Vincent and the Doctor

I used to write reviews of Doctor Who episodes, but I don't do that anymore. Partly because I realised that my reviews weren't very informative or useful to anybody - I tended to say variations on "Gosh, that was good" and "Hmm, didn't like this one so much". It felt like it needed more than a rating, it required analysis, which I am not very good at; especially so soon after having watched each episode; having to be careful about spoilers (my own choice); and only seeing part of the season, so story arcs or two part episode reviews were left hanging.

Anyway, this also is not a review, but it is a comparison. The latest episode of Doctor Who was about the impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, someone whose work I very much admire, and they very cleverly included in the episode some shots of his inspirations. So I thought I'd show some of the ones I recognised. There may be others I missed.

It opens in a wheat field, where crows fly away at the approach of an invisible beast.




The Doctor and Amy find Vincent at a cafe in France.




Vincent's bedroom is very familiar.




His furniture is the subject of some very personal art.






As he speaks of what he sees in the night sky, Vincent paints a picture in their mind's eye.

None Of Your Damn Business

There's been a lot of concerns about Facebook lately. Serious privacy-related concerns. What used to be a priority for the social networking juggernaut is now being treated as a liability. Without warning, personal profile information, image galleries, and some posts, which until now had been set as private, viewable only to a few, were changed to be almost exclusively public, available to all. The only way to change that was to go in and set each individually to private again, though even that option wasn't available until after an outcry.

I had never ventured into Facebook until very recently, when I started to get so many links to the site, of the "Hey, look at this" or "I've been discussing this here" or "Wonder what your old school friends are doing now?" variety, all pointing to Facebook, and not visible unless I was signed up.

So I signed up.

It was not much fun to wade around in, and was decidedly cluttered and non-intuitive. And 90% of what I found was boring, meaningless, or badly organised. But maybe, I reasoned, if I stuck it out, there would be a benefit I could get from it.

After two months, nothing has sprung into view. It seems to be a bit of a dead zone full of inconsequential dullness.

It was the principle of it all that caused me the most worry. My own profile information was safe-ish, I had gone in and set the privacy settings to a reasonable level, but I am worried for other Facebook users, and for what this means to personal information online, generally. It's a frightening precedent to set, does exactly what many Web users have long been paranoid about, and is therefore unacceptable.

I figure the best way to express my distaste at this direction that it is heading is to quit Facebook. Judging by the upset murmurs around the web, I am anticipating as much as a 50% drop in membership activity for it over the next year. That may not be good for Social Networking, but would be a good indication of what users expect of online privacy.

Plus Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who invented Facebook, seems to be a bit of a dick.

So I have cancelled out of Facebook, deleted my account, never to return.

I'm still on Twitter, though.

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Bypassing The Tannhauser Gate

This one won't make me very popular.

Ridley Scott is overrated.

He has directed many films which are listed in personal top tens: Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner; and also made some less popular films, often listed as disappointing mistakes: Legend, Kingdom of Heaven, Black Hawk Down. In terms of pop culture, he has made an indelible impact, not only in making oft-quoted and well-remembered films, but in influencing film styles, especially in the realm of cinematography and production design.

I like Alien, though it's not my favourite of the franchise. I like aspects of Legend as it embodies classic fantasy like no other film, and has one of the coolest bad guys ever realised. And I like some of Gladiator though the fast shutter-speed stylisation has been an outrageous travesty visited upon far too many action films since, including, it appears, Scott and Crowe's next, Robin Hood.

But the one of his films that I have never liked is arguably his most popular amongst the fans: Blade Runner. Even after having re-watched it recently with fresh eyes, the dislike has only been compounded.

An interesting idea - Futuristic Detective Noir based on the Philip K Dick story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which I've never read. You can certainly play around with that concept a lot.

For some reason, a lot of Philip K Dick stories have been made into movies. I can't see why, as the resulting films have not been very appealing, in my opinion, and have apparently been adapted so heavily they may as well have been original concepts in the first place.

The usual structure for a Detective Noir is for someone to come to Sam Spade with a potential crime that needs investigating, he shadows a few people, slips some money to an informant or two, until he gets a lead and a few clues to piece together, solving the crime and catching the bad guy. Much adventure and witty repartee ensues.

None of that happens in Blade Runner.

Deckard is hired to retrieve robots gone rogue, called Replicants because they are indistinguishable from humans unless analysed with special testing equipment. He is handed a lead, which he follows doggedly, and ends up thrown in amongst a seedy and dangerous underworld. The replicants are sent against him, and he deals with them inadequately and awkwardly, and whenever he loses a thread, he is put right back on track again by other people.

Not once does Deckard solve a clue. Not once does he follow a lead that wasn't handed to him without prompting. Not once does he defeat a Replicant with skill. There are sequences lasting many minutes with no talking of any kind. And the last Replicant that comes up against him gives up and dies voluntarily, after spouting prosaic memories that are likely implanted.

And then Deckard runs away from this dangerous exhaustingly damp world with an unpleasant woman.

Stylistically the movie is astonishing, and I think that's what a lot of its fans really like about it. If they first saw it when young, or when it had first come out, which was at a time when production design on this scale and realism had never been executed before, they can't separate their initial experience of it with an objective assessment.

But the story has to hold up, and it really doesn't. It's meandering, with no conclusions, some really unlikely coincidences, and a limp ending of no significance, though it tries very hard to sound like it has. Deckard is pushed and pulled around to every single plot point, with no self-motivation whatsoever. The main bad guy who is orchestrating it all is such an extreme stereotype you can't take him seriously, and seems to be at once both getting in Deckard's way, while also guiding him to the Replicants at every step. The Replicants are violent towards Deckard because they want to live and be free, and yet in the end don't seem to care about living at all.

