Archive for February, 2009

Is it a community, a blog, an online film school? Is it spelled with an 'oh' or a zero? (hint: zero) Oh, we could go down that route and proclaim, "Take Zer0 is the hopes and dreams of everybody on planet Earth!"

Even Sean and I are stumped to give an answer. Stumped like a tree. I'm sure that question plagues me more. Or maybe it plagues us equally. With the involuntary free time we've been blessed with (i.e. we lost our jobs), I retooled the episodes and finalized the cuts to our old Halloween shorts. Yes, episodes are well on their way, and they've been retooled to be both faster to shoot and to watch. This is the internet, which is like a burly bigot: it'll tell you to go back to where you came from if you don't learn to speak its native language properly. And the internet speaks proper fast.

I made final cuts to "Thing at the End of the Hall" and Drew's "The Trick of the Treat." They're more polished, and encoded at a huge bitrate (if you're into that sorta thing). Back in Halloween, I had just a few hours to cut both by the deadline. Quality was tossed out the window of a moving car. I recently found it lying in the street (by now swept towards the gutter), picked it up, placed it in my coat pocket, and spent last week revising the two shorts, quality now back in my possession. At least a full minute has been excised from each. It was a Hallmark moment, full of an important life lesson: Less is more.

Yet in revisiting those shorts I found myself both impressed and depressed. Impressed because "Trick" was shot in three hours, all improv; and "Thing" was a last-minute germ of a story that made solid use of digital.

As to why I was let down...

Three months back I attempted something naive: to shoot a fifteen minute short inspired by The Twilight Zone...in one night, without a crew. Starring myself. Yes, through a long process, I managed to focus the camera on myself.

It was only a half-decent, half finished short film. I learned a lot; but I don't think I learned it in the easiest way possible. Yet I learned without a compromise. With each project in Take Zer0, I've come upon the revelation that we are not, in fact, teaching anything. We are demonstrating. We're not here to lecture; we don't know how.

But where would it all go from here? And what kind of content, and for whom?

I suppose for any and everybody who cares. About theory, about film, about random goals and dreams. Maybe our identity crisis is a freakishly good thing; because just like there is "no one way to make a movie" there is, likewise, "no one person to make a movie." Perhaps we shouldn't focus on just one quality.

More and more, I prefer to envision Take Zer0 as the guinea pigs of the online cinema scene. We're not quite the martyrs seen in The Lone Filmmaker; we don't quite know our target demographic like Wong Fu Productions; and we're not quite as all-seeing as IndyMogul. We're simply here to do any and everything all at once. Watch us demonstrate film theory; watch us fail; watch us succeed; watch us do it all over again until you get it yourself.

Ambition and persistence. What better model is there?

So Drew emailed me his first draft of "Father Time" (in Celtx format). That's the pilot for a webseries he wrote with a friend from Wisconsin. I am unsure if he would like the plot to be mentioned here, so I'll just say that the story is inspired from H.G. Welles' "The Sleeper Wakes." That's about the guy who falls asleep for two hundred years and wakes up in the future. Yeah, I know...Futurama twisted the formula. "Father Time" is at least way better than "Demolition Man." It's contemporary, with a sitcom approach; though it is in no way a straight-arrow comedy, with a bit of familial turmoil thrown in. I enjoyed it far more than I thought.

I wonder where he'll take the story arc.

I was inspired to open my beat-up spiral notebook, the one that I use to scribble notes for "Clip Show," my own semi-autobiographical webseries in-the-making. I ruffled through the crumpled sheets and discovered this odd little drawing I made. I can't recall if it was sketched in fun, in some coffeeshop, or if it's a genuine scene I took to heart.

And what has Sean been up to as of late? I think he's pursuing a full story for his short film, "Late Morning." He intends to cast the lead role obsessively. I think it's the real deal. According to his Twitter he purchased an album off of iTunes, as inspiration for writing. Hmmm. Could he have gotten it off AmazonMP3 for cheaper, with no copy protection, and at a higher bitrate? Yep.

S'true.

As for me, well, that drawing certainly gives me an idea...

