing from a new source. Remember the original Star Trek was canceled because of low Nielsen Ratings (because there were no ratings boxes on College Dorm TV's), and Nielsen Ratings exist for the sole purpose of determining the sale price of commercial time (eyeballs = revenue). If you don't have at least 3 seasons of shows, you can't syndicate and monetize the investment in the first 2 seasons.
Thus the 3rd season of 16 shows of LEVERAGE are key to monetizing the investment.
In the early 1970's, Star Trek fen hatched the idea that we should buy stock in Paramount and NBC and force them to put Star Trek back on the air. Good idea, before it's time. Shareholders had no say over programming.
If this business model idea had existed then, Roddenberry would have had a ready source of all the cash needed to create a 4th and 5th Season of the original show, and probably most of the derivatives and the movies. Fans were willing (and increasingly able) to raise that kind of money as many went on to very successful careers after college.
Remember always -- it's a business model. Invest and reap more than you invested. That's the only criterion of any interest, and the only thing that determines whether you the audience will have access to any bit of fiction.
EXCEPT -- now we have self-publishing and YouTube. Which are the "fanzines" of yesteryear manifesting in the Web-hubbed world.
Yes, the business model of fanzines was - pay nobody, throw your hobby-money into a fun project - the only profit is a boost to your ego (egoboo another coinage of fandom).
Have you seen the Star Trek Episode WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME -- made with unpaid actors, not paying for the script, out-of-pocket investment.
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/weat_gateway.html
It's a TV Show Episode fanzine - and it's fabulous Indie Production.
Marc Zicree engineering and produced WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME with all legal permissions. And it's been hugely successful.
Here's one more datapoint to consider.
Wired Magazine featured in March 2010 an article on using Twitter to transfer money person to person -- better and faster than PayPal.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_futureofmoney
The article talks about uninventing "money" as something printed on paper or coined from something of value. Whole new concept of making a business model work. And the concept arises from a new style of thinking, a new internal or mental model of the universe.
This kind of thinking is native to the Web 2.0+ generation.
But it is transforming the business model of the Fiction Delivery System I've been talking about.
I've been following several people on Twitter who are soliciting investors in Indie films.
Yes, for $25 or $50 you can "own" a fraction of a film - which like HURT LOCKER might win an Academy Award or perhaps a lesser accolade, and become worth money. Or it might be a paradigm transforming addition to this new world. There are lots of different sorts of "deals" out there for investing in Indie Films.
Here's one from Twitter:
@FilmCourageWe are 74% Funded, Over $11,000 raised. $3855 left to go & 17 hours left.... http://bit.ly/aVDeQP
And another one from twitter (@syfy is the official syfy channel tweeter)
Syfy Q) @dspringfield Would Syfy ever consider a cost sharing arrangement like Friday Night Lights on DirecTV? A) We'd probably consider it.
And I'm in some Film groups on Twitter where there's a lot of funding activity going on. Innovation in funding procedures will drive innovation in the kinds of fiction that can be delivered to different fractional audiences -- and then those little audiences grow and change the whole world.
The overall thrust of this series of posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is all about presenting Alien and SF/Paranormal Romance to the general audience in such a way as to reveal to them why this kind of story deserves attention and ultimately respect. The boring business of tracing how funding sources changes the whole business model is just one tiny part of this investigation.
So here's another illustration of the results of this kind of thinking, not so much focused on entertainment as on the kind of tech innovation that is pushing the world of entertainment financing (and thus ownership issues such as copyright) in new directions:
An article in Businessweek titled "And Google Begat..." shows how the entrepreneurial training employees at Google absorb even non-verbally is driving a new wave of tech innovation:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b4169039637367.htm
These datapoints are important not only because of their content, but also because of where I found them.
As Star Trek fanfic began slowly to be mentioned in major media, so also these innovative ways of financing the fiction delivery system are surfacing first here-and-there, and now in the hugely influential national media.
The source of financing for the endeavor actually shapes the endeavor, more even than the objective or driving ambition to communicate.
Financing and its sources belong to the Tarot Suit of Pentacles, the World of manifestation. Here is a list of the 10 posts on the Suit of Pentacles I've done on this blog.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html
Money is not the root of all evil, but rather the manifestation of whatever (good or bad) has been conceptualized "above" that level.
There is a dynamic tension in play between the established system of profiting from large audiences which is explained here in a Review of a book about the film industry and its business model (you probably should read the book; but I haven't yet):
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/04/20/noted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck/?icid=main|aim|dl9|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F04%2F20%2Fnoted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck%2F
and the system profiting from do-it-yourself entertainment (Indie Films, YouTube, Self-publishing, and now TV Series independently funded), which is discussed further down in the Review.
The walletpop.com review says:
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Independent film financing has collapsed. Studios rarely make money on a film. Although the industry may not be putting out films to your taste, you're still paying tax dollars to support them. And Wal-Mart is one reason skin is so rare in major studio releases.
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And a little further down in the article (which you really should read in whole) it says:
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What happened to sex?
There was a time when nudity was almost obligatory in major films. Now, even James Bond's arm candy is modestly attired, and Epstein points out that, of the top 25 highest grossing films since 2000, none have had any sex-related nudity.
There are two reasons for this, according to Epstein.
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Remember earlier here I pointed out how the sex scene has replaced the action scene in SF/F - especially kickbutt heroine urban fantasy. And have you looked at Romance covers as a group lately? Two figures, suggestively intertwined -- the artists must be horrendously bored by that order from editors.
