Archive for the ‘Learning’ Category

Rough Covers

September 11th, 2010 Clint

There was a last minute need of graphics for the covers of four pitch documents to be taken to Toronto for TIFF. There wasn’t the weeks needed to get an actual graphic designer and go through the proper steps of establishing motif of the film, generate concepts to choose from and then iterate down to the best images to perfectly represent the story being pitched.

Instead, I had only a little better than a day to put these four together and there were severe constraints on what I could use. Even if I could have gathered the images of actors and acquired the rights to the photos, none are officially attached and so I couldn’t put them on the covers. I had to use my own photographs and manipulate them to be more abstract so they wouldn’t be easily recognized – or go with inanimate elements that could plausibly be representative of the feature’s themes.

One of the features, the one that I have the rough draft done for, is ‘Dead Man Switch’. It is an action/thriller with a hard sci-fi element and I wanted a cyborg, a female Secret Service Agent and a soldier to depict the primary elements of the script.

The cyborg on the left with the targeting eye is a picture of myself suitably abstracted, not because I wouldn’t give clearance but ‘cause I ain’t leading man pretty. The agent in the centre is a picture of a girl I met on a tour I was on in Europe back in 2002 with a pistol composited into her hand. She was abstracted so as not to be very recognizable, this time because I didn’t have a model release even though she was quite pretty. The soldier is actually a guard at a casino in Monaco from the same tour. The idea was to be archetypical but not specifically recognizable.

 

Dead-Man-Switch_3

 

‘Monster Makers’ is a feature that I am outlining right now and is next for my keyboard once I have the rough draft of ‘Saving the Dead’ finished. For this one I had a picture of a machined plate of aluminum  with another piece riveted to the upper corner (actually the inside of a door on the tug boat I worked on). I took a rough font and put it on a layer above the plate then distorted it to give the impression of a welder scoring the words into the plate. I then embossed a tagline along the bottom, trying to make it look like it had been milled out of the aluminum.

 

Monster-Makers

 

The faked welding turned out better than the fake machined tagline but  it was three in the morning and I only had about an hour to put it together so I went with “good enough”.

Monster-Makers-Detail

 

Then  there is the psychological drama ‘I Am Vengeance’. It is one that I may be hired to write based on the producer/director’s idea and so I am familiar with it but can’t talk about it. For this one, I needed the image of an angry girl and digging through my archives I found a picture I had taken at Christmas a few years back. It is of my cousin and she had smiled for the picture and then glared so I clicked the shutter again. Though she is a little younger here than the character, I think that it captures the feel of the script better than I had any right to expect for the few hours I had to put it together.

 

Cover for I Am Vengeance pitch document

 

The fourth cover is for a horror film and it is another one that I am in line to write if development money is raised so I can’t talk about this story either. For this one, I used a picture I took of a Greek statue overlaid on another from almost the exact same angle that I took of an unwrapped Egyptian mummy. The layer effects build up an air of decay on the cold perfection of the marble.

Kisses-So-Sweet

 

I used a font that is more associated with a romance novel and then gave it the look of fresh spilled blood.

Kisses-So-Sweet-Detail

 

If you were to take the font effect off and delete the underlying picture of the mummy you are left with something that wouldn’t look terribly out of place on the shelf in the romance section. And it is sort of a romance… just not for everyone.

All told, they look like straight to video movies from the eighties but I can live with that since I am not trained as a graphic designer and I only had hours to create all four of them and I think they do look better than a blank sheet of paper with the title in the Papyrus font.

Posted in Distribution, Film, Learning, Selling No Comments »

The Obvious Choice

July 30th, 2010 Clint

I primarily write action, dark comedy, hard science fiction and dabble in horror… so obviously I am the man to write educational programming for pre-school kids.

ClintsMoose

This is not from the program I’m working on but a quick sketch I did for myself just to get me in the childhood mindset. They have actual artists working on the character designs.

