MUM (9 Min) presents
a meeting between two gay male swimmers, one apparently completely deaf, the other
with some partial hearing, simulated in the film.
The effect is dusky, but it tries to simulate what it is
like to live in their world.
There is a sequence where a lot is made just out of painting
an apartment wall blue, then white.
The film has shown in many LGBT festivals, starting with Seattle.
The film is offered by the Trend/Style channel.
“Why Does America Have an Electoral College?”, is a
short animated documentary from “History Matters”.
One of the interesting points is that the original
compromise was supposed to prevent “mob rule” and populism.
In modern politics, it seems to have the opposite
effect.
The original intention of giving smaller states more
clout seemed democratic at the time. It
was felt that rural people needed more representation. One can see how that would invite a
discussion of systemic racism now.
The animation work rather reminds me of Prodigy in the
90s.
Rob Jobbaz presents the short horror film “Clearwater” (6 min) for
Dust.
A young woman (Joan Loluo) is hiking alone near a creek with many falls
and pools (social distancing). A mosquito bites her (shown quite
graphically). Think dengue, or other
arboviruses (maybe Zika). (Dengue is interesting and scary because of "antibody dependent enhancement", but I digress.)
The mosquito takes her blood to an underwater monster who wants to use her DNA to make a copy of her. Well, the copy may not be exact!
I remember a trail in Shenandoah (Cedar Run, maybe), where one of the hikers wanted to take "the low road" and keep us climbing over rocks in a "clearwater" creek, rather than the smoother trail above.
If I find a video that shows me something from science
that I didn’t know and is important, I like to showcase it, even if it isn’t a
formal “movie”.
Today, it’s “6 of the Biggest Single-Celled Organisms”.
A few of them are several millimeters long, and
sometimes have multiple nuclei. Actually one of them is several centimeters and
looks like an underwater grape.
One of them lives near volcanic vents and have
spicules that capture prey, and resemble sponges.
The Acetabularia (“wine glass”) has all of its genetic
material in a nucleus at the base, but then uses mRNA to control the cell, and
can make new nuclei to reproduce.
Some of these “protists” are not necessarily animals
or plants in the normal sense (except for the algae).
Does the slime mold belong in this discussion?
Wikipedia picture of acetabularia, click for attribution
“Jaunt”, by Rebecca Shoplaw.
This is a “micro” short film (two minutes).
Two young adult men leave a workplace for a gentle encounter
in the woods. No dialogue. Very simple.
Stephen Ford’s satire "2020 (A 1917 Parody)", 18 min,
from Ascender Channel, gives us Colton Eschief Mastro and Michael Liberman as
two roommates not allowed to work from home and tasked to run errands for
everybody else.
This schmalzy music score was adapted by Jim Grimwalde
from the score to the “1917” movie by Thomas Newman.
In a Los Angeles suburb, the young men dodge wildfire
sparks and drones sent by police enforcing lockdowns. They’re on a mission for toilet paper. But they wind up making to a protest, which
is still assembling despite the cops.
A real lockdown that was absolute probably would close
a lot of Internet sites, too. That’s
something nobody has thought about.
There is a minor car wreck and one of the guys gets spat at with mask off, and presumably infected.
The film is supposed to be in the continuous shot style
of “1917” and was difficult to make, took three months.
Yahoo! Finance expounds on “Why Movie Theaters Might
Not Survive the Coronavirus Pandemic”, two weeks ago. As we know, Regal has closed indefinitely.
I made a field trip to an AMC in exurban Loudoun
County today to see “The Empty Man”, which I will review on Wordpress
soon.
This particular theater, brand new, is open only
Friday through Sunday.
I went to the first afternoon show of this horror
film, and there was only one other person in the auditorium, so for a daytime
showing social distancing was easy.
The theater is hard to find, in an artificial new urban
section of Ashburn, VA, on a side street.
It’s hardly appropriate to carry the rewards card around. But they did
have a plexiglass screen and a sanitary contactless way to buy tickets.
On the Dust channel on YouTube, Stevie Russell has an
interesting short film “Seedling”.
On the English coast, a young married couple with a
pregnant wife endure a severe storm with lenticular clouds. Cell service goes out, and she can’t start
her car, which suggests possibly an EMP attack or maybe a very severe geomagnetic
storm from a coronal mass ejection.
