JM Script Project update

Some nice dudes worked up our sony vaio script project into a nice animation.

Snow Angel
by angels_in_the_snow

The film was directed by the incredibly talented Laurie Proud.

As JM would say - a good script has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Malkovich 2.0

viao-john.com

Like Ewarwoowar, I try not to post much of the work that we do at Dare, in an effort to stay sane if nothing else. This site however is definitely worth a mention as to me it represents the good side of Web 2.0. It is a site to educate, to stir up ideas while asking for a well thought out response.

If only the Tube could have captured the essence of thinking before you upload as well as this small project. This project, of course stated it's claim in planet User Generated Content (a small moon orbiting Planet User Generated Crap) right from the start in that it was for Sony - a brand holding themselves high up.like.no.other in an otherwise over saturated technology market. Claridges, rather than McDonalds contributions please.

But beyond fast food video, there are still a large range of good video sites, quality controlled and vetted for the best which I still wouldn't think twice about sending my work too. However I took ages, with my mouse hovered over the submit button on this Malkovich site. Is it that I hold careful consideration of words as a higher art than the same of images? Or is it because I was hammered into writing with a fountain pen by my primary school teacher, while told there was no right or wrong in art class.

Who cares? The fact is that web is full of pictures of nudey girls, rude boy race-car videos, User Generated Idiocy and hastily designed pages. We are much less the land of flowing milk and honey for design as envisaged by the futurists, more like conurbation riddled with more back allies than Soho. Maybe it's time creators of 2.0 sites raised the bar in their briefs for quality over quantity of uploaded content. This is a site with a challenge I've enjoyed. Touché my friends.

Script Secrets, Secret Geeks

I spent the weekend attending the Script Secrets, Screenplay writing course over at Raindance. Nice going guys, it was most informative. I don't really want to be a screenplay writer, but I thought that since Dare were prepared to foot the bill then learning a bit about the craft of the writer could only put me in better stead to pursue my romantic ambitions of becoming a truly great interactive director.

What did I find? Well I found myself amongst quite a bizzar collection of odd freaks, geeks and oddballs; even by my most liberal and accepting standards.

Dispel romantic notions of troubled creative writers, twisted on drugs, alcohol and ether; staying up all night exorcising various inner demons via hacking away at their typewriters. No. They're just a freak minority of social misfits who want to live out their fantasies of love, lust, valor, honor, betrayal, mystery and intrigue by hiding themselves in their retrospectively created fictional worlds. Where were the twisted, sworded intellectuals, aspiring to write themselves a better future; pointing through this great medium of fiction to the way we should be aspiring to live? Absent that day it seems, instead a collection of flag waving Greenpeace activists who want to mothball all aircraft travel along with the strong contingent of over zealous gushers, obsessed with conspiracy theory.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Really.

I wish these dudes, who made me realise a few things, all the best of luck in a cut throat business.

1. I need to widen my criteria of acceptance and scrub the "of a certain type", from my, "All freaks, geeks and twisted people accepted" sign.
2. We NEED people like this. Dreamers.
3. Nothing ever got created by people who give in to Mr Cynical.
4. Working in Advertising has made me too quick to judge.

In reflection I think that this craft of the word-smith is perhaps one which requires a strong streak of unconformity and an introverted nature; as to master these cynical tools of juxtaposition and cruel manipulation of mood requires reflection along with the ability to bite your own tongue while you wait to construct your thoughts with a more informed eloqunce.

Long live the great screen writers.