Fred&Dan Productions Blog
The journey of two professional filmmakers building their business in the creative world. Welcome!
2023 and Me (and You and Fred&Dan)
Welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? We hope you all had a restful and lovely holiday! If you watched, read, or listened to anything you loved shoot us an email!! We’d love to hear about it.
Welcome back! The New Year can be an excellent time to reflect on the past year and plan ahead for what’s next. We have lots of things in the works over at Fred & Dan. As I said in our last newsletter, we are always looking to stretch ourselves creatively and we have plenty of things brewing in the months ahead to do just that.
Last time we spoke, we mentioned that we were doing a mini writers retreat before the holiday. We spent four days together at Giovana’s place and had an amazingly productive time! Besides working on our script The Fox and the Moon (and planning out our pipeline for other scripts for the year) we also had a lot of time to reflect and talk out the future of Fred & Dan - we are both incredibly ambitious creative people with passions in multiple areas, not just screenwriting. So while writing scripts will always be our main goal, we also talked about the other forms of media that we long to explore as the company moves forward. We don’t just want to be incredibly successful writers -- we want to help shape the future of media and believe we have the vision to do so!! We’ll tell you more about what we have planned over the coming months, but we are so excited for the direction that Fred & Dan is headed.
Along with talking about the future of the company, we wanted to make sure our mission statement aligned with what we hope to accomplish. We spent a morning writing down words that we associate with our writing, and dare I say, brand, and tried to connect it into a coherent thought that we could put on our website. The two words we kept coming back to were subversive and irreverent so we crafted the following updated mission statement:
“A subversive production company that takes what you see and turns it on its head to answer the bigger questions of the human experience. But surprisingly… upbeat!”
Iykyk about that last bit.
If you look at the homepage of our website you’ll see our new tagline: “Subversive media for the irreverent mind.”
This is the energy we are going to be taking with us into 2023 as we grow our business, explore new creative endeavors, and write new scripts. We will be going back to our regular Friday newsletters so I’m sure we will be telling you about all the twists and turns that are to come over the next few months.
If you’re thinking of creating a ~grand plan~ for the next year (or two years.. Or even five years), here’s how we developed ours:
First we wrote down our main/ultimate goals. This opened up the conversation into what our values are, how we want our company to embody those values and what is the physical manifestation of those goals
We then broke it down into categories for our business - scripts, other media, business expansion, and personal goals (that relate to our business)
We then broke it down EVEN FURTHER into goals for the quarters through the next year. Obviously you can do it by month, weeks, or whatever works for you!
We decided this year we are dreaming big and manifesting what we want our future to look like. We wrote down our biggest dreams and highest hopes, because there is no harm in writing it down. Sometimes seeing a goal physically on the page unlocks your subconscious. Studies show that once you see it you’re more likely to unconsciously take steps to achieve it throughout the year!
We wrote all of this down the old fashioned way - pen & paper on a giant posterboard (in different colors and with small drawings because I can’t help myself), but I also love Canva as a resource to create online, and they even have a collage option now where you can craft a vision board!
We’d love to hear about your goals for the next year! Below is a picture of ours with our very important business partner (Binx the cat) sitting on top of it. We don’t want to show the whole thing, we want some things to be a surprise this upcoming year ;)
Xoxo
Fred & Dan
Happy Holidays and Merry New Year from Fred & Dan
Welcome to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? To everyone who have been reading along - thank you so much!! This one's for you <3
Hello to our lovely readers of Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This is our end of the year wrap up newsletter and we wanted to give a big THANK YOU to everyone that has been reading along for the past three months. We are constantly trying to stretch ourselves creatively and this blog was a way for us to do that and help to hold us accountable on our writing.
We loved introducing you to our new script The Fox and the Moon and the two main characters Fox and Ix Chel. We have been making really great strides on our script since the last time we checked in and are even getting together for a mini writers retreat this weekend before the holidays! We also enjoyed sharing the behind the scenes look of our script Mean Streak and the POC we shot for it in 2019.
Fred & Dan will be returning in January! Keep your eyes peeled for said POC as well as more Friday newsletters.
In the meantime we wanted to share some of our favorite things from 2022:
Fred (Gio) starred in the short film “The Dinner Game” written by Rose Mc Aleese and directed by Lauren Boone.
Dan (Janette) produced and directed four episodes of comedy mockumentary webseries “Jennifer and Chicken.”
Our script “Mean Streak” placed as a semifinalist in the ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship and The Stowe Story Labs Fellowship (and is currently in consideration for two other contests).
We had a crazy experience going on a writer's retreat to Joshua Tree. Maybe we’ll do a whole blog about what happened but basically: February in the middle of absolute nowhere desert + a camper with no heat or lights + food poisoning with an outhouse as a bathroom in the freezing cold desert = not a good time, butt an adventure all the same. Experiences like those lead to great material for scripts
We started this blog!!!! As well as another feature film, we each individually started two TV pilots!
Finally, if you’re looking for something to watch during your winter break we have some recs!!!
The Banshees of Inisherin (Dan: Martin McDonagh is my fav writer/director currently working and this might be his best work!!)
Season 2 of White Lotus
Knives out 2: Glass Onion (neither of us have seen this yet but we could not be more stoked for this sequel!)
Wednesday (Netflix series on Wednesday Addams)
House of Dragon, Rings of Power, Carnival Row (Dan: She was a fantasy girl this year!! I love these three series and can’t wait for season 2 of Carnival Row in February!)
We hope everyone has a joyful and restful holiday season and we’ll see you all back here in the New Year!
From the Joshua Tree trip! Aesthetically pleasing but functionally questionable.
Bringing Mean Streak To Life: Creating a Proof of Concept
Hey! Welcome back to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? We’re so excited to share this next blog with you. This one’s coming to you from Fred on how we brought our writing to life in a short film. We hope you enjoy!
I hope everyone can experience what it feels like to be in the exact place, at the right time, doing exactly what you are meant to do. That’s what being on my own Fred&Dan set, working alongside my best friend and our creative friends feels like. It feels like coming home, but I’m the puppy waiting at the door like I didn't just see my owner this morning before work. I actually warn people before we get on set that I will annoy them with how excited I am, even un-caffeinated at 5:30am…
Our set for the Proof Of Concept (POC)* for Mean Streak was no different, even though it was a much different set from our past. Janette and I have worked on sets as PA’s, Executive Producers, Directors, and Actors ranging from thousands of people, to sets as small as five. None are less fun than the other. All that matters is that everyone brings good, collaborative, safe energy. That sounds like a weird prerequisite, but a set is like any other office culture - just with the added layer of people (actors) sometimes crying, yelling, or kissing.
Mean Streak’s POC was just five amazing artists coming together to collaborate. At the time Janette and I wanted to challenge ourselves to create a body of work without all the “extra stuff.” Just one camera, us as the directors, and a small crew. We had an amazing camera crew with the boys over at We Can Swim Productions, Sven and Cameron as Directors of Photography, and Rebecca Pierce as our fellow Producer.
Janette and I have made it a pillar of Fred&Dan Productions that ego’s must be left at the door, and no one is above another when creating a body of work. This same principle applies on set. We may come with the ideas as the creators, but Cam and Sven were behind the camera, and Rebecca was seeing what we couldn’t and they all had ideas we never thought of.
