A Look Back at 2011

At the start of 2011 I did a post about My Goals for 2011. Before I do the same for 2012, I wanted to look at how I did last year.

Feature Scripts

A year ago I decided that one goal in 2011 I would rewrite the three scripts I did in 2010 and write two new scripts. I didn’t do that. Early on I decided that I would write some “longer” short stories to practice writing for a longer format. I did start to convert a couple of my short stories, The Abattoir Project and The Crying Woman, into scripts.

My First Feature

I didn’t set a goal to start a feature this year and I didn’t make one.

Short Films

I set a goal to complete a short film in 2011. I did better with this goal. I completed two shorts for the $100 Film Festival. It is the 20th annual festival and the organizer asked me if I could do a film. I shot both on 16mm. I still need to do a little more work on them before they are ready to screen. The festival runs in early March, so need to get that done early in the year.

I wanted to finish My Most Difficult Case and submit it for distribution. At first I made progress, but then a person I hired to help took my money and didn’t do the work. I sued him in small claims court. I got some of the money back, but all distracted me from the film. Patrick Aull gave me some good advice that will help me get it done.

I did a sound track for Extra Special Care and put it on my website.

Short Stories

My goal for 2011 was to complete three short stories I had started in 2010, and if that turned out well, I would try to do enough to publish another book. I published five stories:

The Abattoir Project: A Ken Walker Adventure,

The Glencoe Project,

The Gladstone Barrier,

The Crying Woman and

Book Review: Sharkbiter - The Secret to Success.

The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Barrier were part of a larger project idea to do a book or movie about transportation planning. I hoped that it would be easier because I had 30 years experience in the field. It proved to be more of a challenge than I expected. I’ve put it on hold for a short time so I could work on other projects.

I stopped posting my short stories on Triond and Wikinut. I decided that in the long run I would be better off with them on my own site.

Articles

I published 13 articles this year on Triond, 11 articles on Bukisa and 8 articles on Wikinut. That is more than I planned to do. Actually, I didn’t plan to write any. I didn’t make much money. I did better early in the year, but then views dropped off later.

Part way through the year I decided not to post to Wikinut anymore. I get a lot of people who read my posts there, but it doesn’t pay very well. I feel that posting there just undercuts views on my other pages. I haven’t posted much to Bukisa recently. I intended to report reworked versions of some of my blog posts, but never got around to it.

Blog

My 2011 goal was the same as 2010, to post at least one blog a week. This will be blog post number 78. I would like to have more people read my blog.

Writing Skills

Several people had suggested that I work on my characterisation and dialogue, so I made that a goal for 2011. I did some reading on the subject and did some exercises. I think I improved my dialog a bit.

Website and Promotion

I’ve done made some changes to my website. I enjoy the work on my website, but I don’t think it helps draw people to the site.

My Goals for 2012

Next week, after New Years Day, I’ll do a new set of goals for 2012. The results this year were mixed, but I still felt it was worthwhile to set the goals.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Do Characters Need “Post Stories”?

All the advice I’ve seen on writing recommend that you develop a “back story” for your characters. The back story is what happens to the character right up until the story starts. This is very valuable to the writer when they create the character.

What occurred to me was that I never heard anyone talk about what I’d call a “post story” which is what happens to the character after the story ends. I suppose that some writers would think that a “post story” would be just a part of the “back story”, but I don’t recall that I ever saw anything along those lines.

It reminds me of the movie Backbeat about the early days of the Beatles. Part of the interest of films like this is that you know what happens to the characters after the story ends.

The story need not be a direct precursor to the “post story” or, for that matter, connected at all. Even though you may not share it with the audience, it would help you to have some idea what happens to your characters after the story ends.
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

A rewrite for “The Gladstone Barrier”

I started to rethink my short story The Gladstone Barrier this week. I came up with several ideas that I think I can use to develop it into a longer and, hopefully, better story.

Description

In some of my stories, I do have a lot of description of the people and the locations, but have very little in The Gladstone Barrier. It is very much a plot driven story. I think there a couple of good reasons to add more.

First, I can use it to develop the characters more. How they dress, how they move and how they present themselves all tell you something more about them. I think that my characters need that additional depth.

Second, I can use description to create a mood for each scene. A cramped room and a cosy room are physically the same thing, but the description creates a different feeling for the location that will affect readers in how they interpret what happens.

Bits of Business

I feel I need to add some little “bits of business” for my characters. I mean little things that he does that reveal something of his personality. A neat person will pick up loose papers on a desk and arrange them. A sloppy person won’t. I can use these to make the main character, Arthur Macdonald, easier to identify with. I would want to do the same for the minor characters, but not to same extent, since I want the focus on Arthur.

Along those lines, I want to rewrite the opening scene so that Arthur avoids the collision through his own actions. As it is now I don’t think that is clear. That would make him a stronger character and not just some one who is blowing in the wind.