If lighting cannot be easy, then surly it can be uncomplicated. Bearing this in mind, anybody---from those with elaborate studio lamps, to those with low budgets and utility lights (or anything else lying about the house, right?)---can light a scene. And light a scene they should.

Because lighting is, ultimately, the heart of a lot of cinematography. If you disagree, well, you gotta admit it's pretty darned crucial. Yes, style does come into play; but for your own sake, figure out what you wanna do first (and don't always rely on Magic Bullet). And most importantly, figure out how you're gonna go about doing it. What makes lighting so time consuming, especially for amateurs, is the guesswork involved. Where does the Key Light go? Where the Fill Light? Where this, and where that? As this video shows, there is no right answer. And neither is this video meant to give an answer. It's more of a loose demonstration.

It is meant to show that custom lighting comes in all shapes and sizes; and unless the shot looks absolutely atrocious, then there really is no wrong way to arrange your lights. However, there are principles that help. The lighting in this video is a dark, Low Key setup (versus bright High Key, which is frequently used in Romantic Comedies). We formulated it on the spot, with modest lights. We decided to ignore our fancy-shmancy light stands and soft boxes, and did our best with these little guys:

One medium-sized utility "scoop," one small-sized "scoop," one utility work light, and one rusty desk lamp with a busted hinge. The small scoop provided most of the highlight on Sean's shoulders and hair, while the desk lamp lit a portion of the background. The medium-sized scoop got to be the Big Boy of the bunch and acted as Key Light, which lit up Sean. A cheap silver-sided reflector was used to bounce extra light onto his face. And way off camera the work light was aimed at the white panels of the garage door, bouncing enough diffused light to act as a Fill for most of the scene.

Oh, and they're all nearly the same color temperature.

The resulting shot is definitely more dramatic, if not necessarily perfect, over the use of default indoor lighting. Greater emphasis is indeed placed on the subject/actor (Sean). Now, if only we had two more scoops to light the rest of the background. Ah well. Maybe next time.
____

**Want to know more? Want to add to anything? Well then, discuss this episode in the forums!

So, we were in the middle of shooting the next episode and before we could get to the outdoor shots it started raining. And it's been raining the past week. Peter showed me part of what he shot so far (he was directing, I was acting), though, and it looked really good. I think you guys will be surprised. The new format of episodes is going to be quite different than they were previously, but it's definitely for the better.

In other news, I've been working on my short film script. I haven't had as much time as I'd like, but you can check for updates over at my personal blog: esotericsean.com. I'm hoping on showing everyone my final outlined treatment soon.

In other news, we now have a P.O. Box (those of you who were sent buttons or t-shirts probably already know this). I don't know what we're gonna do with it, but it's cool to have. Send us some postcards or letters or whatever you want! We'll write or send something back to you! Just make sure you address it to "Take Zer0" and not one of us (the post office was very specific about this for some reason).

Here's our address (in case you want to copy & paste it someplace):

So one night at a Barnes & Noble I leafed through this Will Eisner paperback. You know, Eisner, the guy who helped define sequential narrative. In a single page he had this awfully simple definition of storytelling, illustrated in little dialog bubbles. It went like this:

Caveman: Tell me...Ol' Storyteller, where do stories come from?
Storyteller: Well, have you got something you want to tell someone?
Caveman: Yeah...a couple of things I'd like to tell. But, how?
Storyteller: Well, now...decide if you want to tell it as a joke or an adventure story. Invent a problem to illustrate the point!
Caveman: Okay!
Storyteller: Next you solve the problem, which will give you the ending. That, m'boy, is storytelling!
Caveman: Ahah!

This is what storytelling is, plain and true. I'm no authority to give vindication; but Eisner's telling is so straight-as-an-arrow, it penetrates pretension and arrives at some kind of holistic truth. A story is a problem. The ending is the solution. Got it? In the abstract, even an unsolved, downbeat ending is a solution in the requirements of the story, if not the dilemma. The bad guy gets away and the bomb goes off, but the story still ends.

If you dislike your story idea, you either have a problem nobody cares about, or you haven't the foggiest of how to fix it.

This is about writing, of any kind. Not just screenplay.