It was three days jam packed with laughs, day to night shoots, and some off the wall ideas that became our favorite shots. We filmed at my parents house, on their roof, and dancing on the kitchen counter. I even threw Janette into the pool for a shot.
As this was our second narrative Janette and I shot together we learned a few lessons that I thought I’d share with anyone thinking of taking on an artistic or entrepreneurial endeavor:
Budget is everything: Remember that this is an investment in yourself and your dream, but don’t get lost. Don’t bankroll a dream because that’s the quickest way to go into debt. Get creative, scrappy, and don’t rush! Rushing costs money. Some of our favorite set pieces were things we made for next to nothing, like an entire wall of the bathroom plastered in 1970’s playboys we found checking out at a record store.
Have confidence: Plenty of people are going to try to push you around and act like they have the know how. If they did then it wouldn’t be your vision coming to life, you’d be working for them, keep that in mind. Janette and I talk about how much we grew from one set to the other just from this alone. While we love to collaborate, on our first set we felt pushed around because we were too nervous that we weren’t the most experienced people in the room. Looking back that’s just not true at all. It’s all about believing in your vision, and at the end of the day that’s all that matters. I even got yelled at on set (which I do not allow anyone to do on set anymore - to anyone) when I was the person writing their check. All of those times we didn’t speak up we lost out on precious time, and we didn’t get our exact vision across. By set two we were much more equipped.
It’s not right if something doesn’t go wrong: I say this with all the love in my heart, it’s going to all go to shit at one point or another. Whether you’re starting a business, running a set, or painting on a canvas, it’s all an artistic process. You’re coordinating, conducting, managing, and trying to do it all with a smile to keep morale high. Plan for the mistakes. Keep room in the budget, keep extra time on the call sheet, and come in with a flexible, creative mindset. The more you can roll with the punches, and see the flaw as a redirection or a new puzzle to figure out instead of a roadblock, the sooner you move past it. This is the biggest game changer, the best lesson I’ve learned. It allows me to laugh and think, “wow I’m so glad it was just a forgotten lens, not a broken one.” Or, “thank goodness my homie owes me one because I need an insurance quote right now at 11pm because I have to pick up equipment at 8am tomorrow.” (Both things that really happened)
All in all three days of shooting produced a three minute short. What was fun about it is that Janette and I got to do our favorite thing, make art together. We got to do it our way and continue to grow our skills. Most of all though, we got to shoot it in the Bay, where Janette and I are both from, with other Bay Area artists. It’s been about three years and because of covid we never got to release it, but we can’t wait to show it to the world.
*Proof of Concept: A short film that sums up your entire script, the essence of the plot, the tone, and the characters. This short film is used to shop around your script and show to potential buyers.
Janette and me on the roof of my parents house filming the last scene in the proof of concept.
Angel & Denise : Crafting Character
Hi there! Welcome back to another edition of our blog Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? We missed you last week and hope you had a great holiday! This week you’re hearing from Dan about the two main characters of our script Mean Streak and how we infused with them life! Enjoy.
When writing a script, sometimes the idea for a character comes to mind first. Sometimes it’s the scenario or setting and then figuring out which character would fit best into this scenario or world. Either way the two need to complement each other. You’ve probably heard the trope of “a ‘straight’ character in a crazy world” or “a crazy character in a ‘straight’ world”, it’s basically the idea that the protagonist of a story and the world they inhabit should offset each other to create dramatic tension. Angel and Denise are… insane. But to be fair they are a by-product of the insane world we live in. We tried to mirror the world of the script to the reality of what it’s like living in Los Angeles in your 20s and how that can drive you to insanity, or give you a really good story.
Angel & Denise are our children. Our fondest, silliest friends. In some way they are the truest but most exaggerated versions of ourselves. Best friends desperately trying to figure their shit out. Desperately. On quite a regular basis we will send each other screenshots of our own texts and say “this is so Angel & Denise.”
After coming up with the idea for Mean Streak, it was about developing characters that would best fit in the scenario of “girls in their twenties who become assassins.” Very quickly we knew that one character had to be more type A and try to keep them on track with the task at hand (Angel) and the other character was on a mission to derail all of that (Denise). I would say these characters really came into sharp relief when we worked on a short script about roommates who have to clean out their refrigerator and the smell or look of the mold nearly kills them, but then later in the evening we see them disposing of a gruesome body completely unfazed. For both the original opening of Mean Streak and this short I decided to name the characters Angel and Denise.
You can go back to the past couple blogs to read about how we used moments in our own lives to influence the stories told in Mean Streak and what we have experienced as millennials to shape the tone and the plot. At this point in time, though, Angel and Denise feel like they’re their own entities separate from us. They’ve taken on a life of their own; they are their own people and make their own decisions. Granted, we type all of those into the computer, but who’s to say they don’t have their own dimensional lives away from us?
Since I do know the inner workings of these two so much, I would say they are like my best friends. The girls who I will grab wine with at the end of a work week and they will tell me about the mess of a week they had, and then that wine will turn into tequila shots, different bars, clubs, waking up in a stranger’s house, and staggering to brunch the next day. Basically the 22-year-old version of Janette & Giovana I wish I could hang out with today, but more crazy and with a looser grasp on their morals. The people we wish we were brave enough to be. Not assassins, but with a bit more of their fearlessness.
The takeaway of this whole blog would be how much we nurture these fictitious people. We bleed ourselves into them. Our emotions, our experiences, our relationships. No, we’ve never been contracted to kill someone for money, but we have been incredibly broke fantasizing about ways to climb out of the deep, deep hole we found ourselves in. And we put every ounce of those feelings and love into Angel & Denise. Our alter-egos.
Here’s a short excerpt from Mean Streak with annotations of how we pulled from our real life to help write the script. In this scene Angel and Denise are trying to sneak into Coachella by convincing two girls they meet in the parking lot of the festival to hand over their wrist bands.
The Millennial Generation : A Satire On Existence
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This week is from Fred on a lookback at our script Mean Streak and why we made it a satire on the sugar babying. Enjoy!
The year is 2017, you’re fresh out of college, and living in the city of your dreams.
You’ve been up since 5am because staying in shape is not an option in LA, it's the price of admission. You worked your 9-5 where you snuck into the empty office on your lunch break to self tape an acting audition. That’s the same job where you’re told by more than a few coworkers that your direct manager doesn’t like you, but you don’t have time to worry about that because you have to race home to change for your shift bartending at the bar 100 feet from your house. Your dinner for the third day in a row is a protein shake with a shot of espresso and Baileys in it, because payday isn’t until Friday and you haven’t figured out a better way to deal with the overly flirty coke heads on a Wednesday.
The night goes as smoothly as it can when you get bitched at for running out of both Silver Bullet and PBR on tap in the same night. But because this dive bar is in one of the most expensive cities in the United States, all of the times you refuse to show your feet or the inside of your mouth is still met with good cash tips. To your chagrin, the end of the night arrives not a moment early…two hours after the legal closing time. You finally count your tips. You’ve made $500 in this one night in tips alone. You rejoice, you’ll be able to make rent this month.
The last two bar flies ask you why you’re so excited. You tell them. One of them, eyes half open, asks how much your rent is. At this point you’re too excited to care about the intrusive nature of the question, so you tell him. He says “is that it? Is that all you need?” With an exasperated sigh you inform him that yes, that’s it, but that doesn’t include car payments, student loans, living cost (once again… most expensive city in the US) blah, blah.