Ling the Mentor

I intended the character Ling to be Arthur’s mentor. I thought that was clear in the story, but some people commented that I should make her his mentor, so I guess it isn’t that obvious. I would need to expand her role quite a bit.

Some people might think it is odd to have a woman as the mentor. The term mentor refers to a story from Greek mythology. The goddess Athena wanted to help Telemachus find his father Odysseus. She disguised herself as a man named Mentor and encouraged Telemachus to seek out his father. In her guise as Mentor, she travelled with him to provide guidance and advice. So, I think it makes perfect sense. Maybe I can use that parallel in the story.

Technical Details

Some of the comments I had about the story focussed on some technical details that they didn’t think I had right. I want to fix those, which will change the plot somewhat. Currently the boss assigns Arthur to do the priority project on short notice. That doesn’t leave him time to do all the consulting and hoop jumping that the project would normally involve.

For the rewrite, I think it would be better for him to take over the project at the last minute because the person who had done the work can’t complete it for some reason. This would put him in a position where he has to defend decisions that he was never involved with and doesn’t always agree with.

Subplots

I also would like to add a subplot about Arthur and a girlfriend or maybe a wife. This would serve to round out his character. It also occurs to me that it would ensure that readers would realize that his relationship with Ling is not romantic. Maybe I can add other subplots, like a conflict between the priority project and the project he had been doing.

The Danger of Delay

I got quite enthusiastic about the rewrite, but I have so much else on my plate now that I have to put it off until later. I wish I could dive into it while my mind is still churning out ideas. I worry that if I leave it to later, that I will lose the inspiration. That happens some times, but usually I can pick it up.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Films Submitted to the 20th $100 Film Festival

This week was the dead line for entries into next year’s $100 Film Festival. I submitted my two films just in time. Somedays . . . is a short one-gag film. Contingency runs longer and is an experimental film about the history of the $100 Film Festival. I hope they are accepted.

I still have some work to do before they are ready to screen. I have until March to get that done. Some of the shots I did turned out poorly and I want to reshoot them.

My plan was to do the 16mm films in the same way that I would have done a Super 8 film, but use the work print. I could still go back to a negative cut or transfer if I wanted to later. Now I’m starting the think it might be better to use the CSIF’s optical printer. That would give me a complete negative of the film, so I could do multiple copies.

I’ve never used the optical printer myself, but I went to a workshop on it. I think I can figure it out, although maybe I need to find someone who has to give me some guidance.

The CSIF is closed until January, so I have some time to plan where I go from here


This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Book Review, “Somedays . . .” and “Contingency”

I made progress on three projects this week.

I published a pseudo book review. It is an idea I’ve been toying with since I began work on Line of Taxis. The story is about a guy I call Orville Sharkbiter. When I did Line of Taxis, I changed his name to Orville Stark-Lieder. You can hear him mentioned at the end of the film on the radio. I would describe him as “the boss from hell”. I’ve had some good feedback on it so far.

http://authspot.com/short-stories/book-review-sharkbiter-the-secret-to-success/  or http://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog/?page_id=761

I got the film I shot back for my $100 Film Festival film this week. I was disappointed with how some shots turned out, so I want to reshoot them. The dead line for submission is this coming Thursday, so I’ll have to live with what I have now.

I actually have two films now. Somedays . . . is a very short gag film that plays around with the SMPTE Universal Leader. I had the idea several years ago, but I didn’t want to make it because I thought it would be difficult. I came up with an easier way to do it, so it wasn’t much extra work to shoot it on the same roll I shot for Contingency.

Contingency has evolved a lot since I started to work on it. Originally it was meant to be a sort of history of the $100 Film Festival, in part modelled after Man with a Camera. Now it is more about how things didn’t have to happen the way they did. I keep getting new ideas for the film, which is a good sign. Although, with only a few days left before the deadline, I need to stop at some point.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Back to Writing: Scraping off the Rust

I haven’t got the film I shot for Contingency back yet, so this week I worked on some other projects. I have two articles and a short/fake article on the go. One article is about how to listen and the other is about chaos theory, complexity theory, and economics. The story is about a character I created called Orville Sharkbiter, who is the worst possible boss you could ever have.

I’ve had the ideas for a long time and had extensive notes. However, when I tried to work on them this week I found it very difficult to write. I think it is partly that I got out of the habit of writing. The other problem is that I tried to write them as if they were blog posts, which is a very different style.

I left them for a day and then tried a different approach. The listening article came together fairly well, but I ran out of steam at the end. I think I can finish it off in another session. I did better with the Orville Sharkbiter story and got a good first draft done. I’ll leave that for a day or so and then polish it.

I experimented with eBook publishing a little more. The place where I sell my book, Lulu.com, has an eBook converter you can use when you publish with them. I couldn’t get the eBook to look quite the way I wanted to, but I can work on it some more.

