Culture: Exhibit E: Pumpkin Patch!

(This is me in the corn maze, surrounded by culture spewing from the Earth)

As the leaves began to turn their aging orange and fall from the trees like cherubs seeking naptime, I made my journey to the annual pumpkin patch. This is no ordinary pumpkin patch, however. This a pumpkin patch with blue grass bands, home made cider and artisan displays, and even a pirate ship. Venturing to this family friendly location takes me away from the hustle and bustle of city life in Shepherdstown. It is a place to meditate on folk music and heritage, a place to awkwardly run into people you haven’t spoken to in years, people you’ve secretly avoided while judging their silly meanderings on Facebook. It is a place to pause. (Below: my girlfriend, sneaking up on a lady pumpkin)

The importance of the pumpkin patch as a cultural relic stems from it’s ability to take us back to our “grass roots” as one could say. It reminds us that we indeed do live in the country and that life isn’t wholly about cranking out papers filled with half-understood ideas and just getting through to the next week. It’s a place that allows us to get lost in a maze other than our dumb, confusing minds; letting us soak in the breeze that blows us onward.

Culture: Exhibit D: Drag Queens!

(For evidence, see the footage Konrad has for his capstone, which I help majorly in shooting. Also, my face was on his poster board, which stated I helped him greatly. Also, I'm an honest young man just trying to graduate.)

Straight Up Drag is a documentary I’m co-producing with Konrad about the culture behind the art of drag queens. To help develop a trailer and sizzle reel for the documentary, Konrad, Matt Richards, and I went out to a drag show just down the road in Boonesboro (weird, right?) and filmed, with unprecedented access, the entirety of the show. This means from dolling up to stripping down, we filmed what the entrance of the stars to the finale of their performances.

Just by filming this event I learned quite a bit about the processes behind the transformation into queenhood. For one, breasts don’t just poof out of no where. There’s a shading process between the man-pecks that’s a vital part of making the breasts look realistic enough. Also, the shading must match well with your skin tone. You can’t just slap magenta on and think you’re boobzilla. Creating the drag visage is very much about knowing what color works best with your skin and where to shade in the most important areas of the body.

I hope that next year we’ll really start pursuing this idea more and have a working product to shop around to festivals.

Culture: Exhibit C: Muppets!

I never watched The Muppet Show when I was a kid. I even hated Sesame Street with a burning passion, which is something I’ve never been able to figure out why exactly. But boy do I love Muppet movies. My favorite Christmas movie is A Muppet Christmas Carol. I watch it every year. So when I saw that a new Muppet movie was poised for release and potential greatness, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

What I love about this film is that it is lays everything on the table. It doesn’t try to just rekindle that fire of old, trying to turn a cheek to the troubles the franchise has found over the last twenty years. It shows the audience that times have changed, yet people still want Muppets if Muppets can be done right. What I also loved was the fact that the writers of the film didn’t try to make the movie hip or create a “modern Muppets”. They distinctly played off of the aged franchise, projecting charm onto the theme of relics rather than garbage. This was the most respectable part of the film, but at the same time it just didn’t feel quite like a Muppet movie. Sections screamed the dry Muppet wit, but other segments screamed a little too loud and obnoxiously for me to care. In the end it gives me hope for another film, but they can’t go down the charming relic path again. This time they’ve got to be obviously fresh and not wholly rely on the hearts of fans of the past.

Week Nine: Research

With all of this talk of 'series bible', 'character bios', and 'audience analyses', you must be wondering "Well how did you figure out how you need to do all this?" Have no fear my two blog readers, this entry is all about research.

Blip.tv is a great starting point for researching web series viewer trends. It's a site that hosts tons of original series and distributes them across the web, tracking who watches what at what time and where for how long. One of the most important bits of data I found from them was what time of day people typically watch shows on the web, which is between 9pm and 11pm weekdays. That, in addition to the others bits of data they offer, helps tremendously when shows are in pre-production, trying to determine the target audience and marketing strategies.

I'm also conducting a market analysis, studying three successful web series: H+, The Guild, and Aidan 5. I'm studying these series to develop an idea of why these shows have found such success and gathered an audience from thin air. I'm studying their budgets, their marketing and social media strategies, how many writers are typically writing for the show, where they distribute their shows, etc. Basically I'm analyzing the ins and outs of these three shows, gutting them to discover the magic they use to create great shows.

Culture: Exhibit B

Many have seen Burlesque, few have lived to tell the tale. Recently, I was given the opportunity to experience the unadulterated wonder of 99% male and female nudity firsthand at the Shepherdstown Opera House. The format for the show developed over the course of nearly a dozen short comedy sketches ranging from dancing in lobster costumes, stripping out of treasure chests (thus wearing only pasties), and flashlight dance numbers in the dark.

