Tyler Gibb – Writer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker

I often solicit feedback from anyone who’ll read, look at, listen to or watch my work. Over many years I’ve learned a fair bit about receiving this criticism. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned – and this can be applied to opinions in general – is to consider the source.

What someone says about your work really does say more about them than it does about the work. Does that mean I should just toss out any opinion I don’t like? Not at all! It just means I have to consider the source, and in addition to that, ask the right questions.

General feedback is where you’re going to get most of the critic’s own personal tastes weighing into the mix. So asking specific questions is a good way to get at the information you need. Again, considering the source, I may ask someone if they understood a storyline; if it wasn’t too confusing; if a certain character came off as shady or down right evil; whether or not an ending was both satisfying and a surprise or not. By getting specific about the points in the work that I may be concerned with, I can skip notes like “I didn’t think it was that funny,” or “it was too gory”. Points like that may still be relevant but only when considering the source of the comments; humour is very subjective and “too gory” for a fan of romantic comedies is a little different than for a fan of horror films.

It can be very difficult to get close to anything resembling objective feedback, especially when dealing with acquaintances. And if all you’re looking for is a thumbs up or down on whether it’s “good” or not, then forget about honesty. The biggest struggle is often extracting that initial objective opinion from one’s self. Once we can do that then we can acknowledge and assess the weaknesses in our work and seek out the feedback that’s going to help remedy it.

And remember, if you’re soliciting feedback you’re asking for it. So suck it up and respect the person taking their time to contemplate what you’re giving them to contemplate. Negative feedback is still much more gratifying than no feedback at all.

A friend of mine called me up the other day seeking advice. She was on her way to sign her first apartment lease and wanted to know if I had any tips on negotiating the rent.

I guess when you subside by doing your own thing with no perceptible means of gainful employment for years on end people just assume you have some deeper knowledge of wheeling and dealing. Negotiation, however, isn’t exactly something that comes naturally to me. In fact, I usually defer situations involving this skill to my beloved Vidya who could probably bargain her way out of quicksand.

None the less I will impart my advice on this subject which I’m sure I have gathered over the years in no small part thanks to Vidya.

Tip 1 – Is this a negotiable situation? (Vid would probably say yes, anything situation is, but I’m a little more of a prude) So I recommend you do your homework. Figure out what precedents have been set. In the case of housing, is it a buyers market or a sellers market? What’s the other guy’s interest in negotiating?

Tip 2 – Choose your battlefield. Heading to your lease-signing with bargaining for a lower rent in mind is not exactly the right venue. Do that and you’ll have one pissed off landlord. Negotiate early when both parties are prepared to engage in that process. Same applies to the creative field. Someone wants to buy your script? Awesome. Just don’t wait til you’re at the contract signing to start negotiating residuals. (Hahaha, residuals for novice a writer… I kill me.)

Tip 3 – Be patient and say as little as possible. This is all about gathering information and is true of any similar situation. Interviewers pulls this routine all the time. The more quiet you are the more the person on the other side of the table is likely to want to fill that void with chit chat and the more they talk, the more you’ll find out about their motivations maybe even their emotions (emotions are negotiation death).

Tip 4, and probably the most important tip – Be able to walk away.

When my friend asked about negotiation tips the first thing I asked her was: How badly do want this apartment? She wanted it bad. In fact, she needed it. Need is Want’s ugly brother. In other words she didn’t have a leg to stand on where negotiation was concerned. Sure, you wouldn’t be haggling over something unless you wanted it but you have to know – from the outset – what your ceiling is and be able to walk away if the other guy won’t meet it.

In the creative field this might seem like the hardest tip to meet. After all, if you’re just some schmuck trying to make a name for himself and someone wants to buy your script then being able to walk away isn’t exactly something you’re going to want to do. But have a look back at the other tips and see if this is a situation you even want to be in. Do your research. Find out if the other guy is even willing to give you a fair price for your work. Find out out if they’re likely to do your work justice. And figure out what the project’s worth to you.

My friend decided to forgo negotiating for a lower rent. She may have gotten the decrease if she’d done her bargaining up front or had other housing options but unfortunately she’d missed that opportunity. Still, she got the apartment which is what she wanted and that’s the important thing.

Basically, I think a successful negotiation is when everybody walks away feeling like they got what they wanted. A very successful negotiation is when the other guy walks away feeling like he got what he wanted when you know he could have gotten a lot more.

A picture is worth a thousand words but make sure you don’t put any in your script.

The industry standard for screenplays is rigid. Margins, font, spacing; all done the same way to preserve a format by which everything from a story’s pacing to the film’s budget is regulated. Very good reasons there’s no room for illustration. I would even hesitate to change up the font on my cover pages for fear of upsetting a stickler.

