Too Fast for Our Own Good

The Hollywood standard for screenwriting dictates that a page of script should equal a page of movie time. 120 pages? That's a feature-length film.

So when we convened upon the Affogato coffee shop to film most of episode 17, I had a 7 1/2 page script to work from. I figured that, plus the recap from last episode and the intro sequence, plus the two flashbacks we cut away to, plus any extra footage for the closing credits, would come in around our usual 10 minute mark.

Wrong.

Those 7 1/2 minutes of script turned into a whopping 4 minutes of screen time. Apparently, STBD moves at the speed of light.

Even with all the extras, we still came in over 2 minutes under our standard time. This means I need to start judging our scripted scenes differently, and estimating that they'll always come in faster than expected. Which means we need more scenes. Which means I need to write more.

Which means: why am I blogging when I should be writing scripts for the next few episodes?

I wonder if there's a patron saint of procrastination, or if they just haven't canonized him yet. (And yes, you just know it would be a him...)

******

In a few hours, Kellee Maize, better known to most STBD fans as Celeste (or "C"), will celebrate her birthday AND her CD release party. Ms. Maize has been working hard to get her first disc out the door, and will be celebrating her success with a few hundred of her closest friends tonight at Altar, where she and many of Pittsburgh's notable hip-hop provocateurs will be performing live. See you there?