Instead of actually writing anything for my screenplay like I promised last week, I once again did a ton more research. Originally, I wanted this episode’s story to focus on Lazlo, a friar, and two feuding soldiers who were unknowingly both under the care of the friar. Well, that meant I had to figure out what the political situation in Spain was when WW II started, which lead to me researching the Spanish Civil War, which led to me discovering the Red Terror. For those not in the know like myself a week ago, the Red Terror was when friars (among many others) were terrorized and murdered by many leftist groups during the Spanish Civil War. Well, why bother with four characters when three would work better? Anyways, Friar Lala Lobo was once an unsavory character who interacted with the soldier. But now the soldier has suffered an injury leaving him blind. Great, how do I tell the backstory? I’m not interested in having the backstory be there for backstory’s sake; rather, I want the backstory to be about half of an actual story that concludes in this episode. But I also need a way to tell that story. I’ve recently read the Pulp Fiction and Memento screenplays and I’ve been thinking about That Obscure Object of Desire. All of these films play with time for a reason. So how can I shape my story and structure so that each supports the other in a crucial way? I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

Other than that, I’ve just been reading screenplay and watching movies. Nothing much to report this week.

Stay Fresh,

Austin

Although I may have done an exorbitant amount of research on friars, I don’t have anything to show for it at the moment (except perhaps a very strange search history). Indeed, the great wonders of the itinerant lifestyle have taken ahold of me and threaten to dig their claws in and never release. If you forget the religious aspects of the friars, I think they lead a spectacular life. Traveling from place to place in order to help communities is enticing. But I like checking Twitter too much and don’t have the money to afford that much data usage. Alas, here I sit.

One of the problems I’m running into is keeping myself on a schedule without actually having a reason to. If I had a job then I would have to be on time or I’d get fired, but working at home means I can sleep for an extra hour and the only person who will be upset with me is future Austin who is way too tired for the amount of sleep he’s been getting anyways. Plus, my morning schedule gets longer and longer as I try to focus on my physical health instead of my work. I need to wake up earlier but after I read my daily screenplay I can hardly keep my eyes open. But I’m working on it. That being said, call me Tarzan because I’m gonna get into the swing of things this week.

As usual, I read and watched a fair amount of stuff this week. I hated the Die Hard screenplay even though I generally like the movie. And The Shawshank Redemption and Dead Poets Society were surprising because of how much was cut out. But my favorite screenplay was Breaking Bad’s “The Fly” episode. Christ, they’re basically writing for each other. There’s inside jokes and subtle nods and concessions as to what they believe can or can’t be filmed. There’s nothing prim or proper about it. But I doubt you get to make jokes about how the buzzing of a fly will sound on Dolby Surround unless you’re at the top of your game like these writers were. Movie-wise: I really enjoyed Barking Dogs Never Bite which had an amazing story and some really fantastic direction. Also, Hereditary was super tense and amazing for a debut film. I think the writing could have been stronger and some directing decisions felt weak at times, but overall I really enjoyed it and have been thinking about it nonstop for the past day.

Well, the goal this week is to make a bunch of jokes about friars and fried food so I hope all goes well and God doesn’t smite me. But I’ve already got some jokes and plot beats that have made me laugh which us usually a good sign for me. We’ll see how it goes.

Remember to cha cha real smooth,

Austin

 

Today’s Listening: Rock n Roll by Lou Reed

Since the last time we talked, I graduated college and moved home to read and write screenplays all day. Okay, like a floundering fish in the net of a pro bass master, I’ve been caught. I try to read and write all day but my eyes get very tired and not doing tough work can be very appealing to me. (Another fish in the net). Fine, maybe it’s not tough work but work is work after all. I am planning on moving to LA pretty soon so that I can be close to production jobs but in the meantime I think it’s a good idea to keep working while I can. And screenplays just don’t require an entire crew and cast to make.