But sexuality has disappeared from the big screen - (still a lot of hot stuff on TV, but that may change soon too).
On the third hand, read this article:
'Harry Potter' Star Says Filming a Sex Scene is Hard, Watching It With Parents is Harder
http://www.popeater.com/2010/04/22/rupert-grint-cherrybomb-sex-scene/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+aol%2Fmovies%2Ftop+%28Movie+News%29
Lesson for the writer - if you want a big audience, delete all the sex scenes.
Remember the writing lesson where you are required to write 10 pages, then the instructor tells you to go over it and delete every single adjective and adverb, and you absolutely die over that drill?
Well, do the same thing with your sex scenes. Delete them all and see if you still have a story in there somewhere. See what that does to the story you are telling. Maybe you have a major motion picture on your hands. Or an Indie.
I have no reason to suspect that what this review on walletpop.com says about Indie Film financing or the 10 items in the big screen blockbuster formula is not currently true. But to the kind of thinkers the Wired article referenced above talks about, that is an opportunity not an obstacle.
I recall my grandparents remembering the days before radio when families would gather in the living room in the evening and play piano, violin, and sing-along, entertaining themselves.
Perhaps we're headed back to that life rhythm on a new arc. Families sitting around concocting a YouTube video; what an image.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/05/hurt-locker-indie-films-financing-tv.html
Now for Part II.
-----------
Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is Part I, a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by Part II, how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
---------
Part II
Today, a similar revolution is going on in film to what has happened in SF/F book publishing under the pressure from an exploding fanfic marketplace (and other sorts of pressure we're not talking about this time).
As fanzines were originally produced and distributed at a huge loss to the publishers, eventually publishers learned the business of publishing applied to fanzines as well. And the best fanzines became break-even.
That's right. They weren't allowed to make a profit, but they could break-even, that is cover the expenses with the price of the 'zine. If it were legal, they soon saw, they could indeed make a profit.
The fiction delivery system I've been talking about in these posts is a business model, and it can operate at a profit - if it's legal.
Hence, the pressure on the copyright system that makes it illegal to turn a profit on material copyrighted by others unless you pay the owner. Society is looking for a new model for the ownership of art by its creator.
The Indie Film community is meanwhile, tapping into Indie Writers, first-time screenwriters selling their first script. It's become a voracious market for scripts that could be filmed for way under a million dollars.
Use the LOOK INSIDE feature on Amazon to read the intro to the screenplay of THE HURT LOCKER.
http://www.amazon.com/Hurt-Locker-Shooting-Script-Newmarket/dp/1557049092/rereadablebooksr/
I have the book itself (it's good) and the end-notes or Production Notes at the end tell the story of how this film was funded.
As Indie film makers climb the ladder, they are able to attract investors and increase budgets to where those "fanzine" type flaws can be avoided. It's all about budget.
Really study how THE HURT LOCKER was created, and you'll see something very important is happening.
Now think about this. TV shows (long a product only of big studios) are now searching for and finding "independent financing."
Read this article in Daily Variety:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016724.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1&query=%22by+Michael+Schneider%22+%2B+Leverage
The TV Show Leverage is looking to leverage some financing from a new source. Remember the original Star Trek was canceled because of low Nielsen Ratings (because there were no ratings boxes on College Dorm TV's), and Nielsen Ratings exist for the sole purpose of determining the sale price of commercial time (eyeballs = revenue). If you don't have at least 3 seasons of shows, you can't syndicate and monetize the investment in the first 2 seasons.
Thus the 3rd season of 16 shows of LEVERAGE are key to monetizing the investment.
In the early 1970's, Star Trek fen hatched the idea that we should buy stock in Paramount and NBC and force them to put Star Trek back on the air. Good idea, before it's time. Shareholders had no say over programming.
If this business model idea had existed then, Roddenberry would have had a ready source of all the cash needed to create a 4th and 5th Season of the original show, and probably most of the derivatives and the movies. Fans were willing (and increasingly able) to raise that kind of money as many went on to very successful careers after college.
Remember always -- it's a business model. Invest and reap more than you invested. That's the only criterion of any interest, and the only thing that determines whether you the audience will have access to any bit of fiction.
EXCEPT -- now we have self-publishing and YouTube. Which are the "fanzines" of yesteryear manifesting in the Web-hubbed world.
Yes, the business model of fanzines was - pay nobody, throw your hobby-money into a fun project - the only profit is a boost to your ego (egoboo another coinage of fandom).
Have you seen the Star Trek Episode WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME -- made with unpaid actors, not paying for the script, out-of-pocket investment.
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/weat_gateway.html
It's a TV Show Episode fanzine - and it's fabulous Indie Production.
Marc Zicree engineering and produced WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME with all legal permissions. And it's been hugely successful.
Here's one more datapoint to consider.
Wired Magazine featured in March 2010 an article on using Twitter to transfer money person to person -- better and faster than PayPal.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_futureofmoney
The article talks about uninventing "money" as something printed on paper or coined from something of value. Whole new concept of making a business model work. And the concept arises from a new style of thinking, a new internal or mental model of the universe.
This kind of thinking is native to the Web 2.0+ generation.
But it is transforming the business model of the Fiction Delivery System I've been talking about.
I've been following several people on Twitter who are soliciting investors in Indie films.
