We are going to run a screen-writers competition with some partners later this year. You know the sort of thing, we’ll set a brief of some sort, have submissions and then winnow the field, the winner gets optioned and comes along on our development track with a shot of making their film.
The question we are knocking about, is what sort of brief for spec scripts is most helpful?

Before everyone rushes to answer, I think its worth abstracting the problem a level, the key question in this sort of thing is:

• What sort of constraints in a brief encourage creativity and interesting outcomes and which sorts inhibit it?

In my experience both as a writer and having run competitions like this before, there are certain types of criteria that are freeing and others that are limiting.

I think the difference between them is a conceptual one: the distinction (not mine but Guillemo del Toro’s, and Aristotle’s before him, but its useful so I’m nicking it) between the core genesis, the heart, the controlling idea of a story and the syntax that is then utilized to tell the story.

The former is the inviolate idea that comes from a writers psyche / muse. It doesn’t arrive ready formed, they come out of long invisible and unfathomable gestation processes in writers heads. They come from forgotten nightmares, buried neuroses, long abiding passions and pre-occupations. Orson Welles’ obsession with fame; Aaron Sorkin’s issues with displaced fathers and the love that can exist between groups of colleagues; Joss Whedon’s fascination with the underestimated power of women; Almodovar’s love of mothers; del Toro’s fascination with the distinction between being and becoming. These are the ideas that inform all these film-makers films, no matter how different their ultimate expression in different types of films.

This is the bit that I think we can’t and shouldn’t prescribe, because it would encourage false or forced entries. We want people to write about what’s inside them, not what we think people should write about. So I would beware of prescribing the themes we want people to write about. We don’t want to puppet writers.

The SYNTAX of a story, however, that is something that is more about audience / market / style then it is about guts and internal process. Orson Wells talks about fame and power as eloquently in KANE as he does in OTHELLO; Almodovar has explored the power of women in melodrama (TODOS SOBRE MI MADRE) and in sex comedy (TIE ME UP TIE ME DOWN); Wheedon deals with women’s power and the politics of it in both teenage vampire fantasy and in Sci-Fi Western (FIREFLY/SERENITY). Sorkin is exploring the same type of philia today on the set of Studio 60 as he did for 4 years in the White House. The tensions between Fascist political ideology and the freedom of fantasy that everyone loved in PANS LABYRINTH were already being explored in HELL BOY. (and apparently in its sequel!)

By Syntax, therefore, I mean choices of: GENRE, LOCATION, SETTING, MILIEU, TONE, FORMAT and PHYSICAL or CONCEPTUAL Limitations. I think this is where we should focus our criteria.

In as sense, there is nothing terribly radical in this thinking of mine. Its just the difference between a teacher who asks his class to write a sonnet about anything they want, but making sure they respect the form of the sonnet, and a teacher who asks everybody to write a poem about a frog who became a prince. The results of the former exercise tend to be more interesting, more varied, and have a greater chance of uncovering a real poet.
At least that’s what I think. What do other people think?

I’ve been having a debate with my friend Simon Hill about the difference between the Scientific Method, and the princples of Rapid Prototyping.

I have been arguing that there are close parallels between the two, to whit

The SCIENTIFIC METHOD, if one could distill it into a single line, goes like this:

Experiment –> measure –> alter –> re-experiment –> remeasure –> deduce

RAPID PROTOTYPING METHODOLOGY goes like this:

create —> test —> iterate. RAPIDLY.

To me the parallels seemed self evident. But here is Simon’s latest missive which lays the counter-argument rather persuasively:

“ACTUALLY THEY’RE NOT (SIMILAR)! Scientific method and rapid prototyping resemble each other superficially, but really, they couldn’t be more different. They are actually separated by a whole developmental stage. Let me count some of the ways

1) Scientific method is about proving hypotheses are true, consistent, explanatory—theory; rapid prototyping is about testing whether a machine, a device, a thing, WORKS and fixing it before you’ve gone too far down the road because that is expensive to change. A theory, on the other hand, can be changed with a stroke of the pen.

2) Scientific method is dedicated to producing THEORY, thought itself, that can then be applied; rapid prototyping is dedicated to producing THINGS. Those are the two most fundamentally different categories in the whole frickin’ universe: ideas and things.