It's an awful way to structure a film. Looking cool isn't enough to save it. It doesn't deserve the fanboy support it gets, with such fundamental flaws throughout.

This isn't a case of differing tastes, this is a bad film, clumsily masked by dazzling visuals.

I am quite disappointed.

It Ought To Be Simple. Why Is It Complicated?

I am finishing up the last touches on a website. In the same way that the most dangerous time to be on a return journey is a few miles from home, the most fiddly time to be finishing a website is in the last few steps. It's when things that you had anticipated to be the simplest and quickest end up taking the longest and are the most maddeningly convoluted.

Why are some methods to do things so absurdly complicated? Why can't everything be elegant and simple and just work straight out of the box?

Early on in my computer career, when the only access to a computer of any significance that I had was to my flatmate's Commodore Amiga 500, I marvelled at the wonderful GUI of its Operating System. Things worked really smoothly, were arranged logically, and were simple for beginners to grasp. It was leaps ahead of what Windows users were battling with, in Win3.1, and was somewhat more advanced than what I had seen in Apple Macintoshes of the time.

But all of that elegance was marred by its disk drive, that constantly whirred and clicked whenever it was empty. It was intended to be an elegant system to recognise when a disk was inside, and it could instantly activate. But the method was clunky at best, with it endlessly circling, waiting, and checking, a soft but everpresent "clunk" every ten seconds. The solution was to always have a disk in, blank if necessary.

A stupid design fault on an otherwise excellent computer. I can only imagine that the Amiga's death was due to more dumb decision-making of that ilk.

After Windows 95 came along, competing more directly with Apple's newer OS, things started to happen, as now using a computer was tangibly logical, instead of mind bendingly complicated. Except a few of my friends at that time didn't want to travel the evil Microsoft or expensive Apple route, and instead clung to the free and kludged together Linux avenue.

Linux, at that time, (not so long ago) was for Nerds only. And I don't mean afficionados and geeks, I mean full on 200% NERDS who obsess over minuscule ephemera as if they actually mattered to the world at large, instead of the easily dismissed nonsense it is.

The Linux Nerds like to use software that they have to "compile" rather than install. That is, they have to add each small part of the program, in pieces, with text commands to get them to work together. They come with no instructions on how to do that, or documentation on how to use the application after it's ready, and no help files should it fail, or any assistance at all. You have to nut everything out yourself, on your own, and if there is a single ounce of incompatibility with any of your other apps or hardware, then it will refuse to work at all, with no explanation.

Compare that with an application with an installer and drivers and a documentation PDF, pretty much the standard for current software on Windows and Macs.

Needlessly complicated, versus sweetly elegant. For some reason, there has to be years of absurd complication and mystifying messiness before someone swoops in and tidies it all up to work effectively and smoothly at long last.

The point of this post is that, on this website I am finishing up, I am trying to find a way to add audio files to the posts so that they come readily setup with a player, requiring no extra work for my client than "choose file, choose place it appears in post, save". I am happy to deal with complications to get a file on my blog (and what a ridiculously messy business it is to add images to Blogger), but for the average user those kinds of steps are needlessly complicated. The method I have employed to achieve this elegant solution involves four third-party plugins; two paragraphs of careful step by step instruction; and two additional text editing steps nobody ought to have to do, and which can easily go wrong, messing up the whole procedure.

It's utter madness that it is so needlessly complicated.

This is coupled with no way for her to upload a gallery of images in one click, no way for her to add a video clip without six lines of javascript or DHTML embed code that she would have to edit by hand each time, and no way to add searchable tag clouds without an expensive separate plugin I will have to purchase.

These kinds of standard, simple, default features are instead unavailable or overly complicated.

Whatever happened to elegance?

You Can Dance If You Want To

I was having a quiet evening in (just like 99.9% of all my other evenings) randomly leaping through YouTube, when I stumbled across the music video for the 80s one hit wonder Safety Dance by "Men Without Hats". Famous for its incomprehensible nonsense, coupled with a weirdly catchy tune, it was the band's only success, and is still popular amongst the nostalgic. And to match up the weirdness, the video is equally incomprehensible.

It begins with a man, Ivan Doroschuk, in pseudo-peasant dress skipping through a field, with a diminutive court jester (played by actor Mike Edmonds, who is great in the TV show Maid Marian and her Merry Men) when they spot a landmark and head off towards it. They meet up with an enthusiastic girl who is skipping along in her own way, where they reach a crossroads, and randomly choose a direction.

It takes them into a village, where they wait by a gate while continuing to dance, and are soon joined by locals and Morris Dancers in a parade down the main street, over a bridge, until they reach a farmyard where they have a May Day festival.

The end.

Pointless, but infectious, fun.

The "safety" dance, incidentally, is when you make an "S" shape with your arms, which they do a few times through the video. S for Safety, presumably.

Anyway, it occurred to me that I could probably find most of those locations in Google Maps.

Luckily Wikipedia solved half my initial obstacles by mentioning the exact village where it was filmed, called West Kington, in Wiltshire, in the UK. And amazingly it's barely changed in the intervening 25 years or so since it was filmed. There seems to be a commitment to preserve the old-timey feel of a lot of country villages in the UK, maintaining their chocolate box appeal for tourists and historians.

I present to you now a few comparison shots of the location, the map of which you can find in Google Maps here.

The sequence was filmed in two separate locations, so there's a subtle break in continuity, but that's not unusual in any kind of filming. In this case, the two locations are barely a mile apart from each other.