Yes, for $25 or $50 you can "own" a fraction of a film - which like HURT LOCKER might win an Academy Award or perhaps a lesser accolade, and become worth money. Or it might be a paradigm transforming addition to this new world. There are lots of different sorts of "deals" out there for investing in Indie Films.
Here's one from Twitter:
@FilmCourageWe are 74% Funded, Over $11,000 raised. $3855 left to go & 17 hours left.... http://bit.ly/aVDeQP
And another one from twitter (@syfy is the official syfy channel tweeter)
Syfy Q) @dspringfield Would Syfy ever consider a cost sharing arrangement like Friday Night Lights on DirecTV? A) We'd probably consider it.
And I'm in some Film groups on Twitter where there's a lot of funding activity going on. Innovation in funding procedures will drive innovation in the kinds of fiction that can be delivered to different fractional audiences -- and then those little audiences grow and change the whole world.
The overall thrust of this series of posts on aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com is all about presenting Alien and SF/Paranormal Romance to the general audience in such a way as to reveal to them why this kind of story deserves attention and ultimately respect. The boring business of tracing how funding sources changes the whole business model is just one tiny part of this investigation.
So here's another illustration of the results of this kind of thinking, not so much focused on entertainment as on the kind of tech innovation that is pushing the world of entertainment financing (and thus ownership issues such as copyright) in new directions:
An article in Businessweek titled "And Google Begat..." shows how the entrepreneurial training employees at Google absorb even non-verbally is driving a new wave of tech innovation:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_10/b4169039637367.htm
These datapoints are important not only because of their content, but also because of where I found them.
As Star Trek fanfic began slowly to be mentioned in major media, so also these innovative ways of financing the fiction delivery system are surfacing first here-and-there, and now in the hugely influential national media.
The source of financing for the endeavor actually shapes the endeavor, more even than the objective or driving ambition to communicate.
Financing and its sources belong to the Tarot Suit of Pentacles, the World of manifestation. Here is a list of the 10 posts on the Suit of Pentacles I've done on this blog.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_23.html
Money is not the root of all evil, but rather the manifestation of whatever (good or bad) has been conceptualized "above" that level.
There is a dynamic tension in play between the established system of profiting from large audiences which is explained here in a Review of a book about the film industry and its business model (you probably should read the book; but I haven't yet):
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/04/20/noted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck/?icid=main|aim|dl9|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.walletpop.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F04%2F20%2Fnoted-journalist-jay-epstein-explains-why-movies-suck%2F
and the system profiting from do-it-yourself entertainment (Indie Films, YouTube, Self-publishing, and now TV Series independently funded), which is discussed further down in the Review.
The walletpop.com review says:
-------
Independent film financing has collapsed. Studios rarely make money on a film. Although the industry may not be putting out films to your taste, you're still paying tax dollars to support them. And Wal-Mart is one reason skin is so rare in major studio releases.
--------------
And a little further down in the article (which you really should read in whole) it says:
---------
What happened to sex?
There was a time when nudity was almost obligatory in major films. Now, even James Bond's arm candy is modestly attired, and Epstein points out that, of the top 25 highest grossing films since 2000, none have had any sex-related nudity.
There are two reasons for this, according to Epstein.
------------
Remember earlier here I pointed out how the sex scene has replaced the action scene in SF/F - especially kickbutt heroine urban fantasy. And have you looked at Romance covers as a group lately? Two figures, suggestively intertwined -- the artists must be horrendously bored by that order from editors.
But sexuality has disappeared from the big screen - (still a lot of hot stuff on TV, but that may change soon too).
On the third hand, read this article:
'Harry Potter' Star Says Filming a Sex Scene is Hard, Watching It With Parents is Harder
http://www.popeater.com/2010/04/22/rupert-grint-cherrybomb-sex-scene/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+aol%2Fmovies%2Ftop+%28Movie+News%29
Lesson for the writer - if you want a big audience, delete all the sex scenes.
Remember the writing lesson where you are required to write 10 pages, then the instructor tells you to go over it and delete every single adjective and adverb, and you absolutely die over that drill?
Well, do the same thing with your sex scenes. Delete them all and see if you still have a story in there somewhere. See what that does to the story you are telling. Maybe you have a major motion picture on your hands. Or an Indie.
I have no reason to suspect that what this review on walletpop.com says about Indie Film financing or the 10 items in the big screen blockbuster formula is not currently true. But to the kind of thinkers the Wired article referenced above talks about, that is an opportunity not an obstacle.
I recall my grandparents remembering the days before radio when families would gather in the living room in the evening and play piano, violin, and sing-along, entertaining themselves.
Perhaps we're headed back to that life rhythm on a new arc. Families sitting around concocting a YouTube video; what an image.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Hurt Locker, Indie Films, Financing TV - Part I
I'll cut this long post into two parts again as an experiment.
-----------
Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
---------
Part I
The world of commercial fiction has been turned inside out, upside down, and backwards by the advent of the Web, and especially Web 2.0 with Web 3.0 and even 4.0, all going mobile.
iPhones, iPads, TV sets that hook up to your home network and let you fish for TV shows and films posted online, with or without a fee, nevermind Kindle and now iPads that can access Kindle's library.
The result of all this technology is a world which closely resembles the world STAR TREK fanzine writers really wanted to create.
And I don't mean in their fiction. Most portrayals of The Enterprise in STAR TREK fanzine stories was less futuristic than the 1960's TV show itself.
I mean in the ability to participate in joint story creations, to communicate instantly, to collaborate and share, all to the purpose of expressing in fiction what is nearest and dearest to the heart. To share universes.