3) Scientific method proceeds by reasoning and theorizing about the results of experiments; rapid prototyping most commonly fixes problems as they arise, and finds solutions through trial and error. There are no experiments in web development; there’s only trying it to see if it works. There’s no hypothesis being tested (something of the form, “If X, then Y”; and “If I press Start, then it will Work” is not what I mean!)

4) Rapid prototyping arose to cope with the complexity of certain kinds of “wicked” projects, it arose out of Cybernetics (if there is any foundational discipline that can claim parenthood), to make development go faster and increase its quality. Scientific method, on the other hand, makes everything go VERY SLOWLY.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong in rapid prototyping. It is absolutely a good idea. For engineering. For web development.”

So here’s my question, and why this debate is relevant to us at slingshot. Is rapid prototyping a useful methodology for feature film development? PIXAR, the company with the most successful track record in the history of feature development (seven features in ten years, all of which took $250 million or more at the global Box Office) certainly thinks it is: its development process is derived from the principles of software and game engineering. But how does that reconcile with Simon’s persuasive argument that prototyping is about things not ideas. Aren’t films more ideas than things? Or are they more things than ideas?

This might seem like a somewhat ontological debate, but it comes into real focus for us as we continue to refine and refocus our development process.

Development, incidentally, doesn’t stop when the cameras start rolling. Its a continuous process of honing the film at every stage - from the cuts we made as a result of audience testing on SUGARHOUSE (which I guess is an example of prototyping and testing) to the script re-writes which are taking place now on FRENCH FILM as a result of a read through we had down at our latest Film Foundry a couple of weeks ago (does a read through count as an early prototype, or is it a scientific experiment? Is a script an idea whereas a film is a thing?).

Have Simon and I got ourselves into a semantic twist?

A big debate that’s been raging as we cast up FRENCH FILM has been “How much do names matter in low budget film anyway?”

The typical studio approach to casting goes like this - movies need stars to get audiences, without stars, you can’t get press or attention on posters. In short your movie won’t open…
So if you can’t get proper stars, then get minor stars. If you can’t get minor stars, get recognisable actors, if you can’t get recognisable actors, get somone out of Big Brother or at least someone related to somone who used was in Big Brother.. And so on…
This can be very frustrating for writers and directors and actors who, understandably, just want to cast (or be cast as) the best actor for the job, regardless of fame. And indeed, how many movies have been spoilt by a bad or inappropriate piece of casting.

(One personal bug bear of this type of miscasting: Keanu Reeve’s casting in Ken Brannagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, a cynical, studio enforced decision which was the one false note in an otherwise perfect film)

Surely, the cry goes, getting the right performance will make it a better film, and that will get it good reviews, and that will find its audience.

Certainly, its true that plenty of movies with unknowns in them, end up making lots of money: Full Monty, Bend it Like Beckham, Whale Rider, Blair Witch, Brothers McMullen. Just to name a random selection (and yes, plenty of the people in those movies are now famous - but they became famous because of those breakthrough movies, they movies didn’t break through because they had famous stars…)

Its equally true that cast alone can’t save a turkey. Just ask the cast of The Da Vinci Code; indeed, the question came up at a panel discussion that I was moderating recently, and my friend Todd Huntley, VP of Theatrical Marketing for 20th Century Fox, quoted some recent research that suggested that about the only current star who can open any movie in any territory is Will Smith (hell, he’s even big in Japan)

So does that mean, that if we can’t get Will Smith, we should all feel comfortable casting the best person for the job and to hell if Joe Public could pick them out of a line-up?

If only, if only… The truth about that decision, like every decision in this business, is that its a complex one. The above two extreme scenarios (great movie with unknowns = hit; rubbish movie with stars = flop) are the least likely of all possible outcomes, accounting for at best 20% of all movies. Sure they are the ones that people cite in the argument, in part because they are memorable (the availability heuristic) and in part because it is always more fun to argue using extreme cases.

But they are rare. Most movies, the remaining 80%, are neither great nor awful. they sit someone between them on the curve. And in that grey area where most movies sit, that is where differentiation matters. Choosing between two average films, audiences will choose the one with famous people in it. That’s the terrible truth. But its true. For every Blair Witch Project, there are a thousand horror movies with unknown casts that disappeared into the video discount bin. Ditto Brother’s McMullen and no-cast Romantic Comedy’s, and ditto Full Monty and ensemble struggle tales. We can’t cite those examples, because none of us ever saw them.

