News and Progress in January and February 2011

I published three articles on-line this week. This month Triond, where I publish, will pay a bonus if I publish five or more eligible articles during the month. With these three I’ve made that. I wrote and published six articles over the last month.

Where Do We Spend Money on Health Care?

A Review of "Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway"

Some Advice to People at The Start of Their Careers

The Dark Side of Quotations

Can Government be Run Like a Business?

Evolutionary Economics

My brother read my script Then the Phone Rang. He said it was better than the last one of mine he read. He said the dialog was better, although a few lines made him cringe. I am looking for other people to read it, but I wonder if I should do a rewrite first. I have some ideas to improve it.

I want to move on with My Most Difficult Case over the next month. My next task is to finalize the music and then I can move on to the sound. I have some paper work to do as well. If your film is over a certain length you need to get a C-number from the CRTC to prove that it is Canadian content. I’m not sure what the cut off is, but I’m fairly sure that I am over the limit.

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

Reflections on 19 Years of the $100 Film Festival

The 19^th annual $100 Film Festival starts next Thursday March 3, 2011. It is a bit of a shock to realize that it has been over 20 years since I came up with the original idea. At the time I felt I was wildly optimist when I told people it might last five years.

Over the years I have become less and less involved with the festival. After the first festival, I had to cut back my participation because of other commitments. The last time I contributed anything to running the festival was in 2003 when I wrote a History of the $100 Film Festival for the newsletter. I did have all my films shown at the festival. The last one was My Most Difficult Case in 2004. I went to all of the festivals until 2009. Last year in 2010, I went to two screenings.

At some level I feel like I have abandoned the festival. However, a long time ago I realized that the festival had taken on a life of its own. It wasn’t really “my festival” anymore. As the years went by, the festival drew in new people. They each contributed their bit to the festival and kept it alive. I believe that the best thing I ever did for the festival was to step back and let others carry it on. I feel good about the festival now, even if I am not close to it any more.

I do miss the “old days” when the festival energised me and kept me active.

I have been slow to move on to my next film. I don’t mean My Next Film. After My Most Difficult Case I decided I wanted my next film to be a feature. As I look back, I wonder if that was the right decision. The enormity of the challenge has stalled my progress.

The last couple of years I have focused on writing. I’ve done four feature scripts now: The Doorman’s Sacrifice, an untitled detective story, Then the Phone Rang and Bright Freedom. I don’t have a script that I want to make yet, although I do have hopes for Then the Phone Rang. The effort is not wasted though. With everything I write I develop my skills further.

When I think of the films I want to make, I think abut how the $100 Film Festival came alive. I want the same thing to happen with my films.

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

The Dark Side of Quotations

I just published a new article The Dark Side of Quotations: http://socyberty.com/issues/the-dark-side-of-quotations/

I came up with the idea almost two years ago, but found it very hard to write. Mostly it was because I would “get lost” in quotations when I did my research.

Monday I told myself to just get it done. Again I got sidetracked in my research, but I pulled myself back from the brink and put it to bed.

I wasn’t that satisfied with one section of the article, The Flypaper Effect, because I couldn’t find a good quotation to use. The one I had didn’t seem all the “dark.” After I failed to find a better one on the internet, I decided to just live with it.

I cut the final section out because I felt it was too egotistical. What do you think?

A Real Quote from Abe Lincoln

“James Morison is a great writer and film maker. I urge you to support him. Please visit his website, 

buy his films, buy his book and if you don’t want to buy, then donate money”

Unlike the other quotes, Lincoln actually did say this. Really!

Well the words were in a different order; he said them at different times and didn’t include the hyperlinks. But he did say them.

OK, maybe he didn’t use the word “website”, but he did use words that had the same letters. ;-)

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

Participatory Cinema

I have been on the look out for new ways to get my projects done. It isn’t easy to make a movie and I feel I can use all the help I can find.

I stumbled upon this Wikipedia article on Participatory Cinema http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_cinema and it thought it might be worth digging deeper.

The idea encompasses a couple of different ideas: crowd funding and community production.

Crowd Funding

In crowd funding, money to make a film is raised from many small investors who each contribute a small amount toward production of the film. There are several websites that have been created to help with this, and of course you can always set up your own site.

This post has a list of crowd funding websites: http://blog.webdistortion.com/2010/07/18/9-crowdfunding-websites-to-help-you-change-the-world/

 

Community Production

In community production, a community of people contribute to the production. This can include suggestions about the script and material help on the film. I found one website that co-ordinates community production: http://www.wreckamovie.com/, although several individual films have their own websites.

Amazon Studios, http://studios.amazon.com/ , looks similar in intent, although many people have expressed doubts about it. My own script hasn’t generated much interest there.