In order to create and purvey their pastiche fiction based on a TV show, fan writers invented an entirely new world.
But they didn't do it all by themselves out of nothing.
Here's how it happened, and I'll show you below what all this has to do with The Hurt Locker (the film about a bomb squad in Iraq that won an Academy Award in 2010).
This also relates to the transformation of the artist's business model by the re-defining of "copyright" erupting from the whole Open Source software movement, and Creative Commons Licensing.
And that copyright issue can be traced back to Star Trek fanzine writers too. Oh, what a tangled web!
Before 1966 and Star Trek, in the 1930's, science fiction magazines connected readers of science fiction and basically invented modern SF as well as SF fandom. In fact, the very people who invented modern SF and created that community (called First Fandom) actually invented the word "fandom" out of "fanatic" and "domain" or "Kingdom."
Science Fiction fans, a bunch of guys, mostly in New York and Philadelphia, got together (physically met in one physical place), and kept meeting regularly and irregularly and created "conventions" as the events where the most of them would turn up.
They admired the writers in the magazines and the very few books. As it became hard to get together physically, they began writing to each other about the stories in the magazines and books, and about the writers, and about each other, and about the most recent gatherings. They invented an entire language to discuss these matters.
There came to be more and more of them, so they needed many copies of their letters to each other, and invented "fanzines." At first these were a few pages filled with letters and essays, copied on a spirit duplicator (which printed in purple ink), and later on mimeograph (decades before xerox copiers were invented), and stapled, then mailed to each other via the Post Office. Yes, snail mailed.
The letters would typically be a few weeks or a few months old by the time you got to read them.
At first, nobody charged money for these fanzines. You got them by contributing a letter or article. The publisher footed the expense out of pocket.
Some 'zines became so large that publishers asked non-contributors to pay a fee for paper, printing and postage. Audiences grew.
I have a fanzine of this variety with a letter from me in it, and my contributor's copy took more than 3 years to catch up with me, what with all the forwarded addresses.
I joined SF snailmail fandom when I was in 7th grade and have been a member of the N3F ever since (National Fantasy Fan Federation - founded by damon knight who also founded SFWA, the profession SF writer's organization where I'm also a Life Member).
Into this world of SF Fandom, Star Trek was born. The show captured the attention of SF Fen (the plural of fan is fen). They discussed it in fanzines.
Devra Langsam and some other New York fen who were captivated by Star Trek started a Star Trek fanzine called Spockanalia -- on mimeo, paper now totally disintegrated, ink faded, and I still have my copies. I had an article MR. SPOCK ON LOGIC, in the 4th issue.
The idea caught on, and suddenly Spockanalia was publishing fiction.
SF 'zines usually didn't publish fiction except as send-ups, spoofs, farces and gotcha's.
But suddenly, dozens of Star Trek fanzines were publishing fiction and articles and letters of comments on the fan written fiction and articles. A whole new world of Star Trek was born.
And Star Trek conventions where fanzines were sold, and story ideas concocted for more fanzines.
I created the Star Trek Welcommittee (modeled on the N3F Welcommittee which had welcomed me into fandom)to answer fan mail from STAR TREK LIVES! ST Welcommittee connected thousands of new and isolated Star Trek fans to the snailmail network. It's being reincarnated on facebook by another fan now.
Today that snailmail world of fanfic and letters of comment on fanfic lives and grows online. Last week here (May 4th, 2010) we derived a writing lesson in SHOW DON'T TELL from a bit of fanfic based on the TV show White Collar published on fanfiction.net.
What has SF Snailmail Fandom to do with Indie Films?
Star Trek fandom produced (is still producing) billions of words of fiction derived from a TV show. It connected thousands of writers and readers in a network that spanned the globe and discussed life in terms of fiction.
The content of that fanfiction violated all the "rules" and requirements of published SF, but was in most cases actually SF.
For a quick overview of classic Star Trek fanfic and some prime examples you can read free see:
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
The SF-Romance was, I believe, first explored in one of those fanzines, an Inspirational SF Romance.
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/showcase/
Those first classic ST fanzines sold and traded at Star Trek conventions gave rise to the "genzine" -- 'zines that contained not just Star Trek but pastiche derived from other TV shows (Man From Uncle, The Professionals). Then whole 'zines devoted to other shows (Dr. Who, etc).
Today, fanfiction.net has almost every TV show's fans posting fanfic.
These original TV spinoff fanzines had to be non-profit (and able to prove it) because of violation of copyright. At first, Star Trek, and other shows tried to stop fanzines being printed and circulated with actual legal cease and desist notices for copyright infringement.
This led to a clarification of the copyright law called today "fair use" and with a proper disclaimer and proof you make no profit, you can distribute fanfic.
That re-energized the fanfic community, and now a whole generation has grown up with a very different idea of what copyright is and what it's for.
Remember, Star Trek gathered, connected and energized whole communities of very geekish tech-minded young people. Out of that community's attitudes and activities has arisen the "Open Source" software movement and Creative Commons licensing.
Now we have a whole philosophy of life based on the "Open Source" concepts.
Meanwhile, also out of the (mostly) women fiction writers and readers arose another boundary shattering behavior.
The women who wrote TV pastiche wanted SF-Romance, and wouldn't let the traditional publishers deny it to them. They wrote it themselves.
At that time, you could not sell (professionally) any original SF or Fantasy that had even ONE sex scene in it.
Fanzine markets grew explosively after STAR TREK LIVES! was published by Bantam.
