"The Script" Podcast e3 -- Oblivion, Lifelines, Tracking Board

I am a hardcore podcast addict. If you see me walking around with earphones in, odds are I'm listening to either a podcast or an audiobook. Today, though, I officially became a podcaster. 

The NYC Screenwriters Collective, of which I am an active member, has recently been putting out a monthly podcast, which I volunteered to help on. For this episode I recorded and mixed the audio, but I was also asked to provide a bit of commentary on William Monahan's script for "Oblivion," along with hosts David Negrin and Christopher Theokas. It was a good time and I'm looking forward to working on future episodes. This episode also includes Mike De Luca's rundown of the Tracking Board, and the Baron's review of "Lifelines."

"The Script" can be found on iTunes, or, if you're an Android nut like me, you can find it on Podbean or subscribe through any good podcatcher.

The NYC Screenwriters Collective is an awesome series of ongoing (weekly) workshops in which writers come together to review each other's screenplays, provide feedback, and learn the craft of on-screen storytelling. If you're a writer in NYC, I highly recommend it. If not, find a group like it -- friendly, skilled writers dedicated to forging better writers and casting better scripts.

Huzzah! The Movie

One of my early film making projects -- my first  foray into the realm of documentary film making -- is actually still an ongoing project. We shot Huzzah! over the course of a couple years, not really having a lot of experience or knowing what we were doing. But my partner, Glenn Bailey, and I were (and still are) passionate about it. This is our love letter to a subculture. Glenn's in the process of editing it right now and I'm handling the web aspects of it. If you know me, you probably know about this project; but if you don't, please pop on over to huzzahthemovie.com and check us out. I'm really excited to see the project finished.

Announcing "Ruff Draught"

My writing setup -- I use Final Draft for a number of reasons. One of my favorite things is how much information about a script I can have at my fingertips.

A while back I committed myself to learning Java. I figured that, apart from being very helpful for my day job, knowing a programming language is every bit as important in the 21st Century as knowing a human language. I've been poking around it for a while, writing small programs for work, but you learn the most by doing and the best projects are those where you scratch your own itch. So I wanted to build something for myself.

I work heavily with Final Draft's index cards feature and I like the way it's implemented -- split-screening index cards with a view of the script is helpful. I tend to lean on index cards in the outlining phase of my work, so by the time I'm ready to get down to business I've already got a 25-50 cards written up. I give them pretty heavy descriptions and I like to read them all together. In fact, what I like to do is take all of that index card text and transform it into the rough draft of my treatment. The problem I had is that FD doesn't really provide a way to do this except to copy the text out of each card and paste it into another document. Over and over again.

Yes, this is a First World problem. Medieval monks who copied the Bible must think so little of me. But I repeat this process several times, often generating new treatments as I work on a new draft of the screenplay. So I figured I'd be my own solution. What I came up with is a little utility that I call "RUFF DRAUGHT."

Ruff Draught Icon -- by http://www.icons-land.com/ -- used free of charge for non-commercial purposes.

At this point, all this does is takes the index card text out of an FDX file and write it into a TXT file. This is version 0.1 -- what you might call a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). It does exactly what I needed it to do but in the most minimal way possible. It's a learning experience for me in programming, but it's also very useful to my screenwriting. From here I definitely have improvements in mind and I'm going to be releasing iterative versions while I can.

Right now, Ruff Draught is free; and it will probably stay that way for a while. If I ever get it to a state that it feels like a product, I may sell it for a nominal fee -- a fraction of what I would have paid when the need first arose. One thing is certain, though, I will continue to develop it as an open source project. The source code is already available on Github if anyone cares -- just please don't judge me by my code.

The Windows version of Ruff Draught is available here.

The Mac version is now available here.

The Lomography SmartPhone Film Scanner

This is a great idea and I really hope it funds. Part of the problem with analog is the difficulty or expense of scanning, especially when you shoot a lot of it. Of course, if you have an amazing or important image, you want to send it off to have the best professional scanning possible with the highest resolution. The bulk of my analog photos are just fun though and a simple scan will do. Actually, the cool thing about this is that when you scan with a phone, you're going to be scanning at a higher resolution than if you did a basic process and scan job at a lab. The only thing I don't like about this is that it won't scan medium format photos, but for the price you really can't complain.