The field is still there, but they filmed it away from the roadside, so the Street View camera doesn't get the same angle. But after much searching (see next shot) I know this is the exact field, and the stone wall in the foreground of the video is that seen at upper left in the lower streetview pic. It is now overgrown with bracken.

You can see on this map the wall that leads away from the road, from the north to the south, towards the path. This matches the continuity of the video, where the characters walk through the field, to the corner of the wall, and then run down to the path.



I struggled to find this location, as the road is not a main one, and could have been private, where Street View rarely goes. I searched for the distinctive building on the hilltop. After matching up fields, pylons, buildings, and road divisions, I found the exact spot. And as you can see, it has barely changed at all.

And even more amazing, you see the log on the patch of grass in the music video? Well, it's still there! It's just been rolled a few metres away.

Then the sequence leaps to the village, and continuity is tight here. They start by skipping down the lane, west to east, past a house, up to a gate at the junction where the villagers cross a bridge, and straight into a farmyard.



This lane was a challenge, as there are three that radiate out from the village, and more beyond, so I had to look at each of them before determining which one it was. You can see the house behind them is the same, and the power pole to the left of shot also matches (a new pole, but in the same spot), with the shed behind the girl.



The girl then dances effusively in front of a couple of houses, which are distinctively recognisable by the fence palings and a red letterbox at the gate. Both remain unchanged.



The gate is just off the centre of the village, at the junction of three roads, a lot closer than the video implies. Though there are some considerable differences, and a mismatch due to the lenses used, you can recognise the same power poles in the field behind the gate.

Note the girl and Ivan (the lead singer) are each doing the "Safety Dance" "S" move.



The wide shot of the village bridge is deceptive. It's filmed in the middle of the field quite a distance behind the gate, and not as a POV from the gate. I couldn't find a matching angle in Street View, but you can see that there are vines on the main building just right of centre in the video shot, and also left of centre in the Street View angle, which are barely unchanged after 25 years. What's up with that?

In case you are confused by the different angles, if you look at the video frame, they are dancing on the bridge, marching from right to left. Whereas in the Street View shot, they would be coming towards us, with the bridge in the midground.





And finally a few metres down the road is a farm, with a large open courtyard, where they set up the fairground for the big dance finale. You can recognise the tractor shed and the long building as the most obvious matching features, though there are some minor alterations like new roof tiles and different paint jobs.

It was quite fun to go through it and confirm the locations, especially as it's such a beautiful, charming area. Whenever I found a match I got a thrill of recognition.

I am such a nerd.

Sieze The Day! Tomorrow. Or maybe next week sometime. July at the latest.

I suck.

Action - Reaction

I have been on the internet for a long time. I started way back in 1995, and before that a friend of mine had a BBS Bulletin Board of his own that he had been running for around three or four years, so I have been aware of the social side of the net for nearly two decades.

The biggest problem with posting your comments online is the lack of the context that shows your intent. It's very hard to tell the difference between sarcasm, jokes, dismissive comments, and serious argument. The creation of emoticons help to a degree, but they aren't used as often as they used to be, and tend to be misused. They're easy to forget to use, and easy to overlook.

I have recently joined Twitter. I hadn't planned to, I tend to resist most fads that appear for their own sake and don't have a useful purpose. In this case I thought maybe I could improve my chances of finding some casual work, but it turns out Twitter probably isn't the place for that. However, I've been suckered into its charming simplicity, and will probably hang around on it for a while.

The other day I signed up for Facebook. Even though that has a far more likely chance of garnering me some work, so far it's been a horrible experience, an onslaught of crap that has to be filtered through by hand. I would be surprised if I stay around on that monstrosity for too much longer.

I have realised something about Twitter's limited approach that is both in its favour and potentially its worst problem. Not only does it come with all the trappings of other online conversation, i.e. that it is public, and it invites reactionary responses; it also has the added limitation of only 140 characters per message.

This forces you to reduce your wording, which can be seen as a blessing, simplifying and clarifying your point to its most basic, as long as you don't write in "txt-spk". But it also means there's no room for context. Anything you write will look like a statement, because you miss out emoticons, and can't guarantee anybody has seen the wider context of your previous or next tweets.

As I follow a lot of celebrities I admire, many of whom are comedians, they will often post something that's obviously humour. Obvious to me, at least, but apparently not to some of their followers. This surprises me, as surely they realise that following a popular comedian will mean they'd get jokey posts from time to time.

So here's my advice to Twitter followers: when someone posts something sarcastic about a hot topic, like politics or a natural disaster or current gossip, do not post a negative reaction. It was almost certainly meant as a joke, but even if it's not: if you agree with it, post a response; but if you disagree, say nothing.

The last thing you want to do is a) look like an idiot for assuming a joke post is real opinion; b) say something you'll regret; or c) put that celebrity off Twitter entirely, to the point where they abandon it, so we all miss out.

I have been one of those people who react angrily to something before thinking. I've done some foolish ranting over things I don't understand and end up looking like an idiot. I even posted something just a few weeks ago about ADR that seemed to rile up a few people in that part of the industry, though I think they misinterpreted my point.

It's easy to make people angry, and it's easy to misinterpret. Think twice. Don't ever post in anger. It would save everyone a lot of grief if you take a few steps back, some deep breaths, and either abandon your plan, or write more thoughtfully.

Is There A Draft In Here?

This won't be a long post. I don't want to talk too much about the new screenplay in case I jinx myself into not ever finishing it, just like so many attempts that have gone before.

But I have completed the storyline, to at least a level that I feel can now be attacked and shaped into a first draft script, so have begun the task of writing it.

