Among all the zillions of decade-ending lists you’ve doubtless seen recently, this one may be the most mind-boggling: “12 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade”. The items are:
A couple of things re screenwriting. First, we have to stay up with current technologies because those need to be reflected in our writing. For example, the fax machine used to be a great ticking clock device, where Character A is racing to get away while Character B is waiting for a fax to come through that identifies Character A. Can’t do that in a script any longer. Or a young person using a landline phone. That would ring [pun intended] totally false to any young adult or teen. Second, some of the new technologies which have evolved that ‘killed’ these obsolete technologies — texting, the Web, MP3s, digital cameras — are forms of or platforms for a consumer’s entertainment; therefore they represent potential competition to movies and TV shows. For the better part of this decade, Hwood has tried to figure out ways to ‘defeat’ or get around current technologies. Now they are wising up and embracing them as new ways to market and even watch movies.
But perhaps the most important point here re screenwriting is this: How can we use current and emerging technologies to our benefit? For example, what about writing a script via Twitter? At 140 characters per twit, it’s the perfect length for a screenplay’s short paragraphs of scene description or sides of dialogue. Let’s say two writers on opposite coasts or different countries ‘wrote’ a story via Twitter, eventually transferring the text into Final Draft to end up with a full-length screenplay. Whether the script sucked or not, the very fact that the writers tweated their screenplay would generate buzz in Hwood.
What are your thoughts on emerging technologies and screenwriting / movies? How do you see things playing out? And 10 years from now, what of our current technologies do you envision hitting the scrapheap?
I think you are jumping the gun on a lot of these. Landlines are not obsolete and in places of terrible reception are a necessity. Yellow pages are not obsolete as sometimes you aren't sure who you are looking for and searching for a random pest inspector online takes far too long. Opening the right section of the book, a minute. Written letters are not obsolete.
Certainly there are alternatives to each of them but at the moment they are only alternatives and at times, not necessarily better.
I already tried the script thing via Twitter, in a way.
I took on the persona of this 17 year old kid tweeting about his life….and other stuff.
http://twitter.com/i_am_mint
"My name is Lindsay Mint, and believe it or not, I am actually a guy. Blame my parents for the name choice."
"P.S. I am still a virgin. I've given myself 40 days to change that."
"Explanation: I am a nerd, and I know it. I lack confidence. It's not a secret. And as a result, I don't do well around women…"
"But I have a group of six friends who have each bet me $100 that I can't get laid. I have 40 days to prove them wrong."
I got 3 days in and had to stop. It immediately became an enormous hassle to keep up with the persona and the story I was trying to tell.
I knew what was supposed to happen, the plot of my story, but in trying to make it look real (like by being mindful of time zones) it just became too difficult to keep up with very quickly.
I was also wanting to have it becomes something huge. And it just never took off, even in just the few days I was doing it. This was over the Summer, before ShitMyDadSays. Before anything Twitter became big, so I know I was onto something. I just wasn't onto the right thing.
I might delete the account and start over again. The problem is finding eyeballs.
I'd started it in an attempt for it to go huge, to where producers got interested. Eventually the story would come out as fake, but they wouldn't care. They would want to adapt the story into the film. I'd get money. I'd break into the business. And all would be well and done.
It didn't happen that way.
Way too often, I wish that there were a couple corded phones in my house. The phone starts ringing and none of the five portable phones can be found. Sometimes one will disappear for several days.
Maybe I'll invent a cord for portable phones!
My writing partner and I literally do live on opposite sides of the world (12 time zones apart, to be exact). We've tried some different ways of getting things done.
For long sections, we can email documents. She uses Vista, I have XP loaded, so we use MS Word in RTF format and have no problems.
For revising shorter sections, we can use chat. We can trade comments or a sentence revision, and it's almost as good as being in the same room.
The only problem is the inconvenience of time for one of us