For more info, check out their Kickstarter page.

"Painting of Heaven" from La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona

We visited two cathedrals in Barcelona, and while the sensation of awe was certainly more palpable at Catedral de Barcelona, the astonishing beauty of La Sagrada Familia cannot be understated. The cathedral is still about 50 years from completion but there's so much that's done so well that it really doesn't feel like a work in progress.

Barcelona, by the way, is a place where you really want a wide lens. The city begs to be shot wide - I had the Canon 8-15mm on almost the entire time I was there.

"Backstage" at Barcelona Cathedral

Every step taken in the Catedral de Barcelona was a step taken in awe. I don't know how, but we were the first people in when they opened the sanctuary in the afternoon so we got the opportunity to appreciate it in solitude for a few minutes before it was flooded with other tourists. It's very hard from a photo to appreciate the pure grandeur of the place.

Photos like this are a great defense for the use of HDR photography. I don't think it's gaudy or overwhelming at all; and this level of detail can't be had with a single exposure. There's not enough dynamic range. It's three bracketed images and at least one looked quite good on its own but was very dark. All of the HDR photos from this Cathedral turned out great.

The Hero's Price

Ever have a moment when something you've heard a million times just finally clicks? Writers talk all the time about tormenting their protagonists, and this is especially true of heroes. The other night I was watching "The Amazing Spider-Man" and (minor spoiler alert) there's a scene where Capt. Stacy (Dennis Leary) has Spidey at gunpoint - he's captured the vigilante he was after - but is convinced to let him go. It's not for Spider-Man's sake that he goes, it's for Capt. Stacy; for his daughter. Fair enough, the conflict of the scene is resolved, right? The problem is, it didn't really cost anything (there's some give and take here, but it's nullified later in the film). As our hero swings off on a web and a prayer, though, a nearby cop takes a pot shot at him, clipping him in the leg. My first instinct, as a viewer, was to think about how unfair that was; but then the writer kicked in. That wounded leg is going to trouble Peter Parker every step of the way to his ultimate victory. Interestingly, here, a personal and emotional victory is payed for in blood. It doesn't matter that he's been let go to do something selfless; he still has to pay a price. That price will make the rest of his struggle harder, increase the audience's empathic anxiety, and make the victory that much sweeter. This isn't the last price he will pay, of course. Each minor success is payed for in some way, challenging our hero to persist and persevere. 

This isn't a revalation or anything. Most writers will have heard this or similar for years. It's just a bit of a Eureka moment - a slight epiphany when, by example, something hit home. It really makes me want to go write an action movie.

Parting the Sea

One of hundreds of photos I took of the ceiling of La Sagrada Familia. Every place you stand there's a slightly different perspective and the architecture morphs into a slightly different hallucination.

Sacred

Save & Close

The morning we visited La Sagrada Familia - a Sunday morning - the sun shone through the window into the bascillica and straight onto the crucifix above the altar. It was really quite a stunning sight. As the sun climbed the sky the effect disappeared but it was magic while it lasted.

La Boqueria

La Boqueria is a covered open air market off of La Rambla in Barcelona's city center. It's a very lively place with vendors selling anything from fruit to Iberian ham to fresh seafood.

Keizersgracht

A view down the Keisersgracht Canal in Amsterdam with the Westerkerk (Western Church), one of the first Protestant churches in Amsterdam, on the left.

Murals from the High Line

I went for a walk this weekend on the High Line to take some photos. If you don't know, the High Line is this really cool little park in Manhattan. What they did was take an out-of-use elevated subway line (I don't know that it should be called the SUBway when it's elevated, but whatever) and converted into a park. It's around a mile long, running from 30th down to around 10th I think, but most of it's only about 20 feet wide with about a 6 foot wide path for walking on. It's a pretty cool way to view the city. Unfortunately, it's still low enough that you don't get great cityscapes; but there were some nice murals along the way

A Kiss in Chelsea by Chris Durham

Squint by Chris Durham

Vamp X and Gen Con

Next month I'll be fulfilling a dream I've had for most of my life - I'll be going to Gen Con! I've played Dungeons and Dragons since I was 8 years old, and other games too. As I've gotten older and my interests have expanded, my love affair with Role-Playing Games is a bit on-again, off-again; but fantasy, games, and storytelling are a constant presence in my life. I've wanted to go to Gen Con since about 1982/83 when I first saw an ad for it in the back of (I think) my AD&D Player's Handbook, but for whatever reason I've never gotten round to it.