Then you could have go-to-black sex scenes in prof SF/F novels but human/non-human sexual relationship was considered, well, ...kinky?
1985, my SF Romance DUSHAU won the first Romantic Times Award for SF. (3rd novel in that trilogy gets right down to the sexual issue)
For Kindle edition and free chapters see
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
November 16, 1986 issue of The New York Times Book Review published (now famous traditionally published SF author) Camille Bacon-Smith's article SPOCK AMONG THE WOMEN featuring Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Star Trek fan fiction.
Then you could have chaste, non-anatomical-language sex scenes in prof SF/F novels.
Academic books mentioned ST fanfic, other newspapers, TV interviews, the internet -- online fanfic explosion.
And now you can hardly sell SF or Fantasy without fully orchestrated, every detailed action revealed, sex scenes. And prof Romance novels use sex scenes the way SF novels once used action-scenes -- as a pacing, punctuation between plot developments.
As the teen fanfic writers and readers grew up, the professional market accommodated their demand for more sex in their adventure fiction (i.e. mixing genres).
Now the biggest professional market is kickass heroine fantasy with combat punctuated by sex scenes. SF without sex isn't selling so well.
SF Snailmail Fandom formed the basis of ST snailmail fandom which created a market which is now served by traditional publishers.
The Indie Film community is following the same developmental path.
The Hurt Locker is an Indie Film. (Independent Film; not a product of Disney, Warner Brothers, big studios).
It's not even the first Indie to win that kind of major attention. Low budget, non-studio films, have done this before.
And that's not a new path. The women's Gothic Novel, once circulated in handwritten manuscripts woman-to-woman, eventually emerged into professionally printed novels.
What young teen fans do quietly on their own, even privately, eventually (used to take 40 years; now it may be only 10 years) emerges to dominate the adult world.
The Indie Film was essentially a fanzine until recent years, and at some levels still is. Most of the indies made are made by beginners or amateurs just for the fun of it.
YouTube has unleashed a flood of talent among the youngest people, learning to entertain an audience with a video, just as young people learned to entertain readers with fanfic and moved on to become professional writers and editors -- who now publish material with those same quirks professionally.
Recent works, like The Hurt Locker, are blazing a trail for works done as much from love of the subject and the medium as for the profit, are reaching award levels.
You must see this one, starring Nichelle Nichols -- click this link to see all the very interesting awards this film won --
Lady Magdelene's
(if you've got 2 or 3 hours - you can watch it on amazon video on-demand for $3)
http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Magdalenes/dp/B002XKK3ZM/rereadablebooksr/
Clicking that link won't force you to pay. You can see all about the movie.
This is a well marketed indie film.
I loved it because the flaws don't bother me any more than the flaws in a fanzine. It showed me a lot about what's happening in the low budget, indie film market, and what real professional skill used in a bare-bones budget film can achieve.
And this one won a number of film festival awards besides the one listed on imdb.com
The point here is that Indie Films have become the modern fanzine, even more than text pastiche on fanfiction.net
And the off-beat, violate-all-the-rules content of these films is becoming mainstream because these indie films are creating an audience.
This Indie Film audience is like the readers of SF in the 1970's who stopped buying traditionally published SF to spend their time and money on Star Trek fanzines.
And then, when Star Trek novels were published by Pocket, they might read those novels, but flatly refuse to follow the professional SF authors who wrote those novels into the author's other SF/F universes.
The publishers concluded that Star Trek fans were not interested in SF/F.
They were wrong.
It was the traditional publisher's rules that turned the readers off.
----------
So here I'll cut you off in suspense. Look for Part II next Tuesday.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
-----------
Introduction
The topic here is "If you want to understand the world, follow the money." And by following the business model and financing sources for the fiction delivery system, we might understand things well enough to boost the Alien Romance field's respectability. So here is a history lesson in financing fiction, followed by how that historical root has shaped what's happening now and reveals what might happen next. If you anticipate what's going to happen next, you can turn a profit on it.
---------
Part I
The world of commercial fiction has been turned inside out, upside down, and backwards by the advent of the Web, and especially Web 2.0 with Web 3.0 and even 4.0, all going mobile.
iPhones, iPads, TV sets that hook up to your home network and let you fish for TV shows and films posted online, with or without a fee, nevermind Kindle and now iPads that can access Kindle's library.
The result of all this technology is a world which closely resembles the world STAR TREK fanzine writers really wanted to create.
And I don't mean in their fiction. Most portrayals of The Enterprise in STAR TREK fanzine stories was less futuristic than the 1960's TV show itself.
I mean in the ability to participate in joint story creations, to communicate instantly, to collaborate and share, all to the purpose of expressing in fiction what is nearest and dearest to the heart. To share universes.
In order to create and purvey their pastiche fiction based on a TV show, fan writers invented an entirely new world.
But they didn't do it all by themselves out of nothing.
Here's how it happened, and I'll show you below what all this has to do with The Hurt Locker (the film about a bomb squad in Iraq that won an Academy Award in 2010).
This also relates to the transformation of the artist's business model by the re-defining of "copyright" erupting from the whole Open Source software movement, and Creative Commons Licensing.
And that copyright issue can be traced back to Star Trek fanzine writers too. Oh, what a tangled web!
Before 1966 and Star Trek, in the 1930's, science fiction magazines connected readers of science fiction and basically invented modern SF as well as SF fandom. In fact, the very people who invented modern SF and created that community (called First Fandom) actually invented the word "fandom" out of "fanatic" and "domain" or "Kingdom."
