743 - Thinking on Your Feet with Ryan Condal

22:47You do not let go. Do not let go.

22:49John August:Yeah. Craig, I'm realizing a meta thing that's happening here is you're asking very questions about how to run a writer's room and stuff like that. And like, Craig, we've talked about this on the show so many times and a lot of listeners are probably voicing this. And it's because it's usually episodes that I'm just talking to a showrunner where you're not here. And so we'll put together a playlist of like just me asking these questions because every showrunner has similar but different answers. And so I'm thinking back, Jack Schaefer talking about how she sort of casts a writer's room. Basically, she knows what she's really strong at and she knows what she's lacking in terms of what she needs for herself to have the best chance at making this show.

23:27John August:So who are the writers that she's going to be able to bring in and who can help her in her weaknesses, both as writers, but also, this is what I'd like to have to write about, is that what you need in the room, because it's great to read these writers, but then you meet with them and then you sort of do the background checks and you must be thinking about like, how is this going to gel in the room? And how much are you physically in a room together? How much is it virtual? What does your writer's room actually even look like? We're very old school. I mean, I'm all in person. I can't do that virtual stuff.

23:56I just, I drift off. I just can't. I can have like a meeting on Zoom, like a story meeting, but I can't break story on it. It just drives me crazy. And we were lucky with the way House of the Dragons sort of fell. I remember our last sort of ominous conversations in the room were all about this weird virus that was spreading around. And my Spanish scout for all of our locations in season one was over the first week of March in 2020. At some point, HBO called while we were out there and they're like, you need to stop going to airports. And I was like, what does that mean? How are we going to get home?

24:26I was like, no, you can go to that airport. Just don't go to any of the other airports. So we just got in a van and then in a closed air van with everybody breathing on each other and drove around and did scouts that way. So we were able to be in person. We weren't forced. Because by the time the season two room came around, everybody was vaccinated and had to be vaccinated to be around. And then we kind of got on. So it was a very old school room, corkboard and cards. I like the physical satisfaction of finishing an episode and being able to put all those cards together in a neat little binder stack and taking them off and putting them on and moving them around on the board.

25:01I like all that sensory stuff. What would be on a card for this?

25:04John August:Like how many words is on a card? Is it just describing a scene? Is it describing a beat? Like what does a card look like in this big writer's room corkboard? It's usually beats, but a beat usually is a scene in the way that we break TV. Rhaenyra does a thing. Daemon brings Rhaenyra her crown, everybody kneels to her. You know, that sort of thing. Because you want to be able to read it from wherever you're sitting in the room. And the writer's assistant sits there and keeps all of them kind of cataloged and then writes all the bullets that are informing the scene beneath it. We really try to break everything out as detailed as possible.

25:37So when the writer sits down with the outline, they know basically all the slug lines that are going into the script, the order that they're going in, at least on that first pass. And then here is what the scene is about. This is where it begins. These are who are in it. This is where it ends. This is the dramatic experience that we're taking the audience through in the scene. This is whose POV it is, et cetera. How long is that outline that the writer is going off with? Well, the room, so we give them a room break, essentially. So the writer's assistant has a room break outline. And that's maybe, I don't know, maybe six, seven, eight pages.

26:09And then they come back with like a 10 to 13 page sort of Microsoft Word, not final draft, but like a prose. A plan. With, yeah, it's like putting flesh on the skeleton. It's just a layer of, that's a layer of flesh. And then the first draft is a layer of flesh. And then you just keep concentric circles of detail.

26:27John August:And when that outline draft comes back or when the first draft comes back, is that a thing that is discussed in the room? Or is that just a thing between you and the writer? What happens with that draft? Sometimes it just depends on, unfortunately, with the way this particular show is made. And Craig knows this. I'm never doing one thing at one time. Everybody thinks that because Craig and I make shows that take two years between seasons, they imagine that there's like six months of work and then it's 18 months of us just like walking our dogs and just thinking of ideas and all that. That sounds nice.

27:00Yeah. No, it's like it's Fallujah the whole time. So we do – we are usually breaking story in that phase while we're in the teeth of the first cuts and posts. Oh, okay. I have two offices in London and I just kind of run between them. So it kind of depends on what's going on at the moment. But half of my day goes to post. Half of my day goes to meeting with the writers. Generally what we do is it's everybody reads the draft, but then it's Sarah and I reading it, taking a meeting between the two of us, making sure that we're going to give cohesive notes together to the writer, sitting with the writer, giving them notes and then sending them off.

27:39But at the end, I like to sort of, okay, here's where we are with all the scripts. Sarah and I have done a pass, or I've done a pass, or Sarah's done a pass. It's gone into the network. Here's the first two episodes. Here's the first four. Let's get together and talk about them. Does anybody have any concern? We do a lot of that, but I know in the network model, there is a lot of the whole room reads the scripts. There's notes, especially in comedy and things like that, where looking for better jokes and punch your things and all that.