The next morning the couple is on the beach (like in
the Nevil Shute novel). She sees an air-floating alien, looking like a shape-shifting
mollusk pass by. Then, the TV and radio
come back on inside, and her car fub will start the car.
Then they learn that the aliens appeared only to pregnant
women. Is this a variation of "Rosemary's Baby"? There is a problem that short films like this really seem like incidental gimmicks, that don't get to probe into the consequences of these dilemmas.
Picture: Ocean City, MD pier (mine, 2014)
I’ll do an easy one today, “Mr. Clinton the Cat”.
Louis Rossmann, his human owner, has a computer repair
shop in NYC and has a channel of pointed videos about IT. Usually, Mr. Clinton is at his side, sometimes
in his lap.
When Louis goes to work in his repair shop, Clinton
will try to tear food containers open.
He is quite adept at opening doors and drawers and getting into things.
He is also very vocal, with constant meows. Cats generally develop a “language” with
their meows which is specific to the owner.
When I was in my first apartment in Dallas 1979-1980
in Oak Lawn, an unaltered male named Timmy adopted me. He recognized the sound of my car (at the
time, a Chevette, which broke down a lot) and would run to the second story (on
a landing) apartment door when he heard my car return home. At night, if he needed to go outside, he
would come into the bedroom, meow and scratch the pillow.
He would also try to hide my car keys.
Connor Franta shows how to film thyself, in a witty
monologue, “I’m Going on a Date”.
That’s in West Hollywood, with himself.
So this is how to make a monologue into a screenplay,
with all kinds of unusual shots and diversions, while cooking lunch, a vegan
pasta, from ingredients. (What would Tyler Mowery think of the writing?)
It is also a spot for Target’s “Good & Gather”. I don’t recall seeing that trademark in northern
Virginia Targets.
If you want to
learn to make high production quality video from a monologue, this video
provides a pretty good example of the ideas.
The coffeepot picture above comes from the Angelino Hotel on the 405 when I visited LA in 2012. There's another video (by Reisinger) that urges switching from coffee to tea (and John Fish likes tea, too).
There was a book in 2000 by Katherine Kersten from the
Center for the American Experiment in Minneapolis, “Close to Home: Celebrations and Critiques of America’s Experiment in Freedom” where the author was critical
of “self-dating”, where individuals were overrunning family formation, which
was becoming an afterthought. But that was years before Obergefell. And a
pandemic like COVID had never been imagined.
“A Very Realistic Day of Online School”, by Max Reisinger.
He appears to be attending freshman college in North
Carolina from home in Carrboro (UNC?)
In a neat but very full upstairs bedroom with a fridge,
the wifi keeps going out as he tries to do the art history lecture.
He then takes a break to cook lunch (from
ingredients), before a podcast.
The visual effects and accelerations resemble those in
John Fish’s videos.
Protocol Labs, with Will Crowley narrating, provide “Life Beyond” (67 min),in two parts, from the Melodysheep channel.
Part 1 (30 min) is called “Alien Life, Deep Time, and
Outer Space”.
Part 2 (37 min) is called “The Museum of Alien Life”.
The series starts with the duality that both the idea
of our being alone in the universe, and the universe having “life” everywhere,
are frightening.
The second film is more engaging. It gives as an animated
look at what life could look like on a small tidally locked planet (more
common), or on a large planet. The
gravity on large water worlds is irrelevant because water would have about the
same density as tissue. Cold worlds without oxygen might be able to support
silicon-based life (Titan).
The film proposes the idea that
self-replicating structures conveying information could exist in the upper
atmospheres of brown dwarfs, in space (plasma crystals) or inside neutron
stars. Other papers have suggested
quantum life with plasma inside regular stars (Michelle Starr from Science Alert).
Picture: electron micrograph of 1996 Martian meteorite
thought to have fossilized bacteria. (Wikipedia embed, p.d., NASA, click for
info).
Zachary Denman offers “Track and Trace” (4 min), the first of a series of short films about the dystopian world that could result from the coronavirus.
In London, everyone carries a “track and trace” app on
their smart phone, which tells them where they are allowed to enter, based on
all kind of health information including rapid tests at home, oximeter,
temperature, blood pressure, etc. It’s
all run by artificial intelligence.
