The Impossibly Long End of Year and Beginning of Year Movie Update!

I can’t believe that it’s a new year already! Where did the time go? I haven’t been blogging like I should have been this past year and I apologize for that. A lot of personal stuff got in the way. Now I’m not one to talk much about my personal life here on the blog, but because my personal life impacted the project so much this year, I feel I owe you all an explanation since you’ve patiently stuck with me all this time. I wish the news was all good. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. So let’s get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first.

Near the end of 2013, the motherboard on my computer burned out. That immediately stopped all work on the treatment because all my files were on that hard drive. I know, I should have had a backup (I do now), but I didn’t then. Fortunately, I had other options that still gave me access to the Internet, but that was about it. Getting my computer fixed took way longer than it should have because I was given some wrong advice but this past summer I finally got it working again.

This is what I've been living with the past year.

This is what my bathroom currently looks like.

Then a water leak in my only bathroom caused extensive water and mold damage in both my bathroom and bedroom. What a mess. The tub/shower got torn out, along with several walls and carpeting in my bedroom. I’ve been living with no tub/shower for almost a year now and have been having to use the shower at the gym. I’m thankful that the shower is available; but it’s also a pain in the neck to have to leave my home to take a shower. So I’ve been saving my money to get the bathroom remodeled first. Then I’ll save to get the bedroom remodeled. I’ve been wanting to get that bathroom remodeled for years. (I’ve always hated that floor and wallpaper.) Now I’m forced to get it done. It’s been a year since this happened and I only have 1/6th of my budget saved so, unfortunately, I have to live with this for quite a while yet.

Shortly after this happened, I got sick. I won’t go into the details, but it is a permanent condition. Fortunately, I’m managing it and have felt fine since. There’s always the threat that I could have a flare up, but if that happens I’ll deal with it. It’s nothing that will stop me from moving forward.

And lastly, I had my identity stolen. What a headache that was. It took months to get it cleared up, but I eventually did. I wish that was the end of it but, unfortunately, from now on I need to keep a hypervigilant eye on my credit report.

I didn’t tell you all of that to get your sympathy. There are a lot of other people that had a much harder year than I did, such as my cousins who lost their 12-year-old daughter to cancer. And I’m not trying to make excuses, but the reality is that sometimes things happen that throw us off course. It can’t be helped. To deny that is simply unrealistic. But it’s not the fall that determines the outcome. It’s whether you get back up again. So here is me getting back up again.

With everything that has happened, you might be thinking that last year is a total wash. No, not at all! It’s the year the treatment was finally finished! Yep, after years of trying to find the right story, I finally have a story that I love and am excited to make. So let me catch you up on what’s been happening with the project.

Back at the beginning of the last year, Shawna, the writer I had been working with, decided that she wanted to leave and pursue her own projects. I totally get that. She had helped me for several years with my story and was patient beyond belief with this beginning screenwriter. I always appreciated her critiques. She was never afraid to express her opinion and tell me if something was wrong. That’s such a rare quality. And even though we didn’t always agree, we were always able to talk about it. I am very thankful for all her input.  Because of her help the story is so much better than it was. I wish her much success in her new endeavors.

After Shawna left, it wouldn’t be until summer that I finally was able to access and work on the treatment again. This time I was on my own. The majority of the story had already been written, so it was just a matter of finishing up the third act and then giving it a quick once over and making some formatting changes. I reformatted it as a scriptment, which is a treatment with some screenplay formatting in it. By fall it was finished. It turned out to be a massive 56 pages long.

Now it was time to have it professionally analyzed. I sent the treatment to two story analysts. Both of them teach college screenwriting and have read hundreds of scripts over the years. One is located in Los Angeles and teaches at UCLA Extension, among other places. (I’ve taken one of his classes in the past.) He has also been a reader for several major studios. The second one is located in San Francisco and teaches at the Academy of Art University and is a former Pixar story analyst. So both of these guys are very qualified. What’s interesting is how very different their notes were.

