More amazing shit from Siggraph 2008. This is a real-time interactive 3D hologram created by a tilted mirror spinning at a ridiculous speed. It boggles the mind to think the potential applications this tech could be used for—holographic communications being the obvious favorite. At last I won't need to fill out stupid notations for my chess correspondence games.
The Kashi ad I filmed three weeks ago is on their web site here. It's not often I get to see my work on a commercial, so if you manage to get your hands on a copy, please let me know! It's being broadcast today on some cable channels, although I'm unsure which ones. Ana would know.
(If you want to see the pics from that shoot, scroll down and click on the "Shots of a Shoot" in the sidebar. Or click here.)
Take any picture and electronically resize it. Delete people from photographs. All without distortion. You have to see it to believe it:
The best article I ever read about the inner workings of TV production was Minimum Headroom by Benjamin J. Stein, and I read it in the February 1988 issue of Playboy magazine. Yes, you read that right—we do sometimes read it for the articles. Not that I was a Playboy subscriber, but a fellow screenwriter matter-of-factly handed me the article and said, "Read this."
20 years later and all the machinations laid down in Stein's article are still painfully true because the main principles haven't changed: the more people have at risk, the more gunshy they get. TV delivers a weekly product which must deliver on its promise as many as 24 times a year... and some kinds of revenue streams dry up quickly if you lose your audience because you try something nobody has ever done before.
Stein's premise centered around the principle of self-censorship: top network execs want something fresh and original, so they order their assistants to go forth and find a new series, something more like Monty Python or Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Their assistants may indeed find hundreds of fresh and original scripts, but hesitate recommending the really original stuff for fear the new series is so original that it can't find an audience. Who recommended this steamy turdpile???, a network exec might scream after the show spectacularly flops. And so ends the new career of a rising network exec, punished for following orders to find something fresh and original. Thus, top network execs are only recommended the safer choices, similar remakes of The Cosby Show and Golden Girls. Hesitant to be remembered for backing a series that killed the network, even the top network exec reneges on his promise to provide "fresh and original" programming. The cycle continues.
This is why programming quality on ad-based network TV has taken a nose dive, and subscription-based cable TV has thrived: network TV dies without its advertising so weekly ratings become disproportionately important while cable execs can experiment with more ease of mind.
Consider the immensely clever Firefly, a Joss Whedon creation which could have successfully found a larger following... if only FOX hadn't cancelled it after 13 episodes. Or Tim Minear's (a Firefly co-creator!) more recent series Drive, cancelled after only 4 episodes, again by FOX. By contrast, a series like HBO's Six Feet Under and Deadwood can take risks and not worry about losing too many viewers because truly original programming is what HBO subscribers are expecting. But for network TV, too much is riding on the line... if a series on network TV doesn't look like it's going to find an audience immediately, it gets the axe. Network TV is a hungry giant wandering around for a big meal: a house salad—which is sufficient for many—isn't going to satisfy his mammoth appetite.
This can only end badly. Most of these giants will starve and die off, but some of them will have to learn to live with smaller appetites. This will most likely have a ripple effect for everyone else in the industry—lower salaries for network execs and series creators will spur an exodus to cable networks like TNT and Lifetime, a paucity of network programming will foster more creative advertising and/or more original programming. But who knows how it will finally play out?
Here's a great article that explains why this summer's best TV isn't on the main network channels:
Rick Kushman: Best dramas not on broadcast networks
By Rick Kushman - Bee Columnist
Last Updated 6:49 am PDT Monday, August 20, 2007
This has been some summer for TV dramas.
If you've been watching the broadcast networks, that makes no sense to you. TV's big dogs are twiddling around with game shows and talent contests. But out on cable, and just basic cable, there's some good television going on.
Here's a partial list of the new stuff: "Saving Grace" on TNT; "Damages" on FX; "Mad Men" on AMC; "Burn Notice" on USA; "Army Wives" and "State of Mind" on Lifetime; and "Kill Point" on Spike TV.
And here are some of the stars involved: Holly Hunter, Glenn Close, Kim Delaney, Lili Taylor and John Leguizamo.
That doesn't include the continuing cable series airing this summer like TNT's "The Closer" and FX's "Rescue Me." That's about as much excitement as you'll find in the networks' new fall seasons, and the success rate is already way higher. All of the new cable shows are drawing solid ratings or good reviews, and most have been renewed.
And notice what some of these networks are. Lifetime, home of women-in-peril movies and sap. Spike, ground zero for testosterone-fueled anything. Their new shows have the old Lifetime and Spike DNA, but they're still better than anything either network has done in a while.
So, what's going on here?
It all starts with two facts about summer. First, fewer people watch TV when the weather is good and the days are longer. Plus, the networks can't afford to make new scripted dramas and comedies all year long, so summer -- when TV use is down -- seems a good time to bail and go with cheaper game and reality shows.
