Reader question - Formatting

Shane writes:

So I had a couple questions regarding the aesthetics of formatting. The first concerns my opening: Im doing a cold open with a couple voices having a phone conversation over black, then I do a "fade in" over the opening image I want for the script and to get the story underway, but If I've already started with a cold open, then should I just start the next scene with a basic slugline and get on with it? If I do start with the fade in, should this automatically start on the next page regardless of how long the previous page was? Having a "Fade In" start in the middle of the page looks awkward, but then so does a half blank page.

If I understand you right, the way you probably want to do it is put VOICES OVER BLACK at the top of the scene during the phone conversation. Then at the conclusion of that talk, do FADE IN as opening of the scene.

My other question regards superimpositions: Do I always have to use "superimpose:" or "super:" What about just centering the locale or date or what have you, and being done with it? I feel like the less "script jargon" the better, it keeps the reader in the story and makes it more visual, but I also don't want to confuse my reader... I know these may seem like trivial questions, but if you've got a great handle on your story, structure, and character development (Which of course is always the primary concern) all those little formatting tricks help make a great script stand out from all the other great scripts because it LOOKS as good as it READS; you see and hear the film even better. At least I've noticed that I do.

This is probably one of those "if it feels right, do it" responses. I think it needs to be clear that the text will be superimposed on the screen and the way you say you're going to do it doesn't necessarily make that clear. Putting the date and time in quotes might make it more apparent, but if everything else in your script works, I don't think this can hurt you too much.

Does anyone have a differing view?

In defense of development

Kevin writes:

Often times, it seems to me, that all "development" does is ruin a good script. It seems like good screenplays, when they are good, don't stand a chance after an army of people (who are not writers) have to "fix the story" to justify their jobs.

Is it wrong of me to think this?

Well, yeah... that's kind of an unfair blanket statement to make without citing any facts or specific examples. From my view inside the process I've seen examples of development working both ways. I've seen producers make suggestions and offer guidance that makes a so-so script stronger, and I've seen examples where scripts die the death of a thousand cuts, where small changes bit-by-bit weaken the film.

But honestly, most of the time when development seems to make a film worse, it's because the script was built on an untenable premise to begin with.

Yes, there are plenty of examples where auteurs scream that studio meddling is what destroyed their precious vision - and yes, sometimes that's a fair cry. But let's not forget that there are plenty of instances where a filmmaker went hog-wild once they were big enough to not have to put up with the development process and the result was a weak film.

- Had Judd Apatow not been untouchable, I have faith that the development process would have honed Funny People into a strong two-hour script that told a consistent story, rather than the nearly three-hour film and-a-half that resulted.

- Richard Kelly should BEG people to meddle with his films. The "compromised" version of Donnie Darko is considered by many to be superior to the director's cut. And Southland Tales will stand as the ultimate example of why some directors need to be reigned in from their worst excesses.

- Let's also not forget the Pixar process of writing films, where creative decisions are debated and made by an entire staff that is constantly evaluating the film. This article on Toy Story 3 covers the process in some length.

So while I'm sure there are plenty of stories where some director legitimately complains "studio meddling" ruined a good script, let's not forget that no filmmaker is ever all that forthcoming in crediting "the suits" or the development people with making a decision that improves their film.

On a different note: I once wrote a letter to Oliver Stone, explaining why he should read my script - and everyone, except the teacher, in my screenwriting class laughed at me. They said he would never write me back and that I was crazy. I found humor in their negativity.

They were right. He called me.

Smart lesson, when I was younger, I had similar luck getting a response from Ronald D. Moore, and also got personal letters and email from several other writers I took the time to contact personally.

Tuesday Talkback - Introduce yourself

Scott Myers over at Go Into The Story does threads like this now and then to give the blog readers a chance to know each other. I was looking through some of the posts on Project Wilson Phillips this weekend and noticed that a few people lamented that even after that collaborative project, most of the readers/posters here were still strangers.

