Screenwriting : Live-Action or Animated? SUPER TURBO JET BOATS by Daniel Stuelpnagel

I'm so grateful and stoked to be in talks with creatives, finance, talent, tech and powerboat industry aficionados in advance of bringing this script for a walk around the town.

A fun project I wrote last year and a zeitgeist of teamwork, enthusiasm, love and joy, and also powerboat racing, filmmaking and vampire supermodel adventures in the jungle, you heard it here first!

I had a crack at the U-99 on Lake Washington for speed trials back in the early '70s. Fun was not the word that came to mind at the time.

Doug Nelson that is great to know, sounds like adrenaline overload?

With that budget it feels like live action.

I want to say animation, just because my son hates anything that isn't a cartoon. haha

J.M. Gulmire that's so right, I actually thought of The Incredibles as a lofty comparable, I remember enjoying just how flashy and retro it is and I feel like it captured the scope of story that would characterize live-action and also displayed the best advantages of animated feature.

At this point I am adapting this Adventure / Comedy feature script into a

TV sitcom format / industry picture as Pilot + Final Episode, an exciting creative journey this year facilitated largely by Stage 32 !!

Scott Sawitz do you think there is a flux convergence / breakpoint for budget and other considerations above or below which live action makes the most sense?

With regard to Story, I think it could be developed either way.

I appreciate your comments!

How did you come up "30M+ budget" for your movie idea? Of the 30M+ budget, how much did you pay yourself as writer?

Pixar Execs & Producers make like $10M+ fees on animated movies. It's two different worlds, two way different movie-making process.. Animation vs. Live-action. I dont even think there is a union for animation writers - no residuals.

Dan MaxXx thanks, it's a mid-range figure, definitely not a Pixar-level project at that budget, and yes they are different processes of filmmaking, yet there are places on the budget spectrum where those bifurcated paths converge and then diverge.

Mostly I am airing this question since nautical live-action can be a volatile type of production, so I think animated might actually be lower budget and certainly lower business risk.

In this scenario, which is again just a hypothetical, any payment coming to me would hopefully be a sufficient largesse from the script sale to get my WGA card, but if it's not this one it will be a different one down the road.

Anyway, I am now adapting this feature script into a multi-cam sitcom format and bringing the budget down to indie level.

Shooting on the water's tough. On my first feature, we had a yacht, a powerboat, and a rigid inflatable. You have to use a skeleton crew due to the confined spaces, turning the world around is an upheaval, and the compensation for damage can be horrific.

There's so much that can go wrong too and lots of potential pitfalls. One of the biggest issues with shooting on the water is the inability to create boundaries. If people catch wind that you're shooting a movie, they're entitled to drop a hook and watch from nearby, potentially ruining shots and creating distractions. Weather is a major factor. Half the crew and cast will get sick. We had the generators fail on our yacht coming back into LA during a storm, lost the stabilisers, and were close to having to call the coast guard.

I've heard horrors of people dropping six figure value lenses in the ocean while passing them from boat to boat.

Everything needs to either be moored when it's not in use, and thus subject to a harbour mooring fee or trailered out and cleaned down every time they come out of salt water.

You also have tighter regulations and permit requirements now on anyone captaining a boat during filming and you need lifeguards on set at all times.

The production will also probably need a separate insurance policy just to cover anything on the water.

As ever, spending $30m is the easy part. Having a plan to recoup it is harder.

Daniel Stuelpnagel WGA has no authority for animation movies.

Daniel Stuelpnagel you had me at "...School slackers."

Shooting on water? See WATERWORLD for what can go wrong. LOL!

Shooting on water isn't easy BUT animation can be a hard sell.... I'd say find the right producer and they'll see the vision.

Hi, Maurice, I did three webinars so far this tear . My goal is to be more prolific in 2022.

CJ Walley thanks, that's exactly right, which is why I think the pie-in-the-sky version could be an animated feature in that hypothetical arena, however I'm going the sitcom direction in a very low-budget version where the boats are imaginary, focusing more on creative development these days.

@Abdur Mohammed I appreciate you, and I hope your creative work continues going well, I really enjoy seeing your concept art and atmospheric artful graphics that you've posted!

Scott Sawitz good point, the zero-budget social-media-streaming / table-read sitcom version I am working on will be a very grassroots proof of concept for the dialogue and at least it's a starting point to find out how much comedy is actually working on the page.

So I will endeavor to launch that with the idea of finding the right producer/partners and see if they do indeed see the vision!

With this spring weather I got out and shot some video, early stage fun concept for this PG Adventure Comedy, and part of the story involves small toy remote-control powerboats, I bought a couple a year ago but never got around to racing them at the lake,

but three weeks ago I took the 17" "REACT" with water-cooled electric motor and full remote-control including reverse and flip-mode (a hundred bucks!), out to a little tributary about twenty-five feet wide, shallow, and tested out the boat at high speeds, got some shots, then crashed it into the bank covered with foliage, and had to wade over and get it out, of course I'm outfitted with new waterproof boots, but with the layer of a century's worth of muddy leaves the river bottom is like quicksand, so I got fairly muddy, but I got the shot.

Then the other week I hiked out through a marsh and found a larger intersection of three tributaries, the little bay is about almost a hundred feet in diameter, geese, ducks, heron, hawks, turtles, fantastic.

So I zoomed the boat around and got some amazing shots, because the turning radius is wide and the speed is so fast that it's a high-risk process ... just shooting on my phone

Sure enough, I ran it aground again on a muddy sand bank twenty yards upriver.

Time to go wading again, where I sank ankle deep and felt the mud pulling at my boots, slogged through the mud struggling for balance, got the boat, got the shot.

So I posted two clips on IG please check out the link in my Profile if you're interested to see that, and I am so grateful to Stage 32 for facilitating growth of cinematic visions, it's a spectacular nurturing community!

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I enjoyed your videos, Daniel. You said "...I got out and shot some video, early stage fun concept for this PG Adventure Comedy." Are you going to use the videos when you pitch your project?

Sounds pretty cool Daniel, good luck and congrats

Thanks Maurice Vaughan, it's more like proof of concept, for me! Proving to myself the entertainment value of the story.

I think every clip can be a prototype for something with better production values, elements of the script, basically just sketching out some visuals for social media to articulate and communicate the tone of the project,

so it depends on elevating those components to a higher level before I would include them in a pitch, but it's definitely helping me to maintain and expand my level of enthusiasm for the project!

Thanks Billy Kwack, I appreciate that!

You're welcome, Daniel. The proof of concept is kind of like a storyboard for you.