and then there was light

i was so terrified there would never be a caprica soundtrack beyond the pilot episode! but yay! that mccreary. my gods, what talent! i had my mp3 player on random the other night, and i kept stumbling across these beautiful, epic pieces, and i’d think “this sounds like mccreary, but i’m not familiar with these leitmotifs, and it would be highly improbable for me not to recognize music from either series, so what is this… is this wagner? non-ring wagner that i’ve thrown into the mix, trying to expand my opera horizons? no, those are definitely poundy drums…” – and every time i’d turn my screen on and check to see what it was, it was something off of mccreary’s dark void soundtrack. exquisite.

but the fun thing about caprica music was the integration of the bsg themes. i’m so “tuned in” to that sort of thing that every time i’d watch a new episode for the first time, i’d find myself thinking things like “NOW would be the perfect time to transition from the tauron theme to the adama theme!” – and then it would happen. useful talent, i know. but to be both a music dork and a sci-fi dork can get a little out of hand. mccreary is a total enabler in that respect. in the best possible way.

Posted by kate under ass-kissing,caprica,link182,musics | Comments (0)

stale blood and digital chrome

the world may end before blood and chrome airs.

2013? boo, hiss. oh, and it’s also a rejected submission from one of stephen colbert’s old green screen challenges.

 
dear The Network Formerly Known as Sci-Fi, i know it’s been a while since we last spoke. there are many questions. what exactly are you guys so busy with  that it takes you like a year to watch one puny installment of the only remaining fragment of your most well-respected franchise? why did you bother filming it and telling everyone about it if you weren’t even going to watch it? if caprica failed because it didn’t retain the audience of its predecessor, why would another spinoff be MORE successful if you put even more distance – like, half a decade – between it and the original series? is all of this procrastinating a ploy to keep your options open until i provide you with a new and improved version of the story?

from kate, with a side-eye and a sigh.

Posted by kate under BSG,link182 | Comments (4)

take the world and make it yours again

i was

hired

last night!

Posted by kate under nuclear waste | Comments (6)

writing panel recap (part II)

i’ll preface this by boasting about how one of the members of my writers’ group said my pages (1-6 of my very first pilot. aww!) reminded him of buffy… which is obviously something any smart-assed sci-fi writer likes to hear. after the obligatory blushing and eyelash-fluttering, i responded that maybe i’d been inspired by a recent talk given by one of its key writers/producers. here are the gory details:

jane espenson at the EMP/SFM, 8th october 2011.

i think this event was part of some female-oriented sci-fi festival that was taking place over that weekend. however, i didn’t really notice a difference in the gender distribution relative to similar geeky events i’ve been to. my hypothesis is that guys who identify as sci-fi nerds are a) probably more than eager to meet/hang out with like-minded females, and b) already used to being kind of marginalized/not really being a part of the mainstream “bro” community – so, they’re probably comfortable attending a dorky convention that celebrates the shows/comics/genres they love regardless of whether or not it’s specifically aimed at women. anyway. lots of costumes. browncoats, a dalek or two, and in front of me in line for jane’s talk – a couple that appeared to be spike and harmony. in fact, when we all got into the theater and jane came out, she saw them in the audience and made them stand up so everyone could see their costumes. she asked if they were supposed to be spike and harmony. “no! spike and buffy-bot!” oops. i think jane and i were probably both fooled by the big hair and maybe some cleavage. she apologized: “you’re probably really mad at me for calling you harmony, then…”

down to business. the moderator asked for jane’s life story. she grew up in iowa, where, she claimed, geekery is mixed in with the corn. watching television showed her a level of diversity that was definitely lacking in her real surroundings. much like someone else we know, she watched way too much television and started writing spec scripts. she said that her first (or one of her first) scripts was for m*a*s*h, and at the end of every scene, she wrote “INSERT COMMERCIAL HERE.” awesome.

she started getting ahead of herself and talking about galactica or something, and the moderator took great care to get her back on track. moderator: “now, let’s go way, way back…” jane: “how far back?” moderator: “let’s go back to when you first started doing star trek…” jane: “i feel like i’m being regressed! i see ron… he looks very young…”

all of her first star trek scripts were about data. data’s long-lost sibling (iirc), data was abused as a child, and so forth. but her first big significant contribution to the franchise was actually an IDEA from one of her scripts, which the producers BOUGHT from her. not a storyline, not a character, but a concept.  i had no idea you could do that!  anyway, it was the idea that space travel does environmental damage, so ships way in the future (enterprise, voyager) used technology that minimized their ecological impact. “so then it became canon – now, kirk and all of the ships in star trek: TOS were running around, polluting all over the place, because of me!!”