So let's do something about that. Tell us something about you, what you do, what you're working on and so on. Also, it'd be cool to see who reads this blog and just lurks. Do we have some college students here? High school? Retirees who are taking up screenwriting late in life?

Who are you people?

Interview with Amy Baack, assistant to "V" showrunner Scott Rosenbaum

One of the great things about this blog is that I've had the opportunity to get to know several blog readers who also happen to work in the industry. Aside from the obvious benefit of networking, there's also the fact that many of them can be a great source of information about their positions in the industry and how one goes about those jobs.

One such reader is Amy Baack, whom I came to know last year when she participated in Project Wilson Phillips. Amy's currently the assistant to Scott Rosenbaum, the show-runner on ABC's sci-fi series V this season. As being a writer's assistant is one of the more common stepping stones to becoming a TV writer, I pursued Amy with a few questions via email and she was generous enough to reply.


At the risk of making you the target of voodoo dolls everywhere, I understand you accomplished the rare feat of landing the job of show-runner's assistant right out of college. That's an accomplishment with about the same odds as buying the winning Mega Millions ticket for a $290 million jackpot. How'd you pull this off?

Landing this position was a huge surprise for me; I certainly didn't expect to advance this far up the industry ladder so quickly. During the first couple of weeks after I graduated from college, I experienced a great deal of panic over my future, as I'm sure everyone who has tried to break in to entertainment work has, as well. I went to film school at the University of Southern California, where I had made some amazing friends. One of them went on to work at an agency, and she gave me the heads-up about the open position at V. I submitted my resume, went in for an interview, and landed the job!

It helped that at the time I was interning for Mad Men and my amazing supervisor there was able to give me a good reference. I wish I could offer up a formula for how to get a job like mine, but I'm afraid a lot of it is luck and knowing the right people. Your goal should really be "making friends" instead of "networking," a term that I think implies you're just meeting people to get a job out of them. It's important to prove that you are able to get along with others and have a good work ethic as well, since television is a very collaborative process.

What had you done prior to getting hired as Scott's assistant that made your resume a strong contender?

As I mentioned above, I was interning in the production department on Mad Men when I got the job for V. Before that I'd had a lot of internships in various fields of the entertainment industry; I did one almost every semester and summer during college. I worked at E!, Spyglass Entertainment, and Fox Television Studios, to name a few. I also did well in school and held outside jobs; I made sure to constantly keep busy, do my very best, and meet as many people as I could. I think going to a wonderful film school like USC definitely helped me out, as well, because I learned an incredible amount there that helped prepare me for my future career.

When did your writing aspirations begin? Had you done much writing in college?

My writing aspirations seem to have started when I was fairly young... I actually recently found the beginning of a script I had written when I was maybe 10 years old. It was a fairy-tale movie that contained instructions for camera movements and everything! (It was also incredibly bad.) So as ridiculous as that is, it's proof that screenwriting has always been in my blood. I didn't do a lot of extra writing during college, since I was always pretty busy, but I wrote whenever I could. I wrote the required scripts for classes, including my first spec (30 Rock), and I wrote a couple of short films on the side, as well. I also enjoy writing in other mediums; I was a columnist for the Daily Trojan, USC's school newspaper, for a couple of years.

Since you work in TV what are some of your all-time favorite shows and how have they influenced your writing? Can you point to any specific show or episode that really blew you away?

My all-times favorite shows would probably be Lost, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't know if I can target a specific episode from any of those shows that blew me away - rather, I'm impressed by consistent strong writing. All those shows have interesting, complex characters, which I think is the heart of really good television.

What is a typical day like for a writer's assistant on a network series? And how LONG is the typical day for you?

My job is a little different than the writers assistants'. As the showrunner's assistant, my duties are primarily based on the needs of my boss, though I am involved in many of the creative sides of the show as well. I manage my boss's personal schedule and contacts, transcribe notes calls with our studio and network, edit outlines/scripts, along with a whole bunch of other random tasks. My work hours during the writing period were 9:00AM - 7:00PM (sometimes a little later). The writers' assistants would start their day with the writers at 10:00AM. Their job was in the writers' room: they took detailed notes, got lunch every day, bought groceries, helped write up outlines, and did research. They usually worked until much later than I did, but it depended on how many notes they had to type up and edit, as well as how late the writers stayed that day.