My writing time has been spent on the second episode of The Maillard Reaction. I’ve only written the first five pages (which are action heavy so probably 6 minutes long if I directed) of the episode over the past week but hear me out. It required tons of research and even more staring out the window as the clouds lazily float by. The opening is completely separate from the rest of the series and it’s set in the French Pyrenees and concentrates on a sheepdog and her flock. I wanted to get the details right so I had to figure out exactly where in the Pyrenees this was set and which kind of Pyrenean sheepdog and which kind of sheep. Some Pyrenean sheep are used for wool and others for meat, which meant I had to then choose between different sheep used for the same purpose. I also found some other interesting tidbits.

Here is the majestic Tarasconnais sheep. I chose this breed mostly because they’re real cuties!

This is a Pyrenean sheepdog. There are various breeds of sheepdog but I needed a white dog which eliminated some breeds and once again, what a cutie pie. Her name is Aubin in the screenplay.

Finally, this bad boy shows up for some flavor and period piece-y goodness. The Pyrenean Ibex is now extinct which I’m sure they’re not happy about but it does help add some depth to the show for the .01% of people who know they’re long gone. Anyways, I’m plotting out the act structure for the rest of the episode and I’ve settled on a basic plot but I need to do a lot of research into Friars, Spain during WW II, and Spanish cuisine during that time. Whew!

Besides that, I’ve read some interesting screenplays and seen some good movies. Many professional screenwriters say you need to read other screenplays constantly to learn which is why I’m doing it. I feel like I’ve mostly learned about what I can get away with in terms of technique and prose. I refer back to some in order to see how they formatted certain descriptions and whatnot. G.I. Jane has been surprisingly helpful in that regard. I’ve watched 10 films since I’ve graduated and surprising to no one the best have been Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress and Ran which are just so so good. The duel in Hidden Fortress was perhaps one of the most tense scenes I’ve ever watched and it’s incredible because of how little set up there is for it. I also watched From Here to Eternity which was awful but I convinced the director of a short film I edited to rename it to “From Beer to Eternity” so I thought I had to watch the original. Not even Burt Lancaster can make me watch that again.

So here we find ourselves again. Me with a blinking line urging me to go on and you with the rest of your life ahead of you. I’ll be sure to keep you updated on all the wackiness in my life. Thanks for reading.

Keep in touch,

Austin

 

Listened to During Writing – Habit by Snail Mail

 

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I don’t have much to report but I do have some stills from the music video and maybe, like debt, they will inspire me to get some work done. I’ll show some stills that speak to me for some reason and try to get y’all interested in what I’m showing. Ok, let’s go.

Hear me out. I do like this frame but it works much better with motion and context and I can’t separate this frame from that context. The previous two shots are of her looking at her room for the last time and then her POV of the room. When we cut back we would expect to see her still looking, but she’s already gone. I always feel a little pull from her as if she’s running away from me personally and I’m stuck in the room.

My attachment to this still mainly has to do with it having once been a lackluster looking shot but color correction really boosted it for me. Looking at it now, we should have let the actress open the car door more so that there would have been more foreground in the shot. The tree to the right is the only thing adding depth to the shot. The trees and the hill in the background feel flat to me for some reason.

You may notice that the color has changed somewhat. The video has flashbacks which we needed to denote somehow. We boosted saturation along with some other things in order to make the difference more apparent and feedback was mostly positive on the coloring here. I really like this frame because it just feels so expressive to me in the context of the video. This scene has some jump cuts and our protagonist trips and then is picked up, but we then cut back to a close of her being picked up and she stumbles into the camera. It’s actually an elegant moment in an otherwise sloppy scene.

I think the eye is drawn to the protagonist here. The wall to the right is a little bright and I can feel my gaze drifting in that direction a little, but she captures my attention well and this shot is short. I think this shot shows some of the best acting in the video, but I guess you’d need more than a frame to judge that for yourself.

Finally, the two shots above are nice little motifs we have. You can definitely see the coloring we did because the second still is almost the same exact lighting. I like it nonetheless. Hopefully, I’ll get to share the full video soon.

See you around,

Austin

 

Listened to during writing : Fantasma by Cornelius

 

Oops, sorry that I’m late. I could make up some excuse about how I’ve been training my lion for our debut circus performance but I actually just forgot to make a post. So sorry to my adoring fans, but only the adoring ones.

