The Holiday Project - Writer's Bingo

Every year my writing group has a holiday project, a writing exercise that we come up with and do during the holiday season as we typically miss a meeting or two due to people being out of town.  The exercises typically have us each bring in some sort of prompt that we each need to use in our piece.  My favorite projects from past year's projects was when we each brought in a short piece of music to inspire our pieces, and the year we each were assigned a day of the week and came up with a prompt associated with that day of the week. We then had to use every day's prompt in order to write something that spanned the course of the week, beginning and ending with your day.

This year, our writing project uses a Bingo Card as a prompt.  Not just any Bingo Card, but one filled with writing prompts. Each writer will have to use all of the prompts in a row, column, or diagonal in their piece. Each member of the writing group (there are 8), contributed prompts for three of the available 24 spaces with the middle space being "Free".  Two of the prompts required a bit of explanation, so I put in footnotes at the bottom.

We will be unveiling our finished Holiday Projects in January.  If you'd like to play along at home, try seeing what you'd do with it: Holiday Project Bingo Card

My piece?  As always, I'm having a lot of fun with playing with the criteria. I'll post it after it's done. It's... different.

National Film Challenge/Boston Theatre Marathon

Since I last wrote, we underwent the National Film Challenge for 2011.  I promised that this time the writing process would be orderly and productive. And it was!  But then the shooting process happened.  And it was less orderly and productive. As a result, I can't post a properly finished product as such a thing does not exist, but I can post the script.

Chain Reactions: A Short Screenplay for the 2011 NFC

Genre: Film de Femme
Character: Casey Scott, Bicyclist
Prop: Light Bulb
Line of Dialogue: "It's probably poisonous."

National Film Challenge 2011: The Return

It's been quite a while since I last posted, for a variety of reasons.  First and foremost, my wife gave birth to our adorable baby girl this summer, and that's been taking up a lot of my attention, as you'd imagine.  Also, the Ex Factor finished filming, although when it might actually be up where you can see it is anybody's guess.

But despite the fact that I haven't been blogging, I've certainly been writing.  I won $500 as a finalist to the Break.com online comedy short contest on scripped.com which is great. The drawback is that because I'm a finalist, Break.com owns the piece and I can't share it. I only can hope that they decide to film it. I also entered a one page screenplay contest, which was a wonderful exercise in concise writing. Here is my entry, Walk of Shame.

I've also been busy turning my superhero novel draft into a superhero screenplay, and with writing a short script for an actress friend of mine to make into an online short, which may be filmed at the restaurant my mother owns. It'll be fun to turn that place into a high end bistro for the purposes of filming for one day.

It's a Wrap!

Last weekend we wrapped up the principal filming on The Ex-Factor.  Astonishingly, as they planned, they filmed 90 odd pages of script in just four filming days.  I haven't seen any of the footage, but from past experience and from what I've seen of the filming, I think it's shaping up to be what I wanted it to be. I designed the show to be as easy to produce as possible, but the extent that the production was streamlined was shocking even to me. The first shooting day they shot all of the studio scenes, which was about half of the script.

Comedy is hard. Also, hot and sweaty.

Armed to the Teeth

The result of my recent participation in the 2011 Boston 48 Hour Film Project was just posted on YouTube. This was the one that I recently live blogged about.


My contributions to the film are as follows:

• Wrote a script that they didn't use (see live blog).
• Gave comments to the guy who wrote the script, basically amounting to "This makes no actual sense. That might be a problem." I said this as constructively as possible. To his credit, the guy changed the end of the script to make everything intentionally a joke as opposed to unintentionally a joke, which was an improvement.
• Procured props and costumes and gave actresses a ride to the shooting site.
• Got pizza.

Making Bullion

"Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes." - John LeCarre


This past weekend Malarkey Films shot two days worth of The Ex Factor web series.  The script for The Ex Factor, as it stands now, is 91 pages or the equivalent of a full-length screenplay.  After the first day of filming they had filmed approximately half of it.  They expect to finish shooting next weekend.  Even though I had written the web series to be as simple to produce as possible, the efficiency of the process they've developed is kind of astonishing.

