Welcome to Jill's Blog
09 Aug 2011
pilots Permalink

Lucy Up Close and Personal

August 9, 2011

“Most of you are not going to make it in show business. Most of you aren’t that good.”

Those words spoken by Lucille Ball during an eight week comedy course Taylor Negron took from her in the 70s. His piece The Pink Gorilla (Tuesdays With Lucy) in Fresh Yarn is a great read.

On the death of Ginger Rodger’s mother, Lila:

“In the early ’30s when women came to Hollywood and they got off the train, they were met by men who impersonated agents and studio executives offering them rides. The men raped these women.” Lucille let the tears roll.

“Lila Rodgers created the Hollywood Studio Club, a place were young actresses could live, and be safe from these rapist-men. In those days, when you were raped, a girl never mentioned it.”

01 Aug 2011
Breaking story 1 Comment Permalink

My New Favourite Writing Tool

August 1, 2011 1 Comment

Working on season 2 of Ruby Skye P.I. I have discovered a new writing tool which I adore!

It’s an app for the iPad called Index Card and that’s pretty much what it is. It’s a terrific tool for breaking story with a really pleasing interface. From the second I started using it, I felt as if it was going to revolutionize the way I write. It might not be as significant a change as when I made the move from type writer to word processor… but close.

The Haunted Library — Season 2 of Ruby Skye P.I. — is a structural nightmare.

Breaking a mystery can be complicated. You have to track the villain’s story, the clues and the detective’s progress. The Haunted Library has three mystery story lines running through it. Plus a non-mystery sub-plot. Using Index Card, I beat out each of these threads on a series of cards each with its own colour.

I like to have big cliff-hanger endings at the end of every episode which means 11 cliff-hangers to track plus a satisfying episode ending. 12 more cards, again, colour-coded.

But wait, why make it easy on myself? I can include in every episode clues for the audience to solve. 12 more cards. These ones in pink.

Using Index Card I beat out all the plot lines, cliff-hangers and clues separately, coding them with colour. The app lets you move cards around, so once I had all the elements and was sure each story had all the necessary beats, I could move them around mingling the stories and working them into twelve episodes.

Once that was done, I pretty much has a treatment. And Index Card has a treatment or outline view that allows you to look at your project as a text and work on it that way as well

Index Card exports to Scrivener which I had never used before and downloaded just because of Index Card. It’s another interesting way to write and I’ll continue playing with it. The interface between the programs isn’t perfect… or at least I haven’t figured it out yet. Scrivener doesn’t seem to recognize projects initiated in Index Card. You might have to start the project in Scrivener and export to Index Card in order to be able to re-import with all the data. I’m not sure and if anyone wants to come over and teach me to do it, I’d really appreciate it.

But the big point is that what I really want to do is break more story because working with Index Card makes it so easy and fun! I highly recommend that you grab it for your iPad today.

By the way, Index Card is free.

25 Jul 2011
spam Permalink

Can Someone Explain Spam?

July 25, 2011

I wish someone would explain spam to me.

What is the point of leaving spam with a link to bing or Yahoo? Are these spammers paid by bing to seed their links?

What about the guy who leaves a link to his own Facebook profile? Is he hoping people will friend him? Not working so far by the looks of his 300-odd friends.

And spam seems to come in concerted attacks. Today, I’ve gotten about 20 spam comments on this blog. Each has a different name, a different typo-filled comment, a different email address and listed as their web site a link back to bing, Yahoo or in one case a guy’s Facebook profile.

What’s the point?

19 Jul 2011
Google Maps Permalink

Chicago Food Odyssey

July 19, 2011

I took a trip to Chicago a couple of summers ago and had an amazing time. I put the entire trip on a Google map but have failed to share it till now. Click on any icon to find out what’s at that location and read about our experience. I even embedded some of the photos I took.


View Chicago Food Odyssey 09 in a larger map

Let me know what you think about this as a way of sharing a travel experience.

14 Jul 2011
transmedia Permalink

Transmedia Lessons from the Potterverse

July 14, 2011

We defended the STONE, we found the CHAMBER, we freed the PRISONER, we were chosen by the GOBLET, we fought with the ORDER, we learned from the PRINCE, and we dominated the DEATHLY HALLOWS….”¨We are the POTTER GENERATION…!

