Showing posts with label Stage 32. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stage 32. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
I know...it's tempting...
When I'm not blogging, or when I'm not putting videos on YouTube, I'm still writing movie-and-TV scripts.
And nine years into my second wind as a writer, I'm still plugging away...even at a time when artificial intelligence has made tremendous strides.
AI has been able to do more things for people than it could even two years ago.
And one of those things is...it can, with just the right prompts, write an entire television script or a screenplay.
Yes...it's tempting to go to ChatGPT or Gemini or some other source and have it turn out a script.
And I'm not going to go there.
Now...I actually feel more comfortable feeding a screenplay of mine (or my one teleplay) through a site like https://screenplayiq.com or https://ScriptReader.ai and getting back an analysis. Last year, I started turning to ScreenplayIQ and ScriptReader out of curiosity...and to get one perspective or two as to whether I'm on the right track in this journey I'm on.
Of the 31 scripts I've written (or revised from my first try at screenwriting...the 1980-1994 period), all but three have earned at least one "recommend" from ScriptReader.
The other three picked up "considers" across the board.
I don't mind using the pitch trailers I get from ScreenplayIQ...and, in fact, I've been able to upload them to YouTube. (They don't look too bad...even with those little or not-so-little quirks.)
Both sites have helped me make better written pitches: ScriptReader and ScreenplayIQ shine at identifying script themes, script moods, and character arcs.
That all said...there's still absolutely NOTHING like the TV-and-movie-script evaluations (paid or not) you can get from flesh-and-blood human beings. The AI evaluations help...but the final word comes from scripthousing sites like Stage 32 and Script Revolution.
If anything I've ever written resonates with people on Script Rev and/or Stage 32, I'm happy.
And if you've ever read any script I've written...thanks so very much for putting my stuff to the test.
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Lookbook #2- "Rivertown Rock!"
I've been wanting to put up this lookbook for some time...and I would've kicked the idea to the curb if it weren't for the way you responded to the "Really Old School" lookbook and its video counterpart.
In 1992, I wrote a screenplay called "Rivertown Rock!" In it, I wanted to take a look at how music's British Invasion affected teenagers here in America's Midwest in general...and one family in particular. Always wanted to take a look at it through a screenplay of mine.
I wouldn't have started a record collection if the invasion weren't a catalyst...and maybe you began collecting 45s and albums back then, too, because of groups like the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five and the Rolling Stones.
Well, after getting feedback through Stage 32, I decided to revise that script of mine (same for "Really Old School" and two others)...and now, through sources like Network ISA, I'm looking for a producer who'd like to film it. (I've already submitted five screenplays of mine through ISA...and got yet to hear from any producers. That's okay...that's the way the system is.)
Here's the "Rivertown Rock!" logline:
It's Sunday, 2-9-1964...when the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show inspires a Sioux City, IA teenager to start her own rock group and show that girls can play the music, too.
I'm Jim Boston...thanks so much for reading this blog!
In 1992, I wrote a screenplay called "Rivertown Rock!" In it, I wanted to take a look at how music's British Invasion affected teenagers here in America's Midwest in general...and one family in particular. Always wanted to take a look at it through a screenplay of mine.
I wouldn't have started a record collection if the invasion weren't a catalyst...and maybe you began collecting 45s and albums back then, too, because of groups like the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five and the Rolling Stones.
Well, after getting feedback through Stage 32, I decided to revise that script of mine (same for "Really Old School" and two others)...and now, through sources like Network ISA, I'm looking for a producer who'd like to film it. (I've already submitted five screenplays of mine through ISA...and got yet to hear from any producers. That's okay...that's the way the system is.)
Here's the "Rivertown Rock!" logline:
It's Sunday, 2-9-1964...when the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show inspires a Sioux City, IA teenager to start her own rock group and show that girls can play the music, too.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
"Jim Boston, how could you skip a month from your own blog?"