I was able to sit in on the first day of shooting, in which they shot all of the Studio scenes.  The extreme speed is made possible by how they're shooting the studio scenes.  The two actors are shot by three cameras.  They run through the scene a few times, first playing the scene as written and then a few times improv-ing their way through the beats of the script.  In the editing, they'll choose among the takes to create the full episodes.

A few days before we started filming, the lead actress asked me if I minded that the plan was to stray from the words I slaved over for so long. It's a real question.  The final result will almost assuredly not contain many of the lines that I liked, ideas that I included, things that have been important to me that I've been working on for a year.  As I sat in the back of the room watching the scenes being run, there were times that the final result resembled my script in only the most cursory ways. It brings to mind the John LeCarre quote that started this blog with.  Is this something that I can live with?

We Need You..

...to help film the pivotal scene for The Ex Factor. On Sunday, May 22nd from 10am-2pm at The Burren in Davis Square, Somerville. We're filming the climactic scene in which lots o' stuff goes down. I mean, there will be old love letters, karaoke, serenading, and drunken antics aplenty.  See it live before you see it on film.

To RSVP, go here: Evite

The Ex-Factor is ready to roll

"For three long years, Josh and Hilary dated, until they both mutually agreed that it was a terrible, terrible idea. Now these 'just friends' are back, and they're podcasting together. Look out world. This… is the Ex Factor."

Last September I convened a small group of actors and my producing partner to do a table read of a comedy web series called "The Ex-Factor".  The series is about a couple who used to date before breaking up, but who now produce a weekly comedy podcast together with predictably mixed results.  We had thought we'd be able to start filming in the fall or early winter, but then the producing partners fell through due to financial reasons, and I had to start over from scratch. 

Liveblogging the 48 Film Project

7:00 pm.  Sitting in a hotel room with my team.  We know the genre.  Detective/Cop.  Waiting on the other criteria. Some people are writing already, I want to wait for all the criteria.

7:02 pm.  Stakeout? Scene of the crime?  Anatomy of a crime syndicate?  Much will depend on the required character.  Will probably use the woodsy house that we have available to us.

7:06 pm.  Character: Uncle Hank or Aunt Henrietta
Prop: Chess Piece
Line of Dialogue: "I didn't see that coming."

Another Year, Another 48 Hours

This weekend is the latest round of the 48 Hour Film Project in Boston, and this time I'm on yet another team.  With the good people at Malarkey Films busy doing preproduction on The Ex Factor, I was left without a team.  So, I put a listing up at the volunteer for a team page on the 48 Hour Film site, thinking that it probably wouldn't pan out.  However, I soon got an email from a guy putting together a new team.  Unlike other teams I've been on, the guy heading this team is a 48 Hour rookie but has assembled what seems to be a good group of people, many with experience and others with a lot of enthusiasm.  In a little over a week the film we made will be screened at the Kendall Theatre.

The Big Crossover: The evolution of a story

I've been in a small, informal regular writing group since 2001, meeting once every two weeks in Somerville.  People have come and gone from the group, but it's just kept on going for a decade now.

The great thing about the group, aside from the feedback and commentary, is that it forces you to have a deadline. When your turn comes up, you need to pass something in.  Often you turn towards things you've done in the past, either revising or reimagining it over and over.

The following is one such story idea, which was to imagine a comic book universe in which the superheroes become aware that they are in a fictional universe.  Of course, since some superheroes are geniuses, they figure out a way to cross over into the real world, with unforeseen consequences.  This idea was one I had in 2003, and I'm now working on the third iteration of it.

This... is the Ex-Factor

So here's the thing I've been working on for about two years that I'm finally able to talk about.

