Skeptical Sunday: A Glorious Dawn

I’ve watched this many times now, and each time I’m overwhelmed with awe at the magnitude of the universe, and how we, through the power of our collective intelligence, might experience it in yet more incredible ways. This video has literally moved me to tears more than once. It sums up Carl Sagan’s passion for scientific knowledge and possibility, providing us with both a promise — “we will, one day, venture to the stars” — and a warning — “if we do not destroy ourselves.”

Without a single appeal to the supernatural or divine, a three-and-a-half minute rationalist meditation that, if you let it, will nonetheless give you a vibrant sense of the numinous.

Book Review: New Moon

With the movie just released this weekend, I thought I should finally post my thoughts on the Twilight sequel.

Now you might reasonably be asking yourself why I was reading it when I had so failed to enjoy Twilight in the first place. Well, as I had mentioned before, I actually found that I really enjoyed the film adaptation, and for better or worse, it’s my habit to read books before I see the film whenever possible. Beyond that…I don’t know. I guess I’m a masochist.

It’s a little touch-and-go at the beginning, but ultimately I have to admit that Meyer seems to have improved as a writer between volumes 1 and 2. There are still some genuinely cringe-worthy passages, but whereas the first book was comprised almost entirely of these passages, this one had stretches of prose that actually felt competent and, more importantly, confident. Then a clunker would drop and ruin the flow.

I’m not sure if this is better or not. At least with the first book you just kind of expected it. This one put just enough space between to get you to drop your guard before sucker-punching you. Mileage may vary.

In getting into specifics, I’ve realized I have a choice. I could easily snark my way through this book, but that hardly feels like it would be productive, or even cathartic. And, as I said, I think I have to give credit where due that this is, actually, an improvement over Twilight when all things are considered.

What I’m going to do with this review, instead, is pretend that I have been given this manuscript and asked to give my notes on it. So I’ll write as though I’m speaking directly to the author and suggesting ways to improve the book before it goes out to the public.

In reality, of course, nobody did ask for my notes. They’re irrelevant by three years and several hundred million dollars. But it’s instructive for me, and my writing, to identify why these books fail to transcend the pre-pubescent and post-menopausal demographics that make up the core readership. To identify why these books — books based on a concept that, hypothetically at least, could yield classics of the fantasy genre — will not, ultimately, find themselves in the company of Lord of the Rings, Narnia, or Harry Potter.

So, here we go. My notes on The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

Making of: Spy Games (Production)

Welcome back you loyal checkers-of-my-blog you. The SPY GAMES series was delayed by a laptop theft combined with my gaining full-time employment, so not being able to write on the go and not having the energy to write by the time I’ve fought traffic home. (Excuses, excuses.) But my shiny replacement laptop has arrived and I’m ready to kick this pig.^[1]

When last we left the process, the script was written and the storyboards had been drawn by me and fixed by Brian. We finished this up at about 5 AM, with a call-time at the location of 7AM. So with nothing to do but kill an hour, we snuck in about 45 minutes of sleep.

Before the weekend began, we had determined that we were going to do this project on the RED. Why buy the camera if we’re not going to use it? We knew that the workflow was a little janky (which I’ll address more in the post-production post) but we felt it was worth trying. After all, if we couldn’t finish, it wouldn’t be a huge deal. And if we could, it would be one of the best-looking entries in the competition.

At the same time, we didn’t want to spend money on extra equipment just for a 48-hour film, so we didn’t rent a mattebox or ND filters. This meant that the exterior shooting (which, as of the script stage, was meant to be “daytime”) needed to be shot in the very small window between dawn and sunrise — before dawn, it would be too dark to shoot; after the sun broke the horizon, even with the RED’s significant dynamic range the image would become unpleasantly contrasty and harsh. So we had an early day.

Skeptical Sunday: A Universe From Nothing

A common claim made by theists of all stripes is that everything can’t have come from nothing, therefore God made it. In its purest form this is called the Cosmological Argument for God. It goes something like this:

-Everything has a cause.
-Nothing can cause itself.
-The causal chain cannot go back forever.
-Therefore there is a First Cause that is itself uncaused and started the causal chain.

