Some stuff, more advice and a treatment for "5 Ways to Split Apart the Day"

Hey everyone! Another late night update "we're open late!" there it is; an instant slogan of mass copyright infringement proportions. What fast food place doesn't have that glowing sign stuck to their windows?

Let me tell ya, I wouldn't ming getting into a shoving match with Ronald McDonald at all.

There's something up with that guy. I know it, you know it...we all know it. McDonald's is like the gateway to hell, approach with caution.

Sorry everyone, been hanging out with my anti-establishment friends today. Also had a fun time at the park. Today was my nephews birthday, his name is Jude Byron (I take credit for naming him) and he just turned three! Great day, we ate, got drunk and had a huge brawl over who's got next on the Spider-Man jumper. When I see we, I mean...me and the kids. Just jazzing y'all. I'll post up the photos when I get the time.

On to the treatment.

This is for all you writers out there, or for anyone interested in becoming a screenwriter : ) So, you've just finished your first feature. Congrats! you're now almost half way through the gauntlet!

Grant it that you have producers or editors who are helping you pitch to some big s*** Hollywood players, pumping out a few more drafts to their specifications is always a given. This is why I always turn in my first draft as the sixth or seventh revision.

NOTE: I do not suggest you do the same. I have a different writing style, where I feel the need to iron out earlier scenes before I can write new sequences. So literally when I finally type "Fade to Black:" I must have been through the entire script six or seven times, dicing and slicing to a certain level of satisfaction. Surprisingly it works, but only to the degree of what you think a polished script should look like. Does it have a rhythm? Did you nail the beats? Is it spaced correctly? Any typos or grammatical errors? The list goes on.

So now you're through the "fix all these red marks on your screenplay" phase. If your lucky, someone is now helping you line your script for an estimated budget. This is what they call a top sheet. It sits on top of a presentation that fits into a fat three ringed binder. Inside you'll find a cover letter with; your overall intentions for the screenplay, a ROI estimate sheet, a compare and contrast to similar films with budget and box office analysis, a treatment and a sell sheet.

That's a ton of prep and all this after you just spent the past few months locked in a cage. Confused? Well there's good news!

• Good: You can easily do a google search for "script repair" and run through a few good places that'll happily charge you for all of the services listed above.
  
• Bad: It'll cost you an arm and a leg! A thousand for some of their basic packages and a few more for complete budget breakdowns and etc.

Hopefully you already have someone helping you out with the monstrosity mentioned above. My partner and I did and it helped tremendously. They are now busy on an unnamed big budget film, so kudos to our producers!

I hope you found this interesting. If you have any questions or would like some resources in the form of book suggestions or some real cool linkage, please feel free to contact me. I'm here to help. I'm just trying to cut this short because I'm super tired and I don't wanna make this too long.

So here's the treatment Jeremy and I wrote and the sell sheet I designed. You can either download the treatment by clicking here or by clicking on the image below.




So this concludes my night. It's 4:26 and I need some rest. But before I go here's my weekend shout outs! Lol. Who does that?

• Jason Baxter: Old roommate, college bud and semi-pro friend (also the guy who gets to write a Jet Li film) Hey bud!
• Slackmistress and Betheboy: Awesome bloggers, great live chat's. Check em' out. They're cooler then the other side of the pillow. Check for "slack daily" to the left, to the left.
• Mervin Luwee Ho: My cousin who paid me an unexpected visit. I hate you...just kidding. Thank you for the smokes.
• Matt and Charina: I hate you guys also.
• Jcorn: Love the awesome comments and kind words, thank you so much for the inspiration. Top rated amazon reviewer and an awesome content producer with hundreds of thousands views to her material. Linkage here.
  
• Wall-E: For being awesome.

Hope all of you had great weekends! Here's a treat for being soft and fluffy. Click here to download the 5 Ways title track in mp3 form. The artist is Surreal from The Sound Providers also known to me as Jeremy Thomas co-writer of this film.

It is now 4:43 and I am almost asleep. Tell your friends about me. Night!

Tags:5 ways, hollyweird, hollywood, john darko, update, treatment, advice, screenwriting, mcdonalds, slackmistress, betheboy, jcorn, jason baxter, mervin luwee, download