Hey, Kids! Comics! As Board Pitches!

enCOURAGEment

In an elevator once with Rebecca Sugar during the first season of Steven Universe she was talking animatedly about comics, and different approaches. I was surprised by her enthusiasm, and asked her what it was about comics that got her so excited.

She thought about it for less than an instant before answering with one, weighty word.

“Freedom.”

I smiled, and nodded. As much success as I’ve had in animation over the years, and as much difficulty as I’ve had working in comics, people are often surprised by my interest in the page and panel medium. But Rebecca nailed it with two syllables.

Freedom.

No notes. No interference. No following trends. Just you, and some paper, and… magic.

There are Gatekeepers everywhere you turn in LA. A terrific visual example is the picture of a famous writer with his feet propped up quite high on the spec scripts he’d written over the years, while proudly holding out his first sale. Most people see that as the key to success. Diligence. Sacrifice.

I look at that picture and it makes my skin crawl. I think of that pile of imaginative ideas no one will ever see.

One of the worst truths about selling ideas in LA is the fact that in order to pitch an idea you must love it. Be passionate about it. Believe in it wholeheartedly.

And then put it in a drawer when no one wants to buy it. Or pile it atop the other ideas you’ve loved, been passionate about, and believed in wholeheartedly, to use as a footrest.

But those ideas remain in your subconscious. Forever. And eventually there’s a logjam of material vying for time and space in your brain, none of it getting out or being seen, and after a while it eats at your brainpower, and your soul. I get queasy just thinking about it.

Consequently, my first rule of advice for anyone asking about selling their idea is “finish it!” If it’s only in your head it will eat you alive, and no one will ever have a chance to know the wonder of it.

Which brings me back to comics. And freedom.

I’m a visual storyteller. It’s how my head works. So comics are a natural fit. But they are expensive to produce, and your sales are limited to comic book retailers who want to carry your book. You’re lucky if you can sell a single copy in today’s market. Even back in the day when I was publishing WorldWatch it didn’t pay it’s bills, and that was almost twenty years ago.

But it haunts my brain, sometimes.

The idea was a superhero team as if they existed in reality. Superheroes as Rock Stars, a satire on the superhero genre, the sexism inherent in it, and the medium as a whole as it had developed—similar in tone to The Boys.

(Aside: WorldWatch, appeared 2 years earlier, in 2004. And I’m not claiming any infringement. I believe in the cosmic unconscious, most superheroes were tending ‘realistic and dark’ at that time, and I only wish the brilliant Garth Ennis would steal from me. Please, Garth, steal from me. The story of WorldWatch was very different, anyway. In the fourth issue the main characters lose their powers, and it would have become a human thriller about former superheroes battling against super powered monsters who had once been their friends.)

I wanted to find ways to finish the damn thing off, mostly to get it out of my brain where it no longer belonged.

Which brings me to digital. And even greater freedom.

Years ago I met this really interesting guy named Mark Badger. He had an idea for ‘publishing’ comics on the computer by making the panels into frames of a Quicktime. You would load them all sequentially, save the QT, then step through it frame-by-frame to read the story.

It was a bit clunky and awkward (and really small, at 320 x 240), but the idea felt like gold, to me. As a comics creator for some years already, I hated the idea that readers could see some big story point on the facing page, long before you were supposed to know about it. Or worse, that people could go into a comics shop and self-spoil all the good bits by thumbing through the latest issues. (Did anyone actually get that full page splash of the nude Betty Page in the Rocketeer home before someone showed it to them? Usually the second you walked into the store?) Badger had found a way to give you back the ability to surprise a reader, a storytelling necessity that was missing from print comics.

I played with the idea a lot, but could never make it work for people. With the help of some friends I even built an early ‘slideshow’ version of the first half of the first issue of WorldWatch. People thought the idea was fun, but saw no potential. Most everyone I knew preferred to read comics in print form, preferably on the toilet. It was that nostalgic feeling they loved. The texture. The smell. Pulp paper and cheap printing, I mean. Not whatever was going into the can.

I even switched over to using CG for the art in an effort to make it more “realistic.”

Still a ‘no go.’

And yet this way of delivering comics stories is why I was so excited about Guided View. I thought ComiXology had cracked that nut. Sadly, they cracked it for people who prefer their nuts uncracked. The nostalgic ‘fun on the toilet’ people. Even if they used ComiXology, the general fans still read their comics in full-page mode. Didn’t matter that the reading experience was far superior in Guided View, when the stories were well told.

That’s even how we pitch storyboards to preview episodic storytelling in animation. Text, and images, one frame at a time, onscreen in the same format the final show will also be seen.

Comics.

Far superior to the old process of pinning the boards on every wall—IMHO—if you want a genuine audience reaction to your work. Having everyone come in to review (spoil) your boards before the pitch always seemed like insanity to me. How can you gauge audience response if your viewer has seen all your best jokes, and dramatic moments? That method always felt like—as a writer—watching people thumb through new comics off the rack. People will say “No Spoilers” for every movie, but this is how they pitch boards? And then go into a shop on Wednesdays and scan every page of a comic before buying it? Really people? I mean… really?

