On the Lot - Episode 1

Well, not episode one, but the first of the episodes where they show the contestants films in their entirety and viewers at home get to vote.

And after watching 18 of these short one-minute comedies.... enh.

There were only four of them that didn't fall totally flat for me. Will Bigham, Zach Lipovsky and Shira-Lee Shalit and Sam Friedlander. Of those, I'm voting for Will Bigham's "Lucky Penny" film which clearly was the best tonight. Zach "Special Effects guy" Lipovsky was technically the best.

Of course, as an aspiring filmmaker, I was watching these with a "could I have done better than these?", and the answer, at least tonight, was absolutely. I didn't enter this contest, partially because I thought I wouldn't be in the class of what they were looking for.

Oh well...

On to the individual films this week.

Dance Man - clever idea. I was mildly amused. Solid filmmaking overall.

Deliver Me - Shot interestingly, but a bit incoherent as to what the film was supposed to be about.

Spaced Out - Not bad. I wasn't as amused by the projectile puppet puke as some seem to be. But overall, well made.

Wack Alley Cab - ?????????? Bye bye Kenny... What a mess. What was he possibly thinking?

Bus #1 - I didn't get this. I got what the joke was supposed to be (urine smells bad! LOL!!) but I didn't get why she thought this would be a good idea to make a film out of. Still scratching my head.

The Big Bad Heist - The trailer was all imagery and no story. I agreed with the judges that he should have followed the rules and made a short FILM, not a trailer. When he said "I want to take risks.", I thought to myself, you mean like not following any of the rules of the contest? Good idea.

Lucky Penny - For me, this one was the best overall effort of the night. A coherent story from beginning to end. Interesting angles. Can't say it was that FUNNY, but I thought it was the most complete FILM. Nothing jumped out at me as wrong.

How to Screw in a Light Bulb - I didn't get this one at all. What was she thinking?

Soft - Interesting idea, but horribly executed. None of the camera angles matched, color-wise. The humor was way too obvious. Sorry, pal. I didn't like it.

Blind Date - Again...?????? What was she thinking? This was a total wreck.

Getta Rhoom - I totally agreed with the judges. The first thought was that this poor fellow had Downs Syndrome, and it turned from potentially amusing to uncomfortable. Even if that's not what he was intending, a good director would have recognized that the actor had drifted all the way over into Mentally Challenged, rather than Nerdy, and would have corrected it.

File Size - I get what he was trying to do, and appreciated the camera work, but overall, this was sloppily conceived and put together.

Danger Zone - While I didn't think it was all that FUNNY, it was clearly the most competently put together of all the films. While I didn't put Zach at the top this week, I think he is clearly going to win this competition. He's the one that most GETS what filmmaking and creativity is all about. Even if he doesn't win On the Lot, he'll win in the long run.

A Golf Story - Tried to hard to be clever, and in the end didn't do exactly what the judges were saying. It didn't have any mini-golf shots (which are funny in and of themselves) or anything that really played off of the silliness that a mini-golf championship should have had. Looked nice. But nice try, but sorry.

Love in 2007 - Again, another film that makes me question if this filmmaker has ever seen a film before, or any sort of narrative.

Please Hold - Could have been good, but totally went off the rails with that first shot of the girl doing her nails while waiting on 911. And I thought the whole 911 thing was great the first time I heard it... on the Simpsons back in 1994. "You have selected regicide! If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one."

Check Out - I thought this was one of the better ones of the night. Well made all around. An actual beginning, middle and end.

Replication Theory - I put this one number four for the evening. Funny idea, and ambitiously shot (with a variety of locations and settings), but it wasn't pulled off as well as it could have been. It took me a while to figure out what the title (Replication Theory) had to do with anything. A better title would have done more to set up the joke a bit better. But overall a solid effort.


Overall, the show is an odd duck. On most of these reality shows, the person showing their talent actually gets to be the focus of the presentation, but with this, they are the behind the scenes people, so it's hard to really gauge their personalities. Perhaps they will show more making of stuff as the show progresses.

But after having done a couple of 48 Hour Film contests, the films that these people came up with (with significantly more than 48 Hours) weren't any better than the average 48 Hour Film (which isn't saying much). I was really expecting a lot better, especially since a vast majority of these filmmakers attended some sort of film school.

We'll see how the survivors of round one react to the comments their first films got and see if they were really that clueless, or if they were just a bit nervous.