The beauty of this show lies in the performances by artists as they dance and lip sing to song by other musicians. Never are they hooked up to mics, readily belting out notes. Rather, the performing artists are bound to their musical selections, choreographing intense dancing sequences involving swinging through the air while hanging on curtains, stripping down to man-thongs, and flipping around the stage. The acts are purely physical, purely aesthetic in design. Audio is collaborative, rather than defining. It is a show about stripping us down to our aesthetic basics, with only a glitter man-thong in between us and pure nature.

Week Eight: I Think?

The White Rabbit Poster is finished and it looks outstanding. Sarah Loy, an incredibly gifted artist, just dotted the finishing touches onto it last week. It's magical because she can understand the mess of ideas that spill from my head and organize that chaos onto a canvas in ways far beyond what I originally intended. I'm truly excited to finalize the typography for the poster and show this puppy to the masses.

Character bios, location info, time travel explanations, and basically everything that has to do with the immediate descriptions of the White Rabbit universe is just about finished. I'm excited to open discussion on the science behind the series. I've tried to make the time travel, immortality, and every other seemingly 'magical' ability within this story as scientifically plausible as possible. Hopefully once these ideas are brought to the table, people can see how these real life theories can be morphed into the fantastical.

Other than that this week is essentially just about wrapping everything up. It's the beginning of the end now and the week after this is centered around making all these packages look pretty for the world to see.

Movie Game

Ever watch a horror movie and wish you could just steer the stupid main character out of harms way, instead of looking into a dark closet and being chopped in half? Well I hope to make that dream a reality with my game design project.

The basis for the game is to shoot a short film with a fully developed story, cast of characters, effects, etc. but also branch the story off in different directions based on the decisions of the main character; decisions that the audience must make throughout the film. Let's develop an example scene real quick to get a better idea of the concept. We'll continue our horror film from above.

Jen gets a call while watching TV. The person on the other end says that they're coming to kill her. She gets weirded out, ends the call. Then the lights go out. She's in total darkness. The audience has two choices now: Call 911 or sit in fear. They choose 911. She dials. Operator's voice is heard. Then: silence. Whoops her phone's battery died. Two choices: get up and grab a flashlight or grab a weapon of some kind. She goes for a weapon. After walking a few feet she hears tapping on a nearby window. Two choices: investigate or get a weapon. She continues for the weapon. It's dark though. She trips over a wooden chair and falls to the ground. Her breathing intensifies. The taps become louder, turning into pounding. Two choices: break a leg off the chair as a weapon or continue to find another weapon. She breaks the leg off after a few attempts. Suddenly the lights turn on. Nothing out of the ordinary is seen but a broken chair. What happens next? The audience will decide.

That's the basis. Nothing extraordinarily difficult, just programming the DVD to skip around to chapters depending upon what's clicked during a choice. There's a company, Will Interactive, out in DC that I met over the summer that does this kind of video work for the military, NFL, etc. so they're my starting point in developing the concept more. There's also a group on YouTube that utilizes the same concept, just linking to a new video after a choice rather than playing on disc. That route definitely allows for a larger audience, but it's clumsy having to click on new pages all the time. DVD seems like a good route when in a classroom setting. Here's a link to the beginning of a video from the YouTube group: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDn0ow8EzcU&feature=related

Week Seven: The Light at the End

Today I realized my college career is nearly over. Some feel fear with this realization, some mourn for the days of naivety and crushing beer cans over your head while smoking seven joints and sky-diving with Thai hookers. I, however, was overridden with a sense of freedom and joy. Soon I can do anything I want. I can have the time to let my imagination flow, to accept jobs filled with absurdity and adventure, and follow my dream of producing the dozens of stories swirling within my head and doing whatever the hell else I like. For me, school has turned into a prison over the years and I'll soon be released from it's obligatory busy work, absurd laws, and most importantly egotistical, over emotional young adults. Holy shit. I can move on.

Anyway, what did I do this week?

Well, I green lit draft #3 of the poster art, which leaves us with the final draft being finished in two weeks. I'm really excited to reveal that soon.

I'm still writing the pilot, but also started thinking about the market analysis for the show I'd like to create. Web series are just starting out, but they're growing rapidly. With the market analysis, I want to analyze two popular shows, how they made it work, and one show that just couldn't cut it, analyzing its faults and making sure I don't do the same. Along with that I'll find studies on online audience statistics similar to Nielsen ratings for television. Basically real boring analytic stuff but it'll definitely get the ball rolling on marketing the series in the near future.

