I spent yesterday working on parts of the script for one project, waiting for a lawyer to contact me, and in the evening playing Rock Band with Tim and his closest friends. I felt young.
Just a quick update today, I'm spending the day with the family traveling to and from Chicago. May the traffic gods watch over us and smile!
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
For My Next Trick
I'm going to blog about nanomachines!
Nanomachines are small like brain cells. Brain cells hurt because they argue, and arguing hurts my ears. Ears of corn are delicious, and one time they told Nero Wolfe who the murderer was. Nero Wolfe doesn't listen to vegetables very often, maybe that's why he's rich.
Rich foods can be delicious like fudge, or overwhelming like a meteor. Why is it one meteor kills the planet and makes people go "AAUUGHHGHG," but a whole shower of them is pretty and makes people go "ahhhhh?" Isn't it nice when we can say one little word and mean everything we want? That's why swearing's fun. Another thing that's fun is backgammon, butI haven't played in forever.
Four could be the loneliest number if it wanted to. It's one lonely number that happens to be with three other lonely numbers, and someone said you're never lonlier than when you're in a crowd. It might have been the guy that sold breath mints, but I don't know why he'd do that, except that he thought people felt lonely due to bad breath anxieties. I don't like mint, it feels like I'm setting fire to my mouth, only it's cold, but I have to brush my teeth anyway. I like my fires hot, it's kind of how I know they're fires. Fire's another thing that makes people go "ahhh" or "ARHRHGHGHGH" depending on the details.
The tails are connected to the butt.
Nanomachines are small like brain cells. Brain cells hurt because they argue, and arguing hurts my ears. Ears of corn are delicious, and one time they told Nero Wolfe who the murderer was. Nero Wolfe doesn't listen to vegetables very often, maybe that's why he's rich.
Rich foods can be delicious like fudge, or overwhelming like a meteor. Why is it one meteor kills the planet and makes people go "AAUUGHHGHG," but a whole shower of them is pretty and makes people go "ahhhhh?" Isn't it nice when we can say one little word and mean everything we want? That's why swearing's fun. Another thing that's fun is backgammon, butI haven't played in forever.
Four could be the loneliest number if it wanted to. It's one lonely number that happens to be with three other lonely numbers, and someone said you're never lonlier than when you're in a crowd. It might have been the guy that sold breath mints, but I don't know why he'd do that, except that he thought people felt lonely due to bad breath anxieties. I don't like mint, it feels like I'm setting fire to my mouth, only it's cold, but I have to brush my teeth anyway. I like my fires hot, it's kind of how I know they're fires. Fire's another thing that makes people go "ahhh" or "ARHRHGHGHGH" depending on the details.
The tails are connected to the butt.
That Didn't Last Long
Okay, so I missed yesterday. My month-long streak of consistent blog entries lasted two days, and that's okay. You know why? Because I'm going to make up for it.
I'm reading an article on historical languages (Science Vol 324, 29 May 2009, p1165), and I wonder how much most people take language for granted. Information gets transmitted in more ways than a lot of people think about. Any time two elements interact, information is transmitted. When proteins align to form bigger proteins, that's information transmission. It's as fundamental to the working of the cosmos as mathematics, but there are hundreds of different schools regarding language while math is more or less universal.
It sounds unfair when it's put like that, but there's a counter-argument that kind of puts math back a peg, and it's that math doesn't carry cultural significance the way language can. It used to, millenia ago when the Greeks were tinkering with theoretical geometry and the Arabians had come up with zero. Over the centuries those and other schools of math became global constants, and it's as though the cultures those constants came from didn't matter. Can you imagine a world where children learned, for example, the iconography of Chinese alongside the meter of English poetry in the same class and couldn't identify the distinctions? Did advanced math students in Greco-Roman times imagine a world where the questions their teachers couldn't answer would be solved by grade-schoolers?
I'm reading an article on historical languages (Science Vol 324, 29 May 2009, p1165), and I wonder how much most people take language for granted. Information gets transmitted in more ways than a lot of people think about. Any time two elements interact, information is transmitted. When proteins align to form bigger proteins, that's information transmission. It's as fundamental to the working of the cosmos as mathematics, but there are hundreds of different schools regarding language while math is more or less universal.
It sounds unfair when it's put like that, but there's a counter-argument that kind of puts math back a peg, and it's that math doesn't carry cultural significance the way language can. It used to, millenia ago when the Greeks were tinkering with theoretical geometry and the Arabians had come up with zero. Over the centuries those and other schools of math became global constants, and it's as though the cultures those constants came from didn't matter. Can you imagine a world where children learned, for example, the iconography of Chinese alongside the meter of English poetry in the same class and couldn't identify the distinctions? Did advanced math students in Greco-Roman times imagine a world where the questions their teachers couldn't answer would be solved by grade-schoolers?
