still so strong.
It's a funny time of year
I can see
There'll be no blossom on the trees
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1. 'The world is everything that is the case.'
7. 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.'
My daughter Holly, who is seven years of age, persuaded me to come in to give a talk to her class. Her teacher was really enthusiastic ('The children have all been making their own books recently, so perhaps you could come along and tell them about being a professional writer. And lots of little stories. They like the stories.') and in I came.
They sat on the floor, I had a chair, fifty seven-year-old-eyes gazed up at me. 'When I was your age, people told me not to make things up,' I told them. 'These days, they give me money for it.' For twenty minutes I talked, then they asked questions.
And eventually one of them asked it.
'Where do you get your ideas?'
And I realized I owed them an answer. They weren't old enough to know any better. And it's a perfectly reasonable question, if you aren't asked it weekly.
This is what I told them:
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?
(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term - but you didn't know who?)
Another important question is, If only...
(If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)
And then there are the others: I wonder... ('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and If This Goes On... ('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman...') and Wouldn't it be interesting if... ('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?')...
Those questions, and others like them, and the questions they, in their turn, pose ('Well, if cats used to rule the world, why don't they any more? And how do they feel about that?') are one of the places ideas come from.
An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is.
Sometimes an idea is a person ('There's a boy who wants to know about magic'). Sometimes it's a place ('There's a castle at the end of time, which is the only place there is...'). Sometimes it's an image ('A woman, sifting in a dark room filled with empty faces.')
Often ideas come from two things coming together that haven't come together before. ('If a person bitten by a werewolf turns into a wolf what would happen if a goldfish was bitten by a werewolf? What would happen if a chair was bitten by a werewolf?')
All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.
Point 1: The screenwriter might feel that the player should follow a set route through the game to make sure that the player experiences the story in the way he or she (the writer) intends.
But the screenwriter needs to learn all the ways to give actual or apparent freedom to the player, so that the player doesn't feel trapped into merely being a pawn in a story. Gamers want to feel they're playing a game, not being played by it.
Point 2: Many screenwriters don't realize that, even in games with stories, there may be ways to play the game that completely avoid the story altogether (example: enjoying "vigilante mode" in Grand Theft Auto III).
Therefore, the screenwriter needs to learn dozens of other ways to make the game emotionally immersive so that it will be compelling, even if the player never experiences the story or puts the story on hold.
Point 3: Many games are designed so that a player might come upon elements of the story in a variety of orders. Most screenwriters create emotional experiences by making a story unfold in a particular sequence. They need to learn how to keep a story emotionally engaging when the different parts of it can be experienced in multiple orders.
Point 8: NPC dialogue is often used to convey information. But having NPCs dialogue only convey information can actually end up squashing emotion instead of enhancing it.
Point 9: Most screenwriters feel comfortable writing cinematics, because they're the part of games most like film and TV. They may not understand that these "mini-movies" are the least game-like part of any game. Although cinematics won't completely disappear any time soon, many game designers consider reliance or over-reliance on cinematics to be a weakness in a game.
Point 14: When it comes to knowing how to emotionally draw a player into the story, the screenwriter should be aware of what's been done in other games, so as to not retread the past. In other words, screenwriters who want to write games should do their homework. They need to sit down and deconstruct game after game.
Point 15: This point was contributed by one of America's top game designers who is helping to push the envelope of story, character, and emotional immersion in games. He wrote to me:
"Game writers have to be able to master the technical aspects of writing for games. There's a coding element to game writing that's the stiffest challenge new writers face."
He was referring to a kind of writing that creates emotion while presenting the player with a wide range of options. In game design and writing, there are often an enormous amount of game experiences structured to unfold as:
If the player does A then X happens; if the player does B then Y happens—and Y is twice as intense if the player has done not only B but C as well.
In this scenario, X or Y might take place soon after A or B, or they might occur much later in the game.
The applications of and variations in this kind of design, programming, and writing are almost limitless in nature. The screenwriter has to not only be able to think easily in this manner, but, importantly, needs to also be able to create a wide range of emotional experiences with these tools.
Point 17: A screenwriter might think that giving a game a story is the only way to make a game emotionally engaging. However, sports games and racing games have little story but can be very emotionally engaging. Screenwriters need to learn that there are many other ways to create emotional immersion in a game besides story. The screenwriter should know how to:
Integrate the story with the gameplay mechanics (Mechanics are actions that can be performed by the character or characters being played by the gamer).
Make the player care about the world of the game.
Create emotionally complex relationships between the player and the NPCs—and, for that matter, between the NPCs and other NPCs.
Figure out to what degree and in what way the world of the game impacts the player, and to what degree, if any, the player impacts the world of the game.
Make sure the player is motivated to play through to the end of the game.
