The Screenwriter, the Mini-Doc, and the Production Book

Last Thursday, I had the chance to meet with Brian Strasmann along with Maddie Kelm and Phil Tuckett.  Our meeting objective was to bounce ideas off each other relating to the Picabo Street screenplay, and Brian had some good thoughts.  Honestly, he had written a screenplay in the past about a ski racer that's eerily similar to Picabo's story.  We talked about the opening scene being an epic bike race down the hill where Picabo used to work during the summer as a kid.  She and her friends would throw their bikes in her dad's truck and race down the mountain where they hauled rocks for construction.  It would be an exciting way to begin the movie.

Also, during the weekend, I managed to complete my mini-documentary/vlog about our Park City trip a couple of weeks ago.  The finished product ended up being longer than expected, but a nice way to practice a little more with filming and editing.







Today, we discussed production books.  Phil gave us an example of a film that almost happened called Team 51.  The production book was pretty solid, with bios of all the crew working above the line, actors they were interested in, locations they had picked out, a budget summary, and examples of other independent films that did well in the box office.  I'm planning on keeping the production book as an example for future projects.

ESPN Picabo Documentary

We watched an ESPN documentary about Picabo Street in class today.  It was a fairly rudimentary documentary.  While we watched I got some cool ideas for the feature aspect of our own production.

First off, I think it would be great to emphasize how Picabo got into partying and got kicked off the US Ski Team.  I think some intense workout scenes in Hawaii would be fantastic too, as kind of her turning point.
I'd also like to make it clear how people were often annoyed by her because of her cockiness.
Her major injury in 1998 would be another plot point where she loses her "tiger."  She's not fearless anymore.
I think the winding down theme of the film should be "There is success in doing your best." That way our feature-documentary has some sense of a resolution at the end.

Brian Strasmann: Screenwriting Presentation

Yesterday, we were privileged with having Brian Strasmann come into class and lecture us on the process of writing a treatment and screenplay.  He's worked in Hollywood for a number of years and worked on films such as Free Willy, so he's been in the filmmaking game for a while.

He explained to us a four-page structure for getting down the story for a winning screenplay.  First off, he recommended that we know our beginning, middle and ending.  That's important.  His four page structure went a little something like this:

1/2 page on the opening scene, condensed and specific.
1/2 page of a general narrative synopsis of the first act.
1/2 page of a dramatic recreation of a plot point, condensed and specific.
1 page narrative synopsis summarizing the second act, fairly general, naming four obstacles for the main character to overcome.
1/2 page of a dramatic recreation of a plot point at the end of the second act, specific and condensed.
1/2 page narrative synopsis of third act.
1/2 page dramatic recreation of the ending scene, specific and condensed.

He said this model works for anything from a short film to a full-blown feature length.  Of course, ours is going to have to be modified a little bit because it's a dual feature-documentary thing, but I'm going to meet with Brian and Phil tomorrow along with some other writers to discuss how to exactly implement this for our project.

VHS Tapes of Research

So, over spring break, Phil assigned each of us in class to browse through 8-10 VHS tapes that involve Picabo Street.  All of them were tapes we acquired at Dee Street's house.  The objective was to go through each tape and find footage that we might be able to use in the documentary.

I found some pretty good stuff.  I had some tapes from the 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics, so there were lots of things like interviews and ski runs.  I made sure to record the approximate times of when they showed up in the tapes.

But then I had stuff like the 1998 Miss America Pageant!  Like... what the heck?  Maybe Dee just mixed up some of her personal tapes with some of the stuff from Picabo's career.  It was kind of funny, but I can't say that I found tap dance numbers and 1990's haircuts super fascinating.

But the deed is done.  We'll probably have to acquire rights from the Olympics organization to show some of the footage I found in our documentary, and hopefully that's not too big of a hastle.

Sound

Yesterday, our class trekked out to the Holland building to record some ambient sound for Art and Libby's Amazing Adventure.  The sound was recorded by none other than Ben Braten.  The sound consisted of us getting up from our chairs and chattering and zipping up our backpacks and stuff.

A lot of the things that Ben taught were things I had been taught in my motion picture production class last semester.  It was things like being careful of ambient sound and room noise and stuff like that when you're recording.  He kind of explained the different shotgun mics we have and briefly went over lav mics and what to be wary of when you set one up.  I worked sound on our final project in that class so I feel fairly confident when it comes to handling that.

Good shtuff!

Park City Research Trip

I kind of loved this trip that we spent at Park City over the past few days.

We packed fourteen filmies into two minivans and trekked up to Midway to check in at our hotel on Thursday.  We reached it at about 8:00pm--the Zermatt, a four-star shindig.  We got dinner that night and spent the rest of the evening chilling at the hotel.

Friday was our busiest day.  We got up at about 8:30am to take a tour of the major movie studios being built outside Park City.  It was an absolute fortress.  And we had to wear safety vests and hard hats because it was still under construction.  But we got to meet some incredible people so that was a fun experience.

After that, we spent most of the day at Dee Street's place, collecting various goods for the documentary.  It's amazing how much trust she placed in us.  She let us handle things like Picabo's ski uniforms, her medals, and even an Olympic torch.  Being on the writing team, I got to sit and chat with her a couple of times and she just told me stories from Picabo's childhood.  I wrote all of them down in my book so I could use them for the treatment.

We spent the rest of the evening seeing Park City, which I had never done before, and I loved it.  The lights, the shops, the people... it was so compact and crowded and exciting.  Most of us spent our time trying to find a place to eat that wasn't already super packed, but we managed.  Then it was back to the Zermatt so we could be up by 8:30 the next morning.

Saturday morning we went back to Dee's place so we could finalize our research.  That only took a couple of hours, then we came home!  Phil said that it was one of the most productive research trips he's had in his whole career of film.  So I guess we got some good work done!  And it doesn't hurt that we all had a blast in the process.