In The Wake Of A Writing Machine

 

A Hundred Screenplays Written Over A 20 Year Period Gains A Writer A Burgeoning Reputation

The Roots Of Yellow Brick Studio

While it would become the fifth and final business endeavor to be encompassed under the Yellow Brick Studio umbrella, ForesT actually could be considered to be at the root of YBS’ development. For at the very foundation of the company’s evolution was the belief that movies could be customized and produced for people who wanted to make their own movies – a concept that would ultimately develop into LegacyVision Films – and this was propelled by the fact that one of the YBS business partners at the time, Eric Nemoto (photo below), over a lifetime of obsessive writing, had developed the unique skill set of being able to write screenplays around the ideas of other people and including them in as characters. As the lead writer of a small ensemble of actors who would go on to develop the successful Hawaii community theater known as TAG – The Actors’ Group, he wrote the play, The Committee Responsible For Exposing The Reverend Terry Jamestown in 1998 (his second script on what would develop into writing over a hundred more on a lifetime quest to write 300), a crime dramedy, specifically with the intent of providing roles for each of the theater’s actors. The Committee became TAG’s first bonafide hit. Another play that he co-wrote, Merry Christmas, Roberta, was voted best play in Hawaii in 2008. He was also responsible for writing what would become TAG’s biggest hit, Building Permit, in 2023, which performed 11 shows, all of which sold out. Of his innumerable screenplays, he wrote Parts Of The Same Circle for a group of actors (who would eventually become integral to the development of YBS) who approached him to write and produce a movie starring them. He wrote Natural Reaction and Closing Costs for actresses who wanted to star in their own movies. He wrote Lisa Patterson for an Encino, California man (who heard of his writing prowess and contacted him) about a Japanese American young woman in WWII who, despite being as patriotic as anyone could be, is sent to Manzanar, a story that was loosely based on the man’s personal experiences. He wrote Prof Blood – Basketball’s First Great Coach for the grandson of a Hall of Fame basketball coach who coached over a hundred years ago in Passaic, New Jersey. He could write scripts of every genre. He wrote drama (The Nothing Man, the story of a New York firefighter haunted by the events of 9-11), comedy (Ramon Runyen, the chronicle of one day in the life of one man having the worst day ever), science fiction (Captain Of The Cornelia Marie, the thriller about a man rescued from the sea who turns out to be the ghost of a boat captain from the past), sports (Gunner On Gunner, the basketball story of a coach who meets his match in the son he didn’t raise), fantasy (Ghost Pachyderm, the tale of the spirit of a dead elephant that haunts the living which was inspired by the circus elephant, Tyke, who rampaged in Honolulu on August 20th, 1994), western (Frenchy Of The West, the fish-out-of-water story of a French chef on the Chisholm Trail), and romance (Birds To The Sun, the tale of ex-business partners who were once in a relationship and an epic homage to unrequited love). And it wasn’t just that he possessed the ability to bring people’s story ideas to fruition, he could write FAST. Believing that urgency breeds creativity, Eric would publicly state that any script that he began would be completed within 30 days, and his list of first drafts would bear this boast out. In fact, many of his scripts would be finished earlier than this self-imposed deadline, and some incredibly earlier. He wrote Parts Of The Same Circle in just nine days. He wrote It’s A Dog’s Death, a personal favorite, inside of three days following the death of his family’s beloved dog, Napua. And most notably, he wrote the love story Trees, another produced play in the early days of TAG, in an impossible 48 hours. In short, through a lifetime of constant, almost obsessive, writing, Eric had become what many of his friends, family, colleagues and the creative community as a whole, would refer to him as, “the writing machine.”

Eric In A Salzburg, Austria Hotel By A Wall Poster Featuring A Scene From His Favorite Movie

The Venture Name And Trademark

By the time Eric started Yellow Brick Studio with Jon Brekke in 2013 he had already written a hundred screenplays. In fact, the family drama, The Good Man From Wuhan, which was written by Eric after Jon developed script leads through his contacts in China, was exactly script number 100 in his lifetime quest to write 300 screenplays. As the first of its eventual many business endeavors, the concept of producing LegacyVision Films, primarily rested on Eric’s ability to write customized screenplays for potential investors within a very fast turnaround time – 30 days to produce a first draft. To promote this service, Eric created a web page under the LegacyVision Films section of the YBS website which literally listed the synopsis of every script that he had written to date (which included a number that Jon had co-wrote with him), along with a number that Jon wrote individually. The idea was to show the breadth of YBS’ screenwriting experience by providing a listing of synopses of all the scripts which had been written to date. This, it was felt, would provide evidence that such customized investor inspired screenplays could in fact be done, done well, and in particular, done fast. This claim could obviously not be put forth from writers who had not really written that many scripts. But this wasn’t the case for the YBS screenwriters, particularly Eric, who literally had written over a hundred screenplays. This collection of synopses was also intended for another purpose. It was believed at the onset that there could arise certain people who would want to invest in the producing of a movie, but who didn’t really have a personal story to tell. In such a case, a potential investor could review the synopsis database and select a story that appealed to them. This, in fact, did happen with the production of the YBS/LegacyVision Film movie, Tiramisu On The Beach. Over time, as more and more scripts were written by Eric, as well as listing a few scripts written by some other YBS creative contributors, the synopsis database had ballooned to 164 by the beginning of 2024. It dawned on Eric, then, that this database had become so substantial that in addition to serving the needs of LegacyVision Films, that it could be promoted as another business endeavor in of itself. Going forward, it would not be used solely to describe and promote screenplays associated with YBS and its creative contributors, but to all screenwriters who would want to have their scripts listed as well. To convey this new creative endeavor, the website was redesigned, and the “screenplay database” that used to be housed under the LegacyVision Films section of the YBS website, would now be the focus of an entirely new section. Eric chose ForesT as the title for this new endeavor for a couple of reasons. First, he had wanted to reinvent an old business name that he had owned back in the early 1990’s that he had discontinued, which initially had been in the field of consulting, but then was transformed into providing contract writing services. While that prior business, in fact, was not named ForesT, it did bear a partial resemblance to this new name, to the extent that Eric felt, internally, he was renewing its spirit without resurfacing the exact title that was used previously. In his mind, ForesT would be a rebirth of an old business into a brand new venture. Second, the trademark (see inset image) of the old business seemed appropriate to reflect the burgeoning database. It was the image of trees in a forest, and to Eric, it was the perfect symbol to reflect the sense that ForesT was essentially a veritable “forest” of ever growing screenplay synopses. The subsequent logo that was created featured the bookend letters – “F” and “T” – capitalized, and the letters in between – “o” and “r” and “e” and “s” – set in lower case, to allow the placement of the image of an opened book, which taken as a whole, reflected that the database was this online “forest” of screenplays through which interested parties could explore and peruse through. The decision to create ForesT, initially started just as the new year turned, quickly came around with the creation of the new logo, the redesigning of the website (including appropriately revising all other sections of the website that referenced the previous database that was under LegacyVision Films), and so with the redesign and delivery of new YBS business cards, this new venture, ForesT, was officially born on January 12th, 2024.

In Addition To The Script Synopsis Database, Loglines For Each Screenplay Can Be Accessed Here