Week Six: Better Late Than Never

What did I do that week? Well, I green lit draft #2 of the main poster art for White Rabbit and developed more of the pilot.

The poster art is coming along swimmingly. It's a beautiful thing being able to ramble about an idea, the person get it, and see it come to life within days. When I find talented people who can read the subtitles under my awesomely unorganized outbursts of thought, the clouds part and cherubs sing. The artist ran into a problem defining the expression on the face of the focal person in the image, along with some issues in developing a rabbit's shadow emanating from this person, but these were quick fixes and we were back on the road in no time. The poster should be done by the end of the month.

Writing is tough. Lots of people don't really know what good writing takes. They have good cameras, are awesome at editing, can make the moon explode with just a few plug-ins and tweaks, but when it comes to writing well lots of people become stuck. When I say writing I don't just mean dialogue. I mean story arc, character development, pacing, atmosphere, not making your cookie-cutting of Campbell's "Hero's Journey" so damn apparent, and everything in-between. So many people just say "well, everything looks great, so that's all I need." They'll just start shooting, maybe develop a real script and even say they're good writers, but they're not. Honestly, I'm not bashing people, I'm just stating that story is the most important component to any form of entertainment, and so many "filmmakers" just compromise it for gloss, thinking they have it already. It takes SO much patience, practice, observation and analyzing, and most importantly failure to even begin grasping what good writing is and how to write well yourself. This is what I'm struggling with right now. I need to take my writing to the next level. It's a hell of a struggle and it shouldn't be anything less. If I'm not questioning every decision I make and figuring out how to make this series an amazing experience, rather than an online attraction, then I should quit. If story isn't the central focus from idea to upload, then I'm just making another video. I'm over making videos and little projects for school and friends. Other people who have been doing that for years should be as well. It's just a simple matter of progression. I'm a grown-ass man. It's time to do grown-ass work.

Culture: Exhibit A

A couple weekends ago I had the great opportunity to support one of my films at a festival deep in West Virginia, aka Motherland. This was my first time representing a film outside of the biosphere of Shepherdstown/DC. It was a great feeling to finally have my films burst outside of that bubble. Let me say however, that this place is hidden from the world. A little too well hidden.

It's been years since I road tripped through the Motherland, so it was a blast to see green mountains for a change, rather than blue humps in the distance. The sun was rising behind me for the last half of the drive, which made the fact that I had been already driving for an hour a little more enduring. You see, I needed to location scout for my web series White Rabbit and there just happened to be an abandoned insane asylum 45 minutes from the festival, along with an abandoned penitentiary a couple hours above that, so checking those locations off my scouting list made this weekend all the more important. And ten hours of exhausting scouting later, it was time to head to the fest and begin networking, which really was just shambling and groaning a bit while losing consciousness. After checking into my hotel and resisting sleep, I got myself to the fest, however I at this point resembled Bilbo in that "shit-your-pants" scene in Fellowship when he lashes out at Frodo like a crazed raccoon.

The fest was an overall success. The town reminded me of Silent Hill (and that town in Troll 2), there were tons of children running around the streets singing (they claimed it was for a fall festival, but I didn't trust it), and the attendance for the film fest was surprisingly low, but that was all right. I got to network a bit with fellow WV filmmakers, watch some alright films, and just relax for a weekend away from the lighting pace of Shepherdstown, WV.

On a serious note though, I learned about the reality of how fast WV is sinking into a pit of poverty and depression. That's not a blasting remark aimed at making fun of the state. Even though I was born and raised on the tip of the Eastern Panhandle, West Virginia is still my home state, so it was sad to see how ruined much of it is. Driving around I'd see hundreds of homes just shitty and rundown. Going to Wheeling I was told stories of the city's rapid decline and industrial shutdown- just over the last five years. Walking through the two abandoned locations I scouted I was told ghost stories from room to room, but the same tales were told, in a sense, as I was driven from town to town, city to city. I could feel the state dissolving as I saw more and more. What's worse is that this dissolve is a secret for lot's of people. We'll gripe upon gripe about mountain top removal, but what about the crumbling infrastructure of our mightiest cities? What about the villages shackled deep within the mountains abandoned from civilization? It was an interesting trip to say the least.

Week Five: Slow Train Comin'

More thinking this week in-lieu of school beating out my soul one day at a time. In terms of Capstone I picked up a science fair poster board, stared at it a bit, then set it somewhere to be picked up again in three weeks. As for my poster board blue print I came up with the idea of not slapping a white standard page detailing the characters or the universe in 200 words. I'm actually going to just choose quotes that describe things well enough and stylize them, cut em' out, or something and slap those on the board accompanying concept art. This way people can look at the board, get the general gist, get excited once getting said gist, and look deeper into the script, series bible, market analysis that will be sitting patiently at the foot of the poster board project.