Now, I don’t expect the story analysts to like my story. It may not be their personal taste; and that’s okay. I just need them to tell me if there are any story problems. What I wasn’t expecting was how much the LA analyst would LOVE (caps are his, not mine) my story. I had always thought of my story as sci-fi/fantasy. His opinion was that it is a fantasy thriller. He thought the genre was great, the weapon unique, and he loved the world I created and the characterizations. I didn’t tell him about the cast I’m writing this for so he judged it purely on story.

What equally surprised me is what he said needed work. He said the story was only half finished, that it was in the middle of act two, and that I needed to finish act two and write act three. To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. I thought I had a beginning, middle, and end! He didn’t agree. He said to take what I wrote and add to it. The other notes he gave me was to make the ending bigger and make the villain eviler. He wanted me to keep it in treatment form until I finished writing the rest of it.

The SF analyst didn’t tell me whether he liked the story or not. He just pointed out some rather minor things that needed expanding and/or clarification. His biggest note was that it needed a better ending. I totally agreed with that. After he was finished with his comments, I told him what the other analyst had said about the story only being half finished. I wanted to see if he agreed. He didn’t. He reaction was the same as mine had been. (“What?!”) He said that the story was ready to go to script and he thought I had about 100 pages worth of script. The LA analyst thought I had 75 pages worth of script.

Goes to show you that even the experts don’t agree and it always pays to get more than one opinion. So who is right? Well, the only way to find out how many pages I have is to start putting the story into screenplay format, so I decided to fix the few minor issues they pointed out, call the treatment done, and start writing the script. If I do end up needing to add on to the story, I already have a bunch of ideas on where to go next.

I thought it was interesting that the SF analyst described the story as having franchise potential. I purposely wrote the story with the idea that it could have both franchise and transmedia potential. I’ve got ideas for a webisode, books, toys and other merchandise, a video game, and future movies, as well as a TV show. Seriously, the story world I created is that big! But I wrote it that way because I wanted to set it up for success from the very beginning. How much of those ideas come to fruition only time will tell, but the possibilities are there.

If I had a huge studio budget, we could do some amazing visual effects, but I also wrote the story with the idea that the effects could be scaled down a bit for a smaller budget. But that doesn’t mean I want it to have cheap-looking effects. I’ve been following a couple of other independent sci-fi movies. The first one, Iron Sky, was done with a $10 million dollar budget, but the effects are so good in it that it looks like it has a $100 million dollar budget. The production company that made it is now crowdfunding a sequel to the movie. The second movie, Space Command, is by Marc Zicree, who has been writing sci-fi books and TV shows for years now. His budget is much lower. I don’t know the exact amount, but I know he raised a little over $200k in his crowdfunding campaign. The rest he is raising from investors. From what little I’ve seen, since the movie isn’t finished yet, it looks like he’s got some really great-looking visual effects. So I know that putting great effects into a low-budget feature can definitely be done. These two movies prove it.

Both story analysts thought I was going to try to sell the story to a major studio. I’m not. It’s always been my intention to produce it myself. (I didn’t realize that I would end up writing it too.) I may take on partners, but I won’t just be handing it over for someone else to make. There are a few reasons for that:

  • A major studio wouldn’t hire Vince, Paul, and the rest of The Invisible Man cast. They’d cast A-listers instead, actors that they deem to be bankable. And that would pretty much negate every reason why I even started this project and got into this business.
  • As a fandom, we’ve already felt the pangs of falling in love with a show where we had no say in its future. If I was to simply sell the script to someone else, they would gain control of the project and we’d be back in the same boat as we were with The Invisible Man. The project could end up getting shelved and we would have no say in the matter.
  • They may not get it. An example of this that the SF analyst told me about is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The movie script by Joss Whedon was taken out of his hands and put in the hands of a director that didn’t get it and it was pretty much a flop. However, the TV show was firmly in Joss’ hands and that became a huge success. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people in the business make suggestions that I know would never satisfy an I-Man fan. They don’t get it, but that’s okay, because I do. I know what I loved about the show; and I’ve done my best to put those qualities into my story. So any partners I take on will need to understand that.