Going home (three people) I predict will be Kenny, Jason, and Claudia.

Old Negro Space Program

Latest in a series of my favorite viral-ish videos. This is a parody of Ken Burns' style of documentaries. Warning: Near the end, it gets a bit Not Safe For Work.

Anyway, this is absolutely brilliant. Too many little details to single out one or two. But if I had to, I'd say that the line "In 1957, if you were black, and if you were an astronaut... you were outta work." was the highlight for me.

Titanic sequel

Here's the latest in my attempt to catalog all of my favorite viral videos. This is my favorite parody movie trailer. It's a sequel to Titanic. Again, I love all the little details. My favorite is the use of the dance version of "My Heart Will Go On."
Bonus points if you can name all the films that were used to create this trailer.

Cat Herders - My favorite commercial

You may remember this from the Superbowl a few years ago. It was for EDS, and was part of a trilogy of commercials. But Cat Herders was the greatest of these.



I love all the little details, like the guy rolling the ball of yarn, and the closeup of the cat fording the river. Brilliant. It's the level of detail I long to be able to include in commercials I work on (but never get to do)


This one is good, but not quite up to Cat Herders' standard.

48 Hour Film Project 2007

Brutal.

That's the only way to describe a 48 Hour Film Project weekend. And that's what this weekend was. My team, Irony Coast, came together again and worked non-stop to produce a short film in the span of 48 Hours. That's 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit a 5-7 minute film. We did it with 15 minutes to spare.

Our film this year? "Plan 48". The genre we pulled from a hat was 'buddy film'. Our required elements (that all participating teams must use in their films) were a character named Stan or Sarah Gibbs who is a communicable disease specialist, a big pink eraser, and the line of dialogue, "You want the truth? So do I".

As usual, we commenced the evening with a few rounds of brainstorming that included all team members. Out of all of that, two must-have elements emerged. One was that our film could be about a team of rogue CDC agents. The other (playing off of our permission to use the Cactus King location, a really cool mega-cactus seller with thousands of cacti of all kinds), was the creation of the new street drug known as "cractus". Using these two ideas come up with by different brainstorm groups, we then crafted the full script, finishing at 6am (with first call scheduled at 7:30am).

"Plan 48" is about how a rogue team of CDC agents deal with the growth of a new street drug called 'cractus' that's made from cactus plants. The unfortunate side effect of this drug is a rare disease called 'dermatitis cactosis'. A breakthrough leads the team to the source of cractus, a crimelord named Hector Pinchazo.



We shot all day on Saturday, finishing at 9pm. Thanks to one of our team members, Gary Denton, we were able to use a giant military truck for use in our film. As mentioned above, we were able to shoot at the amazingly cool "Cactus King" location, as well as at a diagnostic and imaging lab, and we found a bridge trestle that was just made for shooting a film at.


We had to scramble the last hour just to get the film finished in a state that would allow it to be eligible for judging. The direct result of that is that while we are happy with the product, we feel it's at best 80% of where it can and will be. Lots of music needs to be added, some animations we just didn't have time to produce, sound sweeting, color correction, gunfire visual effects... the list goes on. Plus, our very last line, written at 5:30am, just didn't work like we wanted. It looked okay on paper, but when produced, it lacks clarity. So we are going to rewrite and reshoot the ending very soon.

We think it turned out okay. It gets laughs when viewed, but aren't sure if it will really connect with audiences yet. We'll find out this Wednesday at the screening of all of this year's entries, and we'll find out who the judges selected. We did really well last year in the individual categories (directing, cinematography, script, sound, editing, use of line of dialogue), but didn't win the overall city prize. While we aren't happy with our final product, we know now from experience that none of the other teams are likely happy with their films, either, and have similar regrets about things that had to be abandoned due to running out of time. If I had to predict if we get an award, I'd predict editing, since we had a million edits in our film, with lots of very meticulous continuity that (I feel) was successfully maintained. On a purely technical level, the 'technical difficulty' of what we attempted this year was a 5 (on a 5 scale). On some of those counts, I think we succeeded.

One thing we did that we're all really proud of, is that we not only included this year's required elements, we also included LAST year's required prop, character, and line of dialogue. And we actually think we did a better at incorporating last year's elements this time than we did last year.

All in all it was another fantastic weekend, despite how grueling it was. In a few days, we'll all forget just how rough it was and start planning our next big shoot.