Leap ahead a few years, and the ‘adult’ animation industry is flowing along in the success wake of Love, Death, and Robots. Netflix was supposedly interested in something similar, but with more solid story content that could reach an even wider audience. So I took some of my old comics ideas and made a few rough CG animatics from them as a pitch tool for a romance series to be called Love—with very little death, and only the occasional robot. As you can see by the two covers here, it was profoundly inspired by that brilliant flash of Simon and Kirby lightning called Young Romance.

But almost as fast as the Netflix query got put out there, it was withdrawn, and I had what you’ll find linked below as my first attempt at an adult, fantasy fairy tale romance story that could easily be animated in CG, hopefully well beyond that strange little place out on route 69 we all fear to visit… The Uncanny Valley.

I still like this method as a way to tell comics. No animation needed, no weird Valleys in sight.

So we’ve come full circle.

But…

But.

The world is a different place, now. People routinely read on their devices, and prefer them to paper. Print really does seem to be dead. It’s too expensive. It’s heavy to ship. It’s too expensive. Consequently the low-selling American Market is boned and dry. Could the world finally be ready for Mark Badger’s genius?

I believe so. WebToons is making it work. But it could be done better. Check it out and see for yourself. Imagine it with music.

Even if you decide it doesn’t work for you, think outside the box. Come up with ways to make money on your project, no notes, no interference.

Freedom.

Did I mention this was a pitch for the adult animation market of Love Death and Robots? I think I did. So Be Warned. Nudity and foul language ahead.

Love’s Folly

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Avoiding The Gatekeepers

Fans as Bosses

“Nobody knows anything... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” - William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

With this single, famous quote William Goldman—author and screenwriter of The Princess Bride, Marathon Man, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, along with countless others—outed The Emperors of Hollywoodland as wearing no clothes. Most creative Gatekeepers don’t ‘know’ what they’re doing, or why. The industry is run by gut feelings, instinct, and luck… not by plan.

Casablanca was a huge hit.

It’s a Wonderful Life was a flop.

You can’t guarantee a hit. If you could, Hollywoodland would be a hit machine, instead of a simple story factory. Terrible projects become massive successes. Amazing films go into the dustbin. But because of the investment involved the money-crunchers always try to guarantee hits, or at least stack the odds in their favor. It’s an unwritten part of their job description.

I’ve been in meetings where the executives involved disparaged a show that was about to open on the coming weekend, speaking confidently about what ‘crap’ it was, and how it would be the biggest bomb their company had produced, only to find it topping all box office charts days later. In a meeting the following Monday those same executives would discuss with pride how they knew all along it would be a huge hit, and they were adjusting their buying accordingly. They wanted more of what they had always known was an ‘obvious’ success.

As if I’d somehow forgotten the conversation we’d had just days earlier.

The people with these shifting perspectives are usually the Gatekeepers you must charm in order to enter the magic kingdoms of Development and Production.

One of my more memorable meetings came during a science fiction boom in movies and TV. I met with a Gatekeeper who had acquired the rights to Conan The Barbarian, and he knew exactly what the fans were looking for. In an office bigger than my apartment he said to me with absolute certainty, “You know what would make Conan great? Picture this: Conan—in space.” I laughed, until I realized he was completely serious.

The meeting was over. I didn’t get the job. Gate kept.

What I began to realize about the TV and movie business is that the executive position is largely filled with fans of the medium, all with strong opinions about what makes a success—would make more success—with little or no training in story, writing, editing, or visual storytelling. They had full faith and confidence in their own instincts (usually centered around some buzzword or other), while simultaneously living in perpetual fear of losing their jobs. Because—as I’m sure they heard often… as I myself was occasionally told—“I can find three people to replace you tomorrow.”

The flip side of this uneasy equation is that most Creative Types are generally artists who need money to achieve their goals, but are terrible at things like math. Schedules. Budgets. Talking to other human beings. So they live in an awkward symbiosis with executives who handle those ‘unpleasant’ tasks. If one or the other side of these opposing poles of the magnet shifts its balance, the bullet train very quickly seizes the tracks, or worse… goes flying off the rails.

Because the motivation of Gatekeepers is different than the motivation of artists, Creative Types and Gatekeepers are often at balance-shifting odds. It’s more than just a difference in point of view between ‘greedy money people’ and ‘oblivious artists,’ what’s commercial, versus what isn’t. It’s a difference in point of view about things like what’s most important in a show; Story, Character, Theme, Tone, Arcs, Audience Desire, Market Demands, Talent, Casting, Previous Success, and on and on. It’s not the money, or the need for it that goes off-balance. It’s the divergent goals. As one Creative Type once told me, “I’m not here to give the fans what they want. I’m here to give them what they need.” Which—I think—said more about that Creative Types needs than the needs of his project. His Gatekeeper, conversely, preferred the Creative Type give the fans what they wanted. When fans didn’t respond to ‘what they needed’, the executive replaced said creator.