But now I have the perfect excuse.

"Vamp X," a short comedy-horror film I shot a few years ago - before leaving Texas - is being screened at the Gen Con Indy Film Festival (Indy as in Indianapolis, not indie as in movie). So I'm going. David Glenney, the man behind Vamp X has kindly hooked me up with a badge and so off I go to fulfill my childhood dream. Can you say Nerdgasm? You can find the full version of Vamp X on Vimeo, but I'll drop the trailer here for you to check out.

Vampire X Trailer from David Glenney on Vimeo.

I'll be there to check out some film making and writing panels, and, oh yeah, do some gaming. I may also drink a little and take photos of cosplayers. I'm very excited about this opportunity and I really owe some thanks to David Glenney for entering the film and for inviting me along. I owe you at least one beer, Dave, maybe two. 

Additionally, Vamp X is screening at the Indie Gathering Festival in Cleveland, OH that same weekend, and the Horrific Film Fest in San Antonio, TX later in August. It seems our little film is having quite the whirlwind tour - not that it doesn't deserve it; it's just coming as a pleasant surprise a few years after shooting it. Good work Mr. Glenney. Glad I was part of it.

Update (1/11/2013):

Looking back on this post and I thought I'd give it an update. I didn't make it to Gen Con for Vamp X, unfortunately because my stepfather passed away the week before. Well, perhaps I'll get a chance to go again someday, and go there just to game!

Also, turns out that after a round of Festivals, David Glenney decided to take down the trailer link and post the full short so the video above has been updated accordingly.

Fisheye Intimacy

I'm really in love with the Canon 8-15mm f/4 L-Series zoom lens. There's something very interesting about wide angle lenses, something that I think is intimate in a counterintuitive sort of way. Conventional thinking might suggest that long lenses frame their subjects in a close and intimate way but, while this is true, short lenses invoke a different sort of intimacy. Despite their distortion of perspective, the sense of scale and rendition of the "whole picture," to me, impart what the shooter is seeing and can have a lot to do with the photographer's point-of-view than casting the frame dozens of meters away. Very intimate indeed.

Peterbilt by Chris Durham

'Dark Knight Rises' Screening Tragedy

Last night (technically, early this morning), a gunman murdered a dozen innocent people and injured or caused the injury of dozens more at a midnight screening of 'The Dark Knight Rises' in Denver, Colorado. Details are still coming but apparently a man in his early 20s walked in through an exit, wearing a gas mask, and tossed a couple tear gas bombs into a full theater. Most of those who noticed this apparently thought it was some kind of stunt related to the movie, and weren't alarmed. When the man started shooting, other people in the back initially thought that there were some great sound effects. Not everybody understood what was going on right away and then panic broke out. According to witnesses, the man was frighteningly calm during the massacre. As of the last report I saw, 12 people are dead and 50 injured. The police have a suspect in custody who apparently surrendered easily after the damage was done. So far, there are no reasons given for the senseless act.

I'm not a reporter and this isn't really a news blog, so I'm not entirely sure what compelled me to write this post. Mortality is a very touchy issue for me and random violence often hits me in the gut a bit, but there's something more relevant here for me. This happened in a movie theater. The Cinema is a bit of a refuge for me - if anything is sacred it's the cinemaplex. It's the place we go to safely indulge all sorts of fantasies from the romantic to the tragic. Violence there isn't supposed to be real. The violence we witness in a movie should make us think about violence, the reasons for it and the ways around it. Movies are dramatic simulations meant to affect the viewer and, if we are fortunate, make the world a better place. This may be naively idealistic of me, but that's how I see it.

A massacre in a theater, therefore, is like a massacre in a church. This is an awful thing that has happened and my heart is with everyone impacted by it.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/20/us/colorado-theater-scene/index.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57476424/aurora-shooting-witnesses-describe-panic-chaos/?tag=contentMain;contentBody

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577538292604705890.html#

Update on 2012-07-20 20:31 by Chris Durham

On his facebook page, George Takei put my feelings on this in a far better way than I have:

"Many victims of today's tragedy were fans of science fiction/fantasy. The stood in line to be the first to see, to be inspired, and to escape. As a community of dreamers, we mourn this terrible tragedy and this senseless taking of innocent life."

