Blah.

January's nearly over so I thought I'd better make a post. Have nothing to write about though so this will just be a brief spewing of my thoughts. It's really hot right now. The tennis ended last night and it was amazing and Novak won and I was so happy but now I'm bummed it's over. Next year! Haha.

I need a job. Don't have one yet. Will get one eventually.

Trying to read the third and last Hunger Games book. Sort of left it too long and forgot where the second one ended so I'm a bit confused. It's good though so I'm sure my brain will catch up. I'm stupidly pumped for the movie coming out in March. I hate how loads of weirdos are comparing it to that unspeakable vampire franchise. It's nothing like that. Katniss would only have to look at Bella and she would be dead. Also, Katniss is Jennifer Lawernce, and Bella is Kristen Stewart. Only takes a nanosecond to work out which one of them is more kick-ass. Anyway, aside from the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo teaser, The Hunger Games had the best trailer I watched all last year. It was so well put together. Perfect set up and build up without giving too much of the plot away. I'm so excited! I also found out that Elizabeth Banks is playing Effie Trinket. And when I realised who Elizabeth Banks was I was like WHAT. Weird. Weird choice. But I'll take that....

Justin is having a murder mystery party thing and I'm writing the story. Didn't realise it would be so insanely complex. I have to write fifteen characters. All of which have to be pretty rounded. I think I'm stretching myself in quick character development by doing it though so it's all good. Sort of annoying that I have to put my actual novel on the back-burner for a day or two while I get a good portion of this out of the way, but it is fun.

Speaking of my actual novel, completely and utterly stuck on chapter four. I think I'lll skip it and come back later, even though I hate doing that. I feel like it's going to be a good point of development for Jordan's character so I really don't want to skip ahead, but trying to write it is just not working at all. Not sure why. I know it's a difficult couple of scene but I didn't think it would be this hard! Never fear, I will either jump over it or force through it in order to continue writing asap. The end of the hard slog is in sight!

Laptop battery dying. Brain melting in the heat. Need to find water.

Thus ends my brain-spew.

Murdered Darling Monday #1

Got another segment for ya. I stole this one from the lovely girl who runs *Headdesk*, which I insist you check out if you haven't before. Especially if writing is your thing.

This segment, appropriately titled Murdered Darling Monday, is for scenes that I've written that I liked but had to cut for various reasons. If you're one of my beta-readers for "Semblance", you'll be familiar with a lot of the dialogue in this brief scene, but I thought I'd post it anyway. This was the first draft of the meeting between two of my main characters, Jordan and Hayden. The context is a funeral (changed to a wake in the current draft), and previously Jordan spotted this boy during the service, looking like he might faint from the heat. "Semblance" is the first in what I expect to be a series about some teenagers with super powers. In this scene, Jordan is unbeknownst to the fact that Hayden is a cryokinetic, someone who can create and manipulate ice. 

  ‘Hey, excuse me.’ 

  She looked round. The sweaty boy was standing by the air-conditioner, motioning for her to come closer. She glanced back to see her father nowhere in sight, and so went towards him. The boy smiled as she approached. ‘I saw you earlier - you look really familiar - have we met?’ he asked. 

  His eyes were bright green. Jordan scanned the rest of his face and shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’ 

  The boy shrugged. ‘Can’t place you anyway. My name’s Hayden Connor.’

  She took his outstretched hand and shook it. ‘Jordan Elliott.’ 

  At that, his eyes widened. ‘You’re an Elliott? Is your dad’s name Daniel?’ 

  ‘Well, yeah -’

  ‘Oh, my gosh. Your dad is Daniel Elliott. The Daniel Elliott?’ His hands curled into excited fists. ‘I don’t believe this!’ 

  Jordan frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’ She’d never heard anyone talk about her father like that. ‘What’s so special about him?’ 

  ‘Daniel Elliott,’ Hayden repeated. ‘He was on the last elite team in the academy. His strength powers are amazing, I’ve heard.’ 

  ‘Strength powers? I - what?’ 

  Hayden stared at her. His shirt collar rippled under the blast from the air-con. ‘But you must know…’ His eyes darted back and forth, and for a moment he was silent. Then he said, ‘Do you … not have powers?’ 

  She couldn’t make sense of his words, and so she just shook her head. His shoulders sagged a little. 