He laughs… Now, you’ve never had a problem with this “nice” patron in the past. He’s a handsome looking mid-40-year old who spends when he comes in and only treads the line of creepy flirting. He’s one of those that makes it clear how rich he is when he’s been drinking and backs it up by paying for everyone around him. I think he liked the nature of this dive bar for the anonymity - or his superiority complex, you choose. He says, “Look, why don’t you let me take you out when I’m in town and in exchange I’ll pay your rent.”
Just like that you’ve had your first proper proposition.
Janette and I went to a college that was a departure from our upbringings. Nothing can prepare you for sitting in class with royalty and free valets because we had so many Lamborghini and Tesla owners late for class. Where being a celebrity or child of a celebrity did not shield you from getting kicked out of school and where trying to keep up with the standards were next to impossible. Janette and I would look around and see girls our age with purses that were more than our month’s paycheck, vacationing every weekend to places that you needed flights for, and making “instagramming” their life look effortless.
I know some people have family money that would make this life second nature, but I also knew some of these girls were financially independent. We Bay Area girls learned quickly that our counterparts in SoCal were scrappy. They weren’t going to let their silly economical situation keep them from the elite social strata. No, no, these girls were college educated boss babes.
They commoditized their time.
These entrepreneurs would take something they were already doing and make someone pay for them to do it.
You want me to fill up your club and bring 12 of my beautiful sorority sisters? Take us shopping and buy us dinner before you take us to your pre-paid table, we’ll need a party bus too.
Need a chill night in with pizza and a movie? That’ll cost you, and don’t even think about any extra “chill.”
Bored of spoiling your bros with free drinks and vacations? My favorite designer is Chanel, and my mani/pedi costs $100 every two weeks.
These are just a few of the many encounters I’ve heard from women in LA. To which I say, get your bag sis.
So when Janette and I were moving out of our amazing townhouse in North Hollywood, slugging the moldy contents of our fridge to the curb after our extremely long days at work, we started to play a game. What would you do to make money? We talked about all the girls we knew making good money for being young and beautiful. How people often demonized these women but no one was doing anything about the fact that the cost of living was astronomical.
That’s how our script, Mean Streak, became a satire for sugar babying. The amount of stories of ourselves and friends doing very odd jobs to make money, all in the hopes of living up to the “Instagram” standard of living in Los Angeles, are countless. We thought of what the exact opposite of being a sugar baby would be and came up with murdering people for money. Both jobs are frowned upon in society but are both the oldest jobs in history. Just ask the Old Testament.
I know everyone is tired of hearing from Millennials about their woes but this story isn’t just about or for us. It's a cross generational catharsis. This story is a wish answered for everyone who lost part of their 20s due to a financial market crash, a bad job market, or a pandemic. It’s time given back. It’s what we all wish could happen out of a shitty situation inherited and reinforced by a previous generation.
… Back to that Wednesday night in 2017. If you think that man had a God complex to proposition me, he forgot that I was a 23 year old Millennial living off a dream that no man was going to have a part in materializing.
Janette’s 22nd birthday. This very bar made an appearance in Mean Streak.
The Long and Winding Road of Mean Streak
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This week is a lookback at our script Mean Streak from Dan. Enjoy and let us know your favorite memories from your early 20s!
Five years ago at 23 years old, I paid my first installment on my student loans. Gio was there! We lived together.
Seven months later, I had been paying something like $130 a month on my loans while working for minimum wage as a tour guide at Warner Bros. As I watched my meager savings dwindle and realized that my income did not match the life in Los Angeles I thought I would be living, I felt panic and resentment growing inside of me. It all accumulated one early Saturday afternoon as I drove away from the AT&T store with a new iPhone that I couldn’t afford, feeling nauseous about the state of my finances. Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain'' was playing on the radio and I had a strong visceral vision of two young women standing over a man they were about to contract kill. When he asks them why they were doing this, one of the girls responds “Some people are just mean” and the other says “And broke.” That was the first image I ever had for the story that would eventually become our script Mean Streak.
Mean Streak has taken so many forms over the past five years. I’ve written separate shorts based on the two main characters Denise and Angel. I filmed one of those in the parking lot of the post-production company where I was working. Gio and I completed our first draft of the feature in 2019. Before even finishing, our first 30 pages of the script won a contest where it was read aloud by working actors and filmed for youtube. We’ve entered into numerous contests, placed it on the Blacklist, worked with a writing consultant on our second draft, wrote and filmed a proof of concept while both living in the Bay Area, and have since watched as it has placed in very prestigious screenwriting contests and festivals. You can see all the accolades of the script here, on our Coverfly Profile.
Recently I’ve been reminiscing on writing this script and the various stories in our own lives that contributed to it. Usually one of the first things Gio and I do when starting a script is create a Google Doc and write down any and all ideas that come to us. Especially when we write something that draws from our real life experiences, like Mean Streak and our other script Star Spangled Banner. These docs tend to be pages and pages long filled with funny anecdotes, stories, memories, and notes of how we can incorporate them in the script.
For example, Giovana and I both studied abroad our junior year of college - G was in Italy and I was in Germany. It was a tumultuous time, on one hand it was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life and on the other we were both dealing with relationship problems and heartbreak (is that not the most apt definition of what it’s like to be in your early 20s?). We went to Oktoberfest on the same weekend separately and had a very… interesting time, but that’s a story for another time. We tried to find each other as best as twenty-year-olds drunk at 8am off of four steins of beer with sketch burner phones could. In other words, it was a shit show to say the least. Best weekend ever (not being sarcastic, I really mean it). We knew we had to include a traveling aspect to the movie and aspects of our Oktoberfest experience pop up in multiple places in the script.
The shenanigans only continued after we graduated from LMU and moved in together with two other friends in a duplex in North Hollywood. As I mentioned above, we were broke af but still determined to have as much fun as possible. This included going on dates when we couldn’t afford a meal, running (literally sprinting) down the street to our local bar to make it in time for happy hour (another moment that made it in the script), and taking advantage of any and all parties that our successful DJ neighbors would invite us to. Our life at the time seemed like a never ending “OverheardLA” instagram post - constantly trying to match our lives with those we saw on Instagram, lamenting on the woes of living LA, embarrassing ourselves in front of numerous celebrities (please ask Gio about her conversations at the VMAs), and running on zero hours of sleep.
In true millennial fashion, between all of these things we worked multiple jobs to #liveourbestlife, AKA make ends meet. We didn’t know a single peer who wasn’t hustling, not really surprising considering we lived in Los Angeles where everyone has a day job and a side hustle, but I would look around at my friends who were working their asses off day in and day out and think, “You know what, bitch? We deserve avocado toast.” This was before we truly understood what burnout was or how it would affect us later on. Thank god for my youthful naivete because now when I think back on that time 6 years ago in that duplex, I feel tired .
I wouldn’t change a single thing about that time in our lives… except maybe drink more water and get more sleep. Even for all the heartbreak and struggle I felt during that time I look back with a real fondness on the 22 and 23-year-old version of myself trying my best to make it in a world that at times really seemed like it didn’t want me to. I think that’s what we want to get across more than anything with this script. We want to celebrate our resilience and desire to find a way to live the lives we want. (I should probably say here we don’t think that contract killing is the correct way to do this, but hopefully you get what I mean.)