I'm meeting with my concept artist tomorrow, which will be sick. We'll be finalizing the second draft of the main concept art, hopefully commencing with the third and final draft and then within two weeks print that bad-boy and slap it onto the board in triumph.

Things overall are coming together slowly, but wonderfully. School takes a lot of time out of my day when I need to write. It's tough having only a half hour to write in between three classes each day, work, homework, and life, but it'll work out and be awesome, there's no alternative.

Scouted locations a week ago for fifteen hours. The wonderful WV Film Office drove me around to a few potential locations for the bigger scenes in the series. The owners were great, the locations were creepy and near perfect, and I'll have a tough time choosing between them, which is great to say.

In related news my production company is developing well. We're a great team working well together under a common goal of producing and distributing awesome films and series in ways other companies haven't done well yet. With our vision clearly focused now, I hope this company will soon lend new perspective to how we all view and experience films, series, and overall entertainment in a continually growing, unifying world. Only time will tell, but with the two new series fast approaching we're already off to a great start with so much potential for the future. Couldn't ask for anything more.

Week Four: Fan Base, Shmoozzing, Prioritizing

I'm starting off this week on a good note. First of all, I'm downsizing (yet again) pre-production on White Rabbit down to the bare necessities of writing and story. Much of pre-production is going to be housed in the Series Bible I'm creating. What's a Series Bible you ask? Well it's a nifty 50ish page document featuring everything major and somewhat minor about a television series someone wants to sell. I researched a bit of these and found that the Battlestar Galactica series bible is the best suited format for the sci-fi series I'm developing, so I'm taking its format and injecting my content.

Downsizing also means that I'm cutting out the Teaser Video I have been putting together for the past month. I was real excited about it, but after a week of deliberation I determined that I don't have a fan base established. At all. I have no background in web series and no major work under my belt to warrant someone to fork over any sponsorship money for a major giant series. Therefore! I'm going to create a new, very small web series by the end of the year. This will push back plans I've lain for White Rabbit, pushing back potential production of the pilot to May, but the bad far out weighs the good in that producing a smaller web series (sci-fi, mind you) I'll be able to build a fan base, recognition within the web community, make tons of inevitable mistakes on a lower profile production, and once I'm ready to talk to investors about White Rabbit I can hopefully show them a bunch of success statistics and figures from the previous or on-going smaller web series.

In all, down-sizing can be good. It'll help lighten the load for school, while allowing me to work on this smaller project that should help open some doors in the future. If nothing else it gives me and my friends just another reason to hang out, drink beers, and write bad-arse sci-fi stuff.

I Built Straw Towers

There was meaningful play in our straw tower exercise. The goal was clear: build a tall tower that is taller than the other teams' tall towers. We needed to work together, but had to adhere to the rules, which was only build your towers with straws and tape and joy. So already we have contest and cooperation to dominate enemies. The game was neat because we could look at the other players in the room and see what they were doing. Early on this would help us change our tower building tactics, helping us improve and build better groundwork. After we built the ground work it was up to us to build a better tower. This simple progression of group based ideas after laying the groundwork meant that our actions within the core of the game had meaning and could build upon the initial basis of the game, which was to build the best tower ever.

The discernability resulted from the us understanding what we were doing right near the end of the game and looking at other teams to determine what they were doing right or wrong and we would adapt our tactics accordingly. Most of the feedback throughout the game resulted from our observations of other teams to figure out what works and what doesn't. This helped us achieve our goal.

In conclusion, straw game was a game because players worked as a team to achieve a goal while competing against other teams working to achieve the same goal. The rules were simple and the feedback was based around our observations and less from the designer. It was fun.

Week Three: When to Fold

It's important to know what's important. My problem going into this project was that I gave myself an intensely unrealistic timetable. I realized that I was focused on selling the idea of a web series, and not developing it. I wasn't writing it and trying my darndest to make it the best it could possibly be. So I took a step back, thought about what was most important, and put the rest on the back-burner.

Listen: story is crucial. If White Rabbit isn't an amazing story, then I'm already lost. I might as well quit now, because no one wants to watch a great idea. They want a great story with great characters. Now what does it take to make these great stories and characters? That's the magic I hope to find over these next few months. I'm thinking that after I write the pilot episode, with all of it's many drafts and changes soon to come, I'll have a deep understanding of my characters and how I want them to develop. Of course they'll change every episode, but I won't have to mold an entirely new character by that point. I'll already have the groundwork.

