The week ahead . . . and a little bragging . . .

My beautiful and perfect goddaughter, Talyan, has been cast to appear in an episode of one of her--and her mom's--favorite TV shows, Criminal Minds. She's already began shooting. Of course I'll post it here when the air date is scheduled, so the one or two of you who sometimes read this can watch it. Yes, I'm very proud of her.

That's the bragging mentioned in the title.

It just so happens that I'm heading out to Los Angeles in the next few days to visit Talyan and her mom. She'll be done shooting by the time I get there, so I won't get to go on-set with her, but I'm cool with that. It's going to be a blast.

I'm planning to shoot a video of my trip and edit it together when I get back into sort of a documentary. This is mostly for the practice--I may never show it to anybody, depending on what I come up with. Of course I'll be taking a ton of stills, too, especially of our overnight trip to Disneyland. I'm going to ride the monorail! I've always wanted to do that . . .

I've been rereading this screenplay I wrote a while back, Too Many Tonys, and I've been a bit shocked to discover that, to me, anyway, it reads really well. I remember not being all that happy with it when I finished the first draft, but now, coming back to it after putting it down for a month or so, I'm forced to conclude, "Not bad . . ." There are one or two things that need some more work--a couple of the characters are still a bit off, and I'm not completely happy with the ending--but, overall, not bad, if I do say so myself.

What I'll be doing over the weekend is using Power Point to come up with something kind of like a storyboard (thanks to my old friend Regina who mentioned that when I told her about this--I hadn't thought of it that way until she said something!). This will be a little different from the usual storyboard, though. Typically, a storyboard is created for a director to figure out camera angles and camera movements--this one will be more to help me find areas of the story that aren't working, or could work better. So, I'll create a series of slides representing the scenes in the screenplay, then step through them, in the hope that any false notes will be revealed to me as I sort of watch the movie in my mind with the aid of the slides.

When I'm done I'll also have something other people can look at to help me pitch the idea to them, too. Two birds, one stone.

Of course, I've also got the usual things in store for the weekend--laundry, mostly. Also, it's championship weekend in college football so I'll be watching the games. Or at least have them on while I'm working on the movie thing.

It's shaping up to be a really pleasant weekend, in other words.

On the implementation of my fiendish plan . . .

I know, it's been a while since I've posted anything. For anyone who may have noticed, I apologize.

I've been quite busy, actually. I mentioned a while back I was going to get into filmmaking, and to that end I bought a camera--a Canon EOS 70D. I also got an iMac so I can run Final Cut.

I've never been all that into photography so I've got a lot to learn there. I'm getting there, mostly through trial-and-error, which is the best way for me to learn anything.

I've always been a PC-guy so it's also taken me a little time to get up-to-speed on the iMac, but I think I know enough now to get by. I'm using it to type this, actually. I have to say, this huge Retina 5 display is amazing.

One gripe I have, though, is with whoever writes the "Help" documentation for Apple's software. Trying to figure out how to create a master in Garage Band only brought up a definition of what a master is, not instructions on how to make one. Fortunately I could resort to Google to find an article that explained it. Still, it's really frustrating.

Final Cut is the software a lot of people in the film industry use to edit video, which is why I made the substantial investment in this new computer--as well as for the software, which also ain't cheap. I'm going to make this little film starring some toy dinosaurs I have--I've already recorded the dialog using Garage Band, and now I'm going to create the video and edit it using Final Cut. Maybe I'll make the final result available on You Tube or something, or maybe not. It depends on how happy I am with how it turns out.

I also managed to register with the Writer's Guild and copyright a script for my short film, "Niobe," today. So even though it's a holiday I'm not just sitting around eating and watching football.

So, after I finish fooling around with my toy dinosaurs I may shoot one or two more little films featuring those guys before moving on to filming something with actual people in it.

Of course, with the holiday I've got some time off from work, and I'm going to use that to work on this short film. I need to shoot the video portion, edit it and associate it with the dialog I've already recorded, put it all together so that it makes a witty and entertaining little film.

Or trash the whole bloody thing and start over. Either way, I will have learned something!

Sovran (Draconian)

Draconian Sovran

It's always a concern for me when a vocalist leaves a band that I'm really into.

Such was the case with Draconian--I was broken-hearted when Lisa Johansson left, as her amazing voice was one of the reasons I started listening to them in the first place.

In my experience many bands decide to go in a different direction when replacing a vocalist, but fortunately Draconian decided to stick with what was working. New vocalist Heike Langhans has a voice very similar to Lisa's, and this is a very good thing.

The first track, "Heavy Lies The Crown," sets the tone, and when Heike's vocal began I felt a great sense of relief. It was beautiful and powerful and full of drama, which is exactly what I was hoping for, and, indeed, demand from this band.

