So you say you have too much free time? You say it’s a problem? I say you are losing a battle with creativity!
Category Archives: film
Characters
When I think about what makes a story good, it’s almost always the characters and their interactions, their antics, and their disputes.
The original Star Wars had a great dynamic between brash Luke, brave Leia, wild Han, and C3PO the nay-sayer. Star Trek had brash Kirk, wise Spock, cantankerous Bones, and “She can’t give us anymore!” Scotty. Harry Potter had the trio of good students put in contrast with Malfoy’s trio of bad students, surrounded by mentors with weaknesses of their own. Continue reading
Audio Fiction – Podcast format
Aiming my sights at my long term goal, I’ve been thinking about ways to improve my writing. In the next few years I’m going to be revising my Nanowrimo novels, which I think will help me gain a lot of perspective on refinement and what my future works really need. Since my long term goal however is live-action film, with a script performed by actors, I really need to exercise my script-writing skills as well.
25 Year Goal – Film
Recently I decided to set a goal for myself to complete in about 25 years, at which point I’ll be 50. I have no idea what I’ll be doing at that time, but that’s okay. It’s a goal to work toward.
With my friends Zan and George we will make a film better than the original Star Wars.
A view of the world through Japanese ears
I think I’d like to write a short story using the linguistic world view of the Japanese language. The sheer contrast in the way things are phrased and the polite/casual, and humble/honorific spectrums are somewhat alien in English. So the challenge then is, how do I represent these things paying due to the Japanese without using Japanese? Well, that is the challenge, and I’m usually up for a good challenge. Let’s see if I can give you a taste of the sort of flavor this short story might have.
「山下さんの荷物を運ばせてください。」
“If you would lower it to my level, let me carry Mr. Undermountain’s baggage.”
「どうも、助かります。馬場さんは元気でしょうか？」
“How much so, I’m helped. Would Mr. Horsegrounds be lively?”
「おかげさまで。これからもよろしくお願い致します」
“Only under your shadow I am. I put forward my good will from now on and hope you will extend the same to me.
Basically what I did was translate the meaning of the words as directly as possible while being a bit loose in terms of grammar and phrasing. The use of names in this case is meant to represent how the Japanese usually refer to their people they’re talking to by their last name rather than a second person pronoun. I didn’t stick to that throughout though since subjects aren’t required in Japanese. So in the cases where I needed to fill in a subject for grammaticality in English I did use a pronoun. I’m happy to hear your comments, feelings, and corrections, though keep in mind I’m taking liberties with both languages here.
How do you consume media?
I sometimes think my media consumption habits are weird. I don’t watch TV unless it comes out on DVD and I hear a lot of really good things about it. I don’t listen to much in the way of radio anymore, though I used to listen to NPR in the States when driving sometimes. I’m not a huge book reader, but if I find a book that I really like I can invest a lot of time in it and will often read huge chunks at once (I am a slow reader). I also really disliked most comic books and graphic novels until I read Watchmen. As with most things a shining example of awesome will overwhelm my distaste for a certain media format, etc. Continue reading
Filed under film, internet, issues, music, technology
podcast, skype, weather, etc
I started a new podcast that I hope to be able to keep up at least twice a month if not every week. After 9 months of fiddling around I finally got Skype working with video and audio. It still doesn’t work on my laptop but the Mac version worked on reinstall and adding a program?driver? called macam. Tested with my friend in China 
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Mikan Run
Well here’s draft 2 of the logo. I like this one better.
Filed under film, media, music, musing, photography, technology
Dr. Horrible
OMG New Joss Whedon Musical.
By the time you read this it probably won’t be free anyone, but OMG it’s amazing.
p.s. I <3 Joss Whedon Musicals
His Dark Materials
So now that I know that there is a Golden Compass Film coming out soon I feel like I need to finish the His Dark Materials trilogy… So I started reading the Subtle Knife. I’m also in the middle of reading the Amber series by Zelazny. I suck at finishing books that I start. The Golden Compass was a pretty good book, Phillip Pullman has a great sense of fantasy. I hear he wrote the books because he hated the Chronicles of Narnia… hah.
