Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
David After Dentist
I saw this kind of behavior more than once at/after parties while I was in college. It's much, much cuter and funnier when it's a seven-year-old tripping out on anaesthesia, though.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Viral Marketing -- ur doin it rite
Okay, so I lied about not posting about Watchmen no more.
But this viral piece from Watchmen comes on the tail of a disastrously failed viral marketing campaign in Australia, of which I was aware because I follow a number of Aussies on Twitter.
Viral marketing is hard to do right. It's hard to predict what people will latch on to and really start talking about and pass on to their friends. I get a lot of people asking for advice on how to make their video a viral hit, and there are factors you can look at. High-quality content is likely to get passed around. Content attached to some kind of celebrity will probably get passed around. Funny or uplifting usually has a better chance than somber. But beyond that, I dunno. The RvD films are a total fluke -- it's not like we planned for them to be smash hits (although we hoped, on the second one), and I'm not sure you can plan that kind of thing -- although the Ask a Ninja guys might disagree with me.
It seems you can't go wrong with cute animals acting strange. You've seen the sneezing panda? Of course you have. Everyone has. Fucking bear has 30 million views on YouTube. I don't even know how many views the frigging dramatic prairie dog/chipmunk/gopher has, because it's been uploaded about 4000 separate times -- but most of the search results have half a million hits or more.
But trying to actually make an ad badass enough to catch on? It happens. Usually when you're dealing with Superbowl spots, you can be guaranteed people are going to seek it out, and if you do other spots throughout the year like that, there's a good chance people will talk about it and they'll look it up online. But that's more word-of-mouth from traditional advertising than viral marketing, which seeks to make the audience do the work. They spread it around, they show it, they talk about it and it becomes part of the zeitgeist, at least for a little while.
Viral marketing for movies had its genesis with The Blair Witch Project. They set up a website -- when the vast interconnected community they call "Web 2.0" was only just starting to appear on the scene -- which basically asserted that the film was a real documentary about real events. The campaign was so successful that not only did everybody know about this micro-budget indie flick, with almost no real marketing to speak of, but for years afterward I would meet people who still thought it was real.
Quite frankly, I think viral marketing for a film can be a beautiful thing. In the old days, movies were more like live theatre. You sat in your seat and the curtains went up and an overture played. Like in live theatre, the overture was meant to both accommodate some stragglers who were finding their seats, but also to set the mood. If it was a musical it would give you hints of the musical themes you were going to hear. But most of all it provided a buffer zone between your real life, and ushered you into the fantasy life you were about to see on the screen.
We don't have that anymore, except in more specialty theatres. Most theatres are little boxes with chintzy decor. You're bombarded with advertisements for various products, other movies, and reprimands about proper etiquette which people seem to ignore anyway. These days movies don't even have opening credits for the most part, which means you just have to hit the ground running when the film starts playing.
Viral marketing like the Watchmen piece below help, I think, to fill that gap. It creates a whole "experience" of the film's reality, allowing you an early taste of accepting and understanding and engaging the world of the film.
When done right, the seams are invisible. For one thing, note that this video never once mentions the film Watchmen. It's not really an advertisement so much as supplemental material, about what is ultimately one of the central concerns of the story (mild spoilers): Dr. Manhattan changed the world, and no one can in that world can imagine it without him.
It sets the stage for the time period (an alternate 1980s) by being a very faithfully-produced replica of a 70s-era news broadcast, complete with "bad VHS" type degrading, which is heaviest early on.
It also frees up the filmmakers to not really have to deal with setting this up too much in the movie. The world will be different, and what we have here is three minutes of exposition which are unlikely to be crucial to the story, but create, as I said, a fuller, more immersive world.
The last "nice touch" is that the video is posted by the user "thenewfrontiersman," which is the name of a sort of widely-read, conspiracy-theory type newspaper in the Watchmen world. The kind of paper that sometimes gets a scoop but is usually just adding editorial paranoia to otherwise innocuous events (i.e. the kind of paper an unfortunate number of people, in our America as well as theirs, tend to believe). If they do more videos, we may get to become acquainted with the personality of The New Frontiersmen, as well as other characters in the film.
This kind of marketing becomes fun, almost interactive. A kind of spontaneous roleplaying has already showed up in the comments, with people pretending that this world really exists, that this news broadcast is a genuine part of our history.
"I gotta say, I miss all those costumed heroes," one says. "Sure they were reckless, but they made things a lot more interesting."
If a video gets posted about Adrian Veidt, we'll probably see comments praising his products and his humanitarian efforts, while others malign him as a sell-out and a heartless mega-corporation, probably even using anti-Wal-Mart rhetoric to give it a realistic flair. They are engaging with the movie and they haven't even seen it. They are becoming part of the tapestry of the film.
Zack Snyder and the producers have already shown a strong grasp of getting people to feel like they are a part of this film -- they held a short film competition to produce advertisements for Veidt products, the best of which would be seen as television advertisements within the film itself. When you get people to feel a sense of ownership over the movie, to feel that they helped make it what it is, you are more successful creatively (because they're more engaged), and more successful commercially (because they're more likely to come).
I'm really very excited about this movie because more than anything, it just seems like they really get it. This clip is no exception.
But this viral piece from Watchmen comes on the tail of a disastrously failed viral marketing campaign in Australia, of which I was aware because I follow a number of Aussies on Twitter.
Viral marketing is hard to do right. It's hard to predict what people will latch on to and really start talking about and pass on to their friends. I get a lot of people asking for advice on how to make their video a viral hit, and there are factors you can look at. High-quality content is likely to get passed around. Content attached to some kind of celebrity will probably get passed around. Funny or uplifting usually has a better chance than somber. But beyond that, I dunno. The RvD films are a total fluke -- it's not like we planned for them to be smash hits (although we hoped, on the second one), and I'm not sure you can plan that kind of thing -- although the Ask a Ninja guys might disagree with me.
It seems you can't go wrong with cute animals acting strange. You've seen the sneezing panda? Of course you have. Everyone has. Fucking bear has 30 million views on YouTube. I don't even know how many views the frigging dramatic prairie dog/chipmunk/gopher has, because it's been uploaded about 4000 separate times -- but most of the search results have half a million hits or more.
But trying to actually make an ad badass enough to catch on? It happens. Usually when you're dealing with Superbowl spots, you can be guaranteed people are going to seek it out, and if you do other spots throughout the year like that, there's a good chance people will talk about it and they'll look it up online. But that's more word-of-mouth from traditional advertising than viral marketing, which seeks to make the audience do the work. They spread it around, they show it, they talk about it and it becomes part of the zeitgeist, at least for a little while.
Viral marketing for movies had its genesis with The Blair Witch Project. They set up a website -- when the vast interconnected community they call "Web 2.0" was only just starting to appear on the scene -- which basically asserted that the film was a real documentary about real events. The campaign was so successful that not only did everybody know about this micro-budget indie flick, with almost no real marketing to speak of, but for years afterward I would meet people who still thought it was real.
Quite frankly, I think viral marketing for a film can be a beautiful thing. In the old days, movies were more like live theatre. You sat in your seat and the curtains went up and an overture played. Like in live theatre, the overture was meant to both accommodate some stragglers who were finding their seats, but also to set the mood. If it was a musical it would give you hints of the musical themes you were going to hear. But most of all it provided a buffer zone between your real life, and ushered you into the fantasy life you were about to see on the screen.
We don't have that anymore, except in more specialty theatres. Most theatres are little boxes with chintzy decor. You're bombarded with advertisements for various products, other movies, and reprimands about proper etiquette which people seem to ignore anyway. These days movies don't even have opening credits for the most part, which means you just have to hit the ground running when the film starts playing.
Viral marketing like the Watchmen piece below help, I think, to fill that gap. It creates a whole "experience" of the film's reality, allowing you an early taste of accepting and understanding and engaging the world of the film.
When done right, the seams are invisible. For one thing, note that this video never once mentions the film Watchmen. It's not really an advertisement so much as supplemental material, about what is ultimately one of the central concerns of the story (mild spoilers): Dr. Manhattan changed the world, and no one can in that world can imagine it without him.
It sets the stage for the time period (an alternate 1980s) by being a very faithfully-produced replica of a 70s-era news broadcast, complete with "bad VHS" type degrading, which is heaviest early on.
It also frees up the filmmakers to not really have to deal with setting this up too much in the movie. The world will be different, and what we have here is three minutes of exposition which are unlikely to be crucial to the story, but create, as I said, a fuller, more immersive world.
The last "nice touch" is that the video is posted by the user "thenewfrontiersman," which is the name of a sort of widely-read, conspiracy-theory type newspaper in the Watchmen world. The kind of paper that sometimes gets a scoop but is usually just adding editorial paranoia to otherwise innocuous events (i.e. the kind of paper an unfortunate number of people, in our America as well as theirs, tend to believe). If they do more videos, we may get to become acquainted with the personality of The New Frontiersmen, as well as other characters in the film.
This kind of marketing becomes fun, almost interactive. A kind of spontaneous roleplaying has already showed up in the comments, with people pretending that this world really exists, that this news broadcast is a genuine part of our history.
"I gotta say, I miss all those costumed heroes," one says. "Sure they were reckless, but they made things a lot more interesting."
If a video gets posted about Adrian Veidt, we'll probably see comments praising his products and his humanitarian efforts, while others malign him as a sell-out and a heartless mega-corporation, probably even using anti-Wal-Mart rhetoric to give it a realistic flair. They are engaging with the movie and they haven't even seen it. They are becoming part of the tapestry of the film.
Zack Snyder and the producers have already shown a strong grasp of getting people to feel like they are a part of this film -- they held a short film competition to produce advertisements for Veidt products, the best of which would be seen as television advertisements within the film itself. When you get people to feel a sense of ownership over the movie, to feel that they helped make it what it is, you are more successful creatively (because they're more engaged), and more successful commercially (because they're more likely to come).
I'm really very excited about this movie because more than anything, it just seems like they really get it. This clip is no exception.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
My No on 8 Video
This is a somewhat-successful first attempt at using YouTube's "Direct Upload" feature, and it's my appeal to California voters to vote against the discriminatory Proposition 8. The audio is out of sync and it cuts off the last sentence, but the bulk of the message is there.
The video cuts off at the end, the last bit was supposed to say "The law is meant to protect the people, not to harm them. Vote No on Prop 8."
Also of note is this video, narrated by Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson, and describing a little bit more the history of discrimination we should be turning our backs on, not embracing like a long-lost friend.
The video cuts off at the end, the last bit was supposed to say "The law is meant to protect the people, not to harm them. Vote No on Prop 8."
Also of note is this video, narrated by Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson, and describing a little bit more the history of discrimination we should be turning our backs on, not embracing like a long-lost friend.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The 305
Okay, this is kind of old and mostly a fluff post to put something new on the front.
I'm a fan of the movie 300. I took some convincing, all the people talking about how "badass" the trailer looked put me off a bit, and even coming out of it I felt like Sin City was a more significant stylistic achievement, but as time has gone on, I've thought often of 300 and rarely of Sin City.