28:05John August:Yeah, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, like Elaine, classically, she would project it on the wall and just go through line by line and look for all jokes and things like that. That's a very classic way to do that. And because you are preparing to shoot this show and you're probably shooting multiple episodes at once and you're cross-boarding, that's not realistic to do all the time. My question is, is the room running all the time while the show is shooting? Because at a certain point, I imagine the room wraps, but you still have episodes left to shoot. No, so all of the scripts have to be done. Like, you know, season four, we have essentially written, you know, already.

28:39HBO will have all of the drafts this summer, first drafts, our first drafts that we're giving, we're choosing to share with the network. So it's probably like the sixth draft. But we won't start production until early next year, early 2027, because the schedule is such a Jenga tower. Everything is scheduled to sort of set and location and all that. And the budget is just, the schedule affects the budget and all that. So my producer actually has to sit with all of this stuff this summer and build it into a schedule and a plan and when are we going to be in this country or when are we going to be in this country.

29:13And because we shoot everything out of order, it just all needs to be. So by the time, it's really nice because by the time filming starts, that's the only time where we're doing one thing, which is just covering set, doing production. You sure you don't want to do what I do? Oh my God, Craig. Why don't you do what I do? It's so much more interesting. Yeah. Don't have all your scripts written. Just have a plan for the season. Write like three scripts. start shooting, know that you have six more scripts to write while you're shooting and directing. It really, I'm telling you, it keeps you alive.

29:45Yeah.

29:46John August:That spark. Yeah. I have such anxiety that like the very idea of that would just, would just paralyze me. Guess what? I have that anxiety too. And it's still this way, but this is why, you know, I'm even though, yes, John's right. There's been many, many showrunners on him. There are certain stock questions that I suppose a showrunner will be asked about rooms, but I particularly go, okay, well, here's a guy who makes a big fantasy epic at HBO. And if all things go well, my next show is going to be a big fantasy epic at HBO. You're going to be doing one of those. I'm really interested. Yeah. So you have all the scripts done before you start shooting.

30:28Yeah. Which sounds like a dream to me and probably a dream to everybody. We of course rewrite while - Naturally. You'll rewrite a scene. You'll realize you need a scene and then you can make little moves. But at least the network and the budget planners, they have everything there. On the way, when you're getting these scripts from your collaborators, you mentioned you're going to probably do a pass and you're going to rewrite some of them. How do you manage when you have to mildly rewrite somebody? That's nice. Or, uh-oh, we sort of just kind of rewrote it. Is that an expected situation? I'm curious how, especially because your show is so much about politics, how you manage the politics of situations like that in rooms.

31:20I just go for as much a kind honesty as much as possible. I just think there's, I think there are showrunners that don't address it at all. And then that's weird. I think there are people that try to kind of address it and soft shoe it. And then they read the draft and there's not a line in it that they've written. I just try to have an honest conversation with the writers and it's like, look, it's a very specific world. It's a very specific syntax. I'm weird and specific myself. This is what I had to do. Read it. If you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. I always assure them, this does not mean that you are not a great writer.

31:53That's why I hired you. I just, I try to do as much of that as possible. I mean, really, we have, I really do mean we have gotten to a point with the show, thankfully, where one of the other writers beyond Sarah and I has been with us since he helped us cover set in season one. So he started writing in season two, but he got to like learn the show by being a covering producer in season one. He had come out of the British television system. His name is David Hancock. Thank you, David. And people know the system now and they know what to expect. And a lot of times what I will do is do the heavy kind of rewrite.

32:23The studio reads it whenever. And then once we get into the play, because where I will be in the fall is we're going to be doing HBO notes and sort of production notes. And we have to cut this because of budget and whatever, I will tend to hand the drafts back to the writers once we're doing more targeted stuff. And I feel actually my experience has been I've been much more successful getting back what we need when it's more micro, when you're not looking at the whole forest, when you're just looking at a tree. Makes sense. And I also have Sarah, which is awesome because a lot of times I'm doing the production, pre-production stuff and whatever, and she's doing the, can you please do this scene or do a scene where this thing happens?

33:02Can you send me Sarah, please? Can I have her? Now? Craig, actually, she's in an HBO deal. Oh, interesting. So that means she's literally free to HBO. I understand what you're saying. Interesting. Yeah. She's available in like a year. No. What about you leave her there? Yes. And you come over and get that with me. Dude, I kind of want to do that as my next job. I sort of want to be the, I want to be the, the right hand, number two. I want to be the right hand. We're like, what can I do? How can I be your hero where I can go home and sleep at night? I have talked about this with Justin Marks a bit.

