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The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
- daniel-s 5y agoThere are several Emacs modes for screenwriting. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Screenplay https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Screenplay
- tokai 5y agoWould have been nice to hear about the actual process. How is the screenplay disseminated afterwards? Printed out and retyped by an intern on a modern machine or what? What is Movie Master, who made it, what are the features? Right now the article is nothing more that 'lol man used old software'.
- qsort 5y ago> he pulled up a DOS window in Windows XP
- eddieroger 5y agoOn the video embedded in the page, he mentioned that he will print the pages for delivery, then the studio scans them in to digitize them back, and he works from there. The article was dry but the video was pretty neat to hear his point of view on story creation - admittedly, the tactical creation was a minimal part.
- h0l0cube 5y ago> I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers and then I have to work through their computer because you can’t even email mine or anything.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoSurely someone can write this fellow a program to convert to ASCII and a USB floppy drive to move the files, or better yet, an SD card IDE drive for his old PC.
- h0l0cube 5y agoHe could probably have used a modern PC with internet connectivity too. I'm guessing convenience wasn't the point. (If it's a machine from the 90s, it might not even have USB.)
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoNah the USB drive is on the other end. To read his floppies.
- h0l0cube 5y agoOh right, never contemplated such a thing to exist.. but there it is in Google. I wonder if worries about electronic media becoming unreadable over time are overstated
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoDon't worry about your worries being wrong-worries, because your worries are real-worries. Those USB floppy drives have about a 1 in 3 chance of actually working. There's last I looked only one manufacturer left and no real quality control on them. I bought a $30ish at one point and it simply just doesn't read floppies. Not sure it even showed up in the USB device tree. And that's 3.5". I can't imagine how to solve this for 5 1/4" and 8" floppies. Or tape media from the 70s mainframe days, etc.
- h0l0cube 5y agoYikes, my worries were understated. I suppose there's a bunch of special components that they don't even manufacture anymore. Tbf, $30 is a bit too low. If I was serious about archiving or accessing old documents and wanted a reliable floppy drive, it's something I'd pay ~$300 for.. depending on the value of what was being recovered, someone might even pay $3000 for a specialist to recover it.
- happytoexplain 5y ago>How is the screenplay disseminated afterwards? He says, "I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers...". >What is Movie Master, who made it, what are the features? This isn't a tech article (Edit: It isn't a tech publication - it is a "tech" section of a popular publication) - they may research such details, but I definitely wouldn't expect them to. Even then, they did give us one interesting piece of implementation: It has a 40-page in-memory limit. >'lol man used old software' I didn't get this mocking tone from the article in the slightest.
- rado 5y agoDOS is the perfect place for “Dune”. The 30yo game, that is.
- petercooper 5y agoIf anyone hasn't played the game Dune, it is definitely worth checking out - if only to watch a Let's Play on YouTube. It's not really an RTS a la the more famous Dune 2, but a sort of adventure/strategy mix. The appeal, though, is just in how luscious it is. It's a bit dizzying, beautiful (remarkably so, for the era), and full of soul in a way that few games of the era were. The Adlib Gold soundtrack in particular remains an amazing work of art too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUfGyfbzl9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUfGyfbzl9k
- dpio 5y agoThat was a great game. “Atomics!”
- bigbizisverywyz 5y agoYes, there's nothing like 2 straight hours of "Building". "Deploying" "Sandworm Attack!" To get you into the Dune mood :)
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoThere are 2 different "first" games of Dune, that one is Dune 2, there's also Dune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3NcFEvc4yk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3NcFEvc4yk It even has clips from David Lynch's movie. Sigh, I remember getting the CD-ROM version with my first multimedia PC and playing this game...
- ch_123 5y agoAlso using an IBM Model M keyboard, it would seem.
- jedimastert 5y agoTo be fair, I think a lot of today's software is also written on a Model M, even if it's plugged into the latest and greatest. I really enjoy mine, I know a couple other co-workers who have one too
- ahonhn 5y agoTyping on a Model M makes me want to type more and more.