Some of you may be nodding your heads, "Of course that's what a story is!" But we all need to be reminded. The disease called Writer's Block is a cancer of thought: the story, when left unchecked, gorges itself into a tumor. Writers have the bad habit of treating their ideas as reflections of their expectations: they focus so anally on what their their story should be, that they don't allow their stories to simply be. The best ideas arrive naturally; as natural, perhaps, as the inclination to solve a nagging problem. Call it the two o'clock revelation. Call it the ego. Or, as Stephen King calls it, call it Pow! Pow is what happens when two polarized ideas collide to form one super magnet of a story. POW! Just like that. One idea is the neutron, the other is the charge. One is the vinegar, the other is the baking soda. Got it? The best way to go about this formula is to use ideas that contradict. They naturally incite conflict, which naturally makes the writer become Mr. Fix-It, and viola! You got your ending. Pow!

Lets take a step back. When is an idea not a story? Well, when it lacks a defining or unifying action. Some people confuse descriptions for stories. "My story is about a blind guy who lives alone." Interesting. But that, sir, is not a story. No doubt it could make a cool skit or an experimental character study; but a story for the sake of beginning-middle-and-end it surly is not.

A story is what happens. Don't worry about how it happens. That's plot. The first ingredient of a story, or at least an idea of a story, is what happens. Call it the problem, the inciting incident, whatever you like. Something just needs to happen that affects the outcome of the story, even if you have yet to arrive at the outcome. The thing that happens will interfere or impede directly with what the protagonist wants or needs to achieve. Discern the difference between an unclear background action (protagonist sees a car accident...perhaps has direct relevance to the story) and a foreground action (protagonist causes the accident...incites the story without a doubt).

Little tweaks in the thinking process, like the one in the above paragraph, can help to overcome writer's block. It may sound like redundant tripe, riddled with clichés, but this isn't in the interest of Hollywood formula. It's human nature. What may seem like a cliché can in fact turn out to be plain common sense. Just remember, a story is a problem.

More on this in the later posts.

The above video is nothing but problem (Sean needs help with a story). That's because it's split into three parts; this is essentially the first act, and so there's really nothing but exposition. The next episode will move it into the second act, which is solving the problem (Peter acts as mentor). It will touch a lot more on sustaining a story idea. And the third episode will simply tie everything up nice and neat (Sean discovers what he wanted).

And to anyone concerned, this is the format for part of the episodes from now on. This one's a little wobbly, like a newborn fawn trying not to fall. There will be more elaborate ones like this, which liberally touch on abstract ideas, alongside the more directly informational types. We wanna spice it up a little.

You're all enjoying the weekend I hope! Now, a word about the totally unrelated video: it sent everyone in our class laughing.

I was enrolled in two very different classes that semester, Advanced Video Production and Field Video Production. This wasn't made for Advanced Video Production. Hopefully the guys who made it don't mind if I post it. It was a relief at the time to sit through something made out of plain fun compared to the art house fare from the advanced production class (though they were still quite good, and all made with considerable skill). The point, in a poetic Sullivan's Travels sorta way, is that people laughed.

We got a B. Is it me, or did my hair look like Anton Chigurh?

So to anyone who saw our recent two-part episodes, what do you all think of them? It was a prototype of sorts, designed to gauge whether not we were being too convoluted (and ambitious) with the filmmaking topics. Weighing the pros and cons, the pro is that this is perhaps the most hands-on demonstration we can attempt at the moment--to discuss storytelling techniques as we employ them. To those who found it to be too convoluted, worry not, for the next episode will be a more straightforward affair.

If we attempt another one these multi-parters, it'll likely be Sustaining a Narrative. So we'd love to hear all your input on the recent two-part "prototypes" before we push forward.

Sorting, cutting, and mixing 270 different clips is...fun.