White paper, black ink; nothing more, nothing less.

No wonder it’s so hard to get someone, anyone, to read one of these things.

I have a friend who’s been trying to sell a script. A wad of those white pages marked with black ink. It’s no easy feat. However, what my friend did to get producers interested in their wad of paper was something I’d only ever heard mixed reviews about. Something to supplement the wad and essentially absolve the target “reader” of having to actually read anything right off the bat. The tactic was a visual presentation. A boardroom style visual summary of the proposed project.

Now I’ve heard that this can fall right in with the whole don’t illustrate your script law but every once in a while one of these anecdotal stories will appear and chip away at the rule. I heard that Michael Davis, writer/director of 2007’s Shoot’em up won execs over with what basically amounted to flip book animations of the action scenes to his movie. Whether or not the script got him in the door to start with, I don’t know, but as the story goes it’s the visual presentation that did the convincing.

More and more I’ve been pondering the power of the average film executive’s laziness– I mean the power of a visual presentation to sell your idea rather than a script. I think there might be something to it. Eventually your script will have to stand for itself but it’s that tingle of interest, that whetting of the appetite that goes a long way…

My buddy with the wad of paper? Word is that script is now being passed around Hollywood like gravy on Thanksgiving.

When I was a kid – I don’t know, ten or something – I was family bound to a cottage in Northern Ontario for a day. The cottage was on a lake and I was apparently into fishing at the time. I sat myself down on a rock on the shoreline and began fishing. The memory is hazy. I don’t quite remember if I’d been told about an elusive pike just off shore or if by process of sitting there and getting strike upon strike on my line I’d created the mythology myself. There was, however, this pike prowling the waters off shore with whom I became locked in a mortal battle. I’d snagged and lost him a dozen times. He’d claimed at least two of my lures – the tree branches above my head had claimed a third. Each time he struck, he escaped. And each time he struck, I got better at reacting to his attacks, drawing him in. I sat there all day. Alone. I sat there through a rain storm. Fish on, fish off for hours. Night was coming. My family was fixing to leave when I finally reeled him in, landed him… Didn’t have a clue what to do with him.

His face was bruised. I don’t know if fish bruise but I swear his face was bruised from where I’d dragged him over the rocks over and over again. I held him up so that someone could take a picture of us. They told me to wait while they killed and cleaned him so that I could take the fillets with me. Kill him? This worthy adversary? In my daylong battle this ultimate outcome had never even occurred to me. Nor even that there would inevitably be an outcome one way or the other.

We let him go. I let him go.

Patience is a funny thing. I’m a big believer in the notion that a every day you wish away is a day closer to your death. So I don’t wish away my days. On the other hand, I am patient. And patience, by definition, dissolves away time. Finding harmony in both philosophies is a careful balancing act.

I let a big fish go this week in order to pursue another. A big fish that’s put up a good fight and that I’ve never quite landed. With enough patience and yet without wishing away those days in between, maybe someday I’ll find myself back on that shore, back on that rock, pursuing that worthy adversary once more.

I like names. Specifically the etymology of names. Maybe it’s name envy. Perhaps being someone saddled with a given name that is derived from the profession of laying roof shingles or tiles is responsible for this.

For this reason I usually have a hard time labeling a character that I’m creating without attaching some form of significance to their name. Ironically I usually hate it when writer’s do this because if I can quickly root the etymology of a character’s name while I’m reading or watching the story unfold, it usually pulls me right out of the action. That said, I can’t really help myself. I think I’d rather have an audience snicker at a metaphorical name than be bored by another hackneyed hero named Jack.

One of my favourite resources for researching names is website BehindTheName.com. I can spend hours there.

On a particularly trying (self-imposed) assignment, I was looking to name a husband and wife couple for a script I was writing. The thematic nature of the script teamed with the roles of these principal characters had me looking for monikers that would signify that these two were hosts, proprietors, stewards of a home which served as the main set piece of the story. That led me to my first name, Stewart, a derivation of steward. For my female lead I found a name that embodies the mistress of a house, Marta, which led me to its English derivation, Martha. Perfect names for my domestic couple.

However, my own domestic partner was no more than ten pages into the script when she chuckled uncertainly and called out to me, “Martha Stewart? Is that supposed to be a joke?”

Yup. Wrote ninety pages without realizing it. Fortunately this was an easy fix but none the less left me feeling a little silly. Names are fun, but there are obviously some perils if you’re not being careful.

Now… Is anybody else more than a little struck by the fact that domesticity guru Martha Stewart‘s name actually echos her professional calling as perfectly as if it had been written for the screen? Could I be wrong about this whole entertainment thing? Maybe there’s a roof out there not getting tiled because I’ve been deluding myself!