The Cosmological Argument has some serious problems, namely that its conclusion directly contradicts its premise. (Everything has a cause >< There is something that does not have a cause.) It’s essentially a case of special pleading. “Everything has to follow the rules except this one thing which doesn’t and that’s God.”

Some apologists have tried to get around this by making the alternate version known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes like this:

-Whatever begins to exist had a cause.
-The Universe began to exist.
-Therefore the Universe had a cause.

They’ll argue these premises at great length (and when we get to Chapter 5 of CFAC we’ll find William Lane Craig doing exactly that), but ultimately the argument still boils down to a case of special pleading. It asserts two sets of items: things that have a beginning, and things that do not have a beginning. The set “things that do not have a beginning” holds exactly one item: God. So despite the rhetorical hand-waving that they can fill pages/hours going over, the Kalam argument is “Everything but God began to exist,” i.e. “Everything has to follow the rules except this one thing that doesn’t.” Special pleading.

Still, the argument seems potent. It’s absurd to think that something could have come from nothing, right?

…Right?

This video comes from a series of science lectures presented as part of the Atheist Alliance International convention that took place in Burbank, CA a couple of weeks ago (I wish I could have gone, but I couldn’t afford the registration this year. Next year I hope to attend this and The Amazing Meeting). Lawrence Krauss argues that, based on what we know about the universe and the laws of physics, the universe not only could have begun from nothing, but that if there had ever been “nothing,” it would have inevitably had to become “something.”

It’s a pretty dense lecture and it’s a full hour of info, I recommend it for background listening while working on other computer-based tasks.

Making of: Spy Games (Pre-Production)

Last summer, we participated in the 48 Hour Film Project. The film missed the competition deadline, for reasons I’ll discuss when we talk about production, but I was personally so happy with the way project had come together that I wanted to finish it as a short in its own right.

But before we get into that, here’s the final short as uploaded to YouTube (this is not the version that was entered into the actual 48 Hour Film Project):

Short Film: Ghost Story

Today, the first of two new short films that are finally finished and released upon the world. Blog content FTW!

Earlier in the spring, I was asked to be a panelist on the “Comic Con Film School,” a workshop discussion that takes place in the mornings of the Con. The reason was that this year the coordinator of the panel wanted to do a special focus on “visual effects on a shoestring.”

Instead of doing a couple of isolated effects tests, we decided to make a short film that we could use to showcase the various points we planned to make about the production and post-production process. Sean, the coordinator, wrote the script for me to direct.

Before I go on, the film:

(Also a disclaimer: Comic Con does not endorse the contents of this film and was not involved in its production.)

CS Open, Round 1: Scores and Comments

So we’ve gotten scores and feedback for our scenes. I can’t find anything in the rules that says I’m not allowed to share, so…

Undying Devotion

Structure Score: 21
Dialogue Score: 21
Style Score: 20
Originality Score: 22
Total Score: 84

Judge’s Comments: Imaginative scene that never really comes together for the reader.  The shift from ’spirit world’ to ‘human world’ is a bit disorienting early on and the dialogue seems a little heavy-handed and talky.  Lots of action makes for an exciting climax but overall, we’re fairly confused as to what exactly happens and who the characters all are.  Lots of cool stuff here – it just feels like it needs to be reined in a bit.  Good luck.

Hm. Well, I can agree with the reader that the dialogue is “heavy-handed and talky.” I wasn’t thrilled with it either — unfortunately, my feeling was that it was necessary to help the reader understand what the hell was going on (which it still, apparently, failed to do).

I don’t really agree with the rest of the note, as I think what’s happening and who the characters are is all pretty well laid-out in the talky-ass dialogue. Either way, you’d think we’d have gotten more points on style even if s/he found the substance questionable.