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Here Comes Two!! - SPOILERS BELOW!!
Thanks to one of my readers, I'm giving a quick review of another movie seen since my last post from April: Star Trek. It was a great movie with excellent characters and actors to portray them, a smooth-yet-fast plot, and incredible special effects and action sequences. I do NOT agree with the reader's assertion that I "forgot" to mention the movie, in fact I think its omission was an act of brilliance. Seriously, anyone who has seen these movies would acknowledge that Star Trek is far too good to be listed with the movies I reviewed yesterday. It'd be a grievous insult to Star Trek, and now that I think of it I'll spend the rest of this blog entry insulting Star Trek in exactly that manner.
(In all fairness, I'm making Angels & Demons seem terrible when it's not, it's a decent movie... just NOT when compared to Star Trek.)
In fact, perhaps the only thing all four movies (Star Trek, Wolverine, Angels & Demons, and Terminator) have in common is that they are all franchise movies, single stories involving settings and characters established elsewhere. Franchise movies are beloved be Hollywood these days because, among other things, you don't have to work as hard to find an audience. They already know the property, maybe better than anyone involved in the new movie, and need much less effort in order to get them into the theater. Within the story, you have more freedom in regards to introduction, like you can introduce less and add more time to the meat of the story.
This works against creators when they're not careful. The audience that already knows the property has also come up with their own opinions of what the next story should include, and they probably LOVE the story they came up with before even hearing about the official one. It's the job of the team behind the next official production to create a story that blows away any possible idea the audience came up with, at the same time without disrespecting the views of the characters or setting the audience may have. This point is what makes the difference between a great franchise movie and a poor one.
Let's take Star Trek: the producers made it clear in their promotions that this was the crew from the original series, so fans right away know pretty much which characters are going to be in it and where they'll spend a lot of their time. This is a franchise decades old, so people have had a long time to imagine the story of how these characters got together. Seems like a Kobiyashi Maru - no story could satisfy everyone's expectations build on years of obsessive study and speculation; hell, even a small fraction of that demographic would be a lofty goal, so the creators need a way to tell THEIR story in a way that gives them an escape in case the audience doesn't like it. Solution: time warp to an alternate reality. They didn't tell the origin story of the original crew, they told the story of their versions of the original crew, meeting the goals set before them without putting their views above ours, and it was a brilliant way to do it.
You can note that this is one of the rare rare RARE occassions where I will praise the use of time travel in a story. These guys did it right.
Another thing they did right was focus on the characters rather than the ship or one story from the series. I always thought of Star Trek (TOS) as an anthology like The Twilight Zone, as a vehicle for zany science fiction stories. The difference between Trek and Twilight is that Trek had characters that tied each episode together, and I'd argue that Trek's greater commerical success comes from the love the fans had for the characters. All the central characters in the new movie have great moments that give a nod to the original series without being ruled by them - Kirk gets in fights and scores with ladies, Spock arches eyebrows and pinches neck, Bones insists that he's a doctor, they all assert their connection with the classic characters while making them their own.
For the counter-example, I'm going to use Wolverine. This franchise started from the comic book continuity, but also had to pay respects to the movies in the X-Men series. There was an origin story to the character in the comics, but by now the movie continuity is established as seperate, so they could have done whatever they wanted. What happened was they took the comic-based origin, something like six issues worth of material, compressed it into a ten-minute sequence with massive changes, and spend the rest of the movie covering the story of Wolverine's adamantium skeleton and missing memories.
The movie is supposed to be an origin story, it says so in the full title, but it doesn't tell the character's origin. His beginnings, both in the comic and in the movie, take place in a mansion where young Jimmy Howlett makes his first kill, setting him on a fighter's path. The comic book took its time in connecting the dots from this moment to Wolverine's defining characteristics: his sense of justice, his desire for peace, his struggle to retain a sense of humanity. While the comic series didn't receive the widest popular or critical acclaim, it did something very right that the movie missed, and it fact it wasn't until I saw the movie that I appreciated this aspect.
The Wolverine everyone loves both in the comics and the movies began AFTER having his origins wiped from his mind.
Think about that, and then think about the movie. The movie ENDS with his brain getting blown apart, and all his memories leaking out. That origin story we just watched was rendered pointless, and where they could have spent the time showing how Wolverine's personality in the movies might have been formed, they instead had a bunch of action sequences than introduced a school full of different characters. They did a better job introducing half a dozen different characters than the one they promised to introduce.