The easy assumption for my preference is the greater prevalence of muscular men in loincloths and capes in one over the other, but honestly that's not really my gauge. While both were loyal to the graphic novel, and both were shot on greenscreen, 300 was less restrictive than Sin City. 300 used the visionary work of Frank Miller as a springboard, Sin City as a straitjacket. I forgot, while watching 300, that it was shot on greenscreen. I never really lost that sense of confined space with Sin City.
Anyway, a discussion of the relative merits of the two films might have been more relevant a year and a half ago when 300 was actually released in theatres, so I'll skip it. The point in bringing up 300 is to bring up this parody film, 305, which combines the story of 300 with the sensibility (and to an extent, character "archetypes") of "The Office" (American version).
It becomes obvious pretty quickly who's who, especially in the cases of Darryl and Testicleese, who are direct duplicates in both appearance and manner of Dwight and Jim, respectively.
More than likely you've already seen this video, but for those who haven't:
But there's more to it than just a YouTube video. I think this deserves a distinction for being a YouTube video that actually led to a feature film. That's right, there's a full-length 305 movie out there for your viewing pleasure.
For the record, I don't think you should run out and buy the film, but if you see it at Blockbuster, and you're a fan of 300/The Office/both, I think it's worth your time.
My concern was how they would extend the "Office meets Sparta" conceit beyond the five minutes of the original short. Even in the short itself, it threatens to overstay its welcome, but thankfully never does. I thought the full feature would be tired repetition of the same -- not even "joke," per se, but "premise."
"What if the story of 300 was told like the Office?" "What if cavemen sold car insurance?" You get what I'm talking about.
Thankfully, the writers (and I don't have to put it in quotation marks like I would with certain "parodies" out there) actually bothered to come up with a story.
The movie starts off with the short -- and why not, you've already got five minutes of your feature in the can. Although they did bother to improve the composites -- but then immediately leaves the "guys guarding the goat path" conceit and has the characters embarking on their own misadventures. It's campy, it's occasionally cliche, but it's fun. There's some genuine amusing jokes in there, and while it's not really much more than some college guys having fun with a camera -- well, what's wrong with that, anyway?
Plus you gotta show some respect. These are young guys working with almost no money with nothing but a green tarp in a small room, and they managed to make a genuinely entertaining and enjoyable feature film. Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention just based on the "biography" of the project, but I guess somebody making a feature for no money isn't really "news" anymore.
Oh, and also the fight scenes, while not ones for the books, were still pretty decent, especially when you factor in the limitations of the shooting environment.
Anyway, I picked up the flick with apprehension and it surpassed my expectations. Not one to go out of your way for, but if you can't think of anything else to rent on a Saturday night, see if they've got this on the shelf.
I'm a fan of the movie 300. I took some convincing, all the people talking about how "badass" the trailer looked put me off a bit, and even coming out of it I felt like Sin City was a more significant stylistic achievement, but as time has gone on, I've thought often of 300 and rarely of Sin City.
The easy assumption for my preference is the greater prevalence of muscular men in loincloths and capes in one over the other, but honestly that's not really my gauge. While both were loyal to the graphic novel, and both were shot on greenscreen, 300 was less restrictive than Sin City. 300 used the visionary work of Frank Miller as a springboard, Sin City as a straitjacket. I forgot, while watching 300, that it was shot on greenscreen. I never really lost that sense of confined space with Sin City.
Anyway, a discussion of the relative merits of the two films might have been more relevant a year and a half ago when 300 was actually released in theatres, so I'll skip it. The point in bringing up 300 is to bring up this parody film, 305, which combines the story of 300 with the sensibility (and to an extent, character "archetypes") of "The Office" (American version).
It becomes obvious pretty quickly who's who, especially in the cases of Darryl and Testicleese, who are direct duplicates in both appearance and manner of Dwight and Jim, respectively.
More than likely you've already seen this video, but for those who haven't:
But there's more to it than just a YouTube video. I think this deserves a distinction for being a YouTube video that actually led to a feature film. That's right, there's a full-length 305 movie out there for your viewing pleasure.
For the record, I don't think you should run out and buy the film, but if you see it at Blockbuster, and you're a fan of 300/The Office/both, I think it's worth your time.
My concern was how they would extend the "Office meets Sparta" conceit beyond the five minutes of the original short. Even in the short itself, it threatens to overstay its welcome, but thankfully never does. I thought the full feature would be tired repetition of the same -- not even "joke," per se, but "premise."
"What if the story of 300 was told like the Office?" "What if cavemen sold car insurance?" You get what I'm talking about.
Thankfully, the writers (and I don't have to put it in quotation marks like I would with certain "parodies" out there) actually bothered to come up with a story.
The movie starts off with the short -- and why not, you've already got five minutes of your feature in the can. Although they did bother to improve the composites -- but then immediately leaves the "guys guarding the goat path" conceit and has the characters embarking on their own misadventures. It's campy, it's occasionally cliche, but it's fun. There's some genuine amusing jokes in there, and while it's not really much more than some college guys having fun with a camera -- well, what's wrong with that, anyway?
Plus you gotta show some respect. These are young guys working with almost no money with nothing but a green tarp in a small room, and they managed to make a genuinely entertaining and enjoyable feature film. Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention just based on the "biography" of the project, but I guess somebody making a feature for no money isn't really "news" anymore.
Oh, and also the fight scenes, while not ones for the books, were still pretty decent, especially when you factor in the limitations of the shooting environment.
Anyway, I picked up the flick with apprehension and it surpassed my expectations. Not one to go out of your way for, but if you can't think of anything else to rent on a Saturday night, see if they've got this on the shelf.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
She's On The List
If that episode of Friends is to be believed, everybody has a list of celebrities that, if the opportunity presents itself, they would sleep with.1 I don't know if that episode is to be believed, in the sense that I'm not sure everybody has such a list, but I certainly have one.
Obviously that list is of male celebrities, and is pure fantasy since most of them are (apparently) straight, and no, I won't tell you who.
I have, however, another, shorter list of female celebrities that I would hook up with. On the Kinsey Scale, I'd consider myself a pretty solid 5, even a 5.5, but not a full 6. There are a select few ladies out there who are just so goddamn amazing, even I couldn't resist.
Tina Fey is definitely on that list.
Tina Fey, in fact, is on a sub-list of that list. I wouldn't just hit that, I would get down on my knee and propose and raise a family with her. Seriously, I love this woman. And I hope, if I ever actually get to meet her, that this admission doesn't make it awkward.
And, that her husband isn't around.
Anyway.
It's not like she's a new addition to the list, however she's come back to the fore with her spot-on impersonations of Sarah Palin2 on Saturday Night Live. Everyone saw the first Palin-Hillary sketch a week or two ago, but last night she appeared again, this time in a satire of Palin's trainwreck of an interview with Katie Couric:
Funny shit, but also a little scary. Why do I say scary? Because here's the relevant excerpt from the real interview with Couric:
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
You see what I mean by scary? The SNL sketch practically doesn't count as satire because it's almost fucking verbatim to Palin's actual answer.
Seriously, here's the transcript of what Palin says. Now play the SNL sketch and read along:
The way they sync up is almost like playing Dark Side of the Moon while watching Wizard of Oz, except instead of freaking out because that's totally trippy, man, you're freaking out because there's a very real chance she will end up President of the United States if John McCain wins and then dies. And the odds of each one are, at this point, pretty much 50-50.
Even just reading it on its own, it's impossible to parse. As Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars put it:
And yet the campaigns are still neck-and-neck.
Sorry to cock-knock my male readers, luring them in with dirty Tina Fey talk and then abruptly seguing into politics again. But the Palin sketch just got me thinking. So much depends on Thursday's debate.
Obviously that list is of male celebrities, and is pure fantasy since most of them are (apparently) straight, and no, I won't tell you who.
I have, however, another, shorter list of female celebrities that I would hook up with. On the Kinsey Scale, I'd consider myself a pretty solid 5, even a 5.5, but not a full 6. There are a select few ladies out there who are just so goddamn amazing, even I couldn't resist.
Tina Fey is definitely on that list.
Tina Fey, in fact, is on a sub-list of that list. I wouldn't just hit that, I would get down on my knee and propose and raise a family with her. Seriously, I love this woman. And I hope, if I ever actually get to meet her, that this admission doesn't make it awkward.
And, that her husband isn't around.
Anyway.
It's not like she's a new addition to the list, however she's come back to the fore with her spot-on impersonations of Sarah Palin2 on Saturday Night Live. Everyone saw the first Palin-Hillary sketch a week or two ago, but last night she appeared again, this time in a satire of Palin's trainwreck of an interview with Katie Couric:
Funny shit, but also a little scary. Why do I say scary? Because here's the relevant excerpt from the real interview with Couric:
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
You see what I mean by scary? The SNL sketch practically doesn't count as satire because it's almost fucking verbatim to Palin's actual answer.
Seriously, here's the transcript of what Palin says. Now play the SNL sketch and read along:
That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade -- we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.
The way they sync up is almost like playing Dark Side of the Moon while watching Wizard of Oz, except instead of freaking out because that's totally trippy, man, you're freaking out because there's a very real chance she will end up President of the United States if John McCain wins and then dies. And the odds of each one are, at this point, pretty much 50-50.
Even just reading it on its own, it's impossible to parse. As Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars put it:
She literally babbles incoherently, just stringing together a bunch of totally unrelated talking points that couldn't make a coherent sentence at gunpoint. It's gibberish. It's word salad. It sounds like she's playing one of those refrigerator magnet games with a bunch of words and phrases and trying to tie them all together.
And yet the campaigns are still neck-and-neck.
Sorry to cock-knock my male readers, luring them in with dirty Tina Fey talk and then abruptly seguing into politics again. But the Palin sketch just got me thinking. So much depends on Thursday's debate.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Election 2008: Presidential Debate #1
Political post. If you don't want to hear it, go read Dr. McNinja instead.1
Last night was the first of three Presidential debates for the 2008 election, between Democratic nominee Barack Obama, and Republican nominee John McCain. If you haven't seen it, it is available in its entirety on CNN.com.
The first question that's asked is who won. I'm not sure that's the right question to ask, but I'll bite. There are two answers here. On the one hand, from as objective a standpoint as I could figure, it seemed more or less like a draw. McCain was out of his league when it came to the economic discussion that dominated the first half hour of the debate, but he came back strong when they started talking about Iraq, and managed to get the upper hand a bit with "the Surge worked nanner-nanner," to which the ever graceful Obama could only reply "Yes, it did." I think they were about evenly matched in terms of Russia/Pakistan talks. So like I say, a draw.
But a draw, in this case, can also be seen as a win for Obama. John McCain is and has been behind in the polls as the afterglow of Sarah Palin's nomination began to wear off (which, as is often the case, occurred when she opened her mouth and spoke); his "suspend the campaign/debate" bluff got called and he wound up losing the skirmish and appearing at the debate after all. McCain needed a home run, and he was most likely to get it from this debate, as it was (supposed to be) about foreign policy, which is (supposed to be) his specialty. He needed to show that Obama was in over his head when it came to foreign policy, and that he, John McCain, had what it took.