It also turned out that Lulu had converted an earlier version of my book into an eBook and it is for sale on iTunes. (http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/walk-in-the-snow/id470953296?mt=11) Not only that, but I actually had a sale through iTunes. I made enough to buy a Tim Horton’s donut! If I can sell 999,999 more, I’ll make a million dollars.
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

$100 Film Festival Film Update – 2011 November 13

My film is closer to completion now. I’ve even given it a title: Contingency. Not really that original, but descriptive none the less.

My original plan was to include some shots of me editing some film on at Steenbeck at the CSIF. They are moving at the end of the month, so the time was tight. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get in touch with the guy I wanted to help me, so I came up with a plan B.

I will used some outcuts from my earlier films. That is one reason I picked the new title. I think this forced improvisation will make for a better film. I pulled out some of my old Line of Taxis files to see what I have that I can use. It looks promising. I documented my more recent films quite well. Some of my older films are not, so I am not sure what I have.

I shot another roll of film with a few more images I wanted and some titles. I wanted to include shots from my earlier Super 8 movies and I don’t have 16mm blowups I can use. I do have digital versions of those films, so I shot short bits of them off the computer screen.

I included two films that I did before the $100 Film Festival. The Smiling Corpse was a film I did back in 1974. In many ways, it was the original inspiration for the Festival. I copied two “cool” shots from the film. I can only include one of them though. The other film I used was Extra Special Care, which I did as a student project at SAIT in 1989. It was another example of the type of film I had in mind for the festival.

While I was at it, I short another short short film I call Somedays I just Can’t Get Started. If it turned out OK, I’ll submit it to the $100 Film Festival too.

I mailed the film to the lab Friday. I have some “Exposed Film” tape that I use to wrap the exposed film, but I couldn’t find it. Until, of course, after I’d gone and used some other tape. I still have quite a lot of tape and I don’t think I will find much use for it now.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

What I Found in My Notebook

A couple of years ago I started to keep a notebook of the ideas I had for my films and writing. It isn’t an original idea. In several writing courses I took, they suggested I do that.

The other day I pulled it out to look up some notes I wrote last week for an idea I had for an article. As I flipped through the pages I came across some notes I wrote about a film idea I had last August. I had completely forgotten about it. That surprised me.

The story is a variation of the idea I had for The Crying Woman. Like The Crying Woman, the story is about a chance meeting between two people. Where and how they meet is different. The two characters are different. What they want is different. Overall, I think it is a darker story, but it has a happy ending. It also has a message that I feel strongly about.

When I reread my notes, I found the story compelling enough to want to work on it some more. Right now, I have a couple of projects that I want to complete, so I can’t go back to it right now. I have notes for a couple of other stories I want to do.

The big advantage of keeping a notebook is that you don’t lose any of the ideas you have. You never know when they will prove useful. On the other hand, I remember reading an interview with Paul McCartney where he said that he felt that if you couldn’t remember it later, then it wasn’t that good an idea. That may be the case with him, but I think I can use all the help I can get.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

$100 Film Festival Film Update – 2011 October 30

I got the film I shot for my $100 Film Festival Film back this week. It looks good to me. I still have some more shots to get. Then I can move on to the edit.

I’ve started to think about what kind of sound track to do. I can’t do sync sound, but some kind of voice over or music would work OK. The first idea I had was to have a cacophony of voices and have individual phrases and lines popup into the foreground.

I’ve had a good idea about the images I want for a while now, but now I have to give more thought about the point I want to make. For a long time now, I’ve wanted to do a film about contingency: what happened didn’t necessarily have to happen. Just by chance, I got a shot that conveys that idea quite well. That makes me think this could be the film where I do it.

The original suggestion I got from Howard Horwitz was to do a film about the $100 Film Festival. My idea of contingency works well with how the festival came about. If you read the article (http://www.bukisa.com/articles/137107_the-history-of-the-100-film-festival ) I wrote about the festival you can see that there were several times where I might have dropped the idea before I proposed it.

I wanted to use a quote about contingency from Stephen Jay Gould. I was sure I had recorded it, but I can’t find it now. I’m tempted to record it with someone else, but I feel that would be cheating. Maybe I need to come up with my own line to convey the same point.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Website Upgrades in the Works

I want to improve my website and have started to experiment with some changes.

My first improvement was to add an e-mail notification to my blog. Google’s Feedburner allows you to sign up for notifications every time there is an update to the blog. I tried it out myself and it works just fine. Now I need to get people to sign up for it. I already have an e-mail list to send out notifications, but I promised to send out notices no more than once a month. The notices from this will be more frequent.

Up until now, I have created my website with html and php files that I coded myself. I did add WordPress when I added my blog. More recently, I looked into content management systems, which would make it easier for me to maintain the website. I could add features, like comments, which I can’t do very well now.