Its current working title, after floating many different options, is "ShadowGlass".

Assembling the story elements was an interesting development. I had a few sequences in mind when I first came up with the story, and wanted to keep those intact as much as possible. There's often a risk of losing those initial elements after you throw in all the important sub-strata to flesh a story out to completion.

For example, the story may have been inspired by a scene where the protagonist has an argument with a character over something that has a really funny line in it, and you love that idea so much you build your entire plot around that. Then you see holes and gaps that need filling in, so as you flesh those out, other elements start to dominate, until finally after a lot of juggling it all falls into a decent script.

And then you realise there's no place for that initial scene that had the funny line; No matter how hard you try, you can't fit it in anymore.

Well I didn't want that to happen, so tried hard to keep the main elements as close to my initial idea as possible. I did need to find new motivations for some of the characters, but once I found those motivations, they actually added new threads that I could follow, which helped support and strengthen the story, including a whole new scene at the climax, so that was a particularly fortuitous idea.

The first draft is the most important, but also the least precious. The idea is to just write and write and write it all out, no matter how unwieldy or convoluted or boring any given scene may be to read. It will be dry, and perfunctory, and overrun with clichés, and possibly be an absurd load of nonsense.

But then once you have that all on (virtual) paper you have something to edit. The second draft is where characters can develop. By the last scenes in the first draft, you know your characters pretty well, and understand what they are doing, so you can now go back to their earlier scenes and rewrite their dialogue and actions to be more consistent and fulfil their motivations.

The second draft is also where you can see where some scenes are unnecessary, or can be combined into one, or are being too heavy handed with their message, so need to be rearranged or cut or otherwise tweaked to flow. Structure and pace is as important as character.

Third drafts are where you play with the dialogue to make it sparkle, to tighten it so the pacing is right for each sequence, and make it readable. That can often be the draft that you would send around to get reactions or even sell, depending on your skills.

You'd likely get feedback to adjust some things, and they may be small, but they may be big, in which case a fourth or fifth draft may be on the cards. By then you know the story and characters so well, it's usually a simple job to make those adjustments without it negatively affecting what's already firmly in place.

Anyway... I'm not there yet, I'm on page 10 of what will be a 100 page script. Ask me how I'm going after a couple of weeks have passed.

Sounds Different

I posted a query on a messageboard about something, but after some discussion where they answered a question I wasn't asking, I have come to realise there may not actually be an answer.

I thought I would talk about it here, so I can clarify some things in my own head, and cover a little bit of technological development history at the same time.

The saying goes that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. The key word in that phrase is "better". Not to invent something out of whole cloth, but to improve what is already out there so it does it more efficiently, perhaps more humanely, and probably more cheaply, but gets better results.

When George Lucas looked at the way visual effects and film editing were done (which was optically, physically, in a linear, laborious way), he knew that it was time for improvement. Somehow he recognised that the technology was available, or coming very soon, to make considerable improvements to workflow, which would increase productivity, reduce frustration with limitations, and ultimately lead to a new way.

He, or rather technicians within the company he headed, invented EditDroid, a Non-Linear Digital Editing system that allowed editors to move clips and frames around the timeline in whichever combination they wanted, quickly, immediately, and without chopping up the physical film (with every cut of a strip of film, you lose at least two frames, one from each end of the splice). This system eventually evolved into what became Avid, the industry standard for editing. Few film editors still cut physical film anymore, and it's a rare one who doesn't use Avid as their NLE editor of choice. There are also low budget off-the-shelf amateur NLE applications, that borrow some of what Avid pioneered, though they have approached it from the digital video camera side, so have distinct variations in interface and methodology. But effectively, it was Lucas's needs to adjust the status quo that set a new standard and forever changed the way we edit film and TV.

James Cameron, in the same industry, is another pioneer who recognises when things are being done inefficiently and require fundamental improvements. He is excellent not only at motivating changes, but pinpointing the exact areas where it's failing, and even has insightful suggestions on how to fix them.

The reason why 3D worked so well for Avatar was because he knew where it was going wrong, and that he had the technical expertise to adjust it so it worked. And he saw where motion capture was consistently tripping up, and was familiar enough with visual effects and camera technology to provide solutions that would address a lot of its main problem areas. I'm sure he has many more planned improvements for his future films, especially as all of them undoubtedly will be 3D and use motion capture. He used the same uncanny skills in bringing forth the liquid metal T-1000 into Terminator 2, and the pioneering of motion capture characters for wide shots of the Titanic.

This kind of innovation has been rare, but effective. To fundamentally change how everyone does things is a huge undertaking, but it has to be done, or we will remain stagnant, and trapped in an ever-increasingly limited pocket as other technologies pass us by.

So if digital editing and digital visual effects can have such a transformation of technology, the next step has to be with digital audio.

I think there are flaws in the current standard of digital audio editing and manipulation that are being overlooked, overshadowed if you like by the visual, and it is time for them to be addressed.

Here's my problem. When filming takes place on location, the sound is always at risk of being interrupted by real world interference, such as traffic, wind and weather, creaky floorboards, aeroplanes, and a hundred thousand other things. I once was trying to film something so went hunting for a quiet spot out of the way where nobody was going to interfere, and as soon as I clicked "Record" a big truck pulled up, playing its radio really loud, tuned to Salsa music. It was absurd.

So the answer to that, often unavoidable, problem is to record the audio again later, and the most popular way is in a soundproof recording studio. This is called Looping, or ADR, which stands for Automatic Dialogue Replacement (or some think it's Additional Dialogue Recording; they're wrong, but whatever).