That's all for now. I'll post a link to the "theatrical version" of the film that will be showing at River Oaks Theater on Wednesday.

For now, enjoy!

[Television] I find this tv...acceptable

My new favorite TV show-- Acceptable.tv

The above video is just one of nearly two dozen similarly brilliant short videos made for this new show.

It's a filmed-comedy-sketch show that premieres on VH1 every Friday night (9Central) and replays numerous times throughout the week and is also available on their website, acceptable.tv (it's just acceptable.tv, no dot com) What makes this show particularly interesting to me is that it's attempting to wrangle this viral video phase the world is going through and bring some order to it.

The premise of the show is that each week, they debut five short "pilots" for new continuing sketches, each one about two and a half minutes long. Of those, you can go to the website and vote for the two you like best, and new episodes of those will be filmed for the next week's episode.

These 'official' pilots are produced by the Acceptable.tv repertory company, but each week, they play one user-submitted video, also voted on by the website visitors (actually, you have to be a registered member to vote... it's free though).

It's a really neat concept, and so far I'm loving it. Of the skits that the official group have produced, I've really liked almost all of them. In fact, out of 21 current skits, there are only two that I'm lukewarm on.

The people behind this show are executive producer Jack Black, and the group from Channel101, the people that have been doing stuff like this before they started getting financed by VH1/Viacom. Previous Channel101 alums are the Lonely Island guys, of which three of them are now SNL writers/performers. They're living the dream all us video producers nurture.

I could tell you about the funniest videos, but thanks to embeddable flash video, I can just show you. There's a bunch of them, and they are all funny. Enjoy. And if you like these, there are many, many more at the official website.

[Movie Review] Curse of the Golden Flower

Curse of the Golden Flower may be the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. It's certainly not the best movie I've seen, and there's a lot about it that left me scratching my head afterwards, but one thing that's not in doubt is that you've never seen anything like this.

Like most movies in this genre ("Hero", "House of Flying Daggers", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), the movie itself had lots of inscrutable parts. In fact, I had trouble scruting most of the second half of the film. You think you have an idea of what's going on, but then people start flying and balancing on top of a flower, and armies start popping up out of nowhere and you realize you probably missed a key bit of explanation twenty minutes earlier. The plot of this movie concerned secrets and revenge and the repression of women in 10th century China, but none of that mattered.

No, all that matters is that from the first frame to the last, this movie is a feast for the eyes. The image included at the top of this post is just one example of the orchestra of color you will experience. At no point do you ever really feel that you are seeing something real, or that this is in any way a true representation of the period, but I'm sure it's exactly what that period FELT like.

Here's a link to a gallery of still photos from the movie, which really don't do any justice to seeing this stuff in motion.

http://imdb.com/gallery/ss/0473444

I don't have an HDTV yet, but I may have to get one just to watch this film again, to see it in even richer detail.

"Curse of the Golden Flower" is Chinese director Yimou Zhang's third wire-fu, period film, coming on the heals of the almost-but-not-quite-as-beautiful films, "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers." After this unofficial trilogy, I'm not sure what ground is left for Zhang to cover in this genre. I'm sure there are hundreds of other Chinese legends yet to be filmed, but are any of them unique enough for him to spend his time on? Fortunately, he's just as well-known (in Asia) for his non-genre films, and I'm eager to check some of those out.

In addition to the stunning art design and cinematography, I have to also commend the acting in this (despite the sometimes bewildering directions the story would take). Gong Li and Chow Yun-Fat were both mesmerizing and prove once again that foreign actors and actresses should stick with films that allow them to speak their native language. Gong Li was forced to speak English in "Miami Vice", and as a result, her entire performance was awkward and stilted. In a similar vein, I've never liked Penelope Cruz, but I'm curious to check her out in "Volver" (for which she was nominated for Best Actress) since she speaks in Spanish in this movie, rather than English.

So, to sum up, Curse of the Golden Flower is a mesmerizing movie, beginning to end. If you're one of the lucky few that is able to follow the plots of these Chinese "Wuxia" legends, then you'll really like this movie. As it is, I'm looking forward to seeing this movie again, in the highest resolution possible.

Story: Five Teeth. Overall: Eight Teeth.

Getting into Gear 2007

So, thanks to the flurry of activity by the writing group I'm a part of, I'm re-inspired to get off my butt and get creative again. Even though my job actually requires me to be creative on a daily basis, it's not the sort of creativity that leaves me with any sort of satisfaction at the end of the day. Well, sometimes...