I hadn’t found any systems I felt comfortable with, and then someone suggested I could use WordPress. Since I use it for my blog, I have a reasonably good idea how it works. I set up a test website a couple weeks back to experiment with. (http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/testsite/ )

In order to match the look of my current website I need to create my own theme. That has been a challenge. I’ve run into and solved several problems so far. I got a WordPress for Dummies book, and while I found it useful, it doesn’t have a whole lot on how to create new themes, especially with the features I want to include.

I still need to fix a few bugs yet and I want to add in all of the pages before I take the new site live.

I sometimes wonder if I put too much time into improving my website. Maybe I should put that time into my stories or films instead. On the other hand, I think that a professional looking website does help. So far, I don’t have huge numbers of people who visit my site, so I feel I have the time to experiment with the site itself and with what I put on it.

Besides, I enjoy setting up ad improving the website.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Transportation Planning Humour

I wanted to put together a collection of transportation planning jokes, but I haven’t come across many. In fact, the only one I know of was one I wrote about 20 to 25 years ago.

Back then, our department faced some very difficult problems, which had resulted in the replacement of the manager. The new manager asked me to prepare a report about how new models might help to fix the problems. As I wrote my report, I came up with a way to explain what I wanted to say in a humorous manner, so after I finished the report, I wrote a short memo based on those ideas.

The memo is long gone, but this is what I remember of it:

We need to have three new models.

First, we needed a model that would help us address operational problems with our transit system. We would call this the Transit Operations Model, or TOM.

Second, we needed a model that would help us evaluate development applications faster. We would call this the Development Impact Calculation Kit, or DICK.

Third, we needed a model that would help us review the roadway plans on an annual basis. We would call this the Highway And Road Review Yearly, or HARRY.

In summary, with the help of every TOM, DICK and HARRY we can overcome our problems.

I was a little unsure if I should actually give it to the manager. The humour is a little lame, but I thought he would like it. I felt relieved that when I gave it to him, he liked it. He liked it so much that he showed it to several other people.

Unfortunately for me, some of the others were not so amused. I don’t regret that I did it though.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

“My Most Difficult Case” Update 2011 October 9

My progress on My Most Difficult Case has been slow. A while back, I started to think of it as My Most Difficult Film, and it has certainly earned that moniker.

Last March I arranged with someone to do the sound postproduction. Unfortunately, they didn’t deliver, so I’ve had to cancel that agreement. That was a big disappointment for me.

I turned to Pat Aull for help. He helped me earlier with My Next Film. He came over one day and in an hour he taught me enough to do the sound myself. Obviously, you don’t learn to be an expert sound technician so fast, but I only need a competent sound track.

A major problem I had with the sound was that the sync sound recording had a lot of noise. My attempts to clean it up were not very promising. I used Audacity for my sound work. With it, I could remove the sound, but it also changed the voices in ways I didn’t like.

Pat suggested I retransfer the sound from the original tape. I didn’t think that would help, especially since the original recorder, a Sony Walkman modified with Chrystal Sync, was no longer available.

Nevertheless, I went ahead and redid the transfer. Much to my surprise the sound turned out much better. I really should have more faith in Pat. There was still a problem with noise, but I found that in my tests I could remove the sound without adversely affecting the voices.

The only problem with the new transfer was that the speed drifted a bit. Over the length of the 44-minute recording, it shifted about 15 seconds. I did a speed adjustment in Audacity. I found that the drift varied and in some places, it was still up to two frames off. I adjusted that after I replaced the sound in Premiere Pro.

I see what I’ve done so far as an experiment. I will go back and redo the noise removal and time adjustment before I move on to the rest of the sound work.

I see three more steps I want to do before I feel I’m done with the sound.

First, I want to do some adjustments to the voices. I think that if I add some room ambience and adjust the tone a bit, they will sound much better.

Second, I want to add in some background noises. For example, Bryson closes some books, but there is silence. The screech when a chair moves as people stand would add some realism. I could use some noises, like a coughs to emphasize the dialog at appropriate places. I could do the same with bits of music.

Finally, I need to balance out the sounds, so the voices are all the same level. The background noises should be in the Background.

I had hoped to have this film all wrapped in 2011, and I still might do that. However, with two other movies on the go for next years $100 Film Festival, that may be too optimistic.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

$100 Film Festival Film Update 2011 October 2

The weather was good this week, and I didn’t expect that to keep up, so I decided I’d better get the outdoor shots I wanted. Wednesday I signed out a Scoopic from Yvonne Abusow at the CSIF and then I was committed. I had a hectic couple of days. I wanted shots of the various locations associated with the festival over the years. Thursday afternoon I hopped into my car and headed out.

I started at The Garry Theatre, where we held the festival from 1997 to 1999. That didn’t take long, but I was shooting into the sun, so I decided that if I could, I’d reshoot it later.

My second stop was Fort Calgary, where we held the festival from 1993 to 1995. That was another easy shot. I had thought I’d take about a half hour at each location, but I had the first two done in less than a half hour.