Science Fiction fans, a bunch of guys, mostly in New York and Philadelphia, got together (physically met in one physical place), and kept meeting regularly and irregularly and created "conventions" as the events where the most of them would turn up.
They admired the writers in the magazines and the very few books. As it became hard to get together physically, they began writing to each other about the stories in the magazines and books, and about the writers, and about each other, and about the most recent gatherings. They invented an entire language to discuss these matters.
There came to be more and more of them, so they needed many copies of their letters to each other, and invented "fanzines." At first these were a few pages filled with letters and essays, copied on a spirit duplicator (which printed in purple ink), and later on mimeograph (decades before xerox copiers were invented), and stapled, then mailed to each other via the Post Office. Yes, snail mailed.
The letters would typically be a few weeks or a few months old by the time you got to read them.
At first, nobody charged money for these fanzines. You got them by contributing a letter or article. The publisher footed the expense out of pocket.
Some 'zines became so large that publishers asked non-contributors to pay a fee for paper, printing and postage. Audiences grew.
I have a fanzine of this variety with a letter from me in it, and my contributor's copy took more than 3 years to catch up with me, what with all the forwarded addresses.
I joined SF snailmail fandom when I was in 7th grade and have been a member of the N3F ever since (National Fantasy Fan Federation - founded by damon knight who also founded SFWA, the profession SF writer's organization where I'm also a Life Member).
Into this world of SF Fandom, Star Trek was born. The show captured the attention of SF Fen (the plural of fan is fen). They discussed it in fanzines.
Devra Langsam and some other New York fen who were captivated by Star Trek started a Star Trek fanzine called Spockanalia -- on mimeo, paper now totally disintegrated, ink faded, and I still have my copies. I had an article MR. SPOCK ON LOGIC, in the 4th issue.
The idea caught on, and suddenly Spockanalia was publishing fiction.
SF 'zines usually didn't publish fiction except as send-ups, spoofs, farces and gotcha's.
But suddenly, dozens of Star Trek fanzines were publishing fiction and articles and letters of comments on the fan written fiction and articles. A whole new world of Star Trek was born.
And Star Trek conventions where fanzines were sold, and story ideas concocted for more fanzines.
I created the Star Trek Welcommittee (modeled on the N3F Welcommittee which had welcomed me into fandom)to answer fan mail from STAR TREK LIVES! ST Welcommittee connected thousands of new and isolated Star Trek fans to the snailmail network. It's being reincarnated on facebook by another fan now.
Today that snailmail world of fanfic and letters of comment on fanfic lives and grows online. Last week here (May 4th, 2010) we derived a writing lesson in SHOW DON'T TELL from a bit of fanfic based on the TV show White Collar published on fanfiction.net.
What has SF Snailmail Fandom to do with Indie Films?
Star Trek fandom produced (is still producing) billions of words of fiction derived from a TV show. It connected thousands of writers and readers in a network that spanned the globe and discussed life in terms of fiction.
The content of that fanfiction violated all the "rules" and requirements of published SF, but was in most cases actually SF.
For a quick overview of classic Star Trek fanfic and some prime examples you can read free see:
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/
The SF-Romance was, I believe, first explored in one of those fanzines, an Inspirational SF Romance.
http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/showcase/
Those first classic ST fanzines sold and traded at Star Trek conventions gave rise to the "genzine" -- 'zines that contained not just Star Trek but pastiche derived from other TV shows (Man From Uncle, The Professionals). Then whole 'zines devoted to other shows (Dr. Who, etc).
Today, fanfiction.net has almost every TV show's fans posting fanfic.
These original TV spinoff fanzines had to be non-profit (and able to prove it) because of violation of copyright. At first, Star Trek, and other shows tried to stop fanzines being printed and circulated with actual legal cease and desist notices for copyright infringement.
This led to a clarification of the copyright law called today "fair use" and with a proper disclaimer and proof you make no profit, you can distribute fanfic.
That re-energized the fanfic community, and now a whole generation has grown up with a very different idea of what copyright is and what it's for.
Remember, Star Trek gathered, connected and energized whole communities of very geekish tech-minded young people. Out of that community's attitudes and activities has arisen the "Open Source" software movement and Creative Commons licensing.
Now we have a whole philosophy of life based on the "Open Source" concepts.
Meanwhile, also out of the (mostly) women fiction writers and readers arose another boundary shattering behavior.
The women who wrote TV pastiche wanted SF-Romance, and wouldn't let the traditional publishers deny it to them. They wrote it themselves.
At that time, you could not sell (professionally) any original SF or Fantasy that had even ONE sex scene in it.
Fanzine markets grew explosively after STAR TREK LIVES! was published by Bantam.
Then you could have go-to-black sex scenes in prof SF/F novels but human/non-human sexual relationship was considered, well, ...kinky?
1985, my SF Romance DUSHAU won the first Romantic Times Award for SF. (3rd novel in that trilogy gets right down to the sexual issue)
For Kindle edition and free chapters see
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
November 16, 1986 issue of The New York Times Book Review published (now famous traditionally published SF author) Camille Bacon-Smith's article SPOCK AMONG THE WOMEN featuring Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Star Trek fan fiction.
Then you could have chaste, non-anatomical-language sex scenes in prof SF/F novels.
Academic books mentioned ST fanfic, other newspapers, TV interviews, the internet -- online fanfic explosion.
