Joe Flood

Author: Joe Flood

  • Directing a Live Screenplay Reading

    Actors face off in a reading of Mirror Image.
    Actors face off in a reading of Mirror Image.

    A live screenplay reading offers the writer a chance to hear how their work sounds read aloud. It’s a great way to get feedback on your story. You can learn a lot from an audience – did they laugh at that joke? – as well as discovering whether your cleverly crafted dialogue sounds witty or clunky.

    Every year, the DC Shorts Screenwriting Competition performs a live reading of short scripts. We read five short screenplays – the finalists from our competition –  before an audience who votes for the winner. It’s a theater-in-the-round setting, with actors sitting around a table and the audience surrounding them. You’re encouraged to just listen to the words, like a radio play, and imagine the story. (more…)

  • New Article: West Wing Writer Opens ScriptDC

    scriptdcI wrote a short article on the opening of ScriptDC, a weekend conference devoted to screenwriting in Washington. Allison Abner, a writer/producer with The West Wing, will give a talk tomorrow night to aspiring television writers. Should be interesting – I had the chance to visit the set of this iconic TV show during its final season and even sit in on the writers’ room a few years ago.

    Allison’s talk is just the start of ScriptDC, which features some great speakers, including Gordy Hoffman, Marilyn Horowitz, Laurie Scheer and, of course, Jon Gann from DC Shorts. The conference is an inexpensive way to learn about television and movie writing without having to go to LA.

    I’ll be there most of the weekend, most notably at the Saturday night screenwriting competition, where I will be filling in for one of the writers. Five short screenplays will square off in a live reading, with the winner getting $2000 to turn their script into a film.

     

  • Usability Testing – Kill Your Darlings

    Last night was another interesting monthly WordPressDC Meetup. This time, the topic was on, “Users: Understanding and making features for them.”

    Evan Solomon gave a really interesting presentation on usability testing for wordpress.com. His slides don’t really do justice to his talk, which was filled with anecdotes on improving the usability of the WordPress home page. The objective was to increase sign-ups for this blogging service. They performed A/B testing using Optimizely. This type of testing is where you present half of users one version of your web page (the A version) and the other half another version (the B version). You then measure which page does better.

    In the case of wordpress.com, the simpler version did better. Less text, fewer buttons and more white space meant more sign-ups. Evan said that there was a lot of interesting items on the original home page, things that the team really liked. But they got rid of them because they didn’t perform as well as the simple page.

    There are a couple of lessons here:

    1. Simple is always better. Think Google or Apple – it’s about taking things out. People who work on web sites should read Strunk & White: The Elements of Style. It’s a little book about grammar but its lessons on clear, concise writing are directly applicable to web content.
    2. Listen to users. There’s a lot of resistance toward usability testing within organizations. They don’t want to give people what they want – they cling to the broadcast model of “we’ll tell you what we want you to know,” as if there’s not a billion other web sites out there.

    There’s a saying among writers that you must “kill your darlings.” That means take out the florid passages that you love but don’t help the reader. Do the same with your web site.

  • Murder in Ocean Hall – Now for Sale in France!

    We live in a magical age, where I can write a book in Washington, DC, and then readers in Paris can download my work to their e-readers.

    Murder in Ocean Hall is now available in France. It’s available in la boutique Kindle, which is an adorable name for an e-book store.

    The book is in English, BTW. Technology can do many amazing things but language translation requires the subtleties of the human mind.

    And what did I do to publish my novel in France? Uh, nothing. I just made the e-book available on Amazon and they did all the rest.

  • Two Americas on the Streets of DC

    On the streets of Washington, you will find two competing visions of America.

    At the Apple Store in Georgetown, a tribute has been erected to Steve Jobs, artist and entrepreneur. Loyal fans have brought mementos celebrating his illustrious life. The things he created – the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad – brought joy to millions as they allowed ordinary people to creatively participate in the wider world.

    Steve Jobs tribute
    Steve Jobs tribute

    (more…)

  • Steve Jobs at the Intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology

    You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
    – Steve Jobs

    With the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Steve Jobs changed the way we lived, making computers accessible and personal. He transformed how we relate to electronic devices, putting a heretefor unseen premium on design and usability. Along the way, he upended entire industries, breaking the monopoly pricing enjoyed by greedy music conglomorates and forcing telephone companies to meet the needs of consumers.

    Apple is one of the most successful companies in the world and proof of what this country can still accomplish. Only America offers the freedom, creativity and technical knowhow necessary to give rise to a media corporation like the Cupertino giant. Steve Jobs liked to say that he existed at the intersection of liberal arts and technology, a genius that would have been crushed among the slave laborers of China or the repressed salarymen of Tokyo. (more…)

  • Park Ranger Photo Kerfuffle

    With this photo, I have inadvertently started a kerfuffle (love that word).

    ranger on bike

    It was part of a series of photos I took of the Washington Monument inspection for earthquake damage.