Anyway, I've ideas for countless screenplays, short films, novels, essays, graphic designs, photographic composites and artwork, etc etc etc. I just need to stop procrastinating and DO them. At least ONE, anyway.

So hopefully this blog will act as a sort of accountability partner for me. Something that will guilt me into increasing my creative output.

Next really big project coming up is 48 Hour Film Project 2007. We did really good last year (link to the video "Eternal" on our Irony Coast YouTube page should be on the sidebar on the right), and we have every intention and expectation to win this year... That's coming up the weekend of May 18th. Should be fun.

Still need to finish my NaNoWriMo novel. I'm only 17,000 words from reaching my target, and I still really like my story, so I have no excuse not to work on it.

I also need to pick which screenplay I want to work on. "Paper Heroes" has the most work done on it, and the one I think has the most potential to be made into a film. "Sword of Texas" has a lot of work done on it as well. "Camp David" is the one most easily filmable by my film group, and the one that has gotten the most positive feedback and requests that we actually produce. Plus, there are a few ideas I've come up with over the past month or two that are jumping up and down trying to get my attention. Tentative titles for these are "The Royal Family", "The Lion and the Lambs", plus my untitled Vegas heist film, and my untitled serial killer movie.

Plus, there's still the "Zombie Wrangler" short film that's percolating, and the "Flunkies" webisodes we need to produce before half of our cast moves away.

Lots to think about. Lots to do.

Iiiiiiit's Groundhog Day!

And by Groundhog Day, I of course mean the movie, not the day itself. I could care less about a rodent seeing its shadow. No, today is the day to celebrate the greatest American (or otherwise) comedy of the 20th century.

There are very few movies I can watch more than once (I've really only seen the Star Wars movies about ten times each, and only once each in the last decade), but Groundhog Day is the one movie I can watch again and again and never tire of. Which is ironic since the movie is essentially the same set of scenes played over and over again.

Groundhog Day remains my favorite comedy (it falls anywhere from number 3 to number 5 on my list of all-time favorite movies) fourteen years after having first seen it. It's exactly the kind of movie I like, and one I wish I could have made.

One one level, it's just a very funny movie. The jokes never drift into absurdity, always fitting the scene and moving the plot forward.

On the second level, it's the cleverest movie I've ever seen. More than any other movie with a gee-whiz idea, this movie takes it and explores it from every angle, really pushing the concept to its limit. What WOULD you do if you had to repeat the same day over and over again?

And if that's all the movie wanted to do, it would have been a comedy on a level with Ghostbusters. But Groundhog Day's launch into the comedy pantheon occurs because it seamlessly makes the movie ABOUT something deeper. It adds my personal favorite life-theme, redemption.

It's never too late to start appreciating the people around you and the things that happen to you and near you. Even if you've lived the same day over and over again for 10,000 years (as the filmmakers sometimes imply), you can still start fresh and make a change.

There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but that's what resonates so strongly within me. My life often feels like a Groundhog Day, with themes (rather than days) repeating over and over again. Every once in awhile I open my eyes and appreciate all the things around me, and/or learn from my mistakes, and then like Phil, I get to move on to the next great stage of my life.


There's a great article in New Republic (I don't read it, I found this online this morning) that discusses the enduring popularity of Groundhog Day (the movie) and its surprising cultural impact. Even though I've seen and read about the movie countless times, just like the movie, I was able to discover something new. Enjoy the article here.

So Happy Groundhog Day. And make sure you bundle up, cause it's cold out there.

Movie Review - Children of Men

Children of Men is one of those movies that could very easily have been a confusing mess, but fortunately, it successfully achieved my current movie criterion buzzword-- Clarity. A few times, the movie threatened to fall off the tracks of clarity, but each time, it managed to refresh me on the key points I needed to continue on.

The basic plot of Children of Men is that in the year 2027, the world is falling apart and women have been infertile for about 16 years. A young girl is discovered to be pregnant, and she needs to be delivered to a secret group of scientists dedicated to restoring worldwide fertility. However, there is a group that is pushing for an uprising and wants to use the existence of this baby as their rallying point. The movie is essentially a chase, with Clive Owen's character attempting to successfully deliver the pregnant girl to the scientists, avoiding the uprising people.

The movie does a great job of setting up the world through background images, such as TVs, newspapers and graffiti, rather than than an overabundance of expository babble.