Was there a big learning curve for the job?

There was a huge learning curve for my job! I had never worked on a television show before, so this was a fantastic opportunity for me to learn the ropes in-depth. I was blessed with an excellent boss who would let me sit in the writers’ room whenever I had any down time, so I got to really observe the writing process. I've learned a lot more about writing for television, as well as navigating the entertainment industry in general, in this job than I did in any of my college classes.

Those who've worked in TV often compare it to a freight train that doesn't stop. What would you say is the biggest challenge most writers' assistants have to deal with?

Working in TV is truly a time-intensive career choice, whether you're on the writing, production, or post-production side. You need to be very committed to the job and willing to give up your social/personal life for a good chunk of time. It can be very stressful, both emotionally and physically, to be working on a computer in an office for 12 hours straight, which is a challenge most writers' assistants usually have to tackle. However, because you are so completely absorbed in the writing process, assistants are essentially forced to be at their top level of performance all the time. This work ethic inevitably helps when you get promoted to writing on a staff, where you need to be consistently alert and always thinking creatively. And there's always the relief of knowing that the period of madness won't last forever; either your show will go on hiatus for a couple months, which is like a very nice elementary school summer vacation, or the show will get canceled, in which case you get to sign up for unemployment checks (which is an entirely different world of stress).

Back when I interviewed Rob Levine (Jericho, Human Target) he talked about how he got his first writing credit when he was an assistant on Judging Amy, and then later was hired by that show-runner for the staff of Jericho. Assuming such an opportunity would eventually exist for you, are you preparing for it now? Do you find yourself trying to come up with V pitches in the event that an offer comes your way?

You absolutely have to make yourself known as a valuable asset when you're working as an assistant on a show, since that's probably the easiest way to work your way up to a staff position. I obviously hope to work on staff someday, so I had a conversation with my boss during the middle of the writing season about how I wanted to do more creative work on the show to help prove my writing abilities.

As a result, he let me be in charge of writing a weekly series that's posted on the official V ABC website called "The Fifth Column Journal." I also wrote a few lines of dialogue during post-production, managed the V Twitter feed, and pitched ideas for various directions the show could take during the writing stage. I'd love to be able to work my way up to staff in the near future, but for now I'm just incredibly grateful for having so many opportunities to learn about TV writing by observing some incredibly talented people.


What has working in TV taught you about writing for episodic television and writing in general?

I've learned that the most important part about episodic television writing is the intense collaboration that's involved in putting a season together. A TV writer really has to be able to work well with the other writers on a staff. You quickly become a sort of family, since you spend all day in a room with a small handful of people. You have to learn to build off of other people's ideas and allow the rest of the staff to help strengthen your writing. You can't take anything personally, and you can't hold any of your ideas too close. I've also learned that it's important to keep throwing out ideas, even if you're worried they might sound a little stupid. Sometimes the best stories come out of the worst suggestions. Finally, writing is about making choices. There's always a different route you can take; you just have to choose the one that best suits the story you're trying to tell.

Thanks again to Amy for her time. I'm hoping to get a few more writers' assistant interviews up as I get friends to cooperate and meet new assistants through the blog!

V airs Tuesdays at 9pm on ABC.

Take criticism

My wife and I have been watching American Idol as it enters this season (sidebar: Steven Tyler is damn entertaining when they can play with his footage in the editing room... but I cannot WAIT to see what happens when you put this duck on live TV with an open mic. Unfortunately anything REALLY good will probably be chopped out by the time the West Coast broadcast begins) and I always empathize with the Idol judges. When you consider the relative quality of what I read, and the relative quality of what the judges contend with, our jobs are very similar.

It also makes me very glad that my coverage is often anonymous, and that I don't have to deliver it face-to-face to the writers in question. There have been situations where I have dealt with the writers through an intermediary, and often, it reinforces my decision not to make myself available to writers.

