Checkpoint: Resistance

My mate Rob and I are assembling some effects for his short film, Checkpoint, and because we love the whole idea of creating stuff from scratch, he's also put together a sequel idea, which we're calling Resistance.

This will be made entirely of live action people filmed on a greenscreen, then composited against an entirely digital backdrop, a French village. We hope to be able to take 3D models and 2D images and combine them together to allow us to move around within the artificial environment relatively freely.

The challenge comes in making these digital matte images in the first place. Sometimes we can use real photographs, and other times we need to make pieces out of 3D models and mix them in.

A few weeks ago I made a test image from one of the angles, as a test to see if I can create a convincing enough 3D building that it's indistinguishable from the real background. It worked pretty well, and I've progressed somewhat, adding additional features to the building, and have also expanded the backdrop area to give it more space and scope.

There's an explosion that is going to happen within that building, which is another reason why 3D is better than real life - it gives us the ability to add the explosion effect accurately and under our control. We had a meeting yesterday where we discussed a live explosion that we'll create in quarter-scale, in a small model of the building, that we can film, slow down to give it scale, and paste onto the scene. Interactive elements such as a table and chairs or the curtains within the building were also discussed.

Exciting stuff.

It's starting to come together.

Charley Boorman: By Any Means

I accidentally stumbled upon a cool TV series on DVD a few years ago, which at that point rapidly turned into my favourite documentary ever, called Long Way Round. Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman got on a couple of motorbikes and travelled around the world, pretty much on a straight line through Europe and Asia and America, from London to New York. It was loads of fun, with tons of adventure, and a great voyage of discovery for them both.

Since then they have done another, Long Way Down, which wended its way through Africa. Unfortunately, it didn't quite have the same magic the second time, and was also marred by being over-organised, but it was still great TV.

Charley Boorman has also done something on his own, when he took part in the most dangerous race in the world, the Dakar Rally, in a show called Race To Dakar. I enjoyed that too, but it was very much more oriented towards motorbike racing, so that didn't quite draw me in as much as it might someone who's a fan.

But now his latest solo adventure, By Any Means, is something I've been really enjoying a lot. He and his Producer friend Russ Malkin, who has been part of all the previous series, are taking a trip from Ireland to Sydney, via Asia, using only land transport like cars, bikes, buses, boats, etc, to get there. So far there's been four episodes and it's been fantastic. Always upbeat, interesting, and fun, as well as being seat-of-their-pants racing from place to place, in sometimes very precarious transport.

Michael Palin's journeys, which are similar in vein, are now too structured and colonial to have the visceral appeal it had when he began the Around The World In 80 Days trip he made. Charley (and Ewan) are now taking up that mantle instead, and they're following through admirably, with just the right balance of fun and adventure.

I totally recommend it, I'm sure it will be on DVD soon, and I can't praise Charley enough for managing to front the programme with such ease, competence, and charismatic aplomb. This new found career he has stumbled on of hosting travel and adventure shows is perfect for him, and I hope he continues.

Horizon Online

I made a website for my film.

Sometimes the most fun part of a project is the ancillary stuff, which can often take a lot of time that you don't have to spare. It's a common problem amongst new filmmakers that they want to make a film so they can get to have a behind-the-scenes documentary or a DVD with flashy menus, and the risk is they get so caught up with that kind of unimportant yet cool stuff they forget to actually make the film in the first place.

As I am aware of that particular potential pitfall I am risking by doing this, I suppose I can't really let the website be considered properly live yet.

But, typically, I couldn't help myself, and I put this design together anyway. I also tried to be fancy with a couple of funky CSS tricks, like the plane being layered over the top, and the clouds scrolling behind.

Anyway, it's not ready, okay? It's done, but only unofficially.

I shall fill in the blanks as they happen.

Horizon: And So It Begins

I had my first production meeting for my first short film, Horizon, today. I have been afraid to begin something like this for so long, because of the responsibilities I'd have towards the rest of the people involved, and my fear of being unprepared. But now I've committed myself.

It's a story about a Jet Fighter Pilot who looks back on his life and the love he has for his wife. It is a very short tale, set mostly domestically, but with a few visual effects scenes involving the plane in flight. It's not going to win any awards for its sensitive portrayal of a man in crisis, or anything pretentiously moronic like that, but it's good enough as an experiment in my ability to create and complete a film of my own.