Stop three was the 4^th Street office of the CSIF from 1997 to 2002. Parking was a bit of a challenge, but it only took a couple minutes to get the shot.

Stop four was the Uptown Theatre. We held the festival there in 1996 and then again from 2000 to 2003. Again, parking was a challenge. It took me less time to do the shoot than it took me to take care of parking.

Next stop was the Unitarian church on 16^th Avenue NW. It was the CSIF’s office when I joined in 1990 and we stayed there until 1997. We also held the first $100 Film Festival there in 1992.

I drove by the Alberta College of Art and Design and the Plaza Theatre but couldn’t find a place to park, so I left them for Friday.

Friday morning I packed the Scoopic into a back pack and took the bus to SAIT, where I got my shot of ACAD. We held the festival there in the Stanford Perrott Theatre from 2004 to 2006.

I took the LRT to Sunnyside and walked over to the Plaza Theatre. We’ve held the festival there since 2007. We also screened Donna Brunsdale’s film Cheerful Tearful there in 1998. Some guy walked into shot, so I kept shooting until he got out of the way. I was a little annoyed, but then I came up with a way to use that shot of him in the movie.

On every film I’ve done I’ve discovered that filmmaking is a physical challenge. I did a lot of walking around with a heavy camera. Well, the camera wasn’t that heavy, but after I carried it around for a couple of hours it started to feel heavy.

I went back to The Garry Theatre and got a better shot this time. It was the same time of day, but the clouds softened the light.

My last stop was the CSIF offices at Currie Barracks. I got a shot of that too. I returned the camera as well.

I think I see where I will go with this film. Up to now it as just a bunch of shot ideas, now I see a structure to it.

Now I just hope the film turns out OK.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Obsession: The Key to Movie Making

I’ve often read that you need to be very committed to a movie project if you want to finish it. In the last few days I’ve come across a couple of examples that drove it home for me.

The first was a piece on TV about the movie Loose Change. The movie puts forth a 9-11 conspiracy theory. After the work I did on Who Shot the President, I’m pretty sceptical of conspiracy theories.

They made the initial version for $8,000 and posted it on the internet. Despite being free to watch on the internet, they have gone on to sell more than a million DVDs.

What caught my interest in the TV report was how obsessive the movie makers were. They didn’t set out to just make a movie, they wanted to expose what they believed was a real threat to freedom and peace. They made it free so more people would find out. As it turned out, there was an audience that was just as obsessive about 9-11 conspiracy theories as they were.

Loose Change was not the only conspiracy movie made, but it has been one of the more successful. I think the lesson here is that the movie makers’ obsession not only made the movie happen, but also imbued it with a sense of honesty that helped it capture an audience.

My second example isn’t a movie. Stephen King’s book On Writing is a combination autobiography and writing manual. I’m only about half way through, but I’ve gotten a sense of just how obsessive a writer he was. From the age of six he wanted to be a writer and from then on he began to write stories. By the time he became an overnight sensation with Carrie, he had been writing for 20 years.

In the book, he talks about how he persevered in the face of financial difficulties, family responsibilities and a huge pile of rejections. Before his success he had a very hard life. It wasn’t just his obsession that kept him going. His wife pulled the first version of Carrie out of the garbage where he’d thrown it, in the belief that it was no good.

No one starts out as a good writer. Writing is a skill that you need to learn and practice before you get good at it. Stephen King’s story shows the obsession a writer needs to persist until they develop those skills. Movie making is also a skill. You will make many bad movies before you make a good one.

For myself, I feel that I need to find a story that I want to tell even if I can’t make it into a movie. When I came up with the idea for Who Shot the President I thought of it as a feature. When I realized I wasn’t ready to make a feature, I took the idea and condensed it down into a short. It is that kind of idea that I want to find.
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Where Do My Story Ideas Come From?

I did an article a while ago about how I developed my film Line of Taxis. That film grew out of plan to develop my skills as a filmmaker in combination with a desire to express some feelings I struggled with at the time. The article was a useful exercise for me since it helped me understand how I created a story.

However, on other projects I used different approaches. One approach I found useful was to build stories from things that captivated my imagination. In some cases these were other stories and in others they were events in the real world.

Normally when I read a story, watch a TV show or watch a movie, I don’t question the decisions the creator made. From time to time, I did find myself thinking: “If they had done … it would have been better.” I couldn’t change what they had done, so it was just idle speculation. Later I took some of these ideas and used them in my own stories.

An example of this is my story A Homicide Detective's Rude Awakening. I got the inspiration for that story from an episode of Law and Order. In the final scene of the episode, Lenny Briscoe arrives at his daughter’s murder scene. He arrives at the scene already knowing that his daughter was the victim. I thought it would be more powerful if he didn’t know. The emotional distance from the victim that he had careful constructed would be destroyed when he recognized his daughter.