You know those moments on Idol where someone comes into the audition room talking up their own talents? Then they proceed to butcher a classic song, perhaps rendering it unrecognizable... and yet they're shocked - SHOCKED - when the judges tell them it's not up to snuff. In fact, I've seen it start with the judges trying to let them down easy, let them go with some dignity and the clueless auditioner becomes combative, insults the judges personally and either stomps out or demands a second chance.

And I always wonder "What the FUCK did you think was going to happen?" First, let's leave aside the delusion of being the next Freddy Mercury, because that's a whole 'nother ball of neurosis. On what planet does insulting the people deciding to advance your career sound like a good idea?

More to the point, if someone gives you a bad review, does telling them to go fuck themselves really help you in the long run? In the case of a writer with a script, suppose I send you coverage that says, "Look, this needs some work... the concept is a bit derivative, I didn't feel like your character's motivation was very clear, and it was perhaps a little too slow."

Is your response:

1) Thanks for your time. I'll take your notes under advisement.

2) Well, I'm disappointed, but if it's not your thing, I can't really change that.

3) Fuck you! You clearly didn't read it! The character is scared of water - that's his motivation! Didn't you notice he turned down water in every scene, declined the invitation to go to the pool and was shown to prefer sponge baths! Do you know anything? I'm an AWESOME writer! You're just stuck in the Hollywood mold and you're just trying to keep writers like me out because you know we'll take all your jobs! Well if you knew anything about writing, you wouldn't be reading scripts for a living, asshole! Who are you to tell me what's good writing when you haven't sold anything either? Anyway, I've already deleted your coverage from my computer and shredded the hard copy (after I used it to wipe my ass) so you can suck my dick, you no-talent asshole!

Now, there's a subtle difference among those three, but two of those replies might keep the door open for future submissions, while one of them only ensures that I will never, ever read anything from you again.

Here's the thing, manners aside, you can't argue people out of an opinion. This isn't like debating science or history, where there's an objective truth. If I say, "I didn't like it," you'll never convince me "Yes you did!" You're certainly welcome to ask questions, perhaps find out why my opinion doesn't match up with your perception. But if someone's taken the time to read your work, and you don't get the review you wanted, don't waste your breath fighting them. And if you ever degenerate into personal insults, don't expect them to ever call you back.

(Seriously, do you think that Brenda Hampton or the people at 90210 would ever hire me after the way I've slammed them... and compared to reactions I've seen first-time writers have to a bad review, I've been downright polite.)

So the first thing you should learn as a writer (yes, even before formatting) is how to be respectful when someone says, "I don't think it works."

The Chad, Matt & Rob Interview: Part III - Producing web shorts

Part I
Part II

We conclude our talk with comedy team Chad, Matt & Rob.

TBSR: Let’s talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of production – and I know this is going to vary across your whole line there, but about how much do you guys spend on these?

Matt: Well “Alien” cost us two Little Caesar’s Pizzas.

TBSR: How much did, say, “The Time Machine” cost?

Rob: $400? $500?

Chad: It was like $800.

Matt: Yeah, I think it was closer to $700…

Chad: Just because we had all the food for everybody. Food is our #1 cost on every production.

Rob: If we bring 20 people to help us out on the shoot that’s 20 mouths to feed. Usually it’s about 75% of the budget.

TBSR: And you work for free, your camera guy works for free, you own the camera and the editing equipment – and as far as locations, I assume most of the time you figure “Hey we have this set” or “Hey, we can get into this office.”

Matt: We used to literally write around locations.

Chad: “Prison Break” came out of “We have this awesome space. What can we use it for…? We can make it a jail!”

Rob: And in “The Time Machine” we had the office, we had the Bronson Cave. On “The Birthday Party…”

Chad: “Birthday Party” we spent money for a location for a half-day, to get the hospital.

TBSR: Which one would you say was your most expensive one prior to “The Treasure Hunt?”

Rob: “The Birthday Party.”

Chad: That was like, $4000.

Rob: A lot of that was the permit---

Matt: ALL of it!