  ‘Oh. Well,’ he added, with a twitch of smile, ‘Maybe you’re like a late bloomer, y’know? If something ever changes, you can come train with us. My dad says his powers lay dormant until he was almost sixteen. Maybe it’s the same with you. Sometimes you just gotta give them a kick-start.’

  She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but at that moment she heard her father call her name. 

  ‘I have to go,’ she said. She started to trail backwards, and his green eyes followed her as she went. 

  ‘See ya round,’ he said.

  Daniel was waiting by the door, his sunglasses hanging around his neck. ‘Who was that you were talking to?’ he asked. 

  Jordan shrugged. ‘His name’s Hayden. He knew Hezekiah.’ And you, she thought. 

  A look of recognition flitted across Daniel’s face, but for some reason he didn’t elaborate on it. She wondered what he would say if she told him what Hayden had said. Maybe Hayden had had the wrong person. Either that, or her father was hiding a very big secret. 

Why it's a Darling: I was really happy with the description of Hayden and the air conditioner, and was disappointed that it wasn't fitting in the rewrite of the scene. I did, of course, keep some of the lines of dialogue the same in the rewrite, because in terms of character they worked very well for me. I also liked the way Hayden just sees her and starts talking, leading the conversation the whole way, which is very like him. He still does this, but in a slightly different way, in the current draft.

Why it got Murdered: The big problem was that the context created a huge problem for me when I tried to write the scene after this. The setting was too vague, and I knew I had to make it more specific. That's why I reset the scene at a wake, in a house, by the pool in he backyard. It works much better for me.

Anyway! Currently writing chapter four, which is going well, albeit slow. Better keep going with it. The goal for today is to finish it, which means I have about 1800 words still to write! Gonna get cracking. Ta ta. 

Screencap Saturday

I've been wanting to do some kind of 'segment' on this blog, so I thought I'd start with something fairly simple. Introducing Screencap Saturday! Basically, I screencap a movie and put up sequences of my favorite stills. I find screencaps interesting because they literally do 'capture' a very purposeful moment in the movie. It makes me more attentive to the lighting, the framing, the facial expressions of the actors, the relationships between various shots, and the length of pans and dollys. Looking at various snippets from a film give you a huge insight into the director's style. I'll try and do Screencap Saturday at least once a month.

So I will begin with what is currently my all-time favorite film. Directed by David Fincher. Cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth. Editing by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall. I give you The Social Network, in 160 frames.

Stuff. And Movies.

So, as is typical of me, my blogging has failed again. It's pretty lame that I haven't blogged since I watched The Tree of Life.... So a quick update!

I had an awesome Christmas, and made t-shirts for my family.

I went to Carols in the Domain with some amazing people.

Celebrated NYE with the same amazing people.

And went on a camping weekend with - yeah - those same amazing people. Because they're amazing. And we cooked dinner all by ourselves and were cool.

Anyway! Back to the present. I got on here to blog because I've been reading this gigantic book that I got out of the library called Film History: An Introduction. It's incredibly interesting. I'm reading all about how film became a new medium and expanded into an art form, a method of entertainment, and new way to tell stories. I've decided that as I read through the book I'm going to watch the films from 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die that corresponde with the various chapters.

In the first chapter, the main two films mentioned are Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902), and Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903). It's crazy that they started making such elaborate films that early! Full sets and costumes, stop-motion and special effects. If you are interested in movies but have never seen Le Voyage Dans La Lune by George Méliès, you need to jump on the internet and view it on Youtube right now. It only goes for about 11 minutes, so you have. It really is an astounding piece of work for its time. I'm yet to watch Uncle Tom's Cabin, but I plan on doing that today. They use cool techniques like exposing the film twice to add in extra effects. 


And yeah. Hopefully I'll blog again soon but I don't want to make any promises unless I fail, ha. But I'll be back at some point. 


Oh yeah, and I got a twitter. So if you come on here and I haven't updated the actual blog, you can view my obnoxious tweets (I hate that word) in the sidebar about the Australian Open and the Oscars. Won't that be fun? I'm a loser, I know. 

The Tree of Life

Yesterday I watched Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, and after tossing and turning all night, my mind consumed with imagery from the film, I knew I had to write about it.

Before beginning this review I skimmed over the reviews that people had written on the movie's IMDB page. I only looked at the first page, but the review were pretty much 50/50, with users either rating it 5 starts, or 1.

