Men In Skirts
My school saw a dance company at the Power Center today. It was amazing. I think that I finally got dance. I finally understand it. It was like dumping all of the puzzle pieces onto the ground, and seeing them all fall in the right places. It was amazing. I loved it.
It all started when a few male dancers got up on the stage wearing skirts. I wasn’t sure whether or not I was supposed to laugh. I mean, it’s men in skirts. They’re asking for it. But I still felt, as an art appreciator, that it was my duty to try to appreciate it at another level. But then I got to thinking: Art is meant to convey emotion. Dance is an art. Therefore, dance is supposed to communicate emotion to the audience. Emotion via motion. The choreographer is communicating what they themselves got from the music. It’s a lot like painting.
What a choreographer does with the music is like what the painter does with the world around them. They take in what they see and paint it on the canvas, or whatever they’re using. They add their interpretation and emotion in as well. In fact, even the act of painting a certain something, or dancing to a certain something, is a way of communicating emotion. If you feel that the ocean is important, you might paint that. If you feel that Mozart is important, you might dance to his music. The audience can recognize that whatever you just painted or danced to is important to you, just because you painted or danced.
So, with my art appreciative ego intact, I realized that yes. Yes you can laugh at the men in skirts. But not just because the men are in skirts; because the choreographer wanted to put men in skirts, because that’s what they felt about the music. If the dancing is funny, then it is funny.
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An Art Film, Perhaps?
Art films are interesting. You can do whatever with them. They don’t have to make sense. This might be perfect for me; something that my friends and I can just fool around with, and still eventually make something interesting. In the end, it might turn out pretty cool. If nothing makes sense, then it’s nonsensical. It’s an art film.
Just because an art film doesn’t have to make sense doesn’t mean it can’t. It would be an interesting experiment to try to find an unconventional way of communicating a story to the audience. I could finally prove that “unconventional storytelling” doesn’t mean “montage.” That might be pretty fun.
This might be a fun thing to do in a party-like atmosphere. We wouldn’t really have to worry about what was being filmed, as long as something was being filmed. We’d just be having fun. I’ve had plenty of cool ideas that would be fun to experiment with. I think that people might enjoy that.
In conclusion, an art film is an interesting concept to explore. I would finally get to see the cool ideas I’ve had put into action. I haven’t even explored the independence that an art film brings. I could make an art film without any outside help. Outside help is fun, though.
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A Short Film, Perhaps?
I’ve decided that I need something to do. I want to make a film, and so I’ve decided to use this blog to my advantage. Before I recruit the people necessary for the production process, I’ve decided to do a lot of development on my own time. The “hey guys, what should this film be about?” process will have to be abandoned.
Anyways, I’ve decided to start small; I’ve been getting a reputation for biting off more than I can chew. This film will be a short film, a beautiful medium that has been brought to my attention by a book called “Making Short Films” by Jim Piper. But, before I make a short film, I’ll need an idea. That’s what this post is all about: how I am going to use this blog to get my idea.
I’ll be making entries every once in a while about certain ideas that I might have for this film that I’m making. I’ll just be throwing out ideas; characters, genres, settings, etc. Most of these will never happen, but I feel that I should explore the ideas as fully as I can in a single blog entry. No good idea will be left behind. Hopefully by the end, I’ll be able to make a film.
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Klondeisch
I’m following the footsteps of IKEA and giving things weird names, when they should have useful ones. This post has nothing to do with “Klondeisch.”
I just saw Peter Jackson’s King Kong (and all of the special features) and I am back into film mode. I need to make a film. I talked to a few friends about it, and we liked the idea of a kaiju film. This decision was probably influenced by King Kong, and an unconditional adoration of the genre in general.
In order to have a good kaiju film you have to have a good kaiju. A good kaiju needs to have a good backstory. Without it, a kaiju is just a big monster. They need to have a reason behind their fighting. King Kong is an example of this. He had very clearly defined motives. He was taken from his home and put into an unfamiliar metropolis of unfamiliar creatures. He was looking for Ann Darrow, the only familiar thing in this frightening unfamiliar world.
Godzilla has a more complicated backstory. He’s a patriot, the defender of Japan, but he’s also very bitter and angry. He is, after all, just a monster. He has a constant internal battle between his monster instinct and his smarter, Japan-defending hero that we all have come to know and love. When he’s fighting he has to let his monster instinct take over, and he sometimes hurts what his heroic side loves, Japan. He’ll never truly be complete until he doesn’t need to fight anymore. (That will never happen, of course. Who wants to see Godzilla: Pacifist of Monsters?)
Backstory isn’t everything, though. You need to be a cool monster also. If people see posters of your monster and a giant dinosaur about to duke it out, they need to get interested, or your kaiju film will never succeed. If your monster is a vegetable, people might not take you seriously.