When we were writing Mean Streak in 2017, I thought “oh my god we have to get this out in front of people right away because soon student loans will actually be forgiven and this will no longer be relevant.” Well. The reality of being a millennial in the year 2022 has somehow made this script feel even more pressing and necessary than it was five years ago. Yes, we are getting $10K of our student loans forgiven… but unfortunately we’re in a seemingly never-ending pandemic that saw millions of people (including us!) lose their jobs and now a level of inflation that has basically squashed the dream of saving for the near future. As if our savings were anything to write home about before. So fuck it, let’s drink!
Every time we’ve worked on Mean Streak in the past, it has felt so amazing to take the seemingly sad and depressing aspects of life and make it humorous. Usually by the end of a writing session, Gio and I have tears of laughter running down our faces - not just from how funny we find each other but from the humor we have found in our own hopelessness.
For the next month we’ll be deep diving into all things Mean Streak! Stick around for a lot of fun things ahead.
Halloween Newsletter Special!
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? We have a special treat in store for you today!
For the past several weeks, we’ve been talking about our script The Fox and The Moon and the process of writing. For Halloween we decided to share an actual scene of our two main characters Ix Chel and Fox!
Like we talked about in The Mechanics of Writing a Script, this is a scene we wrote together to capture the personalities of these characters and their dynamic with each other. We’re not sure if this will ultimately end up in the final script, but we thought it would be a fun peek inside to the world we’ve created. We hope you feel transported to a world of magic and fun within these quick pages.
For context, this is after Fox has landed himself unintentionally in Texas. While her coven prepares for Dia De Los Muertos, Ix Chel discovers Fox. Knowing her coven is wary of outsiders, and this is her first year in charge of the celebrations, she decides to send him back to Ireland in secret. The only problem is, Fox has lost his magic.
Thanks for reading! Happy Halloween from Fred & Dan!
The Mechanics of Writing a script Part Two
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This week you’ll be hearing from our brilliant Dan about how we like to go about writing scripts like The Fox and The Moon, enjoy! Make sure to check out the footnotes at the bottom for the screenwriting terms Jan uses throughout.
Welcome to Part Two of the Mechanics of Writing! Last week Gio talked beautifully about the process of preparing a script to be written, as well as delving into the philosophy of art in general. If you haven’t read the blog yet, please go check it out - it is truly a treat! I will do my best to follow it up here.
Now that you’ve found the gap in the market and decided how your story fits in there, created a mood board and found your comps, and drafted an outline for your script (or maybe not! Maybe your mood board was enough to jump right in!), it’s time to get to writing. Again, I will be using our script The Fox and the Moon as an example.
These blog posts have been a bit more abstract about the process of writing, if you want us to get into the nitty gritty of things, like formatting or how to write an outline please let us know! We are more than happy to geek out about all things scripts with you.
My first piece of advice: Don’t let the blank page scare you! I was shown how to write a screenplay and given my first screenwriting software when I was 16. That's 12 years now that I’ve been writing scripts and I still find opening a new document to be intimidating. Even though I’ve written dozens of scripts, the majority of which have never seen the light of day, every time I sit down to write something new I stare at that blank page and I think to myself: I’ve done this before? That’s impossible. I don’t think I know a single word in the English language nor have I ever had one idea.
Moments like this are when I feel so incredibly lucky to write with a partner like Gio. Gio had the original idea for Fox and the Moon with a written voiceover explaining our witchy world and Ix Chel’s spell. With these as a starting point it was much easier to get over my hypercritical paralysis and lo and behold words came out on to the page.
This is when I write what I like to call the vomit draft. The vomit draft, although quite a graphic description, is exactly what it sounds like. I vomit all of the ideas onto the page. If you’re at this stage you probably have a general idea of your characters, plot, and maybe even specific scenes in mind you want to write (and if not or you don’t feel confident, go back to your outline or mood board and break it down even more). This is the time to get it all down! Whether you write out of order or chronologically following an outline, just put it all down on the page.
At this point it’s not about page count or how much you write at one time! Whether you set a content goal or set aside 30 minutes just stare at the blank page and see if anything comes out, now is the time to find a writing routine that works for you.
There is an age-old adage that “writing is rewriting.” This is completely true. Whether you're writing a script, a novel, a song, etc. the first go is going to be very different from what you ultimately end up with. My first drafts tend to have way more exposition than what I would like. That’s because as I write the script and spend more time with the characters, I learn more about them. Their wants and needs may change as I decide how they would react to the plot. Their dialogue will evolve as I hone into their characteristics and specific tone. When you know more about your characters, you can craft their dialogue in a more natural way. You will be able to craft dialogue that is rich with subtext and write concise and revealing action lines. But to get to that point, you need your vomit draft.
A lot of the time, Gio and I will craft scenes between characters that will reveal to us how they interact with one another even if the scenes never make it into the script. For the past few weeks we’ve been writing scenes between our two main characters Ix Chel and Fox to develop their rapport and mine deeper into their relationship. While thinking on how to streamline the script we will go through these scenes to determine the aspects of the relationship that we want to reveal. We can then instill that in a few lines to keep the character development and plot moving along.
Now that you have your vomit draft (p.s. You don’t need to call it a vomit draft if you don’t like the word vomit. It happens to be one of my favorite words but I guess if you want, you could call it a first draft), the editing begins! This is another point in time in which I am so happy to have a writing partner. During the writing process Gio and I will switch scenes back and forth and do early edits, but for the most part we save the majority of it after we have our first draft!
One of the best ways to begin an editing process is to read the script out loud. Usually we do a first pass reading things out loud just the two of us. If a scene isn’t working we’ll talk it over, each taking on one of the characters and talking out loud like them until we get to a place that feels more natural.
Next, we’ll do a table read of the script. A table read is a screenwriter’s best friend! I cannot emphasize enough how much hearing the script read out loud will impact the next drafts of your script. Gather friends, family, or creative partners who you TRUST, sit down and hear the words come from someone else. This will allow you to hear how others are interpreting the script and will also show you where in the script the plot is stalled, jokes aren’t working, or you need to cut out scenes.
I emphasize the word trust because ultimately you’re sharing your art and that can be a very vulnerable position to be in. Make sure you have people in your creative circle who want to see your art succeed - people who want to lift you up by being honest to you about your work and present their constructive criticisms from a place of respect and love. This might be a silly thing to harp on, but as a writer or artist of any kind, especially if you are just starting out, early critiques are going to impact how you approach your work and how you receive notes in the future.
I don’t want to write about getting to your final draft because I believe screenplays are constantly evolving and changing. It takes a very long time for a movie or TV show to get made, especially if you write on spec. There might be times where you feel completely satisfied with a script and you’ll step away and move on to something else, and then months or years later you'll take another look and realize ways to make it better because you’ve grown as a writer!
I believe you can get to a happy draft, a draft of the script that you’re happy with. Now you can hold it in your hands and smile to yourself and think “wow! I’m a writer!”
Know that every step of the way you’re going through this, I’m right there with you and I’m proud of you!!
I’d also like to include a list of my favorite screenwriting books:
Save the Cat! By Blake Snyder
SCREENPLAY by Syd Field
Now Write! Screenwriting edited by Sherry Ellis and Laurie Lamson
Writing Subtext: What Lies Beneath by Linda Seger
Sick In The Head by Judd Apatow
On Writing by Stephen King
1 Exposition - Exposition can be dialogue, narration, or even visual information the audience receives that helps them better understand what is going on in the story. Too much exposition, especially in dialogue, can bog down a script and slow down the pace.