So I've been griping this whole time to make a point, and that point is: Stories disappoint when they don't follow through on the promises they make. "But Ryan," you may say, "no one actually promised anything. You're being a judgmental prick!" Screw you, person that's actually me! Any product makes a promise the instant it steps into public attention, and in the case of movies they usually make the same promise five or so different times in 30-second montages.
And just like in real life, it hurts when someone breaks a promise.
(In all fairness, I'm making Angels & Demons seem terrible when it's not, it's a decent movie... just NOT when compared to Star Trek.)
In fact, perhaps the only thing all four movies (Star Trek, Wolverine, Angels & Demons, and Terminator) have in common is that they are all franchise movies, single stories involving settings and characters established elsewhere. Franchise movies are beloved be Hollywood these days because, among other things, you don't have to work as hard to find an audience. They already know the property, maybe better than anyone involved in the new movie, and need much less effort in order to get them into the theater. Within the story, you have more freedom in regards to introduction, like you can introduce less and add more time to the meat of the story.
This works against creators when they're not careful. The audience that already knows the property has also come up with their own opinions of what the next story should include, and they probably LOVE the story they came up with before even hearing about the official one. It's the job of the team behind the next official production to create a story that blows away any possible idea the audience came up with, at the same time without disrespecting the views of the characters or setting the audience may have. This point is what makes the difference between a great franchise movie and a poor one.
Let's take Star Trek: the producers made it clear in their promotions that this was the crew from the original series, so fans right away know pretty much which characters are going to be in it and where they'll spend a lot of their time. This is a franchise decades old, so people have had a long time to imagine the story of how these characters got together. Seems like a Kobiyashi Maru - no story could satisfy everyone's expectations build on years of obsessive study and speculation; hell, even a small fraction of that demographic would be a lofty goal, so the creators need a way to tell THEIR story in a way that gives them an escape in case the audience doesn't like it. Solution: time warp to an alternate reality. They didn't tell the origin story of the original crew, they told the story of their versions of the original crew, meeting the goals set before them without putting their views above ours, and it was a brilliant way to do it.
You can note that this is one of the rare rare RARE occassions where I will praise the use of time travel in a story. These guys did it right.
Another thing they did right was focus on the characters rather than the ship or one story from the series. I always thought of Star Trek (TOS) as an anthology like The Twilight Zone, as a vehicle for zany science fiction stories. The difference between Trek and Twilight is that Trek had characters that tied each episode together, and I'd argue that Trek's greater commerical success comes from the love the fans had for the characters. All the central characters in the new movie have great moments that give a nod to the original series without being ruled by them - Kirk gets in fights and scores with ladies, Spock arches eyebrows and pinches neck, Bones insists that he's a doctor, they all assert their connection with the classic characters while making them their own.
For the counter-example, I'm going to use Wolverine. This franchise started from the comic book continuity, but also had to pay respects to the movies in the X-Men series. There was an origin story to the character in the comics, but by now the movie continuity is established as seperate, so they could have done whatever they wanted. What happened was they took the comic-based origin, something like six issues worth of material, compressed it into a ten-minute sequence with massive changes, and spend the rest of the movie covering the story of Wolverine's adamantium skeleton and missing memories.
The movie is supposed to be an origin story, it says so in the full title, but it doesn't tell the character's origin. His beginnings, both in the comic and in the movie, take place in a mansion where young Jimmy Howlett makes his first kill, setting him on a fighter's path. The comic book took its time in connecting the dots from this moment to Wolverine's defining characteristics: his sense of justice, his desire for peace, his struggle to retain a sense of humanity. While the comic series didn't receive the widest popular or critical acclaim, it did something very right that the movie missed, and it fact it wasn't until I saw the movie that I appreciated this aspect.
The Wolverine everyone loves both in the comics and the movies began AFTER having his origins wiped from his mind.
Think about that, and then think about the movie. The movie ENDS with his brain getting blown apart, and all his memories leaking out. That origin story we just watched was rendered pointless, and where they could have spent the time showing how Wolverine's personality in the movies might have been formed, they instead had a bunch of action sequences than introduced a school full of different characters. They did a better job introducing half a dozen different characters than the one they promised to introduce.
So I've been griping this whole time to make a point, and that point is: Stories disappoint when they don't follow through on the promises they make. "But Ryan," you may say, "no one actually promised anything. You're being a judgmental prick!" Screw you, person that's actually me! Any product makes a promise the instant it steps into public attention, and in the case of movies they usually make the same promise five or so different times in 30-second montages.