 

"For three long years, Josh and Hilary dated, until they both mutually agreed
that it was a terrible, terrible idea. Now these "just friends" are back,
and they're podcasting together. Look out world. This… is the Ex Factor."

Almost two years ago, I started working on a web series, a group of short films designed to be distributed over the net.  My reasoning was that if I could make it as cheap and produceable as possible, I could then find someone to actually make it as opposed to having it languish in my hard drive.

The premise for the series I came up with was this: Two people who used to date for a non-trivial amount of time broke up, but together they produce a weekly comedy podcast together.  It ties together a lot of the things I like to write about.  It's a "backstage" piece, and I find myself writing about people who are involved in some sort of media or art quite a lot.  The premise of Exes having to work together leads to scenes of social awkwardness galore, and broken "bad first date" type of dialogue is something I like writing.  Finally, it's about podcasting, which is something I've been more or less obsessed with since I got an iPod.  First the iPod was all about music, but eventually it's now all about podcasts.  It's a curiously intimate thing, having strangers chat in your ears for hours at a time about whatever you're interested in.  The question that comes to mind is: Who does that?  Who does all the work it takes to put together a podcast, especially if you're not doing it for money.  And why?

That was the thinking that went toward writing The Ex-Factor.  I created the two lead roles to answer that question for me.  Josh, the guy who does most of the work behind making the podcast, who seems to do it to keep close with Hilary, his Ex. He's really good at hosting the podcast as he's an improv comedian who can keep the banter going.  Hilary plays the podcast sidekick, and unlike Josh she has fewer creative outlets as she's stuck in her dead end job, so she's on the podcast to flex her creative muscles not quite realizing the size of the torch that Josh still carries.  Over the course of the series I play with their relationship in various ways.  They're good at making amusing podcasts, but every once in a while something goes awry.

I wanted a specific tone for the web series, as many of the ones I've seen seem to go for the wackiness as a first resort.  I don't mind the "slam cut to something ironic" style of comedy, it's just that it seems to be overused.  I wanted to have all of the comedy of the show to be derived from the relationship between the main characters.  I wanted to establish who they are and then smash different problems and situations against that relationship and see what happened.  It resulted in two really interesting characters that get fully explored over the course of the series.

After I got the writing done, I started showing this to people and got a very positive reaction.  I pursued making this with one friend of mine, and we got quite a ways toward actually going forth with it, but finances caused this friend to pull out of the project last fall.  I then took the project to the folks at Malarkey Films, whom I had just worked with for the 2010 National Film Challenge to see if they were interested, and after some discussion on their part they decided to take it on.  It's interesting to go through the process with different parties as they have different perspectives on the material.  Some things that were crucial details to one group were totally inconsequential to the other.  It really shows how collaborative filmmaking is, and why "Making Of" commentary tracks exist.

So, this is the Ex Factor.  We're holding auditions on April 3rd, and if all goes well we'll be filming this summer. Stay tuned.

An Accidental Success: The Reed Hum 110 Play

If memory serves me correctly, in about a month at Reed College they will perform a play.  I'm not sure what the title of the play will be, but it's a parody of Hum 1110, the humanities course all Freshmen at Reed have to take.  The plot is that a freshman who has not studied during the first year prays for help for her (usually her) final exam, and the gods send down Homer to help guide her through the material she has meticulously avoided learning.  What follows is a loose romp, a mixture of nerdy witticisms,  dirty gags, cameos from the professors and staff who don't have the good sense to stay away, and Reedie in-jokes that are hilarious to the student body but probably loses context the nanosecond a student steps off campus.

The annual performance of this play is, by all accounts, one of the pivotal events of the Reed student calendar, with huge lines forming to wait to pack into the auditorium for it's one-time only performance.  Far more people attend this play than ever attend any Hum lecture.  It's easy for a current student to think that it's the type of tradition that has been happening at Reed forever.

It hasn't, though, unless you define "forever" as "since 1994", when I wrote and directed the first one. Actually, for a current Reedie, that probably qualifies as "forever".  Sigh.

