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Animation is Trippy

I find writing for animation very intimidating. The sheer scope of possibilities makes me very insecure that my imagination could never stretch far enough to create anything that is a tenth as original and wacky and brilliant as, like, the worst Adventure Time episode. I’ve been a fan of Hiyao Miyazaki’s films for very long time. Princess Mononoke is one of the greatest epics ever made, in my effusive opinion. I am so grateful for the dark, beautiful weirdness that exists in that man’s mind.

I guess I’m grateful for a lot of the dark, beautiful weirdness that exists in many animators minds. I had a Mother who let me watch pretty much anything, but she had something against cartoons. She thought they were pointless, mind-numbing drivel. Thankfully, I could sneak off to my Dad’s and I got to experience at least some of cartoon networks highlights from the early 00′s. The Powerpuff Girls, Ed, Edd, and Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog are some of the ones I remember the most. Mojo Jojo’s weird, posh, high-minded voice from the Powerpuff Girls created some really great, hilarious dialogue back in the day. Courage the Cowardly Dog probably started my obsession with horror. I think that’s where animation hits it’s greatest strength. I hate to disagree with my Mum (nah) but I think animation in its huge, imaginative scope can’t really be mind-numbing by definition. When you can do anything, why wouldn’t you create something fantastical that immerses a kid in wildly imaginative place?

Wall-E sequel

Oh no. One of the things I loved most about the Wall-E was that it has no sequel. It’s this perfectly self-contained film with a happy ending that feels satisfying and earned. I’m really bummed I missed this class. I’ll always have the scar on my hand (actually, I hope not) to bring back fond memories of the class that I missed. I found it really difficult to conceive of a sequel to Wall-E, if nothing else because the future following the end of the film seemed like a tough one. That was one tiny plant that grew in a trash heap of an entire planet. It’s not much to go on. I do not envy the hard work those rotund humans and liberated crazy robots had ahead of them in making Wall-E’s planet hospitable again.

It was also very easy to get depressing really quickly. I mean, in my partially informed, partially-educated opinion humanity doesn’t have the best history of learning from its mistakes. The most logical sequel seemed to be the first movie playing over again, because the exact same thing happened. Which is depressing, but at least it’s a really, really good movie. So what I thought about instead was the different threads of themes and ideas that Wall-E explored. And the one I thought I could build a story out of - and it was the way the film encouraged rebellion. The robots that eventually had to be overthrown were not necessarily evil so much as so rule-abiding and so focused on completing their duty that they had created a suffocating world. When no one broke the rules, progress became stagnant. Little cleaning robots had OCD, and the robots who were ‘broken’ were the heroes. It’s a nice little connection between creativity and eccentricity (even, in the kindest way, mental illness).

So for my sequel to Wall-E I really see as like a ten minute short. The planet earth in its dedication to never return to the way it was before, to never harm our planet in the same way again - has adopted strict rules for the protection of the new world. Robots are only used when absolutely necessary, for the bare minimum amount of labour. “Robots are Retired” The new human inhabitors of planet earth are trying to compensate for their shameful era of laziness by being independent of technology as much as possible.

But one precocious little girl with an obsession with technology and robots simply won’t let up. After her Grandma (the tribe storyteller) dies (the first human to die on the newly inhabited planet Earth, and the first time any of the people or robots had been confronted with death at all), because she fell off a roof doing a job a robot could have easily done, the girl becomes emblazoned with ambition to build a robot that tells stories as well as her Grandma did.

Shout-out to Mr. Weir. Week 5.

Freaks and Geeks has always been a major influence for me. It’s an empathetic, character driven high-school drama with an off-beat comedy streak. My kind of show. It laughs at its characters, it lets its characters humiliate themselves (this blog post was very nearly about the painfully sincere Jason Segal pouring his heart out to Lindsay in the most awkward and heartfelt serenade to ever appear on television) but it’s never cruel. It’s a deeply human show that tells its stories with resounding kindness. I’m becoming increasingly certain that writing for teenagers is a market that suits me well (and also the one I’m having the most fun writing for), and I think Freaks and Geeks is pretty much everything I aspire to.

There are so many singular moments of brilliance in this show (this blog post was also very nearly about Martin Starr laughing alone in front of the television) but I’m gonna give a shout-out to one of my favourite Dad characters of all time - Mr. Weir.

Though at first he was used as easy comic relief, with Joe Flaherty snapping out growly one liners with brilliant indignation. But Freaks and Geeks fleshes out all its characters, and even the strict, fear-mongering Dad got his due.