And just like in real life, it hurts when someone breaks a promise.
Monday, June 1, 2009
June Delusions
First: I am challenging myself to update this blog once a day this month. Maybe I'll fail, maybe I'll get in the habit and update more regularly from now on. We'll just have to find out, won't we?
Next: Losing Yourself the Web Comic. WEB COMIC?!?! Yeah, that's what we're going for as of right now. The pages will see web publication first, and as we build an audience we'll have a better chance to cover costs when we print the full story as a single volume. I didn't intend for this story to make its debut on the web, but this makes a lot of sense given everyone's situation, and I couldn't resist.
I cobbled together a draft of a contract over the weekend, and it was as much fun as I was afraid it would be. It's not that it was especially complicated - legal text is written to be exact more than clear, but if you concentrate it's hard to get lost - it's simply a long process. I hope to get a bunch of the bureaucratic components taken care of soon so that page production can begin.
Last: Movies. I've seen Angels and Demons, Terminator Salvation, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine recently, and I'd rate them in that order. Angels is okay, nothing remarkable but you feel entertained. Terminator has explosions and robots abusing puny humans, and that's really all it has going for it. Wolverine has characters named for characters that appeared in comic books that you may have really liked, but the resemblances range from passing to malicious mockery; it's a shame, because it had decent actors.
Maybe tomorrow I'll blog about the disappointment potential to some stories. I feel inspired.
Next: Losing Yourself the Web Comic. WEB COMIC?!?! Yeah, that's what we're going for as of right now. The pages will see web publication first, and as we build an audience we'll have a better chance to cover costs when we print the full story as a single volume. I didn't intend for this story to make its debut on the web, but this makes a lot of sense given everyone's situation, and I couldn't resist.
I cobbled together a draft of a contract over the weekend, and it was as much fun as I was afraid it would be. It's not that it was especially complicated - legal text is written to be exact more than clear, but if you concentrate it's hard to get lost - it's simply a long process. I hope to get a bunch of the bureaucratic components taken care of soon so that page production can begin.
Last: Movies. I've seen Angels and Demons, Terminator Salvation, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine recently, and I'd rate them in that order. Angels is okay, nothing remarkable but you feel entertained. Terminator has explosions and robots abusing puny humans, and that's really all it has going for it. Wolverine has characters named for characters that appeared in comic books that you may have really liked, but the resemblances range from passing to malicious mockery; it's a shame, because it had decent actors.
Maybe tomorrow I'll blog about the disappointment potential to some stories. I feel inspired.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Titles, Those Tribulations
I should make a note - assuming I keep this job through another year - that the months of April and May are an absolute bear carrying a number of plagues to get any writing done in. Along with the extra workload that comes with the end of the academic year, I get called in to cover when everyone uses up the last of their vacation days. To be fair, I've taken days of this time period myself, and made constructive use of them, but it's not helping me keep an energy level that's anything above hibernating sloth.
With the complaining out of the way, I am happy to report that the short story is more or less done. Unless my readers come up with any notable errors I'm ready to put it away save ONE problem. I need a better title, and it turns out I'm crap with them. I thought it was just an attribute I was casting onto my villain but it's true for me as well. I'm hoping I can put it into the back of my mind while I'm working my day job, and while the monotony chips at my soul maybe something will come to me. Or I'll trick someone into making it up for me.
With that done, I can devote more time to a couple other things that're coming very close to something interesting.
First is Losing Yourself, the graphic novel script I will not let die. I have an artist that has talent, a sense of professionalism, some interest in the story, and a genuine interest in the medium. Assuming he comes through on this little litmus test I have him on, I can start going over the atrocious details that will eventually become a contract. That would be something very, very exciting, so much so that I'm not letting myself get excited about it.
Speaking of, another project that was almost a joke of mine caught the interest of a friend, so I'm hoping I can steal some time someplace to work on it a little more and have something concrete we can work with. If nothing else, this will be a good exercise at something I haven't done in years, and loved doing anyway, so I can't lose.
It's become a habit of mine to twist situations into a position where I come out ahead in some way. Everyone does this to some degree, but I'm wondering in my case if I'm trying to WIN or simply NOT LOSE. It's a world of difference, and the further I get with things the more I need to know which it is. Trying to win is a scary thing, with a lot more on the line and it calls for a huge investment, but the payoff is bigger, where trying to not lose is generally easier and safer, if not a little more dull. I feel like I've been trying to not lose recently, but the reason for that is that things are happening that feel much better than simply not losing. They're great feelings, but the only way to maintain or improve on them - and really the only thing to do with them - is to switch to a trying to win attitude, and that's more intimidating than I care to admit.
