Bullet time, next generation. [video]

Movies make a great visual for altered reality. Time distortion, or bullet time, first shown in the film, The Matrix, is characterized by an extreme slow-down of time as the camera moves around the scene at a normal speed.

The video below is the making of the movie.

Few are the first to recognize innovation.

More than 200 million people have visited the Eiffel tower since its construction began in 1887.  But at it’s selection as the centerpiece of the Paris Exposition, there was a huge storm of vitriol, mockery and lawsuits.

To get it built, Gustave Eiffel had to fend off critics. He even had to commit to promise disassemble it in 20 years. From the Wall Street Journal, ‘Odious Column’ of Metal…

Even as Eiffel was breaking ground by the Seine River in February 1887, 47 of France’s greatest names decried in a letter to Le Temps the “odious column of bolted metal.” What person of good taste, this flock of intellectuals asked, could endure the thought of this “dizzily ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a black and gigantic factory chimney, crushing [all] beneath its barbarous mass”? The revered painters Ernest Meissonier and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, writers Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas fils, composer Charles Gounod and architect Charles Garnier all signed this epistolary call to arms, stating that “the Eiffel Tower, which even commercial America would not have, is without a doubt the dishonor of Paris.”

Eiffel’s response to the criticism…

‘And I submit that the curves of [the tower's] four piers as produced by our calculations, rising from an enormous base and narrowing toward the top, will give a great impression of strength and beauty.’ Eiffel the ardent republican wondered why his nay-saying compatriots could not see the glory. France, a lone republic surrounded by monarchies, was building “the tallest edifice ever raised by man,” a completely original industrial-strength monument made possible by new knowledge and technologies, a colossal modern wonder of the world designed to draw vast throngs to France’s Exposition Universelle.

I will have a later posting that lists products and projects that few understand as having any practical purpose or future. Can you think of any?

Movie Plots should be this simple.

Great films should have a story so easy to understand, that even a three year old can get it. Watch this three year old give an insightful review of the first Star Wars movie.

A great question.

Great stories are based on a great question. One of my favorites is “Is this real or am I crazy?” Movies ask this question, creating a mystery the audience has to figure out.

Often, it’s a debate between science and faith.  Science is about the tangible, verifiable physical world. Faith is about the supernatural, intangible, meta-physical world.

Few story genres debate science and faith better than than Sci-Fi. Mulder and Scully debated it on X-Files for nine seasons. Morpheus offers Faith to Neo in the form of a red pill in the Matrix. Jack and Locke have been debating purpose, fate and the supernatural on LOST for six seasons. Their relationship even inspired an episode title: Man of Science, Man of Faith.

Though different stories offer different answers to this debate, what drives the story is always the quest for truth. And sure enough, truth comes along and rocks their world. The desire for truth makes us question everything we believe and takes us on incredible journeys that can be both exhilarating and heartbreaking.

In the new trailer for the movie Moon [June 12], an astronaut, Sam Rockwell, is on a lonely lunar mission. He struggles with the question, Can he believe what he sees? “Is this real or am I crazy?” I love it when the computer sympathetically suggests, “Perhaps you are imagining things?”

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[Trailer options at the apple site...]

This is Jenn’s first contribution. Welcome!

It is the near future. Astronaut Sam Bell is living on the far side of the moon, completing a three-year contract with Lunar Industries to mine Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3. It is a lonely job, made harder by a broken satellite that allows no live communications home. Taped messages are all Sam can send and receive. Thankfully, his time on the moon is nearly over, and Sam will be reunited with his wife, Tess, and their three-year-old daughter, Eve, in only a few short weeks. Finally, he will leave the isolation of “Sarang,” the moon base that has been his home for so long, and he will finally have someone to talk to beyond “Gerty,” the base’s well-intentioned, but rather uncomplicated computer.

Who to write without words. [video]

Writing novels and films is very different. In fact, one of the biggest differences between novels and films is how the emotions and thoughts of characters are conveyed. In novels, this is done primarily though a narrator or character telling the reader their inner thoughts. In writing parlance, this is also known as the inner dialogue. Assuming that the characters have a colorful inner life, this can make for a great novel. But in films this present a unique challenge because there is no way to hear it.
Show it, don’t say it.

The challenge for the screenwriter is how to get this powerful inner dialogue to the screen. If characters speak their thoughts, it often seems forced or didactic. Another method is narration. But this can only be used for one character, and get’s old fast. And narration doesn’t use films greatest power – the image.

A foundational rule in good writing is, show it, don’t say it. It’s best to learn the characters through the choices that they make. Choices demonstrate motivations. Actions do speak louder than words.

A THOUSAND WORDS, directed by Ted Chung.

The short film below tells an engaging story with no dialog. It has a clear narrative, inciting incident, romantic goal, road trip and some surprising twists. Great use of the camera, too. See it all done in just four minutes.