she found writing for sitcoms to be really chaotic. everything was in real time, and time was always running out. with sitcoms, the writers are always working, they never sleep, they never go home, while the actors just come in for a few hours, do their thing, and leave. it’s the opposite with drama. actors are there forever while the writers have much more manageable working periods. british shows, apparently, don’t really have writers’ rooms. it’s more 1-on-1 for each writer with each episode.

she worked on the O.C. for a minute. it was not as dark and as badass as she would have liked. “i think i wrote this story about how ryan, like, got sent back to prison, and he got shanked! and somehow it turned into an episode where it was casino night at the country club.” that show would’ve been sooo much better with more shanks and less country club events…

gilmore girls “missed metaphors” and “broke rules.” it was a “rhythm of life” show, rather than being about sending a certain message or exploring a particular theme.

according to joss whedon, you need a reason to tell every story. but jane didn’t specify whether it had to be a good reason…

RE: working with existing characters. “make it sound like them, but make it unexpected. don’t go with your first instinct.”

what shows does she watch? “community, glee – yes, i’m still watching glee (audience groans)… i know. top chef, work of art, which is about to start its second season, and they’re always like, making things out of toast or whatever…” i felt special because i was already excited about the return of work of art – which, by the way, is already proving its worth by having a contestant who calls himself “The Sucklord,” and i’m also a faithful watcher of community and every top chef variant. our preferences diverge at glee. but i was already surprised by the similarities, if only because it took me so long to warm up to anything under the whedon umbrella.

closing statements: i went into this event kind of expecting to be discouraged. from looking at her credits, it seems like she’s worked on basically every good show ever, and i think i expected someone that talented/successful to be hard to relate to. or intimidating. or not like a real person. but it was the opposite of all that. and now i’ve got six pages that remind at least one person of buffy. after listening to jane espenson talk for an hour, it’s hard not to find that compliment encouraging.

Posted by kate under ass-kissing,BSG,caprica,link182,screenwriting,televis | Comments (3)

writing panel recap (part I)

september 5, 2011. “the writing of battlestar galactica” panel at bumbershoot, featuring ron moore, bradley thompson, and david weddle. silly, silly me. i was thinking that there was no way this could be a well-attended event. for one thing, you couldn’t just buy a ticket for five or ten bucks and be done with it. to get in, you had to, at minimum, buy a $40 one-day pass for all of bumbershoot. i didn’t think many people besides myself would shell out the full ticket price for this one hour-long event. also, it was the last night of bumbershoot, and i assumed most people in attendance would be at the big closing acts on the main stages. so i was picturing this quaint, intimate event where i was sitting in the front row with a small handful of nerds, all of us asking questions, feeling more like we were having a discussion than attending a lecture. of course, i’d be the standout, and inevitably be recruited by RDM and his cohorts, then drive straight from the seattle center to start my new life as a sci-fi writer in vancouver.

not so much. there are two main factors i blame for ruining my fantasy. first, the EMP/SFM sent out a tweet right before the panel began, saying something like “HEY, BATTLESTAR FANS AT BUMBERSHOOT! go attend this thing right now!” second, for fuck’s sake, seattle’s biggest music festival of the year, and they can’t come up with a better, more “must-see” closing act than… hall and fracking oates?? it’s been the black eyed peas, mary j blige, death cab, etc, in past years – but this year, hall and oats. so obviously it would be way more fun to go hang out with the writers of BSG.

so despite having arrived in the vicinity with an hour to spare, it was standing room only by the time i showed up to the theater. since i thought i had so much free time, i spent all of it trying to find the perfect parking space. just driving back and forth and up and down across queen anne, leisurely comparing prices, wondering if i had the skills to parallel park in tight spaces, etc… without ever once thinking that i should hurry up and get to the venue so i could get a good seat. they barely let me in the door.

so i had to stand up in the balcony. like one of the final five. or some creepy loser. either way, there was obviously not going to be an intimate chat. but it was well worth my time, nonetheless. here’s what i can decipher from the notes i took that evening:

