Issue #7 - The Little Things and a New Brainstorming Tool
Welcome to Issue #7, thanks for checking it out!
The Little Things (10 min read)
One of the first meetings a writer/producer has when prepping an episode of TV for production is the concept meeting. They go through the script with all of the department heads and the director and talk about the elements of each scene (props, costumes, viz fx, etc) before all of those very talented people go about the work of making them happen.
The first concept meeting I did on my own for EXTANT was episode three. There were elements we hadn’t talked about in detail in the writer’s room or props and costumes I had written into the script that had never been discussed. Suddenly people were asking me to describe what I was envisioning and I had a hard time answering their questions. I thought I knew my script backwards and forwards but I hadn't gone through all of those little details and asked myself "why" I'd made those choices.
From then on, before every concept meeting I sat down with the script and made notes on every single element in every single scene, asking myself the same question over and over: “What is the story you’re trying to tell?” What story is this prop telling? What story is this visual effect telling? What does the set decoration for this character’s apartment reveal about this character?" Having that granular understanding gives me a basis for answering questions in the concept meeting and informs my answers to the hundreds of questions that come up throughout the process.
It took me a while to start developing the muscle of walking onto the stage and looking at the set on the day and asking, "Would this character have a shelf of leather bound books behind them? Does this space look “lived in” enough? Too cluttered?" Once we’re shooting, "Are we getting everything we need from this performance? What are we missing? How can this be better? Are we effectively communicating our intentions to the audience?"
It took me half a season’s worth of going to the final sound mixes to stop doing the writing job there. I’d be watching a scene and thinking about lines I still wanted to change or moments that didn’t quite land but I was supposed to be listening to how the sound is telling the story. The writing job was finished weeks ago. I had to train my brain and then my ears to listen to all of the tiny details in the sound mix and think about how those elements supported the story.
This is an ongoing process and still my biggest weakness. Writing, casting, being on set and working with the actors, doing tone meetings with the directors, talking about how certain moments in scenes are supposed to feel, navigating notes, those concept meetings with the department heads, solving problems in production by finding creative solutions, I feel good about all of that. It’s the attention to the details that I’m still working on.
To quote Bob Schneider from Flower Parts, “It’s the little things that separate the good from the great.”
One of the unfortunate things happening in our industry right now is that writers are getting fewer and fewer opportunities to produce their episodes all the way through, which means they're not being given the chance to develop those same skills. But even if you're not getting the chance to produce your episodes yet, or you feel like you have room for improvement, you can train yourself to get better at these parts of the job.
In fact, training yourself to notice the little details can impact whatever job you do, it can change the way you see and hear the world, and in extreme cases it may just save your life.
In 2016 I picked up a book called Visual Intelligence by Amy E. Herman. She’s an art historian who teaches courses in sharpening your skills of perception using classic works of art. She's taught this course to doctors, FBI agents, counterterrorism experts and leaders of Fortune 500 companies.
After I started reading it I very quickly realized that I don’t have a high degree of visual intelligence. There’s a painting on the wall behind me as I’m writing this in my dining room. It’s been in that exact spot for three years. If you told me you’d give me a hundred dollars if I could accurately describe it to you I wouldn’t be able to do it. Like I said, this is an ongoing battle, but Visual Intelligence did help me improve my powers of observation. When I went into production on REVERIE I was not as experienced as my showrunner but I was a better partner to him and the production team because of it.
One of my favorite bands, Counting Crows, put out a new EP a couple of weeks ago. I listened to it a dozen times while making dinner, running errands, hanging out with Julie, or getting ready in the morning. The other night I put on a pair of headphones, put away my phone and just listened to the entire thing all the way through. I was astonished at all of the details I’d never heard on those first dozen listens. I picked one song and played it over a few times, picking one instrument to track all the way through. It’s changed the way I hear the record now when I’m back to making it the soundtrack for my day. It’s a deeper, richer experience.
When I was in high school I held up a cassette recorder to the television and recorded the entire movie of THE UNTOUCHABLES so I could listen to it while I was driving around in my car. I didn’t even know who David Mamet was at that point, I just loved hearing that dialogue and score. I hadn’t done that in thirty years but after my experience with the Counting Crows record it got me thinking about how much I’m just skimming the surface when I watch a show or a movie. I started pulling up scenes and sequences this week and listening to them with my headphones on and picture off. My brain always goes right to the dialogue, imagining the words being typed out in Final Draft. But once I push past that and just concentrate on listening I start to hear the rhythm of each character and all the little grace notes in the design. I haven't been on a mix stage in three years but when I get the chance again I want to be ready.
My ultimate goal is to improve my production skills but it’s also pretty clear to me the benefit these exercises are having at the writing stage. For starters, sometimes the tiniest detail can lead to a whole new idea.
Recent example:
Julie and I were walking Ellie a few mornings ago and got stopped at a light. A private driving school car passed by as we were waiting and I noticed the side of the car was dented to shit. I couldn’t stop thinking about that little detail for the rest of the walk and I started asking myself the kinds of questions that lead to the germ of a story. “Who is this teacher? Are they just terrible at their job? Are they a nervous wreck all the time? Or… does that job require you to have nerves of steel, to the point where you are completely comfortable being in a dangerous situations?" That line of inquiry led to some pretty interesting answers.
It's not just new ideas, I'm hoping this attention to detail leads to better ideas.
I read a quote once that I think was attributed to Miles Davis but I looked and can’t seem to find it anywhere now. The quote was, “A good musician can play anything he thinks. The difference between a good musician and a great musician is what they think.”
I’d like to think I’m a pretty good writer but I’m trying to be great. Developing my ability to notice more interesting details in the world leads to more specificity, which in turn makes for more interesting characters and better stories, The world needs all of those it can get.
*** I had written the first draft of this section a few days ago then yesterday I was to on a walk with Julie and Ellie and saw this:
On first glance it looked like there'd been accident or that someone dropped a bunch of trash in their driveway. Having just reread Visual Intelligence I stopped to give it a closer look.
That's when I realized this placement was purposeful. Someone turned their driveway into a mini art installation.
It reinforced everything I've been thinking about and got me wondering how many other things like this I'm missing every day.
New Brainstorming Tool (2 min read)
I kept up the morning pages religiously for about six weeks before I found myself struggling to fill even three pages. I started cheating, using it to work out ideas for this newsletter and had to stop myself because the whole point of the morning pages is to remove any external audience from the process in order to free your subconscious mind.
Then I came across an oral history article about some episode of TV and it gave me an idea about how to brainstorm this new idea I have for a series. I decided to use my morning pages time to write a stream-of-consciousness oral history of the events in this new series from the perspective of different characters, shifting voices whenever I felt so moved. It’s helped me figure out the plot as I go but more importantly it’s helped me understand each character’s point of view about what’s happening and to develop their own specific voice.
I’m kind of stunned that I’ve never tried this before. I’ve written thousands of words over the past ten days or so just by writing as much as I can in the first twenty minutes of my writing day, using the same technique and practice I built with the morning pages. If I keep this up for another week I’ll have enough raw material to put together an outline for the pilot and lay the foundation for a pitch. I could have a new spec pilot by mid-July.
If you haven’t read an oral history article in a while there was a great one that came up in my feed today about WANDAVISION. Check it out, maybe it will spark a new way of working:
'WandaVision' Oral History: Inside the Making of the Show - Rolling Stone — www.rollingstone.com Music, Film, TV and Political News Coverage