Well said, Mr. Sulu.

I'm Catman

Today I became a member of the Internet Defense League and registered my site for their Cat Signal campaign. The IDL is an awareness group inspired by the SOPA/PIPA Internet Blackout and is backed by such Web heavy hitters as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Mozilla. It's basically an emergency broadcast system for the Open Internet.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a lover and advocate of technology. You might even go so far as to call me a tech-utopianist and that's probably not inaccurate. I've blogged before about efforts to protect the Internet in terms of network neutrality, and that's about access; however access is just one side of the control coin. The other side is content.

Now, I don't want to get into my ideas about what is going on in the world of online content because that's a pretty complex and touchy issue, but what I do want to highlight is the hasty drive to control it. In trying to regain control of content, monied interests - usually content "creators" - are making hasty decisions (or, rather, pushing law makers to make hasty decisions) which endanger the very fabric of the Intenet.

Let's be clear about this: THE INTERNET IS ONE OF THE GREATEST - IF NOT THE GREATEST - INVENTION OF ALL TIME.

Undermining the thing that most brings us together is a far greater crime than petty violations of "intellectual proeprty." Initiatives like SOPA and PIPA are dispicable and we need to make people aware of this. I have a small blog here, read by an average of 0.1 people per week, and so participating in the Internet Blackout wouldn't have done a lot of good, or would it? I don't know, but awareness is a great thing and so is collective protest. 

The IDL have a great and simple idea - turn blackout-style activity into an organized campaign. Keeping it kind of topical, they're organizing it around tonight's release of one of the most anticipated movies of the year - "The Dark Night Rises" - and styling it after that same hero. Instead of the Bat Signal, we'll have the very Internet-appropriate "Cat Signal." It's going to be cast on some walls in a few cities, but even cooler, I think, is that it's going to be broadcast on participants' websites.

Again, this is all about awareness. But awareness breeds empowerment. The hope is that participants and people who see this will engage law makers and we as a society can have a real dialog instead of policy driven solely by monied interests. It's hopeful, but so am I. Anyway, I've registered my site and joined the IDL. I think this is a very cool initiative and even though my little site is just a drop in the bucket, without me there'd be one less drop.

If you have a website I urge you to consider the IDL or membership in a similar group. And, when you can, donate to the EFF.

Update on 2012-07-20 13:36 by Chris Durham

Unfortunately, the cat signal doesn't seem to have worked. I got errors when I tried to do the code injection so I threw the code into a separate javascript file that I just called from my header, but nothing seems to have happened. I don't know if this is somethng strange in the way Squarespace is handling the code, but other friends on other platforms seem to have had no problem. So, the short of it is that I missed the launch, but I'm looking into it so I can participate in other campaigns.

ShadowPlay

Wow, it's been a really long time since I posted anything to this blog and I'm absolutely certain that no one is dying to hear what I've been up to. Full disclosure: This post is pre-dated by almost a month - I'm writing well after the fact and updating with the date I should have talked about this. Anyhoo... The project I've spent most of the spring working on is a web series pitch pilot called ShadowPlay.

ShadowPlay springs into existance from the creative mind of my good friend Sketkh Williams. It's the story of a special agent whose partner is his own shadow. Sound crazy? Well, it helps that Shadow (proper noun) has a lot of character. That's about all I want to give away about ShadowPlay right now, but I'll happily tease you with a little trailer.

ShadowPlay Trailer from Constant Cinema on Vimeo.

Sketkh and I worked very closely on this project, producing and directing it together. Basically, the characters, story, and words are his, the images are mine; everything else we collaborated on. It was a pretty good arrangement, but I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout-out to the other good folks that were involved in the production: My good friend Dan Brosnan who handled the lights and helped me out with the camera, Mike "Wally" Wallach who did an amazing job with on-set sound, and Kristina Huegel who pulled double duty as AD and Makeup Artist. I also want to compliment Jennifer Martina on her portrayal of our assassin, Andrew Kimler for voicing Shadow, and, of course, Sketkh for being the petey-est Pete I could hope for.