And it was through reversing a tired television trope of the over-protective father being cruel to his daughter’s boyfriend (this truly needs to disappear forever, it’s no longer funny and pretty darn sexist) that Mr. Weir. was humanised. When Nick shows up at Lindsay’s house after being kicked out, at first Mr. Weir. is characteristically disgruntled. But when he connects with Nick by introducing him to Buddy Rich, a deeper side of Mr. Weir. is revealed. Instead of villainising a boy for being interested in his daughter, he treats Nick as what he is - a good kid who’s having a tough time with his Dad and could use some guidance.

There’s particular moment in this episode that highlights how Freaks and Geeks considers all its characters to be three-dimensional people with a past and a story. Lindsay gets jealous of her Dad’s mentoring of Nick, and asks him why he is being so nice to Nick, and Mr.Weir. replies that it’s because he knows what it’s like to have a hard man as your father. When Lindsay rolls her eyes and grumbles “I know what that’s like.” Joe Flaherty gave her a look, and it’s a brilliant moment of acting from Joe Flaherty - and he says with a gravity that unnerves his daughter - “No Lindsay. You don’t.” So much is communicated in that one tiny line. Lindsay suddenly realises she doesn’t understand as much about her parents as she thinks she does. It’s a wonderfully understated way of telling that Universal story of discovering your parents are people who exist outside of you. And it was told with one line of dialogue.

The Last Blog Post Of Them All

Usually I finish the last blog post of the semester with OH GOSH HOW THE TIME DOES GO BY or TIME IS MOVING MAKE IT STOP PLS THX but this time I’m going with a different sentiment:

Actually, no, I’m not. Time is still moving too fucking quickly. I’m not ready to have completed half my degree.

But then again, maybe I am. Because honestly, I have learned a shit-ton. A humongous shit-ton of shit have I learned.

I think this semester in particular has been really invaluably challenging. I was looking forward to the class ‘Writing for Television’ the most because from the beginning I’ve been fairly certain that television is the dream medium for me to work in. And you know, I was right to look forward to it as much as I did. Even though the realities of what it means to write for television weren’t always easy to take, I have definitely had the most enlightening experience in my time at the VCA so far.

I can’t look at television the same way anymore. The sheer difficulty of coming up with an idea that’s not only interesting and new and dynamic but actually feasible is mind-blowing. I’ve been watching The Office recently, and I’m in total awe at the end of every episode at how perfectly crafted every joke is, and how the plotting was so seamless and how much skill it takes to create interesting story plots that are created by believable character motivations and it’s incredibly intimidating. It really hit me. If I do get lucky enough to end up writing for a TV show one day - I’m going to be really, really bad at it for a while. I’m not going to be able to just graduate from this course and be able to write an episode good enough for The Office. That’s scary, but also I think the best possible lesson I could have learned at this point in my writers career:

It’s going to take an insane amount of hard work to be a successful writer.

Feedback Is Good And The Sound of Silence Is Sad

How were the readings? Reflect upon the content and process of script reading to your peers.

Okay, the feedback we got from Ben was amazing. It was like all the nagging feelings that I had in the back of my mind when I was writing the script that I’d been trying to ignore/fix with funny dialogue were suddenly made perfectly clear, and I’m a much, much better writer for it.

Reading scripts aloud is also just generally really instructive. Just hearing the sentences and dialogue aloud it’s all suddenly so terrifyingly easy to visualise, which means that every little mistake or plotting inconsistency or hammy dialogue are like glaring neon red flashing signs. And for this reason precisely, script readings are a fantastic process.

Premature Reflections

Reflect upon how you have experienced the joys and challenges of writing as a collaborative team.

Ah, see, here’s the thing - I kind of reflected about working collaboratively in week 8, when I could have written about anything. But I never read ahead of the blog post assignments, because spoilers, and now that logic has revealed its flaws. I unfortunately have no more thoughts to add to what I wrote in week 8 about working collaboratively. I’m all reflected out. I don’t think I can get away with that, though. So here are my thoughts from week 8 rephrased in slightly different sentence structures:

A Distant Second Cousin To Related

Go wild. Talk about anything you want... that is generally related

Oh, my. Generally Related. So general. Very broad. Much possibility.

I mean, generally related to what? This course? Most likely. Screenwriting? Also possible. But I think Annabelle is asking for something else. Something bigger. I think she’s asking for something that is generally related to the human existence.

Therefore, here's a review I’ve written for the cult werewolf film Ginger Snaps:

I’m a gamer now.

Discuss one game which you have studied or been exposed to through class and reflect on your experience with that game and how this affects you as a user/writer/creator.