And while perhaps J McC did show -- at least to those already inclined to think so -- that he "has what it takes," so did Obama. No major gaffes on Obama's part. He remained cool, collected, and for every question, he had an answer.2
As I said, McCain needed a home run, this was his best chance to hit one -- and he didn't. Policy-wise, they tied. "Not a game-changer either way," the pundits are saying. That means the game remains as it was: Obama started ahead in the polls, and remained ahead in the polls, and so the tie was, in a sense, a victory for Obama.
Of course, the debates aren't really for staunch Republicans or Democrats, who have already made up their minds and are just watching the way one might watch a football match, a gladiatorial match, or an episode of Destroyed in Seconds. They're not really weighing the two candidates' stances on the issues, they just don't want to miss the very real possibility of political carnage.3
No, the debates are for those beautiful bastards, the undecideds -- who, ironically, are the ultimate deciders. They are the third-or-so of the population that one of the candidates needs to win over. And according to the polls, Obama convinced more of them that he could handle the gig than McCain did last night.
Nonetheless, McCain is clearly of the Orwellian belief that you can control make something true merely by saying that it is true. For example, his campaign ran online ads declaring him the winner not only before yesterday's debate, but before he'd even confirmed that he would attend the debate.
So it's no surprise that, post-debate, the McCain campaign ran the following advertisement:
I think, however, that this ad backfires in a number of ways.
First off, we'll address the obvious elephant in the room: these statements are taken out of context. All three of them were followed by "but." Obama agreed with McCain's sentiments, but not the conclusions he drew or the actions he intended to take. But I suppose that kind of quote-mining is just par for the political course, so we won't belabor that. Let's talk about some of the other problems with it.
As one YouTube commenter pointed out:
Well said, random internet person. Well said.
It also shows a fundamental (the politicians and pundits like that word) flaw in McCain's thinking. Specifically, that being willing to concede that someone else is right, and/or that you have occasionally been wrong, is some kind of weakness. That's exactly the bullshit pigheaded arrogance that has made Dubya the worst President, certainly in the recent history if not in the entire history of our nation.
It's okay to admit that you were wrong. In fact, to me, that shows more leadership potential and a better understanding of the nuances of human interaction than Bush or McCain seem to display.
On top of that, this ad, at least in concept, is plagiarized directly from this ad that VP nominee Joe Biden put together during the primary elections:
Let's stand back and think about this for a second. John McCain puts out an ad stating flat-out that Barack Obama is not ready to lead. And yet:
- John McCain chooses Sarah Palin as his running mate in a blatant attempt to cash in on Hillary's popularity.
- John McCain abandons his "experience" platform and adopts a "change" platform identical to the one that Obama has been using since the beginning.
- John McCain uses the "[blank] we can believe in" structure, recognizing its effectiveness in Obama's campaign
-Even last night, he appropriated Obama's rhetorical "Main Street/Wall Street" dichotomy, recognizing it as an effective sound bite, as well as another of Obama's frequently-repeated phrases, "Let me be clear."
- His "victory ad" is copied from his opponent's running mate.
In other words, McCain has spent his campaign following the other side's lead. If Obama isn't ready to lead, then why is McCain following right behind him at every move?
Also, it's a non-sequitur. The "punchline" of the ad has nothing to do with the preceding content. How does "I agree with Sen. McCain" automatically lead to "No"? It doesn't. They're two separate ads.
Here's my theory as to what happened: As a visual effects and graphics guy, I know that those graphics would have taken some time. So the fact is that they were already planning that ad, and had made the graphics and recorded the narration before the debate even happened, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to get the ad up so instantaneously.
They had already planned to release an ad stating that Obama was not ready to lead, already created the beginning and end bits, and were just waiting for Barack to put his foot in his mouth at the debate, so they could use that clip in the ad as their proof.
And the best they got out of him was his occasional concession that McCain had the right idea, but not the right approach, and just left the latter part out.
This is exactly the problem with their thinking -- the thinking that we already have in the White House. They make a plan and they refuse to deviate from it, even when it is clearly no longer the best strategy. "Stay the course." Fuck's sake.
Last comment on the debate: body language. Watch the debate with the sound off and just judge each one based on body cues. Obama was cool, relaxed -- hate to be trite, but "Presidential." He looked right at McCain, both while speaking to McCain and while McCain was speaking. He stood up straight and proud, and came across as someone I would be proud to have representing our country abroad.
McCain, on the other hand, was small, hunched over, tense, and looked more pissed-off as the night went on. He blinked a LOT, especially at the beginning -- generally a sign of either uncertainty or outright deceit -- and refused to look at or even directly address Obama. There are several ways to read that, none of them particularly good:
- On a purely primal level, social inferiors will not look their superiors in the eyes. You see this in wolves, lions, dogs, and apes. Subordinate males will not look at the dominant male. So just coming from the animal instinct level, John McCain recognized Obama as the alpha male on the stage.
- McCain is known to have a fiery temper, and despite his death's head rictus of a smile, he was all but vibrating with rage as Obama positively refused to be ignorant of the issues. It may be that he avoided looking at Obama because he would have utterly lost his composure if he had done so.4
- McCain was showing a total lack of respect, even contempt, for a formidable and worthy opponent. You don't have to like someone to respect them, and we don't need another 4 years of global petulance and disrespect from our Commander-in-Chief.5
I'm trying not to present a false dichotomy here, but I really can't think of any positive reason that McCain should have totally avoided eye contact, or even addressing Obama directly, especially when the format of the debate was that the two candidates would take five minutes in each topic to address each other directly. If any of you can put a positive spin on McCain's attitude, I'd be glad to hear it.
I was not myself undecided and this debate has not swung my vote. It's only made me more baffled -- and terrified -- that the race could be as close as it is.
As has been said by others, I don't believe that Obama is the pure-souled superpolitician who will finally bring back the unicorns. But I believe that this country needs a drastic change in direction, and Barack Obama represents that in far more ways than John McCain.
And if Obama really does bring back the unicorns, to boot -- well, I will be happy to admit I was wrong.
In the meantime, I'm very much looking forward to Thursday's debate.
Last night was the first of three Presidential debates for the 2008 election, between Democratic nominee Barack Obama, and Republican nominee John McCain. If you haven't seen it, it is available in its entirety on CNN.com.
The first question that's asked is who won. I'm not sure that's the right question to ask, but I'll bite. There are two answers here. On the one hand, from as objective a standpoint as I could figure, it seemed more or less like a draw. McCain was out of his league when it came to the economic discussion that dominated the first half hour of the debate, but he came back strong when they started talking about Iraq, and managed to get the upper hand a bit with "the Surge worked nanner-nanner," to which the ever graceful Obama could only reply "Yes, it did." I think they were about evenly matched in terms of Russia/Pakistan talks. So like I say, a draw.
But a draw, in this case, can also be seen as a win for Obama. John McCain is and has been behind in the polls as the afterglow of Sarah Palin's nomination began to wear off (which, as is often the case, occurred when she opened her mouth and spoke); his "suspend the campaign/debate" bluff got called and he wound up losing the skirmish and appearing at the debate after all. McCain needed a home run, and he was most likely to get it from this debate, as it was (supposed to be) about foreign policy, which is (supposed to be) his specialty. He needed to show that Obama was in over his head when it came to foreign policy, and that he, John McCain, had what it took.
And while perhaps J McC did show -- at least to those already inclined to think so -- that he "has what it takes," so did Obama. No major gaffes on Obama's part. He remained cool, collected, and for every question, he had an answer.2
As I said, McCain needed a home run, this was his best chance to hit one -- and he didn't. Policy-wise, they tied. "Not a game-changer either way," the pundits are saying. That means the game remains as it was: Obama started ahead in the polls, and remained ahead in the polls, and so the tie was, in a sense, a victory for Obama.
Of course, the debates aren't really for staunch Republicans or Democrats, who have already made up their minds and are just watching the way one might watch a football match, a gladiatorial match, or an episode of Destroyed in Seconds. They're not really weighing the two candidates' stances on the issues, they just don't want to miss the very real possibility of political carnage.3
No, the debates are for those beautiful bastards, the undecideds -- who, ironically, are the ultimate deciders. They are the third-or-so of the population that one of the candidates needs to win over. And according to the polls, Obama convinced more of them that he could handle the gig than McCain did last night.
Nonetheless, McCain is clearly of the Orwellian belief that you can control make something true merely by saying that it is true. For example, his campaign ran online ads declaring him the winner not only before yesterday's debate, but before he'd even confirmed that he would attend the debate.
So it's no surprise that, post-debate, the McCain campaign ran the following advertisement:
I think, however, that this ad backfires in a number of ways.
First off, we'll address the obvious elephant in the room: these statements are taken out of context. All three of them were followed by "but." Obama agreed with McCain's sentiments, but not the conclusions he drew or the actions he intended to take. But I suppose that kind of quote-mining is just par for the political course, so we won't belabor that. Let's talk about some of the other problems with it.
As one YouTube commenter pointed out:
By attacking Obama for agreeing with McCain, isn't his own campaign affirming the idea that McCain's policies are WRONG?
Well said, random internet person. Well said.
It also shows a fundamental (the politicians and pundits like that word) flaw in McCain's thinking. Specifically, that being willing to concede that someone else is right, and/or that you have occasionally been wrong, is some kind of weakness. That's exactly the bullshit pigheaded arrogance that has made Dubya the worst President, certainly in the recent history if not in the entire history of our nation.
It's okay to admit that you were wrong. In fact, to me, that shows more leadership potential and a better understanding of the nuances of human interaction than Bush or McCain seem to display.
On top of that, this ad, at least in concept, is plagiarized directly from this ad that VP nominee Joe Biden put together during the primary elections:
Let's stand back and think about this for a second. John McCain puts out an ad stating flat-out that Barack Obama is not ready to lead. And yet:
- John McCain chooses Sarah Palin as his running mate in a blatant attempt to cash in on Hillary's popularity.
- John McCain abandons his "experience" platform and adopts a "change" platform identical to the one that Obama has been using since the beginning.
- John McCain uses the "[blank] we can believe in" structure, recognizing its effectiveness in Obama's campaign
-Even last night, he appropriated Obama's rhetorical "Main Street/Wall Street" dichotomy, recognizing it as an effective sound bite, as well as another of Obama's frequently-repeated phrases, "Let me be clear."
- His "victory ad" is copied from his opponent's running mate.
In other words, McCain has spent his campaign following the other side's lead. If Obama isn't ready to lead, then why is McCain following right behind him at every move?
Also, it's a non-sequitur. The "punchline" of the ad has nothing to do with the preceding content. How does "I agree with Sen. McCain" automatically lead to "No"? It doesn't. They're two separate ads.
Here's my theory as to what happened: As a visual effects and graphics guy, I know that those graphics would have taken some time. So the fact is that they were already planning that ad, and had made the graphics and recorded the narration before the debate even happened, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to get the ad up so instantaneously.
They had already planned to release an ad stating that Obama was not ready to lead, already created the beginning and end bits, and were just waiting for Barack to put his foot in his mouth at the debate, so they could use that clip in the ad as their proof.
And the best they got out of him was his occasional concession that McCain had the right idea, but not the right approach, and just left the latter part out.
This is exactly the problem with their thinking -- the thinking that we already have in the White House. They make a plan and they refuse to deviate from it, even when it is clearly no longer the best strategy. "Stay the course." Fuck's sake.
