I should be so lucky...

...as to wind up being so totally indifferent to old age as my father, who has found himself on the cover of Fifty-Five Plus magazine expressly for his choice to live like A Human and not the kind of demi-human so many folk resign themselves to being after they've been around long enough.

Addendum: I think my favorite line from the article is where Karen Secord, the author, describes my father as being "propelled by intellect, a quick wit and a fierce sense of self" (emphasis mine). Though I wouldn't argue the first two, it's that third quality which I feel really hits the nail on the head - not only as part of the assessment of my father but in identifying a necessary trait for making the most out of this quick jaunt across the Earth we've lucked into.

Transcript: AHAAAAAAHhhh....oh phew......oh ho ho HO HO HO HO HA HA HEE HEE

Holy cow I just about shit a brick! Not one hour ago I finished writing the "Webcomics: What's up with that particular medium of entertainment?" episode of Handful and then I see that Yahtzee has done an episode on webcomics.


A good episode too, mind! I watched it, I enjoyed it. But mostly I was relieved that...
1) I put up that preview of the Ryan North Interview when I did, thus proving I had the idea to do a webcomics episode on my own and that I'm not aping Yahtzee.
2) That Yahtzee focuses directly on gaming webcomics, while I'm looking at the whole spectrum.
3) He's also doing a tongue-in-cheek "How to make your own" thing, while I am taking a different tack.
4) Despite some qualifying remarks in the closing credits, he's obviously taking a big dump on Tim Buckley - which is a perfectly fair thing to do with Tim Bucklebottom - and his webcomic that serves as a perfect measure of the worst in gaming comics...particularly the comedy/drama switch thing.

Oh and uh hey I got to be in Ryan's alt text today thanks to this shirt. I knew it would be good for something other than saving people's eyeballs from bursting due to a manliness overload at the sight of my pecs.

9,000 Corsets and One Man Scratching His Head

One thing that is happening while I am building steam towards launching "Handful" is that I am looking around at other shows and trying to judge what brings in decent traffic. As I was browsing through my folder of Youtube videos I noticed something that really caught my eye - the third part of my Dirk diddling in "The Movies" currently has 9,037 views.


At first I remembered, at least seven months ago now, figuring out that somehow a bunch of members of a corset enthusiasts forum had kept tripping over it - most likely while searching out things more closely related to their joi de vive (sp?). But seven months ago it was around 900 views and wasn't toooo much further ahead of the other episodes, which you'd expect to get roughly the same amount of accidental search traffic. But for it to multpily tenfold is still pretty surprising and the contrast between it and the other three episodes is stark

Views as of this moment
Ep 1: 443
Ep 2: 979
Ep 3: 9,037
Ep 4: 679
Ep 4 Redux: 286

They all have the exact same title but for the episode number. I have to wonder what mysterious X factor I am missing! Meanwhile, the view count for my first crack at directing is currently 637 - I guess my problem was not naming it "Tonight We Fall In Corsets"? Or maybe "Tonight We Britney Nipple Slip Corset"? Surely one can take succor in the thought that, were he of the modern era, Alfred Hitchcock would have had these concerns weighing on his thick, furrowed brow.

P.S. I'm older and I didn't write a damn thing about it here? OH WELL. BLOG FAILURE I GUESS. UM, "THE DAYS SURE DO GO BY QUICK HUH?".

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry...

Mr. Oliver Thomas Coles Brackenbury and Mr. Ry-an North

Oh ho ho....needless to say (but I'm saying it anyways, apparently!), I have edited this in something of an intellectually dishonest manner. The proper interview, and any others I do, will edited in a more straightforward and honest fashion.

Toxic Pacific

I wrote about this a little while ago, but I thought I'd point out that the VBS series on the giant plastic conglomeration in the southern Pacific gyre is now up to view.

Here's part one.

And I must stress, VBS's journalism just isn't the same creature as VICE magazine - which I find to be steadily deteriorating - and shouldn't be pre-judged on the magazine's merits. Give it a chance, I doubt you'll regret it.

Seven Words you probably can't say in Heaven

George Carlin dying can be fairly described, as I'm sure he'd say, as bullshit.

The days...

Jesus jumped up Christ I cannot believe I'm already on the last week of this six week sabbatical. I'm reminded of a cynical bit (as if Shannon Wheeler can write any other kind) from the old Too Much Coffee Man comics. Basically TMCM get's wound up about the progression of time and how it races by when he's engaged in projects (satisfying or otherwise) but that the only way to stretch it out is to waste it by doing nothing (or at least nothing personally satisfying).