Solid State got a better response, but still rather less than I would have hoped:

Structure Score: 21
Dialogue Score: 22
Style Score: 21
Originality Score: 24
Total Score: 88

Judge’s Comments: Very cute, original scene with a never-before-seen setting. The idea that an iPhone could contain a little ‘App City’ and have characters who are all applications and such is truly unique. The dialogue is cute with references to our current pop culture, but a clear story never really takes off. The deception thing never really comes out and the stakes of possibly being deleted in the end feel a little forced and convenient. The final note is exciting but overall, we crave something a little more developed. Good writing and good luck.

I don’t want to sound like sour grapes here, but I’m not sure this reader knows what s/he is talking about. The idea is admittedly less than “truly unique” — as I pointed out last time, it’s basically ReBoot and/or Tron. I really don’t see how we could have made the “deception thing” clearer without becoming “heavy-handed and talky.” I think it’s pretty clear: Shazam has been impersonating the Genius and Pandora has called him out. Even if you don’t understand what those things are, it’s A pretending to be B and confronted by C.

Never comes out? That’s the only thing that happens here.

The reader does make the point that several commenters made, and that I myself pointed out regarding the scene, which is that the deletion feels like it just swoops in at the end rather than being a driving force. The suggestion made to have this conversation take place while running through App City to escape a wave of destruction might have done better — then again, it might have been judged “disorienting.”

Apparently the highest score received by any entry is 97. I would be very interested in reading that scene, or another scene scoring in the mid-to-high 90s, to see what kind of work gets such high marks, because it seems difficult to satisfy these fellows.

Still, Solid State got a decent score, primarily in originality. If either one goes through, it’ll be that one.

If neither one goes through…well, I think from now on we’ll stick to competitions that judge an entire script instead of isolated proto-scenes.

CS Open, Round 1: Solid State

Today’s scene is the one that Anthony conceived. One more time, here’s the premise we’re trying to nail:

Your PROTAGONIST is in a jam. He (or she) had been relying on deception in order to further his objective, but his ENEMY has figured out the ruse. Write the scene in which your protagonist’s LOVE INTEREST confronts him with this information acquired from the enemy – while staging it in a tricky or dangerous situation.

And before I say anything about it, here’s the scene as we submitted it to the competition:

CS Open Entry: Solid State

CS Open, Round 1: Undying Devotion

Continuing off yesterday’s introduction of the CS Open competition, I’m going to start out with the scene for which I wrote the first draft.

Here’s the premise again:

Your PROTAGONIST is in a jam. He (or she) had been relying on deception in order to further his objective, but his ENEMY has figured out the ruse. Write the scene in which your protagonist’s LOVE INTEREST confronts him with this information acquired from the enemy – while staging it in a tricky or dangerous situation.

This scene actually comes from a movie idea I had a few years ago, in which a man moves into a haunted house and falls in love with one of the ghosts. I set that project aside when I began seeing advertisements for Just Like Heaven, although it turns out JLH is more similar to Ghost Dad than it is to my concept.

Before I explain the overall story of the project I working-titled “Undying Devotion,” I’m going to post the scene as submitted to the competition.

As a formatting note, we were told in the contest guidelines to treat the appearance of each character in the scene as we would their first appearance in the script. So even though we would have already met all of these characters previously in the hypothetical full script, they get the CAPITAL LETTER NAMES when they’re introduced here.

CS Open Entry: Undying Devotion

Screenwriting Expo’s CS Open, Round 1

As some readers have noted, it’s been a while since I actually wrote something movie-industry related, other than the 100 Year of VFX video a few weeks back. You know the drill — busy, working, blah-de-blah. But I have been writing a lot in the meantime, just not stuff here.

Anthony and I have been churning out screenplays and treatments, which unfortunately I can’t share here because we’re hoping to get them sold. So there hasn’t been much to report or post about in terms of filmmaking content…

UNTIL NOW!

I’ve finally got some stuff completed such that it’s ready to show and talk about. I’ve got a few actual shorts coming in the next week or so, but for now I want to talk about some recent writing.