The movie's been called a 21st century Blade Runner, and in a lot of ways it's pretty apt. The tone, the grittiness of the world, the bleakness of the story, the humanity of the main characters are all from the same DNA as Blade Runner.

But best of all, the movie achieves clarity at every point, allowing the full tension of each moment to effortlessly shine through without my having to wonder, "Now why is that guy shooting at them again??"

8.5 teeth out of ten.

Movie Review - Elektra

This was on the stack of "Movies that I want to watch that I know won't be any good, but I want to watch them so I can figure out why they didn't work."

I was only marginally impressed with Daredevil, and thought Jennifer Garner was miscast as Elektra. I wasn't looking forward to Elektra when it came out, and less so when almost all the reviews were harsh. But it popped up in the list of movies coming on HBO, so I went ahead and set it to record with my trusty Time Warner (soon to be Comcast) DVR. And there it was sitting in my recorded list as I sat down to eat some grub last night so I opted just to watch Elektra for as long as I could tolerate it.

Turns out I could tolerate the whole film. However, don't take that to mean I enjoyed it or give it a positive rating.

This falls in the category of movies that really didn't need to be made. It didn't bring anything to the action genre or the comic book genre. The story was basically a slight rehash of Terminator 2, where a villain must overcome their evil tendencies to help out a chosen one who has been marked for death. If you've seen a movie, you've seen Elektra. There weren't any surprises in this.

The best I can say about it was that I was never bored enough to stop watching. Some of the effects were neat. The characters were cardboard, but generally likeable. But surprisingly, there wasn't a whole lot of action, and only two scenes were Elektra worer her iconic red costume. There was a lot of talking and running.

Anyway, this movie would probably be better in a group setting with the intent being to ridicule the movie as it plays in the background.

5 teeth out of 10.

Movie Review - Series 7: The Contenders

Now this was a movie that I accidentally watched last night at about midnight. Granted, I had set it to record earlier in the evening, but it was as I was showing Tamara how to use some of the features of the new Time Warner DVR box that this movie started recording right in the middle of the lesson. We just started watching it and before long, we'd abandoned DVR lessons and settled in to finish watching.

The basic premise of this film is that we are watching the marathon of a reality TV show called "The Contenders, Series 7". This reality show randomly selects 6 people from a random town, gives them weapons, and forces them to hunt each other down until only one is left alive. This is apparently a government sanctioned and enforced TV show. So camera crews follow the various contenders around and presents their stories.

The film is shot and presented in video and looks like an authentic reality show. It's like a cross between Cops, Real World, and the Running Man.

What's most interesting about this is that this film was produced in 2001, predating (slightly) the success of Survivor. But it was prescient in its prediction of how reality shows would become more and more extreme. We haven't quite gotten to the point to where a deathmatch reality show is a, um, reality, but we're close.

The movie started off great and had our attention from the first moment. It didn't explain everything at first and just treated you basically as if you had just flipped the channel to a show that had already been on for years and you just hadn't ever seen it before. It seemed to have been done in a semi-improv style and this worked perfectly for most of the first part of the film.

It's only during the second half of the film when they had to steer the plot towards the more convoluted aspects of the story that it started to fall apart a bit. I find this is the case in most mockumentary-style shows is that the movement toward the pre-written story elements always come across as a bit clunky and forced. Such was the case with Series 7: The Contenders.

Overall, it was watchable, even during the contrived parts. An interesting experiment.

Final verdict: 6 and a half teeth

DVD Stack - Reds

Finally watched Warren Beatty's Reds. I have to admit that it wasn't at all what I was expecting. I knew it was about the Russian Revolution, but that's pretty much the extent. My assumption was that Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton played Russians caught up in the tides of the revolution. But I was completely wrong.

Instead, the movie is based on the lives of Jack Reed and Louise Bryant, two American socialist/communist activists/writers from the late 1910's who managed to be in Russia during the revolution and got caught up in it. It's really a love story between the two of them set against this backdrop.

I enjoyed it. It was suitably epic in its scope and intimate in its focus. What really added a lot to this film were contemporary (1981) interviews with people that actually knew Jack and Louise back in the day. It gave the film much more of a sense that this all really did happen, and made the dramatic parts seem more like these were the actual people.

Acting was superb throughout as was the cinematography. I'm sure as I watch (or re-watch) more period epics from the 70's and 80's I'll end up with similar opinions, but Reds felt like a movie that was produced within the last few years rather than 25 years ago.