Me and my “team” of the “best” designers in the “business” have expressed an interest in an earth-based creature, akin to the colossi seen in Shadow of the Colossus. This could mean a number of things. It could just be a vaguely humanoid rock creature, resembling a Dungeons and Dragons golem. That might work, and the suit would be relatively simple to craft. If we wanted to give it a less anonymous backstory, we could move more towards the Tiki-come-to-life seen in the War of the Monsters. There are many options.
Well, there you have it. Except not really. I had drafted this a few days ago, thinking that I would expand upon it, but I can’t really get into the same train of thought that I had before. I’m not really sure where I was going with this. Maybe I’ll tackle it again in another post.
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Daydreams
I’ve been reading Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight lately. In the beginning of the book, while he was describing the first “stage” of writing, he described the stories as “daydreams.” Suddenly it all clicked. Too many daydreams are being accepted as works of fiction right now.
Take fan fiction. The author takes a few characters from their favorite fictional world and plays it out, based on what they, the author, want to happen. They give no regard to how the characters might actually act in the imaginary scenario provided for them. Then look at stories where the author inserts themselves into the fictional realm — Mary-Sue’s, if you will. Now the author’s not even writing from a character’s perspective. They’re just daydreaming.
Then you might ask, why does anyone like fan fiction? They just want a piece of the daydream. They’ve all had it too. It’s like when the Lord of the Rings was made into a movie. Everyone was familiar with the story, but they wanted to see it. That’s what fan fiction is like. They’ve all had the daydream, but they needed someone to write it down.
Eragon is the same way. It’s everybody’s daydream, Star Wars with swords and shields, but he was the first to put it on paper. It’s told one way, the way that everybody wants it to be. No matter how hard Eragon is beaten down, he stands back up and fights, and then when it’s all done he cries about because “he doesn’t want to hurt people.” It’s not heroic, it’s false. Things don’t happen like that.
I have a solution, however. I propose that a new genre be made. “Daydreams.” For these mediocre authors that can’t write anything with more than one real character. Society will then shun all who read books from the Daydreams genre.
…wait, this is getting to be too much of a daydream.
Filed under: Anti-Eragon, Writing | 7 Comments
The Solution
I think I’ve cracked the code for the geographic problems that the Trinity has encountered. We all sort of had this idea already, but now it’s on paper.
This version is scaled down. The full version is a taxing 800 x 895 image. You can view it here.
As you can see, I rotated Griffin’s world by 180 degrees and matchd his formerly southern desert to Chris’ desert. This made for a quite coherent and realistic geography. To the northern and southern parts of the map you can see that things are getting colder, forming cold steppe rather than grasslands.
We have also solved the issues of scale and scope, inadvertently. Since both the northern and southern regions of the map are significantly colder than the parts in the middle, we can assume that the middle of the map is also the equator. This would also imply that the polar ice caps are not too far off of the map. Therefore the scope of the map is nearly global.
There is still much to be done, however. As you can see, the map still has significant Parts Unknown to the northeast and the southwest. Filling those in will be the next step.
Filed under: Trinity, World-Building | 1 Comment
Combined Worlds
The two other members of the Trinity, Chris and Griffin, have been doing some world-building recently. As a member of the trinity, I have contributed to their work by combining both of their worlds into one single geographical area. Some areas had to be expanded, such as the lower-right body of water, which was mostly of my design. I tried to keep it as realistic and as true to the original designs, so I didn’t add any peninsulas or anything. The biggest changes were in the coastline in the lower right, to compensate for the different widths of the images. This is the finished product (click to enlarge):
Pretty cool, eh? This is just the first phase, however, as there are many other issues to solve. If the other Trinity members agree, this could develop into something greater.
From this point we would have to fix all of the climate issues, so that everything is consistent (no rainforests next to deserts). The geographical features of the northern world would need to be established in the level of detail that the southern world has, using the same color key. The southern and northern cultures and histories would probably need to be revised, as would the races, in all likelihood.
Scale is also an issue. How big was the southern world supposed to be when compared to the northern world? If the scales are different, I would need to redraw the map. If not, we can move on to scope.
Deciding the scope, in this case, would be deciding how this map compares to the rest of the world and where it’s placed. The map would be expanded, adding more areas for cultures to be developed. If it helps rationalize the climate contrast, the worlds might even be rotated (click to enlarge):
…or maybe not.
After we have our world, we could develop the other areas and make even more cultures, or we could just focus on this area. This all depends on how big this area is in relation to the entire world. If it’s the size of Europe, we’d probably want to canonize the other parts of the world. If it’s the size of the Americas, then it doesn’t matter as much.
All in all, this would be quite the project to endeavor. It might be a better idea to all make seperate worlds with the thought of combining them in mind, so that we all use the same scale and won’t have to solve any geographical problems. Maybe when it’s all over we could write some less-than-good high fantasy fiction and become bestsellers.
Filed under: Trinity, World-Building | 4 Comments
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, everybody! This is the first post on this blog, which is a do-over of my old blog.
My New Years resolution is to do the simple things well.
Filed under: Holidays | 1 Comment
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