Know many other ways effective ways of creating emotional immersion in the game by the player.
Charles Laughton's ``The Night of the Hunter'' (1955) is one of the greatest of all American films, but has never received the attention it deserves because of its lack of the proper trappings. Many ``great movies'' are by great directors, but Laughton directed only this one film, which was a critical and commercial failure long overshadowed by his acting career. Many great movies use actors who come draped in respectability and prestige, but Robert Mitchum has always been a raffish outsider. And many great movies are realistic, but ``Night of the Hunter'' is an expressionistic oddity, telling its chilling story through visual fantasy. People don't know how to categorize it, so they leave it off their lists.^
[...]
Everybody knows the Mitchum character, the sinister ``Reverend'' Harry Powell. Even those who haven't seen the movie have heard about the knuckles of his two hands, and how one has the letters H-A-T-E tattooed on them, and the other the letters L-O-V-E.
[...]
For his first film, Laughton made a film like no other before or since, and with such confidence it seemed to draw on a lifetime of work. Critics were baffled by it, the public rejected it, and the studio had a much more expensive Mitchum picture (``Not as a Stranger'') it wanted to promote instead. But nobody who has seen ``The Night of the Hunter'' has forgotten it, or Mitchum's voice coiling down those basement stairs: ``Chillll . . . dren?''
Date: Weds, 27 Oct 2004 10:47:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Orin C. Smith"|
To: rxxxxxxxxxx@starbucks.com
Subject: Re: Welcome to Starbucks
There is something else you could do for me. There is a Starbucks on 5th and King that I sometimes go to on the weekend since it's near my house. The service is usually really good but last time I was there I noticed this very, very heavyset girl behind the counter. I don't know the girl's name but she was quite repulsive to the eye. Obviously, as CEO I can't just walk into a Starbucks and start firing baristas and service people because I don't like the way they look, but this girl should not be allowed near scones, if you know what I mean.
I don't know if you want to earn a little extra money this weekend but I'd like you to go there, have a look around and see if you can find out which girl it is. She needs to be terminated. I want the fat girl gone. Let me know when this is completed.
Axiom of extensionality: Two sets are the same if and only if they have the same elements.
Axiom of empty set: There is a set with no elements. We will use {} to denote this empty set.
Axiom of pairing: If x, y are sets, then so is {x,y}, a set containing x and y as its only elements.
Axiom of union: For any set x, there is a set y such that the elements of y are precisely the elements of the elements of x.
Axiom of infinity: There exists a set x such that {} is in x and whenever y is in x, so is the union y ∪ {y}.
Axiom of replacement: Given any set and any mapping, formally defined as a proposition P(x,y) where P(x,y1) and P(x,y2) implies y1 = y2, there is a set containing precisely the images of the original set's elements. (This is an axiom schema.)
Axiom of power set: Every set has a power set. That is, for any set x there exists a set y, such that the elements of y are precisely the subsets of x.
Axiom of regularity: Every non-empty set x contains some element y such that x and y are disjoint sets.
Axiom of separation (or subset axiom): Given any set and any proposition P(x), there is a subset of the original set containing precisely those elements x for which P(x) holds. (This is an axiom schema.)
Axiom of choice: Given any set of mutually exclusive non-empty sets, there exists at least one set that contains exactly one element in common with each of the non-empty sets.
“Thus from the first edition of this little book, I might offer (speaking not ironically but seriously) to dramatic authors and theatrical managers, 10,000 scenarios, totally different from those used repeatedly upon our stage in the last 50 years. The scenarios will be, needless to say, of a realistic and effective character. I will contract to deliver a thousand in eight days. For the production of a single gross, but 24 hours are required. Prices quoted on single dozens...
“But I hear myself accused, with much violence, of an intent to ‘kill imagination! Enemy of fancy! Destroyer of wonders! Assassin of prodigy!’ These and similar titles cause me not a blush.”
— George Polti, 36 Dramatic Situations
TIME: You started off your career as a screenwriter. Is it odd for someone who began their career as a writer to seemingly turn away from scripts altogether?
Wong: I worked as a writer for almost 10 years, and I realized the purpose of the script is as a prescription to make everyone seem to know what they're doing. And the role of the writer is like a psychiatrist to the director. During the productions, the director has a lot of queries. sometimes he has second thought on this idea and he want to make sure this line is perfect. And he needs a psychiatrist to tell him that what he's doing is right. And in my case, I'm my own psychiatrist, which kind of just makes things even worse.
TIME: Is 2046 a continuation of In the Mood for Love?
Wong: A lot of people think that 2046 is like a sequel of In the Mood, but I don't think so. For me it's more like Mood is a chapter in 2046. It's like 2046 is a big symphony, and Mood is one of its movements.