Gatekeepers need success. Creative Types need adoration. Fans need what they want. Creators want what they need. Both think they have the secret sauce.

Nobody knows anything.

In 1999 I left animation and went to work in comics. I was a little stunned to find that the process, and the attitude, were basically the same.

Most editors (Gatekeepers) were fans of the material. They had very strong opinions about what their audience wanted.

The big difference in comics was that they knew their fanbase better than I did. I could get deep into explaining the closed feedback loop that comics publishing has become, and why; how the market for comics is now by fans, for fans… exclusively; but it’s become rather obvious, and something those fans are rather proud of, and don’t want to change.

But I was writing my comics for a general audience (which is what my boss, Bill Jemas had asked for), and a general audience was never going to drive out of their way to come into a comic shop. Meanwhile the fans wanted something else. Needed something else. The fans had become the exclusive (Direct) market, and I couldn’t write for them. I tried, at points, and it was a mistake. I needed to write something other than “HULK BATTLES THE ABOMINATION… AGAIN!”

No harm, no foul. You can’t fight reality. Don’t dirty someone else’s pool.

So I came back to Hollywoodland, and the parallels only became more clear, more obvious, especially once Marvel Movies took over the world. They became a huge success, mostly because the fans running the operation translated the biggest name hits from the comics for a General Audience. Which is what you need when you’re introducing new characters to a fresh market, and starting with origin stories. But as the movies and TV series’ progressed, an unfortunate reality set in. And it was the opposite of working in the closed loop of the comics market. They shifted the movies toward fandom looking to develop a large, and devoted audience.

In-jokes. Easter Eggs. A focus on big action. A focus on returning villains. The Blip and it’s repercussions. Alternate dimensions and outer space adventures where the specialness of superheroes is less… special. Loss of vulnerability. Loss of personal growth arcs. And worst of all, the dreaded multi-headed monster in every Marvel superhero room…

… continuity.

Fans love continuity.

General audiences are confused by it.

Fans are devoted.

General Audiences are fickle.

Fans want ‘old’ in the trappings of the new.

General audiences ‘new’ in the trappings of the old.

General audiences aren’t all fans, and don’t respond to the material the way fans do. They don’t complain and threaten creators when a comic or movie or TV series isn’t to their liking. They quietly vote with their feet. They also rarely get online and praise what they’ve discovered. They read, or watch, what they enjoy, then turn to something else they can read, or watch, and enjoy.

Fans hate-watch, then get online to complain that the show or movie failed because it wasn’t close enough to the comic book source material. So fan-based numbers don’t change a lot in the short-term. They do eventually vote with their feet as well, when the entertainment level they seek drops far enough, leaving only the most devoted, vocal, and intense fans. For you chefs out there, focusing on fans alone is like making a reduction, cooking the sauce on a low heat until the remaining flavors are thickened and concentrated. Reduce too far, and you’re left with something dark, and sticky, that no one wants to eat.

General audiences are the first to boil out of a simmering reduction. They just change the channel and say to whoever else is in the room, “Enh. Boring. Wanna watch something else?” Recently the people running Marvel have boiled away their general audiences in a desire to ‘make their general audience into fans,’ while at the same time changing movies and TV shows far enough from the source material that the comics fans are dissatisfied.

So the Marvel Studios approach has now turned most everyone away. Largely because there is no middle ground. You can serve one audience, or the other. Not both.

It’s a little known fact, but when I was writing Uncanny X-Men my sales were almost the same as Grant Morrison’s on New X-Men. But the ‘common knowledge’ among fandom was that Grant was selling a metric tonne more than me. Consequently many fans complained that they wanted more stories like Grant’s, and many did quit my version of the book.

But at the same time I brought back a lot of old readers who had given up on the X-Men, as well new readers who had never read about a mutant in their lives. Mark Millar once told me at a convention—very kindly—that my X-Men was the only comic in his monthly box of Marvel freebies that his wife would read. Unfortunately, even with winning her over—in the end, numbers-wise—my run was a wash. My numbers stayed close to Grant’s… only a few hundred less. Neither of us clearly outdistanced the other, and no one was building an audience larger than what had been attained on the last successful run that preceded us, other than brief sales-spikes. Certainly not to the numbers that Jim Shooter oversaw with a company-wide edict about making sure every Marvel Comic was accessible to every potential new, general audience reader buying a comic for the first time. See that box that used to be at the top of every splash page? Spider-Man’s expository internal monologue? That’s not there for the long-term fans.

So why is the fan-direct approach a problem for casual viewers? Not making every movie entirely accessible to a first-time audience member? Well, I used to write a lot of the Marvel characters, had read them throughout my (much) younger life—yes, I was a fan—and even I had a hard time following Marvel Studios continuity. I don’t watch their movies with the same attention to detail that I muster for something like… say…. Casablanca.