Today's meeting was with a few of my friends who have made films of their own, and we talked of the practical elements involved, so that I would go in armed and prepared. Locations, directing, filming, permits, schedules, crew, and lots more, were all discussed and decided. Also, a particularly elaborate prop, or set, is the cockpit of the fighter plane, and we explored our options on achieving that.

I am now reassured that things will be easier to handle than I at first anticipated, and am buoyed up by my friends' endorsement. It should go well.

My next steps include sourcing locations, organising a shot list and schedule, and getting a few more people on board as part of my team. It will be a busy few months, I think.

Shouldn't Have Done That

I am a website designer, I've been doing it for over ten years. But I'm not particularly great at it. Sometimes I have done work I'm proud of, but if you were to look at my coding skills, they're mostly pretty average and naive. I like to be tidy, but structurally I can be haphazard, and anything beyond HTML and CSS is mysterious and incomprehensible to me.

As I'm not currently working, which is great and I wish it could ever be so, I don't get to do website stuff much anymore. I could probably redesign my own website, but I've got nothing to show anyway, so it's laying dormant.

So I was talking to my mate Rob about a website I visited recently, and how I thought it was in desperate need of updating, which I'd gladly do if I was paid for the work done to it. And inevitably, I had images in my head of how it could be improved upon. That night I had a very clear idea of the graphics I'd apply to it, and the colour scheme. And then the next day (yesterday) I couldn't help myself, and I spent all day designing the page.

On the one hand I need the experience and to keep up my skills, it can be great fun to create something that works well and fulfils the vision you have for it. But on the other hand, I basically did work that will never be showcased. I have no job lined up, there's no payment, they don't even know I did it.

I find myself wondering if I should contact them and suggest I work on it. But then that would mean a lot of work for them, and therefore a lot of time and money, which they may not be willing to outlay. It really ought to be them who volunteer to upgrade, rather than some pushy designer coming along trying to convince them to do something they have no intention of following up on.

Still, I am happy with the design I did, so here it is.

Writing Is Not Easy

I've been writing the second draft of my screenplay off and on these past few weeks, working through some of the problems.

Having had to introduce a whole new subplot to beef up the energy level it needed, and to keep some of the characters active through the plot, hasn't exactly introduced new problems into the plotting, like I thought it might; It has actually made it a much better story.

But what it has done is introduce problems with the pacing. Having to weave through this new, more exciting thread has interfered with the story structure already in place. Now I have to interrupt or bookend a quiet scene with an exciting action packed scene. Or worse, shunt up an action scene in one location, up against another action scene happening in a different location.

I've seen that work in a film, but I'm not talented or experienced enough to know what the trick is for it. Luckily I don't really have to be too strict in how each scene works together, as in the editing process there's plenty of opportunity to swap and alter and adjust to suit. But having said that, getting the scenes to at least work chronologically, and not be too jarring or confusing to read, is also an important skill to refine. After all, there isn't actually going to be an editing process, as the film is not intended to be made.

I think I'm doing okay. For every change I make that bothers me at its potential for distorting my story, there's another subsequent scene that pulls it back on track and keeps it flowing smoothly. It surprises me how successful it has been so far, to the point where I'm wondering if that means I'm missing something important. I probably am.

I should have this draft complete soon, and will then hand it over to a couple of people I trust to review it. I'll be looking for feedback on my abilities to write cohesively, entertainingly, and with the right level of detail to conjure up the imagery and characterisations I am hoping to depict. I expect I'll get a fair amount of notes, some of them harsh, and perhaps some of them suggesting dramatic changes in the story.

But I hope they'll generally be favourable enough to encourage me to keep going. And then hopefully I'll be buoyed up enough to write something new.

I Like Parcels

Not that long ago, when I had very little money, an awful lot of really cool geeky stuff was made available. They were difficult to source (I occasionally heard about them through my local comic shop), expensive to ship (sometimes shipping cost more than the item itself), and for those reasons, and my lack of cash, I had to let most of them pass me by.

But now I have some money, and the difference is glorious. It's so easy to find the coolest things online. Toys, books, DVDs, music - if you want it, you can get it. Due to demand, shipping is now really competitive and affordable. It's a doddle to get coolness personified sent to me in exciting brown cardboard boxes.