TIME: Do you consider your films romantic?
Wong: For me, romanticism means you follow your heart more than your mind. If that's the case, the films are 75% romantic. The other 25% is the realities, the problem solving, and luck. I cannot describe in detail in the films which moment is like that [the nonromantic proportion], but overall it's 25%.
TIME: What about you? Are you romantic?
Wong: [Laughing] I'm 60% romantic.
TIME: For a filmmaker whose work is so consumed with desire and its frustration, you seem remarkably hands-off about actually showing sex. Why is that?
Wong: I think to describe a so-called love scene, or intercourse is very boring. There must be a point to your focus. Like in Eros, it's always about this person's perspective. It's about the hand, instead of the actual act.
TIME: I heard that your cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, once claimed that all of your films were about the impossibility of love. Do you agree?
Wong: No, I don't think so, because if you have it [love] in your memory, it's already possible to me. He [Doyle] thinks that because he's very physical. [Laughs]
TIME: Can you give an example from the making of 2046?
Wong: We're shooting in a small hotel, everything is very narrow, tight, and I decided to shoot in Cinemascope, which created a huge problem for the lighting and camera man because they don't have a stage or anything to put their light. So Chris has to create something on his feet, and for him, this is the first time he has used this format. Actually he's quite lost, and he has to find a new way to deal with this problem. Of course he complains, and we have mistakes and problems, but this is the way, the challenge, otherwise it will be the same thing. Everyone will sleep, it will be very boring. Especially if it takes five years to make a film.
I can't believe nobody noticed this. It's been done before, ( remember the infamous S.E.X. in the Lion King? ), but this was blatant. I can't remember the exact scene, but there was a shot of a waterfall 'parting', to let a monorail come in, that was so overtly sexual I gagged with laughter! A giant watery vagina and a penis train?!!! WTF? Talk about subliminal programming to kids....
Jóhann writes: "During the first live performance of the piece, the church ceiling was filled with blue helium balloons which were timed to fall extremely slowly to the ground during the performance and scatter among the audience. To our pleasant surprise, the balloons reacted with the sound, falling with greater frequency as the volume increased. During the performance the light slowly changed through the church windows as the sun went down. The concert was fairly late, ending at around midnight and it being a bright, cloudless spring evening, the combination of all these physical and natural processes made for quite a memorable moment". "I had a number of things going through my mind during the writing of the piece, some of them being an obsession with entropy, Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49", postal horns, cybernetics, small birds, heat, space, energy, "singularities", Nietzsche's Eternal recurrence, Moebius strips. I'm absolutely not interested in imposing any one 'meaning' on the piece, but all these things were flying around somewhere in my head. A casual listener might categorize the piece as ambient or meditative, but I think this is really wrong - for me it's much more about chaos and tension rather than harmony. I go through many different emotions listening to the piece, veering from intense joy to acute sadness. The central point is perhaps how a very simple thing can change by going through a very simple process - something about change and transformation and the inevitability of chaos."
One song, "Odi et Amo", is a setting of Catullus's famous poem. He says "This was a happy accident; I'd written the music and wanted a computerized counter-tenor vocal singing a Latin text and was looking through a collection of Latin poetry when I remembered this poem from college and it did fit the melody perfectly and was also thematically perfect for the play. It’s in the final scene. What I really like about it is the harsh contrast of the computer voice and the strings, the alchemy of total opposites, the sewing machine and umbrella on a dissecting table”.
Jóhannsson continues: "The plays is extremely violent and disturbing and basically when faced with the script I decided to work against it as much as possible and just try to write the most beautiful music I could. That approach seems to have worked, at any rate, the music got really good reviews, the leading drama critic calling it "the most beautiful I've heard in Icelandic theatre." I must say I’ve never had such a strong reaction to anything I’ve done before; strangers have actually stopped me in the street and hugged me because of it...! Bizarre.. It is gratifying though, because it’s probably the most personal thing I've done. This stuff is very very close to me."
And although I thoroughly enjoyed the film (for its Kubrickesque camerawork and for its musical score), I think that the plot tries "too hard" to be obscure--that the attempt at deft storytelling simply got in the way of the story.but go out and see it nonetheless, it's visually astonishing and has interesting story elements in a profound sense (and let's say Iñárritu is still a step ahead of you jonathan, see 21 grams).
Novels are written for people who enjoy reading, and screenplays are written for people who hate reading.
WESTWORLD
WestWorld where you are set loose in a violent wild west playground with gunslingers, cowboys & saloon girls.
MEDIEVAL WORLD
Medieval World where participants wield swords, experience chivalry & combat and eat at large banquet tables.
ROMAN WORLD
And finally Roman World where every carnal whim can be fulfilled in the surroundings of ancient Pompeii during the height of the Roman Empire.