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.