And the people who can’t comply are locked up in
mental institutions.
They don’t remember freedom. But the economy works again.
Picture: London Stock Exchange, p.d., Wikipedia embed, click for attribution.
Dyshant Parkoor and Prashant Raj present the two-part
comedy “2020: End of the World: Aliens Apocalypse?”
More parts will be added later, and you don’t realize
it is a series until you start.
In India, a young man barges in on a friend with a briefcase
filled with odd artefacts and a book.
It seems as though the pandemic has something to do
with methane being lost on Mars and impending solar storms. As predicted in the book, the aliens arrive,
and the friend is captures, in a machine that will remove his arms.
It’s all pretty difficult to describe. The subtitles are in part English and part
alien language
From DK Films.
“Gay Werewolves: Vampires in Washington State?”. Andrew Neighbors (an optometrist by trade in
the Bay Area) indeed “goes places” even in a pandemic.
Today, he and Sean (who has a birthday) explore the hidden
coves of what I think is in Olympic National Park, Washington, where I have
been once, in 1996. They mention the Hoh
forest.
There’s no mention of the wildfires (which were
probably at least 100 miles away). And
everyone in his pod of people seems to be remaining healthy. It helps to be able to live alone.
In the meantime, they can prance the Halloween underbrush
and look for a Pacific Northwest version of “The Blair Witch Project”.
The music score contains some piano by Debussy (Arabesque) and "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Rimsky-Korsakoff.
Wikipedia attribution for CCSA 3.0 license for photo from Hoh Forest, Walter Siegmund.
“The Laws of the Universe”(14 min) is offered by Chris
Mangano and written by Adam Aresty, for DUST.
An inmate (who is black) waits for his parole hearing
in a jail cell in Los Angeles. When they
don’t come for his, his mother calls and tells him to look at the TV. A spaceship hovers over downtown LA, and it
seems people are being sucked up.
No one can help him get food until a white jailer shows
up, with a flashlight device that lets him teleport himself. The inmate gets
out of prison by wrestling the device away.
I am reminded of the film “Skyline” (See cf blog, Nov.
14. 2010).
Dr. Ali Mattu (clinical psychologist) leads a zoom
discussion with Hallease, Cyndee Black, and Connor Franta on how to make effective
content, that meets what advertisers can support, but still seems original
enough -- in these times when free
speech has become so hotly contested.
The full title is “Creators Talk About Coping During
These Difficult Times”.
The first two months of 2020 were OK, until the country
collapsed in mid March under the pandemic. An earlier video by Franta had said
it was “weird”.
Franta had made a visit back to Minnesota (he moved to
W Hollywood on his YT career) shortly after the George Floyd death and protests.
Some of the recommendations had to with personal
pursuits – artistic endeavors, music, growing plants, pets, etc.
People are using apps to keep them from opening
certain things when they need to be focused and working (screenwriter Tyler
Mowery has talked about this).
A club or bar to go dancing -- “that doesn’t exist anymore.” Will it? Connor “I want to go to a bar” (The
Abbey). “I miss the chaos.” Fauci: “Bars are bad”.
The film seems to argue that America should have followed
the examples of Italy, France, and Spain and locked down entirely. He could have mentioned New Zealand. I have argued that no large country (not even
China) completely locked down this way.
In Europe, different countries had different rules (Sweden was the most
lax) much as different states did here.
And European cases are coming up now, but it is true that several states
had horrible spikes this summer.
It is also true that US leaders played down the
threat. As late as March 3, Di Blasio encouraged
New Yorkers to go out on the town. Pence kept saying “the risk is low”.
And it is true that Bush and Obama had pandemic preparation
plans that mentioned coronaviruses but that were largely ignored.
It’s also true that Trump cut down on spending on
vaccine development and preparation in 2018, and Trump has himself played down
the virus, as we know now from his own course with it.
With a truly draconian lockdown, my own Internet
activity could not have been kept, and it could not have been brought back
after the end. I personally fared better
but a lot of people in service and performing arts are wiped out.
There is an argument, which may be workable in smaller
countries like New Zealand, that if you lock down hard enough and compensate
everyone to stay home for one month (even shut down “unnecessary” web and
social media sites) you could bring everything back quickly because the virus “dies”
during the lockdown period (two incubation period cycles minimum).