Last week I got a new comic art anthology. Today I got three new DVDs. Next week I expect to get a soundtrack CD and a DVD of one of my favourite movies.

I'm not a fan of the more commonly experienced forms of shopping, i.e. clothes and shoes and wandering from shop to shop, trying stuff on, looking for bargains. Blah. Buying online is so much easier, and more exciting. Perhaps I buy rather too much too often, but I'm careful; It hasn't depleted my savings too much. And it means I get more parcels!

I love getting parcels in the mail.

Spot The Fake Building

I am the king of getting halfway through a project and then leaping onto a new one. It's not healthy, because unless I have a deadline or a promise to another person, those other things tend to be permanently abandoned.

I'm currently involved with two projects for my mate Rob, one for another mate MPS (though I haven't got the footage for that stuff yet), and my own projects that tend to just meander.

In one of the projects for Rob there will be 3D virtual environments, which is usually done by combining video with photographs that will be manipulated in 3D (or 2.5D) in order to look as realistic as possible.

2.5D is when you take 2D elements, like photographs, and apply them to a 3D environment, or manipulate them in 3D space, such as for parallax motion. I shall be doing some of that, as well as building 3D models to place inside those 2.5D environments. The first such example is the oft-mentioned train and railway gun, which is being placed in a 2.5D version of the real valley location we photographed.

But the above image is meant to represent a street in a French village, where we need to place a Cafe. As it has to look pretty specific, and so we don't have to hope to find a good photograph we can use, I have made a 3D model of it.

Can you spot where the real photo ends and my 3D models begin?

Pegasus Rampant - The Second Draft

Writing, they say, is not easy. Just when you think you're on top of things, that you have a great story, an excellent grasp of the characters, and the whole thing is coming together perfectly, something comes along that throws a spanner in the works and totally throws you off your game.

I am halfway through the second draft of my movie script, that I'm writing for my own personal 'writing exercise' experience. I like most of what I'm doing with it; I like my characters; I like the story; I like how many of the scenes unfold and play out; but I have, inevitably, struck a problem. It doesn't, as it stands, work as a movie.

It'd probably be fine if I adapted and expanded the plot into a novel (though it probably wouldn't sell very well and I wouldn't be lauded as the next JK Rowling or anything). And it might work as a comic book, played out episodically. Perhaps. And if I picked a few scenes out to make as a short film it'd be quite promising, I hope. But that's not what I'm doing with it - I'm writing it as an exercise in feature film screenplay writing, so it therefore has to work as a feature film, or else it's a failure.

I noticed early on that the motivations for the characters to go on their adventure were weakly realised, so I knew that in the second draft I would have to add some urgency and intensity to the beginning. I figured out the kind of things I wanted to do but it couldn't be anything too intense, as it would push the rest of the story in directions I didn't want it to go. So it had to be small enough to not impact the story too much, but big enough to add much needed energy to the plot.

Then I realised my bad guy was too static; he wasn't shown as much of a threat until near the end. So I had to introduce his machinations earlier in the story. However, I combined the two problems into one, and now I have my antagonist introduce a sub-plot into the storyline that is continually woven throughout.

But my worst fears are potentially going to be realised: the new sub-plot is threatening to impact the existing storyline, the parts that I already am very happy with. If this means I have to rip out and rearrange that part of the tale, then I will be very disappointed.

Writers will tell you that such things are often the way it goes, and it must be done without sentimentality. Improvement in the final story is all that matters. But, nevertheless, it will be heartbreaking if that's what I have to do.

So I am desperately trying to weave in this sub-plot in ways that will only expand and motivate the characters, and not so it pulls the story down a different track.

The irony is, if I hadn't recognised the problem I saw in the early parts of the story, and had made the finished film as it was in the first draft, it would've been just as good as the B-Movie fantasy flicks that are so often made, as they tend to have plot holes and discrepancies throughout. But my goal is to make something better than that, to prove it can be done if you put the effort in.

And the irony in that is that if I actually sold it and it got made, they'd probably strip out all the things I think are great, and jam in more sword fights and giant monsters, turning it into a mess that doesn't resemble my story hardly at all. Writing scripts is too often a hack and slash exercise, that when it gets released and people dismiss it as rubbish, often blame the poor writing, even though the script they actually put together was a marvellous whimsical joyride of a story, and not the explosion and effects-fest that the idiot director turned it into.