• sometimes major plot points come out of nowhere, and that’s okay. first example: odo and kira. ron was watching some DS9 dailies back in the day, and there was this scene where kira was in odo’s office, going on and on about bareil. ron saw odo’s face in the background, and it came to him: he loves her! “but who knows what rené auberjonois (odo) was actually thinking… it could have been, ‘i saw a pigeon!’ for all i knew.” second example: the progression of gaeta’s character. in the beginning of the series, tigh yelled at gaeta all the time. gaeta was usually submissive and quiet. knew his place. but one day, he threw his clipboard down in exasperation! fast forward a few years and we’ve got a one-legged mutineer giving zarek the go-ahead to send some goons with assault rifles to mow down the quorum. ron: “and someone else on ds9 was like that, what was his name, the cardassian, gul… gul…” a few nerds and i had to help him out and shout “DUKAT” from the audience. the guy sitting in the balcony seat in front of me turned around and gave me a smile. that’s right, buddy. the statuesque blond in the shadows knows her star trek.
• “the dumb stick.” don’t be afraid to pitch stupid ideas. even if they’re really, profoundly, truly idiotic. you never know when one of those ridiculously bad ideas is going to be the catalyst for something good, even if it’s seventeen degrees away from the idea you end up using. so everyone in the writers’ (why can’t i figure out if that’s punctuated correctly? shit, there goes my burgeoning career.) room (BSG, DS9, both? don’t remember.) participated in this ritual where if they had a really dumb idea they were embarrassed to throw out, they had to hold something called “the dumb stick” while doing so. i guess it was kind of a security blanket. a reminder that bad ideas are part of the creative process, and they don’t need to fill you with shame.
• “blah blah blah… the klingons – shit, i mean, the CYLONS!”
• originally, the plan for BSG was to really go into the fleet, the civilian parts, all the different ships, all of the different corners of life post-genocide…. but bastille day broke the budget. something about how an episode set inside a garbage scow full of man-eating flies would have been great (good thing we had the demetrius later on!). they thought about having roslin on a luxury liner in the beginning, then she has this whole “the first class doesn’t exist anymore” realization, forcing class integration. but ship sets are just too damned expensive.
• this is probably the single most important thing i came away with: if you have an idea you love but you can’t explain it right away, WRITE IT ANYWAY. the reason doesn’t have to come first. you can go for entire seasons without explaining yourself! this kind of thing paralyzes me when i write. if i come up with a concept i like in terms of plot, symbolism, magic, “coolness,” whatever… but i can’t immediately explain exactly how it works and why it makes sense, i get stuck. but the boys said it doesn’t have to be like that. why did six snap that baby’s neck in the miniseries? why did sharon (boomer, as far as helo knew) go back for helo? they didn’t know the answers right away, but they liked them, dammit! so they wrote them in and figured it all out later. things will usually fall into place naturally as your story develops, grows more complex, grows a comprehensive “personality.” so chill out, kate.
• originally, the plan was for nog to get BOTH of his legs blown off. someone recalled overhearing one side of a conversation one of their co-workers was having with the network brass about this issue… “too much? well… okay, i think it has to be above the knee, though…” along the same lines, the suits wanted to water down kara’s torture session with leoben. sure, his teeth would be flying out of his mouth as she punched the fuck out of his face, but if he was SMILING, it wasn’t really torture, right!?
• RE: BSG academia. RDM: “i’ve read some of it, i think it’s fascinating, but i didn’t understand a word of it.”
• finally, my contribution to the Q and A. now, i’d had like a month to try and talk myself into being brave enough to ask a question. in fact, when i met with my fellow screenwriters the week before, i’d said that was my goal for the next month (everyone else was setting tangible writing goals, or “timed objectives” – rewrite this many pages, edit this section of dialogue, refine log lines, etc) was to “not bitch out” during the BSG panel. it was the only way i could think of to make myself accountable… if i made people expect me to do something, i hoped i would be more likely to actually do it instead of just being scared and shrinking away at the last minute. my friend juliana helped keep me on the ball. i even tested a bunch of potential questions with my group. i decided to stick with my top choice, something i routinely struggle with: when writing sci-fi, you want to really appeal to your “core” audience of “real” geeks by making obscure references and jokes that only they would understand – but you also don’t want to alienate your more “mainstream” viewers. how do you be accurate with your nerdy references without becoming totally inaccessible to normal people? to be honest, i was so nervous asking the question that i didn’t really pay attention to the first portion of the answer. i was awkward, not knowing whether they could hear me from my shadowy perch, and i was just so relieved to have made words come out of my mouth in a coherent way that i almost forgot to listen to the response (primarily provided by mr. thompson). but i pulled it together enough to get the gist: use another character to sort of represent the voice of the “average” viewer. here’s the example i came up with in my proof-of-bravery email to juliana:

PHYSICIST
This can’t be alien technology! This code is like the hideous illegitimate lovechild of COBOL and Visual Basic 6.