Sometimes I draw ideas from real events. An example of this is my story A Woman Alone in a Cruel World. I saw a documentary about a woman who became a rebel leader in China. When she was a young girl, her family had given to a troupe of performers. I wondered if, when she became famous, her mother knew she was her daughter. Did they ever reunite? How would they feel if they did?

In a biography of John Lennon I read that his mother had three children, all girls, after John was born. She put the first girl up for adoption because she wasn’t married at the time. I find it intriguing that out there somewhere is a woman who is John Lennon’s sister, but doesn’t know she is. She would have been of an age where she would likely have been a Beatles fan, so she would know a great deal about him. How would she feel if she found out? I haven’t developed this idea into a story yet.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

The Seven Character Theory of TV Shows

Many years ago, long before I got serious about writing, I came up with what I called “The Seven Character Theory of TV Shows.” It came from my observation of the TV program Gilligan’s Island. What I noticed was that there were seven regular characters on the program and I wondered why.

My explanation was that the number was a compromise between two forces. The lower limit is set by need to provide a variety of possible relationships between characters, since stories are about relationships. If you had too few, the number of stories would be limited. The upper end is set by the number of characters that people can recognize. If you had too many, then it would become harder to differentiate them.

I read someplace that people’s minds have a limit of seven pieces of information that they can actively consider at any one time. Since this fit my observation that there were seven characters on Gilligan’s Island, I concluded that this was the ideal number.

Of course, once I started to look at other TV shows, the theory started to fall apart. While there are many shows that did have seven regular characters, there were many that did not. As a recall Batman had six and Get Smart had four or five. Mostly shows had fewer characters. I tried to rescue the theory by assuming that the shows with fewer regular characters relied on more guest stars, which brought the effective number up to seven. This didn’t even convince me.

I hadn’t thought much about the theory for a long time, but recently I’ve given it some more thought. My original theory is much too rigid. Basing it on Gilligan’s Island may not add much weight either.

However, I do think there is some merit to my idea. There is a need to provide more characters to bring variety to the stories, and there is a limit to the number of characters you can have without confusing the audience.

In the stories I’ve done of late, I have sort of followed this rule. In The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Barrier I have 8 or 9 characters, although a few of them are minor. For The Crying Woman I only have two. I do have a couple of other characters that interact with the characters, but these are minor. Even so, that only leaves me with four characters.

One of the comments I had about The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Project was that they were a little too complicated. That may be related to the number of characters in the story. I felt that one of the problems with The Doorman’s Sacrifice was that I had far too many characters.

I guess that in the end, you do need to carefully consider the number of characters when you create a story. If you find that you need too many, that might be an indication of a problem with the story. I am not sure just how many is too many. Maybe it is less than seven.

I also wonder: do you need an odd number, or can you use an even number?

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

New Short Story – “The Crying Woman”

I invite you to read my new short story The Crying Woman.

http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/The_Crying_Woman.php

A woman whose life has just been turned upside down tries to run away from her problems. When she has a chance meeting with a man on an elevator, she is drawn into a conversation by the empathy he shows toward her.

I wanted to do a story that was very different from the stories I wrote before. It was a difficult story for me to write.

I want to eventually develop this story into a movie. I would like to hear if you think this would make a movie that you would like to see.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Thoughts on No Budget Filmmaking

The concept of no budget filmmaking appeals to me. Largely because I can’t see that I’ll ever get the money for even a low budget movie

The other day I followed a link someone posted on Twitter to the article The Rights and Wrongs of No-Budget Filmmaking http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abe-schwartz/the-rights-and-wrongs-of-_b_940438.html I encourage you to have a look at it.

The essence of no budget is to know your limits and work within them. One bit of advice I like is to use only the money you have immediately available. Never go into debt to make your movie.

I think the key to success is in the writing. It is there that you really need to be aware what you have to work with. In some of the stories I’ve developed I have critical scenes that are well beyond what I could do in a no budget movie. That eliminates those projects right off the top.

What I am starting to realize is that I need to identify my locations and cast my film before I write my script. In my project The Crying Woman I did talk to one actor before I started to write, but I never gave any thought to the other main character. I have no idea who I might get for the part.

The danger of approaching actors too soon is that if it takes a long time to get the project started, they may lose interest.

The more of the work you can do yourself, the better. I do prefer to use a cinematographer rather than do it myself. When I direct I want to concentrate on the actors and not worry about the camera work. I like to edit and write too. Both of these can be very expensive if you have to pay some one else.

The biggest issue for me is sound production. In many ways sound is more important than the images. Sound is also more difficult to do right. I’ve also found that it can be very expensive to hire someone.  I like to work on the sound, but I don’t have much confidence that I can produce an acceptable quality sound track.

