What this Blog was supposed to be about...
back in 2004 I finally knuckled down and hammered out a screenplay...which although more nearly complete than most of my other creative undertakings is still a work in progress...this Blog was meant to be a showcase for the script, my designs and other ideas relating to the film. Lest you think I have a problem staying on topic let me assure you that it is my intention to post the script on it's own separate Blog(s)...but here's a short treatment...
Manila Envelope
After three and a half years in Australia, Canadian animator Christopher Green’s immigration difficulties have become insurmountable. His employers; Tinsel Toons Australia Pty Ltd., offer a solution. Christopher is dispatched to the company’s newly formed Manila studio, to head up the layout department.
It’s the autumn of 1985, and Sydney has been subcontracted by NooTrak Cartoons (U.S.A.) to produce the first season of “HoTW: Heroes of the World”, at its Philippine studio.
Chris takes a quick trip back to Canada, before flying to Manila via L.A., for a meeting and to collect some material from the client.
A junior secretary in Sydney, has erringly booked Christopher a ticket in Philippine Airline’s exquisitely luxurous “Mabuhay” class. Off to such an auspicious start Christopher arrives in Manila, with a feeling of relief and disappointment, to find that he’s already been demoted to assistant dept. head. Former colleague Antonio Charot is an incredibly talented artist; kind, worldly, but surprisingly, quite hopeless in his capacity as Chris’s new boss.
The next ten months will prove to be something of a trial by fire. Christopher will struggle with office politics; a language barrier, falling in love, and actually having it reciprocated.
His best friend, Rob, will have a serious mental break down, for which he’ll be hospitalized and returned to Australia.
All of this is the least of it however, when set against the last days of the Marcos regime, and the original People Power Revolution, which set off a swathe of movements around the globe that would change the rest of the world forever. Christopher will also finally finish scene 101.
Sunday 27 May 2007
Friday 25 May 2007
a few disparate thoughts...
In hind sight I don’t think I’ve ever given up on anything so much as merely lost interest. There’s a fine line between the required amount of saintly patience and futile pursuit of anything particularly difficult, and sadly the location of that line often doesn’t become known until well after the fact; if ever.
Failure then; is a matter of perspective. If a machine part breaks with catastrophic results it could still be the case that it has already performed well beyond its original design spec. The point is; that a life lived on the brink can’t be judged by such limited standards.
Fish out of water...everything that crawls, walks, runs and flies owes something to that first audacious, Cambrian Era beach bum!
It’s not love that makes the world go ‘round; it’s a gravitational distortion of space time that makes the world go round---and be round for that matter!
Failure then; is a matter of perspective. If a machine part breaks with catastrophic results it could still be the case that it has already performed well beyond its original design spec. The point is; that a life lived on the brink can’t be judged by such limited standards.
Fish out of water...everything that crawls, walks, runs and flies owes something to that first audacious, Cambrian Era beach bum!
It’s not love that makes the world go ‘round; it’s a gravitational distortion of space time that makes the world go round---and be round for that matter!
Wednesday 23 May 2007
Tangequels
(Tangential Sequels)
You film buffs will know that Hitch was fond of employing a device of his own invention which he called the "McGuffin". I was never a big Hitchcock fan, so I'm sure that there are better examples, but the one that comes to my mind was in one of his later flicks...maybe Family Plot...I'm not sure (this post is actually starting to sound McGuffinesque); to wit; We open on a street scene; the camera follows a man walking a dog...(Hitch himself if I recall in one of his walk-ons)...we've established that he's a character of interest...or is he?...No!, it's the guy that just fell to his death from the balcony in the BG...the man walking the dog was the McGuffin...a Red Herring by any other name...which brings me to the somewhat similar concept of Tangential Sequels...call them Tangequels (but remember I coined the term here first!)...a Tangequel takes a character, script reference (preferably, but not necessarily obscure), or related set of circumstances and goes off on a whole other tangent.
One possible Tangequel would be a Klingon adaptation from Shakespeare alluded to in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country...a text for a Klingon Hamlet exists, published as part of the Shakespeare Restoration Project, undertaken by a dedicated group of scholarly Trek and linguistics fans...
When I first saw Disney's Holes I thought that a Western based on the tale of the outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow would have made a great Tangequel...and vehicle for the oh so very lovely Patricia Arquette...