“What was The Blip, again? Oh. So this isn’t ‘our’ world anymore, it’s an alternate dimension where half the world died and came back, and everyone’s whining about it? And when did Scarlet Witch become evil? Oh, she went crazy because… what happened? She fell in love with Vision? When? Did we ever see that? Oh, my God, the chemistry between Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansen is off-the-charts intense! Studio heads sleep on their knees praying for that kind of chemistry, and… hold on… what? She’s in love with The Hulk?”

(Sigh)

Nobody knows anything.

In its heyday, Marvel’s biggest comic book hits sold millions of copies. My run in the earl 2000’s sold about 127,000. Now they sell thousands—or worse—hundreds.

Can a larger audience be reached? At one point Louise Simonson and I discussed creating a girls romance comic to reach a new market. Gatekeepers said, “No. Women don’t read comics.” Then manga struck like lightning, and I watched women walk up to bookstore cash registers with armloads of the things. At ten bucks a pop.

Nobody knows anything.

“The days of million sellers are gone,” A Gatekeeper recently told me.

WebToons routinely sells multiple millions of various digital comics.

Nobody knows anything.

So am I complaining? Where am I going with all this? Am I anti-fan? Anti-comics? Anti-Studio? Anti-continuity? Anti-executive?

No. I am a fan. I’ve been an integral part of varying studios. Heavily into continuity (don’t get me started on Star Trek). What I’m saying is; know and understand your audience, and accept the limitations of that audience. Or revel in the breadth of an audience that you may not yet be fully aware of. Then accept that what you create may not become the biggest weekend blockbuster in modern history, but you’re doing what you love, connecting to like-minded souls, and paying the bills. If you serve your audience—particularly an audience that feels underserved—you may find a niche for yourself that allows you the freedom to do what you love every day.

When I was a young, freelance illustrator, there was a metaphoric quote going around about knowing your audience even then. It went:

“You can’t sell pictures of naked men to Playboy.”

The days of the Gatekeepers are gone. Your reach is unlimited. Small, local audiences can now be discovered, and connected—globally.

Crowdfunding, digital delivery, a computer or multiple computers in every home, in the palm of every hand, all mean you are now your own gatekeeper, and your reach is worldwide. In the past, comics sales, movie and television viewership, were all controlled by Gatekeepers. Studios. Networks. Publishers. Editors. Executives. Printers. Distributors. Store owners. Everyone had a say in the audience you were allowed to reach.

Now you can connect easily to that one manga fan in Marfa, Texas. Or maybe you get incredibly lucky and create the next Twilight, or Fifty Shades of Gray, or Harry Potter, or whatever other project no Gatekeeper would touch that then made millions and reached a worldwide, General Audience.

You want to make a superhero movie? Make one! But know your market, and accept the limitations of potential low-budget special effects, and costuming. Every superhero creator wants to be The Russo Brothers, or Jon Favreau, but that’s more about a need for an ego-boost, and less about reaching your audience. People print up super expensive European album-type hardback books because they love seeing their work printed in them—but their fans can’t afford to buy them. Couldn’t you be happy paying the bills while making what you love?

You want to make a Western comic? Great! But if it has to be in print—in pamphlet comic book form because that’s what you loved as a kid—you may be limiting your reach, and missing potential new buyers who read everything on their phones, and very little on paper. But… maybe you can reach those people and bring them into bookstores, and comics shops with free digital promotional material on YouTube? An animatic based on your comic?

Can you make a movie and sell copies as downloads? Does a comic have to be printed by Marvel, or formatted like a WebToon to get copies to readers? Is there a way to sell your novel as a PDF? Can you sell your first film online, ad-free, then put advertisements in free downloads to make revenue, and reach farther and wider? Can you make a ‘how-to’ video of how you put together your creation to encourage others and get attention, while also promoting your work?

Look at things differently. Look at things realistically. See your options. ALL your options. Then make what you love. What you’re passionate about. What gets you up in the morning, and keeps you going into the wee hours of the night, knowing exactly who and what your unique market is, and how best to reach them.

Become your own Gatekeeper. It may not be obvious, yet, but you already have the keys.

But what do I know? Nobody really knows anything.

Board with Emotion

Notes from a former Show Fixer

I get a lot of grief about my focus on emotions. People often dismiss it as ‘You know Chuck. He likes romance.’ My detractors usually seeing two characters falling in love as the only ‘emotion’ in a story.

Far from it.

Emotions are a great many things. Fear, sadness, pain, anger. Ignoring emotions in a story will hobble that story from the first frame. An emotionless script or board will likely be a flop before it even begins. I’ve seen great scripts made terrible by bad storyboarding. I’ve seen bad scripts made great by fantastic storyboards that then make you think a few hours later, “Hey. Wait. That story made no sense.” I’ve been moved to tears by a simple camera hold, I’ve been pulled out of a story by a flying camera move that would make Michael Bay nauseous.

But when the boarding and the script are in emotional sync, you get—magic.

Storyboarding isn’t about changing camera angles simply to make them interesting. Storyboarding is about choosing the best shot for the emotional heart of the moment. It’s about using the camera—the viewer’s window into your world—to captivate and entrance. And you can only captivate and entrance by engaging your audience’s emotions.