(I kind of like my moose and may use him on one of my own projects- maybe as Benny Moosolini in an “Animal Farm” style animated political sketch comedy series… ‘cause nothing says comedy like a dystopian collapse of civilization! And I say I can’t write for kids?)

Anyway, for the last week or so I have put aside writing my redemptive Lovecraftian horror film to help set the format and write the first three episodes of an educational program for pre-school and elementary school children.

I didn’t take it for the money (people who write children’s educational animation will laugh at that concept) but because it was a worthwhile project and it would force me to write outside my comfort zone. I feel that any time you push the boundaries of what you write, you strengthen your writing overall.

Once I get those three scripts done, I will return to finish up the first draft of “Saving the Dead” (am I taking long enough on that one?) and then do a rewrite on the “Space Inc.” pilot- amping up the action and toning down the exposition.

Posted in Learning, Writing No Comments »

Why Go to Space?

June 30th, 2010 Clint

“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” – Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky 1911

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The next fifty years will decide the future- and our actions, as well as our inactions, will reverberate through all time.

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Think about that for a moment. The universe is over thirteen billion years old and what we do in the next fifty years may well have a greater impact than anything that has ever happened up until now or ever will happen again.

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We are at a pivotal moment, not just for humanity but for life itself. At the very least, the only event that can match becoming a spacefaring life form is the very first life to evolve out of the primordial mud. If the unlikely is true and Earth is the singular cradle for life in the universe… then the only event that can match our move to space is the Big Bang itself.

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The Big Bang, life evolving and our diaspora to the stars- everything else before and after will be footnotes.

BigelowAerospaceGenesisIEarthOrbitView

Limiting our view to what going to space can do for Earth is as nonsensical as asking what Earth’s entire biosphere could ever do for that one little tidal pool where the first life form came into being almost four billion years ago.

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Going to space won’t be important because it can give Earth abundant, cheap and clean energy… but it will.

SpaceSolarPower

It won’t be important because it can deliver strategic rare earth elements that are scarce down here, alleviating many of the driving forces for resource wars… even though it can do that to.

Accessing the 98% of our solar systems assets for use on on Earth won’t be important because it can step over the unreasoning terrors of the Malthusian Catastrophists  and allow the developed world to retain its standard of living while lifting billions of people out of poverty and war to join them… although it will be a wonderful side effect.

Deflecting a Torino 10 asteroid impact may save every human on Earth… but that is just holding off the inevitable if we don’t become a spacefaring species.

torrino_scale

asteroid_impact

Even though it will be wonderful, it won’t be important that it can fulfil the dreams of millions of people and inspire millions more to dream bigger and achieve more than they ever imagined possible.

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It also won’t be important because it can create trillion dollar companies that will pull the economy back up from the economic morass that government debt has us sinking into… even though the world’s first trillionaire won’t be made on our “world”.

BlueOrigin

Going to space will be important for the hundreds of billions of our descendants that will grow to fill our solar system and eventually the stars. As important as going to space will be in the short term for a few billion people on Earth- if we become a spacefaring species, Earth will be called home for only a tiny fraction of humanity.

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We have the opportunity to influence how that begins. Does it begin in a spirit of adventure and peace? Does it begin with distrust, fear and war? Is it stifled with totalitarian control or will freedom grab the first hold? We have the chance now to directly effect how it starts- not “we” as in the government or humanity as a whole, I mean you the person who is reading this and I who am writing it.

Or will you turn our back on the Universe and try to make yourself comfortable in the cradle – hoping that someone else will do it and that it will turn out alright?

Posted in Learning, science, Socio-Economics, Space Tags: , No Comments »

SpaceX Moving Faster Than Space Inc.

June 19th, 2010 Clint

All the key components are coming along nicely in the real world to meet the needs of my fictional world. There is a chance that someone will step up and announce an actual asteroid retrieval mission before I have any chance of building the contacts and experience needed to shepherd my TV show Space Inc. through development.

