Blah blah blah
I am frikkn exhausted. I don't know what is worse, having creativity flow so well only to end up exhausted from it or it not comming at all and actually having enough energy to get through your day.

I am in the "I hate subtext" mode right now. I am going through this duality where the philosophy of the screenplay sometimes takes over the storyline.

I think I am watching the Matrix too often.

This whole creative momentum I have been having has just been crazy, there have been more pages filled in my notebook in the past week than have been filled in the past four months. It hasn't been anything new but the overall structure has just been piecing itself together naturally. McKee never gave any warning about this lol.

I have to say though that Linda Cowgill has done an amazing job with "Secrets of Screenplay Structure" I am not sure if they are secrets revealed but she has some great observations. I have read the book before but not as I actually have been working specifically on key aspects in the structure of my screenplay while I was using the cue card method. It has been a great combo thus far.

I just read Harry's Revolutions review from AICN and I could put down about a thousand words as to what I think but I am going to bit my tongue until Wednesday night after I have seen the movie. Then we'll let the fingers run a muck on the keyboard.

I think WB and the other studios should simply round up all of the talkback guys, pay them a million each and have them crit every movie they make before it makes it to theatres...mind you that would mean only 1/5 of them would make it but at times I think this would be for the best.

I couldn't imagine what would be said about what I am working on right now. I can't even imagine what I am working on right now lol.

Christmas is the first chapter structural deadline, wordy I know, but necessary. I have to finally put the outline to bed and get cracking on a new draft or the dust is going to get too thick.

I have my eyes on a few new guys at conceptart.org and I really should put the whole previs idea behind me but when you work visually it is so hard to do, I wish I could find the time to draw because I really do miss it but that piece of the temporal pie had been put on the writing plate, much as everything else.

Blah.

There is no spoon...but there might be a fork
Well haloween was really quiet, just chilled with the fam and watched this crazed show about some sex addict who murdered his entire family and was found not guilty. What a great system we have.

Actually haloween did allow something to pop into mind. I have been struggling with a couple scenes in the screenplay in terms of a large gathering around the main protagonist and the central antagonist. The gathering needs to happen on a momentum basis but I was trying to have the characters bring it about and it just wasn't working. But the celebration or seasonal event will work perfectly.

I have been to amped to see Matrix Revolutions and I have been doing my best to stay away from aintitcoolnews.com but I couldn't help myself. From what I have read I think my worst nightmares have come true.

See, the thing was with me and the first Matrix was I had never seen the trailer or a preview at all. I drove down to the theatre to just go catch a flick and I saw the Matrix poster then figured "why not".

I left there so blown away I went back again that night. There are so many elements I loved about that film, too many in fact, but I have to admit, Reloaded left a seriously bitter sweet taste in my mouth. It is a tough thing to promise the claims that SIlver told us. How the UCAP system was so perfet we couldn't tell the difference between the synthetic and the real, that going to the Matrix again would be like living in that dream world we were all opened to.

I think the UCAP worked, but it was the animation, specifically the physics of motion and weight that leaked into the realism. In the first Matrix, especially in the opening scenes with Carrie Ann we saw fantastical kungfu and jumping which we accepted because they still seemed to carry a sense of weight. In Reloaded, especially in the burly brawl, everyone seems to weigh five pounds. That gravity is lighter than it seems normally other than them 'bending' the rules. And this is what makes it seem unreal, not the situation but the elements which make it up, like a deck of cards if one falls everything tumbles with it.

The wire work and slo mo combo was simply flawless in the first movie (except for the final kick to agent smith which sends him flying back before Neo enters him). Reloaded was too synthetic and yes I will use what seems to be the standar cliche now and say that it was indeed like watching something off my playstation2.

One thing I wanted to see but didn't in Reloaded was Neo using his computer programming prowess. For him to one up the machines and their "creative" abilities which only seems to make the whole tasty wheat issue that much funnier.

For Neo to use his brain instead of his braun to give the resistance an advantage in the matrix while they were at a disadvantage in the real world just seems to work for me. Then again I could be crazy. "still using all of the muscles except the one that..."

Not to mention the entire "sure you have, every story you have heard about vampires or..." Now could you just imagine that, those programs fighting Neo instead of Agent smith, or Agent Smith enhancing them some how. How bout diving deeper into the biblical overtones in the entire movie and have a flock of black winged angels chasing after Neo through the clouds instead of more Smiths. Again just a thought.
(I think this was expressed as well by Mor on AICN) Or even worse, upgraded agents.

The door was just so wide open and I think the audience for the most part just felt as though they were still waiting by time it had finished.

I am in no way condemning Revolutions before I see it but I just have that feeling, you know.

Alien vs Predator
I saw the rerelease of Alien the other night and the pacing is one of the most obvious elements in that film. On the radio announcement they were hyping up the new sound and enhanced print but to be honest it didn't make too much of a difference in my eyes or my ears especially in some of the voice over when Rippley is talking to Ashe in the mess hall the sounbd cuts are so harsh you swear they lost half the sound every time Rippley stopped talking and they would cut.