For a grand lesson in this, I recommend watching Casablanca. Then watching it again, with the sound off.

To help you focus on specific ideas, here are some clips from Casablanca that show the subtlety of playing with the viewer’s emotions. All their emotions. Not just the romance between Rick and Ilsa, but Renault’s charm, and immorality. His fascination with Rick, and Rick’s backstory. The emotions inspired by love, and country, and bravery in the face of certain death. Most importantly, the emotion of giving oneself over to a higher cause.

Moving the camera can make us laugh in the right spot, and cry a moment later.

1)

Here’s an example of a subtle use of camera close-ups, and then a move to convey an important point in the development of Renault, in Casablanca, starting at 4:02.

The camera shows the bottle, then tracks down with it as it is thrown into the trash. The trash can is a reveal, and a subtle way of driving home how Renault is done supporting the Nazis. If the camera doesn’t move, we see the trash can too soon. A static shot above the trash can reveals the end of the scene too early. This same rule applies to the most famous scene from Casablanca.

2)

We don’t see the croupier—lost in the exiting crowd—and his wad of bills until Bogart moves aside for the punchline, because if we did it would reveal the gag too early.

3)

The camera, and the board can also help you maintain tension, keep the audience guessing, all by building the emotion of a scene.

In the opening of this series of scenes, the young wife walks up to Renault, and we are focused on the woman to show her discomfort with her husband’s gambling losses, knowing that it means to get out of Casablanca she’ll have to sleep with Renault. As she walks past, we shift focus to Renault, who quite obviously isn’t sorry at all. These story beats set up the conflict in clear terms for what comes next.

In the next shot we begin with Rick plainly drowning his sorrows in the foreground creating an emotional shift to the intensity of self-pity he feels, and how it portends the unlikely idea that he will be willing to help anyone. Placing him somewhere else in the shot, or in the background, the wife in the foreground, would soften the intensity, and deaden the drama as we don’t recognize that he’s lost in his own, dark place.

The camera then moves in to tighten on the pair, raising the intimacy, intensity and stakes with that simple adjust. Rick is plainly cynical, and continues drinking. All leading us to teeter dramatically on that precipice of ‘will he help, or won’t he?’

Then, as the shots get tighter, and move into singles, we teeter more, until the young bride breaks through with a story that touches Rick. Moves him in a way we see clearly in Bogart’s magnificent acting.

But it doesn’t work. He shuts down, and rejects her. “You want my advice? Go back to Bulgaria.” Then he leaves her.

He goes into the gambling room. What’s he going to do? The camera follows him, just wide enough to show the despondent husband. Is he going to make the husband leave? Have him thrown out? The turn has begun, but it’s subtle. We don’t yet know that Rick is about to get involved.

Until he does.

Now the bride arrives. The tone shifts. The maî·tre d’ watches, and becomes emotional.

And so do we.

Renault picks up on the shift, and becomes distressed by what he’s seeing. All these emotions grab us. What comes next? Will Renault object? Will the situation become tense? Angry?

Importantly, after the money is ‘given’ to the couple, we get a pair of emotion relieving jokes, and Rick is approached by the wife, who offers him affection. But Rick is uncomfortable with it, and removes her embrace. This moment is crucial to differentiate Rick’s actions from those of Renault. The shot clearly tells us that he didn’t do this for selfish reasons, but selfless ones. He wanted nothing in return for his act from anyone, especially the wife.

Rick has gone from “I stick my neck out for nobody,” to someone who does.

This is the central emotional shift in the character that gets him involved once again in life, and we see it through the emotional reactions of—and to—the people who work for him.

Many of the best shot choices in Casablanca are static holds on Ingrid Bergman or Humphrey Bogart. No tricky gimmicks needed. That’s because they’re such magnificent actors we feel boatloads of emotions simply watching them process feelings on their subtle, yet expressive faces. As a board artist, know when less is more.

To achieve these emotional moments, here’s a shorthand to some of the shots and why they work.

The below YouTube video (I get no money from them, and have no idea if their software is any good, I’m just using it as an example of what’s out there) helps explain many possible shots, but it focuses on the variety, and tension you can create, and even suggests not being constrained by what’s been done before.

While I agree with that to a degree, it’s important to know that connecting with your audience is always the most important thing, and that means choosing a shot that best engages your audience emotionally. Not choosing a shot simply because it wows with its technical, or creative brilliance. You’re telling a story, and entertaining people, not critics.

On King of The Hill, in an episode called “A Beer Can Named Desire” I once had to animate a scene that was performed by Meryl Streep. It required that I board it on ones, using a CG model as a base so I could capture the immense subtlety of her performance.

In animation storyboarding, you have to follow the performance of the actor. Don’t add to or interpret what you think it should be (unless instructed to do so because there’s going to be a reworking of the line, or a recast of the actor).

As Shakespeare might say,

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness.