Aside from the creative aspects of sound production, I don’t know the technical specifications. I know that there are a lot of tricks that can improve sound quality, but don’t know how to achieve them. The problem I have with My Most Difficult Case is noisy live sound. I haven’t had much success with my own attempts with noise reduction. I can eliminate the noise, but it changes the quality of the voices.

Given the cost of sound production, I think it may make sense for me to take a course in sound production.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Painting the Tiger

Back when I was young I spent a couple weeks in the summer at “Art in the Park.” It was a program at Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg. We would go to different parts of the park and paint what we saw. We also went to Kildonan Park, where I did a picture of the Chief Peguis statute.

My memory of that time is rather vague, but one incident does stick in my mind.

One day we were at the tiger enclosure in the Zoo. I strove mightily to do a realistic picture of the tiger. The teacher (coach?) came by and looked at what I’d done. I can remember exactly what he said, but it was to effect that I was too conventional.

After he had gone I decided, OK, I’ll show you unconventional. So I did a more abstract painting. I just did the orange stripes of the tiger. It wasn’t the realistic image I wanted, but more of an impression of a tiger. When I look back, it doesn’t seem so unconventional now. At the time, for me, it was.

When the teacher came back he was very impressed with it. At the end of the program, he selected that painting for the showing they did. I remember seeing it up on the wall at the Kildonan Park pavilion. That was the old pavilion, not the one they have now. I never got the painting back.

As I’ve struggled with my rewrite of The Crying Woman, my thoughts went back to that teacher’s advice. Am I too conventional in my approach? I do recognize that I often fall into a set pattern. I reuse the same phrases, words and structures.

If I really want my movie to stand out, I must find a way to break out of my conventional thinking. Over the last eight or nine months I have looked for a writing formula to help me move to longer and more substantial stories. That taught me more about how to write, but it also constrained my creativity.

I’m not sure how to shift mental gears just yet. Maybe, like the tiger, my work needs to be abstract and impressionistic. I use a similar approach when I created Line of Taxis and I feel that worked well.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Focus Focus Focus

A problem I run into all the time is that I spread myself too thin over many different projects. I find myself jumping back and forth between each project. In the end, I never finish any of them.

It is only when I take a step back; consider each of my projects, and then make one my top priority that I finish. In the last couple days I’ve come to realize that I’ve fallen into the same trap again. It is time to let go of projects.

I have a bunch of ideas I want to work on.

Feature Scripts and Novellas

I wrote four feature scripts and I’d like to rewrite all of them. I’ve also thought of rewriting them as prose. They’d all end up about novella length. Maybe some day I will get back to them, but right now, there is only one, Then the Phone Rang, that I can see I would ever make as a movie.

Transportation Planning

I want to do a movie about transportation planning. I worked as a transportation planner for 30 years and thought that background would help me write. I still feel strongly about many issues in transportation planning, which would help push me through to completion. A month ago I asked some transportation planners what they thought of my ideas. The feedback I got wasn’t quite what I expected. I think I need to take some time away from the project to absorb what I learnt before I pick it up again.

Articles and Stories

A little over three years ago I started to post my stories and articles on-line at sites like Triond and Bukisa. Generally I’ve noticed that my stories don’t do as well as articles. As a result I’ve done more articles. Right now I have quite a few ideas for articles. In fact I had a new idea this morning and wrote up some notes for it.

While it has been nice to have people read what I wrote, it doesn’t bring in much money. It also distracts me from my stories and movies. I’ve decided not to write anymore articles. I’ve decided that several times, but every so often I do one.

I have started to post my stories on my own website and no longer post them on Triond. I want to use them to build up my “brand” and I think that would be more effective on my own website. Several of the articles I wrote I’ve done as blog posts instead. Again, I think it is better to draw people to my own site, rather than some other site. So far it hasn’t made me much money either.

Blog

My blog does take time away from my other projects, but I plan to keep it up. It allows me to articulate some of the ideas I have and help me focus. In the long term I think it will help promote my work.

My Most Difficult Case

Long ago I started to refer to this project as “My Most Difficult Film.” The first draft of the script is dated March 6, 1991 and the film still isn’t finished. I really need to put this project to bed and move on.

Years ago I read a quote from François Truffaut. He said that when he started a film, he wanted to make the best film ever made. As the project progressed, he decided that he’d settle for the best film he ever made. By the end, he just wanted it finished.

I really need to make this project my top priority.

My $100 Film Festival Film

Next year will be the 20^th annual $100 Film Festival. Melanie Wilmink at the CSIF would like to see all the film makers from the first festival submit new films. I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire.

Howard Horwitz, who also had a film in the first festival, and I have talked about collaboration. I did some test shots a couple weeks ago. I need to fill out that idea more. It needs to be ready to submit by December 1.

I have another idea I’ve considered for years. I think I can get it done fairly easily. It would be a very short film. Less than a minute long.

I really do want to get this project done this year.

The Crying Woman

This was originally an idea I had for a movie. It came from a suggestion that I do a film like Before Sunrise. I realized that it was very different from anything I’d done before. As a way to build up my skill, I decided to start with a short story.