2 Writing “on spec” is a term used when a screenwriter is writing an original script without financing or without being on assignment.
The Mechanics of Writing a Script Part One
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan Newsletter Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This installment was written by Giovana and it is truly a treat for any artist. It doesn’t require much more of an introduction so happy reading and thank you for being here!
The mechanics of writing a script at this point feels like second nature, it only took us six years to get here but hey, here we are!
As this is a blog about all things film, Janette and I thought we’d show you the process of how we go about writing the damn thing through the lens of our newest script The Fox And The Moon. This is a great blog for any screenwriting beginner, or any type of artist in general. All in all this is the process that works for us, but feel out what works best for you. It’s a feeling really, you’ll know it when it happens.
“Doing art” in any medium can feel intimidating so break it down into smaller pieces. For us we always start with “the gap in the market.”
Part I
The Gap In The Market:
An idea that is sparked is taken through the filter -
Who else has done this?
Was it done well?
What’s been missing?
Can I do it better? (yes, to that question, you always you can always do it better)
In the case of The Fox And The Moon:
Witches:
Everyone has done it
Disney and Harry Potter has done it well
What’s been missing - Fun yet adult magical stories
Hell yeah I can do it better
2. What’s the bigger question you’re trying to answer? Every story (every good story at least) is asking and answering a bigger question about the human experience. When you lead with that in art you always have a north star. So what question do you want yours to answer?
For The Fox and The Moon:
How interracial relationships (romantic or not) are integral to progress of humanity.
That women play an integral part in community/society and should be seen as such.
Now that you’ve decided you’re the person for the job, time to put some thoughts down. That doesn’t mean it’s time to write though.
Part II
Comps and vibes:
Compile those doing similar work and hone the vibe you’re going for. In the case of this script Janette and I watched, read, and chatted at length about who had the pieces of story we were trying to capture, here’s what we came up with.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina - Show
Pocahontas - Movie
The Ex Hex - Book
From Blood and Ash - Book
Coco - Movie
Encanto - Movie
Like Water For Chocolate - Book
House of Spirits - Book
The Covenant - Movie
Make a mood board
Compile a smaller body of work. It can be messy and imperfect but when you sit back and take it in it captures the essence of what you’re going for. From the color palette, to textures, to the emotion you hope to evoke, this mood board can be a compilation of images from the internet, a playlist, a table set up. Whatever helps you bypass your frontal cortex and skip right to your limbic brain to let your creativity take the reins.
There’s no right or wrong answer, this should be fun but if you’re not used to letting yourself “just do” this might be hard, so have patience and push yourself to follow a feeling.
This is another place you’ll really want to lean on that feeling. You’ll know it’s done when you can’t stop looking at it and think, “exactly.”
For this script we knew we didn’t want it to be too dark but nothing as light as a Disney movie so we spent a lot of time trying to strike a balance. We used both images and music to help us find our north star.
We’re right before the point of “doing.” And whatever you choose is right!
Part III
Start with an outline.
This will move and change but you’ll have some point you’re trying to arrive at.
Whether you’re reading this for your screenwriting journey or a painting or another piece of art, outlining can take the guess work out and allow your creativity to move freely within the lines you’ve drawn.
Send it.
If an outline seems too restrictive, throw it out. We’ve written scripts by compiling vignettes and cobbling together a story that came out great!
Each body of work is different and should be treated as such in our eyes.
If you’ve worked through the previous two parts of figuring out what question it is you’re answering and you’ve put together a mood board, you may not need an outline and can get right to it.
If you find midway through this isn’t working, stop and write an outline. Trust yourself.
Now we’re at the point of doing. So get to work, and go balls to the wall!
Each part of this can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months, that’s okay that’s your process!
Parting note:
I personally don’t believe in writer's block or any artistic block. The block, my friend, is you, standing in your own way, trying to be a perfectionist.
Art is a living embodiment of you, and an extension of you as expressed through your medium. Let it ride! When you feel “blocked” step away, think about why you’re blocked. Usually it’s your indecision about making a choice that doesn’t feel perfect. Just pick one and go for it, if it doesn’t work you can change it or use it to redirect. It was meant to be exactly what it is. I know that might sound a bit esoteric but it’s not. There's a reason people use art as a form of therapy and healing.
When you fully trust yourself and stop listening to your inner critic, your art becomes so fully baked that it’s a mirror for viewers to see their own experience or peek into a world they know nothing about. Either way, your audience will leave changed. People need your art.
Kant was the one to surmise that we only perceive the world through our senses, not as “ding an sich,” the thing in itself. So I’ll leave you with this quote from the art critic Robert Hughes I found in the book Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain, “The essence of the avant-garde myth is that the artist is a precursor; the truly significant work of art is the one that prepares the future.”
The Fox and The Moon - Spells
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This is a continuation of our blog series that takes you behind the scenes of our newest script: The Fox and The Moon. This week you’ll be hearing from both Fred & Dan and the spells we created for each of our main characters. First you’ll hear from Fred (Giovana) and her spell for Ix Chel, and then Dan (Janette) and her spell for Fox.
If you haven’t read our previous blogs on the script you can do so here!
A SPELL FOR IX CHEL written by Giovana
This spell was the actual inspiration for the screenplay. I read a book, Next Year In Havana by Chanel Cleeton, that made me cry so hard for a love lost and time forgotten. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the main characters meant the world to each other until their dying day, but to the world they were no one. Due to war their love was all in secret, lost forever upon their death beds. It made me wish for answers about life after; if peace comes, if you ever meet again, or if peace is simply the eternal clemency from pain.
That’s why I gave Ix Chel’s people the passage between the veil. Because what if life happened after? What if our short existence could simply be a prelude to the rest? An infancy of the soul?
This spell is one Ix Chel uses to connect with her highest self. If you’ve ever seen Avatar the Last Air Bender, think about it like Ang going into a meditative state to connect to himself and then sometimes connect to his past self. If you are familiar with religion, think of it as an opening prayer, or the sacrament of communion.
In this spell, you’ll see just how connected to the earth her people, the Zyanya are. They honor the moon, elements, and nature. Everything they are is cyclical. In this spell fire is the highest power because it is the source of life and death. Like the cycle of life, when Ix Chel speaks the words in this spell she is giving an offering of herself in exchange for the offering from the flame, it’s a symbiotic relationship in a way.
When she accesses her highest power she passes between life and death in this meditative state. It is just as fire can be the source of life and death at the same time. They become one in the same.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
I light this candle and give you my trust
That this flame burns bright
That it sets my soul alight.
Together as one
Separated by none
To know a naked truth, a heart's desire
That’s all you’ll find when you bathe by fire.
So blaze my path
Give my powers your wrath
As we work in unison
To meet as old friends soon again.
A SPELL FOR FOX written by Janette
I am not as rhythmically or poetically inclined as Gio, so writing this spell was definitely a test of patience with myself and overcoming self consciousness. But I decided I wanted to write something fun and witty, as Irish spells are known to be. There is actually a long history in Ireland of curses but I chose instead the “Irish elixir of potency.”
In thinking about the type of magic that this specific wizard coven casts, Gio and I decided we wanted them to use a type of “totem” (a wand or object used to channel magic) to differentiate the Tiernan clan from the Zyanya clan. Also so we could include jokes in the script like, “you use your wand to overcompensate” or “so you need a performance enhancer is that you’re saying?” lol.