- TheBozzCL 5y agoCan't blame him, the tactile and auditory feedback is awesome. Mine is 1 year older than me and still works great.
- causi 5y agoThere's something to be said for the focused nature of older technology. If you were to set me the task of writing something long-form, and told me the faster and better I did it the more I would be rewarded, I'd be doomed with a modern laptop or a smartphone. My favorite writing tool is, frankly, an IBM TransNote from 2001.
- tfandango 5y agoThis is why I like my Kindle so much (and other e-readers are the same presumably). It does one thing very well, and not much else. I could read the same book on my phone but it's always popping up alerts and buzzing and so forth, breaking my attention.
- falcolas 5y agoTo be fair, even if I'm reading on my Kindle, my phone is still doing all that. I can DND my phone, but then it would have the same effect if I'm reading on the phone.
- weird-eye-issue 5y agoOn Android, DND still pops up notifications and stuff. Anyone know if there is any easy way to turn that off? I get so distracted and that certainly doesn't help
- Arrath 5y agoAirplane mode? Turn it off?
- weird-eye-issue 5y agoI think you misunderstood - I mean I just don't want notifications showing up on the screen when I'm using it. If I don't want to be distracted when I'm not using it then I just silence it and put it away from me obviously...
- stuff4ben 5y agoOn the one hand, as a technologist, this pisses me off because we've advanced so far in the field of word processing. Autocorrect, holding more than 40 pages in memory, cut/paste, etc. Why does this Luddite persist in the old ways?!?!?! But as a writer who knows the pains of distraction... maybe he's on to something?
- fsloth 5y agoOne could use the "we've advanced so far" as an argument against oil paints in visual medium. And photography actually did (sadly) create a huge gap in academic art education. There is place for industrial efficiency, and place for medium for art. I think the relationship of a writing utensil in work of art is similar to the functioning of artistic medium. It does not matter what it is, as long as it facilitates the inspiration and getting the piece done. "Efficiency" has no value in artistic process , unless it's part of the artwork. In visual art, you likely want a medium that is lightfast, does not physically detoriate and offers a standard set of pigments. But the paint does not need to be efficient or fast (who needs painting! We have cameras and printers!) Analogously, a writer likely wants a medium that has high enough contrast to be legible, and is robust. You want to use a typeface that most people can read - and write in a language others understand. Since creative writing is a toil for most people anyway, it is unlikely faster typing or better wordprocessing will increase the speed of the final result that much. I mean George R.R. Martin could have used quill and ox blood and the books would be done if he was writing constantly.
- ataru 5y agoMaybe he doesn't want to have to create an account. Maybe he doesn't want to figure out how to disable cloud saves. Maybe he doesn't want to pay a subscription fee. Maybe he doesn't want emojis, mentions, hash tags and recommendations about what his friends are reading. Maybe he doesn't want a analytics report in his mail describing about how he used the software this week. Maybe he doesn't want "undoubtedly absolutely necessary telemetry" being reported. Maybe the old ways were better.
- bleachedsleet 5y ago
- slibhb 5y agoThe screenplay was the worst part of the new Dune movie
- tokai 5y agoNah Zimmers atrocious score was at least a tad worse.
- whydid 5y agoI wouldn't even call it a score, more of a collection of Zimmerisms
- anyfactor 5y agoI haven't seen the movie yet but I assume it has that dramatic orchestral reverbed bass that often covers dialogue?
- emilecantin 5y agoYes. I thought the overall "feeling" of the movie was a bit like Arrival (another Villeneuve movie).
- Unklejoe 5y agoI normally like his stuff, but I did find relief in the one scene during the final fight where the background "music" stopped for a few seconds. That's when I realized how annoying 2 hours of continuous background pad can be.
- jccalhoun 5y agoI am normally not a fan of Zimmer but I thought his score for Dune had some great parts.