I'd like to provide a rejoinder but I don't have one at the moment. Perhaps there's one in here.

Unlikely Alliance

I have to say, I'm rather keen on this "Unlikely Alliance" project by the WeCanSolveIt group. If they are still taking videos two or three weeks from now then I'd certainly like to have a go.

That's how you know!

Man, I've spent almost the entire day editing (and look to be continuing doing so until bed). About mid-afternoon I had a real "Oh good God what am I doing oh man oh lord oh geez. I should just get a simple life that I can manage, maybe where I sell half-used batteries in a store inside an incomplete strip mall located at the corner of some suburb where the children die young and their parents just can't stop fiddling with themselves in public"...moment.

That's how you know you're learning new things and pushing out against the boundaries of your abilities folks!

CLUE: The following picture is part of what I'm slap, slap, slapping together.

Last preview for now...

...if all goes according to plan, I'll be uploading the first proper episode in very early July.

Not having millions of dollars...

...with which to purchase the rights to images and clips, I've been looking through the Internet Archive, everystockphoto and PicFindr a fair bit. Just thought I'd toss them handy links out to anyone else who wants to include clips without getting lawyers calling them - it can happen even when you think you're playing it safe, such as the recent trip up of Red in Tooth & Claw accidentally getting some David Attenborough clips mixed in with their show...then having to re-cut EVERYTHING THEY'D DONE. Good times.

Good times I would like to avoid.

Meanwhile, here's my first mess around with introduction credits for the show!

I...live

So!

The shooting got pushed back to Friday (yesterday) from Saturday (....today). I think things went okay, once I got back into the swing of things after not having been in front of a camera since late December.

As I've mentioned, I'll be doing the editing for these episodes (the latter batch being shot at the end of this month) and after uploading the footage to my computer something painfully obvious finally hit me: I am going to be spending hours and hours listening to my own voice while staring at my own loverly features.

Oh.

Oh god.

I mean, pretty much everyone has at least some degree of an adversarial relationship with recordings of themselves and I am no exception. I wonder if this process will nullify or intensify that?

Improper Ollie

So I've been researching to help decide on the camera style I want for my own show and, amongst other things, I tripped over this. It's not what I'll be doing, in look or subject matter, but I appreciate the style and content all the same. It's only three minutes, so why not give'er a go.

MUTO

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
From both a street art and a film making standpoint, this impressed the hell out of me.

Onward and upward

So, much to my joy I earned the good faith of of my web collaborator to help shoot and produce a show I've been working on - a show with yours truly hosting. We're looking to shoot five episodes a week today and the remaining five of the first season (so a total of ten) two weeks after that. I've got a right laundry list of things to do in order for this to all work out and I couldn't be happier. A third of the way through this sabbatical and I feel well vindicated in my decision.

More news later, when I'm not constantly checking to see if my arse has fallen off thanks to my having been up for something like 26 hours yesterday/today and then not being able to sleep in thanks to the blind flute guy who likes to play outside my bedroom sometimes. As my pal Ryan, who had to deal with this before he moved out and I moved in, put it "How many times do I have to cure cancer before I can dump a bucket of water on a blind guy?".

Workin' in the park...

...is great when I just need to look at one or two pages at a time, but terrible otherwise (for getting work done). You just don't have the desk space! Sure there's the ground but it is not always the most friendly place for a piece of paper and there's generally a breeze or three that'll snatch it away from you.I've often wanted to just bust out a desk like John Cleese doing a "And now for something completely different" bit, even wearing an old suit to complete the image, and just set down to work like that in the middle of all the greenery and sunshine.

Maybe a breakfast-in-bed tray kind of thing? Any suggestions? These pictures are from Trinity-Bellwood Park, by the by.

Scriptwritin' Fancy-Like: Genre writing and eating your own tail.

So! As I have mentioned, the treatment I've just finished is looking to be in or at least containing elements of the film noir genre - which is a tricky beast in some ways since there is little consensus on any kind of concrete definition. Many of the films considered the height of noir are missing a few or even most of the stylistic and storytelling tropes which are associated with noir.

Meanwhile, I find there is always a danger in consciously working within a genre or applying it to a storyline, like a coat of paint. You can run the risk of forgetting to write a good story underneath all them tropes and just end up working your way through a checklist of semiotic signifiers which resonate with your own perception of what the genre is (or worse yet, what you are reading out of a book at the same time).