Anyway, the point is I am at a difficult stage of the creative process, and it's stressing me out a little.

Next!!!

Last weekend I wandered down to Southbank where a friend of mine was filming his very first short film. It was something that I wasn't sure would be fun, but it turned out to be a good way to spend a Sunday.

Pete, or MPS as we call him, wrote this sketch idea a long time ago, and finally has gotten things together to get it made. It was about an audition process for a film, where there were a succession of hopefuls lining up for a part, all turned away. I didn't cameo, though I did do something silly which they caught on camera so you never know.

Anyway, I was there in my capacity as effects supervisor, as there are a couple of funny shots involving 3D, including a rocket shooting along, following someone out the door, and a trapdoor opening up and the poor guy falling through it cartoon-style.

Should be a giggle when it's all done. It was being shot in the Malthouse Theatre, which was for manufacturing malt liquor once, but is now remodelled into a theatre. It's most likely a protected "Listed" building, as it has all its original exterior walls, and a considerable amount of its interior fittings, still existing and intact. Though a lot of it just hovers in mid air without a way to get to them: Stairways lead to nowhere; doors don't open; mezzanines have no access. It's weird, but cool.

Visits From The Family

I'm from New Zealand. I live in Australia. I've been here since 1999. I came here to get away from a life that had collapsed around me rather suddenly.

I used to have a circle of people who were the best friends I could've hoped for. Fun, funny, creative, we did tons of cool stuff together, though a lot of it never amounted to anything. I was pretty happy, even though I had no money, and not much else to call my own.

But then one of those friends moved away to Wellington. Then another did the same. And a third. Another friend unexpectedly died. The last of the group I hung around with found a cool job that took up all his spare time. I was bereft. When I lost my job, due to serially incompetent management, I saved up what little money I still had and leapt across the Tasman Sea to live in Melbourne, and though it was a struggle at first, I soon found my feet and am happy to be in a place I can call home.

I have no regrets on the move. I have found a new group of friends, who, though not as hilariously funny as my old NZ friends, are much more proactively creative, and are very inclusive in their fun social activities. Some of the things I've been involved with are beyond many of my hopes.

But do I miss my family? I'm pretty close to my family, but not in the way some people are. When we grew up together, my brother and sisters and I got on very well with each other. We rarely had disagreements, and didn't really get into serious trouble. Later in life there were a few run-ins that are best left behind us, but they weren't between each other. Our Mother always tried to keep us in contact, and we'd gather for special occasions a few times a year. My brother was the hardest to corral, as his career took off into jetsetting directions while we were all homebound, but when he visited it was a pretty good evening to be had.

When I left NZ, leaving my family was one of the hardest parts of the journey, but I knew it wasn't a permanent arrangement - visits would occur from both directions, and they have done. Every year either one of them has visited me, or I've gone back to visit them. It gets so frequent that it's sort of boring, sometimes, as there's nothing new to talk about. Last time I visited it was for Christmas 2006, before that it was for my younger sister's wedding. But as my Mum travels around the world a lot, she usually stops by Melbourne on the way there or back so I get to see her a lot. The truth is I don't miss my family, because I see them too often for that.

Which brings me to my point. Today my Mum visited Melbourne again, after a little holiday in South Australia, and she brought her friend Linda (who witnessed my Passport renewal form). We hung out together for a brief lunch and a wander, but there wasn't much to chat about. And it's strange to me that I see her less frequently than I did when I was back in NZ, and yet we have less and less to talk about as so few things develop in our lives as we get older. My life right now is not that dissimilar to how it was three or four years ago, whereas through the 90s it was developing in new directions every year.

Mum brought over a DVD of a NZ film that you can't find anywhere else, which was nice of her. It's called Out Of The Blue and was directed by a friend of mine, Robert Sarkies, who I have done work for on some of his earlier films (some completed, some aborted). It's about the Aramoana Massacre, which happened not far from where I was living at that time, and is one of the worst crimes that has ever happened in New Zealand's history. I hope it's as good as the reviewers claim.