Teaser video! Now here's where I'm extra excited. To accompany all my tons of pre-production material, I'll be shooting a teaser video for the series. It'll be the first five minutes of the pilot and be totally badass. Right now production looks to be set for late October. I hired on a DP last week and should be finished casting by the end of this week. All that's left is a sound guy and a grip crew. Both of which I have people in mind for. SO I'm slating that video for a late November release. Maybe a little... Rabbit for Thanksgiving? Oh?

Week Two: How to Sh*t Your Pants. Effectively.

This week I started loading my cannon. In three weeks the website for the series is going to launch along with social media, a new production company site, and everything in between. I also still do freelance work and go to school. In response to all of this mounting up, I decided that shitting my pants isn't such a deplorable act. It's actually quite nice.

Right now everything is running on schedule. First batch of concept art will be done in a week. I'm meeting with my web designers throughout the week, making and signing boring contracts, and am still finding and scheduling networking opportunities all around. Casting began this weekend for the teaser video and I'm about to sign on a DP for the shoot too. All I need now is a thirty year old man and two ten year old boys. And a line producer, lighting/electric crew, a sound guy who magically has lots of recording equipment, and a house out in the middle of a field. All with time, all with time.

The real progress, however, came when I decided not to kill of one of the main characters in the pilot within three minutes of meeting him. This came to me when I realized the simple truth that killing is easy, and also kind of cheating. This character also became the third type of person who is "unstuck" from time (as Vonnegut would say). He can stand on a spot and see anything that has happened around that spot by warping the present around him into the past. He's also learning how to warp in the future too, but it's a bit more difficult. It's pretty neat, but now this adds one more person I need as crew: a special effects wizard. All with time, all with time.

Week One: Developing a Monster

I can't write simple things anymore. It's a curse. A really expensive curse. All I wanted was for a guy who time-traveled to go and save his wife from death. A death that he causes and needs to fix. All I wanted was a journey of redemption, or something simple like that. Something that lasted maybe ten or twenty minutes then was over and everyone felt satisfied. I began writing it out during a flight in late May. One month later I've outlined a four season television series comprising seven episodes a season with each episode lasting 40 minutes. What the hell is wrong with me?

A simple short film about a dude trying to save his wife turned into a television series about a dude trying to save his wife in the past while trying to save his son in the future while trying to make his dead wife fall in love with him while still trying to save her from being a dead wife in the first place. It questions fate and time and if one can change an event even when they've already been living in its aftermath. One guy trying to do stuff has turned into three generations of a family all trying to change the fates of one another and essentially trying to erase the sins of the father, over and over again for nearly forty years. I also threw in people who are immortal, which I threw in after an unwritten vampire film I started developing suddenly became relevant when I decided immortal people could walk around in this time-altering universe.

Never before has a story vomited out of my brain faster than I could react. After a solid month of constant writing, thinking, and writing again, I decided that this has to become reality. So now I'm on a mission to create web series. God help us all.

Rethinking Interaction

Some would call me a nerd. Others, a savant. Since the ripe age of five I have been playing video games. The first time buttons acted as extensions of my mind was when I picked up an X-Men game for the Sega Genesis. Since then, like millions of other people, I have played hundreds of games, some good, most bad. When I was five, video games were just ending their Freshman year in the entertainment market. Now, they've graduated with top-honors, filling our culture with twirling man-foxes, blue rodents who run fast, and some of the best stories that I dare say have been written in the past two decades. With this evolution, we must begin thinking about where this industry will go next, and what can we do as players to help designers create a future fresh with ideas.

I believe this question of direction begins with the simple principle behind video games and games in general: invention. Today, the most popular video games rely on our fingers to press switches that transmit messages to a virtual world reactive of our mind's interpretation of it. What the world throws at us we must react to throw back in a manner we deem fit to progress within it, thus inventing new avenues to walk down within each world. If we fail to react in the way that the world would like us to, we must try and try again, rewinding time and learning that failure is simply not an option. This is the very basic concept behind most popular video games of today and, more importantly, was the blue print for which video games were designed. With knowing this I pose a new question. What's next?

In taking this course I hope to build upon my knowledge of game design and apply it to a concept I've been curious about: interactive video. This essentially brings together the cinematic qualities of live-action film and the choices one must make throughout the course of a video game. What I wonder is how can this marriage of design principles be crafted flawlessly so that the player doesn't just choose path A or B and watch an actor perform the result of said choice. How can the player feel that the character on screen is an extension of themselves and that they as a player can shape the world around this character and not simply watch this person existing only as a machine responding accordingly to prompts? Herein lies the journey I wish to take throughout the course.