Revisiting an Old Idea for a Movie

 

Louis Jaques, Public domain,

via Wikimedia Commons

While attending a meeting of the Older Filmmakers Club this week, the discussion reminded me of a movie idea I had many years ago. It is not a project I feel I could undertake now, or even in the past. Still, I think it would be a good project for someone.

At the meeting we talked about themes and ideas for stories about older people. In particular one issue that came up was about coping with the death of a loved one. This was an issue that I know that was difficult for me.

The discussion reminded me of an idea for a movie that I had a long while ago. I was still living in Winnipeg, so it would have been at least 45 years ago.

In the early 1950s, John Diefenbaker got involved with a court case over a train crash in BC. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canoe_River_train_crash) This was before he was Prime Minister.

The family of the man charged with manslaughter lived in Dief’s riding. The man’s father and approached Dief’s and asked him to take the case. Dief turned him down because he was busy as an MP.

The man then approached Dief’s wife. At the time, his wife was in the hospital dying. She was supportive. One of the last things she did before she died was to ask Dief to take the case. After she died, Dief went to BC and won the case.

I’m not sure why this story has kept a hold on me all these years. There was a “Law & Order” episode where the lawyer Adam Schiff is placed in a similar situation.

Maybe it is that he was able to save the life of someone he didn’t really know, while he was unable to save the life of someone so close to him.

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

“The Lighter Darkness” – A Belated Halloween Story

I finished editing my most recent writing exercise, “The Lighter Darkness” and posted it on-line.

In an old, haunted house, George must overcome fear if he is to succeed.

I wrote the story is based on the title "Complaining About the Jittery Phantom". I felt a change in the title was appropriate. It has a sort of Halloween vibe to it since I wrote it a few days before Halloween. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the audio version ready in time for Halloween. I started to edit it but got stuck and put it aside for a while. Then didn’t get back to it.

The main problem was that the voice changer plug-in I use (Rovee) didn’t work anymore. After a while I discovered that the plug-in was 32-bit and the updated version of Audacity that I installed is 64-bit. I went ahead with the edit with out the voice changer.

Later, I installed the 32-bit version of Audacity. I was worried that I had lost all the old settings I created on the earlier version. Fortunately, they were still there. I don’t know where the plug-in saves the settings.

You can hear it on SoundCloud or on my main site.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-lighter-darkness

·         https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/audio/

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

Modification to My Random Title Generators for Writing Exercise Prompts

I modified my random title generators. One complaint I got from people was that too many of the titles sounded like Perry Mason stories.

Background to the Random Title Generators

I used a few writer’s prompts on-line. Although I found them useful, they didn’t seem to have a lot of variety. The same or similar prompts would start to show up after a while. So, I decided to create my own.

I set up the random title generator with three elements:

·         Noun/Person – This is either a person or thing that is the object of the title. The current versions of the generators have 158 animals, 17 Flowers, 44 foods, 898 persons, 295 places, 646 things, and 206 vehicles.

·         Adjective – This is a descriptor for the noun/person. The current versions of the generators have 1,425 adjectives.

·         Article/verb – This is an opener for the title. For example: "The," "A(n)," "Investing in a," "The Parable of the," "The Case of the," “The Wisdom of the," and "The Werewolf and the." The current versions of the title generators have 726 article/verbs between them.

Because not all adjectives, article/verbs make sense with some nouns/persons, I split the generator into two. Some of the words are common between the two, but others are unique to each. Between the two title generators they can generate about 554,000,000 unique titles.

I plan to add more words to the generators. If you have any suggestions, by all means get in touch with me. I can provide you with the current word lists.

The Modification

The complaint was that many of the articles/verbs I used in the generators tended to make the title sound like a Perry Mason story. I did add more article/verb options to address this, but I had another idea. I added an option where the random article/verb is always "The" or "A(n)".

I believe that this gives more ambiguous titles. This will allow for broader interpretation and creativity by writers.

·         https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/random-title-generator/

 

·         https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/random-title-generator/random-title-generator-for-things/

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