Rob: The LA Film Office was like $3200. Plus the hospital was another $700.

[Post-interview, the guys confirmed that in addition to the LA Film Office costs, the hospital budget was $650, the permit cost $710, and production insurance cost $450.]

Matt: Chad and I went to the Film LA Office – this is probably really boring – and we’re shooting for, what, five hours in this [hospital] location?

Rob: Very controlled. Well, it IS haunted.

Matt: We’re not even on a public road! So we go into Film LA and they’re like, it’s gonna be $700, $800 just to get a permit to shoot in L.A. And while we’re having this conversation, another woman comes out and talks to these three kids and is like, “Okay, so you have the student discount – that’s gonna be $10.” And we’re sitting there like “WHAT?!”…. if someone with a few thousand dollar budget on a film can’t get a break on a permit it just doesn’t make any sense.

Rob: Especially in a town that’s built around the industry. There should be a break.

Matt: They tell you it’s for all of these things like a fire marshal’s gonna come by, and none of that ever happens. No one came. We shot it at Friday morning at 8. No one was there!

Tyler: Even the location owner was apologetic. He said, “I’m sorry guys. I have to do this because of fire code.” And you could tell he was mad at Film L.A. for making him do that.

Chad: You could tell he’d lost business too because they needed to have that. If you had someone filming there without the permit [and they get injured] then he would be in trouble and would not be allowed to use the space anymore. That’s why he was apologetic to us because he knew our shoot wasn’t as intensive as the thing that shot there last, which was Circle of Eight.

Rob: And then [we had to pay] $500 for production insurance.

Chad: That was the first one we shot with production insurance.

TBSR: But when you’re shooting in locations you guys control and public places, it’s very cheap to get these shot, I assume?

Rob: You just need a camera.

Tyler: And we could do it cheaper [still.] Shooting on HD, you have to produce things a little bit more, they have to be lit more specifically. But those are the costs that come with making anything polished which is what we pride ourselves on – giving people a movie experience on YouTube, which doesn’t happen very often.

Matt: We also write budget conscious… For "Treasure Hunt," we had to light two scenes – the first scene and the last scene. Everything else was outside, and we were like “That’ll save us so much time!” Oh, no… we lit the cave too. So three scenes. And the cave was actually lighting a real cave so that was… that was an event.

(all chuckle.)

Tyler: I also think we challenge ourselves with every project. “The Treasure Hunt,” in particular. After “The Birthday Party” such a great experience for all of us [cameraman/visual effects technician] Justin [Martinez], myself, Chad, Matt and Rob working together the first time. It was such a positive collaboration that we knew we wanted the next project to be the next step of what we already had an that was just to get bigger, better and more ambitious.

Rob: And I think we did that.

Matt: And it took us about the same amount of time to shoot.

TBSR: This is about the same time you brought in Justin Martinez to do the visual effects. Did that open your stories up to new things?

Tyler: I actually remember the first conversation I had with you guys. I was on a break from work and was bored and just sent Matt an email saying, “Hey, I love your guys’ stuff. Would love to get together and help you guys out if you have a production in place.”

Matt: We used to work together.

Tyler: And “The Birthday Party” was something they already had a loose story bible for. So I think we met once and it was “This sounds great. I’ve got a visual effects guy” – Justin, who I went to college with and we shot a ton of projects together back in school. Justin is self-taught. He’s spent his own time figuring out these programs and finding creative ways to make great things really fast.

TBSR: He must put in a lot of hours, with the number of effects you guys have.

Matt: Totally. I know for “The Teleporter” we all basically lived in [the office] for 30 days [getting it done.]

Tyler: And I think there are 115 effects shots in that.

Rob: In four weeks.

TBSR: And you said it’s 20 minutes long?

Matt: 25? 23?

TBSR: Wrapping up – what sort of advice would you give someone looking to make a viral video? If someone out there wants to be you guys, what should they know to be you?

Rob: Don’t think about it, just do it!