Last comment on the debate: body language. Watch the debate with the sound off and just judge each one based on body cues. Obama was cool, relaxed -- hate to be trite, but "Presidential." He looked right at McCain, both while speaking to McCain and while McCain was speaking. He stood up straight and proud, and came across as someone I would be proud to have representing our country abroad.
McCain, on the other hand, was small, hunched over, tense, and looked more pissed-off as the night went on. He blinked a LOT, especially at the beginning -- generally a sign of either uncertainty or outright deceit -- and refused to look at or even directly address Obama. There are several ways to read that, none of them particularly good:
- On a purely primal level, social inferiors will not look their superiors in the eyes. You see this in wolves, lions, dogs, and apes. Subordinate males will not look at the dominant male. So just coming from the animal instinct level, John McCain recognized Obama as the alpha male on the stage.
- McCain is known to have a fiery temper, and despite his death's head rictus of a smile, he was all but vibrating with rage as Obama positively refused to be ignorant of the issues. It may be that he avoided looking at Obama because he would have utterly lost his composure if he had done so.4
- McCain was showing a total lack of respect, even contempt, for a formidable and worthy opponent. You don't have to like someone to respect them, and we don't need another 4 years of global petulance and disrespect from our Commander-in-Chief.5
I'm trying not to present a false dichotomy here, but I really can't think of any positive reason that McCain should have totally avoided eye contact, or even addressing Obama directly, especially when the format of the debate was that the two candidates would take five minutes in each topic to address each other directly. If any of you can put a positive spin on McCain's attitude, I'd be glad to hear it.
I was not myself undecided and this debate has not swung my vote. It's only made me more baffled -- and terrified -- that the race could be as close as it is.
As has been said by others, I don't believe that Obama is the pure-souled superpolitician who will finally bring back the unicorns. But I believe that this country needs a drastic change in direction, and Barack Obama represents that in far more ways than John McCain.
And if Obama really does bring back the unicorns, to boot -- well, I will be happy to admit I was wrong.
In the meantime, I'm very much looking forward to Thursday's debate.
- And even if you do want to hear it, go read Dr. McNinja afterwards, because that's some funny shit. Make sure you read the alt-text!↩
- Well, not quite every question. I was annoyed at the way both of them dodged the very direct question "What specific programs will you have to cut [read: what specific campaign promises will you be breaking] as a result of the economic crisis?" But both of them did it, so that one's a draw too.↩
- For this reason, I'm inclined to think that the Biden-Palin debate will be the highest rated of all the debates this election season. One internet wit predicted it will end with Palin curled up and sobbing in a corner, while Biden dons parachute pants and does the Hammer Dance across the stage. ↩
- McCain also apparently didn't realize that his tactic of "make up lies about the opponent's positions and declare them as truth" wouldn't work if his opponent was standing right there to contradict him, which Obama did on multiple occasions, finally neutralizing many of the false talking points McCain has been spreading around the last few months.↩
- The more cynical or knee-jerk among us would probably say McCain was exhibiting racism, but I think, all else being equal (no pun intended), McCain would have behaved the same way with a white man. ↩
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Why McCain must not be elected...
If it's not obvious, my blog is likely to get more politically-oriented in the next couple months leading up to the election. Because the fact of it is, folks, this one matters.
For my non-American readers, I apologize since I'm sure our politics bore your pants clean off. I'll try to intersperse lighter fare. But the fact is that if McCain wins, we are literally going to be in a world of shit.
You may not trust Obama. He's a politician and as the saying goes, if someone or something seems to good to be true, it probably is.
But we have had great Presidents in the past. We've had Lincoln, and Kennedy -- both of whom, incidentally, had less experience than Obama -- and I believe that leaders like that still exist. I believe that someone like Obama can be genuine, and I would rather take a chance on him, even given the slim possibility that he's lying about his goodness, than throw the future away on a man who is almost certainly telling the truth about his evil.
You may not want Obama -- but do you really want the alternative?
Think about it.
For my non-American readers, I apologize since I'm sure our politics bore your pants clean off. I'll try to intersperse lighter fare. But the fact is that if McCain wins, we are literally going to be in a world of shit.
You may not trust Obama. He's a politician and as the saying goes, if someone or something seems to good to be true, it probably is.
But we have had great Presidents in the past. We've had Lincoln, and Kennedy -- both of whom, incidentally, had less experience than Obama -- and I believe that leaders like that still exist. I believe that someone like Obama can be genuine, and I would rather take a chance on him, even given the slim possibility that he's lying about his goodness, than throw the future away on a man who is almost certainly telling the truth about his evil.
You may not want Obama -- but do you really want the alternative?
Think about it.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Thank You, Daily Show, Part 2
Awesome.
These next few months are going to get interesting. I can't wait to see what happens, in particular, when Biden and Palin share the stage.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
So what's this Sandrima Rising thing?
Over the years since RvD, and especially following RvD2, Ryan and I have gotten numerous proposals to be involved with other peoples' fan films. Generally speaking, we've said no. Fan films take a lot of time, even if it's "just a saber fight," and if we're going to spend that kind of time on a project it'll be our own.
Then I got an e-mail about Sandrima Rising. As I mentioned before, the actual complete title of the project is The Renaissance Chronicles: Sandrima Rising. The idea was that they were going to pitch it, to George Lucas, as an ongoing Star Wars series about the adventures of this freighter, the Renaissance, and her crew. I'm already on record on several occasions saying that I don't think that'll happen, and I don't, but as I said yesterday, that doesn't mean I think the project is without value.
One thing that intrigued me about the project is that it followed the Han Solo characters. In point of fact, it's basically Firefly with lightsabers and wookiees -- which is fine by me. I loved Firefly, I love lightsabers, and I can live with wookiees (though dealing with the costume is a nightmare), so it seemed like something that would be a lot of fun.
It was (and is) also an extremely ambitious project. I think everyone who gets into the fan film world -- myself included -- gets it into their head to do a feature-length fan film, but only a few have been able to see it through. Sandrima Rising is shortly going to join their ranks.
I'm going to skip over the story of the film's production, because I've only recently stopped having nightmares about it; I will probably talk about it someday, but I need a little bit more hindsight on it all before I can really say anything. I will say that some good came of it for me, even from the bad. I learned a lot about what can go wrong on a feature film project, and I learned that I can take it and still want to make movies at the end of the day. I met one of my best friends on the set, and walked away with many other good friends.
The original plan was for me and Ryan to choreograph the fight scenes, train the actors, and shoot the fight scenes as "action directors". Ryan wound up being unable to get away from work to come out to the shoot, but we did still choreograph the fight scenes and I showed them to the actors. As I mentioned in a previous post, I wound up doing far more than just choreographing and shooting the fight scenes. And I'm not the only one -- almost everyone on set was taking on multiple roles to make this happen. Jeremy, who played Jacen the captain of the Renaissance, became our AD about halfway through. Andrew, one of the Renaissance crew, built the sets alongside Ed, who played Kyp, a rival captain. Our producer filled a role as a Sabacc player, and even I wound up in front of camera as an ill-fated archaeologist.
But I digress. I'm not here to talk about the production, I'm here to talk about the product. The film was shot last summer, edited in the fall, and since the New Year has been in post-production.
By way of introduction to the project, there are a couple of videos available on YouTube. The first is a "placeholder trailer" for the film. The scheduling for the project was a bit ambitious and they had said that they would have a trailer available as of December last year. None of the effects were completed at that time, but they made good on their promise and put together a trailer from the raw footage (greenscreen galore), and lifted the CG shots from Serenity.
Dwight, the director of the project, spends a little while introducing the project in this video. If you want to go straight to the trailer itself, let it load to skip forward; the trailer starts exactly two minutes in.
Additionally, you can see a work-in-progress version of one of the lightsaber fights Ryan and I created for the film. I say work-in-progress because the sounds and music are temporary, and were put together for a screening at a recent convention.
As I mentioned yesterday, I haven't talked much about this project before. A large portion of that is the fact that I didn't want to overhype it, but there's also the fact that I didn't know exactly how it was going to turn out. I didn't want to stick my neck out for something that could have turned out to be an incoherent pile. The shoot was so messy that I didn't know if the movie would come together at all. But against all odds, it did, and I think it's going to really be something special.
The trailer includes shots from Serenity, but the finished film will have completely original visuals created for the film by Dastoli Digital. They happened to release their film "Omega 35" just as we were wrapping up Sandrima and looking toward post-production. The CG work in their film was great and the producer Moe called them up to get them on board, and they've been doing a bang-up job, delivering professional visuals for the film.
The film is feature-length, but it's cut together in such a way that it can be released in 10-minute chunks. While a feature would be difficult to sit down and watch in a go on the web, I think the staggered release is a great idea. The characters are interesting, the visuals are coming together powerfully, and I think each chapter is going to leave the audience wanting more, and the chapter after is going to give it to them.
As I've said before, I think Sandrima Rising will be the last fan film project I do, aside from RvD3, and I think it is fitting to go out with a bang. If the success of the recent Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is any indication, I think audiences will really flock to Sandrima Rising. It's got some great performances, some great visuals, some great saber action, and I think the story -- especially in serialized chunks -- will really interest and entertain people. My experience in production aside, I think that the finished project is going to be one of the most popular fan films ever released. I really think this is the culmination of this generation of fan films -- everything so many other projects have wanted to be but couldn't quite cut it.
Is it perfect? Certainly not. There are things we could have done differently, equipment we could have used to enhance it (I wish we'd had the RED back then). But as a low-budget production, I think it'll blow people away.
Fingers crossed we can finish it soon, and find out if I'm right about that. I'll keep everyone posted as we get nearer to release.
Check in this weekend for the continuation of what has randomly become Fan Film Week here on my blog, and find out how RvD2 fared in the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge.
Then I got an e-mail about Sandrima Rising. As I mentioned before, the actual complete title of the project is The Renaissance Chronicles: Sandrima Rising. The idea was that they were going to pitch it, to George Lucas, as an ongoing Star Wars series about the adventures of this freighter, the Renaissance, and her crew. I'm already on record on several occasions saying that I don't think that'll happen, and I don't, but as I said yesterday, that doesn't mean I think the project is without value.
One thing that intrigued me about the project is that it followed the Han Solo characters. In point of fact, it's basically Firefly with lightsabers and wookiees -- which is fine by me. I loved Firefly, I love lightsabers, and I can live with wookiees (though dealing with the costume is a nightmare), so it seemed like something that would be a lot of fun.
It was (and is) also an extremely ambitious project. I think everyone who gets into the fan film world -- myself included -- gets it into their head to do a feature-length fan film, but only a few have been able to see it through. Sandrima Rising is shortly going to join their ranks.
I'm going to skip over the story of the film's production, because I've only recently stopped having nightmares about it; I will probably talk about it someday, but I need a little bit more hindsight on it all before I can really say anything. I will say that some good came of it for me, even from the bad. I learned a lot about what can go wrong on a feature film project, and I learned that I can take it and still want to make movies at the end of the day. I met one of my best friends on the set, and walked away with many other good friends.
