Spilling Creative Pixels
Alcohol + Fire + Technology = Good Times
We all know this.
Below I’ve made some smartphone-sized (960×640 to be specific) wallpapers for your iPhone or Android. I was mostly just sick of trying to find something suitable, so I edited a few of my own shots instead. Click on any of the images below to get the full wallpaper size. I can post larger versions of people want desktop versions. Enjoy.
In honor of the end of the week, I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to my favorite alliterative day: Fuck You Friday. If you haven’t read all of Achewood, start at the beginning and say goodbye to the next few weeks.
The great fluffball contemplates life, philosophy, and the desperate need to eat all the cilantro outside.
Taken with a new app I just downloaded today. It’s an iPhone app from Smugmug called ‘Camera Awesome’. It’s slick and easy to use. It’s a free app that charges you for additional presets/filters. But if you never want to fork over 99 cents for those, it’s still quite useful. [button link=”http://bit.ly/wLcgk6″ size=”small” style=”download” color=”silver”]Download It[/button]
Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft. You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. […] O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right – and breaking your train of thought and the writer’s trance in the bargain – or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? […] You can check it … but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don’t do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.
{from the inspirational ‘Advice to Writers’ site}
http://www.goodfuckingdesignadvice.com/index.php#adviceID=55
Click above for good advice. Keep clicking thru for even more. Avoid clicking if you hate cursing or your workplace filters bad language.
Writing is when you make the words, editing is when you make them not shitty.
I’m always interested in how creative people work. What do they do first? Do they outline? What applications do they use? Do they do it in silence or with music? In a crowded coffee shop or in a reinforced bunker? If you post a blurb about how others create (especially when it comes to writing) I am there. John August has a nice series going about writers and their worskpaces – johnaugust.com . It might focus too much on the nitty gritty for some (“I will only write on a mahogany desk with my Macbook and Final Draft while sipping earl grey tea, hot.”), but I love that stuff too.
Scott Myers, however, recently concluded a 10 part series about his own writing process (screenplays specifically). Read about how he goes from the concept to the outline to the 2nd draft and everything in-between. It’s quite educational. You can find links to all 10 parts here: “How I Write A Script” by Scott Myers.
Everything is a Remix Part 4 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
The final installment of the great series on art and the “remix” from Kirby Ferguson. A must for anyone interested in how art is formed and where, legally, we are headed.
Turns out, being sleepy or drunk can be a great thing for the creative type. A scientific study says so. Hooray for science for reinforcing “bad” habits!
Wired found a study from the University of Illinois at Chicago where they gave students alcohol (they get credits for that?) and tested them at various times to see how they performed on creative tasks. It turns out that being able to focus, using all those rules/tricks you’ve developed over the decades, can sometimes be detrimental to the creative process. Turn that off, allow your mind to not limit itself, and you might stumble upon the answer more quickly. Of course, if you need to suss out a math problem or even outline your entire story, you probably want a bit of that structure back.
Their summary was particularly apt for me:[quote]Don’t chain yourself to your desk. Instead, set the alarm a few minutes early and wallow in your groggy thoughts. And if that doesn’t work, chug a beer.[/quote]
I find that groggy half hour when you first wake up to be a great time to write. Don’t talk, don’t listen to music, don’t do anything but get your computer (or your pen/pad) ready and start. It’s amazing what an unrestricted brain will come up with (sometimes amazingly bad, but still, amazing).
Writing, habits, psychology and figuring out that pesky brain of ours. A great resource I just discovered the other day. (click above to visit the site)
(formerly titled You’ll Never Die In This Town Again)
126 pages. Dated November 21, 2003
These won’t be reviews in the traditional sense of the word. I won’t be giving scripts star ratings or grades or anything of the sort. For one, I’m clearly not qualified to be doing that. Secondly, that isn’t what I think is educational about reading screenplays. I’m reading screenplays because I want to write screenplays. I want to see how others do it, how they build characters, how the action unfolds, how the formatting works (or doesn’t). That’s my goal.
So, in these “reviews” I will be coming at it from the perspective of a beginning screenwriter. The stories and characters are still important, but I will mostly be focusing on the flow and the structure. Spoilers will be marked as such.
[/box]
Shane Black sold his first script when he was just 22. It was a small arthouse film called Lethal Weapon. It starred some Australian guy. You probably haven’t seen it. Anyway, he went on to write (and sell) quite a few other action scripts over the next decade. He quickly earned a reputation for writing action mixed with witty dialogue that played with the genre’s conventions. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was his directorial debut after a long hiatus in screenwriting. Ok, here we go.
In their infinite wisdom, Netflix has recommended “Fruits Basket” as one of the top 10 streaming movies for me. There it sits alongside “Henry V” and “The Hustler.” What is this grammatically awkward movie about? Well, here is what Netflix has to say:
[quote style=”boxed”] Yuki Sohma is a teenager whose family harbors a strange secret: If any of them are hugged by a member of the opposite sex, they transform into animals of the Chinese zodiac.[/quote]Kind of puts my fear of hugging into perspective*.
I miss the days when my TiVo would see that I enjoyed The L Word, Desperado, & Blazing Saddles and decide that I was a gay Mexican cowboy who only enjoyed Spanish language programming with guns and/or gay content. Good times.
*I’m just afraid people will steal my wallet.
Because really, if it’s the latter, I think underpants would be more efficient.
It’s the middle of winter but these are still near the front door. California living sure is rough.
Write freely and generously and with careless truth.
