A.D. Croucher's Blog, page 8

Watching short movies

Fun fact! If you want to make a short film, a good first step is to watch short films. It’s a great way to see what cool things other filmmakers have come up with, and also to see just how endless the possibilities are for what short films can be. You’ll see so many different ways of opening a short, of setting up a story, of telling and resolving a story, all within the space of a few mins (sometimes shorts are more like 20-30 mins, but most are 15m or under). And you’ll realize, you can do anything! Yay! Also? You can do anything! Argh! What will you do??!

We’ll cover what makes a great short movie story next time, but for now, let’s focus on seeing what’s out there, and how some great directors got their starts.

Eric Kripke, creator and showrunner of CW’s Supernatural, got his start with short movies. His second, Battle Of The Sexes, was at the higher end of the short movie budget spectrum ($28,o00), but it showcases what short movies can do best: the reversal. We start with a low key situation (man hitting on a woman in bar), which partway through is flipped entirely into a more sci-fi comedy direction. Many short movies depend on a twist/punchline/reveal of some kind, since they are more in line with short stories, or even jokes. Your time and space are generally limited, meaning you have to deliver a setup and payoff, fast. In this case, the payoff is the super-elaborate and over the top scenes in the restroom, as compared to the sedate atmosphere in the bar. Check it out:

One filmmaker who has had a meteoric rise is Colin Trevorrow. His first short was Home Base. This led to his first indie feature the much-loved time-travel romance Sundance hit, Safety Not Guaranteed.

And that? It led to FREAKING JURASSIC WORLD (not the official title, although that would be really cool if it was).

And what did that lead to?

FREAKING STAR WARS EPISODE IX, BITCHES!!! (again, oddly, not the official title…)

The power of shorts, huh?

Sorry

Home Base is a more classical short is some ways: establishing shots, a quick set up, and an extended payoff. It’s more domestic than Battle Of The Sexes, although that could be Home Base’s subtitle, since it deals in a darkly comedic way with the fallout of a breakup. Take a look at how Trevorrow sets up his scenes, and how he uses the majority of his 8 minute running time to develop the payoff of the promise made by the guy in the first couple of lines. Fair warning: it’s completely NSFW!

These shorts are both somewhat elaborate in the way they payoff their twists. But there are other ways to do this, simpler, more low budget ways. Julia Stiles gives a brilliant performance in Neil LaBute’s short, Sexting (also probably NSFW). Here’s the trailer for it:

It’s very, very simple, one scene, mostly one take close on Stiles, and has a brilliant reveal right at the very end. It’s the reverse of Home Base — the entire short is the set-up to one quick sucker punch of a twist at the end. It’s a fantastic example of how a short can be incredibly simple — one locked off camera on one actress for one take. It’s a great way to showcase an actor (Stiles is excellent in this), and potentially an incredibly cost effective way to make a short that has real impact. It’s only available as part of the bundle of short movies called Stars In Shorts, which is available on iTunes; however, watching that bundle is highly recommended, since it contains a huge variety of different styles and approaches.

These are just a few examples of different shorts. Take some time to watch as many as you can; it’s eye-opening, inspiring, and lets you know — anything is possible. You just have to think of it.

We’ll focus on that next time: finding your story, and writing it!

Watching short films

Fun fact! If you want to make a short film, a good first step is to watch short films. It’s a great way to see what cool things other filmmakers have come up with, and also to see just how endless the possibilities are for what short films can be. You’ll see so many different ways of opening a short, of setting up a story, of telling and resolving a story, all within the space of a few mins (sometimes shorts are more like 20-30 mins, but most are 15m or under). And you’ll realize, you can do anything! Yay! Also? You can do anything! Argh! What will you do??!

We’ll cover what makes a great short movie story next time, but for now, let’s focus on seeing what’s out there, and how some great directors got their starts.