    I took the above photo because I thought it was kind of funny – a park ranger in his big hat on a bike. I submitted it to The Wash Cycle, a local blog on bike advocacy. They ran it with the cheeky title, Only You Can Prevent Bicycle Crashes.

    Commenters on the site identified the ranger as Bill Line, spokesperson for the National Park Service. He’s infamous among local bike advocates for opposing the expansion of DC’s bikesharing service to the National Mall. And here he is riding a bike.

    Not only that, he’s not wearing a helmet and talking on a cellphone. A bag swings from his handlebars, unsafely. Commenters on the site also critiqued his ancient flip-phone and ratty handlebar tape.

    Without meaning to, I made news. This simple photo tells a story. Several of them actually, if you want to interpret the image that way. It reveals the hypocrisy of bike opponents riding bikes, as well as a cavalier attitude toward bike safety.

    This blog kerfuffle also highlights the fact that public servants are public. What they do is out in the open and possibly recorded by accidental citizen journalists, like myself.

    I was on a job interview recently and was asked to define “open government,” the movement to make government transparent and accountable to citizens. This photo is a perfect (though minor) illustration of open government in action, showing what happens when citizens get an unvarnished look at public servants at work.

    update: this story was republished on e.politics, a blog that covers digital advocacy. And the photo appeared on Greater Greater Washington.

  • We Are All Content Marketers Now

    Content marketing is defined as:

    the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases.

    We’re all in the marketing biz now, defined by the content that’s available about us online. Whether it’s a post about World of Warcraft in a gaming forum, a Facebook complaint about teenagers at the mall, or a well-sourced article in a scholarly journal, our identities are a function of the web. We may be very different people in real life, but for potential employers, customers, friends or romantic partners, first impressions are formed by what pops up during a Google search.

    Unless you’re living off the grid in some Nevada desert, this information, this shadow-version of your self exists in cyberspace. Details about your life are posted online (like that you finished in 122nd place in the local fun run), without you probably even being aware of it.

    You could rage against this loss of identity or you could do something about it. Content marketing is doing something about it. Instead of just being a viewer of content, start actively creating it. Register a site in your own name. Create a blog. Tweet, comment on stories and contribute to online forums.

    But do so consciously. Be aware that you’re shaping your personal brand online. Think about the searches that people will be doing in the future and how you want to appear in them. Don’t let other people define you – use content marketing to shape your image online.

  • New Essay: The Washington Literary Inferiority Complex

    Why do the great novels of our age emerge from New York and not DC? Washington is the capital of the country, except when it comes to fiction-writing.

    I examine these questions in The Washington Literary Inferiority Complex, recently published by nthWORD Shorts. I think it’s time for the Great Washington Novel.

  • My Favorite Films at DC Shorts

    dc shorts catalogs

    The DC Shorts Film Festival wraps up this Sunday. Now in its eight year, this celebration of cinema brought 145 films from 23 countries to Washington. As the Blogger-in-Chief for DC Shorts, I’ve seen a lot of short films. Not all, but enough to have my favorites. Here they are:

    Little Horses
    At the Q&A after the screening, director Levi Abrino said that he was looking to make a movie with the emotional resonance and complexity of a Chekhov short story. He succeeded – this tale of a divorced dad’s struggle to hold on to his son is moving, sad, funny and yet affirming as well. It demonstrates what independent film does so well, by portraying the drama of people who could be your neighbors. Little Horses won a DC Shorts Audience Favorite Award and a Filmmakers’ Favorite Award.

    The Man in 813
    This is one of several local films in the festival. We also did an interview with director Arlin Godwin on the DC Shorts blog. The Man in 813 is scarcely longer than its trailer, but still manages to tell a funny, creepy story that anyone who has ever lived in an apartment building can relate to – what are my neighbors up to? What’s significant is that the film was shot by one person in his apartment using a Canon T2i, a digital still camera that also shoots video. This short basically cost nothing and yet was screened with films that costs thousands of dollars, a potent demonstration of the advances in technology allow anyone to be a filmmaker.

    Interview Date
    The script for Interview Date won the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition last year. I read this script as a judge for the contest, then watched it being performed before a live audience. As the winner of the festival, Interview Date received $2000 from DC Shorts to turn their script into a movie. I was delighted when director Mike Lemcke and comedian Grant Lyon returned this year with a finished film. It’s been a fascinating journey to watch, this transition of words on a page to moving images on a screen. This connection between a screenplay competition and a film festival makes DC Shorts unique, turning writers into filmmakers.

    The Scarecrow Girl
    For me, this was the most beautiful film of the festival. While shooting in rural Brazil, director Cássio Pereira dos Santos took hours of sky shots, because they were so amazingly blue. These shots frame a film about a young girl in rural Brazil who wants to go to school but can’t. It’s a true story, taken from stories told by Cássio’s grandmother.

    These four films are a great demonstration of the power of independent film to tell stories that you’re not going to get out of Hollywood. Rather than relying on formulas and catch-phrases, indie film at its best communicates visions that are both original and unique.