Remember all those humans who stepped off the Mothership in Close Encounters?...we see most of them in silhouette...no certainty as to how they're attired...what if one of them had been whisked away from Renaissance Europe and returned to modern Wyoming?...that'd be some debriefing and reaclimatisation...where and how and how long did they live on another planet?...living amongst strange creatures with a technology akin to sorcery...then returned to Earth to live amongst humans long settled in the "New World" , again with magical, but less sophisticated technology.
How about Ed Chigliaks movie?...Tangequel to the T.V. series Northern Exposure...maybe Woody Allen could co-direct it.
Last but not least where's the Wyld Stallyns album which features the cuts that finally brought peace to mankind...or the Rockumentary about Stallyns Bill and Ted?
You film buffs will know that Hitch was fond of employing a device of his own invention which he called the "McGuffin". I was never a big Hitchcock fan, so I'm sure that there are better examples, but the one that comes to my mind was in one of his later flicks...maybe Family Plot...I'm not sure (this post is actually starting to sound McGuffinesque); to wit; We open on a street scene; the camera follows a man walking a dog...(Hitch himself if I recall in one of his walk-ons)...we've established that he's a character of interest...or is he?...No!, it's the guy that just fell to his death from the balcony in the BG...the man walking the dog was the McGuffin...a Red Herring by any other name...which brings me to the somewhat similar concept of Tangential Sequels...call them Tangequels (but remember I coined the term here first!)...a Tangequel takes a character, script reference (preferably, but not necessarily obscure), or related set of circumstances and goes off on a whole other tangent.
One possible Tangequel would be a Klingon adaptation from Shakespeare alluded to in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country...a text for a Klingon Hamlet exists, published as part of the Shakespeare Restoration Project, undertaken by a dedicated group of scholarly Trek and linguistics fans...
When I first saw Disney's Holes I thought that a Western based on the tale of the outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow would have made a great Tangequel...and vehicle for the oh so very lovely Patricia Arquette...
Remember all those humans who stepped off the Mothership in Close Encounters?...we see most of them in silhouette...no certainty as to how they're attired...what if one of them had been whisked away from Renaissance Europe and returned to modern Wyoming?...that'd be some debriefing and reaclimatisation...where and how and how long did they live on another planet?...living amongst strange creatures with a technology akin to sorcery...then returned to Earth to live amongst humans long settled in the "New World" , again with magical, but less sophisticated technology.
How about Ed Chigliaks movie?...Tangequel to the T.V. series Northern Exposure...maybe Woody Allen could co-direct it.
Last but not least where's the Wyld Stallyns album which features the cuts that finally brought peace to mankind...or the Rockumentary about Stallyns Bill and Ted?
Sunday 20 May 2007
Paalam sa iyong pag-yao
Yesterday, my son informed me that Yoyoy Villame had died, it came as a sad shock to the Hyperbolic Hyperborean as I had had a chance to see the ebulient troubadour here in my own remote neck of the woods only last fall but didn't go...alas, mostly for want of money as I was still out of work at the time...more later...
R.I.P. Yoyoy
Please bear with me, this will all make more sense as and when I'm able to get back to my postings...
Forward (from the unfinished, unpublished intro to the book of the film of the...)
The following started out as a screenplay which, after gestating for well over a decade was finally blurted out over the space of many weeks beginning in May 2004. At this writing, I am still toying with the idea of trying to shoot a few scenes to use as a pitch to potential investors. I am much encouraged by the recent upsurge in the success of independent films. Also, we have reached a point where almost affordable digital video technology renders image quality comparable to, if not better than super 16mm, on a standard sized cinema screen.
There are nay sayers, and rather than be put off by them I’m energized by the challenge...There are after all a million good reasons to not even try to make a film...the trick is in finding the one reason to continue to try...I’m not so sure that even within a huge, well established studio that the process of getting any particular project “greenlit” doesn’t vary greatly from one picture to the next...oftentimes the stories of how films get made are better, or at least more interesting or amazing than the films themselves...hopefully if this project ever comes to light it won’t disappoint...