Checking on Twitter, I see that Sean and Rootclip have now entered the final chapter of The Alien. It certainly has been a unique run so far, with perhaps the most disparate attempts for each chapter; so varied is each entry that the story could qualify for an anthology of sorts. Some look at this as a disappointment. I find it rather risky and refreshing. Sean made the unusual, off-beat story in an attempt to coax that unused, unspent, and otherwise most creative part of the brain into wakefulness. Personally, it's a shame that users have bent the focus of the story from its female protagonist, back to Rootclip's default masculinity. But not even that mindset could shake away the sense of variety at play. My favorite? "Jim's Been Drinking Again." The plotting is ho-hum, but the pacing, editing, and audio are accomplished in spades.

So here's looking forward to Rootclip's next story, the latest evidence of which was alluded to in this now two-day-old Tweet: Back to script writing. This next story on Rootclip is going to be a good one! Yes, Rootclip, I eyeball your Twitter with the profound yearning of an infant for Mother's milk.

In a broad summation of events, Sean has been trying to meet with several local actors and actresses. You know, networking; and, perhaps, a little passive casting for his "Late Morning," I suspect. Offhand, he assures me that the Lessons are not only prepped to be shot soon (meaning more sleepless nights), but that they'll also blow your mind away. Not precisely in those words, mind you. I believe he muttered something softly like "Pretty good."

As for Drew, school and work has been keeping him busy (Take Zer0 is, after all, our full-time job alongside our other full-time jobs). He'll likely make an appearance in future episodes, preferably ones in the very near future. He tells me he pitched his "Father Time" web series to somebody connected up-on-high in the television industry.

Speaking of television, props to John in the forums for introducing me to Garth Marenghi's "Darkplace," a British TV show that spoofs sci-fi/horror shows of the 80s. A shame it was canceled. If the title sequence doesn't convince you that this show is genius...then you probably don't like a lot of things, I guess.

Well, anyway, have a great weekend everybody!

You're all enjoying the weekend I hope! Now, a word about the totally unrelated video: it sent everyone in our class laughing.

I was enrolled in two very different classes that semester, Advanced Video Production and Field Video Production. This wasn't made for Advanced Video Production. Hopefully the guys who made it don't mind if I post it. It was a relief at the time to sit through something made out of plain fun compared to the art house fare from the advanced production class (though they were still quite good, and all made with considerable skill). The point, in a poetic Sullivan's Travels sorta way, is that people laughed.

We got a B. Is it me, or did my hair look like Anton Chigurh?

So to anyone who saw our recent two-part episodes, what do you all think of them? It was a prototype of sorts, designed to gauge whether not we were being too convoluted (and ambitious) with the filmmaking topics. Weighing the pros and cons, the pro is that this is perhaps the most hands-on demonstration we can attempt at the moment--to discuss storytelling techniques as we employ them. To those who found it to be too convoluted, worry not, for the next episode will be a more straightforward affair.

If we attempt another one these multi-parters, it'll likely be Sustaining a Narrative. So we'd love to hear all your input on the recent two-part "prototypes" before we push forward.

Sorting, cutting, and mixing 270 different clips is...fun.

Checking on Twitter, I see that Sean and Rootclip have now entered the final chapter of The Alien. It certainly has been a unique run so far, with perhaps the most disparate attempts for each chapter; so varied is each entry that the story could qualify for an anthology of sorts. Some look at this as a disappointment. I find it rather risky and refreshing. Sean made the unusual, off-beat story in an attempt to coax that unused, unspent, and otherwise most creative part of the brain into wakefulness. Personally, it's a shame that users have bent the focus of the story from its female protagonist, back to Rootclip's default masculinity. But not even that mindset could shake away the sense of variety at play. My favorite? "Jim's Been Drinking Again." The plotting is ho-hum, but the pacing, editing, and audio are accomplished in spades.

So here's looking forward to Rootclip's next story, the latest evidence of which was alluded to in this now two-day-old Tweet: Back to script writing. This next story on Rootclip is going to be a good one! Yes, Rootclip, I eyeball your Twitter with the profound yearning of an infant for Mother's milk.

In a broad summation of events, Sean has been trying to meet with several local actors and actresses. You know, networking; and, perhaps, a little passive casting for his "Late Morning," I suspect. Offhand, he assures me that the Lessons are not only prepped to be shot soon (meaning more sleepless nights), but that they'll also blow your mind away. Not precisely in those words, mind you. I believe he muttered something softly like "Pretty good."