The Astonishing State of Science Fiction TV

Science Fiction and Fantasy on TV has had a chequered history. The 60s was surreal with weird shows like The Avengers, Prisoner, and Thunderbirds. The 70s and 80s had a whole bunch of cookie-cutter adventure shows like Incredible Hulk, Invisible Man, Six Million Dollar Man, Knight Rider. The 90s had an onslaught of shows set in space with aliens, like Star Trek (et al), Babylon 5, Space: Above and Beyond, Earth II, Seaquest DSV, and the silly stuff like Hercules and Xena. Then X-Files and Buffy came along and bucked the trend somewhat.

But it was the onset of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who's reimaginings, and the unique Lost, that have set the way for a new breed of Fantasy TV, and it has made me all excited about television again.

However, there is a major problem. Almost none of these shows are shown here! Aargh! If it wasn't for the internet and bittorrent, I would see almost none of this top class entertainment. And most of the time I end up buying the DVDs, so it's to their benefit that they remain available to me this way. I urge you all to check out these shows that I've been watching recently, and marvel at their brilliance:

Should I Get An iPhone?

I don't have a mobile phone. I have never had a mobile phone. Their ubiquitousness bothers me; their inescapability irritates me; the broad assumption that we all have one frustrates me; the expectation I ought to have one disappoints me.

But I always knew that I would probably get one eventually, when the true need for one arose. Perhaps if I had a family of my own (I can safely predict that's not gonna happen), or was employed in a job that absolutely required one (I am unlikely to be in such a career, but you never know).

And now the iPhone has arrived in Australia, and I am wavering.

I am not a particular fan of Apple's "style over substance" approach to their products. They seem to spend rather too much money on something that looks cool, sometimes at the expense of usability, and usually use it as the centrepiece of their promotion: "Buy this, it's only slightly better than anything else out there, but it looks really pretty!" And a lot of people seem to like the prettiness more than the substance; The new MacBook Air only has its slimline design going for it, at the serious expense of practicality, and yet it's selling well.

I'm not anti-Mac, or pro-PC, I am loyal to PCs only because it's all I've ever known and see no need to change. Re-learning an OS, under the illusory expectation it's better, when it may be much of a muchness for my kind of usage, isn't something I'd want to spend time on.

But the iPhone... just seems to be so cool! And I don't mean in that "style over substance" way I'm decrying, because I wouldn't just give up my principles on a whim. The substance really is what makes it cool - it is usable, functional, full-featured, and, I have to be honest, represents the future of GUI design.

I think that if I do decide to get a mobile phone, it will have to be an iPhone. I won't accept anything less.

Pegasus Rampant - The First Draft

I have just completed writing my first ever feature length movie script.

I started it as an experiment to see if I could do it. Having just come off from writing a short film script, and finding it to be a fun and exciting challenge to complete to my own satisfaction, the next step of writing something longer was one I felt enthused by.

A first draft is not going to be very good, but that's deliberate. The trick to it is to just write everything out, the whole story, without refining it too much, just to have it down on paper. As a wise person once said, it's easier to edit existing text, than it is to fill a blank page. So I just wrote it all down with stream-of-consciousness storytelling, because I knew that I would be going back over it again, and again, and perhaps even again, before it's ready to be shown around anywhere.

And it's true, not even halfway through the writing of it, I could see so many things wrong that I would need to adjust and replace and fix up later. Whole plot strands that I thought were important petered out over the course of the story, so I'll have to tidy up those loose ends. Characters I introduced had no follow up, so they'll have to go. Other characters I didn't expect to introduce will need to be referenced earlier in the story to uphold good continuity. Scenes need to be tightened to add excitement and urgency, or lengthened for pacing. And of course, the dialogue will have to be punched up so it sizzles.

But that's the fun of it. As soon as it gets boring I'll stop, but right at this moment I'm rearing to go. I can't wait to get stuck in and make the story better.

I have no illusions that this script would ever get picked up and made. I suppose it might, if I managed to find a way to sell it, but that isn't the point of why I am doing this. It's a personal challenge, a test to see if I am capable of writing a good tale, of completing it to its end, to see if it excites me enough to want to do it a second or third time, and more importantly to see if I can write something that is entirely my own that is as good as (or better than) some of the movies I see actually get made. Can I do it as well as the professionals?

More than likely, if I did manage to sell it, it would be rewritten again by somebody else, then changed again by the Director, and in the Editing, to the point where it wouldn't be the script I wrote after all. That's how the business works, and I have no illusions that my written word is sacrosanct. Even the greatest movies of all time, directed by the greatest movie makers of all time, buggered about with the script to get it into the shape they thought it needed to be. I accept that, though as long as the heart of it was there, if the plot was mostly intact, and if some of the better dialogue was kept, I'd be gloriously happy to see it up on the big screen.