There’s not much to report this week. Mainly, I’ve been focused on submitting my film to festivals and searching for jobs and apartments in LA. Apartments and festivals are expensive, you guys. I keep thinking about all the things I’ve purchased in the past and can’t help but think of how many more festivals I would be able to submit to if it weren’t for buying my friends snacks or getting that appetizer the one night. Alas, we live we learn. I’ll never eat food again to support my job addiction.

Peace out,

Austin

 

Listened to During Writing : Light Upon the Lake by Whitney

I was watching clips from Heat last night and it is so good. I remember the first time I watched the diner scene. You have to be in the right mood to watch a movie. It’s the job of the filmmakers to put you in that mood, but they can’t help if you come in tired and grouchy. I was definitely in the wrong mood for Heat (and in an even worse state of mind for The Mirror which I’m dying to rewatch). That being said, Heat is also incredibly awful at times. Casino and Heat are two movies that have no business being as long as they are. I could absolutely edit at least an hour out of Heat‘s runtime and it would be so much better (and with as much nuance in character. I see your objections a mile out. Don’t even try me). I also rewatched clips from The Godfather. It’s crazy how good a line “I believe in America” is. Like, crazy good. I’m certain I’m in the minority on this one but my favorite scene is in the hospital where Michael is trying to find his father. The lighting is gorgeous, the editing is spot on, and each shot conveys so much emotion. I’ve watched that sequence enough times that I can see Michael running up the stairs with the camera’s slight tilt as if it were right in front of me.

I’ve continued to work on the music video. I don’t have any stills for you just yet, but soon. We got feedback from the band and they seem pretty happy with it, although they suggested a few changes. Which was interesting because this is the first time I’ve had a “client” (not really a client but okay whatever don’t look behind the curtain please and thank you). And their advice was largely good because it felt more like collaboration than demands (apart from the stuff I disagreed with but that’s a part of this process). My editing partner in crime has been working on the coloring which was fun until we realized the coloring was off because the monitor wasn’t set right. Still, I’m happy with what we have right now.

My thesis is premiering at my college over the weekend. I hope everyone enjoys it or at least doesn’t throw any tomatoes at me. A more seasonal vegetable would be nice (Google reports that fennel and artichokes would pair nicely for a delightful spring salad).

That’s all for this week,

Austin

Welcome back to the rodeo. If you’re actually at a rodeo while you read this, then yee-haw. Giddy up, cow poke. I done rustled up some updates for y’all today. Let me return to my east coast slang now in which I talk a lot about how great our bagels and pizza are (really great). Anyways, I did some stuff recently.

The music video is coming along nicely. I shot enough footage to make a 10 minute video, but the song is about 4:45 so I had to trim it down. Which was very fun, surprisingly enough. Music video editing is a economic form of editing. I have 2x the amount of footage I need so I have a lot of options to draw upon. Of course, that doesn’t count all the takes we have. Because we had a ton of shots to get on a short schedule, we only did one take for most shots. But, every now and then, a second or third take snuck in. That being said, certain scenes stood out to me and others were absolutely necessary. The others shots were simply discarded, by my co-directed made her own cut and we compared her and mine. She made some interesting choices that I never would have thought of and probably vice-versa. The edit has a lot of jump cuts which perfectly fits the flashback structure of the video. Now that I’m working n my second edit, I’ve taken a page out of my partner’s book and started using discarded footage as a quick flashback to elude to some other moment in the characters’ lives.

The coloring of the video is another story. As faithful readers will remember (and I’m sure all of you do), I’m colorblind. This means that I’ve been torturing myself trying to create two distinct looks for the video: one for present day and one for flashbacks. Showing the first rough cut to my peers resulted in them telling me they noticed no difference, so yippee. But I think my partner will be able to do better work than I can and we’ll end with a really great product.

I also have my final film major exam these next two days. I’ve been studying a list of films and film terms for a couple months now and I hope I pass. It would be a real stinker if I failed and lost any chance of getting a degree and then went home down lots of cash with no potential and then fell into the world of crime and became a huge mob figure and then turned into a wealthy but unhappy monster. What a shame.