In this business it is extremely easy to lose control of a project if one is not careful. From production companies that shelve scripts and never produce them to distribution companies that buy films and shelve them instead of distributing them. Remember what happened to Mike’s movie Idiocracy? So taking on the right partners will have to be done very carefully.

Since I’m making this movie primarily for I-Man fans (the ones who get it), I wanted to get their opinions about it. So I asked four fans if they would read and discuss the story with me and three of them accepted. I’ve already talked to two and I have one more that I need to talk to yet. So far, the response has been very positive. I heard from them what they liked and didn’t like and what they thought needed improvement, which was mostly really minor stuff. I’m not going to name who the fans are that read my treatment, but they are free to come forward if they wish. All three fans have signed non-disclosure agreements, so if they do come forward, please do not pressure them to disclose anything about the story. But they are free to tell you general info that doesn’t give the story away, such as if they think I got the tone right, what they liked about it, etc.

So where am I on the script? I have 40 pages of the first draft finished. I’m shooting for a pace of about a page a day and I’m behind. I should be on page 62, so I’m trying to get caught up.

I’m on page 14 of the treatment. At this pace I’m writing around three pages of script for every page of treatment. If that continues, with a 56-page treatment, I’ll have a 168-page script!  Way over the estimate of both story analysts! At a minute per page that translates to a two hour and forty-eight minute movie! Of course, the page count could come down once I hit the more dialog heavy parts of the treatment. We’ll just have to see what we end up with.

Frankly, I’m more concerned with writing a really good story than I am about page count at this point. When I first started writing the script I was using a great little free program called Trelby. It’s a pretty basic program but it gets the job done. Then I got a free copy of Final Draft, which is considered the industry standard. It’s full of bells and whistles and I still haven’t learned everything that it can do yet. But what’s interesting about the two programs is that in Trelby, I was getting around two pages of script for every page of treatment; and in Final Draft, I’m getting around three pages of script for every page of treatment. Trelby seems to condense everything a little more. So if I was using Trelby, I’d have a movie that was one hour and fifty-two minutes long.  See why I’m not too concerned about page count?

By the way, I want to give a big shout out of thanks to Jim Fleckenstein for the free copy of Final Draft! It just wasn’t in my budget to buy the program, so it was a wonderful surprise to get a free copy of it. Jim, also, has been very helpful when I needed an expert to look at some police radio dialog in my script. His law enforcement background came in very handy. The Invisible Man really does have the best cast, crew, and fans.

Before I make any sort of announcement about the movie’s name, I’m getting it trademarked. I don’t want to start advertising it and then find out that someone else has laid claim to it, so I have my lawyer working on that. I have one piece of artwork already drawn by a fan that will make a cute banner, wallpaper, or t-shirt graphic, but I’m holding off showing it until I get an okay from my lawyer. I’m also working on getting concept art done for the movie. I can’t wait till that is done and ready to show you.

So there is a lot going on. 2015 looks to be a very exciting and busy year! Thank you for being a part of it and supporting my efforts to feature our Invisible Man cast in a brand new story!

Treatment Update and Important Mailing List News

Treatment Update

I’ve been really quiet on the blog for a while because I’ve been putting my focus on writing the treatment.  Here’s a bit about the writing process:

Each time I go through the treatment, I’ll go back over what’s already been written and clean up anything that needs to be fixed.  Then I’ll usually write another page or two.  After that, I hand it off to Shawna who looks at the old stuff again and the new pages and gives me her thoughts and edits.  It may be a slow way of working, but it is making the older pages better and better.  And while Shawna is working on it, I’m thinking about where I want to go with the next scene or two.  I know how the story is ending.  It’s just mapping out how to get there.

The treatment is getting a lot more detail this time around, which I think will help the script writing go a bit easier.  It reads more like a short story than a dry synopsis, which is what it should do.  Synopses are short matter-of-fact summations of a story…basically a condensed version of the plot.  Whereas, treatments are more entertaining—like a story.  Writers use treatments to sell their screenplays to producers.  But in this case, I’m using the treatment to get the details of the story worked out; and then I’ll use it to get cast and crew on board until the screenplay can be finished.