Cable networks, on the other hand, can live with lower ratings. They spend less on their original shows -- usually that means fewer big-money stars and faster production schedules -- and they air a lot of repeat programming. (They also get revenue from the cable systems, such as Comcast, that carry them, but the class on TV financing is for another day.)
In any case, TNT, USA and the others can survive with smaller audiences. If 3 million or 4 million people watch a basic-cable show, that's a good payday. If 4 million viewers watch "Shaq's Big Challenge," which was about the number for ABC's good-hearted reality series this summer, it's a disaster.
And because the broadcast nets don't air many original dramas in the summer, that lets the cable folks launch their new shows with much less competition.
The last piece of the picture is that the bar has been raised on cable, by shows such as "The Closer" and FX's "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck," by pay-cable channels HBO and Showtime, and by all of the competition out in the culture for viewer attention and entertainment dollars.
"Cable has kind of changed the landscape," Hunter, star of "Saving Grace," told TV critics last month. "It happens to be made for less money. And so risks can be greater because less cash is at risk. And it's not in competition with the networks. So every single thing about it adds up for the people who were wanting to take some chances."
Specifically, that means, say, AMC doesn't have to try to make a show with a broad- enough appeal to draw 10 million-plus viewers. And often, broad appeal means rounding off some of the sharper edges and themes of a series.
Instead, AMC is a smaller cable network that just needs to give people a new reason to tune in, and it's doing that with "Mad Men," a smart, moody period drama about Madison Avenue in 1960.
(The show is averaging a bit more than 1 million viewers, which is still a big increase over anything AMC has aired recently.)
Matt Weiner, the creator of "Mad Men," wrote for HBO's "The Sopranos" and told TV critics he believes his show has benefited from the HBO-like patience and creative freedom AMC showed Weiner when he was developing the new series.
"These people, they really like this thing," Weiner said. "They want to do a show based on quality, and when you hear them say the word 'quality,' they're not saying it in that fake way... They really mean it."
Stars such as Hunter, "State of Mind's" Taylor and "Damages' " Close all told critics separately during the TV Critics Association press tour in July that the writing on some cable shows is actually better than anything they're offered in the feature world, and as Close said, it's always a good career move to "go where the writing is."
And because the cable networks are trying to be original and challenging -- to offer something different from the often-safer network fare -- a lot of the new cable dramas feature anti-heroes like Close's and Hunter's characters. And they feature women leads who are over 40 years old or, in Close's case, 60.
There are a lot of reasons for that, but a big one is that many of the cable shows are just trying to break old molds. Taylor said that television and movies used to work off of basic formulas, which made for simple, unrealistic women characters.
But the demand for better TV forced writers to break out, and female characters became "less two-dimensional and more complicated."
Less two-dimensional and more complicated pretty much describes the entire crop of new cable shows.
Successful is another description, and that's got the broad-cast networks thinking they can't give away their summer audiences much longer.
ABC entertainment president Steve McPherson told TV critics that maybe the networks have to revamp their annual plans: "We'd like to get some original scripted (shows), both drama and comedy, on next summer."
A well-taught film school grad had never heard this amusing fable, so it's worth putting in writing:
THE FIVE STAGES OF AN ACTOR
It's always fun to see someone come up with, and execute, an idea you had years ago and dismissed because you thought it was more trouble than it was worth. My idea was to have a sturdier button, something you could really beat the crap out of... but could also serve as a delete button! Link.
Sometimes you want something attached to your computer which you can just BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF - and with the USB Stress Button you're actually supposed to! It has three modes, Explosion, Punch-Out and Worksheet, and each button-mash switches it to the next. Explosion mode generates a countdown with a graphic, satisfying explosion; Punch-Out shows a cartoon face and punches the hell out of it; and Worksheet (or "Boss") makes it look like you're actually doing something in Excel (and if you were, that's probably why you've lost your temper, patience and marbles).
As much as I love doing typography on my computer, there are still dudes like this tinkering with the old tools. What strikes me most about this video is how high this guy's standard is, and the obvious precision and pride in his work.
A part of me is wistful that I don't know how to do this.
I'm all for freedom of choice, but this is one step beyond calling your child Adolf Hitler Pruden, or something warm and fuzzy of that ilk:
BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.
The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.
"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.
While the "@" symbol is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta," or "love him," to Mandarin speakers.
Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people's increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialisation and the Internet break down conventions.
Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like "King Osrina."
Li did not say if officials accepted the "@" name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages.
Sixty million Chinese faced the problem that their names use ancient characters so obscure that computers cannot recognize them and even fluent speakers were left scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript of the briefing on the government Web site (www.gov.cn).
One of them was the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name had a rare "rong" character that gave newspaper editors headaches. BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.
The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.
"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.
While the "@" symbol is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta," or "love him," to Mandarin speakers.
Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people's increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialisation and the Internet break down conventions.
Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like "King Osrina."
Li did not say if officials accepted the "@" name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages.