See, I’m not a gamer. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that, but just to be clear: I’m not a gamer. I don’t play video games so much as press buttons in video games and hope something moves. But I did really, really get into this one game called Soma. Shayer and I studied it for our presentation on environmental storytelling, and I really couldn’t shut up about it. No, really, I couldn’t. I skipped three slides, seven cue cards and I still spoke for basically the entire ten minutes of our allotted time.

It was such a fantastically immersive game that I’d find myself panicking and pausing the video game because I needed a break from the tension so much. And as a horror film fan, this was weird to me. No matter how scared I’ve gotten in a horror film, it’s never been so much for me that I had to stop actually watching. But the hours of being so caught up in the atmosphere of SOMA were for one thing, really tiring, but also really interesting. The level of detail in generating fear through withholding knowledge and creating an intricately sinister landscape were really instructive if I ever finally write horror.

A Writer Has Very Specific Observations

Observations about the semester so far. Be specific.

I have three main observations about the semester so far. Specifically:

1) I’ve observed that the semester has a specific quality.

2) I’ve specifically noticed how time moves this semester.

3) The specific way I’ve noticed time moving this semester is that it moves fast.

Coding Makes Me Feel Dumb

“How’s Twine working for you? Reflect on what you’ve learned and experienced through doing the twine assignment.” Fuck twine. Fuck fuck twine. I hate twine. I hate coding. The end. Goodbye forever...Fuck twine. Okay, that’s unfair. You have to understand - I’m coming from a place where I coded 11 CARDS totally perfectly and they totally worked and then the 12th, the goddamn TWELFTH CARD did not for NO APPARENT REASON THAT I CAN FIGURE OUT ASIDE FROM THE MALICIOUS GODS OF CODING DEEMED IT TO BE SO THE NERDY FUCKERS. But overall, I’m honestly really enjoying the challenge. It’s beyond my comfort zone, but I’m finding writing in such a totally different medium to be exciting. I was lost at the beginning, but figuring out this new format is actually turning out to be a really interesting creative experience. It gets easier the more you do it I guess. And now that the TV Bible is out of the way, I can dedicate more time to really getting it right. I have to figure out my story more - it’s too much like a story at this point, without enough of a driving force that makes it, well, something interesting to PLAY and not just READ. But for now I’m just trying to get the skeleton of the story down and figure it out from there. May the nerdy twine gods have mercy on us all.

Unreal: Femininity is Theatre

This show. This goddamn show. It’s The Sopranos, it’s The Wire, it’s Mad Men - it’s the anti-hero with the broken moral compass and tortured soul who you can’t help but watch because they’re brilliant at something, even if that something is inherently destructive.

In Unreal, the anti-hero is Rachel, and she’s a producer on a reality show called Everlasting, a knock-off on The Bachelor. And what Rachel is talented at is using her emotional intelligence to manipulate women into debasing themselves on television. Unreal is totally saturated with saccharine roses and glitter and love triangles - but it’s also a deeply disturbing window into the soulless, misogynistic, celebrity-obsessed culture that makes a show like The Bachelor possible - and what it takes to be good at making something inherently evil. If you think evil is too dramatic a word - trust me, it’s not. Evil is exactly the extent Rachel is driven to. It makes fucking good television. Moment that says so much about Quinn: Quinn is the executive producer of UnREAL, and in the producers room she snaps commands at the cameras, crafting drama from the editing room with the zoom button. In the pilot, she barks out a comment that the two black contestants on the show shouldn’t go first out of the limo - because there’s no way they’re going to win. Some of her underlings gasp, and she blithely responds with: “It’s not my fault America is racist, people!” It’s a shocking moment, but it perfectly highlights Quinn’s uncompromising willingness to compromise virtues and morals for the sake of success. She’s vicious, and she’s a hypocrite. She’s my favourite character. There was a great moment when the contestant, trapped in a limousine for hours waiting for the show to start, all ‘escape’ it into the surrounding park because they so desperately need to pee. Crouching behind trees, they’re giggling, and it seems like a moment of bonding. But then, one of them, Faye, gets humiliated when the girls start mocking her for having pubic hair. “Don’t they wax in Texas?” This scene gives so much information. First - about Faye. She starts to realise quickly that her looks don’t match - she was chosen to be the “Virgin” and total fodder for comedy. It also introduces the complexities of the relationships between the contestants. They’re competing, but still. They’re trapped in a house with each other for weeks. Some kind of community, though superficial and easily broken, is inevitable. The pilot culminates in a brilliant ending that demonstrates exactly what Rachel is capable of. Introduced as scruffy and slouched in her “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” shirt, she seems exhausted by life, but ultimately trustworthy. But then. But then. One of the eliminated contestants is smiling into the camera, saying: “He’s a great guy, and I’ve had such a wonderful time on the show.” Then the smile drops. Her eyes go flat with ice. She says “And I’m going to keep repeating that on a loop until you let me go home.” Watching this in the control room, Quinn barks at Rachel to do something. The contestant is refusing to give the humiliating meltdown the show needs. And so Rachel does something. She enters into an act of such skilled manipulation that she might as well be working as a Cold War Spy. She pretends to give up. She yells to turn the camera off, and for somebody to bring her a fucking drink. Quickly, her and the contestant are getting into girl-talk. Rachel slyly starts dropping hints about the contestants traumatic background as a foster child, whispered to her from the show’s psychologist, asking if she’s afraid that she’ll never be loved. Bam. Meltdown. After the contestant storms off, giving the exact footage they need to edit her into a crazy, psycho bitch - Rachel is left staring up at the sky, empty and dead inside.