Much like you can’t jump right into the middle of a film and make complete sense of it, you can’t bypass the first 195 steps of storytelling and get straight to the wrap party (writers are invited to that, right?). It all has to begin somewhere.
In taking those first steps, it is all too easy to slip down a different yet enticing path. So let’s take a look at some of the distractions that I’ll often find myself stumbling over on the way to a finished product (these are specific to screenwriting, but the lessons are pretty universal). There is a lot to be said for self-control, but sometimes mental repetition of what NOT to do is enough motivation to do the right thing. The mind is a terribly fickle and easily distracted tool. It loves input and hates being denied the opportunity to run amok. Give it free reign and instead of an unforgettable story, it may just give you:
“What?” I hear you saying. How can you have any sort of movie poster without even the slimmest bit of a story? Text my dear, text. MOVIE TITLE plastered dead center in silver letters on a black backdrop. A release date at the bottom. A frustratingly vague tagline at the top. Something like: [box]When the world turned its back on him, he turned his back on the world.[/box] or [box]We didn’t know what we were dealing with.[/box] or even [box]I’ll take the salad AND the soup.[/box]
The point is, a movie poster represents a finished product. Not only have you finished your screenplay, but the movie is already being filmed and actively marketed. It’s a comforting but distracting fantasy. Don’t try to market your film before you’ve written the title page. In fact, don’t try to market your film at all. You may find yourself wondering if a more “marketable” idea would be more worthwhile (that debate is big enough for another few pages).
Not everyone wants to be “paparazzi hiding in your garbage can” famous, but most everyone wants to be at the top of their field. Well-respected and considered talented among your peers. This leads to more work and better connections. You want more work right? If writing brings you enjoyment, what better what to further your career than to earn more fun, well-paying assignments. A bit of fame also means that your next script will sell for more. Which leads us to…
“If I sell this thing, I will totally be able to afford health insurance!” The depressingly practical take on wealth and riches. Once you let yourself wander down this path, it has a tendency to let finances seep into the process. I personally don’t enjoy thinking about money, taxes or investing. Unless you’re writing about Wall Street, you should suppress it when it pops up for you as well. “Will I be able to pay the rent if this doesn’t sell?” “Would this be a $500 million movie?” [quote]People love movies with kids speaking like 25 year old grad students, right? That should give it at least a $200 million boost at the B.O.”[/quote]
Bringing money into the picture can skew your creativity toward the commercial and depress you if you’re not where you want to be from an earning standpoint. You don’t need that. Especially not when you’re trying to ramp things up.
Now that we know where NOT to start, where do we begin? Pretty much anywhere. Inspiration comes from the damnedest of places. These are my four most common starting points:
The driver on the bus you take to work every day has never said a word. He overhears a thousand crazy conversations a week. Does he write them down in his journal? Maybe he acts them out with puppets once he gets home, making sense of the snippets he overhears as he goes about his job.
Find an intriguing character (or traits) and see where it goes. Not everything can easily be formed into a screenplay, but plenty can. If it dead ends, fine. You’ve just created a backstory for a minor character down the road. Mark it (tag: backstory goodness). If the character speaks to you more and more, you’ll uncover more depth, some logical story lines, and even additional characters (your driver might need an arch nemesis, like say…a bicyclist).
A witty or poignant turn of phrase sticks with you. This is a favorite of mine even though it is seemingly the weakest. I have hundreds of lines of dialogue (usually one or two lines at a time) that are unattached to any project. There are no characters, no names, no storyline, no situation, nothing. The danger here is trying to force your clever words into becoming a story. It’s not always going to fit. Sometimes you’re just going to have to let it go. But when it does work, it can really pay off. Your dialogue wasn’t just witty, it was insightful. It pulled back a curtain on the human condition, and the human condition stared right back at you with its dead, haunted eyes. The character who speaks these words is on the verge of a personal discovery, but the man she’s talking to is secretly working against her. Expand and explore it.
Two housewives lock themselves in a pantry as thieves ransack the house, looking for a safe. The twist? One of the women suspects the other is sleeping with her husband. It boils down to a simple domestic dispute. An argument and confrontation. The robbery is just a stressor (and a time constraint). Find something unusual and take it halfway to the finish. If it doesn’t pan out, maybe you can still use it for a short. If it does, consider how your characters got there in the first place. What would logically lead them there? You may very well change the scene (or cut it) after learning all about your characters and story, but starting is the important part.
Yes, the end. The beginning of the process doesn’t mean the start of your story. The beginning is merely your first step (see above) in the creative process. The end of your story can be a great starting point. How does it all end? Does a couple wind up together? Does the world collapse? Is a lesson learned? Are there tears? Deaths? Party favors?
Here’s an exercise: [highlight]What has been your dominant emotion for the past day or so? Ok, grab ahold of that. Now end your story on that note (or the resolution of that emotion). Feeling inspired? Give us an ending that is inspiring both to the audience and the lead character. Feeling downtrodden? Show us the difficulty of life, of a situation, of a character in over their head. Or show them overcoming that obstacle to break through and see a tiny glimmer of hope. Keep going.[/highlight]
This is just a small sample of what is possible. Which is a good lesson in itself. So much is possible, so many stories are there, ready to be discovered. Don’t let mental distractions keep you from exploring your creative depths. We all have to start somewhere, and keeping a few tricks at the ready can help get the ball rolling.
A nice image might help set the tone for the weekend to come.
We’ll start with the blue dog, who enjoys a nice bokeh, a shallow depth of field, and winning staring contests.
Unless otherwise specified, all photos are taken by me.