Sixty million Chinese faced the problem that their names use ancient characters so obscure that computers cannot recognize them and even fluent speakers were left scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript of the briefing on the government Web site (www.gov.cn).
One of them was the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name had a rare "rong" character that gave newspaper editors headaches.
My 93 year old Aunt-in-Law Kitty Pruden passed away last month and my cousin was able to scour through her photos, of which there were many. It was actually through Kitty how I got the first picture of my paternal grandfather:
That's a peculiar photo because he looks so much like my own father that many people often think they are the same person, just older/younger:
You can imagine my surprise, then, when my cousin mailed me the photo below. Scrawled on the back were the words, "1870s, Silas Pruden". I am related to a Silas Pruden, but is one of these guys Silas??? And what were they doing? Was it a posse? Was it a secret club? The mystery continues... 
Indie actors & filmmakers, take heed:
Acting Up
Steve's post about emotional context got me thinking about something I've noticed a lot of ...
Performance.
More specifically, bad performance.
When you cast your film, please take the time to cast good actors.
Screw that—take the time to cast GREAT actors.
Pretty please? Your audience will thank you for it.
You've spent all this time creating the character, thinking up the backstory, writing the snappy dialogue... all of this is meaningless unless you have someone who can sell it.
Performance is everything. It's why this is a star-driven business: because these are the folks who take the time to FEEL all of these emotions that we put on the page. To paraphrase Quentin: "If you're not a great actor, you're a bad actor and bad acting is bullshit in this business."
As audience members, we're acutely aware of when someone is giving a non-genuine performance; we're human, so we know when someone is not behaving genuinely. And it doesn't matter how much production value you put into your film—if an actor is giving a bad performance, that's what will attract the most attention.
Acting is the natural recreation of human behavior. It's listening. It's reacting. It's behaving. It's FEELING in front of a camera (or on stage, or what-have-you). In short, it's NOT ACTING.
We want our audience to feel the emotions of the genre—we want them to laugh, to cry, to be scared, to be on the edge of their seats. If the actors aren't feeling it, neither will the audience. How can we become involved in the story if we're preoccupied with a crummy performance?
So please take the time to make sure your movie is cast well. Audition and re-audition and re-re-audition if necessary. Shyamalan spent FOREVER agonizing over Cole in Sixth Sense—he said he thought he wrote a part that COULDN'T be played by a child actor. And then Hayley Joel walked in and blew everyone away. On the extras for the special edition Superman DVD, watch and see all of the actors who AREN'T Superman... and then watch Christopher Reeve.
If you're shooting a five minute short or a full-length feature, make sure every part is filled with someone who will add life to your movie, not take away from it.
Pretty please? Your audience will thank you for it.
Worked on a great shoot as Script Supervisor this last Saturday for Kashi. As the photos here show, Kashi pulled out all the stops to make their commercial the best it could be. Frankly, I was surprised they shot a TV commercial on 35mm:
When I was in film school about five or six thousand years ago, I learned how to edit film—actual celluloid film—by using a flatbed. Flatbeds were pretty slick machines. You started by taking the film track (the reel with just the images on it) and running it from the reel-holder on the left side through the tapehead to another reel-holder on the right side. Essentially, it was like sitting inside a massive tape cassette. You remember those, right? Before CDs?
Once you had your film track properly threaded, you could lay down your sound track [sic] in one of two reel-holders. Typically, one reel-holder was reserved for a dialog track and the other for sound effects track, although that was strictly a matter of preference. You could, for example, put music in the other reel-holder or even another dialog track.
In the editing process, we used something called "slug tape", which was exposed film tape. It was meant to be filler, to take up a certain amount of the reel—either for image or for sound—until you knew what you could swap it out for later on. All three reels would roll in sync and you'd start out with a complete reel of slug tape for your sound effects track and slowly chip away at it, removing a few feet of slug at a time so that a special effect would play at precisely the right moment. When done, you'd usually have a music or dialog reel spliced with only small bits of slug tape here and there.
Writing is perfectly epitomized by slug tape. When I write, my inclination is to get it on paper exactly as it is in my head which has led to years of frustrating idleness. Thus, I have been forced to accept that, for at least the first time around, everything I write is almost always going to be slug tape. Over time, I'll yank out a clunky word and slide in a better one, snip out an awkward phrase and replace it with a more fitting dependent clause... writing is exactly like editing with slug tape. I even started writing my feature script 62 Blocks to Battery Park by slapping together 120 blank pages with two brads and slowly replacing each blank "slug" page with a finished page. Even though the first draft was wretched, the "slug tape" would slowly be replaced with better "footage". Eventually, it gets hard to tell where the slug tape is at all (arguably, that is why authors will always need editors).
Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot cleverly use a verbal cue to remind themselves, and each other, that their initial writing suggestions aren't carved in stone, but start as slug tape: "Okay, this is the bad version..."
I have kids, so I can say this... this ought to be a gift for everyone at the holidays:
And here's where you can buy them.
