Luke's Notes for the Monday Meeting

I have been called in early to work as of about five minutes ago, so I will not be attending our meeting this morning. Briefly, what I was planning on saying is this:

Most of what we've got looks pretty good. The jokes work, and there's actually been a lot of thought as to final camera direction. While I want to tell you that's a good idea (because we are the entire production crew for this short) I don't know that I can. Glover specifically mentioned that directing via the script is to be avoided.

Frankly, I'm not sure if it's a big deal in this case. Like I said, we're only directing ourselves. We are the ones who will need to come up with staging and direction, in the end. But it is bad etiquette in a modern production environment for a scriptwriter to try and horn in on the Director's and DP's jobs. I don't know if Glover is going to require changes for the sake of practice. I hope not, since it's silly to have these ideas and not keep them written down, but I think it could happen.

The way I usually approach scriptwriting at this point is to lay out the action and dialog, and then figure out the direction via storyboards after I've written out my first draft. Think of it like setting up an animation in Maya, and then placing cameras. You have a vague idea of where it's going to go, but the tweaking and fine tuning is a separate stage.

I'm fairly pleased with the degree of constancy we've maintained, as well. I really don't think there will be a lot of changes required to make the writing match up from section to section, aside from my own section containing no specific camera instructions.

Also, David, I need to see some work from you. I hate to call you out in front of the internet, but I'm not going to be there to call you out in person, so it was my only choice.