Perhaps one day that will happen.

Recovery on Schedule

The pain throughout the recovery period from my Wisdom Teeth surgery was sometimes overwhelmingly horrible and uncomfortable, to the point where it was hard to sleep, difficult to eat, and really I couldn't concentrate on much at all for any length of time. My expectation of spending the time reading books or watching DVDs proved optimistic because my headspace was too disturbed by the discomfort. Though, having said that, I have managed to write almost an entire movie script through those days.

And just when I thought I might end up suffering twinges of pain for weeks and weeks, I woke up to a completely pain-free day, early last week, and it's been glorious ever since.

On Friday I returned from my Post-Op Checkup almost $2000 lighter, but also comforted by the Dental Surgeon's assurances that I have recovered remarkably healthily. He said he was surprised how good it looked for only two weeks since the operation. It was a difficult surgery because the teeth were very deep in my jaw, not having erupted (they call those impacted teeth). I think ordinarily they wouldn't've been removed at all in the normal course of events, but as one had a cyst, and another was potentially close to eruption, it was the right thing to do.

All I can say is I'm glad it's over and don't want to have to go through anything like that again any time soon.

Team Sports should not be in the Olympics

So the stupid waste of time that is the Olympics has begun, and already I don't care and wish they'd stop. Apart from them being mostly meaningless, and almost completely no different to any other sports event that happen throughout every year, they are just a big excuse for melodramatic wins and losses.

But team sports should be eliminated from the Olympics. They are so arbitrary in their results, because they're based on a round robin. Anything could happen, the teams are made up of randomly picked competitors, often not from the best athletes (because they're professional and aren't eligible), and it just comes down to who wins a round robin tournament. The point of the Olympics is which individual athlete is the best in the world at their particular sport, and team sports in round robins do not, and can not, demonstrate that. So why have them?

It's bollocks. And it should stop.

And while I'm at it, get rid of rhythmic gymnastics, synchronised swimming, and tennis, as well.

"Horizon" is on the horizon

Yesterday I appeared to make a commitment to something, unexpectedly.

I was invited to hang out with a few friends, and we talked of many things, most of which had some kind of movie related theme to them. Dags spoke of his next, Flair. Rob talked of him beginning the editing of Checkpoint. Ads had thoughts about the kinds of movies he would like to see made. And I talked about Horizon as though it was actually going to happen.

Until that point, it was a possibility. But after some of the tests I've done being quite successful, and the trust I have that Adam is capable of building the cockpit set to a cool and realistic degree, I can see how this is all within my grasp.

So I now have to figure out a schedule, a budget, a cast, get some costumes and props, find locations, and commit a few people as a crew. The post production is no problem, it's my least worrisome part of the shoot. But everything else needs to be organised, and I am notoriously poor at organising things.

I don't drive. This limits my ability to organise people. I don't have a mobile phone, which makes me difficult to contact - I prefer using email as my main source of communication, which many of the core team are only haphazard at responding to. Therefore I may have to get a phone. It's probably past due, but so far I've gotten away with it. A car is certainly not going to happen, though maybe I should buy a pushbike or something, to at least give me some additional mobility.

A commitment like this, having to rely on other people, and they have to rely on me, is a scary prospect. It's a challenge I'm not confident I can step up to the plate for, even though at least 50% of what is required, I've demonstrated in the past that I'm capable of. The money doesn't bother me too much, though I'm not going to spend up big. But the time, and the effort, should have a pay off. If I want these people to help me, then I should follow through. I should do it for them, as well as for me.

Horizon isn't a particularly amazing story, as far as it goes. It's short and has a questionable ending, there's no dialogue, and it doesn't have any funny bits, in fact it starts out quite hopeful and then is rapidly destroyed by tragedy. But that's not important - what matters is I have to make my first short film.

I have some organising to do.

On Writing

I like to write stories. I remember the first time I realised I had the power to create any story I liked, without the limits that restrict creativity. I was ten years old, and the Teacher said we could write a story with a particular theme (in this case it was a treasure map). Up until then I always struggled to write anything, I found it a chore because the motivation was forced, and the story ideas were on subjects that didn't interest me - usually based on some dull dramatic incident I didn't care about, or even a non-fiction event that had actually happened to me that I had to dredge up and write about. Dull dull dull.