And now you can hardly sell SF or Fantasy without fully orchestrated, every detailed action revealed, sex scenes. And prof Romance novels use sex scenes the way SF novels once used action-scenes -- as a pacing, punctuation between plot developments.
As the teen fanfic writers and readers grew up, the professional market accommodated their demand for more sex in their adventure fiction (i.e. mixing genres).
Now the biggest professional market is kickass heroine fantasy with combat punctuated by sex scenes. SF without sex isn't selling so well.
SF Snailmail Fandom formed the basis of ST snailmail fandom which created a market which is now served by traditional publishers.
The Indie Film community is following the same developmental path.
The Hurt Locker is an Indie Film. (Independent Film; not a product of Disney, Warner Brothers, big studios).
It's not even the first Indie to win that kind of major attention. Low budget, non-studio films, have done this before.
And that's not a new path. The women's Gothic Novel, once circulated in handwritten manuscripts woman-to-woman, eventually emerged into professionally printed novels.
What young teen fans do quietly on their own, even privately, eventually (used to take 40 years; now it may be only 10 years) emerges to dominate the adult world.
The Indie Film was essentially a fanzine until recent years, and at some levels still is. Most of the indies made are made by beginners or amateurs just for the fun of it.
YouTube has unleashed a flood of talent among the youngest people, learning to entertain an audience with a video, just as young people learned to entertain readers with fanfic and moved on to become professional writers and editors -- who now publish material with those same quirks professionally.
Recent works, like The Hurt Locker, are blazing a trail for works done as much from love of the subject and the medium as for the profit, are reaching award levels.
You must see this one, starring Nichelle Nichols -- click this link to see all the very interesting awards this film won --
Lady Magdelene's
(if you've got 2 or 3 hours - you can watch it on amazon video on-demand for $3)
http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Magdalenes/dp/B002XKK3ZM/rereadablebooksr/
Clicking that link won't force you to pay. You can see all about the movie.
This is a well marketed indie film.
I loved it because the flaws don't bother me any more than the flaws in a fanzine. It showed me a lot about what's happening in the low budget, indie film market, and what real professional skill used in a bare-bones budget film can achieve.
And this one won a number of film festival awards besides the one listed on imdb.com
The point here is that Indie Films have become the modern fanzine, even more than text pastiche on fanfiction.net
And the off-beat, violate-all-the-rules content of these films is becoming mainstream because these indie films are creating an audience.
This Indie Film audience is like the readers of SF in the 1970's who stopped buying traditionally published SF to spend their time and money on Star Trek fanzines.
And then, when Star Trek novels were published by Pocket, they might read those novels, but flatly refuse to follow the professional SF authors who wrote those novels into the author's other SF/F universes.
The publishers concluded that Star Trek fans were not interested in SF/F.
They were wrong.
It was the traditional publisher's rules that turned the readers off.
----------
So here I'll cut you off in suspense. Look for Part II next Tuesday.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
http://www.simegen.com/jl/
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Conversation on Twitter
If you've been following my entries on the blog, you know I'm examining the rising phenomenon of "social networking" as part of the way "publishing" is changing under the impact of the Web and e-book. Those changes are re-shaping Genre, and allowing for the explosion of Cross Genre novels, mixed Genre novels, and mashed universes where characters by one author meet characters from another author's series.
Here is a scattered sample of some of my posts here on social networking.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-cb-radio-come-on-back.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html
and the attempt by "marketers" to use the social networks to promote their products, many of them bewildered why it doesn't "work."
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html
Twitter has rapidly become one of my favorite social networks because I keep discovering people, and finding links to things I want to know about but had no clue that I was interested in (and thus would not have googled for the subject).
Here is a conversational exchange with a person I follow, who follows me so that I can hear what they're saying and they can hear what I'm saying.
scripteach I greatly enjoyed #TheHurtLocker, but thought the direction rocked, not the script. It felt like it drifted off the rails in 3rd Act.
jlichtenberg @scripteach "It felt like it drifted off the rails" doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why and how to fix pls
scripteach @jlichtenberg doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why & how to fix pls In less than 140 characters is hard!
scripteach @JLichtenberg I'll try to blog about #TheHurtLocker soon. For now, the protag's unauthorized mission into city & return home felt false.
jlichtenberg @scripteach Good point about "unauthorized mission" motivation failing. How do you spot that in your own work? #scriptchat
scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: How do you spot in your own work? #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do
jlichtenberg @scripteach Ur nutshell " #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do" ROCKS!!! @susansizemore
I flagged Susan Sizemore on that because she and I exchanged tweets about staying with POV character. She tweeted that she'd made herself a problem by following too many minor characters, and that made me think (but not tweet) the complex relationship between following minor character's pov and using minor characters to reveal major character's motivations.
And @scripteach was talking really about a MOTIVATION problem in this very prominent film.
The #scriptchat hashtag can be searched on to produce all the tweets by everyone on twitter who inserts #scriptchat into a tweet -- regardless of whether you're following them or not.
People (ppl) discussing The Hurt Locker use the hashtag #TheHurtLocker and see each other's posts.
Anyone searching on a hashtag may (not will; may) see your tweet if you include that tag.
And they may, not will, follow you to see what else you say.
Having conversational exchanges like this is one the most rewarding and instructive functions of social networking.
Now of course I should write one of my humongous posts on what @scripteach has said and what it means and how you can use it.
For the time being, though, memorize and think about
"Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do"
I'm not good at nutshells. It would probably take me 2500 words to sketch a means of employing that bit of wisdom.