Eric Kripke, creator and showrunner of CW’s Supernatural, got his start with short movies. His second, Battle Of The Sexes, was at the higher end of the short movie budget spectrum ($28,o00), but it showcases what short movies can do best: the reversal. We start with a low key situation (man hitting on a woman in bar), which partway through is flipped entirely into a more sci-fi comedy direction. Many short movies depend on a twist/punchline/reveal of some kind, since they are more in line with short stories, or even jokes. Your time and space are generally limited, meaning you have to deliver a setup and payoff, fast. In this case, the payoff is the super-elaborate and over the top scenes in the restroom, as compared to the sedate atmosphere in the bar. Check it out:

One filmmaker who has had a meteoric rise is Colin Trevorrow. His first short was Home Base. This led to his first indie feature the much-loved time-travel romance Sundance hit, Safety Not Guaranteed.

And that? It led to FREAKING JURASSIC WORLD (not the official title, although that would be really cool if it was).

And what did that lead to?

FREAKING STAR WARS EPISODE IX, BITCHES!!! (again, oddly, not the official title…)

The power of shorts, huh?

Sorry

Home Base is a more classical short is some ways: establishing shots, a quick set up, and an extended payoff. It’s more domestic than Battle Of The Sexes, although that could be Home Base’s subtitle, since it deals in a darkly comedic way with the fallout of a breakup. Take a look at how Trevorrow sets up his scenes, and how he uses the majority of his 8 minute running time to develop the payoff of the promise made by the guy in the first couple of lines. Fair warning: it’s completely NSFW!

These shorts are both somewhat elaborate in the way they payoff their twists. But there are other ways to do this, simpler, more low budget ways. Julia Stiles gives a brilliant performance in Neil LaBute’s short, Sexting (also probably NSFW). Here’s the trailer for it:

It’s very, very simple, one scene, mostly one take close on Stiles, and has a brilliant reveal right at the very end. It’s the reverse of Home Base — the entire short is the set-up to one quick sucker punch of a twist at the end. It’s a fantastic example of how a short can be incredibly simple — one locked off camera on one actress for one take. It’s a great way to showcase an actor (Stiles is excellent in this), and potentially an incredibly cost effective way to make a short that has real impact. It’s only available as part of the bundle of short movies called Stars In Shorts, which is available on iTunes; however, watching that bundle is highly recommended, since it contains a huge variety of different styles and approaches.

These are just a few examples of different shorts. Take some time to watch as many as you can; it’s eye-opening, inspiring, and lets you know — anything is possible. You just have to think of it.

We’ll focus on that next time: finding your story, and writing it!

How to make a short movie: The Real Quinn Hardy

This summer, we wrote, directed and edited a short movie called The Real Quinn Hardy, about an aspiring singer-songwriter who thinks she’s about to make it to the majors. When it all goes wrong, she digs deep to write a song that she hopes will change everything.

It all started back in April, in Nashville, at the Bluebird Cafe, where inspiration struck in the middle of eating a black bean burger, forcing us to actually stop eating (damn it though the burger was SO GOOD, the muse does not respect the burger) and start scribbling the first few ideas, beats and lines of dialogue.

Later that night (after an AWESOME Bluebird set by the way — shoutout to Jessica Roadmap!), we pretty much had a first draft. We spent a month polishing and rewriting it, because all writing is really rewriting, then a month in preproduction where we cast our brilliant and wonderful actors (Rachel Keefe, Ana-Lisa Gunn, Brian Gallagher and Brittany Kleban), storyboarded it, designed the sets, and wrote the song too (which our fantastic lead actress Rachel also sang!).

Then, yikes! We shot it. D went full Spielberg, while A basically ran the set. It was awesome.

Two of our kick-ass actors: Rachel Keefe and Brittany Kleban

11 hours, 3 scenes, 70 shots later…

…it was time to edit.

So, we edited. And edited. And edited. And six weeks later (glossing over Apocalypse Now levels of insanity), we had a short movie.

Like, we made a thing, guys. It’s real!

We learned SO MUCH from this experience.