The problem with ADR is that in a real location, there's an open air quality that is distinct and unique. The sound bounces off nothing but the ground, or a wall that is a particular distance away, adjacent to another wall that is made of a specific wood of a particular thickness, and there's one (or five or two hundred) people nearby all wearing clothing giving a unique dampening quality, etc. It never ends what makes not only the location, but the way the sound reverberates and is recorded, unique. Even the brand of boom microphone can make a difference. So when they go back into the studio and record the ADR, it does not sound the same as the live location. It instead sounds like a carefully dampened soundproof booth.

Actors are getting increasingly adept at re-creating the exact phrasing and timing for matching their dialogue, so I cannot lay the blame on them. But the dialogue audio editing needs a serious shake-up, because there's no excuse for the shoddy mismatching of audio quality between location and ADR anymore.

We have recording equipment of astonishing quality, and unbelievable digital manipulation tools with unparalleled fine tuning controls. Surely they can analyse waveforms and re-create the effects. After hundreds of tests, they should be able to put together a thousand macros and new filters to make the ADR audio sound the same as the surrounding audio.

What is holding them back? Why are they stuck with such useless software that cannot achieve what, in my mind, is simply manoeuvring waveform peaks and troughs to be anything we want?

If we can have pixel control of the visual image, then surely we can have similar fine control of audio waveforms.

The technology is still stuck in an analogue mode of thinking, and it needs a kick up the arse to break free, a whole new approach, rebuilt from the ground up, to finally see the infinite possibility it has at its disposal.

No more limitations!

I've Started, So I'll Finish

I am very good at starting things and then never finishing them. I know I am not alone in this skill, but it is frustrating how many good ideas I begin and then abandon, even though they would probably be really brilliant if they'd been completed, maybe even fortune-inducingly good.

Since completing my first screenplay, I've been aching to write another. Each time I think I have a good idea, and it will thrill me to start on it, I get lost about halfway through and interest starts to wane. This is a bad thing on many levels, not least of which is if I ever want to dabble in it as a career, not motivating myself enough to finish it is not encouraging for prospective Agents or Producers. But then, if I had time and money as part of my motivation, provided by said Producers, I'd be sure to make it a priority and do a better job of it.

But that's a poor excuse for my appalling level of non-completion. My motivation should lie in the strength of the story, and the entertainment I get from creating the characters and sending them on their adventure. Being discouraged at a plot hole is no way to operate. I really have to kick myself into gear if I want to be a writer, even on an amateur level.

When I grew up in the 80s, a series of movies for young teenagers came out with a similar structure and setting. Not the Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink series, though they were certainly significant for many. I am instead referring to the Fantasy/Science Fiction movies where young kids in a small town go on a fantastic adventure, with no interference from adults except as potential enemies. Goonies, Gremlins, E.T., Explorers, Back to the Future, Time Bandits, etc.

But films like that just aren't made any more, and it's a shame. The fantasy films of today are all based on book series. I can understand how Harry Potter might influence a few incidental releases, but every single one, bar the occasional unique animated film? What's going on with that?

I want to write a film like I remember from the 80s. With kids having adventures, involving a small fantasy element, but with only a localised threat to contend with. None of this "Saving the World" nonsense. Just saving their own lives or their neighbourhood is enough of a challenge for most kids, so just leave it at that.

So while I was watching a DVD of one of the recent kids movies, inevitably based on a book series, I wondered if I could come up with even just an original concept that would fit my wishes. Could I come up with a story with a solid beginning, middle, and end, with all the potential for comedy, thrills, and threats, plus a few fantasy elements, something original, that has not been done in a film before?

And rather surprisingly, I thought of one. As I considered each individual element I wanted to include, it all began to fall into place remarkably quickly. I was so excited, I started to write it all down.

So far I have about 60% of the main plot, but the other 40% has to be sorted out before I can begin the script writing itself. Crucial elements aren't yet determined. But as I piece together what I do have, I can see plenty of opportunities for fun sequences, both action and comedic, which hopefully will only strengthen the plot, and lead to ideas to fill in the crucial blanks.

I am so excited by this story, and its originality, that I feel as giddy as I did when I first started putting together my first screenplay, Pegasus Rampant, though I had the bonus of being in recovery mode from my wisdom teeth surgery, giving me time to seriously concentrate on one thing. Nevertheless, it feels very much like I'm in a similar place for this project, so I hope I can maintain that enthusiasm and follow through to a finished screenplay, even if only a first draft. I really want to complete this one, because if it works it will serve as an excellent second example of what I'm capable of.

An interesting thing happened when I was looking through the Thesaurus for some keywords to create a title from. I stumbled on another word, not appropriate for this film, but perfect for another story idea, a short film in fact. So I took the opportunity to scribble down some notes on that idea too. I may revisit that one when discussing our next big project, whatever and whenever that may be.

I Lament The Loss Of Beige

I am a night owl. That is, I prefer to work in the afternoon and evenings and into the night. I do not like getting up early, even though that is a very pleasant part of a day.

This means I tend to work when it's dark outside, and it goes further, in that I prefer to work with the lights out. I will probably have the TV on, which is four or so metres away from me, and my desk will be illuminated by the LCD monitor, but otherwise it will be completely dark, just the way I like it. I don't even have a lamp.

In the days of CRT monitors, the illumination afforded by the screen was enough to let me see everything on my desk before me. It helped that all the items I use are in a lighter tone, beige or grey. But two things have changed in computing that has caused me some bother.

LCD screens no longer have illumination power. They light themselves up, but as for my desk, I can barely see my own fingers.

And computer peripherals have foregone beige entirely, and are all almost exclusively black.