I was prepared to jump on the Number-1-Rating bandwagon when the film first began with a quote from the book of Job, a strange glowing light and a whispery voiceover by Jessica Chastain. I was expecting it to be strange and plotless, but judging from the trailer I was also sure that the movie would be full of beautiful imagery and excellent cinematography, so I was determined to get through all 2 hours and 12 minutes, even if it killed me.

Well, I'm still alive. So many people said that this movie has no plot, and though it may be true that is it less of a chronological tale and more of a of an art form, there is undoubtedly a story, told nearly entirely through the camera. There is minimal dialogue in the movie, and for the most part I felt that this worked to its advantage. I'm a huge fan of telling important details completely through the camera, and in this movie Malick is the master of that.

The film is told through the eyes of Jack, journeying through the most memorable years of his life as a boy in the 1950s. The story is an impression of his memories: his complicated relationship with his father, his mother's love for him, and his loss of innocence. This film is a journey of faith, both for Jack and for the audience, relying on what he chooses to show us in order that we might understand him and his struggle with the two opposing forces in his life, emulated by his parents: grace and nature.

I found myself wondering how two people who were such opposites had come together. Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Inglorious Basterds) is the inventor father, priding himself on being a smart and strong man and wanting his boys to grow up the same. Throughout the film we see Jack wrestle with conflicting feelings of wanting be like his father and yet hating him at times. Pitt's character represents the world and he puts himself first.

Jessica Chastain (The Debt, The Help) is the gentle, graceful mother who showers her boys with love and affection. She cherishes the boys' childhood and reminds me a little of Wendy from Peter Pan. The film opens with shots of her character as a girl, and there are many occasions where we find her running down the street with her sons, laughing as she chases them, often barefoot and even jumping on the bed in one scene. She clings to innocence, rarely disciplining the boys but perhaps teaching them more than anyone the most important things they need to know in life.

Glimpses of the adult Jack (Sean Penn (Milk, Fair Game)) bookend the story, a troubled, lost soul who questions his place in the world. He is seen wandering through imagined canyons and through office buildings; his world is full of tunnels and empty spaces; he travels but he doesn't get anywhere until he meets his younger self near the end of the film. There are things he needs to reconcile with his past.

This movie is about so much more than meets the eye. The first half hour, images of nature and the beginning of the world, flash before your eyes as you view the rest of the film, and for that reason it's entirely necessary that the interlude is in there. It needs to be long so that it stays with you. It fits perfectly with the themes of nature and grace, and makes you think of the natural beauty and conflicting behaviour of the world, portrayed in each of the characters. The characters themselves are far more complex than they first appear to be, as so much of the story is told not through their words but through their actions. A scene in which Jack shoots his younger brother in the hand with a BB gun is followed not by his verbal apology but by the way he holds a fan towards his brother's face to cool him off, presses his fingers to his brother's lips to make him smile, and hands him a plank of wood to hit Jack if he wants. There are things that happen in glimpses, memories from childhood about a house fire nearby, an accident at the pool involving a neighbourhood boy, and the time the boys' father went away and they chased their mother through the house with a garden lizard.

For all the things I liked about this movie, no film is perfect, and there were two things that stood out to me that I didn't like so much. At times the classical soundtrack is over the top and a little offbeat, and I did find it distracting especially in the first half.

Twenty minutes into the film, during the creation interlude, we see some dinosaurs. The point of the interaction between two particular dinosaurs in this scene was to provoke this question:  What is that essence that drives us to commit heinous acts of violence one moment and act compassionately the next? This happens to the characters several times in the movie, so I understood Malick's need to provoke these thoughts from his viewers not just through the humans but through animals and nature, but I felt the CGI was an incredibly poor move. The wonder of this film comes from the fact that everything is natural. There is a scene where Jessica Chastain's character is walking down the street and a butterfly lands on her outstretched fingertips. I read somewhere that Jessica and the crew followed that butterfly for three blocks just to get that shot. And it really was perfect. It would have ruined it for me to learn that the butterfly was digital, and the dinosaurs did the same thing for me. Unfortunately, they actually turned up in the movie. This really took away from the experience for me, and I wish that they hadn't put it in. 