It’s always about the emotions, and are those emotions conveyed in the board. Not about the technical shine of something no one’s ever seen before. I’ll always hire someone who gets this, over someone who doesn’t, any day of the week.

enCOURAGEment

Second in a series

Scott McCloud once said to me, “When you create something new, you build an audience of like-minded people. Readers you enjoy having lunch with.”

I was invited to lunch with some X-Men fans once. I thought it would be fun to see what they had to say. Mostly they wanted to tell me what I was doing wrong as a writer for the series. One person would tell me over their burger and fries exactly what they didn’t like about what I was doing, and then the next person would say, “well, that doesn’t bother me as much as (SOMETHING ELSE).”

And the next person would repeat the cycle.

This is the inherent problem with writing for company-owned, pre-existing characters—often even when it’s a later book in a series you created—such as when discussing whom Harry Potter should have married. Fans of a work will develop and flesh out their own mental stories (Harry will marry Hermione), and get upset when what they imagined doesn’t happen. Then—weirdly—they turn on the person who created the series they enjoy so much.

Want to write the greatest Green Lantern story, ever? Okay. Could be fun. Which Green Lantern would star in your “greatest Green Lantern story, ever?” Some people love Hal Jordan. Some prefer John Stewart. There are a lot of Kyle Rayner fans. There are even quite a few Guy Gardner devotees. Many don’t like other iterations, only their favorite.

So tell me a Greatest Green Lantern story that doesn’t alienate some—or all—Green Lantern fans.

People often tell me, “I have the greatest idea for (FILL IN THE SUPERHERO BLANK).” My response is always, “You should do your own thing,” which often—sadly—deflates them. One person actually admitted “that’s scarier.” Yeah, it is.

I get it. I do. There’s a real joy in getting your shot at a cultural icon like Superman, X-Men, or Wonder Woman. I sure had fun writing them. And I learned a lot about writing, collaboration, and visual storytelling in the process. It enhanced my career in animation. Even made me some money—though not as much as people think. And I understand the fear of creating something original—from your heart—and having it rejected, or criticized. Stomped on. Noted, and dismissed.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It does happen. And it hurts.

But very rarely does someone come up to me and say, “I loved your run on (FILL IN THE SUPERHERO BLANK). I re-read it all the time. It changed my life.” It happens, but it’s extremely rare. And yet I still have people say that about Hero Sandwich. Or my brief stay on Miracleman which I didn’t even write. Or—widening out a bit—my more personal projects like Flywires, Edgeworld, Love, or more often my novels like Pride and Nakedness (and, yes, I know this isn’t ‘my’ property, technically).

People are moved, and connect with the personal. With the deeply felt. I get comments and emails thanking me for helping Rad Sechrist bring Kipo and The Age of The Wonderbeasts into existence. I get a lot of underserved thanks for Steven Universe (I was just the support structure on both of those. The repository of experience. The genius was all Rad, and Bill, or Rebecca, Ben and Matt. But it was original genius).

You could write another Batman. Or you could create the dark, intense, and really wonderful Left on Mission or Blacking Out, as my friend Chip Mosher did. Time better spent, IMO.

You will get criticism from people outside your circle of understanding on an original. But they will go away. It’s called ‘finding your audience',’ and your first book is ‘the sacrificial lamb’ that will get most of the criticism. But those complainers rarely buy book 2.

It won’t be like writing a ‘bad’ X-Men story, or a ‘bad’ Batman story where the fans were there before you, think they know more about what makes a good X-Men/Batman story than you do, and so are more dug in, stick around, and continue assaulting you online, and (sometimes scarily) in-person hoping they can bully you away to be replaced by someone they may love, but other X-Men/Batman fans will probably hate.

In the end, there is no winning in work-for-hire. Other than the meager paycheck, and potential notoriety.

The only reason to write (or draw) someone else’s creation is the built-in audience, guarantee of interest, and potential sales. Money, exposure, and experience. Learn as you get paid. Build a name for yourself for when you launch your own creations.

You can go that route.

But I recommend skipping that step, and going right into becoming a god, breathing life into your very own universe.

Right now.

Self-publish it if you can, animate it yourself, build your own animatic, or storyboard and stay away from the Gatekeepers. Most of them are going out of business, anyway, because they don’t know what they’re doing any more than you do—so trust yourself over them.

Create something new, build an audience of like-minded people—readers you will enjoy having lunch with.

NEXT enCOURAGEment: Avoid the Gatekeepers. Most of them are idiots, anyway.

Fixing Your Show Before it Breaks

Notes from a former Animation Fixer

I get a lot of DM’s from people asking me the same questions, so I’m going to address some of them here, in one post. Take them for what you think they’re worth.  Substitute the word ‘show’ below for ‘comic’ if you’re in that field, and it works pretty much the same.

I was The DreamWorksTV ‘Fixer’ for almost seven years, and I’ll explain what that means in short order down below, along with the nuts and bolts of how you can ‘fix’ your own show before it ever gets broken. Or set up your own comic or creation for the best potential to get interest in the animation markets. But first I want to explain the three most important things I’ve learned from my years in Hollywoodland.