So with no light, and a dark keyboard, I cannot see what I am typing (Yes, I am a two finger typist who still needs to look at his keyboard to type. I am far from alone in this, so get over it).

This has not been a huge bother to me, because I still possess my favourite keyboard, a quiet cheapie I got from Dick Smith that has held me in good stead these past ten or more years. I even remember which store I bought it at. And it is beige, so is a light enough tone to be seen when barely illuminated.

But my other computer, the one I use for my 3D Graphics work, has a black keyboard. Not only is it impossible for me to read the keys in the darkness, but the arrangement of keys is slightly different to my other one, which I am much more familiar with after ten years of constant use, so I often hit the wrong key or have to go hunting at close quarters to find my way. Believe me, hitting "Delete" when you wanted "Page Up" is not a fun mistake to make.

And worse still, my favourite keyboard model is now discontinued. There are other beige or silver keyboards here and there, but with a different arrangement of keys, and there are properly arranged keyboards out there, however they are all black, at least so far as I can find locally.

I remain vigilant, and if I ever stumble upon another keyboard of the right colour and key situation I will pounce on it. But I fear it may be a long time before beige ever comes back into style.

Gosh Darn It!

So about six months ago I messed up with my blog design by accidentally saving over it with a template, completely losing everything I had tweaked it into. Took me four hours to get it back into shape.

Today I decided I would back up the design so I wouldn't make the mistake of doing that again, and had a look around for the link I knew was available to save my template. And there I found a button that said "Save Template".

Did it have an explanation next to it? No.

Did it have a warning after clicking on it? No.

What did it do? IT CHANGED MY TEMPLATE TO THE DEFAULT.

Turns out, the button should actually be labelled "Save OVER My Template".

Fuck shit damn.

So I spent two hours restoring it to something close to what I had before, found the real link that actually backs up my template, and now I have it sorted. Except I'll probably tweak it as I discover things that just don't sit right and need a-fixin'.

House of God

Since beginning modelling in 3D with any earnest, i.e. after I had gotten over the initial stumbling blocks of figuring out how the hell I can make all the myriad of options available to me in Lightwave actually do what I want, there have been a few things that have been near the top of my "want to try making" list.

I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to model very cool, and sometimes intricate, things for various projects, such as a steam locomotive, an old truck, a jet fighter plane, and an Imperial Shuttle. I have learned new modelling techniques, how to texture and light things to be as realistic as possible, and what most of the buttons in the menus actually do.

But there are a few things that I have yet to try my hand at, those that I plan to make, one day, when I have some time to spare. These include a steampunk airship, an accurate mediaeval castle, and a fully articulated robot.

But top of the list has always been to do a cathedral.

Cathedrals are arguably the most spectacularly beautiful examples of architecture in mankind's history, and personally are about the only thing I allow the Catholic Church to have gotten right. With huge towers, embellished with spires, and long vaulted halls supported by tall flying buttresses, and a multicoloured rosette window, they are works of art like no other.

There are thousands of cathedrals worldwide, of various designs, but they all have a standard layout they conform to. After all, if they didn't adhere to certain architectural consistencies they'd just be churches or chapels. But these are cathedrals, the grandest and most impressive of the faith-related buildings, and they have a job to do. Which mostly seems to be as tourist attractions.

One cathedral I was particularly impressed by is St Mary's in Sydney. I had a look around inside and out, and was in awe of its scale. Previously all the cathedrals I had visited had been comparatively small, though still with all the prerequisite features. The cathedral I have decided to base my CG model loosely on was randomly chosen from pics online, but turns out to be one based in Washington DC, called the National Cathedral. However, I am taking some liberties, and fudging the design when it's faster and easier to cut corners.

The interesting thing about assembling the model is how intricate and detailed it looks, but really it's very repetitious, with fancy delicate frilly bits and bold statement parts, all being repeated multiple times, sometimes hundreds of times, throughout the design. That means I need only model one spire, and then can copy and paste it 24 times to flesh out the tower details.

The bad things about this approach include that the repetition can sometimes look obvious; and that the high level of detail slows down the computer display, making adding each new level of detail slower and longer.

But in the end it will be worth it.

Alessandra, Magda, Caprica

Another desktop wallpaper, this time of two of the stars of the new show Caprica, which is the prequel series for Battlestar Galactica, covering the gestation of the Cylons.

On the left there is Alessandra Torresani, who plays Zoe Graystone, who dies in the first episode, but her video game avatar lives on inside the body of a robot; and on the right is Magda Apanowicz, who plays Lacy Rand, Zoe's best friend who was unwittingly caught up in the terrorist act that Zoe was killed during.

The original pic is a promo image for the show, but was in portrait orientation. I cut them out of the background, which was a wall of the set from the show, and layered in my own gradients to blend it into the landscape-oriented blank space to the right of the image. Then I just added in the title and their names.

The reason I chose this image is because Magda Apanowicz played my favourite character in the show Kyle XY, and after it was cancelled I was immediately interested in what she was going to do next.

It occurred to me as I was putting this pic together that Magda would be ideal to play Wren in Pegasus Rampant. If it were ever to get made (and it won't, this I know) she would be the kind of actress Wren would have to be played by: the tomboy-next-door.

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Socialising Without Meeting People

I value my solitude. I like the quiet, insular, solitary life I have made for myself. Sometimes I miss a little bit of interaction with others, but I could happily stay indoors and never meet another living soul for days at a time, with no ill effects.

Eventually I know I need to get out there and talk to someone, it's unavoidable, but I try to keep it minimal, enough to keep me happy, and then I can get back into my solitude again.