33:40Not get balder. Yeah, exactly. Justin is making Shogun season two while we're making The Last of Us season three. And his offices are right below ours on the same lot. So every now and then we just walk over and complain to each other about our lives, which is great. And there is this strange desire to either, yes, not be in charge or their fantasies about just being murdered. Then you don't have to finish. It's a dark place. It's a hard job. It is a hard job. When I look at your show, just watching the first episode of this season. Yeah. We should talk about that. The naval battle is just like, come on.

34:24Thank you. I watch this and here's my curse. I am enjoying this thing and I am in awe of this thing. And then there's this third part of my mind that's like, oh no, the meetings, the amount of meetings. Just for that shot, there were meetings. That's, and I just feel for you.

34:42John August:Which things actually have to be on the water versus which things are going to be just blue screens? Just like, ugh. The, just the, okay. When he falls through, the special effects guys are like, we can practically have the wood go or do it. And it's like there's four million effing meetings. It is exhausting. That episode looked like there were many meetings. Yeah, so we stole it from original Game of Thrones, but original Game of Thrones called it Game of Meetings. All right. Because that was what pre-production was. Worst novel ever. We're house of the meetings. But yes, it's you have your eight episodes and then each set piece that's that size, like the Battle of the Gullum.

35:22We have we have a number of those this season. Those become episodes unto themselves and they have their own production meetings and kind of their own office staff that sort of follows them around and notes them. Because even with that, like you can't as you know, you can't be in multiple places at a time. And sometimes you're off in a different country filming that day. And because prep continues all the way through the production, that was first up. So luckily we did all of that before we started. We did the prep for it before we started shooting. But yeah, it's a lot. It's intense. It's intense.

35:54And so much of what is difficult about making a show like yours is that you have the work of putting this down on paper. And I presume you have the same experience I have, that the more you do this, the more you realize you can't put enough detail on the page. Every time you write a little extra detail, you saved yourself a meeting, but you can't make a 900-page script. So you're looking for that balance. And then there is this brutal process of, okay, how are we going to do this? And sometimes it gets in my head when I'm writing where I'll start to write something and go, okay, well, then how are we going to do this?

36:35And how many, and then I'm like, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not your possibility. You know what? I get one chance to write my draft and everybody gets it and people go, wow. And then someone goes, we can't do it. And then I'm like, okay, now we can discuss maybe what we can and can. But I wonder as you've gone along in response to budget realities and just the logistics of doing things, has that leaked back into the writing process at all? For sure, because I just want to, I want to save myself time. So we do a lot of breaking of the big set pieces. We try to break them out ahead of time in a way that you want to preserve that creative experience.

37:22Going back to me as a 12-year-old, I am one of those weird writers that actually still really enjoys sitting in front of Final Drive. It's actually my happy place within the craziness of making this show. And it's probably because I just get to be alone. And it's the only place where I'm not being asked a question. But I do enjoy that kind of monastic pursuit because it's such a small facet now of this massive thing that takes two years to make. You really only write a first draft for, I don't know, a few weeks out of that entire two-year cycle. So I really do like it. But just because it's so complicated, we try to actually break it out in the room first and then talk about sort of production methodology and what is this and talking with my producer.

38:04And my producer and production designer are basically on, they take a few months off sort of during the teeth of post but they're basically on 18 months out of the two year cycle so they're very accessible so I can talk to them about is this a thing that we can make? Is this a thing that you think we can do? And figuring out that stuff in advance and of course you rewrite it a million times as you get into the making of the show like with the gullet we did this Alani Peristere the director who's actually a neighbor of yours right now because you're in Vancouver, right? Yes, I mean well not physically at the moment, but two weeks from now, yes, back to Vancouver.

38:40Yes. So he's up working in Vancouver right now, making big television. And he and I talked about this. He had worked on the previous season, so I knew he was going to do this episode. So we talked about it for months going into it, production methodology and all that. And then through pre-production, he actually made this thing that we ended up calling the Supercut, which was like basically a really fancy animatic that was pre-vis with the dragons. So it's pre-animation storyboards that he had a storyboard artist like cut and like film almost like a Ken Burns documentary to try to put movement into the storyboard.

39:15Sometimes it was just slug lines from the script, but just to understand the structure of the battle.

39:19John August:Yeah. And then we ended up rewriting. We found a whole bunch of this stuff. The individual ideas works, but how are we intercutting all of this so it feels like you're building and building and building. So we actually like edited the sequence before we ever even made it with this multimedia kind of thing, shared the super cut with all of the crew so that everybody knew what we were making. And honestly, it's like, I don't know why it took until the third season to do it with one of the... And we always have previs with the dragon sequences and all that because they need to know exactly where the dragon is, what it's doing, because that's how they program the moving saddle and the camera moves and all that.