The original plan was for me and Ryan to choreograph the fight scenes, train the actors, and shoot the fight scenes as "action directors". Ryan wound up being unable to get away from work to come out to the shoot, but we did still choreograph the fight scenes and I showed them to the actors. As I mentioned in a previous post, I wound up doing far more than just choreographing and shooting the fight scenes. And I'm not the only one -- almost everyone on set was taking on multiple roles to make this happen. Jeremy, who played Jacen the captain of the Renaissance, became our AD about halfway through. Andrew, one of the Renaissance crew, built the sets alongside Ed, who played Kyp, a rival captain. Our producer filled a role as a Sabacc player, and even I wound up in front of camera as an ill-fated archaeologist.
But I digress. I'm not here to talk about the production, I'm here to talk about the product. The film was shot last summer, edited in the fall, and since the New Year has been in post-production.
By way of introduction to the project, there are a couple of videos available on YouTube. The first is a "placeholder trailer" for the film. The scheduling for the project was a bit ambitious and they had said that they would have a trailer available as of December last year. None of the effects were completed at that time, but they made good on their promise and put together a trailer from the raw footage (greenscreen galore), and lifted the CG shots from Serenity.
Dwight, the director of the project, spends a little while introducing the project in this video. If you want to go straight to the trailer itself, let it load to skip forward; the trailer starts exactly two minutes in.
Additionally, you can see a work-in-progress version of one of the lightsaber fights Ryan and I created for the film. I say work-in-progress because the sounds and music are temporary, and were put together for a screening at a recent convention.
As I mentioned yesterday, I haven't talked much about this project before. A large portion of that is the fact that I didn't want to overhype it, but there's also the fact that I didn't know exactly how it was going to turn out. I didn't want to stick my neck out for something that could have turned out to be an incoherent pile. The shoot was so messy that I didn't know if the movie would come together at all. But against all odds, it did, and I think it's going to really be something special.
The trailer includes shots from Serenity, but the finished film will have completely original visuals created for the film by Dastoli Digital. They happened to release their film "Omega 35" just as we were wrapping up Sandrima and looking toward post-production. The CG work in their film was great and the producer Moe called them up to get them on board, and they've been doing a bang-up job, delivering professional visuals for the film.
The film is feature-length, but it's cut together in such a way that it can be released in 10-minute chunks. While a feature would be difficult to sit down and watch in a go on the web, I think the staggered release is a great idea. The characters are interesting, the visuals are coming together powerfully, and I think each chapter is going to leave the audience wanting more, and the chapter after is going to give it to them.
As I've said before, I think Sandrima Rising will be the last fan film project I do, aside from RvD3, and I think it is fitting to go out with a bang. If the success of the recent Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is any indication, I think audiences will really flock to Sandrima Rising. It's got some great performances, some great visuals, some great saber action, and I think the story -- especially in serialized chunks -- will really interest and entertain people. My experience in production aside, I think that the finished project is going to be one of the most popular fan films ever released. I really think this is the culmination of this generation of fan films -- everything so many other projects have wanted to be but couldn't quite cut it.
Is it perfect? Certainly not. There are things we could have done differently, equipment we could have used to enhance it (I wish we'd had the RED back then). But as a low-budget production, I think it'll blow people away.
Fingers crossed we can finish it soon, and find out if I'm right about that. I'll keep everyone posted as we get nearer to release.
Check in this weekend for the continuation of what has randomly become Fan Film Week here on my blog, and find out how RvD2 fared in the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Lots to mention...
Been hard at work on everything in the world these last few weeks, seems like. Some of the highlights:
Kung Fu Red: The first of many collaborations to come between myself and Anthony, we shot this the very first weekend we got our brand-spankin-new RED camera. I wanted to shoot a fight scene and he obliged. It was originally just supposed to be a camera test but we wound up liking the edit so much that we finished it out with sound, music, and color grading.
I've embedded the YouTube for your convenience and viewing pleasure. If you want to see it in higher quality, check it out on Vimeo.
The Descendants: Turned in the latest, and IMO greatest, draft. I'm super happy with it, I'm waiting on Dark Horse to see what they have to say.
Sandrima Rising: Working with the Dastolis and churning out finals. Some of the CG work in this is really top-notch. There's a "city chase" sequence in the middle that I think will knock people's socks off. My hat's off to those guys.
fxphd: I've mentioned fxphd in the past, but this time around it's even more special: Ryan and I are teaching a course this term! So if you can afford it (and for the level of training phd offers, aside from us, it's an amazing deal), come sign up and we'll drop some knowledge on you.
48 Hour Film Project: Already kind of addressed this. We really wound up liking the film we made, with the exception of the opening scene. We re-shot the scene and will be posting the revised version on YouTube probably in a couple weeks (I have too much going on to finish it right now). We will also probably post the 48 Hour version after that, just for comparison.
Troika: This is a project that Anthony wrote and directed a selection of scenes from in order to pitch it to financiers. As a writer I'm super-critical of my own work, and that of others, and there's not a lot of scripts that really entertain or interest me. I like reading good scripts, but a lot of scripts just don't cut it.
I have to say, Troika is a great script.
Among the scenes shot are a fight scene, a dialogue scene, and a car chase. The car chase was shot on greenscreen, and there are plusses and minuses to that. On the plus side, the fact that they were shooting green is the reason Anthony called me to be on-set, and that led me to being on-set for all of the subsequent shoots, and ultimately concluding that not only did I want to make movies with those guys, I didn't want to make movies without them.
On the minus side, it was my first day on-set and I wasn't totally committed to the project, or to them, at that point, so I came on board as a consultant for the first half of the day and then buggered out. I did have something else to do, but I can't remember what it was and it doesn't matter; I should have stayed there all day. So while I consulted and gave them advice, once I was gone they were on their own in a foreign land, and mistakes were made. Now, in between Sandrima renders, I'm working on the car chase stuff, and its difficulty is my punishment for leaving that day. Karma!
Still, it's nice to have something that isn't lightsabers to put on my reel.
He's also written another script that he's working on developing and may shoot in the next few months, and which I also think is great.
So that's where I've been the last few weeks and why my posts have been scarce, and will probably continue to be scarce through July. I am still active on Twitter, and will be getting more active back here once all of these projects -- which have bottlenecked into July -- are completed.
Oh, also, Ryan and I will be at Comic Con this year, as is swiftly becoming traditional. If you see us, do say hi.
Kung Fu Red: The first of many collaborations to come between myself and Anthony, we shot this the very first weekend we got our brand-spankin-new RED camera. I wanted to shoot a fight scene and he obliged. It was originally just supposed to be a camera test but we wound up liking the edit so much that we finished it out with sound, music, and color grading.
I've embedded the YouTube for your convenience and viewing pleasure. If you want to see it in higher quality, check it out on Vimeo.
The Descendants: Turned in the latest, and IMO greatest, draft. I'm super happy with it, I'm waiting on Dark Horse to see what they have to say.
Sandrima Rising: Working with the Dastolis and churning out finals. Some of the CG work in this is really top-notch. There's a "city chase" sequence in the middle that I think will knock people's socks off. My hat's off to those guys.
fxphd: I've mentioned fxphd in the past, but this time around it's even more special: Ryan and I are teaching a course this term! So if you can afford it (and for the level of training phd offers, aside from us, it's an amazing deal), come sign up and we'll drop some knowledge on you.
48 Hour Film Project: Already kind of addressed this. We really wound up liking the film we made, with the exception of the opening scene. We re-shot the scene and will be posting the revised version on YouTube probably in a couple weeks (I have too much going on to finish it right now). We will also probably post the 48 Hour version after that, just for comparison.
Troika: This is a project that Anthony wrote and directed a selection of scenes from in order to pitch it to financiers. As a writer I'm super-critical of my own work, and that of others, and there's not a lot of scripts that really entertain or interest me. I like reading good scripts, but a lot of scripts just don't cut it.
I have to say, Troika is a great script.
Among the scenes shot are a fight scene, a dialogue scene, and a car chase. The car chase was shot on greenscreen, and there are plusses and minuses to that. On the plus side, the fact that they were shooting green is the reason Anthony called me to be on-set, and that led me to being on-set for all of the subsequent shoots, and ultimately concluding that not only did I want to make movies with those guys, I didn't want to make movies without them.
On the minus side, it was my first day on-set and I wasn't totally committed to the project, or to them, at that point, so I came on board as a consultant for the first half of the day and then buggered out. I did have something else to do, but I can't remember what it was and it doesn't matter; I should have stayed there all day. So while I consulted and gave them advice, once I was gone they were on their own in a foreign land, and mistakes were made. Now, in between Sandrima renders, I'm working on the car chase stuff, and its difficulty is my punishment for leaving that day. Karma!
Still, it's nice to have something that isn't lightsabers to put on my reel.
He's also written another script that he's working on developing and may shoot in the next few months, and which I also think is great.
So that's where I've been the last few weeks and why my posts have been scarce, and will probably continue to be scarce through July. I am still active on Twitter, and will be getting more active back here once all of these projects -- which have bottlenecked into July -- are completed.
Oh, also, Ryan and I will be at Comic Con this year, as is swiftly becoming traditional. If you see us, do say hi.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Stuck
So this is the 48 Hour Film that won Audience Choice in our group, wrenching the validation I so crave from my small, girlish hands.
*sob*
Seriously though, you can see why it won -- and again, why I voted for it. The Steadicam shot is extremely well-executed, smooth all the way through with no bumps; throughout the film the camera and blocking are creating new frames that are all very nice.
Also worth noting, I never saw a camera shadow. And the actors did a really good job of not shadowing each other. For a shoot at a time with such long shadows (I'm guessing it was around 4PM), that's pretty impressive.
There are no "clunkers" in the dialogue, at least nothing that can't be excused for the short writing window, and the performances are all really strong. You'd expect a line or two to be below par but it got into the film because the rest of the take was good; but here, all the performances are solid.
The music toes the line between "catchy" and "repetitive", but I think it stays on the right side of "catchy", and gives a good pace to the film. It's also a very active film, without any real dead time. Which is pretty impressive since it covers a lot of ground and it's mostly just following a guy walking.
It gets a little cute at the end, but it's forgivable. All in all, you can tell the director knows what he's doing. It's worth studying -- and for a 48 Hour Film, that's damn impressive.
I liked it when it screened, I'm glad it won Audience Choice, and I'm glad it's up on YouTube so I can share it with you guys. Enjoy.
*sob*
Seriously though, you can see why it won -- and again, why I voted for it. The Steadicam shot is extremely well-executed, smooth all the way through with no bumps; throughout the film the camera and blocking are creating new frames that are all very nice.
Also worth noting, I never saw a camera shadow. And the actors did a really good job of not shadowing each other. For a shoot at a time with such long shadows (I'm guessing it was around 4PM), that's pretty impressive.
There are no "clunkers" in the dialogue, at least nothing that can't be excused for the short writing window, and the performances are all really strong. You'd expect a line or two to be below par but it got into the film because the rest of the take was good; but here, all the performances are solid.
The music toes the line between "catchy" and "repetitive", but I think it stays on the right side of "catchy", and gives a good pace to the film. It's also a very active film, without any real dead time. Which is pretty impressive since it covers a lot of ground and it's mostly just following a guy walking.