I don't even like talking on phones. The awkward pauses, the lack of a face to gauge expressions and intent, the crappy reception quality, the inability to do anything else at the same time without it being seriously inconvenient.

Link: 10 Reasons to Avoid Talking on the Phone

That's why I like email as a way to interact instead - it gives me the time to say things clearly, rewrite, rearrange, attach images or links, and generally express myself comfortably. Unfortunately, most of the people I email are really bad at responding to them at all, let alone to every point I need a response about. Maybe three of my regular correspondents give me good emails in return, the rest are horrible at it. Or they can't spell, which also gets on my nerves sometimes.

It seems email is not going to be the primary choice for communication in the future, like I would have expected. For one thing, mobile phones are more prevalent than they ought to be, and still dominate as the method of choice to talk to others. Much to my annoyance.

I do like to use instant messaging. Back in the late 90s, I joined up to ICQ and have been using that ever since. It was really big and popular, at the time, and I "met" a lot of people, some of whom became great friends. However, Instant Messaging has taken a tumble, replaced by SMS texting and Twitter.

I also regularly post on discussion forums, but it's rare to establish a decent community of regulars that way. You'll make friends, perhaps, or at least acquaintances, but generally it's just a big miasma of faceless names, each easily mistaken for another, and also more prone to serious confrontational arguments. This is where flame wars began, and sometimes they can be so serious the forums have to be shut down entirely.

The impending arrival of the live version of Google Wave may make some impact on online communication, as it seems to be a way to concatenate all existing forms of chat into one system with ultimate adaptability and control over how you involve others. But I don't think it's social media as much as corporate. It behaves more like a chat room or virtual meeting, but using existing, recognisable methods like email and instant messaging to interactively communicate with large groups, so it will be perfect for meetings, or discussions, but not so good as a social networking tool.

The two biggest social networking and communication tools currently in action, though, are Twitter and Facebook. I have not joined either, but the world and everyone in it is desperate to get me to be a part of both. And I am wondering if my reluctance to join is justified, and if I should give up on my stubborn refusal, as there may be some small benefits.

I still hesitate.

Every new buzzword widget that gets put out there tries to be the next big thing, and I am always wary. I have seen too many of them burn up and die, usually very soon after ignition, or more likely just after someone like me joins them at long last only to see they missed its peak and it is about to tumble into the abyss of forgotten nothingness.

I am lucky in that has never been me, but other people, though I have witnessed it happen. I can usually predict the inevitable failures with 80% accuracy, so stay away from them. MySpace, for example, I could see would inevitably fall by the wayside. It's no longer the phenomenon it once was, mostly brought on by its horrendously revolting interface and unacceptably bad HTML.

Facebook, on the other hand, was pretty, and gentle on the eyes, and had some actual substance behind its façade. Though I haven't joined it, I at least saw that it had a better future ahead of it. Except, as so often happens, they've started to change some of the fundamentals, and there are rumbles amongst the faithful. If they don't fix some of these issues soon, it could all collapse.

Facebook's singular purpose seems to be to hook up with long lost friends and catch up on what they're all doing with their lives, maybe renew friendships, or make new ones through a chain of "people who know people". I can't see that being very appealing. I moved to Australia to get away from my old life, I don't want to expose myself to them all again. It's almost intrusive. But having said that, there are some friends I truly miss, and wish I could hang out with them again, or at least touch base. I am almost tempted.

Twitter seems to be a way for strangers to talk nonsense, and hopefully occasionally one of them will say something profound with their 140 characters and they'll become a flash-in-the-pan phenomenon for 15 minutes, which might lead to a book deal and an appearance on The View with Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. I am not a very profound person, especially in 140 characters. My humour is usually absurd or esoteric, my contributions minor and inconsequential. I am a quiet achiever, and don't usually say much in a conversation between more than three people, though I am absorbing everything. I'm not sure if I'd involve myself much.

However. My life is currently in a state of flux. I am running out of money, so I need work - website designs, visual effects, or even writing if I am lucky. Where do I find the people who can help me get those kinds of jobs?

It seems to me I need to network. Socially.

Aha.

Maybe I should join them after all; maybe that's where I'll find my next step in my working and social life that I need to survive.

I think I may have succumbed. But hopefully it's for the right reasons.

Piece By Piece

I made another babe-related wallpaper today, and I thought I'd show how I made it.

To look at it, I hope that you'd think it was a genuine untouched photo. That's certainly my plan most of the time. Whenever I make a matte painting, I try to get it as seamless as I can, so it's sort of become my default approach, though I don't always achieve it (I am notorious for cutting corners and cheating).

So I started with this original photo of actress Missy Peregrym (from the TV show Reaper, and a brief role on Heroes). If you look her up on Google Images, this is the pic you'll find most often.

But there's a minor problem with adapting it directly into a wallpaper - it's in a profile orientation; that is, it's taller than it is wide. I could crop it to fit, which I did try, but it cut off too much of her lower half, which was a great shame; plus, she's so centralised in the framing, it was not as nice a composition.

I took the highest resolution copy of it I could find, kept it full length, and scaled it to the vertical height of my monitor, which is 1050 pixels. Then I expanded the width to 1680px, leaving a huge block of empty space to the right.

There was a second pic I found online, from the same photo shoot, which had a little more of the door behind her, so I knew I could match that up if I distorted it to align the perspective. This filled up about a third of the empty space, but still left a lot more to fill. So I took that same pic, flipped it, and, after more distorting, joined it up like a mirror image. An overlap and a soft edged eraser blended the mismatched edges.