But in the long run, Sweden is turning out relatively
well.
I am 77. I am
at risk. But it is easy for me to work
at home. I do my own grocery shopping
(with an N95 clone mask) and other errands and ride elevators in an apartment
building every day (with mask). I go
places by car, but alone, and generally do only takeout food from drive-ups. So far, OK.
But this virus is like a cancer. One person may have a very mild case (or it
may still cause longhauler effects not expected even if mild), but in certain
environments (indoor spread) can spread it to dozens even if asymptomatic. The exponential infection cycle re-ignites.
Two high school seniors are in love. Jonathan (Christian), shimmies down a
staircase pole (I’ve never seen that in a house) to his lukewarm dad on
acceptance.
He walks over to a local coffee shop and sees his boyfriend
David (Jewish), who works there early. His parents are much more accepting,
The
decision by Disney to postpone the next Bond release into 2021 is a catalyst
for the decision, but surely the unrelenting pandemic and the increasing
information that large gatherings indoors are responsible for most of the
spread is driving the decision. The
closures will surely last until early Spring, unless there is more rapid
progress than expected on vaccines and immediate treatments, or there is some
breakthrough like “rapid testing” smartphone technology (a little bit like
South Korea’s or Taiwan’s approach).
“Tenet” did
not do as well as hoped (and I don’t think it is quite as compelling as “Inception”).
“The Infinite Pattern that Never Repeats”, a presentation by
Paul Steinhardt on the problem of “tiling the plane” to infinity” (as in
flooring), on the Versatium channel. Indeed, what a geometry lesson.
The concept is called “Penrose tiling”, which I will defer
to Wikipedia for explanation. A related
problem is how “quasi crystals” form in nature.
The picture above shows a typical mineral quasicrystal in
nature, Wikipedia embed (click for attribution and chemical formula).
One can certainly imagine board or computer games based on
this mathematics. Kadi Runnels explains how tiling can he used to explain the speed of light and relativity here.
“It’s About Time!”, by Isaac Carlton (5 min, Dust channel), presents
a young man, played by Cody Osell, in the 1980s, typing a letter, in a small room
in a farm house with the gadgetry of the day.
A refrigerator, with a candle on top appears in his
yard. Inside, there is a sign, “get in”. It’s an invitation for an unstoppable loop in
time travel.
It will then go through its defrost cycle.
Author Solutions (a company in Indiana that owns
several POS self-publishing brands) offers a video “How to Prepare for
PitchFest”, dating back to 2012.
The video gives five major tips. It actually starts with a pop quiz of being
able to identify three famous films from their loglines (including “Tootsie”
and “Armageddon”).
It also shows a practice pitch session with other
authors, getting feedback.
The actual pitchfest is a like a speed-dating setup
(and there is a script I have seen in Minnesota, “I Hate Speeddating”, at a table
reading there in 2002 by a guy named Brent when I was living there, but I haven’t
seen the film show up; I also remember the "table reading" programs at the Jungle Theater near Lake Street, as well as the ISPMSP evenings at Bryant Lake Bowl nearby).
It’s pretty obvious that the industry can’t host
in-person pitchfests very well until there is a Covid19 vaccine (or something
equivalent like a home rapidtest system). I think we will eventually see them organized
as online events on Zoom or equivalent.
In February, 2020, I was to attend a pitchfest in
Beverly Hills, CA (and fly from East Coast) and I cancelled out because of my
own COVID and “quarantine trap” concerns.
I’ve explained that elsewhere.
The material in my books appears as “backstory” material in my
screenplay, and that situation is more difficult to pitch. Here is my discussion of it (note the supplementary statement).
Tyler Mowery (Practical Screenwriting) has a
discussion of exposition, including backstory and “dream sequences” here. Generally they have to be handled carefully
and the material in them needs to have a bearing on the “top level” plot and
that plot’s major characters. (“Inception”
is interesting.) This could be difficult do organize in a pitch. I have gotten some feedback online suggesting
that documentary may be more efficient in covering the issues in the book
(compare “conscription” to “quarantines” during the pandemic). So that’s where I am right now. Stay tuned.
Picture: Brown County, Indiana, Aug. 2012