It gets a little cute at the end, but it's forgivable. All in all, you can tell the director knows what he's doing. It's worth studying -- and for a 48 Hour Film, that's damn impressive.
I liked it when it screened, I'm glad it won Audience Choice, and I'm glad it's up on YouTube so I can share it with you guys. Enjoy.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Where the Hell is Matt
I know I said I'd blog about the 48 Hour Film Project. And I will. But this came to my attention and I couldn't not share it.
Maybe I'm just a sentimental bitch of a man, but I thought this video was really moving -- in part because of the triumphant music, but mostly because of the triumph of the video itself. It's one thing to watch a guy dance badly on the internet. It's another to watch him dance badly around the world. But it's really something else entirely to watch hundreds of people from around the world, of all difference countries and cultures and ages and races and genders and backgrounds, lay all that aside and dance badly with him.
I'm sure most people watch this video and see a neato little viral. I watch this video and I see hope that human beings might just make it, after all.
Maybe I'm just a sentimental bitch of a man, but I thought this video was really moving -- in part because of the triumphant music, but mostly because of the triumph of the video itself. It's one thing to watch a guy dance badly on the internet. It's another to watch him dance badly around the world. But it's really something else entirely to watch hundreds of people from around the world, of all difference countries and cultures and ages and races and genders and backgrounds, lay all that aside and dance badly with him.
I'm sure most people watch this video and see a neato little viral. I watch this video and I see hope that human beings might just make it, after all.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Weezer Video: Pork and Beans
Okay, so you know that "music video from a prominent band" I mentioned?
As some of you have no doubt surmised, it was Weezer, for their single Pork and Beans. That is really us, but since it was shot in HD and then downscaled to YouTube I've been cut out of almost every shot.
Fun fact: they apparently wanted Star Wars Kid initially; when that didn't pan out, they called us. Works for me!
We also managed to talk them into letting us do the lightsaber effects for the video ourselves, although ultimately I did all the lightsabers and Ryan did all the drumsticks (which they wanted in red and then changed).
That is *really* everyone it's supposed to be. Doing the shoot was incredibly surreal given that we had all seen and enjoyed each others' videos, and everyone there was incredibly cool and fun to talk to. (And yes, they'd all seen the South Park episode they were in.)We all exchanged e-mails, which may just turn out to be your high school yearbook "K.I.T.!!!" gesture, but hopefully not.
Anyway, we all had a great time and even though we're not in there for much of it, we're proud to be a part of it and we hope it gets a bazillion views.
As some of you have no doubt surmised, it was Weezer, for their single Pork and Beans. That is really us, but since it was shot in HD and then downscaled to YouTube I've been cut out of almost every shot.
Fun fact: they apparently wanted Star Wars Kid initially; when that didn't pan out, they called us. Works for me!
We also managed to talk them into letting us do the lightsaber effects for the video ourselves, although ultimately I did all the lightsabers and Ryan did all the drumsticks (which they wanted in red and then changed).
That is *really* everyone it's supposed to be. Doing the shoot was incredibly surreal given that we had all seen and enjoyed each others' videos, and everyone there was incredibly cool and fun to talk to. (And yes, they'd all seen the South Park episode they were in.)We all exchanged e-mails, which may just turn out to be your high school yearbook "K.I.T.!!!" gesture, but hopefully not.
Anyway, we all had a great time and even though we're not in there for much of it, we're proud to be a part of it and we hope it gets a bazillion views.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Back to India -- Kalluri Vaanil
So, I've continued watching "Animus" and I have decided that I do in fact love the film. The more I watch it the more I notice, both in terms of what he did and what he was trying to do. It ain't perfect, but it's still good stuff.
Anyway, moving on.
This next video's most popular iteration on YouTube is titled "Crazy Indian Music Video". It's actual title is "Kalluri Vaanil" and it's by the artist Prabhu Deva. Before I researched the short (and given that I don't speak the language, I actually have no idea how I managed to decipher it enough to search for it properly), I would describe the film thusly:
"Imagine that a dance choreographer had one week to live, and he chose to put every idea he'd ever had into one last blow-out music video. I think this video is pretty close to what it would be like."
It's kind of weird at first, especially the high-pitched treatment the female vocals get, but dammit, it's catchy as hell, and the dance moves are really energetic. This makes ME want to shoot a crazy music video of some kind, because it looks like they're all having a hell of a good time.
Anyway, moving on.
This next video's most popular iteration on YouTube is titled "Crazy Indian Music Video". It's actual title is "Kalluri Vaanil" and it's by the artist Prabhu Deva. Before I researched the short (and given that I don't speak the language, I actually have no idea how I managed to decipher it enough to search for it properly), I would describe the film thusly:
"Imagine that a dance choreographer had one week to live, and he chose to put every idea he'd ever had into one last blow-out music video. I think this video is pretty close to what it would be like."
It's kind of weird at first, especially the high-pitched treatment the female vocals get, but dammit, it's catchy as hell, and the dance moves are really energetic. This makes ME want to shoot a crazy music video of some kind, because it looks like they're all having a hell of a good time.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Animus
As the folks reading this may or may not know, I'm a sucker for martial arts movies, particularly kung fu stuff. A former roommate of mine had a similar obsession, and had a library of old Shaw Brothers and other obscure or rare titles that I still miss today. Among that library was a DVD called Everyone is Kung Fu Fighting, a collection of amateur martial arts short films. Most of them were pretty crap, but there was one called "Cradle of the Blind" that I really dug. The choreography was solid, and of the same tastes that I find fun and interesting in fight choreography. I was also really impressed by some of the clever camera work.
Well, at one point when surfing Craigslist for something to stave off my pre-RvD2 boredom, I came across a posting by the same Anthony Alba who had made "Cradle of the Blind," looking for a writer to help him with a book idea he had. I got in touch with him, we met up and although that specific idea has not yet come to fruition, we've kept in touch the last couple years, shared some WIP stuff, and I'm pleased to say that one of the WIPs that I saw a few years ago is finally a finished film, called "Animus".
When I saw the rough cut of "Animus", I have to say I didn't get it. But I liked the final version a hell of a lot. There are interesting choices made in the shooting and editing that I keep watching over and over. Give me a few more days and I might even say I love the thing; I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of commitment just yet.
One thing I can say for sure: Anthony is insanely talented, as a director and especially as a fight choreographer and martial artist.
Case in point: if you've seen Equilibrium, you may remember the fight scene at the very end with the Big Bad, where the two characters were supposedly doing a wild and highly technical gun-fu fight against each other -- when in fact they were playing patty-cake, batting each other's weapons away lazily as the camera dollied frantically about them.
Starting at 2:11, "Animus" has the fight scene we SHOULD have gotten at the end of Equilibrium.
I'm not going to comment or review the film itself here, other than to say that the film managed to hold my interest for over 20 minutes in a dinky low-rez YouTube window, and that's hard to do. I enjoyed it and I told Anthony I would use my Intarweb Powerz to try and get the word out.
I've been helping him with a concept shoot for a feature he's co-written with his brother Ski-ter1, and I think our respective teams -- me and Ryan with Anthony and Ski-ter -- have a long and fulfilling future of collaboration and partnership ahead. Once you see some of Anthony's work, I think you'll be as excited about the prospect as I am.
If you have a YouTube account (and all the cool kids do), be sure to click through to the actual film page and leave a comment for him, so he knows his work is seen and appreciated. That's really all us filmy-types want.
Without further ado, "Animus":
Well, at one point when surfing Craigslist for something to stave off my pre-RvD2 boredom, I came across a posting by the same Anthony Alba who had made "Cradle of the Blind," looking for a writer to help him with a book idea he had. I got in touch with him, we met up and although that specific idea has not yet come to fruition, we've kept in touch the last couple years, shared some WIP stuff, and I'm pleased to say that one of the WIPs that I saw a few years ago is finally a finished film, called "Animus".
When I saw the rough cut of "Animus", I have to say I didn't get it. But I liked the final version a hell of a lot. There are interesting choices made in the shooting and editing that I keep watching over and over. Give me a few more days and I might even say I love the thing; I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of commitment just yet.
One thing I can say for sure: Anthony is insanely talented, as a director and especially as a fight choreographer and martial artist.
Case in point: if you've seen Equilibrium, you may remember the fight scene at the very end with the Big Bad, where the two characters were supposedly doing a wild and highly technical gun-fu fight against each other -- when in fact they were playing patty-cake, batting each other's weapons away lazily as the camera dollied frantically about them.
Starting at 2:11, "Animus" has the fight scene we SHOULD have gotten at the end of Equilibrium.
I'm not going to comment or review the film itself here, other than to say that the film managed to hold my interest for over 20 minutes in a dinky low-rez YouTube window, and that's hard to do. I enjoyed it and I told Anthony I would use my Intarweb Powerz to try and get the word out.
I've been helping him with a concept shoot for a feature he's co-written with his brother Ski-ter1, and I think our respective teams -- me and Ryan with Anthony and Ski-ter -- have a long and fulfilling future of collaboration and partnership ahead. Once you see some of Anthony's work, I think you'll be as excited about the prospect as I am.
If you have a YouTube account (and all the cool kids do), be sure to click through to the actual film page and leave a comment for him, so he knows his work is seen and appreciated. That's really all us filmy-types want.
Without further ado, "Animus":
- If you have the RvD2 DVD, Ski-ter shot some of the pyrotechnic BTS. He's the guy behind the camera who says "You gotta love that sh*t."↩
Thursday, March 06, 2008
You already know it isn't true
For the sake of argument, when discussing religious faith in this post, I will be referring to the Christian faith most specifically. Simply because it is the one with which I am most familiar, and the one that any readers I may have are most likely to subscribe to. I am not familiar enough with Islam to really delve into it, I will have to read the Quran before I even attempt to do so.
I'm not going to get into the absurdities of the Bible itself too much -- there are plenty of other sites that do so, and I'll link them either in this post or my next one -- but I do need to address the issue of faith in God.
Simply put: you don't have any.
"The audacity!" you cry. "You dare presume to know my heart?!" Well, no, that's not what I said. I'm sure that in your heart you're a good person and you tell yourself that you believe in God and that helps you through the rough spots. But if you're a Christian, you are not following God's word.
The very fact that you can read this shockingly audacious post is proof that you are not following God's word. If you were following God's word, you would not have the internet, a computer, or even the roof over your head.
To illustrate the point further, I give you a video from GodIsImaginary.com, to spare you from some reading, and me from some writing:
The video neglects to mention Matthew 6:24, Matthew 19:28-29, Luke 9:23-25, Hebrews 13:5, and Acts 2:44-45, which all repeat some form of "give up everything" in a very literal, material sense.
Still here? Of course you are. You didn't run out immediately and sell everything you've got because in YOUR version of the faith, all you have to do is be a good person and say Jesus' name every once in a while. In your version, John 3:16 is all there is. But that is not what the Bible says. And if you don't accept what the Bible says as true, on what basis ARE you basing the notion that Jesus and God exist, and that Jesus is the son of God (and also God himself1)?
The only evidence of God/Jesus is the Bible. If the Bible is an unreliable source, then there is NO reliable evidence of God/Jesus.