Well, here's how:
Last month, I stumbled onto the world's biggest social network and educational center for creatives in movies, television, and the stage.
And I got hooked!
It's none other than Stage 32, and right now, it's up to 500,000 members worldwide...more people than live here in Omaha (by itself, not counting the suburbs).
For almost three years, I've been trying to kickstart a pursuit that hooked me from 1980 to 1994: Screenwriting.
When I was still attending Iowa State University, I bought a paperback copy of the script to the 1973 classic "American Graffiti." I really liked the way George Lucas (the movie's director...that's right, that George Lucas!), Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck wrote the story.
Bought a couple of handbooks on writing for TV and for movies...and I've still got one of them to this very day: "The Television Writer's Handbook," a 1978 publication Constance Nash and Virginia Oakey teamed up to bring to the world.
Then in 1979, as an elective, I enrolled in a screenwriting class Joe Geha conducted. The chief project for each class member was a 30-minute script...and I ended up concocting a TV sitcom pilot called "Long Way," about two women who drove a truck for a Central Iowa soft-drink bottling company. (I worked at such a company during the summers of 1976 and 1978...and liked it!)
The next year, I moved here to the Big O, where I tried and tried and tried to come up with movie scripts (when I wasn't working for a local inventory service). I subscribed to Writer's Digest as well as something called Hollywood Scriptletter, a newsletter that, in the mid-1980s, was renamed Hollywood Scriptwriter.
Through WD, I found out about the Peggy Lois French Agency. Armed with another TV sitcom pilot ("Edna's Garage," about a New Orleans auto mechanic and her crew), I tried to get representation through that Sun City, CA firm...but I was told: "You haven't had enough life experience."
Not even working for my dad at his own Des Moines auto-reconditioning firm during the summers of 1969-72 and 1977 (as well as most Saturdays from 1969-72) supposedly counted to the PLFA staff.
Well, in the middle 1980s, I joined a screenwriters' support group. In those pre-Internet days, we mainly wrote letters to each other. Things were fine...until a letter from a Phoenix member named Willi Waltrip stated that I should give up trying to write scripts and, instead, peck out novels.
OUCH!!
I dropped out of the group, stopping trying for a few years to write scripts, then got back into it by 1990- two years after I'd moved from Omaha to Sioux City, IA.
Between 1990 and 1994, I'd typed out four more screenplays...then packed it in as I started hitting the unemployment lines as the used-record-and-tape-and-CD store I moved to Sioux City to help launch got ready to call it quits.
I was through trying to cook up screenplays. That was it.
Until 2016.
Three years before that,
Nick Holle (who teamed up with Michael Zimmer to helm a 2012 documentary about the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival, "The Entertainers") gave me his Power Mac G5 computer...originally purchased by a former OTPP contestant,
Brent Watkins (who teamed up with his wife Jackie to help produce the documentary).
This Power Mac had- and still has- a copy of Final Draft 6. (Yeah, I know...that was five Final Draft iterations ago.)
But since 4-18-2016, I've been using that copy of Final Draft 6 to get back in the screenwriting race, cooking up a fresh-out-of-the-box, 2010s effort and refurbishing three others (two from the 1980s and one from the 1990s).
I've learned a lot from logging onto Richard Botto's claim to fame
...especially when it comes to how a spec script should look. First of all, I learned that, in today's screenwriting, you don't refer to camera angles in a spec script. You keep character descriptions to, basically, age and traits.
And every scene, in addition to being "EXT." or "INT.," must also be labeled "DAY" (if not "MORNING" or "AFTERNOON") or "NIGHT."
I've never been more fired up about writing scripts than I am right now, thanks to Stage 32 (named after Paramount's Stage 32, a property that previously was in the hands of the old RKO Studios; in fact, "Citizen Kane" was filmed on that very stage).
And I can't wait to pitch my stuff, either. Stage 32, matter of fact, has a page full of listings for pitch sessions.