I give it 9 teeth out of 10.

NaNoWriMo - Update

Okay. Here it is, mid-January. I got sidetracked in November by work and life in general, and am currently stalled out at 33,000 words. I hope to get it kick-started tonight or tomorrow and try to get to 50,000 by the end of the month. Not likely, but I'm going to go for it. In any event, I should be able to finish the rough draft of Word War III over the next month or so at the worst.

But before I do that, a couple of movie reviews.

NaNoWriMo - 7 - Day 5/6 - Back on the Horse

Now it's really starting to get fun. After three days of feeling practically helpless to get any traction on this story and to get myself out of the rut I was already in, I had a really good writing night tonight. Nearly 3000 words. I made up a whole day today, almost. Now I'm only 2200 words off pace, and with two good days, I can be right where I need to be.

The story is really starting to take some shape. I have a vague idea of where I want it to go a chapter or two ahead of time. Characters are starting to take shape and tell me things about themselves that I didn't know. More eloquent words and phrases are starting to flow from my fingertips rather than the typical "he glanced" or "he replied".

This is really fun.

I think I can actually do this. After Thursday and Friday I had serious doubts, but now... it's entirely possible.

Can't wait to see what happens next with this story.

And I never in a million years thought I'd be writing a political thriller...

NaNoWriMo - 6 - Day 3 - Chugging to a Halt

Okay... I am/was starting to get worried. I'm getting NO momentum going on this story. I spent all day working on emergency print ads and making some changes to the Global commercial. Then I had to go buy some wireless networking gear for my mom and then go to her house and set it up, and (this was the good part), eat some fantastic gumbo. After that I went to my sister's house and enjoyed their hot tub and spent a nice evening with my sister and her husband (Ryan and Tamara were both home sick tonight). And then I came home and watched a great episode of Battlestar Galactica.

So it was after midnight when I finally sat down to maybe think about writing. I almost just called it an evening, but managed to get in a fair amount of writing. Not a huge amount, but enough so that I feel like it wasn't a total waste of a day, NaNoWriMo-concerned. I'm now up to 1867 words, which is WAY behind where I need to be, but I was able to get back on the horse which is good. Saturday really SHOULD be a good day where I catch up. We'll see.

And I did pretty good today about not bogging myself down with editing and rewriting as I go. I came thisclose to grinding to a halt while looking up the actual geography of downtown Washington DC. That can all wait, and I successfully just plopped something down quickly. I think I'll get better at just going with the flow the longer I do this.

Okay... time for bed again, and a bit of "No Plot, No Problem" reading. Tamara is going garage saling in the early morning and I will try to wake up to join her. It's the mega-neighborhood sale, so there are usually good things to be found.

Out.

NaNoWriMo - 5 - Day Two

So it's 11:45 and I'm just finishing up work for the day (a major commercial for Global Industries). I haven't had a chance to write a single word today, and I'm totally wiped out. I think I'll try to go to bed early tonight (midnight) and wake up really early tomorrow and start writing to catch up.

One good thing I did last night before I went to sleep, was I read a good chunk of the "No Plot, No Problem" book written by the guy that started NaNoWriMo. There was a ton of good stuff I learned because I almost didn't read it, thinking I knew what he was going to say. The main thing that was re-iterated to me was that this month-long contest isn't about quality.. it's about quantity. If I'm going to edit and proofread and rewrite as I go, I'll never finish. Yesterday, I was so caught up in trying to make Craig's first chapter have a different voice that I got bogged down...in chapter one. I just need to WRITE it, as fast as I can, and really get it in my head that I'll be able to edit it later and rewrite it later.

So hopefully, tomorrow will be a more productive day, novelish-speaking. I might have a commercial to produce, but if I don't, then I'll be able to spend a good part of the day working on the novel. I should be able to catch up and maybe even get ahead. We'll see.

One really positive note, Tamara really likes the idea of the book and what I've written so far. It's the first time I've ever seen her interested in, much less excited about something I've written. So if SHE likes it, I might just have something.

Okay... on to sleep.. after a bit more reading of the "No Plot, No Problem" book.

NaNoWriMo - 4 - Day 1.5

Okay.. today wasn't a good day. I haven't felt good all day and I just want to go to bed. However, I did manage to get a few words done. I'm up to 1335 words. Tomorrow should be better.

