By Emilia Hwang
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
They came from the outer reaches of Los Angeles County.
A group of 25 teenagers infiltrated the 15th floor of the
Oppenheimer Plaza building Thursday evening. The throng of teens
converged in a snug conference room after having traveled from far
away lands, some as far away as Palos Verdes and Thousand Oaks.
There wasn’t a Backstreet Boy in sight, so what were they
expecting to find in the eminent Westwood high rise?
The source of all the hubbub was a new science fiction adventure
film called “War World.”
However, the movie wasn’t ready to be screened. The battle
scenes had not been shot. The heroes and villains had not been
cast.
In fact, the screenplay hadn’t even been submitted to the
studios.
The teens were participating in a unique test screening ““
one without a finished film to test. What producers Steve Jay Rubin
and David Lee Miller were testing was the story.
“Our core market audience is the teenage crowd,”
said Rubin, who graduated from UCLA in 1973. “We want to take
the unprecedented step of actually reading the script with
teenagers to see if they get it, with a feeling that if
they’re on our side, it emboldens us to go
forward.”
A boy in a baseball cap said that he liked watching “Road
Trip.” And his spiky-haired friend wanted to see “Scary
Movie.”
What better way to find out what movies teens are interested in
than asking them?
Miller, who co-wrote the screenplay for “War World”
with Rubin, is also interested in involving their target audience
in the creative process. He values the input of his 13-year-old
son, Jordan, as the conception of the script was partly a personal
gestation.
“I pushed him to write it because it sounded good,”
Jordan said.
Hollywood routinely tests pictures before they are released to
the public market. However, Rubin and Miller invited teenagers to
read and critique their script before its submission and
production.
“Studios will sometimes show a finished movie to their
targeted audience when it’s all done and they’ve
already spent their $97 million,” Rubin said.
“We’re doing this at a stage where we can still make
some major changes if the need be.”
Though Thursday was their first test reading, Rubin and Miller
plan to have multiple readings as they make changes to the script.
In the first set of participants, they brought together teens from
various areas and ethnicities. They plan to also have additional
readings with entirely different people from varying age groups and
cultural backgrounds.
“Ultimately, this is a business,” Miller said.
“If we know what our audience wants before we produce it, or
if we know we’re producing something that will definitely
appeal to our target audience, the chance to make money will be
much greater.”
The participants are encouraged to take notes during the
reading. And afterwards, they fill out a survey evaluating their
response to the script.
If it’s as simple as testing a movie’s screenplay
before it’s gone to production, then why haven’t more
producers taken the obvious step towards ensuring success?
“People are very nervous to show their material to people
before it goes out to the studios,” Rubin said.
“They’re scared that bad buzz will happen or
they’re just not inclined to think like we’re
thinking.”
Rubin utilizes his experience in publicity and marketing.
“I’m doing everything I possibly can to guarantee
that my script isn’t just one of ten thousand scripts sitting
on a pile waiting to be rejected by somebody when it needs to get
attention.”
And the attention the writers are trying to capture is not only
that of studio heads, but also that of the teenagers. Involving
teenagers in the developmental process is a strategic move for the
writing team.
“The teenage audience is the audience that fuels
blockbuster movies,” Rubin said.
They’re not only characterized as a dating crowd, but also
as repeat viewers who like to see a film multiple times.
“If you get a hot movie like “˜The Perfect
Storm’ or “˜MI:2,’ you’re generally going to
appeal to an audience that’s going to go back and see the
movie several times,” Rubin said.
Furthermore, Miller said that teenagers tend to know what they
like. Boys, like his son, tend to watch lots of TV and play many
video games.
“They have the instruments of technology and production at
their fingertips right now,” Miller said, referring to the
growing sophistication of teen audiences. “The target teen
audience is now able to communicate to us as filmmakers better than
they ever were before.”
Rubin and Miller plan to stay in touch with kids who have
attended the reading via e-mail.
According to Miller, teenagers are media-oriented people,
interested in new technology like DVD and the internet.
However, the reading of the science fiction script consists of
six actors who merely read the dialogue. Without the usual audio
and visual effects that typically characterize big action pictures,
all the teens are left with is reading the exposition.
Like many of the other participants, 16-year-old Jonathan
Urquijo had never been to a reading before.
“It’s hard to envision the story off the
paper,” he said. Nevertheless, Urquijo liked the script and
said that it reminded him of an anime movie.
Rubin isn’t worried about how the action, humor, and fun
characters of “War World” will translate from the page
to the young minds of his readers.
“I’m not going to be sitting in the corner firing
off sky rockets every five minutes to simulate space battles, but I
think our writing is very sharp,” Rubin said. “If
anything, it’ll get your imagination going.”
Fifteen-year-old Lethin McNair had no problem following the
story.
“It’s like reading a script in a play,” she
said.
Movies have been both lauded and denounced for their
accessibility to mass audiences. Technological innovations in movie
making allow a wider range of people to appreciate films.
Kimmie Agin, 15, noticed that reading the script without the
special effects forced everyone to use their own imagination and to
focus on the story.
“Music, especially, is a big part of movies,” Agin
said. “And if you don’t have that and people are still
paying attention, then that means it’s probably going to be a
really good movie.”
Some of the younger kids did an impressive job of keeping up
with the reading. Nine-year-old Jon Freedman enjoyed imagining the
action scenes. He said that reading the screenplay is a good way to
preview the movie.
“It’s like a book coming out before the
movie,” he said.
But books and screenplays don’t have the special effects
that can take attention away from the story lines.
“I can lower the lights in the room and create weird sound
effects in the background,” Rubin said. “But, I think
I’m going to leave it up to the imagination of the
people.”