The most important, practical thing? Write what you can reasonably shoot with the resources that you have. Think about who you might be able to cast (friends, family, nonunion local actors, your super famous A-list third cousin), what kind of props you can scrounge together, where you can shoot, and then base your story around that. Yes, spaceships would be cool. Couple of dinosaurs? Obviously awesome. Superheroes who can fly? Hell yeah. But, realistically, it’s more likely to be people drinking coffee. Which is FINE –two people talking in a room can be beautiful, epic, hilarious, devastating… As long as you write it that way!

No less a filmmaker than Judd Apatow summed up his entire filmography as exactly that — people sitting around talking. You could say the same thing about Cameron Crowe (the brilliantly mind-bending Vanilla Sky aside).

It’s all in the HOW, not the WHAT.

The what is “people talking.” The how is the kind of people, the subjects they talk about (and around), and where they’re talking. Are they in a cafe, on a space station, arguing about comic books, dealing with an alien invasion (you know, the usual short movie topics).

The question you need to ask yourself is how can you make your people talking interesting? What’s the hook? What’s the thing about your story that is purely you. The thing only you could do in that moment? Because there is something — you just need to find out what it is. Felicia Day was a hardcore gamer when she started writing her groundbreaking web series The Guild — it’s people talking, but the hook was gamers talking about gaming.

In our case, we love music, and we write music, and we were SUPER INSPIRED by the awesomeness that is Nashville. So we based our story around a songwriter.

Rachel Keefe as Quinn Hardy

Also important!! Don’t worry about whether you have expensive cameras, a crew, or access to all your dream locations. In the end, you have to find a way to make it happen on your terms, with what you have in front of you. If you can’t shoot in a real cafe, dress a room to look like one. If you don’t have RED cameras, use a regular camera, or even your phone. Make whatever you’re using work for you in the context of the story. Write the scene or the movie, find some actors, feed them, let them do what they do best while you point your camera at them. Then edit it together and…

Over the next few months we’ll be posting regularly in a lot more detail about every stage of making a short, from concept to script to preproduction to shooting to postproduction and beyond.

But for now, we’ll leave you with this. We didn’t want to sit around thinking about why no one has offered us the next Star Wars movie (side note: Lucasfilm, please offer us the next Star Wars movie) — we wanted to make something — so we made something.

And you can too.

The cold never bothered us anyway…

Now that CORRUPTED has hit the virtual shelves, we’re getting ready to gear up for book three. It’s definitely a busy time here at Croucher Towers. We’re finishing up a rewrite of the movie script we wrote last year, which placed quite well in a few competitions. We got some great feedback and notes on it, which gave us some good stuff to think about and work on… so we dived right back in to really pull it apart and put it back together again. Although the central character through line is unchanged, each of the three acts has been heavily restructured, some substantial new scenes added, and we’ve cut out a LOT of what was there before. Editing is ruthlessness. You have be cold, like Elsa. (Or Captain Cold in The Flash). There’s no room for sentimentality or “but I love that scene”. The story becomes your master and you have to obey (but not in a 50 shades kind of way). It’s a thrilling process as you clear away the lines and scenes that you realize are slowing things down, and the script takes its final, streamlined shape.

Once that’s done, the final planning for and writing of book three will begin in earnest, as we take all the ideas we’ve been developing for our characters’ arcs and work out where to add robots and aliens. WE LOVE WRITING!!! :-)

Back to the index cards and flip charts and laptops and iPads and iPhone notes!

ALTERED on sale! 99c or 75p

Just in time for the holidays, ALTERED is now on sale!

ALTERED is available for Kindle at Amazon and nook at Barnes & Noble.

Also:

Buy For Kindle UK

Buy For nook UK

New YA Sci-Fi Alert! Altered Sequence Book Two Now Available!

Hey everyone. CORRUPTED, book two of our YA sci-fi series ALTERED SEQUENCE, is now available! It picks up right where ALTERED left off… And just in time for the holidays, right now ALTERED is $0.99, and CORRUPTED is $2.99. Details below!

 

Surrounded by threats, Reese wants to hide.

Erika wants to fight.

On the run, searching for safety in Detroit, Reese has never needed his father’s help more.