Oh, one last thing: If you like what you see here, I'd appreciate it if you popped over to the ShadowPlay Facebook Page and give us a quick like. Thanks!

Give a Buck...

I seem destined to stay on the topic of crowd funding. Actually, it's not crowd funding in general that I want to write about write now; it's a specific project. A couple days after my last post about Kickstarter, I found this project and I think it's also worth supporting.

Net neutrality is a big issue facing us and the way that it plays out will determine our society's path forward in the 21st Century. It's a free speech issue. It's important to small business and enterpreneurship. It's incredibly important to the future of the entertainment industry, especially regarding streaming and video content. It's something that more people should be passionate about but for some reason it flies under a lot of people's radar. 

I feel passionate about it and that's why I think this is an important project to fund. And since this is something where numbers count, where the voices of the people count, I encourage people to contibute one dollar. As it says right on their Kickstarter page, "Just imagine what the impact of 27,000 $1.00 pledges would be..." 27,000 $1 pledges would be much more powerful than 1 $27,000 pledge. 

I've said that the smart money in crowd funding goes to kickstarter because of minimized risk. You can't have much less risk than a buck. So give a buck if you give a fuck about the future.

(D)Riven

Writer & Director Brian Ramage is crowd funding his project and if you're reading this I want you to consider contributing. I'm not recommending this because Brian is a friend. He is; but he's a friend because he's an intelligent, passionate, and respectful filmmaker and a deeply sincere person. This is a project he's been working on for a long time now and, tired of struggling through the gauntlet of Hollywood, he's decided to go his own way. In my opinion (for what it's worth) he's gone the right way with this. He's chosen the right crowd-funding site and attached a talented and popular cinematographer (Philip Bloom) to the project. Brian (@reubal on twitter) is a capable director and Riven is a project that ought to be made a reality

A couple of weeks ago I shot out the following tweet: "Dear indie producers: I've seen many indieGoGo projects I'd have contributed to were they on on Kickstarter. Just sayin." I actually tweeted this in relief that Riven was trying to be funded through Kickstarter. I'm not saying this to belittle any filmmaker who is funding or trying to fund through indieGoGo - I have friends who have done so and they have my full respect - however a Kickstarter project suggests to me a higher degree of professionalism. I followed that tweet with: "In other words I'd put $100 toward a $1k movie made for $1k before putting $10 toward a $10k movie made for $1k."

Making a movie is a business venture. Once you want to move past, or do something besides, making zero-budget shorts (don't get me wrong, I love independent cinema on all scales), you're talking about investing large sums of money and you need to be serious about not throwing that money away. indieGoGo allows you to set a budget target for a film; but if you don't hit that target, you walk away with the money and can make the movie anyway. As a prospective investor I have a huge problem with this. The $1,000 movie you make isn't the movie I paid to get made - I paid for the $10,000 version of that move (and hopefully something even better). I understand that the contributions aren't exactly investments and that there are incentives for contributors, but let's get real - unless I'm contributing at a high level, I'm not contributing so much to get a signed DVD copy as I am to see a movie I'd like to see and to see something I believe in come to fruition.

On the other hand, if someone has set up to attempt funding through Kickstarter I know that they've given careful thought to what their budget should be. They've had to plan to pay what it takes to get the movie made, not less and not more. Well, maybe less if they're creative with their financing, but you get the point. If you don't hit your target you don't get to use my money to make a half-ass version of the movie. And your target is probably a reasonably low bid at production cost without being too much of a compromise. And, coming back to the topic of incentive packages, you can actually budget for them because you know how much money they will cost IF you need to fulfill them.

I'm sure that Indiegogo has its perks too, and, as I said, I don't want to criticize filmmakers too harshly that go that route. It just seems to me that in order to properly execute a movie you have to have your shit together. Having the confidence to effectively say, "I will not make this movie unless I can get my shit together," will part my cash from my wallet far faster than otherwise. It did with Riven

Spacetime

I just wanted to take a minute to draw attention to a friend's work. I met David South at the Power of Pro8mm Film seminar in Los Angeles earlier this year and we hit it off pretty well. He's a motivated guy and very enthusiastic about analog film. When we met he was working on this music video he was shooting on Super 8. Well, it's been released into the world so I want to encourage everyone to check it out.

If you're interested in finding out more about Dave and his work, check out his website over at Dos Moon.