News from a Broad - Julia Camara

One of our Broads, Julia Camara, has written to us about her latest project:

Hi Friends,

Reduce to Dust, the short film I completed in 2001, is finally available for sale on DVD.

I'd like to invite all of you to check out the page and write a review if you've seen it. If you haven't, use this as an opportunity to support a starving filmmaker and buy a copy.

Thanks for your support.

Also, if you're receiving this and you worked on the film and would like a copy, I'll gladly order one for you. Make sure to send me your address.

Julia Camara

A synopsis: Reduced to Dust

A black and white eerie short about a man dealing with divorce in a very unusual way; befriending a skeleton. Starring Miller Scott and Joanna Tisell. Written and Directed by Julia Camara.

Meeting Global Peace

Today I had a great meeting with Nina Streich, the Executive Director of the Global Peace Film Festival. It was great to talk to another festival founder/organizer who has been at it a bit longer. Nina is also a former NY Film Commission Director, so she has a lot to share. It is clear that we are doing the right thing to be growing slowly and in a very organic way. Nina's festival, which takes place in September, is a great event for any of you broads to consider if you have films that fit into its mission of promoting community, humanity, dialogue and discovery of value in the world we share, check them out at peacefilmfest.org.

Tips for Screenwriters - Off with Their Heads!

Where does your script REALLY start? More than 50% of the scripts I read every year have opening scenes that are not nearly as interesting as the rest of the story. Not badly written, not meaningless, but tiresome and overdrawn. I get a lot of background I don’t care about. I want to get on to what happens to whom. I swear I could toss out the first fifteen pages of most scripts, and no one other than the author would miss them.

So why don’t good writers see this obvious failing? I think this is because the writer’s pleasure is as vastly different from the reader’s pleasure as a mother’s love is from everyone else’s. How many of us have seen photo after photo of a child or pet when, for us, one or two would do? Well, as a writer, when you read your story, every beat that is adorable to you may not be of equal interest to your reader. You have to teach your prose manners.

You, the writer, are forming a newborn world in your imagination. You have to write your way into that world, bring the people and places to life in your mind. Once the story has legs and “has learned to walk” so to speak, you go about challenging your characters and changing their world. So. Go to your script and find the first real challenge or change for your main character and check your pages. Are you only a few pages in or are you 10-15 pages in? Remember, you are writing a movie, where backstory can be dispatched before the opening credits have finished rolling. Get the story going.

Here’s an experiment. Give someone your script minus the first fifteen pages. Then invite them to ask questions about things they didn’t understand or missed because the beginning wasn’t there. If you don’t have anyone close who has not already read the story, do it yourself. Mentally toss out what you know about the beginning. Image your movie opening with a scene about fifteen pages in and read through the screenplay. Was anything that was missing crucial, vital, absolutely essential to getting the plot or character? Put that stuff back, but try to do it later as the story unfolds, not at the beginning unless you absolutely have to. Do not put anything back in just because you love it, or, if you cannot do without, sum it up in your opening credits and get on with the story.

Women Write - Then What?

News from the world of scriptwriting competitions is not good for the gals. The 2008 Movie Script Contest announced its winners, and out of the 24 finalists, three were women. And of the winners - zip, nada, zero. Out of eight comedy screenplay finalists, the only woman was at the bottom with an honorable mention.

Last summer I wrote a long post about some of the reasons for this gender bias by people of presumably good will, but understanding does nothing to further our interests. Pointing out the bias, protesting against it, fighting it at each turn uses a lot of energy and does not seem to produce results.

As someone who reads a ton of scripts every year, I can tell you women write great and funny films. True, I am female, but again, the experiences I have had in this festival show me that guys like the kind of comedy women write when they see it on screen. In general (with all the pitfalls of generalizations) women structure their comedies differently, both in the relationship of the world to the characters and in the manner of the climactic payoff(s). But I have had Marines and ex-cops who knew no one associated with the films walk out of screenings telling me that this festival was the most fun they have had at an indie screening. Anecdotal - yes. I would also say emblematic, symptomatic of a larger appeal that these women's work possesses if only they could reach a larger audience.