Bored, confused, and trying not to die.

“Reflect on one event/moment in Games writing class so far that has enlightened or energized you. How does this relate to your work?”

I came into this class...er...not exactly motivated. It sounded cool. I loved the idea of learning how to write video games. Some of my closest friends are gamers, and I loved the idea of finally understanding what the fuck they were talking about sometimes. It was all very exciting. And then I started in on actually playing video games for the first time in my life (can I just say, it was really hard to convince people that I had to play video games for homework). And I sucked. I sucked real bad. I wondered around the wasteland of Fallout New Vegas essentially just being bored, confused, and trying not to die. So you know. It was just like real life, really, which I don’t think is what video games are trying to be. A moment in games that enlightened me was listening to the podcast we were given for homework. It suddenly changed my whole perspective. I always thought I just never COULD write for video games, because I’ve been so outside that world for so long. But the people in the podcast talked heavily about how they started off in film, and then how that translated into their video game writing. Most importantly - though they talked about the scope of video game writing, and the chaotic nature of writing for a video game when the story hinges on so many different factors - technology, whether it’s actually interesting to play - most of what they spoke about was just writing. Writing as a craft. It occurred to me then that writing for video games doesn’t have to be something totally alien, I don’t have to rethink my entire philosophy in order to do it. I don’t have to build an entirely new and foreign skill set to write a video game - I just have to enhance it. Upgrade it a little. And isn’t that what the writing process is all about anyway?

Transcendant Transparent

Sorry, but the word play was too cute to resist.

A show about a trans character feels perfectly in the zeitgeist of now - it’s not a show that could have been green-lit ten years ago. Hell, maybe not even five years ago. But the ideas and themes it presents are familiar and generous in scope, macro even as it presents them in the narrow sliver of this affluent, Jewish, L.A family.

There’s infinite nuance in transparent, in the way it examines gender and sexuality and identity and family and sex and intimacy and change but at its core, at its deeply intelligent and character driven core - I think its a show about the transparency with which we see each other’s flaws, and the blindness with which we see our own.

"It is so hard when someone sees something you do not want them to see."

The first part of the script that demonstrates this theme is when Ali goes into Josh’s apartment. Josh is introduced as an aggressively superficial hipster, his apartment described as “Perfectly placed everything.” We meet him when he’s in bed with a girl far, far too young. The eighteen year old ingenue to his approaching middle-age crises, who he sweet talks “I can’t sleep without you next to me” as if he’s infatuated. When Ali walks into his apartment and sees her the script has this tiny little moment:

ALI (dead inside) Oh, hi.

Clearly, womanising is nothing new for Josh, and Ali has seen straight through him.

There’s another fantastic scene that highlights the theme of the siblings being blind to their own faults, even as they selfishly and pettishly rip into the faults of each other at the dinner table with Mort. They’re eating barbecue, and Sarah is watching her family eat messily and get sauce all over themselves in growing horror. They then bicker for over a page, pointing out sauce on each other as they cluelessly continue to make a mess of themselves. It’s an effective visual metaphor, that also further outlines the dynamic between the three of them.

The last scene I’ve chosen is one between Mort and Josh. Mort’s coming-out creates the most obvious turmoil for Josh, who never had the fluid understanding of sexuality and gender that his sisters so clearly do. As Josh is talking to his father about buying a car and sprouting sexist bro-talk to his father about the kind of car women like, his father responds with this:

MORT You shouldn’t categorise - all women this, all women that. JOSH Hey, learned that from you. MORT I don’t know everything.