My thinking is this is a spell and potion that Fox’s brothers passed down to him as a joke on their youngest baby brother. So here it goes:
In order to unlock the famed Irish Potency you must first gather the following ingredients:
Two ounces of cochineal, one ounce of gentian root, eight grams of saffron, four grams of snakeroot, four grams of salt of wormwood, and the rind of ten oranges. All of this should be steeped in a quart of brandy. While mixing the ingredients you must complete the following incantation:
If your Mickey doesn’t rise under the sheet
If it needs help getting to its feet,
Poitín can help you out well
To get you out of any dry spell.
These mixtures of roots and spices
Will help your potency with any vices.
Take well with brandy, with a slap from your most trusted
And run to who you wish to love before you are busted.
The Fox and The Moon - Creating Ix Chel
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan newsletter: Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This is a continuation of our blog series that takes you behind the scenes of our newest script: The Fox and The Moon. If you aren’t caught up yet, you can read about the lore of the script here and Janette’s research on Celtic lore here.
Trepidation, and impending rage has riddled me leading up to this moment. Like I said before, I wanted to write The Fox and The Moon because I’ve never felt seen in magical stories. But knowing the lack of representation of magical Indigenous lore in mainstream culture, I was scared I wouldn’t find anything.
Happy to report that I was able to cobble some things together. I’m sure there is exactly what I’m looking for out there somewhere but, I haven’t found clear lore, customs, or specifics. In fact, a weird thing kept happening during my research. Every time I searched for any iteration of Tejano Witches my internet crashed. I would search something else, reload, no problem. I would try again, internet crash. After far too many attempts I had to give it up.
From all across southwest America (I tried to keep it specific to Mexican American Indigenous lore rather than American Native) to down in Central America there are many similarities in the witchy lore I’ve discovered. I reached down to the America’s because the ancient empires of Inca, Mayan, and Aztec made up what is now Latinx culture of the Americas.
Okay here’s what I’ve learned:
Aztec witches were ordinarily held in high esteem because their “black” practices were believed to have been assigned by the gods.
Mayan’s believed in Ixchel, a death god equated by the Spaniards with the Devil.
Día de los Muertos originated in ancient Mesoamerica (Mexico and northern Central America) where indigenous groups, including Aztec, Maya and Toltec, had specific times when they commemorated their loved ones who had passed away.
Ancient Mesoamericans believed that death was part of the journey of life. Rather than death ending life, they believed that new life came from death. This cycle is often associated with the cyclical nature of agriculture, whereby crops grow from the ground where the last crop lies buried.
Indigenous societies, pre colonization, recognized the importance of women in society through their contribution of giving life.
For Native American people, witchcraft is just another part of their spirituality
Ancestry, life after death, and spirits of past ancestors is the bedrock to channeling any power
This is just some of what I’ve found; there’s also what I’ve learned from my own oral history and speaking with fellow Tejanos, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans. Based on all of that here’s what I’ve woven for the lore of our main character Ix Chel:
The tribe Zyanya (ZYAH-nyah - meaning forever/always) is said to be the reincarnation of its coven’s first people. In each life as in the last, they grow and learn to be in service to the rest of humanity. When they pass through the veil they are reborn and come back to earth as a descendant of their past self. The Zyanya people hold the wisdom of their predecessors as part of their essence, and they are able to call on that ancestor and others of their past. The entire tribe pulls their highest wisdom and seeks counsel from the first of their kind (and the first of all witch kind) the Goddess Divine. No one knows who is the direct reincarnation of this Goddess but she is said to be the beginning and end, the God of all the Gods.
The people of Zyanya hold the responsibility of being the key, the doorway to life and death, with the utmost respect and reverence. So those who can physically create and give life are those who make decisions and guide the tribe. Understanding themselves as neither here nor there, they see themselves and their magic as always holding light and dark, good and bad. Both are necessary and both are important.
So when one of their daughters Yolotli (Yoh-LOH-tLee), became lost in the veil (life beyond death) after a stranger from a distant coven came to the Zyanya people, they took part of each of their own powers and wove together the strongest protection spell they could. This spell would keep them from the eyes of outsiders for hundreds of lifetimes to come. Closing themselves off to the outside world, to their role as part of a bigger whole, and to anything new, the Zyanya people have not come in contact with another coven in hundreds of years. That is, until a young Celtic witch from Ireland, Fox, shows up in the middle of this small Texas town on the eve of Halloween, Samhain, and Dias de los Muertos.
When I first started this research I was afraid I wouldn’t find anything. I love to tell the stories of the human experience beyond the explainable, life beyond death, and personifying the fact that we as women are the creators of life. I guess you could say, the fear of people forgetting our powers drives me. I fear for them ;)
The Fox and The Moon - Creating Fox
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan Newsletter Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This is another behind the scenes look at our new script The Fox & The Moon. This post is all about our main character Fox written by Dan! Enjoy!
Today, I took a deep dive into Celtic history to write the lore behind our love interest Fox. While we might not go into this lore specifically in the script, it is the background of his character that will add depth and dimension as we write his scenes and dialogue.
This is all in service of research for Giovana and mine’s current script The Fox and The Moon, a witchy romance tale about prejudice, love, and worlds colliding. As lovers of romance novels, we are pumped to be creating our very own entry into the lexicon of “supernatural people fall in love and have crazy sex.”
Both of our main characters share the ancestral backgrounds of us, the writers - Indigenous Mexican American from Gio (Ix Chel) and Celtic from me (Fox). I have been wading through all the stories of Irish witches to find a place where Fox’s family could fit in and have it make… semi-sense without pissing anyone in the Celtic wicca community off… too much.
So first off, the number one main thing I love about Celtic witch lore, is that pretty much all of the known Celtic witches are women. There’s only one recorded man who was ever persecuted for witchcraft in Ireland and it was believed he was working at the whims of his wife and her sister, who were the real witches.
Second, unlike their sisters and brethren in America and other parts of Europe, Irish witches did not face much persecution. Ireland has a long history of magic, including a strong belief in fairies. If you’ve ever been to Ireland this is no surprise, the place itself is so beautiful it feels like there’s no way there wasn’t some kind of supernatural intervention to make the hills so green and the Guinness so delicious. When witch hunt hysteria took over many other parts of the world, the Irish were like “You know what? We’re going to mind our business. If there are witches then that is their business. That is not our business. Good day and goodbye.”
How does Fox, our Outlander-sexy wizard who also happens to be the black sheep of his family because of his humane views of other cultures, fit into Celtic lore? Let’s start with The Morrigan, the Celtic Goddess of Magick and Night, also known as the “Great Queen” or “phantom queen.”
There are many stories and tales about The Morrigan, how she isn’t actually one person but three sisters, how she herself fought on the battlefield and was heard chanting poetry, or how The Morrigan was connected to, or possibly even the same person as, the legend Morgan le Fay - the rumored magical sister of King Arthur.
The idea of Fox being related to King Arthur intrigued me greatly, and then I remembered a movie that came out within the past two years called The Green Knight about King Arthur’s nephew Sir Gawain. The story is classified as a chivalric romance, perfect for drawing parallels to our romance movie love interest.
Not only that, but Sir Gawain has been titled the “Knight of Maidens” and is noted as having dalliances with multiple magical women, including the aforementioned Morgan le Fay. I love this story. In it Sir Gawain slays a giant serpent and it turns out to be Morgan and then they have a hot love affair. I imagine it mostly taking place under magical waterfalls.
Based on all of this, here is the lore I have developed for Fox and his family:
Fox’s family are descendants of Sir Gawain and The Morrigan, tying them both to Welsh and Irish history. They are an old, important family with hundreds of years of accumulated wealth and a tendency to birth boys. This union between Sir Gawain and The Morrigan started an acceleration of male Celtic witches, which was previously almost entirely made up of women. Fox’s family, particularly his father and brothers, are attached to their history as Arthurian descendants and believe this gives them some higher seat at the table (no pun intended), like they have a divine right to be authorities in the witch realm.
Family crest is a crow in a green tree - a combo of the symbol of Morrigan and a nod to The Green Knight.
One of the most interesting and fun parts of writing is the research part. Especially when writing something that ties to history, and my own ancestral country of Ireland.
Morgan Le Fay
Sir Gawain
The Fox and the Moon: Lore
Hi! Welcome to our weekly Fred & Dan Newsletter Why Aren’t You Famous Yet? This is another behind the scenes look at our new script The Fox & The Moon that we co-wrote together. Here is our playlist curated to give the vibe. Enjoy!
In writing The Fox & The Moon, we knew it was important to have our own lore that explained the history of two ancient witch covens. Here is the “lore” of our script that we wrote in preparation:
Hundreds of years ago, two Ethereals (beings who evolved into having supernatural powers) fell in love and it almost tore two covens apart.
Ethereals, or what humans know as witches, have coexisted with humans since the beginning of time. They have evolved alongside humans, developing their covens and clans in secret but not completely hidden from sight. Ever see things you can’t understand? Some people describe it as “the matrix glitching.” Well, you’d be surprised how often Ethereals are behind these glitches.
A Celtic wizard, Aodhan (AY-O-DEN), was sent to the Americas, to uncover the power of a coven in the southwest called Zyanya (ZYAH-nyah). Aodhan’s father Eoghan (O-in, like Owen), the leader of the Tiernan coven, could not understand how these “savage” beings could have generated magical abilities that surpassed any others and wanted to know what the true source was, and if possible, to steal it. For he did not believe that these people who looked different and thought differently from them could have ever developed this power on their own - something sinister must be aiding the Zyanya.
When Aodhan arrived in what is now modern day Texas, he discovered a coven of witches who were so deeply connected to the earth they could derive their natural powers straight from the core. Their powers were their birthright, given to them by the first Ethereal- The Goddess.
Instead of trying to steal their power, Aodhan wished to learn more about it. The clan leaders were wary of him, but the daughter of the head of the coven named Yolotli (Yoh-LOH-tLee) showed him the ways of The Goddess, helping to connect him to the Earth and to a power greater than he had ever realized. The two, inevitably, fell in love.
Aodhan and Yolotli shared with each other their covens' differences and similarities. At this time of intense persecution for witches all over the world, these two covens found themselves in a moment of peace with humans. The Zyanya tribe was accepted as healers in the wider non-witch community that surrounded them. In Ireland, the Tiernans were able to grow their influence not only amongst witches but humans as well.
But Aodhan came from a society where women were considered less than. They were wives and homemakers. Yolotli’s coven valued women as healers and key members of their community. Many women and two spirits had led the coven throughout the past thousand years. The Zyanya were concerned on how Aodhan would influence Yolotli. Neither of the young lovers cared, they wanted to marry and unite the covens.
When Aodhan returned home to tell his family of the news, his father was furious. Eoghan did not want to bring these abominations of witches into his coven, into the Tiernan. Aodhan and his younger brother, Caden, who idolized him, tried to appeal to their father but he would not be moved. Aodhan made a heartbreaking decision. He decided to return to the witch and her coven and leave his family forever. What the two lovers didn’t realize was that their families had taken things into their own hands. Eoghan cast a powerful hex, preventing the mixing of the blood from any witches of either coven. The elder Zyanyas cast a spell to protect their lands from any fair skinned colonizer. They attached the spell to a pendant and gave it to Yolotli.
When Aodhan returned to the desert where Yolotli lived, he found his powers had gone and he was weakened, his age suddenly catching up to him. The two tried to undo the hex, but unable to access his powers, the wizard began to tear apart. To save her love Yolotli pulled from her own life source to give her magic more power. Between the Hex ripping their beings apart and the protection spell working at the other end to keep them apart, the two knew they wouldn’t make it out alive. In an effort to keep their covens from ruining the future of their species, they joined together to weave an unbinding spell. They hoped a future Ethereal would uncover the truth and break the hex.
The strain of the magic took its toll and cast them into oblivion, their souls never to be found past the veil. The only thing left behind was Yolotli’s pendant meant to protect her coven, the unbinding spell now magically woven into the seams.
Unable to take the guilt of their deaths, both families blamed the other for the lovers’ demise. The Zyanya family claimed that Aodhan was sent to steal their power and killed their daughter when he was unable to do so. Eoghan told everyone Aodhan was murdered by the “savages.” His hatred for the coven lived on in Caden, who held the grudge for his older brother’s death.
Hundreds of years have passed, but the legend lives on.
Aodhan’s younger brother Caden, Fox’s father, believes that his brother was killed by this coven in the Americas, but unable to find proof of the coven ever existing, the majority of the Tiernan believe he was simply lost. No one from either coven steps foot on the soil of the other. They don’t speak. They don’t acknowledge. Eventually the covens are erased from the minds of the younger generations, only the elders remember the tragedy.
That is until a young wizard named Fox makes a bet, and a young witch named Ix Chel accepts a dare. Only then do fates sealed hundreds of years before align and their two worlds collide.
And so begins The Fox and The Moon…
The Fox and the Moon: The Origin Story
Hi! Welcome to the Fred & Dan Friday newsletter. This week you’re hearing from me, Fred, and how I came up with the idea of our new script The Fox and The Moon. This is part of our series where we take you behind the scenes as we develop and write a new script!
This might sound weird, but it all started with an itch. Not the scary kind that you need to see a doctor for, don't worry! Have you ever been looking for a book, tv show, or movie that satisfies a specific craving but couldn’t find it? No, just me? Well anyways that’s what happened.
I’ve always loved anything witchy or occult. Add romance and I’m hooked! Horrible plot lines, beloved classics, vapid characters, or stories I cry and pine over - bottom line is whether it’s trash or high quality, it doesn’t matter. Give it all to me.
I am one of those people who grew up on Harry Potter. I've read the damn book in three languages because I have that much of a witch fixation. Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Twilight, Hocus Pocus, or any other vampire/witch/magical romcom in any form I have devoured multiple times. It’s my guilty pleasure - you get the point.
What’s crazy is that all this time, I didn’t see myself in any of these witchy stories. I've loved them since I was a child and still get lost in them as a grown up, even though I'm not necessarily represented in them. As an indigenous Latinx American, and one in an interracial relationship, you rarely see mainstream stories about us, especially in the witchy space (can’t believe I called it that). So when I couldn't find a witchy novel or movie that wasn’t centered around the New England or European witchy experience, I went searching.
The thing about it is that “witchery” has been seen all over the world, throughout history. But rarely does anyone write about the "modern witch" from the perspective of the colonized and how that’s affected things. A story where non white magic isn’t “bad”, a side character, or less than. It has always bothered me, because there are myth’s and lore world wide with just as beautiful history, and culture. Once romance is added in, it is almost always highlighting white couples.
That is not to take away from those stories, which let me reiterate I love, but there’s room for more. The story of an interracial couple is new in media, it’s nuanced, and it’s beautiful, but often times it is still a small percentage of relationships represented on screen. I personally believe it’s because it’s still not as normalized as it should be.
Those I speak to in long term, committed interracial relationships will tell you it isn’t always easy. From constant lessons on each other’s cultural quirks, familial workings, and generational traumas, it can feel exhausting at times but always gives your relationship a richness - one I feel lucky to experience in my own relationship. I can say without a doubt that you get to know your partner, their culture, and their values on such a deeper level because you are forced to have those deep conversations. In that you commit to loving not just who they are but what has made them, them.
So this story, The Fox and the Moon, came out of that. It was that itch to talk about what it’s like to be in an interracial relationship, which both Fred & Dan are in as business partners but also in our personal lives. It’s the fact that in all my years of trash witch novel studies I’ve never seen a story with a bruja that I loved and the masses loved, meant to be beloved and watched over and over.
The conversation of cross-cultural relationships isn’t a micro issue of society, in fact about 20% of newlyweds are interracial couples. We live in a world so polarized it can feel like the divide just keeps growing. The Fox and The Moon is a story about two of the same who are conditioned to be afraid of each other but feel so drawn to each other despite all odds.
It begs the question…when society, the people you love, and an ancient hex keep you apart, will love still conquer all?
The Fox and the Moon mood board.
Janette and I always use visuals aids like mood boards and/or auditory aids like playlists to explain our vision to each other, and to help create the script vibe.
On Writing*
**not to be confused with Stephen King**
Hi! It’s Janette (Dan) here. Writing about the process of writing feels strange. I guess meta? Like, once I write down my process of writing does it continue to exist? Sorry I’ve been reading a book about Greek philosophy, so for the past 24 hours I’ve been thinking and sounding like a pretentious asshole.
Like many people who declare themselves as writers, the actual act of sitting at my desk, opening my computer, and writing words is akin to a miracle.
Here’s a breakdown of my day so far, a day I have set aside to write this specific blog post:
7:15am - Wake Up.
8:30am - Actually get out of bed after spending an hour on TikTok and Instagram.
9am - Breakfast and a whole French press to myself. Because it’s not a true working day if my heart isn’t desperately trying to hammer out of my chest.
9:45am - Look up from my book (the aforementioned Greek philosophy ) and realize ‘oh shit I’ve been sitting here for 45 minutes’
10am - Refill my coffee, go up to my desk and open my journal. I love to journal before I write anything “serious” (by serious I mean anything not going in my journal). It’s my stream of consciousness. The theory of journaling before writing is that it helps wade through all of your thoughts to get to the good ideas. My theory is that I think my life is INCREDIBLY interesting, probably far more interesting than other people’s, and that someday when I die in a very interesting way people will be enraptured by the journal entries of such an interesting person - Hyped up on caffeine, but still tired. I mean… I’m hooked.
10:15am - decide I am too antsy to sit still and go downstairs to do yoga.
11am - Shower. Get more coffee.
11:15am - TIME TO GET DOWN TO BUSINESS!!
1pm - Actually start writing.
Being a writer is truly exhausting, it’s the reason I require at least one nap a day.
Once I go through all of that and actually start writing, things actually become quite easy. Giovana and I had a conversation about writing the other day and a very common thought amongst screenwriters is that having a finished product is amazing but the process of writing is excruciating. I completely disagree (as does Gio). It’s not the process of writing - I have quite a lot to say in case you couldn’t tell and I love doing that through other people’s voices; it’s the process of SITTING DOWN to write. That is the true struggle.
Along with 4 hours of procrastination, other things I like to have on hand when I’m writing are a cup of hot coffee (cannot be iced), at least one or two books (just to have them near), and music of some sort. Music selection changes depending on what I’m working on. Writing in my journal, or something personal like this blog post, is way more flexible. This whole blog series is supposed to be about our writing process of our new script, a witchy romance called The Fox and The Moon. The other day while writing the opening together, Gio and I listened to the entirety of the Pocahontas soundtrack because our main character is a young Mexican American Indigenous witch.
I guess I failed this first assignment in a way because it took me almost nine paragraphs to mention the reason why I’m here, to talk about the process of writing The Fox and The Moon. We’ve really gotten away from the point here, haven’t we?
Guess you’ll have to come back to the next post to read the actual process of doing research for a new script.
Welcome to Fred&Dan!
Us at our first movie premiere for our short MGirls!
Hey hi hello!
If you’re reading this, you’ve either supported Fred & Dan in the past or have subscribed to our newsletter!
If you’re new here, welcome! We’re Fred & Dan AKA Giovana & Janette, best friends and writing and producing partners. Fred & Dan is our LLC that we started in 2016. That’s right, we are BUSINESS BITCHES.
A quick overview of us: we met in college at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The actual date of our meeting is much contested because the first two years of college are… fuzzy to say the least. But by junior year we were good friends and by senior year, inseparable! We had an internship together at a production company called Good Universe, and it was those long commutes in the car that really brought us together. That and IPA Mondays at the campus bar. (side note: IPA Mondays at a college bar??? They were giving us $1 IPAS!! They have the highest alcohol content of all beers! What were they thinking??)
Post college, we were living our best (and broke) early 20s life in a townhouse in North Hollywood with two other roommates and noisy DJ neighbors. It was during this magical year of post graduation anxiety that Giovana approached me (Janette!) about helping her write a screenplay - a true life story of her mom and friend’s experiences growing up in the Mission, San Francisco in the 1970s. San Francisco in the ‘70s?? Say less! After going through a couple drafts together Giovana made me the happiest woman alive by asking me if I wanted to be her writing partner. And I, of course, said yes. Imo, they should make registries for business partners, not just romantic partners.
The following year we completed our first production together, a proof of concept of the aforementioned script called MGirls. We contributed $11,000 of our own money and raised an extra $6,000 to recreate a 1970s San Francisco night club in the heart of Eagle Rock, Los Angeles. It was the most intense, and most rewarding experience we’ve ever had.
So much has happened in our lives since then. We both left LA and moved back home to the Bay Area, I have since moved back to LA while Gio resides in Oakland. We’ve written four feature films and one TV pilot (with three scripts currently in development). We came up with the name of Fred & Dan - a combination of our last names Frediani & Danielson. We launched our LLC and produced smaller productions in the Bay, including a proof of concept for our script Mean Streak, yoga videos for Giovana’s business Fire & Flow , and social media/online videos for other women-run, Oakland based companies and creators. Our script Mean Streak has won and made it to the finals of big deal screenwriting competitions. We’ve had and lost managers, we’ve come close to deals to have them fall through, we’ve entered SO MANY screenwriting contests. There have been a lot of tears, laughter, and so much wine and coffee.
We wanted to start a blog to bring people into our lives as screenwriters as we continue to grow our business and chase our dreams. You’ll hear from both of us here about our journey as a long-distance partnership, our experiences on set in different roles, the process of writing our new script, The Fox and The Moon, and hopefully explain to our parents why we aren’t famous YET.
We hope you stick around as we continue our shenanigans through life and this crazy career path! Make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter to get our new posts every Friday!
Fred & Dan doing what we do best…drinking coffee and/or wine!