39:54It's all programmed to what's going on in the previs. But the stuff with the ships and the guys fighting on the deck, like that's stuff that you tend to figure out, you know, sort of closer to the day when you're actually going to shoot it. Some of it gets figured out on the day. So we were able to rewrite the sequence and put in story beats and cleverly disguised explainy dialogue and things like that. So you knew where you were going. And it was just, it was such a wonderful thing to have because otherwise I would have gone into filming that sequence in a total, I mean, I went into the filming that sequence in a total state of terror because we sent so much money on it and everybody was waiting for it and so much was riding on it.

40:29But I knew what it was going to be in the end and I could see it. And I just knew that as long as, As long as it's in the little video monitor, we have it and we can go make this thing. And sure enough, when I'm more clear of it, I want to go and watch the super cut again because I'd love to see how close it is to the final thing that we did. It's a hell of a thing, I will say. I texted Franny, who is our collective boss over there at HBO Drama, and I was like, oh, no. Because we had a pretty big battle sequence in season two. I felt pretty good about that. And then... It wasn't on the water. It wasn't with boats.

41:07No, no. Yeah, no flying creatures. No. And then I saw this thing, but I will say we do have a sequence. It's very different in nature, but... Stuff's coming. I'll say, you guys, really, the bar is so high. Just, first of all, you know, the amount of people that watch your show is just insane. It remains insane, which is great. Because, you know, over the course of time, these big shows, you know, will start to slough viewers away. and you guys still are just absolutely crushing it. And the quality of the storytelling is so evident and also the quality of the craft. Because I'm also, you know, I'm sitting there looking for bad comps.

41:47Like that's me. That's all I do all day in post. Like when we get there is like, is look at one shot 500 times until it's correct. And it was just so well done. Like so well, I know how hard some of those shots are. and to see it all put together so expertly, it just inspires me to do as well as I can do over in my end of the mushroom spectrum. Thank you. It was a hell of an episode. It really was. And emotional, you know? Yeah, well, that's the key of the thing. It all comes back to the script because if it's just empty spectacle, so we tried to put as much drama, tension, emotion, all those things into it.

42:25You did. And I have to say, I'm surrounded by an incredible team. I just have an incredible team. It's like I work with a proper British film crew, like a high-end British film crew. Everybody at the top of their game. You know, Lonnie is like, Lonnie should be directing features. He's an incredible director, so collaborative, so patient. It really takes a whole village. Oh, it takes apparently a city. Yes. And now everybody's in an arms race with each other. Like we're in an arms race with the original show. You know, it's like HBO projects are in an arms race with each other. and you just keep having to push it and push it and push it.

42:59Eventually we're going to, I don't know, find the singularity or something and collapse into a black hole. Yeah.

43:05John August:Before we do that, Ryan and Craig, if you'll permit me, I'd love to talk, something that's been on my list for a while to talk through and the two of you guys on this Zoom together, I think is maybe a good place to start in it. There's this idea that we often have that thinking and thought are a product of language, that basically it's our language that gives us the ability to do things, to think things, to think thoughts. And I was reading articles this last week about this idea of motricity, that essentially that it's our ability to move is what is actually where thought comes from. That what differentiates plants from animals, and Craig, maybe your fungi people have a sense of this too, is that plants don't need to move anywhere.

43:46John August:So that's why they don't have brains. But animals have brains because we need to move someplace. And the idea of moving someplace, the need to move someplace, makes you have to model the future. It has to give you deliberate action, the idea of going from here to there, and actually thinking as we sort of, as characters think and as we as writers think. Really, that's the reason why we use so many words that are related to movement. So we talk about pushing an idea forward. We talk about getting inside something, like looking at something from the outside. We move forward with something. So many of our words that we use to describe thought really come from motion.

44:25John August:And Ryan, the reason why I was thinking about you for this is that watching your show over the last three seasons, you never have characters sitting down. Characters are always on their feet. I've other people pointed that out. As opposed to the original Game of Thrones, which has a lot of chamber things where people will take a seat, I'm pressed to think of many examples where characters are sitting in your show. There's a couple of small council meetings where they're there, but you keep people up and moving a lot. Yeah. And so I want to talk about sort of character movement, but also how character movement relates to characters thinking and characters making choices.

45:00John August:And as they're not moving, we sort of can't see the thinking behind them. That's really interesting. I had never thought of it that way. It's funny because I feel like we are a castle-bound show more than Thrones was. And maybe this is my sort of my kind of anxiety thinking about how much we are bound to the castles. Because really it's, you know, I've talked about this show as the original series is this like this sweeping epic. It's Lawrence of Arabia. It's pure David Lean, right? The whole thing. And we have elements of that. But then we are more of this like kind of family saga. I've talked about this as like a gangster epic where basically the Capo de Capos dies.

45:41Viserys dies in the first season. And then all of his other Capos and the soldiers are fighting. And they all happen to be family, right? So it's this Greek tragedy gangster epic. Because it's just based on essentially these two factions, the Greens and the Blacks, they are bound to their castles a lot. There's less Western going on in this show than in original Thrones.

46:03John August:It's a civil war within the Targaryen family, but it's just these two houses and you're centered on those two places. Yes. And the original show was figuring out who was going to be king, whereas we have two sovereigns. We have a king and a queen and they are protected in their castles. And so much of the story is based around them and what they're plotting and doing at the time. So I think it's probably my anxiety just saying, well, we're castle bound, so we should be on the move and on our feet. And one of the big reasons for that, thanks to the incredible resources that we had to make this show right from the very start.

46:36I mean, I'm incredibly indebted to David and Dan for making the most successful TV show of all time because it meant that we came right out of the gate with a tremendous amount of resources. I mean, we had the equivalent resources that they had in season five. We had coming out. So we've built these incredible composite sets. We have multiple sets that are built on these 50 ,000, 60 ,000 square foot stages where they are built to the walls of the stage. So the Red Keep, everything but the throne room, which is its own set. The Red Keep, you can move from room to room and film continuously and you're not hiding blue screens or anything like that.

47:11So we, of course, the directors take advantage of that. There's a lot of steadicam, there's a lot of movement, a lot of walking, where somebody doesn't leave the room and you have to cut to bring them into the next room. You follow them out and it just, it creates the sense of movement. So I'm very glad to hear you, a filmmaker, say that because it's certainly, definitely in the DNA of what we're making. I like this idea. I think this is a very cool idea that I don't know if we'll ever figure out exactly like what the secret of consciousness is. Because it's a microscope looking at itself. But I do think there is something compelling about how movement underpins a lot of this.

47:50Even if you watch something where no one moves, like my dinner with Andre. Yes. No one moves. But they talk to you in ways where you are going places. And in scenes I find where two people are sitting, and I love a good sitting down scene. Last season there's a scene where Dina has to explain to Ellie, she actually knows who killed Joel. Spoiler, he died. And in shooting that scene, we really dialed in on when someone would lean forward. There's a moment where she slides cookies over to her, which is like this. So then micro-movements become big things, but there is always some movement happening.

48:34I think it's very smart. And when you're directing, it's almost the first thing that happens in that day because your actors come in and you just start blocking and blocking is how are we moving? Yeah. And it does make a huge... And I think about it too when I'm writing all the time.

48:52John August:There's a scene I was working on yesterday where because of stuff moving around in the script, I needed to move it from a sitting scene to at a location where it was not going to be possible to sit. And so it's largely the same dialogue, but it feels so different to have the characters on their feet and moving around during the scene. And I had to find different ways into it and out of it because it's just a different vibe when characters are standing at a place versus sitting in a place. Ryan, back to your show, in Dragonstone, they have a massive table where all the council is there to meet.

49:25John August:I don't think I've ever seen them sitting at that table. It's always just Rhaenyra at the end of the table making a decision. You gotta look down. It's the point of view, right? If you're sitting, you can't quite see the full... Gotta see the map table. You've got to see the map. There's lots of standing in that room for sure. But also, when we talked on the show countless times, characters sitting at a table, it's like difficult to shoot. And so one of the great things about characters standing is that you can actually get, you can cover that more easily than you can if they're actually sitting down at the table.

49:51John August:You still have some eye line issues. Yeah, there are going to be some. Particularly as characters are moving around, but it's also more dynamic and you could probably also stay in the wides a little longer for it too. Well, there's something too about the notion that sitting implies a temporary safety. The person you're with, you are safe. And this is a break or a moment where characters are allowed to turn away from what is immediate need or immediate threat and can become a little internal. This is why, even though I really do not personally enjoy shooting scenes where characters are on horses because they're annoying to do, they're really annoying.

50:29It's just the problem is where the camera goes. It's very annoying. It's hard to do. But those are the best sitting scenes because they're moving, but they're sitting. And there is a much more interesting, safe discussion. Whereas, yeah, when you're standing, there is always the implication, we might have to turn around, run, and start killing people immediately. And I like that. Yeah. I would also say the counterpoint to that is in our sitting council scenes and probably have more pages shot in the small council chamber in the Red Keep than any other set on the show thus far, just because it's existed since season one and there are so many multi-page scenes in there.

51:07When everybody is sitting, you can create movement in the edit by having the overlapping dialogue of the person who's talking. You're not watching them. You're watching the reaction somebody else is making. And then thus you create this sense of layering and complexity in the scene because it's like, well, Damon's ranting about something, but it's not necessarily what he's ranting about. It's how the other people are kind of side-eyeing each other. And then you can kind of, you know, we're not a cutty show, but you can, in those moments, take those big static stage scenes and sort of bring a lot of life and movement and energy into that way.

51:41Yes. Yes, I like to remind myself of that when I'm shooting the first wide. And it's like, well, this is a school play. Yeah. It's like, okay, it'll get better. It'll get better. It'll get better. That's right.

51:53John August:So in the show notes, I'll put links to some of the things that I was thinking about as I was putting together this little segment. Barbara Tversky has a book called Mind in Motion, which has a lot of stuff about this. There's a neuroscientist, Rudolfo Lianas, who also talks about this. The idea that what we call thinking is actually the evolutionary internalization of movement. Thinking is basically just imagining action. It's imagining things. It also may help explain why we can only think about one thing at a time. We should, in theory, be able to think multiple things at the same time, but you can only move one direction at a time.

52:25John August:And so we're just adapting that system to do our thinking. So I'll put that in the show notes where people want to explore more. Yeah. I love this. This is really great. I want to read this. We have some listener questions or at least one listener question. Ana writes in. Ana writes, John and Craig, eight years ago, I wrote in about my anxiety surrounding the decision to quit my salary job and pursue screenwriting full-time. You gave excellent, encouraging advice. Since then, I've written several films for major studios. I can't thank you enough. Your encouragement was exactly what I needed to hear in some of the darkest, most imposter syndrome-fueled moments.

53:00John August:That's great. It's very nice. My question is about sequels. One of my films coming out later this year has commissioned me to write the sequel. I'm thrilled, but I'm finding myself oddly tripped up by the craft of reintroducing characters the audience will have already seen on screen. Do I give them a character description, even though we've already met them? how much context do I provide for moments from the first film that we'll flash back to in the sequel? Essentially, how much catching up should a sequel screenplay do for the reader? And how much can it assume they already know? You've both written hugely successful sequels.

53:36John August:I spent all my allowance to see Charlie's Angels full throttle, no fewer than eight times in theaters as a preteen. And I'd love to hear how you approach the craft of returning to characters and worlds the audience is presumably already familiar with? Oh, that's a great question. Well, first off, congratulations, Ana. Yeah. It's interesting talking about television and then thinking about feature films because season to season, episode to episode, how much do you need to reintroduce those characters? But with a feature film, there's no guarantee that people saw the movie before this or they even remember the movie before this.

54:07John August:So you do need to find some way to meet those characters again in a way that is rewarding if the person knows who the character is, also makes sense if they don't really know who the character is. So it's some degree of reestablishing the premise of who this character is so we understand their function within this world. It's not the same as, we can assume somebody who's watching the second episode of season three of House of the Dragon has a sense of who these people are, but you cannot do that for a feature film. Well, we also have this wonderful tool called Previously On. Previously On, it's gorgeous.

54:41Which is massively important. Unless you're on Netflix, which doesn't do it. Right, because Netflix doesn't want you to have ever stopped watching anything. That's their punishment, right? But like on HBO, where there's a week between episodes and then, you know, time between seasons, we have previously on, and it is important. Even if you're mid-season and you're coming up to an episode, and I have a suspicion this will occur frequently for you, Ryan, in this season, there'll be a previously on, and it will refer to the things that happened in the prior couple of episodes. And then there'll also be like one thing from season one that you throw in there because it's gonna be relevant.

55:13and this is something that the nature of our show certainly will be doing that because we are replaying essentially three days from a different perspective. It's a lot easier. In movies, you don't have that. So when you introduce these characters, since you're specifically saying tripped up by the craft of reintroducing characters, put them in a context that either is a familiar one for where they started. So, you know, Stu's a dentist in The Hangover. And he's back doing dentistry in Hangover too. Like, you know, meet them where they are and see that they've tried to return to their normal lives, but you can't.

55:54Or show them having changed dramatically because of the events, but whatever it is needs to somehow be in contrast or comparison to where they were. And just have characters comment a little bit on the time that's passed. And there should be some bit of overlap, some little piece of something that even though a movie professes to have wrapped everything up by the end, well, introduce that really there was one little thing, one little flappy bit that wasn't wrapped up and have that kind of be your way into some of these characters so that not only are you meeting them with some context, but you're also beginning to imply why this sequel needs to exist, which certainly isn't because the studio wanted to make a lot more money.

56:42That would be crazy. That would just be silly. No, that never happens. No, that's not why we do them. I would also say do what I do, which is go watch your favorite sequels, favorite sequel movies, and just see what they're doing and see how those new characters are introduced. Have they jumped forward years in time? Is it the next day? How are they doing that? What are the things that you like? And then just steal it. I mean, steal it in the way that you steal it and adapt it for your own.

57:05John August:I think about like the Indiana Jones movies and it's like they don't have to sort of fundamentally reestablish Indiana Jones, but those initial scenes with him or with any character who's coming back need to have a quality of that original thing that's in conversation with the first movie. So people who are rewarded for remembering who that character is, but can also quickly be up to speed if they don't know who that person is, if they know what their function is. James Bond movies are the same kind of situation. It's like, who is Q, who is M, what is their function, and we're ready to go. All right, it's time for our one cool things.

57:36John August:Mine is this article by Amy Dang, sort of a blog post by her titled, I Solve My Mystery Fatigue with AI. And she says, here's the bold version of my claim. An AI literate patient running a good process with a frontier model can outperform most primary care physicians for ambiguous multi-system symptoms. And so in her case, it was this fatigue that she could not figure out what was actually happening to her. And so when she would go to her doctor, they would say, oh, maybe it's this, maybe it's this. And she was frustrated by the lack of a clear answer here. So what she did is actually take the AI out of it.

58:13John August:It's just like, it makes good sense, which is she was tracking and logging her symptoms. She was doing the tests that made sense. She was analyzing them, but most crucially, she was using an analysis to figure out like, who are the experts who could actually maybe address this thing? And like, who should she actually go talk to? because so often I think we sort of go to the first person who seems to be relevant and they're going to only answer to their limited expertise. So it's just a chance to sort of, what I like is she felt like a protagonist in a story faced with a situation who was doing protagonist-y things and taking agency to figure out what to do next.

58:49John August:So I would just recommend people to read this, especially if you're facing something where like, this is vague and weird. I don't know what this is. It may be a good place to start thinking about other ways through something. So just to challenge the headline here. Please. Her mystery fatigue wasn't solved by AI. It was solved by a doctor that she found through AI. It was solved through her taking agency to find the right doctor to do a thing. The doctor did it. I'm just saying that, yes, like you can also say, I'm going to take the time to research the best doctors out there with AI or without AI.

59:22But I just, the headline is, I solved my fatigue with AI. The implication being AI told me, stop eating this, start doing this and take this medicine, which it did not do in this case. No, it did not, no. Yeah, but the idea of I figured out the right doctor for me through AI. I mean, that is the kind of thing that I think AI, yeah.

59:42John August:Yeah, I think we're also often, you and I are often spoiled and Ryan is in London right now. We have in Los Angeles access to all this sort of, the specialists and to do all the things. I mean, Craig, with your diabetes diagnosis, you were able to find the doctor who was like the right person for this, had you been in a smaller market that didn't have that person, you could be struggling. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And so that's why, and so I'd say like, yes, 10 years ago, you might be able to Google this, but like, would you be able to find the right path through this? I think it does help in these situations.

1:00:14John August:And so. Yes, I can see that completely. Yeah. Just challenging the slightly clickbaity headline there. You should challenge it. Yeah. I have a game, John, again. I can't even imagine. I mean, but I'm really enjoying this one. So, John, you played Myst, I assume. I don't know. Oh, yeah, I loved Myst. Oh, my God. Ryan's nodding his head. Okay, so you're one of us. So they're trying to make a Myst series. I think it's a really challenging series to make. The book-based metaphysical lore of Myst was not why I played Myst. No. Was it puzzles? Was it puzzles, Craig, that you loved? It was puzzles. Not what I, I mean, no offense to those guys, the great brothers who did those things, but the story was not necessarily, it was rather opaque and not the most compelling part of those games.

1:01:01But there have been sort of mist-ish kind of things that have come along. And this one is rather mist-ish and quite stylish. It's called Dimhaven, The Lost Source. Yeah, I'm clicking through the link. It looks nice.

1:01:14John August:It was at dimhaven.com. Yes, and they had made Quern, which is another kind of cool game. And what I like about this one is it's got a particularly weird style. You arrive on an island that is in some vaguely Eastern European-ish kind of place. And there's a mystery and you're looking for your uncle and stuff is happening. But what is particularly nice about this, and I find these games really struggle with this, is that they've tuned it to a pretty good difficulty level. And they tell you, we're not going to hold your hand. You have to figure this stuff out on your own. It's got a great kind of level where you're like, what am I doing?

1:01:54and I'm going, well, what if they mean this or, oh, wait, aha. They kind of built these puzzles so you get some solidly good ahas in it. So I've made it past sort of the first and second sections. I'm on to the third now. I'm really enjoying it. It plays fairly well in the Steam Deck. It's not really great on the Steam Deck. There's some funky stuff. I'm so happy by having a game four inches from my stupid eyes that I'll deal with the Steam Deck issues. But it's on Steam. so you can play it on anything, really.

1:02:25John August:Yeah, I'm looking at the Steam page here. It looks like it's also playable on the Steam clients for PC and for Mac as well. Exactly, yeah, you can play it on. It would be preferable to play it probably on the Steam Deck. On a desktop, yeah? Yeah, you can play it on a desktop, exactly. But then, of course, I've been installing a game on my computer, which I'm not allowed to do, so therefore... What? Huh? If I have a game on my computer, Craig, I'm going to play this game on my computer rather than doing the writing I'm supposed to be doing. That's why... You can't. Games are for iPads for me. All work and no play, John.