But when I began this story, I suddenly saw opportunities open up each time I wrote a new paragraph; I knew I could introduce a new character whenever I wanted, someone who then would take the story in a new direction when it needed it; I could also invent a location, so that it would look just the way I needed it to, so that certain incidents could occur to serve the story; I could have a conclusion that made a certain amount of sense and which related back to the beginning of the story; and best of all, I could add humour that was natural and real.

Now, this was when I was ten years old. The finished story was only six pages long, and wouldn't exactly set the world alight with my incredible grasp of the written word. But when the story was finished I realised a very important concept: that when you write, you can create anything you want, and have things happen in any way you want, and that kind of freedom, where you aren't restricted by the kind of rules that would mean a boring result, makes writing fun and exciting.

Throughout my teenage years I continued to write stories - some short, some long and involved - and I became quite well known for it. Most of them were silly and absurd wacky stories, inspired by my love for Spike Milligan's Goon Show, but then later, after I gained an interest in Mediaeval Fantasy, a few of my stories started to turn into epic magical adventures.

My biggest problem, though, was completing what I started. And in fact, I still have that problem.

Unfortunately I don't write very often anymore. Partly due to having no time to commit to it, and partly because I am discouraged by my lack of motivation to finish anything I start. But also because I find it hard to be inspired enough to actually commit myself to something like this. I know I really enjoy writing when I get started, so I wish I could find the time to sit down, force myself to self-motivate, and actually get something done a lot more often than I currently do. I need to lock myself away and force it out, even though I know it's not really "forced" once it starts flowing. In fact by the time it gets going, it's usually impossible to stop myself.

In the past I've written many different kinds of work: short stories; long stories; play scripts; TV scripts; movie scripts; even songs and poetry. The most fun I've had, and most motivated I've been, is usually when I am co-writing with another person, because you get to bounce ideas around, complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, and just have a laugh together. In that situation I'm happy to do the actual typing up of what we come up with, as long as I have someone to go to when we see a hole in the plot, or need a new event.

My biggest storytelling weakness is plot - I tend to be very derivative and linear and find it hard to come up with an original idea to bridge a gap. But my biggest storytelling strength is dialogue - I can move the story along with some good naturalistic conversations between characters, along with sparkles of humour. That's my belief, though it's a rare occasion when I can prove it to myself, I write so infrequently these days.

So anyway. Last week, when I was over at Rob's house after my toothy surgery, we talked about movies, as we always do, and watched a couple of DVDs. One of them was a low budget fantasy film that didn't really zing with amazing visuals, or have a particularly clever plot, and the fight scenes were uninspired. But it did have some nice character moments, and there were a couple of good ideas buried in there. However, when viewing those many flaws it made me think "I could do a better job than this!" and when Rob agreed on a few of its weak points, I was somewhat inspired to give my own version a try.

These kinds of films have very low budgets, and so can't have expensive visual effects or epic action sequences. But that doesn't matter - if it's written well enough, has some fun characters, and has the right tone, it will be looked on favourably, be handed a budget, and will be given an opportunity to be made. These films always find an audience at the local DVD rental store, and will easily make their money back. And it occurred to me that I want to be in that position - to be able to write a good enough story that it will at least get made and be watched. It's a great way to get a start in filmmaking, and even easy to make a career in it if you are willing to work in the low budget arena.

I was in something of a state of dizziness after my dental surgery, so I wasn't able to articulate myself to Rob very well that afternoon, and what I wanted to say to him was we should work together on our own fantasy film. Sit down, nut out a plot together, and write it - just for fun. But I never got the chance to articulate my idea properly, I was still a bit dazed and uncomfortable to talk properly, so after getting home, I spent a few hours thinking about what kind of movie I could write that had all the elements I like in an adventure, fit within a low budget, and was better than the one we watched. I even started noting down some plot elements, characters, situations, etc, that I would like to see.

And what amazed me is this: I looked at this list of ideas, and I thought about ways to have them fit together, and I saw a few possibilities and considered them. I saw a few ways to fill in what was missing with some more ideas. Then I assembled them together into something resembling a beginning. Suddenly, from there I saw what the next scene should be. And the next. And then I saw a middle, and a way to bridge them all together. I even saw a possible conclusion.