When friends and family continually prompted me to write a book I was reticent. I felt that I had to stick to my guns; I had, after all, already written a script...because I wanted to make a movie! Although, truthfully, I wouldn’t have even started had I not convinced myself that my only goal was just to finish a script. Curiously, the confidence gained in finishing 132 very imperfect pages, was enough to shift those goal posts; and the notion of actually bringing this project to fruition once again seized my thoughts and was keeping me awake at night. The idea of returning to square one; tearing it all apart and trying to rewrite it in novel form was onerous. I wrote a script, partly as a compromise to begin with, precisely because I wanted to tell the story, but I didn’t care to, or feel that I could write a novel/memoir. I had scenes in my head that I wanted to see shot the way I’d imagined them. I had recounted some of these as anecdotes, often many times over, others less so, and still others kept as secrets until they were laid bare on the page.
It occurred to me some months later that perhaps I could assemble all the material I had collected, including my own writing, research text and images, storyboards, designs, etc. and attempt to publish it as a ready made “kit” for making this film. The end result would not be unlike those numerous “making of” or “art of” film books that have become so much more popular over the last few decades. The only significant difference being that this would be a making of book for an as yet unmade film. It’s also a neat, and as far as I know, an as yet untried marketing strategy. Furthermore, even if it was self published (admittedly a strong possibility); properly bound and printed, it could be a very handsome and comprehensive proposal document, and/or press kit...it could even include an EPK on CD. In this latter instance, it needn’t even be expected to sell as a book; merely be used to drum up interest and hence, although more expensive to produce would only be published in a small edition...and of course if successful, then well worth it. Producing a book might also be a good crash course in tackling...on a smaller scale...some of the problems of producing a film.
R.I.P. Yoyoy
Please bear with me, this will all make more sense as and when I'm able to get back to my postings...
Forward (from the unfinished, unpublished intro to the book of the film of the...)
The following started out as a screenplay which, after gestating for well over a decade was finally blurted out over the space of many weeks beginning in May 2004. At this writing, I am still toying with the idea of trying to shoot a few scenes to use as a pitch to potential investors. I am much encouraged by the recent upsurge in the success of independent films. Also, we have reached a point where almost affordable digital video technology renders image quality comparable to, if not better than super 16mm, on a standard sized cinema screen.
There are nay sayers, and rather than be put off by them I’m energized by the challenge...There are after all a million good reasons to not even try to make a film...the trick is in finding the one reason to continue to try...I’m not so sure that even within a huge, well established studio that the process of getting any particular project “greenlit” doesn’t vary greatly from one picture to the next...oftentimes the stories of how films get made are better, or at least more interesting or amazing than the films themselves...hopefully if this project ever comes to light it won’t disappoint...
When friends and family continually prompted me to write a book I was reticent. I felt that I had to stick to my guns; I had, after all, already written a script...because I wanted to make a movie! Although, truthfully, I wouldn’t have even started had I not convinced myself that my only goal was just to finish a script. Curiously, the confidence gained in finishing 132 very imperfect pages, was enough to shift those goal posts; and the notion of actually bringing this project to fruition once again seized my thoughts and was keeping me awake at night. The idea of returning to square one; tearing it all apart and trying to rewrite it in novel form was onerous. I wrote a script, partly as a compromise to begin with, precisely because I wanted to tell the story, but I didn’t care to, or feel that I could write a novel/memoir. I had scenes in my head that I wanted to see shot the way I’d imagined them. I had recounted some of these as anecdotes, often many times over, others less so, and still others kept as secrets until they were laid bare on the page.
It occurred to me some months later that perhaps I could assemble all the material I had collected, including my own writing, research text and images, storyboards, designs, etc. and attempt to publish it as a ready made “kit” for making this film. The end result would not be unlike those numerous “making of” or “art of” film books that have become so much more popular over the last few decades. The only significant difference being that this would be a making of book for an as yet unmade film. It’s also a neat, and as far as I know, an as yet untried marketing strategy. Furthermore, even if it was self published (admittedly a strong possibility); properly bound and printed, it could be a very handsome and comprehensive proposal document, and/or press kit...it could even include an EPK on CD. In this latter instance, it needn’t even be expected to sell as a book; merely be used to drum up interest and hence, although more expensive to produce would only be published in a small edition...and of course if successful, then well worth it. Producing a book might also be a good crash course in tackling...on a smaller scale...some of the problems of producing a film.
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