As for Drew, school and work has been keeping him busy (Take Zer0 is, after all, our full-time job alongside our other full-time jobs). He'll likely make an appearance in future episodes, preferably ones in the very near future. He tells me he pitched his "Father Time" web series to somebody connected up-on-high in the television industry.

Speaking of television, props to John in the forums for introducing me to Garth Marenghi's "Darkplace," a British TV show that spoofs sci-fi/horror shows of the 80s. A shame it was canceled. If the title sequence doesn't convince you that this show is genius...then you probably don't like a lot of things, I guess.

Well, anyway, have a great weekend everybody!

They’ve been called everything from heroes to troublemakers and harbingers of false hope – but to those companies of the less scrupulous variety, The Yes Men are quite simply a royal pain in the backside. Riding the success they received as the subjects of an earlier Festival documentary (The Yes Men, 2004), activists Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno took the reins themselves on The Yes Men Fix the World as the daring duo continued to kerfuffle corporate baddies with well-planned hoaxes and civil disturbances. After the film made its premiere at the Festival, Bichlbaum and Bonanno answered the audience’s questions.

Q: Do you have any outstanding warrants at this time?
Bonanno: No. In fact after the scene where we were taken away, the Canadian police took us away from private security and told them that they couldn’t do anything to us. We did get a trespassing ticket but they threw it out. The crown refused to hear it.

Q: Obviously the press was saying you guys were doing wrong or giving false hope. It should be shown that what you were doing was good and right. What are your plans to get that out there?
Bonanno: We need distribution. We want this to show on TV and in movie theatres. We want to work with organizations to see what ways we can collaborate on their campaigns.
Bichlbaum: This is the beginning of that. We don’t know where it’s going to go yet. If you have ideas, please do come tell us.

Q: What was the experience of making this film yourself?
Bichlbaum: Working with Chris Smith on the first film was a great experience. This movie was an arduous experience and quite exhilarating at times, but far more difficult than we imagined. But we discovered a lot of stuff along the way. Hopefully it was worth it.

Q: How did you decide you wanted to direct it yourselves?
Bichlbaum: We wanted to get in a lot more documentary material and actually give voices to the people that were directly affected by the policies we were going after. So we figured we would just do it ourselves.

Q: How much research did you do in advance of each individual story you told?
Bonanno: It depended on how quickly we had to do the thing. Our research is based on hard work that’s done by journalists and by environmental organizations. With Dow, Greenpeace had made it a major campaign issue partially because of Dow’s history as a large chemical company and also because of their refusal to pay for Bhopal (India). Greenpeace was seeing Bhopal as a real test case because it was the largest industrial accident in history and hasn’t been cleaned up. So it’s always a challenge to learn enough about the issues we need to address before we go on a stage.

They’ve been called everything from heroes to troublemakers and harbingers of false hope – but to those companies of the less scrupulous variety, The Yes Men are quite simply a royal pain in the backside. Riding the success they received as the subjects of an earlier Festival documentary (The Yes Men, 2004), activists Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno took the reins themselves on The Yes Men Fix the World as the daring duo continued to kerfuffle corporate baddies with well-planned hoaxes and civil disturbances. After the film made its premiere at the Festival, Bichlbaum and Bonanno answered the audience’s questions.

Q: Do you have any outstanding warrants at this time?
Bonanno: No. In fact after the scene where we were taken away, the Canadian police took us away from private security and told them that they couldn’t do anything to us. We did get a trespassing ticket but they threw it out. The crown refused to hear it.

Q: Obviously the press was saying you guys were doing wrong or giving false hope. It should be shown that what you were doing was good and right. What are your plans to get that out there?
Bonanno: We need distribution. We want this to show on TV and in movie theatres. We want to work with organizations to see what ways we can collaborate on their campaigns.
Bichlbaum: This is the beginning of that. We don’t know where it’s going to go yet. If you have ideas, please do come tell us.

Q: What was the experience of making this film yourself?
Bichlbaum: Working with Chris Smith on the first film was a great experience. This movie was an arduous experience and quite exhilarating at times, but far more difficult than we imagined. But we discovered a lot of stuff along the way. Hopefully it was worth it.

