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Zack Stentz’s Stance on Script Stakes

Zack Stentz’s Stance on Script Stakes

I may not have previously expressed my appreciation for Zack Stentz (from the truly awesome Sarah Connor Chronicles show), so here we go.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying his daily long tweetscussions© about screenwriting for a bit now.
They’re so cool that he should really compile them on his blog.
Since this isn’t the case (yet?), I shall do it for him. Rather, I’ll compile what I think is one of his better tweetologue© from this past month: the August 6 talk about stakes. And not the Buffy kind.

Turns out, scripts need to have stakes. Yeah, shocker. What’s relevant to us however, especially for television, is that stakes can’t be as high as a lot of modern block-busters (at least they are in appearance). You can’t save the planet every episode. In fact, one would think that the average action movie has the Earth/USA in jeopardy, constantly. Turns out, this isn’t quite right. You should dig a little bit deeper to find the real meat. That’s right, character stakes (aka TV’s bread and butter).
Zack goes over a few feature examples, specifically from both Thor (which he co-wrote) and the Star Trek reboot. It may not be much (only ten tweets), but it’s still pretty interesting.

And now, I’ll shut up and let the tweets talk:

A TV Calling 3.0

A TV Calling 3.0

Welcome to the third version of A TV Calling!

In 2008, the site was launched.
In 2010, the site moved to WordPress and switched to a custom-made modernized design.
Today, the site goes back to its minimalist roots.

I’m super excited to finally open the doors on this brand new skin!

The idea: have a simple, efficient design that could emphasize the most important content of the site (i.e. the articles).
I think we’ve accomplished that pretty darn well.

Although I wasn’t able to launch it on the site’s fifth birthday, I say better slightly late than never.

Say hello to a clean, open view of the articles, in (almost) full width.
Say goodbye to distracting sidebars. The important stuff is now condensed into the static menu.

You can explore at will the site. It’s easier than ever.

What you’ll find:
– New “hover” menus, with quick-access to the most requested articles and popular sections from the site.
– Fully-redesigned pages with a ton of useful information.
– Completely responsive theme that automatically adjusts to your device: desktop, tablet or phone. (For example, there are three variations of the main menu.)
– Remastered pictures and banners for all featured articles. Bigger, brighter, better.

New feature: “Next on A TV Calling”
As the name implies, it’s a teaser for upcoming articles and announcements that are gonna be on the site.
You can check it out on the left, towards the bottom of the sidebar.
Exciting!

Speaking of, there’ll be a few new regular segments that are coming down the pipeline.
And additional major announcements are still to come. Don’t miss next week.

In the meantime, enjoy the site!

Grand Redesign

Grand Redesign

I’ve been teasing “big things in the works” for TV Calling.

I’m happy to finally announce one of these things.
*drumroll*
A complete redesign of the site!

That’s right. I’m revamping the design entirely, from scratch.
I’ll be presenting the brand-new theme in the coming days (just as soon as I’ve fixed a few pesky bugs). The unveiling should, hopefully, be within the next week or two.

The new theme will answer a few of people’s requests throughout the past few years, not the least of which is a reversal in color-scheme. The sudden switch may be quite jarring to some, but more eye-pleasing.

This is just the tip of the grand revival iceberg you’ve all been waiting for (at least, I have).

More announcements will be, well, announced as soon as TV Calling’s new skin rolls out.
Shortly.

Stay tuned!