It's been said that the only way to succeed in life is to make everyone believe you've already succeeded and will only continue in the future. It's an art that, if you're either good or lucky enough, life will come to imitate. We'll see, I guess.
With the complaining out of the way, I am happy to report that the short story is more or less done. Unless my readers come up with any notable errors I'm ready to put it away save ONE problem. I need a better title, and it turns out I'm crap with them. I thought it was just an attribute I was casting onto my villain but it's true for me as well. I'm hoping I can put it into the back of my mind while I'm working my day job, and while the monotony chips at my soul maybe something will come to me. Or I'll trick someone into making it up for me.
With that done, I can devote more time to a couple other things that're coming very close to something interesting.
First is Losing Yourself, the graphic novel script I will not let die. I have an artist that has talent, a sense of professionalism, some interest in the story, and a genuine interest in the medium. Assuming he comes through on this little litmus test I have him on, I can start going over the atrocious details that will eventually become a contract. That would be something very, very exciting, so much so that I'm not letting myself get excited about it.
Speaking of, another project that was almost a joke of mine caught the interest of a friend, so I'm hoping I can steal some time someplace to work on it a little more and have something concrete we can work with. If nothing else, this will be a good exercise at something I haven't done in years, and loved doing anyway, so I can't lose.
It's become a habit of mine to twist situations into a position where I come out ahead in some way. Everyone does this to some degree, but I'm wondering in my case if I'm trying to WIN or simply NOT LOSE. It's a world of difference, and the further I get with things the more I need to know which it is. Trying to win is a scary thing, with a lot more on the line and it calls for a huge investment, but the payoff is bigger, where trying to not lose is generally easier and safer, if not a little more dull. I feel like I've been trying to not lose recently, but the reason for that is that things are happening that feel much better than simply not losing. They're great feelings, but the only way to maintain or improve on them - and really the only thing to do with them - is to switch to a trying to win attitude, and that's more intimidating than I care to admit.
It's been said that the only way to succeed in life is to make everyone believe you've already succeeded and will only continue in the future. It's an art that, if you're either good or lucky enough, life will come to imitate. We'll see, I guess.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Broken Records
I could apologize for the lateness of my post, but I'd sound like... well, my blog entry title.
Last week I submitted a brand new short story in to a new contest. They're both new to me, and the story at least was new to many of the people I told it about. The bad news is that I don't think the story is actually DONE. IT has a beginning, an ending, and characters who - by the time they get to the end - aren't quite who they were at the beginning. Depsite this, I think it could be better. I thought about holding the story back and missing this contest, but I feel like I have to have something out there. I could easily stall forever on the pretense that "my work isn't perfect," so I figure it's worth the attempt at least.
This isn't the only development I've had recently. I'm in talks with an art student about illustrating Losing Yourself, and to date this is the closest I've come to actually locking an artist down! With some helpful albeit grounding advice from the uber-talented Stuart Sayger, this project is starting to look like a concrete book. Getting the material together and trying to be professional about vetting the guy out certainly feels like concrete.
I also had a wonderful surprise concerning a story I came up with at a bar one night in London. I shouldn't say anything about it, more for fear of jinxing it than disclosure liabilities, but it could be an amazing and fun opportunity.
To help fund any or all of these, I have invested in something called Powerball. Just a little investment, and true to the economy they've told me my money's gone. Grand.
Last week I submitted a brand new short story in to a new contest. They're both new to me, and the story at least was new to many of the people I told it about. The bad news is that I don't think the story is actually DONE. IT has a beginning, an ending, and characters who - by the time they get to the end - aren't quite who they were at the beginning. Depsite this, I think it could be better. I thought about holding the story back and missing this contest, but I feel like I have to have something out there. I could easily stall forever on the pretense that "my work isn't perfect," so I figure it's worth the attempt at least.
This isn't the only development I've had recently. I'm in talks with an art student about illustrating Losing Yourself, and to date this is the closest I've come to actually locking an artist down! With some helpful albeit grounding advice from the uber-talented Stuart Sayger, this project is starting to look like a concrete book. Getting the material together and trying to be professional about vetting the guy out certainly feels like concrete.
I also had a wonderful surprise concerning a story I came up with at a bar one night in London. I shouldn't say anything about it, more for fear of jinxing it than disclosure liabilities, but it could be an amazing and fun opportunity.
To help fund any or all of these, I have invested in something called Powerball. Just a little investment, and true to the economy they've told me my money's gone. Grand.
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