If you want to research it - check out the writing error technically termed "contrived."
-------
I also found via twitter that the SHOOTING SCRIPT of this film has been released in print with additional pages of illustrations etc. at 160 pages --
----------
FROM AMAZON:
In addition to the complete shooting script, this Newmarket Shooting Script® Book includes an exclusive introduction by Kathyrn Bigelow, a 16-page color photo section, production notes, storyboards, and complete cast and crew credits.
-----------
And here's more about it on Amazon:
The Hurt Locker: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)
This is indeed a strange new world where to get a story out printed on paper it must first become a major motion picture winning awards right and left.
The alternative is to become a TV commentator.
I ReTweeted (RT) the tweet that alerted me to The Hurt Locker as a script on paper and flagged @scripteach thusly:
jlichtenberg RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay (and the party last night celebrating it): http://bit.ly/baTR84 @scripteach
And @scripteach answered that he would read the script thusly:
scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay): http://bit.ly/baTR84 I'll read script & see what I think
That's why it's called "social networking" -- and that's why marketers can't afford to do it. At no time did the publisher of the shooting script participate in this exchange. I don't even know if they're on twitter. I didn't go out to sell a copy of the script. I was just curious how a screenwriting teacher would explain a script's hole to writing students on #scriptchat so I asked, and got a great answer, and picked up on someone else mentioning a blog about the film's success which has on it a link to the shooting script published as a book on paper.
That's a "net" and it got "worked."
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
Here is a scattered sample of some of my posts here on social networking.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-cb-radio-come-on-back.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-tips-tweets.html
and the attempt by "marketers" to use the social networks to promote their products, many of them bewildered why it doesn't "work."
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-via-social-networking.html
Twitter has rapidly become one of my favorite social networks because I keep discovering people, and finding links to things I want to know about but had no clue that I was interested in (and thus would not have googled for the subject).
Here is a conversational exchange with a person I follow, who follows me so that I can hear what they're saying and they can hear what I'm saying.
scripteach I greatly enjoyed #TheHurtLocker, but thought the direction rocked, not the script. It felt like it drifted off the rails in 3rd Act.
jlichtenberg @scripteach "It felt like it drifted off the rails" doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why and how to fix pls
scripteach @jlichtenberg doesn't help a writer learn not to drift off their own rails Say why & how to fix pls In less than 140 characters is hard!
scripteach @JLichtenberg I'll try to blog about #TheHurtLocker soon. For now, the protag's unauthorized mission into city & return home felt false.
jlichtenberg @scripteach Good point about "unauthorized mission" motivation failing. How do you spot that in your own work? #scriptchat
scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: How do you spot in your own work? #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do
jlichtenberg @scripteach Ur nutshell " #scriptchat Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do" ROCKS!!! @susansizemore
I flagged Susan Sizemore on that because she and I exchanged tweets about staying with POV character. She tweeted that she'd made herself a problem by following too many minor characters, and that made me think (but not tweet) the complex relationship between following minor character's pov and using minor characters to reveal major character's motivations.
And @scripteach was talking really about a MOTIVATION problem in this very prominent film.
The #scriptchat hashtag can be searched on to produce all the tweets by everyone on twitter who inserts #scriptchat into a tweet -- regardless of whether you're following them or not.
People (ppl) discussing The Hurt Locker use the hashtag #TheHurtLocker and see each other's posts.
Anyone searching on a hashtag may (not will; may) see your tweet if you include that tag.
And they may, not will, follow you to see what else you say.
Having conversational exchanges like this is one the most rewarding and instructive functions of social networking.
Now of course I should write one of my humongous posts on what @scripteach has said and what it means and how you can use it.
For the time being, though, memorize and think about
"Beware of what YOU want protag to do v. what the character should want to do"
I'm not good at nutshells. It would probably take me 2500 words to sketch a means of employing that bit of wisdom.
If you want to research it - check out the writing error technically termed "contrived."
-------
I also found via twitter that the SHOOTING SCRIPT of this film has been released in print with additional pages of illustrations etc. at 160 pages --
----------
FROM AMAZON:
In addition to the complete shooting script, this Newmarket Shooting Script® Book includes an exclusive introduction by Kathyrn Bigelow, a 16-page color photo section, production notes, storyboards, and complete cast and crew credits.
-----------
And here's more about it on Amazon:
The Hurt Locker: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script)
This is indeed a strange new world where to get a story out printed on paper it must first become a major motion picture winning awards right and left.
The alternative is to become a TV commentator.
I ReTweeted (RT) the tweet that alerted me to The Hurt Locker as a script on paper and flagged @scripteach thusly:
jlichtenberg RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay (and the party last night celebrating it): http://bit.ly/baTR84 @scripteach
And @scripteach answered that he would read the script thusly:
scripteach RT @JLichtenberg: RT @MattDentler: Some thoughts on THE HURT LOCKER screenplay): http://bit.ly/baTR84 I'll read script & see what I think
That's why it's called "social networking" -- and that's why marketers can't afford to do it. At no time did the publisher of the shooting script participate in this exchange. I don't even know if they're on twitter. I didn't go out to sell a copy of the script. I was just curious how a screenwriting teacher would explain a script's hole to writing students on #scriptchat so I asked, and got a great answer, and picked up on someone else mentioning a blog about the film's success which has on it a link to the shooting script published as a book on paper.
That's a "net" and it got "worked."
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
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