48 Hour Go Green Boston Results

The results for the 48 Hour Film Project Boston Go Green event are in, and the Malarkey entry How Mobile Apps Saved the World did pretty well, although we didn't get the big prize.  The film won "Best Director" and "Best Ensemble Acting", which were both ironic since the directing consisted of one camera shot and most of the actors were non-actors who were interviewed in the Errol Morris style. 

Of the 15 Boston entries, ours was named the Runner Up for Best Film which was a heck of a showing for something that was even more of an ad hoc production than is usually the case for a 48 Hour Film Project production.  We basically showed up on Saturday with a few pages of notes, a homemade "Interrotron" and the hopes that we could get normal people to make up stuff that we could fit together into a coherent piece. It just goes to show how well the normal people brave enough to go on camera did when asked to riff on stuff, and how good the editing was.

The Silent Treatment

At the end of the nineties I had a silent comedy phase.  I went back and rented every Chaplin and Keaton movie I could find and read both of their autobiographies.  I read every bit of commentary I could about that era, and even took clowning classes to get a sense of how you someone can tell stories without words.

During this time, I wrote two full length biographical pieces, a screenplay called Buster Keaton's American Life and a play called Chaplin and Keaton on the Set of Limelight.  I like them both, but I might never be able to do anything with them due to the legal difficulties of using real historical figures. I may post them here at some point.

Two Short Plays: My Boston Theatre Marathon entries

My playwriting discussion group has a guy who hates the 10 minute play.  Actually, to be fair, he hates that the predominance of the 10 minute play tempts playwrights to try and cram 15-20 minutes worth of story into 10 minutes for the sake of getting them entered into contests.

I'm someone who loves the form of the 10 minute play.  I tend to write towards constructing moments rather than resolving plots or exploring all aspects of an idea, and 10 minutes seems to be a good length in which to build the machinery that will unveil the perfect moment.  That's not to say that I don't write longer pieces (I'll get to those eventually on this blog), but the short play has been in many ways some of the most rewarding things I've written.

Writing Under Pressure - The 48 Hour FIlm Project Go Green

This past weekend, I just took part in Malarkey Films entry in the 48 Hour Film Project's Go Green Challenge.  If you're not familiar with the 48 Hour Film Project, it's a challenge in which teams are given 48 hours to write, film, edit, and produce a short film.  In each case you're given a set of criteria that you have to include in your film, usually a genre, a line of dialogue, a prop and a character.  In the Go Green iteration of the challenge, the genre is up to the teams to choose but the films have to have an environmental theme.

It's the sixth time I've been involved with a 48 Hour team, the third time with Malarkey.  Before I had latched onto teams, I had wanted to get involved in the project for a while but hadn't been able to find a team to join.  Eventually I discovered some co-workers of mine were involved in a team and joined up with them for a few events.  When that team lost steam, I was referred to a team run by a friend to the Malarkey Films team, where I discovered that people I knew were in the group.

Lilith at the Wedding

Link: LilithAtTheWedding.pdf
Type: Short Screenplay
Status: Unproduced

My regular writing group has a yearly tradition around holiday times.  Each year we decide on a new writing challenge, and we give ourselves the period over the holidays to work on it.  Sometimes we give ourselves inspirations, such as music or photos.  Other times we have to hit certain plot points at certain times.  Sometimes we give ourselves requirements that we have to use.

What this blog will be

So, I suppose that the thing to do is to introduce myself and what this blog will be about.

My name is Greg Lam, and I write a lot.  Mostly I write plays and screenplays, though I also have written prose stories and a sci-fi novel that needs a major round of editing.  I'm fairly confident that I'm pretty good at writing.  I've gotten plays into the Boston Theatre Marathon five times, and those have resulted in a couple of publications.  I wrote a screenplay for the National Film Challenge that was one of the finalists for 2010.