The magic isn’t truly in the wand. It is in the pen.

If you’re a Potterhead this has been a bittersweet week and today is massive.

This despite the fact that the Potter movies never truly satisfy real devotees. We know the movies are flawed in story terms, that they leave out essential details and sequences. We can’t imagine how those who haven’t read the books get anything out of them.

Nonetheless we will be there tonight at midnight in costume, with boxes of extra-soft tissue. Tears will be shed.

The Harry Potter books are the ultimate transmedia canon. The story and characters have migrated to every platform and given birth to every form of audience participation imaginable. There’s fan fiction, role playing, cosplay and live events like Leakycon, quidditch matches and midnight parties in bookstores and movies theatres to celebrate each new release.

In my family, we have created a number of rituals around the series. Before every new books was released, we would re-read all the previous books (yes, I have read this series many times and I just finished rereading The Deathly Hallows yesterday). We go in family groups to midnight showings, we wear costumes” we relive the story almost the way we relive the escape of the Jews from Egypt every Passover.

Not to say Harry Potter has become a religion for us, but it is closer to religion than any other media experience I’ve ever known.

What I want to talk about though, is not my own fanaticism but why the Potterverse is the ultimate transmedia experience and what lessons we can apply to our own canon-building efforts.

Harry Potter has traveled to every platform ever created by humankind. And it has engendered unparalleled audience participation. How?

The pundits often talk about creating “gaps” in transmedia narrative for users to fill.

J.K. Rowling didn’t that.

What she did do was imagine a universe of breathtaking breadth and scope. She created dozens and dozens of fully drawn characters, detailed geography with many notable locations, a timeline that spans generations, an epic fantasy tale that includes humour, danger, adventure, mystery, romance and more, plus a deep philosophy.

The incredible detail is what sparks the audience’s imagination and allows them to continue to live within the story universe.

There is a character for everyone. We can call relate to someone — we don’t have to be Harry or even Hermione or Ron. We can be Luna or Neville or even Snape. There are a vast number of characters in the text and each is fully serviced with complete bios and arcs. Consider this description of some of the members of the Order of the Pheonix the first time we meet them in The Deathly Hallows:

Ron, long and lanky; Hermione, her bushy hair tied back in a long plait; Fred and George, grinning identically; Bill, badly scarred and long-haired; Mr. Weasley, kind-faced, balding, his spectacles a little awry; Mad-Eye, battle-worn, one-legged, his bright blue magical eye whizzing in its socket; Tonks, whose short hair was her favourite shade of bright pink; Lupin, greyed, more lined; Fleur, slender and beautiful, with her long silvery blonde hair; Kingsley, bald, black, broad-shouldered; Hagrid, with his wild hair and beard, standing hunch-backed to avoid his head hitting the ceiling and Mundungus Fletcher, small, dirty and hangdog, with his droopy basset hound’s eyes and matted hair.

There are no minor characters in Rowling’s writing. And that’s key.

Then there are the world building details that can be brought to life with real world objects: wands, prefect buttons, robes, butter beer, house colours, time-turners and sneak-a-scopes… make your own or buy the pre-packaged swag. It doesn’t matter to an avid fan, it’s all in service of recreating the story world.

Think of the timeline — the stories start when Harry turns 11 and end about 9 months after his 17th birthday. But Rowling takes us back in time — to Harry’s childhood, to his parents’ childhoods and schooling, to Dumbledore’s youth — and forward to Harry sending his own kids off to Hogwarts. And there is a full cast of characters for every phase of the tale. Albus, Abberfoyle, Ariana and Grindelwald from Dumbledore’s youth. Wormtail, Lupin, Snape and Sirius from James and Lily’s days are Hogwarts.

Engaged Potterheads role-play and write fan fiction about Harry’s kids, about what happened at Hogwarts when the “trio” were out fighting horcruxes, about the marauders’ days at Hogwarts. They relive events in the shoes of characters other than the trio bringing the narrative to life in new ways — playing out the story as Lavender Brown, Mrs. Weasley.