This exchange says so much about the two of them - about how Josh is going to react to his father, Mort, transitioning into who he always was - Maura. Josh is going to feel that everything he knew and understood about masculinity was a lie. But what’s so interesting about this scene is that it also highlights Mort’s delusions. What’s truly transcendent about transparent is that it doesn’t shy away from showing the ramifications of living out your life dressed as a man, and the privilege that entails, to then living your life being a woman. One of the most interesting things transparent did was show how Mort’s repression of his true self - a woman - resulted in misogyny, and Maura has to come to terms, as a woman, with how her misogyny, result of repression or not, affected her children. And this scene, this tiny little scene in the pilot - already sets up that exploration that extends over two seasons.

do i write good yet or nah

Year 2 - Week 1 Blog Post What is writing. Where is writing. How is writing. Am I writing?

What even is writing.

I’ve discovered over the past year that writing can make you feel both transcendent with a kind of creative high when the words are so easily found you hardly know where they’re coming from, but also it can feel like cement is slowly filling up your skull, drowning your brain and leaking grey sludge out your ears.

Unpleasant, basically. Writing can be unpleasant. Writing is hard. Sometimes writing fucks up. Sometimes you try something different that backfires spectacularly. Sometimes you have no ideas. Sometimes you have ideas but they’re all dull as shit, even to you. Sometimes your own life is too loud and painful for the words to make sense.

I think something that I really learnt over the last year as a writer is that you’ve got to let that stuff go. I had a really rejuvenating break. I started exercising again, and actually spent most of my free time hiking and swimming instead of going slowly numb. I think I forget sometimes how much I need to be a person who, like...moves. I was a bit of an athlete in high school. That shit doesn’t go away on its own. My days would be physically exhausting but at night I’d end up with a brain that I could actually use. And I wrote! Substantially, even! I’d lost that in second semester - I stopped writing until I absolutely had to, because, to be honest, since this is tumblr - I’m not someone who can write without examining their own mind, and I really just didn’t want to go there.

It was a good way to come into the new year. A bit of a cliche, but I’m not against them if they’re a good thing. So looking forward to television writing this semester. It feels like it’s what I came to this school for - I have a feeling I’m going to love collaborating so much more than I like writing alone.

#vca #writing

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Playing Favourites

Disclaimer: I find “Top 5″ lists reductive. But:

1. Repulsion

I wrote a 2000 word blog post raving and obsessively theorising about Repulsion. I know Polanski is a controversial figure with a convoluted history, and it’s hard to ignore that history when his film is so entrenched in the disturbing, in the cracks of a broken mind, when that’s what makes it so fucking good. Would any other director be able to create a film that explores the darkest aspects of sexual and psychological aberrations? Does that excuse the allegations, the crimes that he’s been accused of? I don’t know. But I do know that this is the most innately disturbing film that I’ve ever seen, and I think it’s brilliant. Also, his exploration of the internal life of a woman, regardless that she was so disturbed, was incredibly insightful.

2. The Circle

Brilliant. Shattering. Entirely powerful. I loved that we were shown a film that exists entirely outside of traditional hollywood cinema. An endlessly empathetic window into the imprisoned lives of women in Iran.

3. L’Atlante

I’m a romantic. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will anyway. L’Atlante is exquisitely simple. I was transported when watching this film. I curled up on the seat, clasped my hands under my chin and simply felt. The film is crafted so tenderly; it’s a film of small moments. When Jean was whispering in Juliette’s ear, and she was smiling so sweetly, giddy with the feelings he was creating in her, I found those same feelings bubbling up inside me. That, I think, was the particular power L’Atlante had - more than anything, this slow, simple film is about the feelings the lovers inspire in each other. Not the dramatic actions they take for one another or how their minds meld - it’s about feeling.

4. Ilo Ilo

I really enjoyed Ilo Ilo. I loved the empathy behind the fastidious mapping of the intimate, domestic space. Really, I think empathy drove the entire film. Each of the characters was treated with understanding. Even the Mom, who was in danger of becoming the Harried Nag stereotype, was given the freedom to be a real person, tired and harrowed by the every-day slog of work and chores and effort and stress that so entirely forms real life. I think that the power of a film like this is that it says as much in the micro, even mundane moments as many films say in the use of grand, dramatic devices. I feel like this film fits the most within the style of what I want to write.

5. Desperately Seeking Susan

Only film directed by a woman this year. I really, really appreciated having the opportunity to discuss this yesterday, and I understand Luke’s response, so I’ll only say this: Film Schools shouldn’t waste the opportunity to change the way films made by women are perceived as separate from mainstream filmography, too trivial to deserve cinematic appreciation. There are many films made by women that could be considered “classic films” if only they were more often shown at film schools.

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