MALE MODEL
What? It looks just like all the other computer stuff in the world – crazy, confusing, and… well, alien!

PHYSICIST
If you went to a photo shoot and the stylist said she was going to dress you in a designer alien outfit, and then she gave you an oversized novelty sombrero, a dingy polyester track suit and a pair of orthopedic sneakers with velcro fasteners – would you believe her?

MALE MODEL
I wouldn’t want to.

PHYSICIST
Exactly.

…or something to that effect. i don’t know. i think i’ll close by quoting myself in that email again. i don’t think i can come up with a better summary of what i took away from the experience.

The weird thing is – as awesome as the whole thing was and as proud of myself as I am for not being a chicken, it also sort of feels like my heart is breaking. Just hearing about what goes on in the writers’ room, how people surprise you and how amazing it is to sort of form a group “brain” that creates a way better story than any individual could have imagined, cute anecdotes from the sets of my favorite sci-fi shows… I just want to do it so badly, it hurts. Finally, there’s this ONE specific type of social situation where I can picture myself fitting in, becoming a better version of myself, doing the thing I love with other people that feel the same way, doing it professionally – it’s just the whole “so close, and yet so far” thing that gets to me. If that makes sense.

anyway. stay tuned for part II: tales from espenson.

Posted by kate under BSG,link182,screenwriting,televis,tl;dr | Comments (0)

the quotable jane espenson

oh dear. over a month later and i still haven’t typed up the notes from the ‘writers of bsg’ panel featuring the amazing sci-fi trifecta of ron moore/bradley thompson/david weddle, and here i am trying to pick a few choice quips from a similar event today featuring, obviously, the incomparable jane espenson (who doesn’t need a stinkin’ trifecta). the thing is, i tend to feel guilty when the top post on my site (that has such a wide, diverse network of faithful readers) is mean – not that i don’t hate the team whose name cannot be spoken as much as it seems, because i definitely do – because i might be frightening away potential employers and minions and husbands with my negativity.

so, in the spirit of liking things, here are my favorite things that jane said today:

1. what were her first three star trek: TNG spec scripts about? “they were all about data! the first one was something ridiculous about how we find out data was a victim of child abuse…” (nerds laugh uproariously)

2. “one of the great things about working for abc is that you have the rights to every disney character in existence, and for the show i’m doing now (once upon a time), we get to create these fucked up back stories for all of them… so, conceivably, we could have like, a typical hollywood couple (please picture angelina jolie right now) adopting a child… and have them adopt mulan!”

3. “oh, you want me to write an episode that has a bunch of dead children? well, better roll up my sleeves and make it funny!” (re: BtVS 3×11 – gingerbread)

4. “and that’s why now i try really hard to avoid murdering gays.” (re: killing off tara and the resulting fan hysteria)

okay. that’s enough to convince everyone that i’m a good person who’s full of love and excited about the world, right? excellent. one of these days i really will provide a full account of what i’ve learned about actual writing from all these writing events, as well as a full account of every witty anecdote i’ve gathered, or, at least the ones i can interpret from the scrawls in my memo book. and, naturally, there will be a little bit of how i embarrassed myself, but in the grand scheme of things, i think the important thing is that i was brave, and i’m probably the only one who will really remember the awkwardness. oh, let’s just end this with a teaser and hope that my compulsive need to follow through will force me to produce what i’ve promised, sometime before 2012:

it was standing room only for the RDM event. things weren’t exactly as i expected. so, it wasn’t an intimate chat with me, my heroes, and a few like-minded friends-to-be… but, the unexpected twist actually had kind of a cool result: i got to ask my question from the dark balcony of the theater we were in, which wasn’t entirely unlike an opera house. so: it’s all quiet. the moderator calls on someone for the next audience question. everyone turns their head to look for the source of the voice. they see a tall blond woman lingering in the balcony shadows but they can’t quite make out her face… oh, it was just riddled with galactica symbolism! and if i have to feel a little awkward in order to complete my goal of being brave and do it from a totally relevant dramatic setting… well, i think that’s a clear win for team kate. for once.

stay tuned!

Posted by kate under ass-kissing,BSG,caprica,link182,screenwriting,televis | Comments (1)