I thought that not only would I develop my skills, it would also help me pitch the film. It has been a hard slog to get the story done. I made some good progress on a rewrite yesterday, so I feel much better about the project now.

While I feel good about the story, I do worry that people may not like the ending. It is so built into the structure of the story that if I wanted to change it, I would have to start over from scratch. I want to finish the story I have now, but I also think I will start on a new story in a similar vein.

My Short List

I plan to concentrate my efforts on just three projects for now.

·         My Most Difficult Case,

·         My $100 Film Festival Film, and

·         The Crying Woman

Ideally I should only have one top priority, but I think I can work on all three of these projects at the same time. Each of them will have periods where I have to wait for some one else to do something, which would allow me time to work on the other projects.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Project Updates: A Film, Another Film, An Article, A Story and More Stories

I made progress on several of my projects this week.

$100 Film Festival Film

I got the test roll for my new $100 Film Festival Film (HDFFF2012). I was happy with how good it looked. I had been worried that the film was too old and wouldn’t work. I need to plan out what to do next. What I’ve had in mind is something like Man with a Movie Camera.  I’ve been in touch with Howard Horwitz to collaborate on this project. He had a film in the first $100 Film Festival back in 1992.

My Most Difficult Case

Actually I haven’t made much progress on My Most Difficult Case. I’ve run into some difficulty with the sound production.

Can Taxes be Fair?

I wrote and published a new article about taxes. I had some ideas about what is fair and thought that an article on taxes would do well. The initial response was good, but then things slowed down.

The Crying Woman

I got the first draft of my story The Crying Woman done. It came in at about the length I planned, but the last section of the story was short by 200 words, while the first three sections were a little over. Right now I think I shouldn’t get all concerned about that.

Before I start to rewrite it I want to think over what I want to do with the story. Since I took so long to write it, the style I used isn’t consistent. I had followed the Lester Dent formula, but it isn’t really appropriate for this kind of story. I want to move back closer to the style I used for A Walk in the Snow, A Woman Alone in a Cruel World and Hello, My Name is Bob.

Transportation Planning Stories

I’ve written two transportation planning stories, The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Barrier, as part of my goal of a transportation planning movie.

I posted a request on some LinkedIn groups for transportation planners to comment on my transportation planning stories. The response wasn’t as great as I had hoped, but I still had trouble responding to the comments. I want to give thoughtful responses and that takes longer. I got most of them done this week, but I think there are still a few I need to follow up on.

I started on the outline for a new transportation planning story this week. I tried to incorporate some of the suggestions I got.  I wondered if I should be doing a new story outline now with all the other projects on the go. I do enjoy doing out lines and it is a little too easy to drop what ever else I’m doing and put them together.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Issues in Transportation Planning #5: The Public and the Media

The relationship that transportation planners have with the public and media is an essential part of the job. But it is a relationship that can be strained by conflict.

Researchers, like Zahavi, have found that people spend about an hour a day travelling. It doesn’t matter if a transportation planner works in the public sector or the private sector, in the end taxpayers have to pay. Given how directly people are affected by transportation, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that transportation planners are subjected a lot of public scrutiny. Needless to say, this can lead to conflict.

In my experience, everyone has an opinion about transportation and everyone thinks they are an expert. They may completely misunderstand what a transportation planner does, but since they pay the bills, you need to be diplomatic in your response. The customer is always right.

When I was in graduate school I read an article about public participation. That was 35 years ago, so I don’t have the reference. The article talked about the difficulty that planners had with public input to long range plans. Usually the people who showed up for public meetings would have more immediate concerns and had no real opinion on what should happen 20 or 30 years later.

More generally, when transportation planners meets with the public, people are often not interested in the issue that the transportation planner has been assigned. They may be interested in problems elsewhere, sometimes not even transportation related. I had a character in The Gladstone Barrier who was interested in sewers, but who glommed onto the transportation engineer to solve his problem.

I heard a story about a transportation planner who had a project where he expected several of the options to be highly controversial and get the public angry. While he was supposed to do all his evaluation under public scrutiny, he wanted to do preliminary analysis of these options before he went public. He thought that if he could eliminate the controversial options for technical reasons before he went public, he could make his life much easier.

The transportation planner’s relationship with the media is another potential source of conflict. I took media training once and I think most of the time the conflict in this relationship can be avoided. People in the media have tight deadlines, so they will be open to a cooperative planner who can make their job easier. That isn’t always the case. Good stories need some conflict, so media people look for the conflict in a situation. Some may even try to create conflict.

I must admit that I am tempted to make the public and media into the villains in a story. After all, that is often the way it feels to a transportation planner. I suspect that people in the public and in the media often see transportation planners as the villains. However, I believe that a more nuanced relationship where both sides show good and bad traits would make for a better story.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog