As they say: “Christmas is when you get stuff! You need more stuff!”
Well, Christmas is over… it came and went as fast as a day goes by.
I got some great stuff – here’s a picture! Here are my favorite gifts…
Dollhouse: Season Two [Blu-ray]
Drawn to Life: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures Volume 1
To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios
Speaking of animation history, Waking Sleeping Beauty
The How To Train Your Dragon
Inception: The Shooting Script
Great stuff! Woohoo!
So there’s this book called Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies
The book also details about 10 different genres of movies, such as Monster in the House movies, which are about characters facing some deadly evil, like Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Alien, or Golden Fleece movies, where a group of characters go on some kind of journey, like Star Wars or Finding Nemo.
Anyway, I’m happy to say that my screenplay The Melody Box follows the structure of the Out of the Bottle genre so well, that I will call myself a plagiarist genius. No, really, just following my instincts, the story follows the Out of the Bottle structure very nicely. Character gets magic, magic changes life, magic causes complications, the character eventually rejects the magic, etc. I was really delighted with myself.
Another real eye-opener for me (though unrelated to my screenplay) was that in Monster in the House movies, the evil that the characters are fighting has to be somehow associated with the actions of the characters. The characters (or at least one character) has to sin, has to invite the trouble of the monster(s) in; it all has to be someone’s fault. For example, in Jaws, people underestimate the power of the shark and keep the beaches open, even though they should know better. In Jurassic Park, John Hammond clones dangerous dinosaurs, even though he should know better. In Titanic, they should’ve known to put enough lifeboats on the ship, they should’ve known not to turn the ship too much upon seeing the iceberg, and they should’ve known not to say something as blasphemous as “even God couldn’t sink this ship!” The sin might even be something like not paying enough attention. I think the reason these “sins” work so well is because audiences will imagine themselves in the situations they see, and if they can’t say to themselves that they would’ve found a way out of danger (even if it means sawing a foot off), then watching the movie isn’t quite as fun.
(P.S. I think a novel plot can be much more “loose” as different readers will experience such stories at a different pace, sometimes over many months. However, the more the plot of a novel follows the “Save the Cat” structure, the easier a movie adaptation will be. And it could be a nice way for someone who’s plotting a novel to get ideas. Overall, I think most good writers will follow similar structures naturally, just as good composers follow the “rules” of music theory naturally… because it just feels right to do so.)
It’s not too early to plan out some goals for the new year, is it? Here are my goals for 2011:
1. Do good work for Animation Mentor – and graduate!
2. Learn to model an environment in Blender
3. Learn to model and animate a character in Blender
4. Continue trying to sell screenplay The Melody Box
5. Write a “listening guide” companion to my album
6. Finish writing a novel – and finish planning another
7. Finish writing 15 short stories
8. Listen to the complete works of Mozart
9. Listen to 100 other pieces of classical music
10. Read 25 fiction books, 25 non-fiction books, and 300 short stories
11. Practice drawing for 100 hours
12. Play video games for 100 hours (I can dream, yes?)
13. Watch lots of movies and TV shows… to study story structure (“Save the Cat” style)
14. Spend as little money as possible… save it for a 2012 vacation!
I also created a special page for it, which you should see on the side menu. I’m hoping to keep that page updated with my progress. It should be updated at least once a month…
As I say on the page, these goals are purposefully beyond my reach (though not completely impossible). The goal is not so much to actually reach these goals, but to get somewhere while aiming for them, if that makes sense.
The only goal I must reach is the first: Do good work for Animation Mentor. The other goals are nice, but I will sacrifice working on them for the sake of Animation Mentor if I must (and I probably will).
I’ve also recently become interested in Blender. My free student version of Maya will expire at some point (actually, it might’ve already, so I’ll have to try to renew it for the next Animation Mentor term), and Blender looks like a nice alternative. After all, it’s free! And it can be used for commercial projects for free. Not that I’m planning any commercial projects any time soon, but it’s nice to have that option.
Christmas
We’re a week away from Christmas! I’ve got almost all my shopping done, I just need to buy one more thing… then I just need to wrap them, put them under the tree, start the fire when my parents aren’t looking because the gas costs money, sit on the floor and look at them and think happy thoughts.
Have you noticed in all those TV specials in which characters talk about the “true meaning of Christmas” they never actually say what it is?
I watched the Christmas classic A Christmas Story earlier this week, one of the great films of our time. No holiday is complete without at least one viewing. Now I just need to watch A Muppets Christmas Carol, not only the last best Muppet film, but also the best film version of the Christmas Carol story there is. Right? Yes? Indeed? They need to put it on blu-ray!
Animation Mentor
I have finished my second semester at Animation Mentor! Though it was quite a bit of work, the term really flew by. I’m getting better with my time management, I didn’t feel as overwhelmed as I did last semester, but I hope I can continue to improve next semester. We get a two week break for Christmas (though I’m still working at my job, so it’s not like I’m on vacation or anything), and then we’ll go through semesters 3 and 4 in a long continuous 24-week no-breaks stretch! It will be intense! I’m exhausted just thinking about it! But I still get excited imagining being able to work as an animator full-time… by this time next year I’ll be done, and we’ll see what happens with my life then…
I’ll post my second semester reel soon…
Anyway, I do think I’ve made some good progress this semester, and I definitely learned a lot. I look forward to more!
Got published!
Beceause my writing be so well, I was got profsionally published! The words flowed so passionately!
I’ve been blathering about it way too much, so I won’t say much now, but my short story appeared in Daily Science Fiction earlier this week! ‘Twas a rousing success. Cake was baked and eaten, wine was (and caused me to be) drunk, and angels sang glorious hymns.
(It was emailed to subscribers earlier this week. If you didn’t subscribe, DSF will have the story on their site on December 22nd, I believe.)
And I got a profile page on the ISFDB… woohoo!
On Thursday morning it started snowing, so I went to work for about 20 minutes before we closed. It’s wonderful to still have snow days in your mid-twenties. So I spent some time writing a new short story. Not sure what it’ll be called yet, but it’s about a sword that shows its holder the image of an evil person, then guarantees the holder invincibility as they slay that person. Isn’t that great? Yes, it is.
11 days until Christmas!
Just a couple updates on my life:
1. Be sure you’re signed up to get some Daily Science Fiction! Even if only for a day. My story, Maker of the Twenty-first Moon, will appear tomorrow, December the 15th, making it my fictional debut. You don’t want to miss this historic occasion. I plan on baking a cake tonight to celebrate. Might seem arrogant, but all excuses are valid for cake.
2. The second semester of Animation Mentor is just about over! I’ll post my second semester reel later this week. The semester really flew by. While I think I definitely improved this semester, I know there are plenty of areas I definitely need to keep working on. This semester was quite challenging, but overall, I’m still very happy with Animation Mentor, and I’m looking forward to the third semester, starting next month.
3. I got this email in regards to one of my screenplay query letters (for The Melody Box):
Hi Sean,
Thanks for your intriguing query.
I’ve attached my bio/producing credits and can be reached in New York City at: [censored].
Let’s talk first.
Best,
[censored]
At first, this got me all excited. I forgot the first rule of the artist’s creed: don’t get excited. After Googling the producer’s name a bit more, I found that he ran a script consulting service, and I’m sure that’s what he wanted to try to sell me on. Ugh! No thanks.
That said, I have been fortunate enough to get a few actual genuine requests for the screenplay, woohoo!
I guess that’s all I have for today…
18 days until Christmas! Yay, woohoo, and such things.
Over the last week or so I’ve been editing my screenplay The Melody Box and it’s at the point now where I’d like to try selling it.
Most books and blogs I’ve read about selling your first screenplay strongly suggest that you write several before trying to sell one. I started writing another one earlier this year, but I lost interest and don’t really feel like continuing work with it. Quite frankly, it seems like a waste of time to write a screenplay if it’s not going to be produced. It’s a waste of a story. Might as well write a novel. The only reason I wrote The Melody Box as a screenplay is because music is essential to the plot. It could work as a play or a movie, but it can’t be just prose; the audience has to hear the music.
(I do have another story idea that must be a screenplay just because certain things must happen visually, but I don’t yet have a good grasp on the story, and, again, I really don’t feel like putting a whole lot of effort into something that would most likely go nowhere. Maybe that’s a bad attitude to have, but I’ve got plenty of other more interesting ways to use my time creatively.)
So I might be shooting myself in the foot by not working on some more screenplays, but that’s a hole in the foot I’m willing to have. I’m not really trying to become a full-time screenwriter; I just want to get this particular story out there somehow.
So I’ve got my screenplay. I prepared a query letter and a synopsis for it, which I plan to send to producers in Hollywood. Today in fact. There are hundreds out there, so this will probably be something I’ll be doing over the course of several months.
The idea / hope is that a producer (or someone involved with the producer’s creative material acquisitions) is interested in the query enough to read the synopsis, and is interested in the synopsis enough to request the script. I send it to them and they like it enough to option it or buy it. (In case you don’t know, buying an “option” basically means they’re not sure if they want to buy it, but they’re interested, so they pay you a certain amount to not sell it to anyone else for 6 months or a year or something while they make up their minds.) I’d be happy enough just to get to that point, but then the real dream-come-true part would be it, you know, actually getting made.
Wish me luck! I can read your mind, and appreciate the luck you have just wished me subconsciously…
I came across this blog post the other day: Ten Life Lessons from Richard Branson.
I thought I would just repeat the lessons, but give my own explanations for them. Hopefully this will help you have a better life. OK, here goes…
1. “Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more.”
At least, I assume. I mean, they look nice, and you’d probably enjoy yourself while you’re using them, but ultimately they somehow won’t give you happiness. Having those things implies you have a lot of money, and more happiness will come from your bank account and the not-having-to-do-work-you-don’t-want-to part of life, not the big yachts. However, once you have riches like that, it’s not very polite to continuously talk about how happy it makes you.
2. “I enjoy every single minute of my life.”
I just think of what it’ll be like when I’m rich. Once I am rich, I can just remind myself that I’m rich.
3. “But the majority of things that one could get stressed about, they’re not worth getting stressed about.”
Really, the only thing to stress about is losing your money. Everything else is pretty pointless. Don’t worry about stuff that doesn’t involve boat loads of money. If you don’t have boat loads of money, you shouldn’t be worrying about anything at all. Your life is ultimately meaningless.
4. “You can’t be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.”
Nobody wants to follow someone who is mean to them. People like getting praise, so giving it to them is a good way to get power over them. Just don’t go overboard, or they’ll think you’re insincere. Give them just enough to keep wanting more and you will have them on a leash.
5. “There is no one to follow, there is nothing to copy.”
If you want to be a leader and have power over others, you have to make sure no one has power over you, you have to make sure you don’t become one of those mindless followers.
6. “I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off doing nothing.”
You want to make sure you’re rich enough that if the business fails, you’re not dependent on it. Also, if you’re in it just for the money, then I don’t want to compete with you, because you might succeed beyond belief and I don’t want that kind of competition.
7. “I never had any intention of being an entrepreneur.”
That’s a big word with weird spelling. I’m not quite sure what it means.
8. “I made and learned from lots of mistakes.”
Looking before you leap is overrated. If you want to get ahead, it’s better to learn from mistakes than planning research. There’s always a chance you could succeed without thinking, and that’s the best kind of success to have. If you find that you are doing actual work, what’s the point?
9. “If you can indulge in your passion, life will be far more interesting than if you’re just working.”
Like I said, work is for losers. Get your followers to do the work.
10. “Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.”
After all, that involves no work whatsoever, and that’s what makes life awesome.
OK, I hope these tips have helped you. I didn’t really tell you how to make money easily, because that is a secret that must stay closely-guarded. If I want to maintain my power, I have to make you think my life is a whole lot better than yours, and as long as you think I’m always happy and always have been, then I’m happy enough.
Please excuse the blatant self-promotional nature of this post, but December 15, 2010 looks like it may become quite historic. According to SF Signal, it is the day I will have some of my fiction professionally published for the first time. (And, considering how undedicated I am to the craft, perhaps the last…?)
You can subscribe to Daily Science Fiction by email for free.
You’ll also see that a story by Eric James Stone is scheduled for the day before mine. If you recall my first post about Maker of the Twenty-first Moon, I mentioned that I got the idea for it (or at least a part of it) while reading one of his previous short stories, Taint of Treason. So it’s a fun coincidence that my story should come right after one of his.
Anyway, subscribe to DSF, mark your calendars, and prepare for much celebration… I think I’ll bake a cake that week… maybe write some music for it…
I also found this article to be interesting:
If you saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 this weekend, then you most likely marveled at the gorgeous animated sequence where Hermoine tells the tale of “The Deathly Hallows”. … Variety is now reporting that the director of that sequence, Ben Hibon, is attached to direct the fantasy action thriller Pan. Based on a script by Ben Magid and originally set up as a directing vehicle for Guillermo del Toro, “The film puts a dark spin on J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan with Captain Hook as a haunted former police detective in pursuit of a childlike kidnapper.”
…
Hibon, along with his producing partners Renee Tab and Tarik Heitmann, have also optioned Richard Harland’s steampunk novel, Worldshaker.
That Harry Potter animation was the best part of the otherwise disappointing film. (The nude kissing was the worst part; entirely inappropriate for a Potter film; it’s awful how they’ve been trying to sexualize these stories, shame on you filmmakers! Shame shame shame!)
Anyway, Pan sounds very interesting, I look forward to it.
Worldshaker sounds even more interesting. I now really want to read that book. Then again, Hollywood tends to mess up steampunk-type books, like City of Ember and The Golden Compass. Something stylistically they just can’t get right about it… though they might actually get Hugo Cabret right, considering its director, who usually knows how to make a good movie.
I found this article to be interesting. It states:
Once upon a time, there was a studio in Burbank that spun classic fairy tales into silver-screen gold.
But now the curtain is falling on “princess movies,” which have been a part of Disney Animation’s heritage since the 1937 debut of its first feature film, “Snow White.” The studio’s Wednesday release of “Tangled,” a contemporary retelling of the Rapunzel story, will be the last fairy tale produced by Disney’s animation group for the foreseeable future.
Actually, I think most of the “princess-ness” of Disney came about in the 90’s with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Pocahontas, all released in less than a decade, and all following a similar Broadway-influenced romantic comedy formula. I’m sure Walt Disney himself never meant for his company to be defined by fairy tales or princesses. They did Snow White in 1937, then didn’t do Cinderella until 1950, and didn’t do Sleeping Beauty until 1959. That’s only three princess-oriented fairy tales done in old Uncle Walt’s lifetime.
The article mentions that their Princess and the Frog didn’t do as well as they’d like. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but looking at the previews, it certainly didn’t look that great. It was tauted as introducing Disney’s first black princess just as the nation was getting its first black president. A film decision like that should never be made for political brownie points. And they were, dare I say, racist, playing to stereotypes and setting the film in New Orleans and making the music score jazzy. The film shouldn’t have been set in America at all. Unless the intent was to make the movie about racism (which I doubt, and there are already plenty of movies about that), the movie should’ve treated the princess just like any other princess.
Anyway, I digress. My point is, I don’t think this news is really all that breath-taking. It’s natural. It’s obvious.
I think it’s kind of silly to guess at what the public wants, because I don’t think you really can know, beyond certain genre generalizations. Like “vampires are popular now” or “wizards are popular now” … but that doesn’t tell you what sort of story people would be interested in seeing, or what sort of stories they would not be interested in seeing.
I think filmmakers should step away from looking at the profit numbers (as long as there’s a profit at least) and just do whatever interests them the most, whatever story gives them goosebumps just thinking about. The audience does matter, but only to a certain degree… not to the degree of dictating what sort of film to make next. Really, audiences have no idea what they want.
Not that that’s not what Disney is doing. I can’t really tell from the article what they’re doing; who knows how they’re making their decisions?
Oh, and did they really want “Tangled” to appeal to boys? Firstly, its style is all wrong for that, from the colors to the guy’s facial hair pattern. Secondly, the preview doesn’t show enough thrilling action. Instead it shows “Here comes the smolder…”
The article also mentions that they’re no longer doing Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen. Though it’s been dramatized before, I’m rather happy about this. Firstly, I’d hate to see the story Disney-ified. The story has a darkness to it that Disney (or Pixar) would probably ruin, even if they ruin it well. Secondly, I’d like to do it myself. Not ruin it, that is, but turn it into an animated feature. I guess there’s really not much of a chance of that, but if Disney had done it, there’d be no chance, so at least now there’s a one billionth of a percent chance.