In spite of my low word count today, I did manage to get some backend work done on the story. I have a much clearer idea of how the chapters will play out and how the duel will be constructed like a game of chess. Each writer will have to plan several moves ahead and anticipate what the other writer is doing, and try to determine what the other writer thinks he knows about

I also think I know who the main antagonists are-- I'll hold that back for now.

Okay... falling asleep at the keyboard. Be back tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo - 3 - First Report

Alrighty... it's 2am. I've got 930 words in my prologue. Not bad. I'll have to pick it up just a bit tomorrow night.

I've settled on a title for my story: Word War III. This is the third writing duel between these two writers. In the prologue, I opted to tell it first person from one of the writer's points of view. He's lost the previous two Word Wars, and vows to win this time.

My only quandary at this point is do I continue this first person view throughout the novel? Do I have this character comment on the other guys chapter, interspersing the commentary within the text of the chapter? Do I have him scour the text looking for clues as to what his opponent is intending and potential ways of countering him? Or do I just stay wholly within the narrative from this point on? Or do I have a mini-section at the beginning of each chapter as the POV character comments on what he's just read and ponders what he has to do when writing his next chapter? I kinda like that better. A bridge between each chapter. It might be fun to sprinkle in all sorts of external things happening to the POV character that are then reflected in the next chapter. There can be periods of panic as he struggles to write the next chapter. Periods where he feels he clearly has the upper hand. I like this. These bridges will have to be short so they don't break up the narrative flow of the story itself. With any luck or skill, I can turn this into a deep, multi-layered story with extra layers of meaning behind what happens on the page.

We'll see.

For now, it's sleep.

NaNoWriMo - 2 - My Plan

Okay... so here's how I'm going to go about this. I've got my basic idea for the skeleton of the story, such as it is. Then each day I'm going to write another chapter (or two, depending on how I ultimately decide to structure it). I have no intention of fully plotting out the story, or even partially. As I type this, I intend to use my Idiot Box game cards to dictate what the next chapters will be about. That way, I have no pressure to have everything line up logically all the way to the end.

This will also allow me to approach this more like the writing exercise it is, rather than WRITING A NOVEL. It will be a fun, creative challenge every single day, and that's got me excited, rather than dreading it. Because I KNOW that if I'm given a few random elements that I can come up with an interesting story in no time at all.

So here's the premise:

The overall story is going to be the duel between two writers who have been co-writing a book. They have had some sort of falling out and have decided to sabotage the story. What they will do is each day, they will alternately write the next chapter of the novel, putting the main character in such a horrible situation that there's no way the other writer can extricate the character from it. This will constitute "winning" in the eyes of the writers.

The rest of the story will be the chapters as "written" by the two writers, told through the eyes of the main character, and with each chapter ending in a cliffhanger.

The ending will be determined, I'm guessing, by whatever themes, plot, and concepts that develop throughout the month.

As I type this right now, all I know is that the main character is named Bernie (as named by Ryan), he works as a car salesman (Ryan) in Lake Charles, Louisiana (Me). He's living a boring life, and something happens at the dealership to propel the rest of this story. I'm guessing there is a hold-up, or someone steals a car with him in it. Hey.. it's a test drive. That works.

One thing I think is that the tone of the two writers should be very different. They should have distinct enough 'voices' that the reader should be able to know who's writing the chapter just by how it sounds. But even still, the character has to be consistent regardless of which writer is at the wheel. I can kind of see one of them being more jokey while the other is more grim. That should provide a wide enough contrast.

At first I was going to make this a battle between the two writers, where they each attempt to sabotage the other's story, but I think it works better as a contest between the two. The first chapter can be the two of them setting up the ground rules for the contest, and the conditions for winning.

At this point, I'm unsure if I'm going to attempt to come back to the two writers during the story. I may not even come back to them at the end of the story. It would be nice to be able to make it work within the context of Bernie's story.

A potential title (and definitely a working title) just came to mind. Word War I.

One other idea I'm toying around with (actually, it just came to mind not ten seconds ago) is making this something like Betrayals in that each chapter is also a completely different style of story, such as newspaper article, blog entry, etc. That might make it more fun for me, but also more difficult, as in addition to coming up with the story, I'd also have to determine a style as well. Probably not, as that would make it more difficult to leave each chapter with a cliffhanger. Okay.. executive decision... same 'novel' style throughout.

Okay... just a little bit longer. I think I'll start a bit early on it.

Updates later.