One of the many challenges with this story is making sure that all five of the main characters (played by Vince, Paul, Eddie, Shannon, and Mike) serve a real purpose in the story.  I don’t want any of their characters to be throw-away characters, like Eberts was in The Invisible Man.  As much as we loved Eberts (and there was even an episode about The Importance of Eberts), in reality, the producers could have easily taken the character out of the series and it wouldn’t have hurt the storyline.  I think it’s to Mike’s credit that he connected with the fans early on and endeared himself and his character to us.  By doing this he assured his continuation on the series, even becoming a series regular in season two.  So I really want to make sure that Mike’s character has a role that is vital to the story and I think we accomplished that.

How fortunate for the Veronica Mars fans that Warner Brothers is willing to bring back their show in the form of a movie, even if the fans have to fund it themselves.  I wish Universal had been as cooperative with The Invisible Man.  Instead, I was turned down flat.  Of course, I was not the show runner, so that gives me considerably less pull with them.  In spite of all that, I’ve always kept in mind that this movie is first and foremost for I-Man fans.  While I can’t copy I-Man, I’ve definitely been using it as inspiration.  I’m hoping that this story will be so good that it will get past any disappointment you may have that it’s not I-Man.  Just to be able to see the cast together again will be such a treat!

This last pass through, I ended up writing five new pages and I’m really happy to say that we are sitting right smack at the beginning of act three, the final act!  The end is so close, I can taste it.  I can’t wait until I’m able to share this story with all of you!

Mailing List News

Some of you observant ones may have noticed that there is an email sign-up form on the front page of my website as well as the Shoom Zone Facebook page.  It’s actually been there a few months.  I’ve been experimenting with a new mailing list service so I really didn’t want to say anything about it until I got the kinks worked out.

The mail service has a cool feature that allows one to split up the mailing list by interests.  I really like the idea, but in practice it was a pain in the neck, so I removed that feature.  I apologize to those of you who signed up already and specified their interests because this means that you will now be getting all my blog posts by email, not just the ones that match your interests.  Although I feel that I need to be blogging more, even at this blog’s busiest, you shouldn’t be inundated with email.  And if a subject doesn’t interest you, you can always delete the email.

My plan is to move everyone from the old mailing list over to the new one within the next month or so.  If you want to go ahead and sign up now, please feel free to do so.  You’ll be able to choose whether you want html, text, or mobile format.  If you don’t sign yourself up, your default will be html.

I won’t sell, rent, or share your email address with anyone except in rare cases as spelled out in the privacy policy.  Please read it if you have any concerns.  Your privacy is important to me.  I don’t like it when someone else abuses my trust and I won’t do it to you.  If you have any questions about it, please feel free to ask by posting a question below or contacting me via the contact form.

Click here to sign up for the mailing list and enjoy the convenience of getting blog posts in your email.

I-Man Scripts for Sale!

If you’ve always wanted to own an Invisible Man script or if you know anyone who would like to own one, today is your day!  Joan McCartney (formerly of Perseus Project) is selling some of her scripts!  Here’s what she has available:

Season One

  • Cat and Mouse
  • It Hurts When I Do This
  • Brother’s Keeper (writer’s draft, dated 5/10/02, autographed by Craig Silverstein)
  • Brother’s Keeper (revised writer’s draft, dated 2/21/01)
  • Diseased (autographed – hard to see – by Vince, Mike and Shannon)
  • Frozen in Time
  • Flowers for Hobbes (autographed by Dungeon Dan – special effects make up artist, with production notes on cover)

Season Two

  • Den of Thieves
  • Bad Chi
  • Immaterial Girl
  • Germ Theory
  • Mere Mortals

All scripts are $10.00 each plus shipping.  If you purchase all of them, they are $8.00 each plus shipping.

If you are interested in purchasing one or more scripts, please contact me via my website contact form.  I will forward all requests to Joan and she will reply and work out the details with you.