But as much as genre can be used as a style substitute for substance, it can spruce up what might otherwise be a less interesting story. Used this way, it's basically steak sauce and like sauce you just need to have the sense to know how much augments the meal and how much can drown it. With noir, some of the tropes (like it's use of lighting) aren't the scriptwriters concern unless he is also the director. But the dialogue, the kinds of character motivations and the tone of the story are all laid out by chumps like yours truly before being filtered through the actors, director, art director, set designer, costume designer etc etc.

The temptation to provide thick, lumbering descriptions is amplified with genre too, since the look is so much a part of what defines any genre. I'm not the first person to say this by any stretch, but if you want to read a good noir script (and a good script, period) then you could do worse than to read the one for Chinatown. Even if you're not fussed about reading the whole thing, I'd say you should check out the opening scene with Gittes in his office. This is a good illustration of why the lines of text which go underneath scene headings and wrap around dialogue are referred to as "action" lines in any script editing software you'll get your hands on. Yes the suits, the office, the background music etc all help make a film "noir" but that's not what Robert Towne was called upon to provide - he was there to provide the corruption, the desperation, the secrecy, the sordidness and the paranoia that also help to make a film fall into that category.

Anyways, I'm starting to ramble and Christ knows that there are volumes and volumes of abstract theory about this sort of thing. Me? What do I do?

While reviewing a post-apocalyptic short that I wrote a while ago, making notes to trim it down to a better length for festivals and to get it into a shape I'd feel comfortable trying to film, I started a practice which came in very useful for my work on the noir treatment. Looking through the action lines I'd ask myself first one question and then, sometimes, one other.

First: "Is this something which would be covered by another member of the crew, somewhere down the line?"

If so, then I like to jot down whose job it would be and then I ask myself...

Second: "Given that, how essential is this thing I'm describing to the plot, tone or characters? Basically, does the this line do anything or does it just add to the background?"

And then I'll remove, change or leave the line based on what answer I give myself. The only place I allow a little leeway is within the one scene which I feel sets the tone for the rest of the story (usually, but not always, the first). However, I'm not entirely sure I can defend that habit.

Another good way that I help keep myself from getting overly descriptive is to remind myself that if about one page of script equals about one minute of film and that there is a limit to how long the film can be, then do I want to take up valuable page real estate with more gripping or story a description of a chair?

Put that way, the answer is pretty obvious.

That's enough about genre for now, I'm sure I'll come back to it before I die of old age surrounded by golden idols of yours truly.

Finally, I just thought I'd note an odd experience I had while brainstorming on the treatment. The film noir aspect was first suggested by my collaborator. The burlesque side of things has been on my brain since I've met more than one person involved with the scene since I came to Toronto. So it was, with...would you call it serendipity? Well anyways, so it was with no direct intention that I was stirring around a bunch of plot points in a pot when they lined up to form an almost perfect reproduction of the first short film I ever wrote - Trenchcoats & Corsets. For those few who know of it, I'll just let you chew on that. For those who don't, I have to stress that the odds of this have always felt very astronomical to me. Though I do feel that retelling others stories can have merit, I frown the hell on it when authors of any kind begin to repeat their own work. Ah well, it wasn't on purpose and now I suppose I've gotten an interesting warning.

-------------
Addendum: I rather like this contraption.
Also, if you want some additional proof that the great they sometimes do stumble - it's worth noting that Robert Towne also wrote (and had a role in) The Last Woman On Earth. I've got that sucker on VHS and hooooo boy....

marriedtothesea.com

Background....check!

How hot can a 'dang' get?

Well hot dang the noir treatment is done. Now to wait for a response - which might be bothersome if I didn't have ten other projects to occupy myself with! Yesterday I got a nice start on the web show work I need to have done for next week, so I reckon that's the thing to work on through the weekend. But not tonight - tonight I'm going to try and finish a painting I started, if for no other reason than that painting seems to use almost none of the same cuts of my brain as writing does and thus it makes a great way to recharge while still doing something.

I wish I'd done more in this first week, but I've done some comparisons with other things I've worked on since moving to Toronto and I still got shit done quicker and far MORE shit done in a shorter period of time - so I'm not really complaining. Plus I've needed

Meanwhile, for those who are amused by such things, here is the short playlist I listened to over and over to maintain the right mood for working on the noir treatment.

"Fly" by Luscious Jackson
"About Her" by Malcom McLaren
"Diabolus" by The Cinematic Orchestra
"Thread", "Theme to Kill a Dead Man", "Hunter", "Nylon Smile" and "The Rip" all by Portishead