And for every flop with stars, there are a dozen average films with stars that do good to great at the Box Office. These we can probably name: any Bruce Willis, Eddie Murphy, Steven Segal, Steve Martin, or John Travolta flick of the last 5 years.

And in that grey area, of the average film, lie the tension between the casting decisions that money men want to make and that creatives want to make. Because creatives believe - and have to believe that it will be great. That it will be excuted perfectly - and good creatives know, that the odds of perfect execution improve if decisions are made based on integrity to the story - i.e. the best person for the job, regardless of fame.

But financiers, can’t be that hopeful. Financiers have to assume that the team won’t execute perfectly. Because no matter how talented, most of the time, most people don’t. No one every sets out to make a bad film - or even an average one - but that’s where most of it ends up.

So financiers want ‘name’ casting for insurance purposes - for the situation where the film is average, because then the name means that some sales at least are guaranteed. With a few names, you can secure your TV sales, your DVD numbers, your average box office. In short you can make back your money without having to count on perfection.
And in that tension, between the financiers needs for insurance, and the creatives desire for perfect execution is potential for a vicious circle. Because casting the wrong person for the job INCREASES the odds that the film won’t be excellent but only average, thus making the whole thing a self fulfilling prophecy.

But of course casting the best person for the job doesn’t guarantee perfect execution, how could it, its just one factor amongst many: the script, the director, the crew, random chance, the alchemy between elements - in short it depends on the movie gods.
The job of the producer, of course, in this as in everything, is balancing between these tensions. Because the producer has to simultaneously believe that the film will turn out excellent and guard against it turning out average or worse. That is his dual responsibility to talent on the one hand and money on the other. Stressed yet? Welcome to my world.

OK, so whilst I’ve been relatively quite on the blogosphere, I have been out spreading the word of slingshot in other places.

Last Friday saw not one but two conference appearances (what can I say, I’m like a travelliing troubador, singing the songs of the sling). In the morning I was at the London Media Summitt where I got to debate Content, Cash and Creativity with Reuter’s “Head of Innovation” and the aliterating nemesis of the UK digital media scene Azeem Azhar

One of the more interesting questions was about how one can use new technologies and new business models to better harness creativity. It’s a question that tends to stump most creative business entrepeneurs, but there are interesting examples of it out there.

Here is one: StarWreck - a collaborative creative phenomenon which would have been unthinkable in the pre-social media era. The transformative effect of MySpace on the garage band (a melee my brother has just joined); as is the collaborative journalism/discussion of the blogosphere itself: see the high scholarship and wit being applied to shopping by the VisaDiarist and her peers.
Any others people can think of?

But that was just the mornings conference. In the afternoon, I was speaking, with the gorgeous Mr. Gary Love at the BFI’s Young Talent week, part of the London Film Festival. We told war stories, including this one, from our experience on Sugarhouse Lane, and it all seemed to go down quite well. Almost as well as the vino tinto at the reception at the end of that day of speaking. Well what can I say, one gets a dry throat…

So, no rest for the slightly wicked. Actually, that’s not true. Knackered from the Sugarhouse Lane shoot, I’m on a brief holiday, and the feeling is good.

But the slingmachine chugs on. No sooner than wrapping on our first film, we have put our second out to cast, and further have commenced in earnest our search for the rest of next years projects. We announced last week our shinny new development track, supported by skillset, in which we are seeking new talent and new projects.

You can read the news about it here and if you are a writer, agent or producer wanting to submit a project or team for consideration, the process for doing so can be found over here

What we are trying to do in the grandly named “Training and Development towards Greenlight” process, in association with our friends and parterns at PAL ant the Met Film School, is improve on the dismal odds of the typical British development cycle, where (according to Arista only 1 in 27 films with significant development spend in them, convert into production. That’s such a depressing figure, we thought we could hardly do worse.

If you have had a good or bad development experience, in particular if you have views on The UKFC development track, PAL or Arista Development Programmes or have a view on our own programme, we’d love to hear from you as we prepare to launch into the “TDTG” (see above) process.