Well, all I can say after that is: Log onto stage32.com to see what all the hoopla is. And if you'd like to see any (or all four) of the screenplays I've loaded onto Stage 32, just visit stage32.com/profile/673680/scripts_screenplays.
Thanks, thanks, thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"
Last month, I stumbled onto the world's biggest social network and educational center for creatives in movies, television, and the stage.
And I got hooked!
It's none other than Stage 32, and right now, it's up to 500,000 members worldwide...more people than live here in Omaha (by itself, not counting the suburbs).
For almost three years, I've been trying to kickstart a pursuit that hooked me from 1980 to 1994: Screenwriting.
When I was still attending Iowa State University, I bought a paperback copy of the script to the 1973 classic "American Graffiti." I really liked the way George Lucas (the movie's director...that's right, that George Lucas!), Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck wrote the story.
Bought a couple of handbooks on writing for TV and for movies...and I've still got one of them to this very day: "The Television Writer's Handbook," a 1978 publication Constance Nash and Virginia Oakey teamed up to bring to the world.
Then in 1979, as an elective, I enrolled in a screenwriting class Joe Geha conducted. The chief project for each class member was a 30-minute script...and I ended up concocting a TV sitcom pilot called "Long Way," about two women who drove a truck for a Central Iowa soft-drink bottling company. (I worked at such a company during the summers of 1976 and 1978...and liked it!)
The next year, I moved here to the Big O, where I tried and tried and tried to come up with movie scripts (when I wasn't working for a local inventory service). I subscribed to Writer's Digest as well as something called Hollywood Scriptletter, a newsletter that, in the mid-1980s, was renamed Hollywood Scriptwriter.
Through WD, I found out about the Peggy Lois French Agency. Armed with another TV sitcom pilot ("Edna's Garage," about a New Orleans auto mechanic and her crew), I tried to get representation through that Sun City, CA firm...but I was told: "You haven't had enough life experience."
Not even working for my dad at his own Des Moines auto-reconditioning firm during the summers of 1969-72 and 1977 (as well as most Saturdays from 1969-72) supposedly counted to the PLFA staff.
Well, in the middle 1980s, I joined a screenwriters' support group. In those pre-Internet days, we mainly wrote letters to each other. Things were fine...until a letter from a Phoenix member named Willi Waltrip stated that I should give up trying to write scripts and, instead, peck out novels.
OUCH!!
I dropped out of the group, stopping trying for a few years to write scripts, then got back into it by 1990- two years after I'd moved from Omaha to Sioux City, IA.
Between 1990 and 1994, I'd typed out four more screenplays...then packed it in as I started hitting the unemployment lines as the used-record-and-tape-and-CD store I moved to Sioux City to help launch got ready to call it quits.
I was through trying to cook up screenplays. That was it.
Until 2016.
Three years before that,
This Power Mac had- and still has- a copy of Final Draft 6. (Yeah, I know...that was five Final Draft iterations ago.)
But since 4-18-2016, I've been using that copy of Final Draft 6 to get back in the screenwriting race, cooking up a fresh-out-of-the-box, 2010s effort and refurbishing three others (two from the 1980s and one from the 1990s).
I've learned a lot from logging onto Richard Botto's claim to fame
And every scene, in addition to being "EXT." or "INT.," must also be labeled "DAY" (if not "MORNING" or "AFTERNOON") or "NIGHT."
I've never been more fired up about writing scripts than I am right now, thanks to Stage 32 (named after Paramount's Stage 32, a property that previously was in the hands of the old RKO Studios; in fact, "Citizen Kane" was filmed on that very stage).
And I can't wait to pitch my stuff, either. Stage 32, matter of fact, has a page full of listings for pitch sessions.
Well, all I can say after that is: Log onto stage32.com to see what all the hoopla is. And if you'd like to see any (or all four) of the screenplays I've loaded onto Stage 32, just visit stage32.com/profile/673680/scripts_screenplays.
Thanks, thanks, thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"
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