The Orville Sharkbiter plan for election reform

With the recent discussion about elections and election reform I decided to post a clip on election reform from my sort “Make ’ em Squirm: The Sharkbiter Way”.

You can watch the clip at: https://youtu.be/ZDhRMo8AIak

You can watch the complete interview at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9y-Bf6abU

Please note that the election reform proposal in this video is not a serious proposal.

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

"The ZOOM Bomber" – Update 2

I got some more feedback on "The ZOOM Bomber" this week. I made some revisions to the script and worked on the story board.

The script has a fight scene, and I am by no means a fighter, so I asked a friend of mine who used to train in fighting to review my script. She had some useful comments on the fight scenes. I made some revisions to the script based on that. The scene is brief, so there were not a lot of changes to make. It is a more realistic fight now.

I did some more work on the story board. I only got about 3 more done, but I did give some more thought to what direction I want to go. I worked out a list of images I still need create, and it came out at over 60. I’ve got 8 done so far.

One thing I am thinking about doing is to make more use of photographs for the storyboard. Creating environments from scratch can be time consuming. I also experimented with carbonifying the photographs, so they match the image quality of the rest of the elements in the storyboard.

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

"The ZOOM Bomber" – Update 1

A few weeks ago, my script writer’s group challenged me to write a script about a ZOOM meeting. At first, I didn’t see any point in that, but then I came up with an interesting concept.

My working title is "The ZOOM Bomber".

I started, then stopped, then started again. Eventually I had a first draft. I left it a couple of days and did a revision. I was worried that I may have gone too far with the violence in the story. I do have a couple of fight scenes. We'll see what people think. I've passed it to a few people for comments. Once I get some feedback, I'll do another revision.

I didn’t intend to do anything further with the script. I do plan to post a final revision on my website, but I can't see myself making the film. I don't feel up to finding someone else to make it.

However, I started to feel inspired to investigate maybe doing something more with it. At one of our script group sessions we talked about some major companies do animated storyboards to see how a movie plays.

I did something like that with "The Barrier" using Xtranormal. I don't think Nawmal would work with this story because of the fight scenes (https://www.nawmal.com/). I found a story board program on-line that I am trying out: https://wonderunit.com/storyboarder/. It doesn't animate, just creates a series of still images, but I think that might do for now. It has been a bit of a challenge to start using it. I did get the first sequence of the story done. I can move on to the rest.

I used some artificial voices to create the dialogue. They aren't licenced for commercial use, so if I want to post the result on-line, I'll need to find another way to do the dialogue. I know some actors and maybe I can get them to do it as a test. That is something I would like to try out anyway.

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

Interrogation Research for "The Interrogation"

Since Rapport Interviewing is a core aspect of "The Interrogation”, and I felt I didn’t know enough about it to write about it in a convincing manner, I decided I needed to do some research.

Being the lazy sort, I started by finding a few YouTube videos and popular articles on the subject. My big hope was that I would learn enough from that and wouldn't need to dig any deeper.

I felt I learned a lot from what I read and saw, but when it came time to write it up for my blog, I found myself overwhelmed by the material.

I'll need to analyze what I read a lot more before I can give a write up the justice it deserves. Instead, today I will list a few lessons I did learn.

•  People who practice this technique prefer to call it an interview. They try to create a casual friendly atmosphere. They will hold it in a hotel room with comfortable chairs rather than the stereotypical bare interrogation room.
• The two aspects of the technique are developing rapport and detecting deception. 
• Developing rapport is a matter of building trust and respect for each other. This leads to empathy and openness in communication.
• A good interviewer will act nice toward the subject of the interrogation. Interviewers cannot fake this. It must be genuine. A friendly smile can go a long way toward building trust and respect.
• Giving the subject a hot drink can put them at ease.
• Interviews start by looking for common ground. This does not need to relate to the issue of the interview. It could music they like, family relationships, food and so on. 
• The interviewer must make it clear that the subject of the interview is free to choose if they want to talk or not. People will talk more readily if they feel it is their choice than if you try to force them.
• One technique is that the interviewer will tell the subject something personal about themselves. This encourages the subject to share something personal about them selves. When I read this, I thought of the scenes between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in "Silence of the Lambs". In the next paragraph of the article, the referenced those scenes explicitly.
• The interviewer must remember that goal is to learn, not to punish. They must control their own emotional response.
• "Everyone has a story they want to tell. The goal for the interviewer is t0 create an atmosphere where they are willing to tell it." - Major Sherwood Moran
• A terrorist will want to tell you why they did it.
• There are several techniques for detecting deception, which I need to investigate further. However, once the interviewer has gained rapport with the subject, it is much easier for them to challenge deception.

Rapport interviewing is very much a skill and it takes time and effort to become good at it. In my life I came to realize that knowledge is not skill. People can know what to do from reading or watching someone else do something. A person can only develop a skill if they do it themselves.

There is still quite a lot I need to absorb about interrogation, but I already see opportunities to improve my story. In particular, the title “The Interrogation” is wrong.

 In the meantime, I found some more articles that I think I should read as well. I should also re-watch “The Silence of the Lambs”, or at least the scenes between Hannibal and Clarice. I will need to process what I've learned before I can embark on my next step of writing.

Some of my sources:

My Secret to Breaking Terrorists: Detecting Deception & Rapport | Lena Sisco | TEDxWilmington https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9j8iJHSCbY

The scientists persuading terrorists to spill their secrets https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/13/the-scientists-persuading-terrorists-to-spill-their-secrets

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