ADDENDUM: Please note that the scripts, and thus the autographs, are copies, not originals. Also, there is currently a waiting list for “Diseased.”


Two Weeks to Go!

Can you believe there are only two weeks left of voting for Round 1 of this competition?  Yikes!  So how are we doing?  Well, in one week we went from 40 people voting and 95 votes to 111 people voting and 341 votes!  We more than doubled the number of voters we have and we more than tripled the number of votes!  Way to go!

But the big question is, how are we stacking up against the competition?  Last week I found 33 entries with more votes than we have.  We plowed right past about a dozen or so entries that seemed to have started out pretty strong, but then fizzled out.  And we are getting very close to passing by four more.  But then I found a few more entries that were in front of us.  So as of today, there are 25 entries that I know of with more votes than us.  While it is very encouraging that we appear to be moving up, please keep in mind that I haven’t seen all the entries and have no idea how many that I haven’t seen have more votes than us.  Also, I’ve found at least three entries that started after us and have passed us by.  So we need to keep voting every single day and we need to keep finding more voters! 

To see how we stack up against the top players, here’s how the top ten entries (that I know of) are doing:

  • 3,235 votes, 706 voters
  • 1,334 votes, 299 voters
  • 1,283 votes, 156 voters
  • 1,025 votes, 269 voters
  • 958 votes, 145 voters
  • 898 votes, 111 voters
  • 895 votes, 196 voters
  • 863 votes, 181 voters
  • 722 votes, 96 voters
  • 721 votes, 151 voters

So please don’t get complacent!  We’ve got a ways to go yet!  We need every vote!

Joyce, our I-Maniac fan club president, is currently moving the fan club mailing list to a more reliable program.  So if you get an email from her, be sure you opt in.  She’ll be sending out an announcement about this contest as folks opt in.  Some of the email addresses no longer work, so if you have contact with an I-Maniac that may not be aware of this contest, please lend a hand and let them know about it.

I attended a United Filmmakers Association mixer over a week ago and was able to get a free copy of the Reel Directory, which is the Northern California version of the Hollywood Creative Directory.  Basically, it’s a directory of services and everyone in the business from audio post facilities to production equipment to stunt equipment rentals to traffic and crowd control services…virtually everything you could possibly think of and would need to make a movie.  I’ve used it to start calling around to studios and getting rental rates for the video we’re shooting.  My director is prepping for another shoot right now, but we’ll be meeting again on Friday.  I’m happy to say that my financing came through, so this video is officially green lit!

I’m also starting to get quotes from artists and will be commissioning some custom artwork as part of my submission.  Exciting stuff!

The contest requires that if I use any third party’s name, I must have a signed release from them.  This weekend, I got emails from Paul Ben-Victor, Eddie Jones, and Mike McCafferty and I talked on the phone to Vincent Ventresca on Sunday.  All these wonderful guys are very willing to sign a release so that I can use their names when entering my submissions into the contest!  Vince is contacting Shannon for me and I’m still waiting to hear from her.  Do you realize how lucky we are to have such a supportive cast?  I can’t think of another cast that would do what these guys do.    

There is still so much to do and it’s going to get crazy.  Please don’t mind me if you see me wearing a straight jacket in the near future!

Contest Wrap Up

The NAME THE MOVIE CHARACTERS CONTEST has now come a close after a run of eight weeks.  My does time fly!  I hope you all had fun! I want to give a big congratulations to our winners:

Rochelle Ramos for naming Eddie Jone’s character Sam Weber
Cheryl Johnson
for naming the antagonist Sebastian Grey
Rochelle Ramos
for naming Mike McCafferty’s character Lester
Carol Ward
for naming Vincent Ventresca’s character Ethan

It’s not often that the opportunity to name characters in a movie comes along and now our winners will have those bragging rights; and Rochelle Ramos gets those bragging rights times two!  And if your friends and family don’t believe that you named that character, just show them your name in the credits.  That’ll vindicate you!  I’ll be contacting each of you winners in the very near future to sign a release form, so keep your eyes open for an email from me.