SpaceX just announced a couple days ago that Iridium Communications has signed a contract with them for launch services in 2015 through 2017 to help put their next generation of satellites into orbit. At $492 million it is the largest private launch contract ever. Don’t think that SpaceX will be twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the next five years, they already have over 20 launches on their manifest ahead of the Iridium NEXT launches.

Since Iridium will be down to 72 satellites, shouldn’t it be rebranded as Hafnium?

   Electron_shell_077_Iridium  Electron_shell_072_Hafnium

Anyhow, SpaceX is exactly what my fictional William Barron needs to launch the components and crew for his Pathbreaker spacecraft.

But this fictional mission needed another rocket that could move an asteroid and SpaceX is all about launching to orbit. While the Merlin engine could be repurposed to push Pathbreaker out to meet the asteroid- it is not suited to changing the delta V of something as massive as my fictional asteroid Vazquez-Koski – not enough to put it into Earth orbit.

Good thing that there is another rocket company working on that problem.

vasimr

 Ad Astra Rocket Company is developing what they call a VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR®) that is so weak it can’t even lift itself off the launch pad let alone anything to orbit. Which is exactly what I want because once a rocket like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 gets it off the planet, electric thrusters like the VASIMR can burn for months rather than minutes. As gentle a push as it has, a lot of velocity change can build up if you push for long enough. The potential for these ion rockets is looked at in a recent article in Aviation Week titled Ad Astra Ponders Vasimr Mission To Asteroid.

The author of that article, Mark Carreau, writes about the potential of the ion rockets for a mission to an asteroid and back… Mars as well but that is for season six. In season one, William Barron would be using several of these high efficiency rockets to push on the asteroid for months on end to shifts it into Earth orbit… that is, if he can beat the Chinese to the asteroid.

Once in orbit, the TV series would be working within the scenario that I wrote about two posts back in Space Inc. and the Unspillable… hey, I ain’t spoiling if it is the Chinese who are controlling this or the Americans via William Barron.

As much as I love writing, I just wish that after getting out of high school I had carried on with pursuing a degree in Aerospace Engineering like I had wanted to – before becoming disillusioned by the governments lethargic domination of the arena. Instead of just imagining it, I could be bending iron to actually make us a spacefaring civilisation.

Right now, SpaceX “Careers” page shows they are trying to find another 125 people.

Stay is school kids.

Posted in Learning, science, Space, Television No Comments »

Falcon 9 Makes Orbit

June 4th, 2010 Clint

spacex_logo_large

YES! As I write this, SpaceX has just made orbit with their first flight test of the Falcon 9 rocket system. After an earlier auto-abort at about T -1 second, they cleared the automatically triggered hold and went on to a flawless second run before today’s launch window closed.

Besides creating a private low cost to orbit rocket system for anyone, Elon Musk plans to be in the front running to replace the retiring Space Shuttle for delivery of cargo, and eventually crew, to the International Space Station.

Me, I want to hire them to launch the components to a crewed asteroid intercept, retrieval to L-5 and mining operation. If they meet their target $/kg then they will cut the mission cost from about $9 billion to only $7 billion to retrieve a few thousand tons of NiFe to earth orbit where it would be worth at least ten time that.

Now all I have to do is raise $7 billion.

I’m thinking of putting a “donate” button on the sidebar for you to click.

Posted in Learning, science, Space 1 Comment »

The Medium is the Messenger.

February 20th, 2010 Clint

Bear with me, I am a minarchist and things are about to get a little snarky in here. First, I want to emphasis that I feel it is morally wrong for the state to sanction and finance one group of people’s voice over others – others who are forced to pay for it.

But the point I want to make right now is that it is pragmatically wrong as well because the people writing the regulations and mandates have historically made decisions that have been detrimental to the industry both financially and artistically.

And they are at it again.

