Contour At The Movies

I hope you’re not getting tired of hearing about PadWorx Digital Media because — as I’ve been going on about for the past year — the move into digital and transmedia is only continuing to heat up and those screenwriters who neglect to pay attention to this space are going to be like the movie moguls of the 1920′s who thought talkies were a fad.

It’s not just because digital media represents a new avenue to peddle our wares (though it is and it does), it’s because understanding the interconnectivity between transmedia and what you’re writing RIGHT NOW is becoming an increasingly important component of every smart writer’s business plan.

Case in point: PadWorx has just announced that we’re working on the interactive, immersive book/app version of Quirk Publishing’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which is an important book for several reasons.  Besides being the catalyst for a whole mess of ‘mash-up’ titles (Android Karenina, Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has been optioned by Lions Gate Films and is in pre-production.  For the record, Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is currently being shot on location and produced by Fox. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and similar titles are big business and Hollywood is taking notice.

Of course, PadWorx is only involved with this title as a service provider.  We didn’t inspire, create, or write the original Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Seth Grahame-Smith is the author), however we are putting our creative stamp on the underlying property in a very real way that people will see, pay attention to, and hopefully be impressed by.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies followed a traditional trajectory — from book to movie –however it’s now pushed to interactive book/app as well.  If you’ve seen either Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition or A Christmas Carol for iPad, you know how cinematic these book/apps can be. As companies like PadWorx attract more attention they will have the impetus and credibility to create original titles that people will take seriously, not just perform service work on existing titles.  The book to movie trajectory will inevitably broaden to include book/app to movie.  This isn’t far-fetched; it wasn’t that long ago that plays became movies and not the other way around.  All you need to do is check out the latest roster of shows on Broadway to witness how the paradigm has shifted.  The potential for adapting a movie for Broadway is part of every reasonable filmco’s pre-purchase marketing meeting as is ‘transmedia,’ Hollywood’s buzzword of the year.  If you are involved in the book/app space, you are involved in a growing industry that Hollywood is taking very seriously.

Bottom line…if you don’t already own an iPad get one and download some book/apps in order to understand how to apply your craft to this new breed of storytelling.   If you don’t think that this convergence will reap benefits for those of you who fancy yourselves writers, then you haven’t been paying attention to the world these past 12 months.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

As you may have realized I’ve been a tad absent from updating here.  That’s largely due to my launching of my new multimedia company, PadWorx Digital Media Inc.

So, we released our first title, “Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition” on Wednesday, October 20 (by coincidence, Bela Lugosi’s birthday).  On Thursday we got knocked out of our seats when we found out that our app was named “App of the Week” by Apple.

Firstly, it’s an honor and immensely satisfying to get that kind of recognition so quickly.  But YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU.

I’m assuming that most people coming to this site are writers.  You have your eye set on the big fish — writing for features or television — and that’s fine.  Someone has to write those, so why not you?  I’ve done both, and it’s also very satisfying, however, you are in a perpetual state of waiting for the phone to ring.   Unless you’re independently wealthy, you need someone to change your life by hiring you.   Maybe they’ll call and maybe they won’t.  And even if they do, and you get that job, as soon as it’s over you’re back to waiting for the phone to ring again.

But there is something you can do while waiting.  You can create something from nothing and get it out to the world.  The digital universe moves in real time, and it is the ultimate democracy.   You don’t have to live in Los Angeles to be taken seriously, you don’t have to be a youngwhitemale who went to USC, you don’t have to suck-up to anyone’s D-Person, you don’t have to beg an agent to rep you, you just have to be creative and willing to reach out across digispace to like-minded strangers, get them to share your creative vision and then will it into being.   Of course, it helps if there’s the bit of the entrepreneur in you, but I believe “entrepreneur” is a behavior and behaviors can be learned.

My friends, I’m telling you that we are living in magical times, at the dawn of a digital media revolution.  The revolution needs you; your ideas, the force of your conviction on those ideas, your creative spark.  According to a recent article, by the end of this year there will be 20 million tablet PC’s sold.  And then another 55 million in 2011.  And then over 208 million in 2014.  Add up those numbers, and you basically have an entire US population’s worth of tablet PC’s out in the world.  And you know what?  They’re all going to need content.