Rowling tells an epic tale. Good vs. evil. Life vs. death. Her themes are the hugest there are. And this too contributes to how engaged the audience is.

So what are the lessons?


  • Lots of characters each with complete biographies and arcs.

  • A detailed geography with iconic places.

  • A past, a present and future (populated with people)

  • World building details in the form of food, costumes, objects and games.
  • Epic storytelling that crosses genres and doesn’t shy away from life and death events.

  • Big themes.

But boiled down to just one thing: detail. It is the detail of Potterverse that it’s most ardent fans love, the detail of J.K. Rowling’s vision that brought her world to life for all of us to share.

14 Jul 2011
Friday NIght Lights Permalink

Long Live FNL!

July 14, 2011

Grantland has a fantastic oral history of Friday Night Lights by Robert Mays — a piece written entirely in quotes from Jason Katims, Peter Berg, Brian Grazer, actors, executives and other key players in the project. Besides being just an awesome structure for a blog post, there’s lots of insight into the series:

Sarah Aubrey: I think Pete was concerned that Kyle was too pretty. But a couple weeks later, Pete met him for lunch.

Peter Berg: He rode up on a motorcycle. He’d been drinking for two days with his buddies. He had a beard and bags under his eyes. He was clearly hung-over as shit. I was really surprised, because I remembered him as this fresh-faced, boyish, charming young man. And here he was looking like one of the Baldwin brothers after a hard weekend.

Kyle Chandler: He said, “Whatever you did last night, I want you to do that every night. I want you to look exactly the same you do right now when you do the show.” A big Cheshire Cat grin came across my face, because I envisioned telling my wife that that was part of the job.

Berg: [In the original Friday Night Lights movie], Connie Britton’s role was sort of Pretty Wife Clapping in the Stands, which is about the shittiest job an actress can have. At least Talia Shire got to own a pet store and go ice-skating with Rocky.

Connie Britton (Tami Taylor): When Pete got in touch with me and said, “We’re going to make a Friday Night Lights TV show. Why don’t you come play that part?” I was like, “No way!” The only thing worse than playing a nothing part in a movie is [playing it] for years and years on TV.

Berg: She said, “Are you fucking kidding me? You think I’m going to spend 10 years sitting on a hard-wood bleacher getting splinters in my ass and cheering on Kyle Chandler? You’re out of your mind.” I said, “I promise. We’ll create a character. We’ll give you a job. We’ll give you dimension. We’ll give you a real voice.”

Chandler: It was the best pilot I’ve ever seen for a TV show. Arguably, it may be one of the best pilots ever.

Patrick Massett (co-executive producer, writer): The cut from the field to the sawing of the helmet to Minka Kelly crying.

John Zinman (co-executive producer, writer): The voiceover ”

Massett: “We will all be tested.”

David Nevins: It was gorgeous. Beautiful filmmaking.

Angela Bromstad (former President of Primetime Entertainment, NBC): At screenings for pilots, you have a pretty eclectic group of people — high-level executives and development people, research, scheduling, and publicity people — all of them very tense. At the end of the Friday Night Lights pilot you had people cheering and clapping. But the minute the lights came up, our head of marketing, John Miller, walked up and said, “This is a great pilot, but I really don’t know how we’re going to sell this.”

Nevins: I knew what I was in for the first time I saw the pilot — this was never going to be easy.

Bridget Carpenter: It wasn’t upbeat. Not everybody was likeable.

Reiner: The first scene we did was in a church, and I said, “Let me meet the pastor.” We met the pastor, and he was great. So I said, “OK, you’re going to be in the show.”

Liz Mikel (Corrina Williams): He got up and said a prayer. It was an actual prayer; it wasn’t anything scripted.

Jeffrey Reiner: [Showrunner] Jason Katims was there, and he didn’t even know we were filming. We were these two Jews from New York so immersed in this Baptist service that we were just glowing. We shot 25 minutes for 45 seconds of footage, but what we were doing is creating an environment that would inform the next five years.

Tons more interesting reading to found in the actual post. Check it out.

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