The “Canadian Media Fund”, after about a year of being hammered out as I write this, looks like it will mandate that supplicants applicants put forward a plan that encompasses as much of the television, game consoles, smartphones and web world as it can. Your funding will depend, not just how many propaganda cultural points you can hit, but how many mediums you can floodcast on.

I think the fund chasing producers and the government bureaucrats that hold the bags of taxpayer cash have all taken McLuhan too literally.

"The medium is the message" never meant that the medium replaced the message but that the medium influences the way the message is delivered and perceived.

It seems that many self styled pundits on the future of content delivery have decided that the medium is what it’s all about and that the message is merely filler.

Don’t get me wrong, as we grow to understand the newer mediums and how they influence the packaging and perception of the message, we will learn to create great and epic works that that fully exploit the nature of those mediums.

Personally I’m developing Red Hellas with plans for novels, a one hour dramatic TV series, comic books, a half hour webisodic series and  a MMOG… but it is organic to the world I am creating. That isn’t so for most of the other projects I’m working on and it would be counter-creative of me to try and force it.

The Iliad has been brought to life in epic poems, paintings, novels, movies and eventually it will be a Massive Multiplayer Online Game that can stand with the best of those old mediums.

Were Homer to start filling in the reams of funding forms today, the state would demand to hear the awesome ringtone and to know how his business plan monetized that MMOG within the next year?

And this would surely make it ever so much more likely to succeed critically and creatively, as well as ensuring that it will be just what the audience wants.</sarcasm>

While they have no idea where they are going, these men and women are running as fast as they can and making good time.

Please, may I offer up a replacement phrase that can be taken completely and utterly literally?

"The medium is not the message, it is just the messenger."

Now don’t give him to much crap to carry.

Posted in Distribution, Film, Graphic Novel, Internet, Learning, Selling, Socio-Economics, Television, Webisodic, Writing No Comments »

A Little Inking in Manga Studio EX

February 19th, 2010 Clint

Ink_Christina_HendricksInking of Christina Hendricks in Manga Studio EX 4 by Clint Johnson

One of the content creation avenues that are open to the lone artisan shop is graphic novels. If you can write and draw, the only barrier is your time.

You can work with a pencil and paper. I have and it has a certain charm to it, but is it slow and doesn’t lend itself to building a library of content to be repurposed.

The computer, that amazing multi-tool of the mind, allows a huge range of tools to create. In this post, I will extol the virtues of Manga Studio EX from Smith Micro. If you want to see what really acomplished artist can do with it, check out the selection of Google Videos or check out this Rorschach cover by Dave Gibbons.

 

So you see, while it does have that big old “Manga” right there in the name, it isn’t specific to that type of comic… you don’t have to start drawing big eyes and small mouths from right to left. What it is, is a program designed specifically to create beautiful lines that simulate ink and place them on a well laid out series of panels.

While it excels in layout, inking and lettering it can kind of has to be pressed into colouring. I would probably continue to take the images out to Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop for better control of colour.

I have it installed on both my desktop and my old Motion Computing Tablet PC but do almost all my actual drawing on the tablet. (If you’ve ever used a real tablet computer you will understand why I am so completely disappointed by the iPad – a brand new product from Apple that is an unbelievably crippled thing that can’t do ten percent of what my six year old Windows XP based Tablet PC can do.?)

With the pressure sensitive pen of the Tablet PC drawing in Manga Studio EX is almost like using a brush and ink… except when you make a mistake it is a matter of hitting undo rather than redo from scratch.

I did the above drawing of the zaftigalicious Christina Hendricks as practice and I think it turned out adequate for my purposes… now I will have to spend hundreds of hours more to get up to speed. That drawing took the better part of a day and it isn’t even a proper panel- that would probably take me two or three days right now.

Give me a few months full time with this software and I think I could start turning out a solid workman’s one or two panels a day that I would find acceptable. When I will find that time is another question altogether.