To everyone else who participated, thank you for your support and enthusiasm!  If you didn’t win this time, don’t fret.  There will be other opportunities in the future for you to participate and support the project.  I’m cooking up ideas all the time!

I, also, want to give my appreciation to my fellow judges:  Shawna Buchanan, Joyce Harrell, and Joan McCartney.  I couldn’t have done it without these wonderful ladies giving me a hand.  To keep it fair we each got an equal vote, which means that they had the power to outvote me.  But, we were actually pretty much in agreement most of the time.  (You think it might be because we are all fans of the same show? 🙂 ) 

A little about the voting process:  I first listed all the submitted names in an email to the  judges. (Towards the end that got to be quite laborious with the large number of entries that were submitted!)  Then everyone gave their opinions about the names.  That afforded us all an opportunity to get each other’s viewpoints, which was really useful because many times someone would make a point that the others hadn’t thought of yet.  Finally, I created a voting form (Again quite laborious with all those names!) and each of the judges voted for their favorites.  It was always majority rules with each name needing at least three votes to go to the next round, which is where all of you would make the final decision based on your votes.

So, Shannon Kenny’s character’s name, Tara, remains the same because of a tie that left the final decision with the judges.  But, not surprisingly, the question has been asked, what about Paul Ben-Victor’s character?  Don’t worry.  I didn’t forget about Paul’s character.  I just didn’t include his character in the contest because he already has a name that fits him perfectly and I think it would be a crime to change it.  Sorry to disappoint anyone who may have been  looking forward to naming Paul’s character!

Next Steps

So what’s next?  Well, I need to get some computer problems solved first before I’m completely without a computer.  Then I’ll be getting right back to work getting the story finished.  This means I need to finish the story bible.  After that I’ll be giving the treatment a very thorough going over and have my screenwriter make the changes.  Hopefully that will be the final edit before I send it to the story analyst(s).  

I’m, also, going to do some research in preparation for my series of interviews of distribution companies for the United Filmmakers Association.  That keeps getting pushed back, but once my computer problems are solved, I’ll be able to move forward with that.  

I’m looking forward to a productive year and really making some progress with this project!

 

Character #2 (Final Results)

Last week we were left hanging as to the winning name for Shannon’s character.  It was a tie between Tara and Madeleine.  This meant that the judges had to break the tie and make the final decision.  The judges voted and it was unanimous.  The winning name is the name the character already had…Tara!

This means that we will not be naming a winning contestant for this round.  But the contest isn’t over!  We still have two more characters that do not yet have names!

Character #2 (Results)

The voting has now come to a close for Character #2 and we have a two-way tie!  The two names with the most votes were Tara and Madeleine

This means that the judges will have to break the tie.  We’ll take the next week to discuss and vote on which one we like best.  Then, on Monday, December 27, 2010, at 6:00 p.m. PT, I’ll post the winning name here on the blog. 

 There are only two more names left, so join in on the fun!

Character #2 (Voting Period)

Now starts the Voting Period for Character #2! The Judges discussed the pros and cons of each name and then voted on them. Names were chosen by majority rule, which meant that a minimum of three votes were needed to move the names to the Voting Round.  In this round only one name received four votes.  The rest received three votes.  Congratulations to the four finalists who made it to this round!

Now the naming of this character rests with all of you. It’s out of the Judges’ hands. It’s your decision.  Please take a minute to vote and show your support.

Some reminders:

  • Be sure you are logged on to this Blog.
  • Each person gets only one vote, including the contestants who entered the contest and the finalists.
  • Enter your vote in the comments section (below) of this Blog post.
  • You have one week to enter your vote. The comments will be closed Monday, December 20, 2010, at 6:00 p.m. PT.
  • This is a popularity contest. The most popular name wins! So finalists are free to campaign if they wish.

This round is a bit different from the last voting round in that we are also including the current name of the character, Tara, for you to vote on.  Do you like the character’s current name or do you prefer one of the finalists’ character names?   You can only vote for one of them!

Tara
Samantha
Jenny
Madeleine
Jessica