Thanks for reading,

Austin

This past week has been a whirlwind. I haven’t had a moment to myself until this week, so I thought I would share it with you. I spent most of my time working on the music video. My co-director and I mapped out the plot and she wrote the shooting script. From there, I made a shot list and we secured locations and actors and equipment. After that, we filmed for four days in three hour chunks. We had about one hundred shots on the shot list but we altered the list as inspiration found its way to us. The best is when you realize you can combine two shots into one with a little camera movement. We had a close-up of our heroine’s face and then a wide of her entering a car, but we realized that we could capture both things just by craning the camera up to look out a window. Here are some super cool BTS pics from our super rad shoot:

I felt good about the shoot. I’d been caught in the mindset that whatever came after my thesis would have to be better. I was paralyzed out of a fear of returning to my old, mediocre ways. But shooting this music video pushed me out of that. Although I wouldn’t say this is some great triumph, it is a step forward and that’s what I should be focusing on. Unlike my thesis, all the shots were on a gimbal. I prefer fluid movement with complex staging, but I knew we had too many shots and we could only afford to get one take for most shots. The weather in Ohio has sucked recently. The first day was beautiful and sunny, but then it rained and snowed on and off. That just means there’s a lot of color correction to be done (which is great because there’s nothing more wonderful than a colorblind man doing color correction. I still recall the time people had to inform me that my grass looked orange).

And I finally finished the first draft of the pilot for The Maillard Reaction. Woop woop! (I have just been informed by autocorrect that “Woop woop” isn’t a phrase but to hell with autocorrect!) I worked on it tirelessly (Lies; I was very tired) and wrote about 45 pages in a week. Which, I think, is pretty good. There’s a ton of action so I think the episode would actually run over an hour. We did a reading today in my class and it felt amazing to have people laugh exactly where I wanted them to and get emotional on cue. I think most of my colleagues responded to it well and I think there’s some tweaking I could do, but overall I’m very satisfied. Here’s some proof for ya:

That’s enough chatting for this week. I’m going to go through another draft of the pilot and start editing the music video. And soon I’ll be premiering my thesis at my college. There’s a lot to look forward to.

Goodbye,

Austin

 

 

There’s tons of work to be done, so I’m gonna make this quick and clean. I’m working on a music video this week. By which I mean I have 6 days from today to co – write, direct, and cast a five minute video. This will be the first thing I’ve shot since my thesis film and I’m not looking forward to it entirely. The band has an brand identity that opposes most of my aesthetic sensibilities, although I have no problems with the aesthetic itself. It’s just not true to myself is all. But that’s part of the fun. I am being forced to branch outside of my own sensibilities and produce a product I’m proud of. It reminds me of how writers say you have to love all of your characters, even the villains. The problem then is to make some hybrid of these two aesthetics while servicing the song. Should be fun.

Besides that, I’ve decided that there’s a chance that I might go to LA potentially. As everybody and anybody knows, there’s creativity and creative people there aplenty. I’m looking forward to meeting people who are serious about making films. I’m equally excited to eat nothing but cheap crackers for the next couple of years and live in a broom closet. Hopefully, the rent won’t be too bad.

I’m writing the pilot episode for The Maillard Reaction finally. I’m trying to hit the 60 page length for my hour long, but I think that all the action lines I’ve written are going to make it really long so I might have to cut a lot. The dramatic tension keeps developing , although I never feel like it’s very tense. I kinda want that though. I want the pilot to be a little loose, a bit like an Ozu film. But that doesn’t sell now does it. But Ozu films stick with you long after their done, unlike a lot of tense thrillers that end up falling flat. Which is not to say that there aren’t stakes or some form of tension, but I’ve never seen anyone on the edge of their seat watching Tokyo Story.

And that’s the truth, Ruth.