Tyler: The first thing you make isn’t gonna be that—

Matt: Well it might be if it’s something like run over a car with a truck—

Tyler: It might be, but I think people get hung up, they get afraid of it NOT being that, so they don’t make anything at all.

Matt: Just go make a bunch of stuff. It’s gonna suck, just like all of our stuff sucked. And then it gets better and better and better, and you get more comfortable with it. Every single time we learn so much about whatever it is we want to do.

Rob: All this stuff happens when you’re not thinking about it. We didn’t think for a second the Alien video was gonna be viral. In fact we didn’t think anything was gonna be viral. We just kept making stuff that we liked.

Matt: We never think “Let’s make a viral video.” It’s just “Let’s make a video that’s gonna entertain people.” And it either does or doesn’t. My personal favorite thing from what we do is all the emails we get from teenagers, maybe younger, who are like “I love your stuff. It inspired me and my friends to make our own version. Here’s this” and then they send us these links. Because I remember when I wanted to do this, or do music, I had all of my influences, so that’s really special.

Chad: That and the 7^th grade middle school project in Rocco Russo, Ohio. The whole middle school made interactive adventures for their last day of school, and the last day of school they did a special screening of all of them.

TBSR: And you guys gave them some guidance on this?

Matt: Yeah, we Skyped in with the class.

Tyler: So awesome! I love that. It’s always been a dream of mine to be in a textbook or influence the education process, and it’s awesome to think there was a whole school of 7^th graders making interactive videos.

TBSR: And I’ll put a link to that up on the blog too so those guys get some eyeballs on all that hard work.

[Here they are: The Chemical Spill, The Alien Invasion, & The Class Field Trip.]

Final question: you guys have done choose-your-own-adventures, you’ve done aliens, you’ve time-traveled, you’ve done some amazing visual effects… so when are we going to get a Chad, Matt & Rob musical? I know that Matt used to be in a band, Link 80. Is a musical the next step?

Tyler: We’ve talked about it! I’ve always wanted to shoot/direct a musical.

Rob: I know our next steps are movie and TV show, and once we get those going, maybe we’ll do a musical for the interwebs. Our goal for 2011 is to focus on what we truly want to do, and that’s film and TV. Like we’ve been saying, if you don’t take a shot, how are you ever gonna score? So we’re gonna take a shot.

The Chad, Matt & Rob Interview: Part II - The Interactive Adventures

Part I

We continue our talk with Chad, Matt & Rob.

TBSR: About six months after the Alien video you transitioned into the “Choose Your Own Adventure” style of video, and you were the first people to do it – with “The Time Machine.” What triggered that idea?

Rob: This is one of those moments that I really remember. We weren’t sure what we were going to do. And I sent an email out to everyone saying: “Choose Your Own Adventure.” Because YouTube was doing annotations, but nobody was really using them.

TBSR: Annotations being that within the video, you can specifically choose what other videos it links to?

Matt: Yeah. Essentially it’s just embedding a link within a video.

TBSR: So did you say “Let’s do Choose Your Own Adventure" and come up with an idea that works” or did you have an idea you retrofitted into that style?

Matt: What it was was that we were all tired of making little three-and-a-half to five-minute things. We were like, “That’s cool, but we want to do more. But it’s the internet so no one – at least not then – no one’s going to watch a half-hour thing… so it allowed us to tell longer stories. What I remember next was we went down to the Farmer’s Market and I had just downloaded [a diagram of how the Choose Your Own Adventure stories were structured.] So we were just like, “here are these nine boxes. Let’s fill them in.”

TBSR: So you had the structure and…

Matt: It was literally just nine bubbles. And we wrote it in a weekend. Shot it that weekend and the next weekend.

TBSR: And this leads to possibly the most important question I could ask you guys: In the last choice, if Chad, Matt and Rob don’t save their past selves from certain death, how come they don’t cease to exist immediately? I’m sure no one else has ever asked you this.

Rob: Let me ask you this: have you ever been involved in time travel?

Matt: Right, that’s how we rationalize it---

Rob: We have [time-traveled.] We have first hand experience. That’s just what happened. I can’t explain it.

