Archive for March, 2008

scripped frenzy - prologue #2

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Sorry for the delay, folks. Turns out you can’t blog from China! I don’t know how they do it, but the Party knows which are blogging websites and which are not, and from inside the country my browser cannot find Wordpress. God bless America.

Fortunately, China has other things going for it, like cheap food, cheap taxis, some great universities, and very cheap beer. In fact, I even had two cans of Tsingtao on the plane ride back to the homeland so I could sleep better. And believe me, sleep I did. China is also in the middle of an incredible infrastructure boom. This is no 3rd world country; it has all the fixings of a major metropolis. There’s a maglev in Shanghai and 8-lane streets throughout Beijing. The internet is slow and censored but it is certainly available, and often is free at cafes. The people, from my limited perspective, are friendly and happy. But then again, I mostly saw and interacted with the business class. That’s less than 1% of China.

But, according to the project I worked on as part of MIT’s China Lab, there are plenty of writers in China! A website, run by ChineseAll, gets 50 million uniques each month and has content driven by real Chinese authors. It’s almost like a Scripped for novels, which is why I was so enthusiastic about working on this project. This is a model that works, and in China they’re already ahead of us, 50 million users strong. This was the best spring break ever.

Unfortunately, it meant I didn’t get my outline done, but I have a bit more inspiration and real-life experience than I left with, and that should count for something. I also read half of William Goldman’s book, Adventure’s in the Screen Trade, which I thought was marvelous. Then the time change caught up with me and I fell asleep. Still, I feel invigorated and excited to do this Script Frenzy.

I’ll  do my outline today in entrepreneurship class. The writing starts tomorrow!

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Miami

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

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It seems like I only write when I’m on vacation, but I swear, I actually do work from time to time. I was in Miami this past week for Spring Break and my girlfriend and I had an awesome time. We attended the Miami Masters Series tennis tourney, spent a lot of time on the beach, and just generally had a nice time. We were lucky enough to sit in the IMG Luxury box thanks to my sister and brother-in-law and we watched Novak Djokovic lose and Rafael Nadal win (which is great because I am a huge Nadal fan and I dislike Djokovic). My sister interviewed Nadal after the match, and was nice enough to mention her in his blog. He’s a great guy…. The picture above is a bit weird - my iPhone somehow skewed the way the court looks….

On the Scripped front, we have a huge week ahead of us. We’re gearing up for Script Frenzy and we have a few big meetings ahead. We’re really excited about the way things are going, and really appreciate all of your positive feedback. Please let us know what feature you’d like to see next!

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Clean Kitchen

Monday, March 17th, 2008

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This week is finals week at UCLA, but fortunately I have no finals. Instead, I have to deal with writing a 20 page paper, and giving two presentations. I’m not sure which I’d rather deal with - papers, or presentations. Regardless, I think we can agree that both are an incredible pain.

 On the bright side, I FINISHED MY FIRST SCREENPLAY ON SCRIPPED! I am super, super excited about the work I put into this thing - I hope my screenwriting professor likes it. I talked about it before, but it’s basically about two middle-aged guys competing for leauge tennis glory. It’s almost like a “Dodgeball” for 40 year olds.

 Oh, and I also cleaned my kitchen, which I’m super proud of. It has been weeks since I’ve had any meaningful time to clean anything, so I’m happy about that. Userbase is growing, positive feedback is rolling in, and we’re really happy about the site!

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scripped frenzy - prologue #1

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Well, here we go. Scripped is on its way, and it certainly keeps us busy. I also notice from our analytics that people are actually reading this blog. I guess that means we need to be careful about what goes up here. Bummer.

There is a lot I wish I could write. We’re being compared to certain other companies you might also know about. But competition is good. It means there is a market for free online screenwriting applications. Surprise! People like free stuff! It becomes a competition, I suppose, for the best writing community and/or embedded writing tool. That’s the main difference between us and the other guys. But I don’t want to (or simply can’t) dwell on that here. Instead, I’ll write about a another kind of competition: Script Frenzy.

I was on a bus between Boston and New York City last year with an old friend from Berkeley, telling him about the nascent form of Scripped. He thought it was cool and wondered how we would get users. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you run a competition for scripts, just like NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month?”

“Hmm,” I replied. “That’s interesting.” And I put my headphones back on.

But the idea stuck, and I visited the NaNoWriMo website and discovered the Office of Letters and Light. Then, to my surprise and near-dismay, I found it, the actual embodiment of the idea from the bus: Script Frenzy. Shoot, I thought, they took our idea. Then I remembered something I learned back in elementary school: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So I joined their email list.

The first Script Frenzy happened in June 2007. It was awesome. I didn’t participate, but I still thought it was awesome. I liked receiving their emails as I sat in a garage in Los Angeles, scheming up Scripped. When they asked for donations, I said hello, and tacked another $50 onto my student debt. To my delight, they wrote back.

Thus began a very friendly relationship with the founders and organizers of both the novel writing and screenplay contests. With the Office of Letters and Light located just across the San Francisco bay from where I grew up, it was easy to meet in person. I was taken immediately by their passion and dedication and hoped Scripped might be able to contribute in some way. Since we offer Scripped Writer for free and do not charge for PDF export, it seemed natural that they might suggest our website to their new writers.

We are also thrilled to promote Script Frenzy to everyone in the Scripped community. In fact, I’m so excited, I will also blog about my first Frenzy experience. Write a full script in the month of April? No problem!

All in a day’s work.

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Import (Beta) Ready to Rock

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

You didn’t really think we would leave you without an Import Function, did you?

When you start a new script, you will now be able to import an old script from Final Draft, CELTX, Movie Magic, or any of your other favorite screenwriting programs. Test it out by starting a new script today!

For guidance on how to use import effectively, please refer to The Help Center.