The project I am most interested in tackling is set in the sword, sorcery & singularity world I am building called Red Hellas. Since it is a full world building project where practically everything will have to be designed fresh, the art design will probably take longer than the actual drawing.

It would probably make more sense for me to start with a project like taking Space Inc. out to a comic book series aimed straight at the heart of the space advocates. The stats show that NASA’s websites passed the 18 billion hits a year a while back… and yes, that is billion with a ‘b’. If I can’t get to Tom Hanks or Morgan Freeman then I just may have to steer it away from the television to the realm of ink.

Posted in Casual Creation, Graphic Novel, Learning, Tools No Comments »

Pitchmarket 2010 Research Mode

February 18th, 2010 Clint

The first thing to do when going into a pitching event like this is to learn everything you can about the people that have been brought in to sit across the table from the pitching masses.

Just pitching anything to anyone is a recipe for irritating people. If what you have to offer doesn’t fit with the person then it is a waste of both their time and yours.

Using IMDB-Pro, the supplied links and bios on their blog along with good old Google; I try to find out what they and the company have done before- then look at the development slate out ahead of them.

Then I have to make an honest assessment of the fit. Do they have a record of producing material in the same genre as the script I want to pitch to them? Do they have a track record of completing projects to a standard that I would be comfortable with? Are they already working on something that is eerily similar to what I want to pitch?

The trouble with my TV series Space Inc. is that it is a perfect fit for Tom Hanks’ Playtone as well as being a very good fit with Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment and a not bad fit for Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment… after that there is too strong a chance of it getting royally screwed up.

If I had creative control I could make it with any one of the dozens of good production companies. No production company would take that chance on a writer without years of experience in the writing room and that is only reasonable and expected.

My research is much more exhaustive than these postings will portray, there are pages for each person and links galore, but these posts will give bullet points, tips and conclusions.

Posted in Film, Learning, Selling, Television, Writing No Comments »

Pitchmarket 2010

February 18th, 2010 Clint

I noted that FTXEvents is putting on Pitchmarket 2010 over the March 6-7 weekend. I looked over the roster of “decision makers” and figured that maybe it was time for me to throw out some more pitches.

While there isn’t a great track record (or any record?) for writers getting hauled up from the huddled masses at any of these events- it is a chance to meet people that are hard to get to outside of these things.

Keep in mind that most of the people coming to these events are a little lower on the totem pole than they are made out to be. That isn’t to say they are not moving up, just that it is often considered a way to give baby agents and assistants who are about to become development executives a chance to be barraged by pitches- a sort of baptism by fire if you will. While they usually (not always mind you) do not have the power to give even a tentative “yes” to anything, they can take scripts to those who can. Also, their career trajectory is in the direction of that power and it certainly won’t hurt to get onto their radar.

Also, from what I hear; the further the pitches are from Hollywood, the better the calibre of people you will be pitching to. You see, when it is in their own city, there isn’t much of a draw for those higher up the hierarchy so they send the assistants… when they are offered plane tickets to a another city and are put up in a hotel, it suddenly becomes more attractive. This one is in my backyard… 2000 kilometres from Los Angeles.

Although the TSA seems bound and determined to make travelling by air as horrible an experience as possible- so the attraction of a plane ticket is subject to change.

All said, I certainly could use practice pitching my work and who knows, someone may love an idea so much that they have no choice but to champion it.

Posted in Film, Learning, Selling, Television No Comments »

No, I Won’t Write Your “Sure Thing” Idea for Free.

February 17th, 2010 Clint

I see that the Writers.ca website has a handy “What to Pay” page that gives a rundown on market based range of pay for different writing jobs in Canada. They aren’t extravagant but you’d be surprised at what some people want to pay.

It is a handy link to keep for those times when someone offers you five cents a word to write for there website or wants you to ghost write their ever so exciting idea for free with the promise to pay you 10% of the profit when it sells to Random House or Steven Spielberg.

Posted in Learning, Tools, Writing No Comments »
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