1.)  You can never guarantee a hit. But you can guarantee a good show. And good shows outlive their initial failure.

2.)  No one can make a perfect show. So stop working to impress your peers, and work toward impressing your audience. Don’t bottle-neck the show, refining. Let it go.

3.)  If you don’t want someone effing up your creation, don’t sell it to Hollywoodland. Creators usually want the money, and they want their perfect, personal vision. But you have to face the harsh reality that the more money that’s involved, the less likely you are to see your personal vision maintained. When lots of money is spent, the more the money-people get scared, and tinker to ‘make it better.’

FIXING:

As I said, nearly seven years fixing shows at DreamWorksTV, and it was odd how many people knew who I was because of it. People I’d never met called me “The Fixer” in hallways, and wanted to buy me lunch. One person even joked, “No one ever wants to have a show struggling, and then see you walk in their door.”

For my first job at DreamWorksTV I was brought in to finish Dawn of the Croods, and get it delivered to Netflix. Or—if I didn’t think it could be finished—to shut it down. It was incredibly far behind schedule, and internally people didn’t like the show. But Dreamworks didn’t know what was wrong with it, or how to get it back on track.

It was a ‘half-hour show’—or a 22 in the shorthand way of referring to the actual running time of 22 minutes—and I heard a lot of ‘reasons’ when I came in to interview for the job for why it was failing. Like: “comedy works better as two 11’s than it does as 22’s.”

Two 11 minutes being the SpongeBob format, as opposed to—say—the 22 minute Simpson’s format.

Yeah. I actually heard that.

Other reasons were “the scripts aren’t funny,” “the animation is too slow paced” and “it was just a bad idea from the start.”

None of those were true.

Enter me.

I took all the materials home on a Friday before my Monday start date; scripts, animatics, model designs, bible, etc., and reviewed everything over the weekend. I could see why people didn’t like the show, but it goes back to the visualization post I made earlier in the week.

First of all, the scripts were hilarious. Brendan Hay is a comedy genius, and we are still good friends all these years later, so I think that tells you how well we eventually worked together.

But his vision wasn’t getting through. The animatics weren’t connecting with an audience primarily because the comedy in the scripts wasn’t landing. Anyone who’s worked with me on King Of The Hill knows you can screw up a great joke for a lot of reasons; poor timing, wrong camera angles, too cutty, too much acting that’s distracting, jokes delivered by characters with their backs turned to the camera, the set-up gets moved too far from the punchline because of added visual  ‘gags’ or attempts at physical comedy by the board artists, or directors, etc.

Brendan was inexperienced, and was up against some strong personalities that saw comedy differently than him. He was right, and they were wrong. Once we fixed that, and made his and the other writers’ jokes land the way they needed to, the show started to sing. The animatics got funnier, more charming, and delightful, and slowly began trickling out to the rest of the company as employees snuck around servers to check in on just how badly I must be doing. Brendan and I knew we were on the right track when executives went from asking to have their names removed from the credits, to demanding that they be added on.

Yeah. That happens.

So what did I do on that show, and the ones that followed, in a way that left me friends with Brendan, Scott Fellows, Rad Sechrist, and so many others? I accepted that they were better at their job than I could ever be, and left them to it.

I taught. I didn’t take over.

Hollywoodland is collaborative, but people see it as a ‘star’ system, and that is a common misunderstanding. Everyone wants to be a name like Spielberg, but he’s a one-off. Leave your ego behind, and collaborate. Find people who are better than you at their jobs, and set them free with guidance, not control. Don’t be a Lennie and crush the thing you love.

So what are the basics that I teach?

1.)  Write a good script. Don’t start with a weak script thinking you can fix it later. (‘Fix it in Post’ is a thing no one in television production ever wants to hear). Fixing it later is costly, time-intensive, exhausting to a crew that is likely already overworked, and the number one thing that will make your show late. It can also make it worse as the changes start to give the episode a patched together feel.

2.)  Follow the basic rules of story if you want a large audience. People whine and complain about three act structure, the five-minute rule, and The Heroes Journey, but they work for psychological reasons that are too complex to go into here. Reinvent the wheel on the personal, not the professional.

3.)  The Five-Minute Rule (I knew you’d ask): Capture your audience in the first few minutes. Give them clear goals, wants, needs and drives.

4.)  Capture it with heart, not kinetic action. No one has ever walked out of a movie saying; “Wow. I felt nothing, I didn’t connect with those characters at all… what a great film.”

5.)  Emotion, emotion, emotion. I’m amazed that I get pushback on this—what I consider THE MOST important thing in entertainment. I’m sometimes dismissed as a ‘romantic’ (true, but beside the point), a ‘shipper’ (also true, but that never leaves my living room to affect my JOB), or told that people don’t want emotion, they want adrenaline, or worse; boys don’t like emotion.

Wrong. 