Austin

I enjoy video games in many different ways. Obviously, I play them. Although Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide is my favorite game, I’ve played through all of Kingdom Hearts 2 about 4x and I sink a ton of time into roguelikes (Steam alone says I have a total of 122 hours spread across 4 different roguelikes, 56 of those hours belonging to Rogue Legacy which I one-hundred percented, and there are still two roguelikes I haven’t even started). I also adore puzzle games, mostly for their variety. Roguelikes blend together a little bit, but puzzle games have a grand diversity that makes each one shine if polished correctly. My most played puzzle game on Steam is Mini Metro with 54 hours. Besides that, I watch more Overwatch and Monster Hunter streaming than is healthy for a growing boy. I’ve literally watch over a hundred hours but have no desire to play either of them. So what does all this matter?

A fun exercise I find myself doing more and more these days is distinguishing what makes each artistic medium different. Film’s eccentricities and unique aspects stick out to me, but video games steal a lot from them. Although video games’ cutscenes are where most of them pop up and are somewhat arguably not part of video games proper, I think films can learn from video games in turn. The main thing that sets video games apart from all other mediums is the game mechanic. Game mechanics are the ways players interact with the game world. In Super Mario Bros. players have the jump mechanic. This is the only time the audience is able to interact with the medium. They change the world that has been created for them. I think I like film more because I cannot change anything, I just have to sit back and accept it. I’m not trying to suggest that movies become interactive or choose your own adventure; rather, we should look to puzzle games for two different points of inspiration.

First, the exposition of the mechanic. Some video games are bad at this because pop-ups appear on screen telling the player which buttons to push and what the effect will be. But better games give the player space to explore the world as well as the mechanics. Being given this space to play allows me to feel more immersed in the world, but I understand that some games just cannot let the player go like this. Although I’ve never played a MoBA games before, I’m pretty sure there’s way too much happening mechanically to not provide instructions. But smaller games feel more intimate for this very reason. I think that films can treat exposition of style in the same way. It’s often said that filmmakers need to teach their audiences how to watch a movie. I think lazy filmmakers use the credit sequence to do this. They just slap some thematically appropriate music on top of a pretty background with some words flowing over it. Sure, the music slowly brings the audience into the tone and emotion of a movie, but usually not that movie in particular. Now look at Do The Right Thing. It’s inconceivable to imagine that title sequence over any other film and the audience is instantaneously introduced to the style. They are primed for the viewing experience they are about to receive and they got to jam out to Public Enemy at the same time. Stylistic exposition doesn’t have to come during the credits, but put something at the front of the film. Get Out, as amazing as the writing is, has a terrible opening in my opinion. I think we don’t learn how to watch the film and the commentary from the character is more annoying than it is enlightening. Almost the exact same opening works better in It Follows, a movie I enjoyed less but had better commitment to its directing and commits from the very start without faltering. What I want is for movies to bring us into the emotional and intellectual space of the film without making us aware of it so that we can immerse ourselves in the film.

Second, the expansion and exploration of that mechanic is equally as important. Making Mario jump is fun, but not forever. What does jumping allow Mario to do? Well, he can kill goombas and break blocks. In later games, Mario can string jumps together and explore new areas. In puzzle games, the central mechanic is usually augmented with side-mechanics or tools that the player gets over time. Essentially, the developers find ways to iterate on tasks by changing the way the player must view the game mechanic. In terms of film style, I think this means we cannot just use a high angle constantly to show someone is powerful. This would be like forcing a player to do the same puzzle over and over again but maybe just with a change of scenery. We must develop the language of a film over time. We must either shift when that language is used or slowly alter what the meaning is. As filmmakers, we inherit techniques from over a century of masters and it’s very easy to take what we are given and stop there. But audiences are smart and we need to be smarter. So we need to take what we are given and expand upon it. Deepening our understanding of a mechanic or changing how that mechanic works applies perfectly to how style in film should operate. If a visual motif is repeated often enough, it is no longer a motif because it becomes an obvious sign telling viewers what to think. We must constantly challenge people and ourselves.

I like video games and I love movies. I spend most of my free time between the two and I can’t help but to have these thoughts pop into my head when I’m taking a shower. I’m always excited to think of how I can make better films and so I think stealing from the things I love most is a good way to start.

It’s never really game over,

Austin