But his father’s past might be the biggest threat of all.

And as danger closes in, one word keeps coming back to haunt them:

Equinox.

CORRUPTED is available for Kindle at Amazon US and nook at Barnes & Noble.

Also: Buy For Kindle UK

Get CORRUPTED in paperback!

 

Altered Sequence Book One: ALTERED

ALTERED is available for Kindle at Amazon and nook at Barnes & Noble.

Also: Buy For Kindle UK

Get ALTERED in paperback!

The Maze Runner: Escaping the maze of YA movie adaptations

Let’s cut to the chase: The Maze Runner is one of the very best YA movie adaptations to date.

First-time feature director Wes Ball has done a fantastic job taking the best elements of James Dashner’s excellent novel and transforming them into a tense, gritty and emotional cinematic ride. It’s everything you’d want it to be. The maze looks incredible, and the grievers are even more horrifying on screen than they are on the page. Ball has done a tremendous job both serving the source material, as well as bringing new scenes and beats to help it translate fully to screen.

Kaya Scodelario and Dylan O’Brien

From the very first frame, the movie dives in relentlessly and does a great job in capturing the unnerving unpredictability of what it must feel like to be sent into the maze. The sound design plays a huge role in this movie, and creates a deep, rich, terrifying atmosphere, complimented by the great soundtrack.

It’s extremely well-cast too, with Will Poulter, Thomas Sangster, Dylan O’Brien and Kaya Scodelario as standouts. Scodelario is a brilliant actress; in fact, one of the film’s few flaws is that she is not given nearly enough to do. Hopefully, that will be remedied in the next installment.

It’s already done hugely well at the box office, and the sequel goes into production in a few weeks. Thank goodness, because even a year seems like too long to wait for The Scorch Trials!

All in all, it’s a big, fun, dark and fulfilling experience, one that does YA proud.

Rating: four out of five shuckfaces.

When YA zombies attack: Jonathan Maberry’s ROT & RUIN

With ROT & RUIN, Jonathan Maberry kicks off a huge, intense YA zombie series in impressive style.

Benny Imura has just turned fifteen, and is looking for a job. Preferably one that lets him kill zombies. He lives in the fenced-in town of Mountainside, somewhere in California. On the other side of that fence lies the great Rot and Ruin, the vast wasteland that used to be America, which is now infested with zombies. Orphaned as a baby by a zombie attack on his parents, Benny is full of rage at the undead, and most other people. But there is no one he hates more than his brother Tom, who Benny believes abandoned their parents to die.

As Benny and Tom’s tense, explosive story unfolds, details about First Night — the dreadful night that the zombie plague began — emerge. Right from the beginning, you’re immersed in epic world-building that feels terrifyingly convincing, and thrown into the deep end with complex characters consumed by their secrets and agendas. It’s grim, it’s dark, it’s violent, and it’s full of unflinching truths about humanity. The seamlessly interwoven past and present creates a relentlessly suspenseful and emotionally charged narrative that races to a thrilling and horrifying finale.

ROT & RUIN is a breathless, brilliant thriller, an exhilarating Robert Cormier-Stephen King level teen-horror hybrid. Maberry has gifted us with a deep and excellent introduction to a vast world that fascinatingly, even with its engrossing, gripping main story, has so much more to explore. Throughout this novel, people are faced with losing their souls; some are strong enough to survive, others are not. It’s powerful, heady stuff that a lesser author could not handle. Maberry’s grasp is rock-steady. He drives his story through character, which makes it all the more fulfilling.

With its highly charged emotions and complex relationships, ROT & RUIN is an extraordinary novel, one that demands that you consume the rest of the series like a hungry zombie immediately.

Rating: five out of five regrettable but necessary zombie kills

James Dashner and The Maze Runner at San Diego Comic-Con #SDCC

San Diego Comic-Con. One of the most extraordinary experiences you can wish for.

San Diego Comic-Con

Back in late July, we went past the nerd event horizon and deep into the heart of the geek universe.

We saw things, yo.

Gollum!