So, what are you going to do?  Sit around and wait for someone to call you and give you permission to be creative?   Dear Lord, I hope not.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

In my upcoming book, “My Story Can Beat Up Your Story!”, I have a chapter in which I outline something I refer to as ‘the tough writer’s business plan.’  One of the main themes there is “diversify.”  As I write in the book:

“When I first moved to Los Angeles in the mid-eighties, if you wanted to be a writer you had to choose: TV or features. That was the advice I was given. Of course, everyone wanted to write features, so that’s what I focused on. Writing for television was what you did if you couldn’t make a go at screenplays.

“Now, it’s a free-for-all. The smart writers are doing everything. Write spec screenplays, write animation, write sitcoms. It’s nothing personal; it’s just business. There is very little I don’t have as a writing sample. Preschool, family comedy, earnest dramedy, animated features, live-action/animation hybrids, big budget action, western, comedies, sports movies, even content for tablet computers; I’m a chameleon.  Whatever a producer needs me to be, I am.”

In the spirit of practicing what I preach, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of my new company: PadWorx Digital Media Inc.  I can’t tell you how excited I am about PadWorx and our slate of projects.  On Wednesday we’re going to announce our first title, with a few more announcements in the coming weeks.  You can check out the corporate announcement HERE.

As writers, we need to keep our minds open and explore all possibilities to ply our craft, especially when there are so many new media outlets and technologies.  Don’t let anyone tell you differently…these are exciting times to be a writer.

Interestingly, the evolution of PadWorx can be traced right to this website, starting with my post about Alice for the iPad and then my interview with Chris Stevens, one of the founders over at Atomic Antelope.  PadWorx is the result of my being inspired by the possibilities in digital entertainment that Chris and Ben so quickly showed the world now exist.

Now, none of this means that I’m walking away from screenwriting by any means (I’m desperately trying to finish a rewrite on a hockey movie; yes, I live in Canada) but in today’s world and today’s entertainment market, if you want to have an ongoing career as a writer you need to do one thing, and one thing only.

Diversify!

–Jeffrey Alan Schechter

The final two days of shooting for season 2 of OVERRULED are upon us!  If all goes according to plan, Thursday, April 23 wraps production of these 13 episodes.  After that, it’s back to the normal grind of juggling many balls.

It’s been a great shoot so far, made even more exciting by having caught some promos for the series on Family Channel.  We’re told that season 1 will air either in the summer or the fall.

So…what have I learned from the experience this time around? Firstly, I think that I’ve improved my 1/2 hour comedy writing.  I used to take more time setting up a joke, now I fish for the joke in almost every line.  I’m not sure this is the right pace for features, but for 21 minutes and 5 seconds of tween television, it’s what the genre demands.

Secondly, I’ve learned what the big hole in my skillset is.  I’m awful at the politics of this business.  Not the politics of getting a show made, but the politics of knowing what I want and not making people feel off-put because of it.  

I grew up in this business thinking that people like clarity and decisiveness.  You don’t want a director, executive producer, or showrunner who dithers.  However in the hands of some people, clarity and decisiveness come off as strident.  I may be one of those people.  My enormous certainty (not to mention ego) is an acquired taste.

But what can I do?  Without falling victim to delusions of grandeur, I can look back on my career and empirically say that the greatest successes I’ve had have been when I’ve followed my own lead.

I’m reminded of that scene in BROADCAST NEWS (written by James L. Brooks) between Holly Hunter as the news producer and her boss.  Holly’s character, JANE, is relentlessly pushing her vision for how a time-critical news segment should be produced.  Her boss, PAUL, disagrees with her but SHE WON’T LET IT GO.  Finally, he looks at her and says, sarcastically “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.”  Jane looks at him, ready to cry, and says from the bottom of her heart and totally in earnest the following:

“No. It’s awful.”

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Right around that time I moved to LA in the mid-1980′s an upstart computer store opened with a crazy idea: cater just to the film and television community.  I gave it six months to a year before it folded in the shadow of Computerland.  Well, Computerland is gone, but THE WRITERS STORE is still there, and over the years Jesse Douma and his family developed their store into a mecca of merchandise and advice for writers, producers, and directors.

As Contour for Windows 1.0  joins Contour for Mac 1.1  in release, I just wanted to thank Jesse and the gang at The Writers Store for their support of Contour in general and me in particular.   Jesse will be the first to tell you that I can be a huge pain in the backside when it comes to being passionate about what I do, but (I hope!) he’d also be the first to tell you that my heart’s in the right place in my concern for writers.

Anyway, kudos to you, my TWS friends.  Your store is a class act and greatly appreciated.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter