cheeseburger

A cishet man getting pegged by his cishet girlfriend is not gay, he's not less of a man or submissive by default. A cishet man getting pegged by his cishet girlfriend can be sexually dominant and simply likes to be fucked in his ass - these two can co-exist. Yet, in the eyes of cishet society, a man that likes to have his ass played with, must enjoy it because it's "degrading" , not because it simply feels good.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

A friend of the blog recently asked me to discuss tips on script breakdown and scheduling. Script Breakdown is one of the AD 101 essentials and nothing else can really fully happen without it. I realize, also, that it’s fall semester and many of you are students just beginning to prep for your big fall projects or theses or whatever may be (my college was not a normal one in these regards). But even if you’re no longer a student, and even if you’re not an AD, breaking down a script is an essential building block of pre-production that all filmmakers should have a good grasp on.

It begins with the script. Everything begins with the script, actually. Which is why I’m such an asshole about script formatting. The format is the blueprint for production and the breakdown is the reason why. I’ve had to reformat scripts just to perform a proper breakdown on them. Please learn and utilize proper formatting for script writing and WHY and don’t just rely on Final Draft or Celtx to do everything for you. If you’re a student, you should be typing this all out to understand the format better. Don’t even bother with the programs until you can format a script in Word docs. 

So you have your script. It’s properly formatted. Now you need to number the scenes. Just a numerical numbering. I’m being redundant on purpose. Don’t put “5A” as a scene on your White Script (1st Shooting Draft). 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… etc. Yes, you may jump back and forth between scenes in the script, but we can just shoot it altogether, it does not matter. Do not confuse the Assistant Cameras or Scripty by having scenes in the script labeled with letters unless you are on the revisions (scene and page numbering and revisions is a WHOLE ‘NOTHER blog entry).

Ok, scenes are numbered. Now begins the full breakdown. You’ll need some things: a printed script with scene numbers, some different color highlighters and colored pencils, a pen, possibly a ruler if you’re not good at eyeballing 8ths of a page. And one of these:

There’s tons of templates for this online that you can print out from anywhere. If you have Movie Magic, it too has a whole breakdown template and it prints out similar to the sheet above as a default.

Each sheet represents a scene. Sometimes a scene has two sheets if you run out of room on the first one (say for a heavy stunt scene, or a scene with a lot of characters…). 

Let’s look at the elements:

(1) - fill in the date you’re making or updating the sheet. Pretty explanatory, yes?

(2) - this is color coding for the production schedule. Yellow is Day Exterior. White is Day Interior. Green is Night Interior. And Blue is Night Exterior. Movie Magic has other colors, say for scenes that are morning or dusk and scenes that are implied to bounce back and forth between interior and exterior. 

(3) - production company. Make up a name if you’re a student film or don’t have a production company. this is the fun part of making movies… naming your imaginary production studio!

(4) - name of the movie! don’t think I need to elaborate here…

(5) - scene number. Yes, this is what I asked you to prep with the shooting script. Again, one scene per page for beginners. 

(6) - scene name - this is really your slugline - HIGH SCHOOL - GROCERY STORE - DAD’S ROOM, etc. 

(7) - description: short and sweet description of the scene. DAD BUYS MILK. ADAM PUNCHES THE WALL. VAN FLIES OFF CLIFF, etc.

(8) - breakdown page number. each of these sheets should be numbered, just like the script pages. Just go up numerically, pg 1, pg 2, pg 3, etc. Again, you can have multiple pages per scene depending on how many elements there are in the scene. 

(9) - INT. or EXT. is the scene inside or outside? it could be both, actually, (say, an interior scene calls for an exterior establishing shot, but there’s no actual scene in the script listed for that exterior). but this is rare.

(10) - Day or Night. Yes, it could also be morning, or dusk, and if it needs to be that specific, list it, but mostly we just want to know if this a night or day setup.

(11) - page count. here’s where the ruler comes in. 1 page of screen play is broken down by 8ths, so 1 page = 8/8ths of a page. This is how we determine how long a scene runs. Scene only takes up half a page? the page count is 4/8ths. scene runs multiple pages in the script? let’s say that 3 1/8ths a page. or 5 6/8ths a page. or even more… (smack your writer).  

(12) - CAST. this is your characters list. And each character is assigned a number. Only speaking roles are listed here. RED is the highlight color for characters in the physical breakdown. 

(13) - STUNTS. not all scenes will have physical action, but this is where you would list any stunts. Stunts are ORANGE on the breakdown key. Stunts often are different from special effects (there’s a separate box for SFX). Even if the stunt has SFX involved, just list the stunt part here. You will list the SFX in another box.

(14) - EXTRAS/SILENT BITS - this is not the general Extras category. This is for extras that have a specific job but no dialog. Say, the postman delivers mail to the lead character, tips his hat, and heads off without saying anything. The POSTMAN would be a silent bit. These get highlighted in YELLOW. These are separated because sometimes they are paid more than background extras because they have a specific purpose other than filling in the background.

(15) - EXTRAS/ATMOSPHERE - these are your background extras. Spectators at a sporting event or concert, people walking by the background of a sidewalk scene, people shopping in a store, people in the waiting room reading magazines and looking bored or scared, etc. They don’t have a specific function, they are simply to fill in the background. These are highlighted GREEN. 

(16) - SPECIAL EFFECTS - this is gory makeup, compositing effects that need track markers, heads being chopped off, bruises, etc. anything that needs to be specially rigged for a certain effect to take place. practical and visual/optical effects, and makeup effects are highlighted in BLUE. 

(17) - PROPS & SET DEC - a surprisingly often forgotten about element of student productions. You’d be surprised how many projects I’ve seen that had no art department whatsoever (even “pro” ones). PROPS are the objects that a character uses. SET DEC are simply decor that the script mentions. Both go in this space (although, try to keep props and set dec separately labeled within the box) and both are highlighted in PURPLE.

(18) - VEHICLES/ANIMALS - the script I’m working on has mass amounts of cars and a horse. Treat cars and animals like characters, for they are often a bigger pain to get in and off set than often thought about.  Give them numbers like they’re characters and highlight them in PINK.

(19) - WARDROBE - specific outfit elements mentioned - police badges, ties, winter coats, boots, etc. These are CIRCLED in the script.

(20) - MAKEUP/HAIR - the beauty school section of the breakdown. If the script lists specific hair or makeup (wigs, hair pieces, clown makeup, glitter, etc.) Some people list special effects makeup like bruising and aged makeup or blood in here too, but only do that if you makeup person is also your SFX makeup person. you really want to keep them separate. Put an ******ASTERISK next to the makeup/hair elements in a scene.

(21) - SOUND EFFECTS & MUSIC - this is the sound section. door SLAMS, glass BREAKS, child SNEEZES, MUSIC BLARES from a passing car, etc. I also list the numbers of the speaking characters in this box, or if there’s any voice over, singing, screaming, anything the sound guy will need to know outside of basic dialog. Highlight sound elements in BROWN.

(22) - SPECIAL EQUIPMENT - cranes, jibs, dollies, condors, that beautiful 100K light I posted a while back, rain makers, fog machines, forklifts, etc. Anything that you really don’t want to rent for the entirety of the production that is needed for this scene would be listed here. Draw a BOX around anything that indicates the use of special equipment.

(23) - PRODUCTION NOTES - anything about this particular scene that needs to be noted. Morning light, needs to be shot with another scene, mass amounts of special effects, heavy stunt day, animal wrangler needed, shoot over two days, etc. 

So this is your basic script breakdown sheet. It is not, however, the be-all and end-all of breakdown sheets. This one is a good start, but you’ll find that a lot of templates get far more in depth (like having boxes for Camera Effects or Grip & Electric notes). Feel free to build your own sheet based on the script/production. The more detailed the breakdown, the better it is for department heads to get prepared. 

Now that you know the basic elements of a script breakdown, tomorrow I’ll discuss the basics of creating a lined script and filling your breakdown sheets and how that leads to scheduling and budgeting. 

Feel free to ask me any questions, but please do so in my “ASK ANYTHING” box and not just replying. I can’t just simply reply to your replies for some stupid reason (tumblr… what?!)

And they were pier-mates!!

some info, crowdstrike is essentially an antivirus software for enterprises. which means normal laypeople cant really get it, they're for businesses and organisations and important stuff.

so, on a friday evening (it of course wasnt friday everywhere but it was friday evening in oceania which is where it first started causing damage due to europe and na being asleep), crowdstrike pushed out an update to their windows users that caused a bug.

before i get into what the bug is, know that friday evening is the worst possible time to do this because people are going home. the weekend is starting. offices dont have people in them. this is just one of many perfectly placed failures in the rube goldburg machine of crowdstrike. there's a reason friday is called 'dont push to live friday' or more to the point 'dont fuck it up friday'

so, at 3pm at friday, an update comes rolling into crowdstrike users which is automatically implemented. this update immediately causes the computer to blue screen of death. very very bad. but it's not simply a 'you need to restart' crash, because the computer then gets stuck into a boot loop.

this is the worst possible thing because, in a boot loop state, a computer is never really able to get to a point where it can do anything. like download a fix. so there is nothing crowdstrike can do to remedy this death update anymore. it is now left to the end users.

it was pretty quickly identified what the problem was. you had to boot it in safe mode, and a very small file needed to be deleted. or you could just rename crowdstrike to something else so windows never attempts to use it.

it's a fairly easy fix in the grand scheme of things, but the issue is that it is effecting enterprises. which can have a looooot of computers. in many different locations. so an IT person would need to manually fix hundreds of computers, sometimes in whole other cities and perhaps even other countries if theyre big enough.

another fuck up crowdstrike did was they did not stagger the update, so they could catch any mistakes before they wrecked havoc. (and also how how HOW do you not catch this before deploying it. this isn't a code oopsie this is a complete failure of quality ensurance that probably permeates the whole company to not realise their update was an instant kill). they rolled it out to everyone of their clients in the world at the same time.

and this seems pretty hilarious on the surface. i was havin a good chuckle as eftpos went down in the store i was working at, chaos was definitely ensuring lmao. im in aus, and banking was literally down nationwide.

but then you start hearing about the entire country's planes being grounded because the airport's computers are bricked. and hospitals having no computers anymore. emergency call centres crashing. and you realised that, wow. crowdstrike just killed people probably. this is literally the worst thing possible for a company like this to do.

crowdstrike was kinda on the come up too, they were starting to become a big name in the tech world as a new face. but that has definitely vanished now. to fuck up at this many places, is almost extremely impressive. its hard to even think of a comparable fuckup.

specific examples include but are not limited to

why is an evil timeline character design disabled? (why do the heroes go through equally punishing battles and never lose an arm, a leg, an eye?)

why are the futuristic scifi terrorists uniformly darker skinned? (why are the heroes so much lighter?)

why is the greedy boss fat? (why are the heroes skinny?)

why is the criminal mastermind heavily scarred? (why is the brooding, traumatized hero unscathed?)

why is the predatory creep a bearded person in a dress and makeup? (why are none of the heroes trans women?)

who taught you that this is how things are?