Q: How did you decide you wanted to direct it yourselves?
Bichlbaum: We wanted to get in a lot more documentary material and actually give voices to the people that were directly affected by the policies we were going after. So we figured we would just do it ourselves.

Q: How much research did you do in advance of each individual story you told?
Bonanno: It depended on how quickly we had to do the thing. Our research is based on hard work that’s done by journalists and by environmental organizations. With Dow, Greenpeace had made it a major campaign issue partially because of Dow’s history as a large chemical company and also because of their refusal to pay for Bhopal (India). Greenpeace was seeing Bhopal as a real test case because it was the largest industrial accident in history and hasn’t been cleaned up. So it’s always a challenge to learn enough about the issues we need to address before we go on a stage.

An upper crust dinner. Well-dressed socialites gorge themselves on every animal possible, splayed across the huge dining table, filling up their bottomless pit stomachs with meat and trimmings. Servants and musicians scramble to keep them entertained. Then the inevitable comes (not that they even care).

Next Floor references the work of Luis Buñuel, and like his films, makes a piercing social critique, all wrapped up in a compelling filmmaking style and satirical attitude. The film was shot in the summer of 2007, but is more timely than ever given the current world economy and CEOs continuing to award themselves with lucrative bonuses.

“The notion of the apocalypse has been a recurring theme in my work,” says creator and producer Phoebe Greenberg. “And fortunately, that was an inspiration for the director, Denis Villeneuve. The desire to illustrate ‘gluttony’ in the form of a bourgeois dinner party was compelling in our era of over-consumption. The grotesque aesthetic and brutal consequences are inspired by some of my favorite Eastern European dramaturges, notably Stanislaw Witkiewicz and director Tadeusz Kantor.”

Greenberg’s career has been in the theatre with film as a recent preoccupation, with the short film format giving her opportunities to take risks in story and style and to work with film professionals. She chose Villeneuve as Next Floor’s director after seeing his feature film Maelstrom. Forming a strong artistic collaboration, they worked on the script together.

“The screenplay has modern elements of old silent film comedic shorts and very little narrative,” Greenberg says. “This medium and format was the most accurate expression to get the point across and to have impact on a large and diverse audience.”

With no dialogue, the images do all the storytelling in Next Floor. The character’s vibrant faces and slight motions, the primeval displays of raw food, and the dust-covered clothes all provide the “meat” of the film for viewers to chew on. Next Floor may not make you feel better about the world’s class struggles, but it will remind you that you are not alone.

Be sure to watch Sustaining a Story Idea: Part 1 before this one!

Now we all have stories to tell. Sort of. Most of it is a mish-mash of abstract scenes and imagery, stranded in the murky depths of our minds. According to Will Eisner, a story is not a story until it is "told in an arranged and purposeful order." This means that those abstract scenes in your mind are not stories at all; they are just ideas and nothing more. To prematurely call them stories is not only false, but dangerous. It tricks you into thinking that you've overcome the hardest part.

Step 1: Want

No sustained character can exist without a desire, a want that permeates the story. It is the carrot dangling before their nose, and they will chase it till the end. If there is no carrot, there is either no story, or little reason for the story. They must want something; and as a twist, that something will not always be precisely what they expected. There is the external, material Want, which is more obvious; and then there is the internal, personal Want, the discovery of which is usually a major "point" of the story. A summary of the above video would go like this, sandwiched by the external and internal Wants:

A lonely writer who wants to tell a story about love goes on a drunken journey and ultimately realizes he wants the real thing.

The best stories veer toward an unexpected ending. Give the protagonist the present they never knew they wanted...or deserved.

A very old man wants to be left alone after the death of his wife and becomes a recluse. He is evicted and is forced to live with his grown daughter, an executive struggling against the void of a corporate career. Because she inherited her mother's ambitious personality, he begins to enjoy her company. She finds him to be a burden and plans to send him to an old folk's home, the same thing her mother did to her grandparents. Father and daughter squabble. The old man, too proud, stops taking his medication and passes away, to be with his wife.