Next thing I knew I had enough to start writing something down, what's known as a "treatment", which is a rough but complete description of the storyline. I got about two pages into it and got stuck - I realised I had a D and an F but didn't have an E. I also had a pretty good idea what my H was going to be, so had to think about the G.

So I took a break, lay on the couch, and thought about what I'd written so far. Within an hour I had come up with ideas that filled the gaps, perfect Es and Gs, which also sorted out what my N, O and P would be. I leaped up and started filling in my alphabet even further, and was going great guns, until eventually I realised I needed a twist. I knew why the twist was needed, where it would go, and what it would involve, but not what would motivate it.

So I stopped and lay on my couch again, and just thought about what I had written so far... and this is what surprised me the most of all - I came up with something, and this is the point of this whole post, that not only worked as a twist, but fit into the beginning of the story, the middle, the ending, and, most amazing of all, even made the temporary title make sense. All of it suddenly snapped into place, worked so perfectly with each other, filled in all the plot holes I had, and completed my entire story satisfactorily. What's so odd about this is it was an idea that I came up with really late in the game, and yet now it looks like it should've been what the entire story was inspired by!

Writing is a strange beast sometimes. But it is so satisfying when it works.

Now, whether this is actually a good story I'm writing is another matter entirely. First I have to finish the treatment, I'll need to play around with some of the pacing, and then of course actually write it as a script, before I will know if it's all worth it. After that it is extremely unlikely it will actually be made (I have no illusions there. I certainly have no money to make a mediaeval fantasy movie).

But that's not the point. I'm just enjoying the act of writing. It's so much fun!

Excised From Mouth Region

I used to have four wisdom teeth (as do most people) and two broken teeth long since impacted. I no longer have these, because this morning they were forcefully removed, ripped from my mouth, snapped and wrenched out of my skull, by a professional dental surgeon who I paid to do it for me.

Luckily I didn't feel a thing because I was knocked out with a general anaesthetic by the pleasant anaesthetist (she was a fellow Kiwi) and afterwards there was no pain because the nerves of the teeth were removed along with them, and there was no residual damage to my facial nerves that run along my jaw (near where the wisdom teeth sit). Therefore my dental surgeon clearly is a very talented and experienced man, and did an excellent job.

My friend Rob did a huge favour for me and drove me home, but with a detour to his place to supervise my immediate aftermath of the general anaesthetic and help me get my mind off the discomfort and numbness from the local anaesthetic. He had plenty of experience with hospitals himself, and his anecdotes very much reassured me that what I was going through was normal on the upper side of fortunate.

Most of the fees will be covered by my health insurance, which is great - I rarely use my insurance, as I can afford most of my rare medical procedures already anyway, and tend to think of them as a necessary part of life I should deal with my way, rather than get someone else to pay for it like a cop-out of responsibility. But as I'm paying for the insurance, then surely I should use it for big expenses like this.

Right now I'm all swollen, which is quite an uncomfortable feeling and makes me look like I have "superhero lantern jaw syndrome"; ice packs help with that. I also have to take a goodly amount of antibiotics to prevent infection, plus I have some extra strength painkillers which I hopefully will not require.

The swelling should go down in a day or so, but it does make eating challenging, so I'm not sure if I should venture out and find some suitable easily swallowable foodstuffs, or just muddle on through with what I already bought in anticipation.

So I'm a little indisposed, but not too messed up.

"Gates of Hell" gets a review

Last year I did some effects for a feature length film called Gates Of Hell. It was directed by a friend of mine, Kel Dolen, and is a horror. Fairly formulaic in plot, as these things tend to be, but it has a nice twist to it.

I was asked to do the effects by my friend Rob who was already working on it, and then the effects supervisor James got a hold of me for more stuff. My official credit is as a 3D Artist, I think.

Most of my effects were for 3D graphics and "matte paintings", but I also did a couple of minor composite tricks, like extending a wall and lightning flashes. Seamless stuff, mostly. You shouldn't even know any of my shots have had any work done on them.

Anyway, there's a review of it at Aint It Cool News by local reviewer Latauro, and he liked it a lot. It was a pretty cool review, which hopefully is a sign that it may one day get a successful theatrical release. And there's a trailer for it here.