I want to find outlets for our films outside the mainstream. If we can build an audience and a name for women's comedy, the establishment will come to us. So how do we do that. Any ideas?

Satirizing Sarah

If you care about women's humor, as I do, Sarah Palin's arrival on the national political scene has been a boon. One of the Broads from this year's festival, Susan Deming, has made a musical McCain/Palin musical spoof, "I Picked a Girl," that very definitely hits the funny bone. Susan's "singing Sarah" is a hoot. Watch it here. Susan has been doing political parodies of Hillary as well, and all I can do is salute.

And she's not the only one. Other Palin spoofs are here and here to mention a couple.

More women's satire, that's what I want to see. Maybe we should do a political blog retrospective next year.

Tamar Halpern's "Your Name Here" August 16

A bunch of us broads caught a screening of Tamar Halpern's (BH 2007 Best Feature) sweet and fun feature, Your Name Here when it screened at Dances With Films.

I don't want to call Your Name Here a mockumentary because the word implies a certain attitude of superiority on the part of the filmmaker toward her subject. This is full of affection and the laughter is based in love. It follows two 14-year-old kids who play and write music and try to start a band in Silverlake. So much of the story rings so ridiculously true, in part because of how the two lead actors, who were 14 at the time, friends and musicians, improvised scenes speaking and acting the way 14-year-olds do. An adult could never write it so well. The film is a blast for adults and for kids.

Here' s the logline...

The story of two kids who want to start a band, Your Name Here is about to be endorsed by KidsFirst, an organization dedicated to quality children's programming. Shot in Silverlake, wholly improvised, and driven by original music written by the stars, Jordan and Michael, Your Name Here is a 'Once' for kids.

Trailer: www.tamarolandpictures.com, click Your Name Here
More clips, photos, and general shenanigans: www.myspace.com/yournamehereband
And of course, Your Name Here is now on Facebook

There's another screening here in LA on Aug 16th, Saturday, 4pm, Laemmle Grand Downtown, as part of the Downtown Film Fest. Don't miss it.

Broads Blogging Workshop

A bunch of broads came over and we went set up accounts to blog and twitter together as a way of building our profiles. It was exciting in the same way that the big BlogHer conference had been for me because the small number was more than compensated by the fact that these were my group of gals. So now, if you go to Twitter, you can read the twitter streams not only for me at twitter.com/BroadHumor, but for Donna Wheeler , Suzi Iselt, and Michelle Clay.

So if you didn't or couldn't come, here's what you need to do. Create a blog. If you're an absolute beginner, here's how to do it in simple steps.

Blogger can set you up in a few easy steps. Yes, you'll get frustrated when you get errors because your username or blog name are taken, or you didn't check a box, or you couldn't read the insanely difficult security question that keeps bots from creating blogs. But it's only three pages of that, and you're in. Write something and hit "PUBLISH POST" (SAVE NOW merely creates a draft - it won't show up on your blog). Click the "VIEW BLOG' button when it finishes publishing and bookmark the page so that tomorrow you won't wonder how to find your blog again. Next, go to the "dashboard" (the link is on the top right) and create your profile and save.

You're almost done. Next to your blog listing is a link to "settings." Clicking that will bring up a page where you can give a general description of the blog. Save it. Then go to the "comments" link and scroll down to control comments. For example, do you want to restrict comments to bloggers or let anyone comment? You have to change the setting to make commenting open to everyone. You should leave verification on so that you don't get spam comments. And you might want to have Blogger send you an email whenever you get a comment by putting your email in the box at the bottom. Click save and you're done.

If you're feeling brave, you can go to the "template" link and play with the layout of your page. Or you can just click over to your blog and admire it. Then send a Twitter post - called a "tweet" - that you are up and running.