Because simply flipping didn't match exactly, I extended the edges of the panels with the clone stamp tool, maintaining their angle. Then I deleted the light on the wall, eliminating the obvious repetition, and mixed in a dark gradient to keep the corner in shadow. That not only drew the eye to the lighter part of the image, where Missy is standing, but also helped hide the fact that there's no door handle. I bet you didn't notice that.

I removed the word that was painted on the door, and added Missy's name there instead.

But a couple of days later I was looking at it again and I realised a couple of things. One is it had a horrible green tint to the image, presumably as a stylistic choice. I am red-green colour blind so it wasn't as obvious to me as it might have been to others. I have adjusted the tint back to a warmer red.

Then the other thing I did was changed the opposing wall. As it stood, it looked like a door at the end of a narrow corridor, but I think it was more likely to have been a corner of a larger room, so I took the rail and skewed it to be straight, and re-textured the wall to remove the corner-ish nature to it, so now it looked like the room was bigger.

And that's how I did it.

It was a relatively easy pic to put together, too. Some that I have done in the past have been ten times more complex than that. Always fun, though.

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Unjust Criticism

Avatar has ticked over to be the biggest box-office hit in the history of film, beating James Cameron's previous movie, Titanic, and in a faster timeframe. Now, despite its achievement being trumpeted far and wide, box office take is an unfair measurement, because many other factors helped it to reach this milestone.

Firstly, this number is based on money earned, and not ticket sales; it doesn't accurately compare how many people have actually watched the films. Inflation of ticket prices, for one thing, make a difference. Plus, the ticket prices for 3D showings are higher than 2D, so compared to Titanic, for example, the 3D tickets in 2010 cost nearly twice as much as regular 2D tickets did in 1997.

The novelty of 3D is also a drawcard. Many people, both established fans and newcomers, are drawn to Avatar's cunning use of 3D to enhance the experience, rather than dazzle like a flashy gimmick, and those who have not gone to a 3D film have been enticed into letting Avatar be their introduction to it. More 3D showings coupled with it requiring more expensive tickets, is a potent combination.

On top of that is the fact that Avatar was released worldwide at the same time, a rarity now but virtually unheard of in pre-1995, so it has been less impacted by piracy, and is lucky enough to capitalise on the immediacy of online buzz and promotion. So, though it certainly does have a role to play in the machinations of movie production, you and I can't judge its success just on box office income.

Avatar has its fair share of critics, though. They tend to pick on its simplistic storyline, borrowed as it is from many films of the past, such as Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, Ferngully, and even The Smurfs.

They claim it has borrowed liberally from standard tropes, reducing it to a simplistic retelling of a familiar, and flawed, tale. "The Noble Savage" trope is the one I see mentioned most often, which is the assumption that a primitive culture, with its connection and reverence to nature, is inherently good and honourable, as opposed to the cruel and selfish nature of "civilised" man.

The problem with that is the movie clearly shows that the Na'vi have a literal link to Eywa (Gaia), through a biological connector that all the native creatures possess, which they use to join their body and mind to each other. Plus the planet has a literal central nervous system, actually physically located in itself. They do have a connection with Nature, and there it makes sense for them to be more respectful towards it.

Other tropes include the weapon- and destruction-mad military leader, the corrupt corporate executive, the turncoat within the ranks, and, most obvious of all, the interloper who falls in love with the Chief's daughter. But every story has its tropes. They say there are only a few storylines anyway, and every story ever told takes elements from those and twists them into something new.

James Cameron had a few agendas he was trying to fulfil. First and foremost, he had a feast of visuals he wanted to showcase. The easiest way to do that is to have a simple, and not a complex, storyline to let us explore the world as we watch. Second, he had new technology he wanted to play with, and utilise as fully as he could. He managed to do that by having 75% of the story take place in Pandora's jungles, where all the characters are virtual CGI creations. And, by definition, the Na'vi lead simple lives, and therefore have simple characterisations.

And he was also trying to entertain. There's a fine line between complex and complicated. In the past decade, there have been only three movie series that have seriously contended the Titanic throne of success. They are The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harry Potter.

Lord of the Rings had the toughest job, in having to take a long and multi-layered storyline, revered amongst nerds everywhere, and reduce it down to nine hours of solid entertainment. This required heavy excision, rearrangement, and simplification.

Harry Potter was based on simple storylines, but very very long books, so had to take out huge swathes of subplot to keep them down to watchable lengths.

Both of those plot-altering decisions were lambasted by purists and nerds who have too much time on their hands. And yet, despite this: box-office slam-dunk blockbusters, every man jack of them.

But Pirates of the Caribbean had almost an open canvas, and used that as an opportunity to prove that complexity can have a place in a fun fantasy adventure, if you want. This was not the best thing it could have done, as the last of the trilogy was generally considered the lesser, simply because its complex characters and storyline confused and irritated too many (Though I do not count myself among them, as I absolutely loved it, especially after watching it repeatedly on DVD where the plot starts to straighten itself out more).

What does that, and Avatar's success, prove? That simplicity can be great, and is often better than unnecessary complexity. Complicated multi-layered plots and characters are perfectly suited for a family drama or political thriller, but all a fantasy adventure needs are simple, straightforward, excuses for fun and excitement. Anything more is just inviting criticism and confusion, and, worse, impending box-office failure.

Having said that, I have no doubts that James Cameron's plans for the sequel, which will inevitably arrive sooner than you'd think, is to amp up the ante in both visuals and storyline. He won't fall back on a rehash of what he's already told, and will need to develop a few extra levels of complexity to keep everyone's attention. And, just as I was with the expectation of Avatar's runaway success, I am confident that he will deliver it again.