T-Rex heads, Transformers, elves, hundreds of tenth and eleventh Doctors, a fully functional Iron Man, a giant Smaug, Guillermo Del Toro walking around, John “Captain Jack” Barrowman, lots of Batmen, and many Spider-Men… one of whom was actually Daniel Radcliffe in disguise so he could walk the convention floor!

Basically, 130,000 amazing geeks pack the convention center for four glorious days that overflow with all things good and great from the worlds of comics, TV, movies, collectibles, gaming… and publishing. Oh yeah, Comic-Con is the secret book convention no one seems to talk about — all the big publishers were there, giving out ARCs and finished copies. We scored around 25 at final count! Plus, there were so many great panels. We went to a few YA-oriented sessions, and were lucky enough to get the chance to speak to Laini Taylor, Leigh Bardugo, Jonathan Mayberry and Rob Thomas (we asked him about a second Veronica Mars movie, he said nothing was decided yet, but more books are on the way), amongst others.

And then there was the man Dashner. Author of the hugely popular MAZE RUNNER trilogy (plus prequel), and also of EYE OF MINDS, book one of the new Mortality Doctrine series, James Dashner had the most excellent job of accompanying the MAZE RUNNER movie cast and crew to multiple panels, joining them to promote the movie.

So naturally, we were PSYCHED to get tickets to Zachary Levi’s Nerd HQ panel at Petco Park for THE MAZE RUNNER, featuring Chuck/Fandral himself as moderator, as well as three of the movie’s stars, Kaya Scodelario, Will Poulter, Dylan O’Brien, the director Wes Ball, and Dashner.

Will Poulter, Kaya Scodelario, Dylan O’Brien, Wes Ball, James Dashner and Zachary Levi

And it was good.

How good? Well, after the panel was done, Wes Ball came back and showed us a sneak peek sequence featuring an actual GRIEVER and it was EXTRAORDINARILY INTENSE. It was a breathtaking, nonstop scene… we all promised not to give too much away, but suffice it to say, it’s the real deal. Gritty, emotional, powerful…. Seriously, this movie looks poised to be HUGE, easily up there with the very best of the YA adaptations. It’s true that, sadly, YA adaptations have had mixed press of late, with praise being reserved more for the contemporary movies rather than the genre ones. But this looks seriously great. And even better, they’re already writing the script for THE SCORCH TRIALS, hoping to shoot in the Fall! Fingers crossed that THE MAZE RUNNER opens big.

But back to the panel.

The three leads have spent a long time promoting this movie already, and the banter flowed back and forth between them easily and good-naturedly. Dashner got in a few jabs of his own, with O’Brien giving it right back, while Mr. Ball mostly kept a low profile under his baseball cap. It’s cool — he knows he has an awesome movie on his hands.

Dashner talked about how he loves HAMLET, hates MADAME BOVARY, and mentioned that THE MAZE RUNNER was influenced by Lord Of The Flies, pointing out that the character of Chuck was inspired by Piggy… and also Chunk from The Goonies.

Halfway through the panel, D got to ask Kaya a question. Somehow he kept it together and spoke in sentences, asking her if her approach to playing Effy in the amazing SKINS was any different to the way she approached playing Teresa in THE MAZE RUNNER. Her answer was so inspiring that we’re going to just quote it here:

Kaya Scodelario, with Poulter and O’Brien

“I genuinely believe that our, for want of a better word, ‘craft’… that makes it sound wanky and actor-y… but our job, what we do, should be the same in any context, so no matter what the budget is, no matter who the other actors are, or the director, you should always put every part of yourself into it, because it’s a beautiful experience to lose yourself in a character and to learn to respect them and understand them, and hate them sometimes. That’s to me what this job is, it’s what I love. With [the MAZE RUNNER], there was always a fear of is it going to be huge, and are people gonna hate me, are they gonna be angry that I’m not right for it, are they gonna be disappointed… but you have to just completely put that to the side and do the best that you can, as an actor and as a person, to just fulfill that role, no matter what it is.