The remaining tracks are what I've come to expect from this band, which is a Very Good Thing. Their previous albums have raised the bar very high in my book so to have my expectations met with this one is almost mind boggling.

The song "Rivers Between Us," (featuring guest vocalist Daniel Anghede) is a bit of a departure for them--it's a little more romantic than their other material, but it's haunting and beautiful. Check out the video here. This tune has managed to finally dethrone Within Temptation's "Let Us Burn" as my favorite, and it's currently in super-duper heavy rotation on my personal playlist.

All-in-all, this one is well worth the wait. I give it an A+ and highly recommend that you click the link at the top and buy it. Now.

In Search of Citizen Z.E.D.

Two types of movies that I lose patience with very quickly: time travel, and "found footage."

So, needless to say, a project that came to me a while back, and which now has a title (see above), is both a time travel story and a "found footage" one.

I'm really excited about it, because I've finally managed to think up a story that I think will address a couple of issues that I think are important, and do so in an engaging and entertaining way, without becoming preachy.

Beyond that, I don't really want to say much more right now. It's still in the early stages. Next step will be to write a treatment for it, and that will require some more thought.

In the mean time I intend to focus on this idea for a short, "Niobe," which I will begin plugging away on as soon as I post this update.

I've finished the first draft of Two Many Tonys and I'm letting it sit for a little while, as I work on these other things. By the time I come back to it hopefully I'll be able to read over it with fresh eyes and know what changes need to be made--beyond those that resulted in me changing my mind about some things as I was banging it out.

So, I'll be plotting and writing "Niobe," treating In Search of Citizen Z.E. D., and trying not to allow any more projects crowd my already limited attention. It's not easy. For some reason I've been coming up with other ideas that I really like, and older ideas I've had are sort of waking up and clamoring for my attention, too. One of the curses of doing what I do, I guess.

Anyways, time to work on this short thing, and hopefully manage to pound out something that'll be both engaging and under twenty minutes or so in length.

And watch football. Because I just can't help myself.

Projects on deck, in queue, and at bat . . .

Okay, a more normal posting from me now, about what I've been up to lately.

I'm maybe 2/3 of the way through the alpha draft of a screenplay for a mystery that I'm calling Too Many Tonys. I call it an alpha draft because it's not quite together enough to be considered a first draft. I've changed my mind about some key plot elements and I'll have to straighten all that out with a rewrite later. Right now, if somebody besides me read it, it wouldn't make much sense, because of that.

Once I get to the "Fade out:" for that project I'm going to put it aside for a couple of weeks to work on a short project I'm calling Niobe. It's more of a drama, and I don't expect it to be longer than 10 script pages. Maybe less. It's going to take some intense concentration on my part to get it down to that short because I've got a lot of story to tell and I'm not giving myself much time to tell it. It'll take some thinking to get it down to that length without making the story seem choppy. I'm also planning, eventually, to shoot this one myself, which is another consideration. That won't be until sometime next year, though, at the earliest. I'm not going to be setting this one aside--I'm going to focus on it until it's done.

Then, once I'm done with that script, I'll jump back onto Too Many Tonys and begin the rewriting process. Within a couple months hopefully I'll have this baby to the point where I can copyright it and register it with the Screenwriter's Guild.

After that, I've got another short project I want to do--this one is more horror than anything. I'm calling it Inside, and it's based on my own song of the same title. I plan on shooting this one myself, as well. I'm expecting it to be around 10 pages or so in length.

By that time I should be ready to start on this project that, right now, has me a bit intimidated. I don't have a title for it yet, but it'll be a science fiction piece that involves time travel. Yes, I know I've said I hate time travel stories, but this is such a good idea . . . anyway, it's one of those stories that could really make some statements I feel need to be made, and be entertaining at the same time. It's also going to take some intricate plotting, and the pacing is going to be especially tricky. It's one of those things that'll either be great, or really suck. There won't be any in-between.

Then there's another drama about a preacher with something to hide, based on a short story I wrote years ago, that I think would make a decent little movie.

At this point it gets a bit nebulous, but I do have some things I'm considering--most of these would require me acquiring the movie rights so they'd fall into the area of pipe dreams at this time:

• A prequel to the Predator movies
• An adaptation of Michael Moorcock's The War Hound and the World's Pain
• An adaptation of the Karl Edward Wagner and David Drake novel, Killer
• A romcom about a couple who has been living together for over a decade deciding to get married--and the Queen of England winds up attending the wedding (due to various and sundry hijinks and escapades . . .)
• A "bitter home boy" story set in a small Southern town I'm calling Misery Creek.
• A horror movie set on a space ship

Of course, all of this is subject to change. Hopefully I'll live long enough--and somehow find the time and money--to do all this. We'll see . . .

Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion . . .

I was chatting with my goddaughter the other day, and we were discussing movies that are out now and which one, if any, I should see. She suggested Pan. I told her that I don't particularly care for Peter Pan.

She was aghast, and horrified, and thought I couldn't love her anymore because she adores Peter Pan. I told her that, first of all, I don't hate  Peter Pan, it's just not something I care for. Also, she is free to continue loving it all she wants, and I'd even watch the movie with her if she wants. I also explained that I don't expect her to like the same things that I like, and she's free to watch or read or listen to whatever she wants, as long as she enjoys it.

She accepted this and was overjoyed that we might get to see Pan together.

My goddaughter is 11 years old, and even she could grasp a concept that seems to elude an awful lot of people these days.

Choice:

 the act of choosing : the act of picking or deciding between two or more possibilities: the opportunity or power to choose between two or more possibilities : the opportunity or power to make a decision: a range of things that can be chosen

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/choice

See, I've been seeing all these memes on Facebook posted by people who oppose abortion about how it's the first step in eliminating people who may oppose those in power. It's just another tool for keeping people down. This from mostly people on the far right.

Of course, for something like this to work, abortion would have to be mandatory. There would be police officers rounding pregnant women up to force them into clinics to have abortions. While I've seen that happen in other places in the world, I just don't see it happening here anytime soon.

See, what gets their dander up is choice. They don't seem to understand that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you must do something. If something is legal they seem to think it's mandatory.

This is one of the tools in the lunatic fringe's toolbox. They did the same thing with marriage equality--skipping right over the fact that all it does is give gays the right to marry each other, and making it seem like it's required now, for everybody, or will be in the future.

The folks who buy into this seem to have problems grasping that concept. It's not just politically, either--if you don't like the movies they like, or the food, or whatever, they think there's something wrong with you, not that you just don't care for it.

So, here's my deal. You can marry who you want, you can go to whichever church you want, you can believe politically whatever you want, you can read whatever books or see whatever movies you want. The fact that I may disagree with you is not a slap in your face, and the fact that you may make decisions that I wouldn't make is not offensive to me.

But when you decide that you know what's best for me, and use lies and misinformation to try to limit the choices I can make simply because you don't like them, it's a step too far, and then I will get offended, and I will say something.

So, please, understand what the word choice means. Use it in a sentence. Try to apply it in your daily life.

If you still don't get it I know an 11 year old who could probably explain it to you.

The Visit, directed by M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, The Visit, compares favorably to his more successful efforts, The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable, though it is a bit of a departure from those two earlier films.

The basic plot is a teenaged sister and brotherr, Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) are sent to visit their grandparents by their mom, (Kathryn Hahn), while mom takes a trip with her boyfriend. Since mom has been estranged from her parents for years, the two kids have never seen their grandparents, and know very few details about them.

Of course, all sorts of strange things happen, and the suspense builds until the kids find out exactly what is really going on. The film is presented as a documentary filmed by Becca, who is a budding filmmaker, and that is something you'll need to keep in mind as you watch it.

Like The Sixth Sense, there is a twist that will change the context of the story. Unlike that other film (which is on my list of all-time favorite movies, btw), the twist here is quite sinister. The Sixth Sense is an even better movie if you see it while knowing the surprise at the end. I'm not sure I can watch The Visit again, knowing what's really happening.

Shyamalan made some odd choices as far as his staging goes--many of his shots have all of the activity in the shot going on to the left of the screen, with nothing at all on the right. I'm sure this was deliberate, and possibly it was his way echoing what was going on in the plot--by the end of the film staging was a lot more traditional, and we also know a lot more of what was going on with the story.  I'm sure that the conceit that it was supposedly shot by an amateur filmmaker had some bearing on it as well.

Performances were solid all around, and the film has the look you would expect from Shyamalan, with a gorgeous color palette and interesting contrasts. There are plenty of shocks and scares, and, while the ending isn't quite as satisfying as I'd like, it was still wrapped up nicely.

I'd recommend it. See it, at least once.

On a side note--I was a bit disconcerted, during the previews, at the number of movies that were "based on a true story." I find those incredibly tedious. I don't mind films based on true stories per se; it's when they are marketed that way that I find them annoying. Why? Because an awful lot of people forget about the "based on" part and just assume that every shot, every word of dialog, every bit of action, is what really happened. Uh, no. Don't ever use a narrative film to help you decide how you feel about a historical event, because chances are an awful lot of it was just made up to fit whatever narrative the filmmaker wanted to relate.

Okay, those are my thoughts about The Visit. Have you seen it? If you did, what did you think?