1:02:57John August:Yeah. Ryan, do you have something to share with us? One cool thing. I do. And John, I know you're very techie, so I'm sure you've brought up VPNs before, but I have a very specific VPN thing that I uncovered over the last year. I've lived in London since 2020. So a lot of the things that I like and enjoy, sports in particular, have kind of been taken away from me. NHL hockey is very hard to follow when you're living in London. There's also time issues. So I haven't seen a Super Bowl in six years. I haven't seen an Oscars in six years. That's a separate sort of thing. But I'm sure there are others that work.

1:03:34I use this Nord VPN and I actually put it on my Apple TV. And it's just very easy for anybody that's also marooned in another place where you can't get the things that you want. It's very easy to toggle on, toggle off. Actually, I used it for a year to access HBO Max because HBO Max just launched here like two months ago. So it used to be Sky. I could not bear to watch our shows on Sky because they put commercials in it and they compress it and crush it to death. And it was just very depressing to me. So Peacock, Paramount Plus, the other things that aren't yet available here in the UK, it kind of defeats the things that look at it.

1:04:16And I'm, you know, I'm not stealing these things. I've subscribed to them. I'm just not in a locale where you can get it. You're busting the geofence, you know. Exactly, exactly. And the Nord, it sits on my Apple TV, turn it on and off. It's been great for watching sports. MLB is really the only thing that doesn't like it, but MLB, you can actually get over here with the MLB app. So I've sort of figured out everything other than the time problem of the Super Bowl starts at one in the morning. I use it because I'm in Canada and a lot of stuff gets geofenced out of Canada, including HBO, which up there is, they don't have HBO Canada yet.

1:04:50It's Crave. Crave, yeah. Then I got a Crave subscription, so you know. Okay. Because sometimes I'm like, what did we do in that scene? And I'm like, just go on HBO Max and put, okay, Crave. Yeah. What's annoying about our production facility is that their whole, you know, Wi-Fi IT thing prevents any VPN from being used. Yes. Oh, correct. And so we can't do it at work. But yes, when I'm at home and I want to watch something on HBO Max, I'm absolutely, NordVPN, that's the same one I use. I just put myself in Los Angeles and off and running. Yeah, great. And then actually HBO Max, now that they're available here, it's different content based on where you are so you can toggle between them.

1:05:35Oh, that's cool. I had not seen Chernobyl. I was alone last summer because we were shooting so my family went away and I had not seen Chernobyl since it came out. I was like, I'm going to fire up Chernobyl again. Let's feel good. So I'm depressed again. HBO Max Europe did not have it, which surprised me. Because it's a European story. Why would they not have it? It was just so strange to me. So I was like, okay. So I toggled back and then I found it. You know, I wonder if the reason is because it was a Sky co-production. Yes. Sky, in fact, paid more for Chernobyl to be made than HBO did. and I wonder if in the split that became something that...

1:06:14They got in the divorce? They got in the divorce. Interesting.

1:06:17John August:Yeah. Crazy. All right. That is our show for this week. Scriptress is produced by Meredith Stedman. Supposedly. Edited by Matthew Cilelli. I like this. Our intern is Lauren Loesberg. Our outro this week is by Matthew Cilelli. He's dusted off his Game of Thrones outro and I think he added some drums because there's a lot of new drums in your music there. I love it very much. Also great. I really like the tapestry, the embroidery intro. Now it's great. Yes. You and company is why you and company is the maker of our title sequence. They're incredible. Love those guys. Good stuff. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com.

1:06:54John August:That's also the place where you can send questions like the one we answered today. You'll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a sign up for a weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Script Notes book is available wherever you buy books. If you buy it in London there, It's a narrower book, but it's the same content. Yeah, learn something, right? Learn something, absolutely. Stop watching Chernobyl and read a book. Seriously. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes and give us a follow. You'll find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast.

1:07:26John August:We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You'll find those at Cotton Bureau. The show notes with all the links to things we talked about today are in the email. You get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to our premium subscribers. Craig, why do you lower premium subscribers? Well, John, they help pay for all of our wonderful people, including our producer and our editor and our equipment. Our intern, our paid intern. Our intern, our paid intern, and of course the fees that are required to host the show. And when all is said and done at the end of the year, if there's a little bit left over, charity.

1:07:58Charity, yeah.

1:07:58John August:So we're supporting the Entertainment Community Fund and other great work here in Los Angeles. Basically, we're angels. That's what it is. Yeah. Nobility. Good people. Yeah. We're saints. Saints. I can't even say it without laughing. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptos.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on Dragons. Ryan Condal, an absolute pleasure talking with you about your show. Congratulations. And keep doing it. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you, guys.

1:08:37Thank you.