And I like playing intense women, because as women we are not simple… as much as the world wants us to be, we aren’t, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We shouldn’t be ashamed of having emotions, and of messing up sometimes, and being upset, and angry, that’s all part of what makes us human, so I could never just be the girl next door. I need more than that.”

Needless to say, she got a huge round of applause for that.

Yeah!

Dashner said they should just stop the panel there, because there’s no way any of their answers could be as good as that! Scodelario is a brilliant actress, and is the only female presence in the film — the reason for which is a key part of the story. Her thoughtful, intelligent answer above bodes well for the integrity of this movie. In addition to her ability to dive deep into complex characters, Scodelario promises to bring a huge amount of heart and soul to the role of Teresa, as well a fearless sense of humor, which we can only endorse. In short, she’s as complex and inspiring as you would want the sole female character to be.

The panel in action

It was an excellent panel, and it made us even more excited for the movie that we were before, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY SHOWED US GRIEVERS IN ACTION.

Afterwards, we totally stalked Mr. Dashner by the stage door.

James Dasher and fans

He was kind enough to sign our copy of his new YA sci-fi virtual reality thriller, EYE OF MINDS, and told us that he really hoped this one would find an audience and that readers would latch onto it, because it’s a highly personal book for him. Readers, we’ve read it, and it’s really, really good. One of those can’t-put-it-down books, full of characters who grab you, ideas that shock you, and a great balance between dark, messed up twists, and the humor and warmth of three friends as they try to keep it together on a deadly mission. Highly recommended. Whether it’s the terrors of the VirtNet, or the horrors of the Maze (or the Scorch…), Dashner always has an extremely compelling, page-turning style of writing, taking you deep into a sense of place while also keeping the action and character conflicts crackling.

In case you couldn’t tell, we’re big fans.

And seriously, if you haven’t read THE MAZE RUNNER yet, please… go and remedy that now. It’s gritty, tightly plotted, thrillingly paced, and full of emotion and intensity. Everything you want in YA sci-fi! Then read THE SCORCH TRIALS and THE DEATH CURE. And then the prequel, THE KILL ORDER. You’ll be glad you did.

And with that, it was time to leave Nerd HQ and Petco Park, and disappear into the night to prepare for another day of geeking out.

Petco Park, looking all gorgeous at dusk

On working: Short story published, movie script written, novel almost done!

It’s been a busy ol’ 6-8 months here in writerland. At the end of last year, we were humbled and honored when one of our YA short stories, The Place That Will Keep Us, was published in the 2013 Momaya Annual Review. Not only that, they were lovely enough to give us the third place prize! Most of the time you feel like you’re writing in the dark, not knowing AT ALL what anyone thinks of what you’re doing, whether anyone will like it or respond to it. So getting published in Momaya was a wonderful feeling. When you’re a writer, these kinds of moments form the string of lights that help you through the darkness.

The story is set in the southwestern U.S., and focuses on the son and daughter of a guitar player who are forced to go on the run and fend for themselves as they travel up into the midwest. So naturally, when we decided to adapt it into a movie script, we set it on an alien planet. With aliens. What else were we gonna do?! :-) We finished the script a couple of months ago, giving it the full YA sci-fi polish, and we’ve been sending it around. Fingers crossed!

Fear not, we’ve also been working on the sequel to ALTERED. Which, as of right now, is *this close* to being finished! It’s going through final edits now while we get the cover design finalized. This is always an exciting time — editing is when a book truly comes to life.

Once you’ve gotten into the actual editing, that is. Staring at the completed manuscript for the first time can be a bit nerve-wracking. In fact, the moment between the end of the first draft and starting editing is totally that bit in Empire on Dagobah where Luke faces his deepest fears and sees Darth Vader.

Facing your unedited manuscript. Scary, it is.

However, fortunately, then comes the actual process of refining, honing, cutting, adding, excavating, elevating, and many other “ings”, the end result of which is a book that you feel hopeful and excited about (as much as your writerly neuroses will let you, anyway).

So it’s all systems go right now; because, of course, book three is already calling!