 

Some Examples

Sauna is a horror film set in 1595 on the border between Russia and Finland. Sauna is finished and can be purchased on Amazon. http://www.wreckamovie.com/sauna

Iron Sky is a story about the threat of an attack from a Nazi base on the Moon. Iron Sky has completed shooting. http://www.wreckamovie.com/productions/show/ironsky

The Cosmonaut is the story of a Russian cosmonaut who is lost on a trip to the Moon in the 1960s. The Cosmonaut is still in preproduction. http://www.wreckamovie.com/thecosmonaut

 

Is This the Way To Go?

This is a fairly new approach and while there have been some films made, many more haven’t. I like the idea in general, although it would take a leap of faith to plunge into a project. I have a lot of fears about legal problems and interference.

I have some elements of collaborative cinema on my website now. I have a donation option that could be used for my own crowd funding. I need a project that will excite people’s interest if that is to work.

Through my blog I hope to get some feedback on my ideas and projects, although I have very few comments so far. If a project is to be successful, it needs to take on a life of its own. I saw that happen with The $100 Film Festival and Line of Taxis. That only happens when others step forward to support the project.

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

Sore Teeth and Other Thoughts

The last couple of weeks one of my teeth has become very painful. This week it got so sore that I found it hard to concentrate on much else. I will get it pulled Monday.

Recently, when I develop new stories, I try to give the main character some kind of handicap or limitation that they need to work around. After this last week, I think that a painful tooth would be a good handicap to give a hero. You really need to be nasty to your heroes.

I did manage to finish and publish a short article this week: Some Advice to People at The Start of Their Careers . It is a follow up to an article I did earlier: Six Lessons for Planning a Career . When I finished the earlier article I cut out a lot of material to keep the article short. I went back to that material and used it to build up a new article.

I came across another blog post to recommend: http://filmutopia.posterous.com/movie-blog-hey-film-makers-its-about-the-scri . His first point is one that I can attest is a good idea. When I first started to make films, before I started a project I would tell people about my ideas. I could tell from people’s reactions, which ideas caught their fancy and which ones didn’t. It wasn’t a conscious plan on my part, but it made a big difference in my work. I don’t really do that any more. I want to find a way to get that kind of feedback again.

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

Advice to Filmmakers Blog Post I Recomend

I came across this blog - via a tweet - today and I think it has some good advice that I will take.

http://trulyfreefilm.hopeforfilm.com/2011/02/i-am-a-nobody-filmmaker.html


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

Ideas for a How to Write A Feature Movie Script Article

Over two years ago I wrote a series of three articles on how to write a script.

How to Write a Feature Movie Script Part One - What is a movie script anyway?

How to Write a Feature Movie Script Two - Writing a script isn’t just writing a script

How to Write a Feature Movie Script Three - Finding your way into the story

I started the series as a way to organize my thoughts about how to write a script. Since then I have thought about other articles in the series, but I haven’t done any, yet.

One idea was to talk about getting feedback. I did write one article about the feedback I got on my film Who Shot the President (Why Do People Hate my Film?). I still may do an article that looks more generally at the issue.

Another idea I had more recently was on structure. Over the last year I wrote three feature scripts and several short stories. That experience gave me a lot to think about on structure.

I get confused by the terminology people use to describe structure. Scripts can be broken down into acts, sequences, plot points, story events, scenes and beats. What some people call story events, other people call scenes. I define a scene as something that happens in one location at one time, which is useful when you shoot a film. In a film, a story event could be played out in several scenes.

One of the things that I want to write about is the concept of the “beat”. Some people seem to use it as a synonym for story event or scene, while others use it to refer to a brief interaction within a scene. In my view I think the brief beat is a more useful concept. I see a beat as something lasting about 10 seconds. It could be an exchange of dialogue, or a bit of action. For a 90 minute film there would need to be about 540 beats.

Beats are built up to create a scene. Story events are built up to create sequences and sequences are built up to create acts. Acts are combined to make the whole movie. When you write, you would normally work backwards from act to sequence to scene to beat.

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

New Articles on Forecasting and Health Care

One of the sites I publish on (Triond) has a special on this month where I get a bonus if I publish 5 or more articles, so I’ve gone back to several articles that I’d left unfinished. I published two this week. Three more articles and I’m done.

A Review of "Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway"

I just happened to spend the last 30 years of my life as an “expert predictor” in transportation planning, so this book caught my eye. My brother Keith and his wife Colleen gave me a copy for Christmas. This review allowed me to pontificate on some of the views on forecasting I developed over my former career.

I published it on Bukisa and Wikinut as well, but Triond pays better.

Where Do We Spend Money on Health Care?

Like many people, I worry about the future of health care. My father was involved with the creation of Medicare in Canada. I did an article earlier on a comparison between the U.S. and Canadian systems. Since then I have dabbled with several articles, but mostly I have compiled information.

I put this article together from a couple of reports I found on-line. I wanted to build it into more of a discussion of the cost of health care, but I want to keep my articles under 1,000 words. One of these days I will write another article to follow on from this.

This article is also on Bukisa and Wikinut .