Part 18: Opener Progress

Overnight, I thought about the opener and reread my previous post. I thought about how to make the content a little more front and center, how to make the opening spread a little more interesting and a little more visually dynamic. Typically, it's pretty easy to recognize a profile's subject--there's usually a photo or an illustration of the protagonist. In this case, there isn't a usable main image (by choice, obviously. I could have just commissioned an illustration of Kaufman, but chose not to. That's the easy way out, plus we were hoping to get a self-portrait of the man.)

So today, I played around with a couple variations on yesterday's theme, but this time looking at playing up Kaufman's name, shortening the dek (and splitting it from the headline, looking for a pithier, New Yorker-style treatment). I also had the idea of inserting production stills from each of Kaufman's movies, and placing them adjacent to their references in the lede.

It looks pretty cool, I think, so I'm going to keep going along this path. I need to start laying out the rest of the story--it's running 7 pages--but first I need to show this layout to Bob Cohn, our executive editor, and see what he thinks. I don't necessarily have to accept his feedback, but it will make it easier in convincing Chris Anderson if he agrees with where I'm going. He'll probably have some good suggestions for me and start thinking about how to position the display copy, so once I get his buy-in and feedback, I'll investigate the turn pages.

But I'm running dangerously behind. This story is supposed to go into what we call "copyfit" Monday, which means that the layout should be blocked out and ready for Nancy to trim the galley to fit, write pullquotes and captions. First, I'll need to get with Anna to pull stills from Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine, and Being John Malkovich in order to make some progress.