- simonh 5y agoI've watched it twice now, and while the first time I thought the score was a bit jarring (possibly the theatre had the sound level too high as well), the second time I barely even consciously noticed it.
- Ciantic 5y agoWhat I like about this is the 40 page limit. He actually considers it a kind of feature, and this arbitrary limit has contributed to his works. One would think that if 40 pages comes to full, the writer would just find a way to extend it, but instead he didn't bother and shortened instead.
- dgritsko 5y agoI distinctly remember an assignment from college where there was a 12-page limit on the report for a machine learning assignment. Some people freaked out over this - "12 pages isn't even enough for me to finish describing the problem!" And the professor's response was essentially "If that's true, then you are writing the wrong report." Brevity is the soul of wit indeed, and having these sorts of constraints can definitely yield a better result under some circumstances.
- mrweasel 5y agoWe had to write “real” research article, and was limited to 14 pages. One article was selected for a conference, meaning that we had to trim it down to 6 or 8 pages, I don’t recall precisely. That was a difficult writing assignment.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- scrumper 5y agoI believe that with screenplays there's a fairly direct correspondence between the space taken up on paper and time in the movie. So a page is generally a minute. In the article, he talks about how it "creates acts" - each act is going to be about 40 minutes. I'm not in the field at all so I'm hoping someone knowledgeable will confirm or refute this.
- seanicus 5y agoThe gold standard set out by Syd Field in his famous screenwriting book is that for a 2 hour movie this is the breakdown: act 1 - 30 minutes act 2 - 60 minutes act 3 - 30 minutes But of course rules are made to be broken and they're also adapting a novelistic story structure. But now kind of curious to watch some of this writer's films and time out these 40 minute act breaks.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jordanab 5y agoGeorge R.R. Martin also wrote his books on a DOS machine running WordStar 4.0
- incanus77 5y agoAs it says in the article.
- jordanab 5y agoOh, you're right. I overlooked that last paragraph.
- tkuraku 5y agoMaybe that's why he can't finish the series...
- throw0101a 5y agoThe Expanse has finished an entire nine-book series in the time since the last A Song of Ice and Fire was published.
- Shorel 5y agoThis is probably because of the benefits of collaborative writing. No procrastination possible when you have that level of engagement. GRRM is alone and bored.
- rudedogg 5y agoHere's a video of Stanley Kubrick talking about DOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlsZoZLlwC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlsZoZLlwC8
- eddieh 5y agoHere he is talking about UNIX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54hrLTpsO5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54hrLTpsO5g
- AdmiralAsshat 5y agoWish the article would note that he won the Oscar for the Forrest Gump screenplay, not Dune. I kept rereading the article and wondering how he got an Oscar for a movie that was just released.
- nsenifty 5y agoI used Wordstar to type up my school reports and newsletters (well into mid 90s) in an actual IBM PC with 640k RAM and no hard drive. I wasn't aware of the 40-page limit. Although it is entirely possible that I never had to encountere it.
- happy_path 5y agoAre we going to see old refurbished devices be sold as distraction-free machines? Does a new market for somewhat-luddite computers exist? I'd like to buy something like the freewrite [1] but cheaper, any suggestions? [1] https://getfreewrite.com/ https://getfreewrite.com/
- Guest42 5y agoI've had similar experiences with green screen enterprise manufacturing software. It had a remarkable amount of features that were accessed via nested command sequences that didn't take too long to learn, and could easily handle 800 users simultaneously with no lag or interruption.
- deanebarker 5y agoI watched some order takers at a food service company a few years back. They worked in a green screen program -- not sure if it was DOS, or some terminal. The speed at which they worked was unreal. Their hands never left the keyboard. They knew where everything was, and they could literally retrieve any information in less than one second, both due to the speed their fingers worked on the keyboard, and the responsiveness of the app. I remember thinking that I need to pay more attention to keyboard-only usage of the next app I write.
- Guest42 5y agoAgreed, it's as though all features were organized carefully into a B tree that became polished over the years.