If you're my age or older, your choice of a job will involve the medical insurance benefits offered. If you really had faith in God, you wouldn't have insurance. You wouldn't have a doctor. You wouldn't carry a first-aid kit. You wouldn't even have Advil in your medicine cabinet. You would pray your headaches away.
The next time you get hurt, say a deep wound that's losing a lot of blood, are you going to PRAY that it stops? Maybe, but that's sure as hell not ALL you're going to do. You're going to call 911, you're going to try to stop the bleeding yourself, you're going to wrap it in bandages.
And THEN, when you've done all that YOU could possibly do, and all that's left is to wait and see, you'll start mumbling "Please God, please God."
If you really had faith, that would be the first and only thing that you did. But you are not stupid. You know, on some level, that just praying will get you jack shit.
Unless, of course, you're a member of the Church of Christian Science. They DO believe in prayer-only. They DON'T go to the doctors or take medicine. Their mortality rate is pretty high. And if you're not one of them -- even if you identify yourself as a Christian -- you have no trouble agreeing with me that they are irrational and foolish in their sole reliance on prayer.
Consciously you may really think you believe, but some part of you knows that it's nonsense, and not something you can rely on solely.
Still don't buy the part where I said you don't really have faith in God? Let's talk about amputees.
You may have noticed at the end of the video that it linked to two sites. There was GodIsImaginary.com and WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com.
It sounds like a silly question, but it's actually significant.
Some of my following argument is borrowed from parts of both of those sites. I am essentially summarizing their argument and encourage you to read both sites thoroughly.
If you're a Christian, you presumably pray to God for things.2 All things, big and small. You'll pray that you pass a test, you'll pray that your car will not spin out of control if your car skids on a wet road, and if you get sick, you pray for your illness (AFTER making all possible medicinal assurances, as mentioned above). Especially if it's a dire illness, like cancer.
If you or someone close to you gets cancer, durn tootin' you'll be praying for them. And if the cancer goes into remission: hallelujah, it's a miracle! And if it doesn't, well, it was all part of God's plan (which deserves a post of its own).
You would pray for cancer. You would pray for a tumor. You might pray for a broken arm, although most people recognize that since fixing a broken arm is standard procedure, you don't really NEED to put that in God's hands.
But if you LOST your arm, or your child lost his arm, it would never occur to you to pray that God re-grow the arm. You would never pray for someone to re-grow any lost appendage. Would you?
If you would, then my argument fails to address your truly prodigious level of faith, and you can pretty much skip the rest of this post.
But if not, why? You'll pray for anything else, but why not that?
Because you KNOW that the prayer won't work. The prayer won't work because it is currently impossible for a human being to grow back a limb, and your faith in prayer only works as long as the efficacy of prayer is ambiguous. You pray to God to help you with your test. If you pass, it was his doing, regardless of the amount of studying and hard work you put in. If you didn't, it wasn't his plan. You pray to God to cure your cancer. If the cancer goes into remission, it was his doing, regardless of the rigorous chemotherapy and other brutal treatments that beat the cancer back; if not, it is usually MEDICINE's fault for being imperfect or not doing "enough".
You pray for things because it might work out, and you'll be able to hold on to your faith and give it up for the big man if it does.
Except for a lost limb. Because you know, deep down that there is a 0% chance of it working and you see no reason to waste your time trying. But if you REALLY had faith, you would pray to re-grow that limb.
Jesus said of prayer:
There's no need of interpretation here, it's very direct and literal. Nothing will be impossible to you if you have faith "as a grain of mustard seed". In case you're wondering, mustard seeds are really small.
Again, totally direct, totally literal. You will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Mountains into the sea, for fucks sake! Surely a missing limb is nothing.
Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19, James 5:15-16, Mark 9:23, Luke 1:37. God says, unequivocally: I WILL answer your prayers. Not I might if I feel like it, not there's a 50-50 chance it'll fit in his plan. He WILL answer.
And does he?
No. And you know it. You won't pray for any amputee you know because you know that prayer won't do any good. Cancer might go into recession, but humans do not regenerate lost limbs. The limb is gone. And all the mustard-sized faith in the world isn't going to get it back.
Even if God does exist, you have no faith in him to be true to his word -- and rightly so, because he is NOT true to his word. The atrocities of the Bible aside (see EvilBible.com for a list of God's Greatest Hits in that regard), the efficacy of prayer is statistically zero, whereas an unselfish prayer should always be answered according to God himself. A God who does not fulfill his promises is as unworthy of faith/trust as any human being who has failed, time and time again, to fulfill his promises.
That is, if you believed in the God/Jesus that's in the Bible. Which you don't, not really. You have material goods and you take medicine for your ills and you don't bother praying for things that can't be helped, even though supposedly God can help ANYTHING. You don't believe in that God/Jesus because you have clear evidence that that God/Jesus doesn't exist, and if he does, is wholly unworthy of your faith and worship, because he is a liar and a sociopath.
So that begs the question: What God/Jesus DO you believe in, exactly?
I'm not going to get into the absurdities of the Bible itself too much -- there are plenty of other sites that do so, and I'll link them either in this post or my next one -- but I do need to address the issue of faith in God.
Simply put: you don't have any.
"The audacity!" you cry. "You dare presume to know my heart?!" Well, no, that's not what I said. I'm sure that in your heart you're a good person and you tell yourself that you believe in God and that helps you through the rough spots. But if you're a Christian, you are not following God's word.
The very fact that you can read this shockingly audacious post is proof that you are not following God's word. If you were following God's word, you would not have the internet, a computer, or even the roof over your head.
To illustrate the point further, I give you a video from GodIsImaginary.com, to spare you from some reading, and me from some writing:
The video neglects to mention Matthew 6:24, Matthew 19:28-29, Luke 9:23-25, Hebrews 13:5, and Acts 2:44-45, which all repeat some form of "give up everything" in a very literal, material sense.
Still here? Of course you are. You didn't run out immediately and sell everything you've got because in YOUR version of the faith, all you have to do is be a good person and say Jesus' name every once in a while. In your version, John 3:16 is all there is. But that is not what the Bible says. And if you don't accept what the Bible says as true, on what basis ARE you basing the notion that Jesus and God exist, and that Jesus is the son of God (and also God himself1)?
The only evidence of God/Jesus is the Bible. If the Bible is an unreliable source, then there is NO reliable evidence of God/Jesus.
If you're my age or older, your choice of a job will involve the medical insurance benefits offered. If you really had faith in God, you wouldn't have insurance. You wouldn't have a doctor. You wouldn't carry a first-aid kit. You wouldn't even have Advil in your medicine cabinet. You would pray your headaches away.
The next time you get hurt, say a deep wound that's losing a lot of blood, are you going to PRAY that it stops? Maybe, but that's sure as hell not ALL you're going to do. You're going to call 911, you're going to try to stop the bleeding yourself, you're going to wrap it in bandages.
And THEN, when you've done all that YOU could possibly do, and all that's left is to wait and see, you'll start mumbling "Please God, please God."
If you really had faith, that would be the first and only thing that you did. But you are not stupid. You know, on some level, that just praying will get you jack shit.
Unless, of course, you're a member of the Church of Christian Science. They DO believe in prayer-only. They DON'T go to the doctors or take medicine. Their mortality rate is pretty high. And if you're not one of them -- even if you identify yourself as a Christian -- you have no trouble agreeing with me that they are irrational and foolish in their sole reliance on prayer.
Consciously you may really think you believe, but some part of you knows that it's nonsense, and not something you can rely on solely.
Still don't buy the part where I said you don't really have faith in God? Let's talk about amputees.
You may have noticed at the end of the video that it linked to two sites. There was GodIsImaginary.com and WhyWontGodHealAmputees.com.
It sounds like a silly question, but it's actually significant.
Some of my following argument is borrowed from parts of both of those sites. I am essentially summarizing their argument and encourage you to read both sites thoroughly.
If you're a Christian, you presumably pray to God for things.2 All things, big and small. You'll pray that you pass a test, you'll pray that your car will not spin out of control if your car skids on a wet road, and if you get sick, you pray for your illness (AFTER making all possible medicinal assurances, as mentioned above). Especially if it's a dire illness, like cancer.
If you or someone close to you gets cancer, durn tootin' you'll be praying for them. And if the cancer goes into remission: hallelujah, it's a miracle! And if it doesn't, well, it was all part of God's plan (which deserves a post of its own).
You would pray for cancer. You would pray for a tumor. You might pray for a broken arm, although most people recognize that since fixing a broken arm is standard procedure, you don't really NEED to put that in God's hands.
But if you LOST your arm, or your child lost his arm, it would never occur to you to pray that God re-grow the arm. You would never pray for someone to re-grow any lost appendage. Would you?
If you would, then my argument fails to address your truly prodigious level of faith, and you can pretty much skip the rest of this post.
But if not, why? You'll pray for anything else, but why not that?
Because you KNOW that the prayer won't work. The prayer won't work because it is currently impossible for a human being to grow back a limb, and your faith in prayer only works as long as the efficacy of prayer is ambiguous. You pray to God to help you with your test. If you pass, it was his doing, regardless of the amount of studying and hard work you put in. If you didn't, it wasn't his plan. You pray to God to cure your cancer. If the cancer goes into remission, it was his doing, regardless of the rigorous chemotherapy and other brutal treatments that beat the cancer back; if not, it is usually MEDICINE's fault for being imperfect or not doing "enough".
You pray for things because it might work out, and you'll be able to hold on to your faith and give it up for the big man if it does.
Except for a lost limb. Because you know, deep down that there is a 0% chance of it working and you see no reason to waste your time trying. But if you REALLY had faith, you would pray to re-grow that limb.
Jesus said of prayer:
For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. (Matthew 17:20)
There's no need of interpretation here, it's very direct and literal. Nothing will be impossible to you if you have faith "as a grain of mustard seed". In case you're wondering, mustard seeds are really small.
I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. (Matthew 21:21)3
Again, totally direct, totally literal. You will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. Mountains into the sea, for fucks sake! Surely a missing limb is nothing.
Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19, James 5:15-16, Mark 9:23, Luke 1:37. God says, unequivocally: I WILL answer your prayers. Not I might if I feel like it, not there's a 50-50 chance it'll fit in his plan. He WILL answer.
And does he?
No. And you know it. You won't pray for any amputee you know because you know that prayer won't do any good. Cancer might go into recession, but humans do not regenerate lost limbs. The limb is gone. And all the mustard-sized faith in the world isn't going to get it back.
Even if God does exist, you have no faith in him to be true to his word -- and rightly so, because he is NOT true to his word. The atrocities of the Bible aside (see EvilBible.com for a list of God's Greatest Hits in that regard), the efficacy of prayer is statistically zero, whereas an unselfish prayer should always be answered according to God himself. A God who does not fulfill his promises is as unworthy of faith/trust as any human being who has failed, time and time again, to fulfill his promises.
That is, if you believed in the God/Jesus that's in the Bible. Which you don't, not really. You have material goods and you take medicine for your ills and you don't bother praying for things that can't be helped, even though supposedly God can help ANYTHING. You don't believe in that God/Jesus because you have clear evidence that that God/Jesus doesn't exist, and if he does, is wholly unworthy of your faith and worship, because he is a liar and a sociopath.