Regardless of the quality of the story I just made up, notice how the old man's Want (to be left alone) transformed into something far more insightful and less obvious (to literally be with his wife). The "story" is the order of events that took place for him to reach that realization, and for the audience to empathize. Any sub-plots and supporting characters are there to reinforce and justify the main problem. Just remember that what the old man wants is what gives way to the rest of the story. If he did not want anything specific, the story could not easily exist, at least not in such a tight order of events. An unintentionally loose order of events is a common symptom of or being unsure of what your character wants.

Johnny Protagonist must want something, else he will be bored, along with the viewer.

Ah, but you say that this Want = Goal formula is too "Hollywood?" Hold it right there. Even the most rudimentary elements of life are formula. Every minute a person wants something. I want a drink; I want a candy bar; I want to read; I want to listen to music; heck, I want to sleep (it's five o'clock in the morning). Life is a series, a succession, of wants. Good stories are merely more focused, and amplified, than the real thing.

Step 2: Extrapolate

A story is what. A plot is how.

People have this misconception that plot and story are two very different yet still identical things, like maternal twins. They're more like co-workers. Ray Bradbury described it like this: Story is Point A, and Point B, and so on; 'plot' are the footprints in the snow the characters must tread to get there. Don't worry about plot until you have the story. After all, you must know where you are going before you can figure out how to get there.

So if a character wants something, why not just let them have it and be over and done with? Because then there would be little plot and less drama than what a solid story would entail. It would not even be a narrative. It would be a skit. A skit dwells on a single problem and is resolved for the audience's amusement. Sketch comedy comes to mind, as well most of the material on YouTube; though they tend to be mislabeled as short films.

A narrative is focused on the telling of a problem from a reinforced perspective. Whether or not it is solved becomes irrelevant. It is how the problem is solved that peaks our interest. And once you learn to ask why it needs to be solved, why anybody should care, viola! you have a narrative.

Assembling and plotting the story, beginning-middle-and-end.

One mistake is to view your story as a giant slab of concrete. Break it down into blocks to build a structure. "Ah, here is when we meet and get to know the old man." "Oh and here is when he gets evicted and the story really starts." Each part is an individual snapshot that has a purposeful function. None of it is window dressing, and none should overstay their welcome. As a rule, it is said that one scene of conflict should not carry itself directly into the following scene, because the point has already been made. It would feel redundant and used up. So move on. The plot should contribute to a forward-moving momentum. Toy around with the arrangement of your plot and of the events in your story. It is the DNA, and its varied arrangements will yield fascinating effects on the audience. Is the beginning supposed to be fast or slow? Should the audience acknowledge the ominous desk drawer before it is opened, or not? And so on.

In the case of the episode, the plot is constructed of, first, a flashback montage of Sean's problems; then it slows down and takes a detour to review his problems; then we finally see that they were not, in fact, problems. They were his unforeseen solutions. Finally, we learn of his newly solved problems by a second flashback montage that casts new light on what went before. It is a circular plot, structured to recall the beginning.

And So...

The episode scripts were outlined in an hour. They were also written in an hour and shot the next day, off-and-on (we were at the mercy of rain and weather) in a period of five days. I came up with the admittedly shallow story by first coming up with a problem, arriving at a logical solution, and then backtracking for a Want. In the end, it's what led up to the cheesy ending you have before you.

An 8-LED emergency light. There is no such thing as "pro" lights. Only lights that work.

And because someone asked in the last post, the Gazing-Up-at-the-Stars-On-the-Grass shots were lit entirely by this handy little thing (pictured above), twenty bucks at your nearest Target store. As for the majority of the shots, we used natural sunlight with reflectors and diffusers. The night shots at Drew's apartment were lit entirely by two utility clamp lights (the same ones used in the recent Low Budget Lighting episode).

Well, I think that about does it for Sustaining a Story Idea. It's partly practical and partly conceptual. What can I say? It's an idea meant to foster even more ideas. Perhaps next time we'll do Sustaining a Narrative. And so it goes, it is six o'clock in the morning. I better get on to bed. Or you know what? I might as well grab some coffee.