- milesvp 5y agoI met a guy some years back who specialized in rewriting accounting software user interfaces. He was a former accountant, so he knew all the things that accountants needed to do with software and the order things tended to need to happen. He focused a lot on input order flow. He claimed that the reduced cost of data entry easily paid for his services for his clients, and made the people using the software happier too. You really don’t want someone good with reverse 10-key data entry to constantly be moving back to a mouse and try to click on some random button or input box.
- captn3m0 5y agoI found some archive links about Movie Master, the software mentioned in the post above. - https://web.archive.org/web/20001021145625/http://www.teleport.com/~cdeemer/mm.html https://web.archive.org/web/20001021145625/http://www.telepo... - https://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/sic07.htm https://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/sic07.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20001027005742/http://www.teleport.com/~cdeemer/Software.html https://web.archive.org/web/20001027005742/http://www.telepo... points out that the Hollywood Screenplay "uses the source code of the former Movie Master and adds improvements". It's probably referring to Movie Master Windows version though. If someone would like to try, a Windows 95 version is available here: https://archive.org/details/goldutils018 https://archive.org/details/goldutils018
- alistairSH 5y agoI'm amazed that the screenplay for a 150 minute movie, based on a ~400 page novel, fits on 40 pages.
- au8er 5y agoAs mentioned in the article, he aims to make each act fit in 40 pages, not the entire screenplay. > Roth also said the 40 page limit helps him structure his screenplays.“I like it because it makes acts,” he said. “I realize if I hadn’t said it in 40 pages I’m starting to get in trouble.”
- alistairSH 5y agoDarn, that's what I get for skimming the article quickly. And makes WAY more sense.
- dibujaron 5y agoI think it's 40 pages to an act.
- 1235711 5y agoShould have just dictated it to a mentat.
- lelag 5y ago> Nobody can get on the internet and get this The screenwriter seems to be under the impression that running a DOS prompt under XP will protect him from having his script leaking, which is obviously not true if the computer is itself connected to the internet. In fact, connecting your XP computer with your secret screenplay to the internet in 2021 might be the fastest way to have it leak…
- chapium 5y agoI see this as one user, solving a personal issue at the burden of everyone else around them. Seems more like arrogance than zen.
- stellcorn 5y agoI definitely agree with this one. It's probably possible but it's arrogance in display.
- slowmovintarget 5y agoI have to disagree. Script security is often a huge problem. He's solved that by using a program that is unlikely to leak. That was one of the benefits. You saying the writer was just arrogant feels to me to be the equivalent of saying any artist that chooses to paint with oils instead of acrylics is selfish because acrylic paints are easier to clean. There is often an association between the medium and the state of flow for someone making a creative work. Seems presumptuous to judge how someone else produces, successfully, when no one else complained about it. He won the Oscar for writing Forest Gump and was nominated for five more. People keep hiring him, so he must be doing something right.
- anyfactor 5y agoI often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism? I sometimes want to feel the experience of my Pentium 1 PC with that rubberdome keyboard and ball mouse. But I know it was a frustrating experience. The mouse didn't work exactly, we had to alt+ctrl+delete every 20-30 minutes. They keyboard felt like jello. The CRT monitor gave us headaches. Moreover I have a 2010 era functioning hybrid laptop that is collecting dust. I like the idea of familiarity it is certainly not a comfortable or faster experience. Is it veiled minimalism underneath you have frustration that you can't do anything that would be distraction because your computer is ancient.
- chasil 5y agoJust for fun, I have installed "Joe's Own Editor" by running "yum install joe" from Oracle's EPEL mirror. Then I ran "joe /etc/passwd" (after exiting root) then pressed ^K-h, and Wordstar's help menu appeared. Wordstar and the vi editor share evolution on serial terminals of the 70s (vi specifically on the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A). They were designed for a minimal number of keys, and thus keeping the hands on the home row, away from the function keys. Some people grow very much accustomed to this. $ rpm -qi joe ... URL : http://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/ Summary : An easy to use, modeless text editor Description : Joe is a powerful, easy to use, modeless text editor. It uses the same WordStar keybindings used in Borland's development environment.