In saying that, this is a beautiful film, amazing because of the amount of time and effort it would have taken from all cast and crew to complete, a movie that stays in your mind for a long time afterwards. It's one of those questioning films. Not everything that comes to mind is answered by the end of the movie, but that's what life is like, isn't it? You wonder about things. You let your imagination run wild over what if and how and why?

My recommendation for watching this movie is to let everything go. Watch it with someone who won't talk too much during the movie. Turn out all the lights. Empty your mind of everything and just enjoy this experience, because that's what it is. It's not so much a movie with a beginning, middle, and end, but a expression of life and art. My final rating, only marked down for the cgi and partly for the score, is 4.5 stars.

Un-Live Blogging

Here's my thought-process throughout the lunar eclipse that happened this evening. If you've been reading posts here for a while you'd know of my interest in Lunar Eclipses due to the important appearance of one in my WIP Eloquence. So this is sort of 'fun research' if one can get away with even calling it research. 

Beginning at 11:30pm Saturday, December 11^th, 2011, the moon and the sun are opposing each other. The sun is not visible but the clouds around it are a deep red like sunset. The moon is glowing bright white, surrounded by a circle of clouds drenched orangey-red from the sunlight. 

11:40 Darkness sets in! The lower edge of the moon is fading black.

12:17 am. The eclipse has taken about 50 minutes to become engulfed almost halfway. There is red only in the clouds surrounding the moon, and the half of the moon that has been eclipsed is black, like it has been swallowed in shadow. The brightness fades in and out, partly due to the cloud cover but also due to the amount of the moon that is ‘disappearing’. 

(Having to keep changing exposure times, which may be something the photographer could comment on, depending on how deep I want to go with the technology. Will have to research this.) 

12:23. And we’re pretty much at halfway. The moon is beginning to change dark red on the shadowed side. 

12:37. Rather disappointed at the cloud cover that is ruining the latest shots. It’s far too dark now to get a good photo. Might wait it out a bit to see if the clouds clear before we reach totality, but if it’s not any better by 1am I’ll have to retire. Also the laptop battery is low. 

12:40. A blanket of cloud is threatening to suck the moon in. The brightest thing now shining on my camera lens are the lights from the endless stream of taxis that keep coming down my street to pick up all the drunk people partying across the road. 3 minutes of battery life remaining. This could be it, folks. 

12:42. No moon to be seen. Lame. 

12:43. I can see a sliver of moon struggling to break through the clouds, but it’ll soon disappear what with this being an eclipse and all….

12:52. Just plugged the laptop back in after it died on me. Camera packed up now and doors locked so seeing the totality was not to be tonight. Guess I’ll have to wait until 2014! A tiny part of my soul expects that Eloquence will be finished by then, but with the amount of ideas in my head, who knows? Snuggled in bed now with clean sheets and a nice sleepy feeling, so I guess it’s a happy ending anyway. Will post pictures tomorrow if I get a moment! 

Sometimes, things stop working.

I've been having trouble with the opening scene of my novel for several weeks now. I've known for ages that the problem is my main character's behaviour. Every time I attempted to write the scene she would just stand around and not do or say anything productive to move the story forward.

Tonight, I finally figured out the source of this problem. I've recently made a lot of changes to the character, particularly her backstory. I knew that this would result in some major personality changes, which is what I wanted, but all in all she would still be the same 'person', if you will.

That's what I thought, anyway. Turns out I've been trying to write this scene with two conflicting ideas - one being the idea of what the character must be, and the other being what the character actually is. So I ditched all ideas about how the scene was "supposed" to play out and gave my character back her free reign.

This might sound strange, especially to non-writers - how does the author give the character free reign, you ask? Surely you're always in control of the character - after all, they're fictional! They don't have real brains!

Of course they don't. When I talk about my characters like that, I mean I've let go of the boundaries in my head. I've dropped ideas such as "the scene MUST start like this" or "she HAS to do that before this happens". I went back to old drafts, rereading scenes where my character was present. I searched for her voice again - the voice that I had lost during the changes. I reminded myself how she acted, thought, and reacted, and then I went head-first into the new draft. I wrote without thinking about what had to happen, and simply let my character do what she does. And voila! 900 words!

Letting the characters be themselves and do what they want works wonders for the word-count.

Okay.

Laptop? Check. Notebooks? Check. Markers and highlighters? Check. Flashcards? Check. 

Three-Act Plot Guideline? Check. Juicebox? Check. 

Let's finish this plot planning once and for all.