TBSR: All right. That was the one I knew I had to ask.

Rob: Very insightful question.

Matt: The thing about time travel is that there are no rules. And isn’t the idea of time travel that the minute it happens, everything ends?

TBSR: There are so many different theories. The main theory is that it’s impossible because it allows for the possibility of paradox and since paradox can’t exist, anything that allows paradox to exist, can’t exist in and of itself. Ergo, time travel is impossible.

Rob: (awed whisper) Wow. But it’s not impossible, is what you’re saying…

Matt: I saw The Time Traveler’s Wife, okay?

TBSR: For those reading this interview, that question comes up regularly on the YouTube comments for the last video in the story. Usually every other page of comments sets off a debate about the nature of time travel.

Matt: We definitely didn’t think about that when we were writing.

Chad: We just thought it’d be funny to leave ourselves getting our asses kicked.

TBSR: And how would you say “The Time Machine” was received? It was the first of its kind on YouTube, so that must have gotten some notice.

Matt: Everyone seemed to like it. It’s very simple… quick.

Rob: We didn’t know anyone [working] at YouTube, and I remember refreshing my computer at 9pm on a Friday night and I saw “Time Machine” right there on the front page, under “Top Video.” I remember calling these guys right away, super-excited. Got a beer, and stayed up until three in the morning just looking at comments.

(all laugh)

Chad: Hitting refresh.

TBSR: Do you let the comments get to you? Like if they’re saying “Oh! That was awesome!” you’re like “These people are great!” But if they say, “I don’t like Rob because of x, y, z” do you write it off as “what do they know? They’re just people on the internet.”

Rob: I admit, it used to bother me in the early days---

Matt: It doesn’t bother me anymore.

Rob: Not anymore. We’re kind of immune to that.

Matt: I think comments are awesome.

Chad: It’s what you want. Instant feedback.

Tyler: And it’s so democratic, so as a creator, you already know what’s working and not working. And it’s honest feedback because of the anonymity.

Matt: Right, totally unadulterated!

Tyler: When you read movie reviews – with the exception of something that’s unanimously considered bad – you get the sense there’s always politics involved, there’s always a bias involved. And with the web---

Chad: “YOU SUCK!”

Tyler: --and the people who are really intellectual and who use that anonymity to express an honest opinion, that’s an awesome thing that’s super rare. Sure, it sucks to have your thing critiqued, but we’re not making anything to exist in a vacuum. If people don’t see our stuff, then what we do is meaningless. We’re not making it for ourselves. It needs to have an audience. That’s what validates the work and the process.

Rob: And we always have our audience to defend us from those people who come on and bash.

Matt: But they’re also superhonest with us in terms of, like, “I love you guys but this isn’t your best thing.”

Tyler: I think the reaction to “The Teleporter” was really surprising to us because we thought when we were creating it that it was in many ways an example of how far we’d come as creators. And I maintain that there are videos in The Teleporter" that are the best thing that I’ve ever shot. I love them as a viewer and I love them as a creator and I’m super proud of them. And sometimes those sentimentalities you feel as a creator don’t translate to the audience, and I think some of that was lost on the audience – and was shadowed in a lot of ways by us signing with a brand. [AXE Shampoo.]

Matt: The thing we learned from “The Teleporter” was [the audience’s] expectations… it was a lot shorter than our other [interactive adventures]. In all it was about 30 minutes of content but if you watch [just one thread,] it’s short. And that threw people. We got a lot of emails saying, “There wasn’t much to it.” Which is totally right. And also having a sponsor threw a lot of people – and us at first!

Tyler: We fought a lot of battles [with the sponsor] to create something that we would want to create, and the brand was great about letting us do that. It was the product of a lot of smart compromises – we don’t get to defend that, the content has to speak for itself. But one of the dialogues that started in the comment section was about the idea of selling out and branding. We had a lot of people who were upset about the brand integration, and then there was a group of people who understand that nothing that we do is made for free.

Matt: We don’t charge anybody for it.

