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munchman: Whoa! A SAILOR MOON Music Video

…or, uh, something like that.

YouTube Preview Image

In other words, yer friendly webby munchman isn’t sure what the hell this thing is, but it features the SAILOR MOON crew and shows off their new animation style, and, well, I’ve got this friend, let’s call her Amorous Adele, and she – God, this is painful – she’s a big SM fan (Sailor Moon, doods, what were you thinking?) so letting her know that I’ve posted this for could be, you know, a good thing for me.

Unless she hates the new animation style…

Crap! Wish I hadn’t thought of that–

Hi, Adele!

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Movies Definitely are Turning Into TV

…Except they cost way more to watch. What’re we talking about? Just this:

universal-pictures-100th-anniversaryby Liz Suess

Fans of classic monster movies, beware!

Universal Pictures is extremely well-known for many of their classic movie monsters, including Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, Wolf Man, and The Mummy. They’ve decided to take all of these classic movies and re-vamp them, while at the same time creating a unified world between films. Recently, they’ve gained a lot of popularity from franchises such as The Fast and the Furious and Despicable Me, so it’s nice to see them going back to their roots.

Early development has already begun on this incredibly ambitious project. It seems like they want to do something similar to the Marvel universe—where all movies can mostly stand on their own but also are interconnecting with characters and plots. Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek) and Chris Morgan (The Fast and the Furious) are reported to be the front-runners on this project, although nothing beyond that is official just yet. There have been a lot of remakes in the past, however none have tapped into the unity that this project entails. There’s a lot of charm to watching old monster films just to see how far movie production has come, but it will be fun to see the monsters re-vamped for the 21st century.

Read it all

Damn you, Marvel! What have you done?

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Pitching Your Ideas: A Primer

sellingmottoby Scott Berkun

Coming up with good ideas is hard enough, but convincing others to do something with them is even harder. In many fields the task of bringing an idea to someone with the power to do something with it is called a pitch: software feature ideas, implementation strategies, movie screenplays, organizational changes, and business plans, are all pitched from one person to another. And although the fields or industries may differ, the basic skill of pitching ideas is largely the same. This essay provides a primer on idea pitches, and although most of my experience is in the tech-sector, I pitch to you that the advice here will be relevant to pitching business plans, yourself (e.g. job interviews), screenplays, or anything else.

THE NATURE OF IDEAS

Ideas demand change. By definition, the application of an idea means that something different will take place in the universe. Even if your idea is undeniably and wonderfully brilliant, it will force someone, somewhere to change how they do something. And since many people do not like change, and fear change, the qualities of your idea that you find so appealing may be precisely what make your idea so difficult for people to accept. Some individuals fear change so much that they structure their lives around avoiding it. (Know anyone exhibiting the curious behavior of being obviously miserable in their job, their city, their relationship, but still refusing to make changes?). So when your great idea comes into contact with a person who does not want change, you and your idea are at a disadvantage. Before you can begin the pitch, you have to make sure you’re talking to someone that’s interested in change, or has a clear need that your idea can satisfy.

Healthy and progressive organizations make change easier than stinky evil organizations do. Smart organizations (or managers) often depend on change. Leaders in these havens for smart people not only encourage positive change to happen, but expect people at all levels of their organization to push for it. It requires more work and maturity for these managers to make this kind of environment successful, but when they pull it off, smart people are systematically encouraged to be smart. Idea pitching happens all the time: in hallways, in the cafeteria, in meetings.

But since most of us don’t work in these kinds of places, the burden of pitching ideas falls heavily on our shoulders.

Read it all

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Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 7/25/14

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
by munchman

  • Billy Eichner (BILLY ON THE STREET) has a deal to write an untitled “comedic take on Hollywood and pop culture…as a book for Hachette Book Group. (Hachette, you may recall, is the publishing house that Amazon’s been slugging it out with. Congratulations, Billy, on getting your big writing op with a book that nobody will be able to buy from the world’s largest bookseller. Oh, dear, that didn’t come out quite right, did it?)
  • Dustin Lance Black (MILK) is adapting A. Scott Berg‘s Pulitzer Prize winning bio, Lindberg, into a limited TV series to be produced by Paramount TV.  (Cuz Nazi sympathizing one-shot wonder manly man flyers are the kind of thing the TV audience just loves to eat up. My munched-up self can’t help but think that this ain’t gonna be the hit somebody’s thinking it will. But what do I know?)
  • Cris Cole (UK’s MAD DOGS) has written the pilot for a U.S. version of the series for Amazon Studios. (Cuz why make crappy $$$ writing for the best TV system in the world when you can make slightly less crappy $$$ writing for what yer friendly neighborhood munchman would bet his soul on – if I had one – will end up the worst?)
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munchman reads “Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV” by Joe Toplyn

by munchman

The Good:comedywritingbooktvwriter.net

  • This is a serious and very well-intended book packed with useful tips
  • It breaks the late-night TV genre down to its basic elements and tells the reader exactly what to prepare for when writing monologues, desk bits, sketches, parodies, audience bits, remotes and the like – the staples of late-night TV
  • In other words, you won’t find anything anywhere that’s more complete

The Not So Good:

  • This thing is so serious and well-intended that it’s only available as a paperback. That’s right – no Kindle version yet, which means it’s kind of expensive ($20.69 at Amazon as ze munchedman writes this)
  • Joe spends a lot of time telling us what he’s going to tell us until he finally gets around to actually telling it, which if you’re a ADHD kinda person can getcha kinda…restless

Recommendation:

Buy this book. It’ll go down easy with some legal recreational pot in Colorado, say, or Washington State. And, almost as importantly, it’ll give you the best grounding you can get in short comedy. At least until Mel Sherer (look him up) gets around to writing his own tome.