Casablanca, arguably one of the greatest films of all time, would not be the same without the emotion in that film, and I’m not just talking about Rick and Ilsa, as important as that is. The maître d’ watching Rick arrange for the newlywed husband win at roulette grabs my heart every time. The emotion of the French anthem being sung to drown out the Nazis is intense. “Your winnings, sir,”—okay, not emotional, but a great laugh—which is also important. On, and on, and on.

Jurassic Park is one of the greatest dramatic horror/action films ever made, and it’s nothing without the core relationships, most importantly between Dr. Alan Grant, and those kids.  Gravity Falls, the twins and the surrounding characters. The intensity of Tom Cruise versus Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men when Cruise knows it may well cost him his career. That’s not a romantic moment, but it’s a lengthy scene that is damned emotional, and continues far beyond that famous “You can’t handle the truth” meme.

I could give more, but look at any real hit, or memorable film. You want a show that connects, and grabs an audience? Give them emotion, or stand aside and let someone else have the fun.

6.)  Create unique and memorable characters that are appealing, interesting, and interact engagingly and entertainingly, through conflict. Don’t give me jerks who have a ‘character arc’ where they become better people. I don’t care. After you’ve spent five minutes at a party with a jerk, do you give a $#!+ if they find happiness after you’ve gotten sick of them and walked away? Conflict does not mean you are horrible to people, and then deserve redemption. Conflict is opposing goals, and the best intentions for how to achieve them, then LEARNING from the other person to GROW your own, personal point of view. Pride and Prejudice, folks.

7.)  Design appealing characters, and cast for skill, and talent. Again—find people better than you at everything.

8.)  Hire people you like to work with, not people whose genius is legendary, and are also legendary pains-in-the-ass. In the end it may not be a ‘brilliant work of art that impresses your peers’ but it will be done, it will be great (I would argue better than it would have been with the Pain), and you’ll enjoy the process—and life—much more.

9.)  Surprise people. With comedy. With drama. With emotion. With character twists.

10.) Learn the nuts and bolts of EVERY job on a show, and understand what it takes to do it. You can’t give good guidance if you don’t understand the process. Greg Daniels knew visual storytelling, and why a joke worked from one camera angle but not another. I learned a lot of what I know from him. And I’d bet serious money he knows even more now.

Never assume you know it all. Always be learning.

11.) The most important note is the one you don’t give. If a show is 95% there, do you really need to spend hours tweaking that one scene that’s not quite hitting it perfectly? To make it something that only you and your closest friends will notice or care about? No. People have lives and families. Let them go home to them.

12.)  Leave your audience happy.

Your audience is obviously the most important thing, no matter whether it’s small or large. If you’re doing it for you, and people who think like you, great. Much easier to target an audience of people who share your brain. If you’re doing it for a broader television or internet audience, you have to take more into consideration.

A great example from Croods: We had screened an animatic to executives for notes, and one of them—a woman—gave the note that Thunk had done something that creeped her out. Brendan and I pushed back, saying he’d done it before, and that the ‘creep factor’ was what made it funny. The executive graciously backed off saying “maybe it was just me.”

After she left, because Brendan and I had an open policy to speak up, one of the other women on the crew said, “That Thunk thing also creeped me out. I didn’t think it was funny.” When we tried the same push back, she said, “Yeah, but those other times were creepy as well, and made me cringe, not laugh.” Brendan and I opened it to the room, and every woman in it agreed.

We pulled the gags.

Our audience was boys and girls. Just because boys don’t see it as creepy, doesn’t mean it isn’t. Life lesson, that.

Consider Harry Potter (no comments about Rowling, please. It’s not pertinent to this discussion). It was marketed to 6-11 year old boys. The smallest book reading market there is. But those boys all loved it. Enough that they told their sisters, who started reading it, and also loved it. The boys’ parents never stopped hearing about how great the book was, or read it to their boys at night, and were captivated themselves. Before long the audience grew exponentially because Potter was the incredibly rare kind of series that crosses demographics by being emotionally true.

But first it had to sell to those boys. And wouldn’t you know it? Loaded with emotion, those books.

SpongeBob is the same story. It nailed its core audience, but had enough adult humor to cross over to parents and college students.

A final note: This is about selling your ideas, not following artistic vision. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve gone my own way hundreds of times, and made no money, but gotten tremendous personal gratification from what I created.

Rule 2 above, and focusing on demographics often irritates ‘artistes.’ But when you move beyond self-publishing and want to sell something to a wider audience, it’s no longer about art. It’s about commerce. You want to make art? I applaud and encourage you. Luxuriate in it. Feel proud. Create what moves you. But don’t come whining to me if you don’t make money off it. But please do come lord it over me if it strikes and you get rich. Nothing would make me happier. You’ve attained the best of all possible worlds, and in that regard, I love being proved wrong.

There’s a lot more I could say about fixing a show, or creating a good one to begin with, but this is about fixing it before it breaks, not spending hours in HR, learning how to fire people, or how to get fired, or having to know what a bar-chart is, and why you need to stop fearing it, and learn how to read it.

So go with God. I wish you massive success, and I hope you never see me walk in your office door, unless I’m just stopping by to say hello, and bringing cookies.