So that begs the question: What God/Jesus DO you believe in, exactly?
- This makes no fucking sense to anyone, by the way. Even theologians call it the "Mystery of the Trinity", as though its truth were a foregone conclusion, and it was just beyond our comprehension. Maybe it doesn't make any sense because it isn't true.
Seriously, if I made a movie with a gaping plot hole, and called it the "mystery" of that film, I'd be laughed out of whatever place I happened to say such an inane thing. ↩ - If you don't, we can skip this step of the argument entirely, because you already have so little actual faith in God that you know better than to expect anything from prayer at all.↩
- FYI, "what was done to the fig tree" is this: Jesus comes upon a fig tree and is hungry, but the tree has no figs. So Jesus curses the tree on the spot and it dies. This story shows up in TWO of the four Gospels: Matthew 21:19, and Mark 11:13-14, 20. In the Matthew account, the tree dies instantly; in the Mark account, the tree is dead the following day. Also worth noting, the Mark account states that "the time of figs was not yet."
In other words, the tree had no figs because it was OUT OF SEASON, and Jesus STILL condemned it to death. And then BRAGGED to the onlookers about how anyone could also lash out irrationally with the power of God, if they had just the smallest bit of faith. Gives WWJD a whole new twist, don't it?↩
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
I hate Mondays
Obviously, given the title, it would have been better if I posted this actually ON a Monday, but whatever.
Most of the people in my generation, and the one just prior, will know immediately that I am referencing Garfield. For those of you who just got to this planet, Garfield is about a fat orange tabby named Garfield who loves lasagna, hates Mondays, and is incredibly lazy. He's usually either torturing the dog, Odie, or mocking his owner, Jon Arbuckle.
I used to love Garfield; I had many of the early collections and it was my second favorite comic after Calvin and Hobbes. But Jim Davis is like the anti-Bill Watterson. Whereas Watterson refused to ever license his characters for anything (those window stickers of Calvin peeing on things/praying to things are totally unlicensed), Davis couldn't sell out fast enough or completely enough.
Garfield has been a Saturday morning cartoon (with dozens of "specials"), a live-action movie (and its sequel, and now an animated 3D movie (with its own pending sequel); they've sold prints, stickers, T-shirts, baseball caps, boxer shorts, CD holders, plush toys, figurines, bedsheets, pillow covers, window curtains, shower curtains, bamboo curtains, mudflaps, magnets, mousepads, coffee mugs, piggy banks, snow globes, bobbleheads, salt and pepper shakers, door stops, clocks, antenna balls, and toilet seat covers.
I did not make any of that up. And that's not even including CafePress, where you can slap one design on everything.
Also unlike Watterson, who knew that he essentially had nothing more to say when it came to Calvin and Hobbes and decided to retire the strip after ten years1, 2008 marks 30 years of daily Garfield comics. And let me tell you, the well ran dry a good decade ago.
It really has gotten to the point where if you've read one Garfield comic, you've read them all. Garfield is now near the bottom of my list of favorite comics. Not quite the bottom, because there are some TRULY shitty comics in circulation these days, but well below Non Sequitur, Get Fuzzy, Zits, and a number of others.
So why am I blogging about Garfield if I think it's tripe?
Well, first of all, there's a team of filmmakers that are re-enacting Garfield cartoons in "live action" shorts. Being only three panels, they then proceed to fill the rest of the time with "tribute" music videos. The music videos themselves are kind of funny, and at least they're also short.
For example, here's the strip from December 03, 1991, with a music video tribute to Alan Jackson's "Chattahoochee":
This one's music video "tribute" is a collection of review snippets for the aforementioned Garfield movies set to music. Allow me a moment of predictable cliche in saying: Mee-ouch.
Check out lasagnacat's YouTube account for more.
So as you've seen even by those two strips alone, you've got two recurring themes in the Garfield strip. Garfield's fat and lazy, and Jon is borderline retarded -- or at least socially inadequate -- and Garfield sees fit to comment on it with frequency.
But someone apparently had the brilliant idea that Garfield's commentary was unnecessary. Someone created Garfield minus Garfield, in which they remove Garfield from the comic panels. The result is an astonishingly existential comic starring Jon Arbuckle.
Take, for example, this strip from January 8, 2007:
Retarded, right? It's not even partially funny. It doesn't even make sense ("they're your shirt"?).
But look at what happens when you take Garfield away:
Isn't that the best comic ever? Or how about this one:
Holy CRAP.
As described on the Garfield minus Garfield site:
I think Garfield (minus Garfield) just became my favorite comic. And the best part is, with 30 years to cull from, and more being done every day, there will never stop being new ones.
Most of the people in my generation, and the one just prior, will know immediately that I am referencing Garfield. For those of you who just got to this planet, Garfield is about a fat orange tabby named Garfield who loves lasagna, hates Mondays, and is incredibly lazy. He's usually either torturing the dog, Odie, or mocking his owner, Jon Arbuckle.
I used to love Garfield; I had many of the early collections and it was my second favorite comic after Calvin and Hobbes. But Jim Davis is like the anti-Bill Watterson. Whereas Watterson refused to ever license his characters for anything (those window stickers of Calvin peeing on things/praying to things are totally unlicensed), Davis couldn't sell out fast enough or completely enough.
Garfield has been a Saturday morning cartoon (with dozens of "specials"), a live-action movie (and its sequel, and now an animated 3D movie (with its own pending sequel); they've sold prints, stickers, T-shirts, baseball caps, boxer shorts, CD holders, plush toys, figurines, bedsheets, pillow covers, window curtains, shower curtains, bamboo curtains, mudflaps, magnets, mousepads, coffee mugs, piggy banks, snow globes, bobbleheads, salt and pepper shakers, door stops, clocks, antenna balls, and toilet seat covers.
I did not make any of that up. And that's not even including CafePress, where you can slap one design on everything.
Also unlike Watterson, who knew that he essentially had nothing more to say when it came to Calvin and Hobbes and decided to retire the strip after ten years1, 2008 marks 30 years of daily Garfield comics. And let me tell you, the well ran dry a good decade ago.
It really has gotten to the point where if you've read one Garfield comic, you've read them all. Garfield is now near the bottom of my list of favorite comics. Not quite the bottom, because there are some TRULY shitty comics in circulation these days, but well below Non Sequitur, Get Fuzzy, Zits, and a number of others.
So why am I blogging about Garfield if I think it's tripe?
Well, first of all, there's a team of filmmakers that are re-enacting Garfield cartoons in "live action" shorts. Being only three panels, they then proceed to fill the rest of the time with "tribute" music videos. The music videos themselves are kind of funny, and at least they're also short.
For example, here's the strip from December 03, 1991, with a music video tribute to Alan Jackson's "Chattahoochee":
This one's music video "tribute" is a collection of review snippets for the aforementioned Garfield movies set to music. Allow me a moment of predictable cliche in saying: Mee-ouch.
Check out lasagnacat's YouTube account for more.
So as you've seen even by those two strips alone, you've got two recurring themes in the Garfield strip. Garfield's fat and lazy, and Jon is borderline retarded -- or at least socially inadequate -- and Garfield sees fit to comment on it with frequency.
But someone apparently had the brilliant idea that Garfield's commentary was unnecessary. Someone created Garfield minus Garfield, in which they remove Garfield from the comic panels. The result is an astonishingly existential comic starring Jon Arbuckle.
Take, for example, this strip from January 8, 2007:
Retarded, right? It's not even partially funny. It doesn't even make sense ("they're your shirt"?).
But look at what happens when you take Garfield away:
Isn't that the best comic ever? Or how about this one:
Holy CRAP.
As described on the Garfield minus Garfield site:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.
I think Garfield (minus Garfield) just became my favorite comic. And the best part is, with 30 years to cull from, and more being done every day, there will never stop being new ones.
- Fans may not realize it (or want to), but that was in 1995, thirteen years ago. Next year there will be students in high school who were born after C&H ended. But enough about C&H, that's a blog for another day.↩
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
SLOW DOWN!
A couple videos for you today, both on the same theme. The first, a TED Talk.
TED now has an iTunes feed, where every day they upload a new talk from their massive library of insightful discussions. I have talks running in the background as I work pretty much every day, and I'm skipping around to what sounds interesting.
Today I ran across this talk, a talk from TED 2005 by journalist Carl Honore.
This is an important topic, and was especially noteworth for me since I've got a bunch of things happening at once, and my attempts to do them all quickly and simultaneously makes it such that I get very few of them done at all.
I think a lot of us have things we want to get done or a place we feel like we need to be going. But this is all there is (depending on your spiritual persuasion, I guess, but that's a topic that I will address in forthcoming posts), and we should enjoy it now and again.
The other video is a little stop-motion short film made by a dear friend of mine. The film was made for a "film festival" among our friends -- i.e. everybody make a film if you want to and then we'll screen them all at a party. It's called "Going Postal", and based on the title I expected...well, something quite different than what I got. But the visuals and the story have such heart and such humor, and the music is so perfectly chosen, that I found myself deeply moved by the video and am still moved every time I see it.
She disabled the embedding on the video, but click here to check it out on the YouTube page. It'll be good to go directly to it anyway, so you can bookmark it for a gloomy day.
TED now has an iTunes feed, where every day they upload a new talk from their massive library of insightful discussions. I have talks running in the background as I work pretty much every day, and I'm skipping around to what sounds interesting.
Today I ran across this talk, a talk from TED 2005 by journalist Carl Honore.
This is an important topic, and was especially noteworth for me since I've got a bunch of things happening at once, and my attempts to do them all quickly and simultaneously makes it such that I get very few of them done at all.
I think a lot of us have things we want to get done or a place we feel like we need to be going. But this is all there is (depending on your spiritual persuasion, I guess, but that's a topic that I will address in forthcoming posts), and we should enjoy it now and again.
The other video is a little stop-motion short film made by a dear friend of mine. The film was made for a "film festival" among our friends -- i.e. everybody make a film if you want to and then we'll screen them all at a party. It's called "Going Postal", and based on the title I expected...well, something quite different than what I got. But the visuals and the story have such heart and such humor, and the music is so perfectly chosen, that I found myself deeply moved by the video and am still moved every time I see it.
She disabled the embedding on the video, but click here to check it out on the YouTube page. It'll be good to go directly to it anyway, so you can bookmark it for a gloomy day.
Monday, February 25, 2008
From the mouths of babes
This vid is making the rounds and it is pretty amazing.
Star Wars: A New Hope, in the words of a three year old.
I love the cup she's got her hand on and drinks from occasionally. It makes it feel like a for-real interview of some kind.
Star Wars: A New Hope, in the words of a three year old.
I love the cup she's got her hand on and drinks from occasionally. It makes it feel like a for-real interview of some kind.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Charlie Bit Me!
It's been a little while since I posted a YouTube find. Apparently I'm pretty behind on this one, as it's been up 9 months and has over 6 million views. So you may have seen it already. I haven't, and I thought it was great:
What I love about it is how real it is yet how perfectly "structured". It's almost as though it's a performance. Also, little kids with heavy accents are adorable.
What I love about it is how real it is yet how perfectly "structured". It's almost as though it's a performance. Also, little kids with heavy accents are adorable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)