Tyler: Yeah, we spend our money and our time because we love to do it, but it’s not free for us. It either costs money, time or both – and people were really sticking up for that [in the comments.]

TBSR: And I think the integration wasn’t all that obtrusive either. It’s not like you were doing the Wayne’s World gag of just shoving the product in the camera.

Matt: That was something we were really conscious of. The first thing we agreed on was “We’re alright to not do this,” like if we don’t come up with something we’re happy with, we’re just not gonna do it. [we didn’t want] “Look at the brand integration we’re doing!” because to me that always feels like a cop-out. I get it, but you’re still doing what you’re making fun of, so is it really better? The funny thing about "The Teleporter" is that the biggest brand integration in the whole thing is just [a small bit] at the end of the first video – a freeze-frame of three shampoo bottles. That was not [Axe telling us to do that], that was our choice. That was us telling them, “You need that for the story. You need to see three paths you’re going to take.” Which was something we almost didn’t want to do because it felt so branded, but as far as story went, it was what we needed there. If it was three crayons or three pencils [instead] that’s what we would have done, so why wouldn’t we do that just because it’s branded?

Tyler: We had to do a lot of creative problem solving with the project because we wanted to respect the audience and respect what we’d created in the past. And what people expected of us. With any brand, there’s always a level of expectation. It’s how brands have longevity – a level of expectation from the audience, the consumer, of what you’re gonna get.

Rob: I think it made us really, really more excited now to release “The Treasure Hunt” because I think “The Treasure Hunt” truly represents who we are and what we do.

Matt: It’s the kind of stories we want to tell.

Tyler: It’s kind of our web opus.

TBSR: It’s very cinematic. Now, I say this having seen an early cut months ago in a movie theatre, perhaps under the optimum conditions for it to BE cinematic, but it really feels like “The Chad, Matt & Rob Movie.” But I’ll be interested to see the reaction since each individual segment is a bit longer than your previous ones.

Tyler: And are infused with more story. I think they’re long in the right ways, which is why I think people will respect their length and understand that every second is essential and is true to what the project is, which is what the process we’d been through before taught us – that everything [needs to be] necessary… you can’t have fat!

Matt: Like if it was TV [we’d have to make it fit] 22 minutes. On the internet, there’s no set time-length, so you [can be merciless in what you cut.]

Tyler: We’ve had conversations about how anxious we are to cut a feature because we’ll get to hold on a shot for longer than two and a half seconds. We can’t wait to cut a scene that takes its time and is maybe four shots. And I think what we’ve learned from this process will make those cuts even better.

Rob: But we’ve never really created “for the web.” We’ve created what we wanted to create. I don’t think we ever really worried about time.

Matt: [With The Treasure Hunt] for us, this is the direction we want to go. We want to make longer content. We want to tell bigger stories. We could just make people getting hit in the face over and over – and while we’d still include that kind of thing – it’s just our chance to expand.

TBSR: And you’ve done public screenings so you’ve seen that it plays to an audience.

Tyler: That has fueled these last few editing sessions. I think that we know when something is good and when it’s not, [but] there’s always that point you reach when the amount of time you spent is so significant that you can’t not love it, just because you’ve invested so much of yourself. But you don’t get to defend that process – that exists completely independent from it screening in a theatre in front of however many people. But it’s really encouraging to see this in front of people – it’s like “We’re not crazy! [This works!]”

TBSR: You said that first and foremost you try to make what you guys like, but do you have like a profile of your audience?

Matt: I think what happened with us, which has been kind of serendipitous, is that we made what we liked and it found an audience, so our answer to that is to just keep making what we like and hopefully [our audience] will continue to like it.

Rob: Which is what it should be. I feel like if you force yourself on an audience, you might not hit it in the right way.

Matt: Right, like part of the reason we don’t want to do sketch comedy is because we suck at sketch comedy. It’s not a judgment on sketch comedy in any way; it’s a judgment on us being really bad at it.

Tyler: Why give people a bad version of what they already love, just to fill some niche?

Tomorrow - the nuts and bolts of producing web shorts