- colanderman 5y agoI use JOE as my daily driver. I grew up on Borland Turbo C, so it was an easy transition for me when I picked up Linux circa 2000. JOE ships with several keybinding variants as well. E.g. `jstar` launches JOE with more WordStar-like bindings.
- EvanAnderson 5y agoI'm in a similar boat. I used a lot of Turbo Pascal and EDIT.COM/QBASIC.EXE (which has some similar keybindings). Joe was the natural editor to use when I started with Slackware back in the early 90s. It's really a pleasure to keep using 30 year old muscle memory.
- jeffwask 5y agoWindows backward compatibility is legendary.
- dr-detroit 5y agoReally really really sad that HN is impressed by this emperor has no clothes moment. This is the equivalent of listening to records at the wrong RPM and you applaud.
- omarhaneef 5y agoThere are lots of stories about writers who are very productive using an old method: --This dune story, --Game of thrones (asoif) written on wordstar --And of course dozens of writers who still use pen and paper This is what these environments have in common: no or minimal internet to distract you
- slowmovintarget 5y agoThere are some other characteristics as well. With pen and paper, you can only move forward. That is, your only real option is to complete the draft. You can revise or rewrite when you're typing it in. Neil Gaiman writes this way; fountain pen and notebook for first draft. Cutting material is much less painful. You simply don't type it in. The temptation to go back and tweak what you've written is fairly strong with modern tools. An author can waste hours, an entire writing session, on rereading what they wrote and making adjustments. That's an activity best left to after you have a completed draft in hand.
- omarhaneef 5y agoI completely agree, but the inability to edit doesn't explain the advantage (if any) of the wordstar/ms-dos editor crowd.
- slowmovintarget 5y agoRight. You identified the prime characteristic for the CUI crowd: no context switching. Though Wordstar purportedly was superior for text manipulation. Robert J. Sawyer wrote an article [1] on why he still uses it. Made me want to learn it, but I realize that if I'm going to put effort into learning a tool, I'd likely want it to be Emacs instead. (I currently use Scrivener.) [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/wordstar-a-writers-word-processor/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/words...
- olivertaylor 5y agoEmacs is worth it from a “creating an ideal environment” perspective, but it is a nightmare from a “stay focused” one. Tweaking your editor becomes very easy and very distracting.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sktrdie 5y agoThat's next level hipster shit :) Just like newgen coders wanting e-ink displays. Less is more!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- squarefoot 5y ago"on an ancient beige mechanical keyboard" That is an IBM Model M, probably the best computer keyboard ever made; I wouldn't be surprised if besides the software it also played a role in helping to write the screenplay. That keyboard is simply an amazing piece of hardware; I have two, one is dated early 90s and carries a Lotus 1-2-3 v2.2 sticker on it, just to say...
- apricot 5y agoThe model M is my favorite keyboard and I own a stash of them large enough to last me for my whole life. That is to say, I own one model M keyboard.
- lavp 5y agoModel Fs deserve a shout too
- joeman1000 5y agoI think there’s too much hype around the model M. I own one and find it too bulky and loud. It’s a gimmick. Also it has a PS/2 connector, so it’s a pain.
- squarefoot 5y agoThe hype is well deserved, it's a rock solid piece of hardware that lasts decades, something that is so rare today. I got my first one in the mid nineties and never had to do any maintenance aside normal cleaning, while the spare one I have lays unused since day one. Yes, it's loud, I agree that could be annoying in quiet office environments. About the PS/2 connector, that is not a problem since USB adapters are very cheap, but there are also many projects around to replace the internal controller board with one that speaks directly USB, also some have been extended to implement some more buttons and program them to do stuff. A search for "model m controller" will return some interesting results.
- WorldMaker 5y ago