But it is the pure presence the Alien has off screen which makes it so incredible, we tend to fear it more off screen than when we actually see it and Mr Scott does such an amazing job creating that fear on screen.

Anderson has his work cut out for him because to be honest I think if resident evil would have had alternate direction and a second draft of the script the movie could have been something. I just don't see PA's style fitting this genre, it is like asking hitchcock to direct something about marry, PA was given the ultimate chance to scare the crap outta us with RE and it flopped, not because of production design, not because of the script, not because of the talent or lack there of but simply because his directorial style does not create that type of atmosphere for the audience which is crucial when it comes to making the characters of Aliens and Pred a believable and frightening presence.

This is what I see: PA sitting there thinking "ok now we can open up the can with the predators, give them all of these sweet weapons and abilities to create the action. Then we have the humans, the empathy that they are in alot of trouble, we will make them the underdogs so the audience roots for them to survive through brains and cunning. Then we have the fear factor, the Aliens, make them bigger, faster, and darker, oh and the drool LOTS OF DROOL! We mix it all up into the Aliens becomming an epidemic where the preds and the humans almost have to team up to save themselves and the human race."

I pray for all that is good this does not happen...What I do pray for is this

Predators bite off more than they can chew. They come down to hunt, it is a young group of Preds on a first hunting trip and they get their ass's kicked, so now we are left to clean up the mess, we have to go further than the preds and solve this little problem. A group uses the pred technology to help them in the clean up and salvation of earth. Us vs. Aliens in the end, if the preds die by the second act we know we are in a boat load of trouble and have to come up with something quick to deal with this. Maybe we don't, maybe we have to fall back as a race and leave the door open for a sequel.

Just a thought

So I hit a major breakthrough with the script this morning. It is so funny, I am so productive in the morning, I am usually up by 6:45 am then drive into town, be sitting with coffee and a bagel by 8am and write until about 11:30 then off to work, I hate to see what would happen if I didn't have to go to work.

So the back story is done...almost. No, it is done...almost. AHHHH, I wish I could just settle, finally relax and simply be content with this creation but I fear that will never happen. Dialogue is such an easy thing to deal with but structure and character just consumes me. I am sure I will know when it is right...I hope.

The bright side is some of the cue cards will come down which is a good thing because I am running out of thumb tacks.

I just don't get this motivation, where it is comming from. I know I should be burning out by now, maybe I have and I am in denial, lol. I think I just have so much to go for now, more than when I started and that will probably keep going. Sometimes I think half of it is just to keep myself occupied so I don't think about my fiance being away. Maybe that is why God is keeping us apart, to keep me ontop of all of this.

All I need is a 36 hour day so I can do more previsual designs.

Ok back to it, if anything comes up I will update again tonight.

In The Deep, In The Dark.
I am still unsure as to why I am doing a blog, maybe it is for me, ahhh yes, a little self perscribed therapy riddled with typos and dreams.

For those of you reading I am a 24 year old guy from Vancouver Canada with hopes of one day taking this life consuming screenplay of mine to larger places than my home pc.

I am away from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design until hopefully this January where I am studying Integrated Media.

I am a movie addict, I wish there was a program for us out there, those who can't control the addiction to cinema. It is like being dehydrated, you can never get enough water...EVER.

Last night I hit up the re release of Alien, directed than the man himself Mr Scott. It still amazes me to this day how well they pulled the production design off in those days. I hope the skills of miniature artists are never left behind for the world of CG. Though there is fear in me.
I went in keeping the date in mind because on the radio they were hyping the new print and sound design to Reloaded levels, I don't know about the other four people in the theatre but I couldn't see much difference outside of the dim lit hallway shots of the Nostromos. The sound design still should have been cleaned up, I don't know maybe they just moved it up to Dolby Digital and slapped a big gold star onto it but some of the voice over, especially in a scene between Ash and Rip was brutal.

I am still take by the Alien to this day though, the elegant menace it is. Cameron did a better job in the fright and panic scenerio though I think the pace of the Aliens screenplay and editing really helped that out. Scott and Cameron in my opinion did an equally amazing job of putting it on screen.

Now, Alien vs Predator has got me worried. Here are two franchises that could not have started off any stronger only to be brought to a smouldering hault with a series of watered down sequels (Alien(s) excluded of course) So I think I can see the door swinging both ways here. Either it is going to save both franchises in the eyes of the fans and pocketbooks of the execs through opening up more history to both races as well as putting our future on the line, OR, it is going to be worse than we could possibly imagine and will finally sink both ships forever maybe even to the point of Dark Horse abandoning the comic series as well.

I love sitting there though knowing it was made on the year I was born, it amazes me infact. The next time I shoot another 16mm short I will keep all complaints to myself lol.

So I am up to 160 cue cards on my bedroom wall. I could do the structure organizing for the screenplay on my computer but for some reason this works so much better. Analogue. Words to live by.

I am pretty close to becomming happy with all of it, I am just going to have to say enough is enough by the end of November. The great thing that has been happening though is more ideas are comming through for the second and third in the series.

I really want to put the previsual team together but there is simply no point right now, I am just excited and eager which is a good thing but it gets me jumpy.

Then again I have been jumpy since day one of this project. Four years down.