And again... KARL

In the last workshop I had with Karl I was a little off seeing as I had missed the last one because of a school trip and I was unable to really find anything that I wanted for making my book, although the day did not turn out to be a total disaster. Since I did not have a project Karl had me make a book (I forget what it was called) that opened up like an acordian. The entire time I thought he was just having me do busy work for him until he told me at the end that it was my book to use. In fact I felt really accomplished afterwords knowing that I had made a new kind of book that I had not done before and the fact that I got it all done in one day of STAC. I really do like actually getting things done. Karl and I though did get to talk about what I was actually going to do as a project and decided on an atlas, bound in some kind of red material and cornered in some kind of bronze looking metal. I'm excited to see how that one turns out.

Karl session 2

Although behind in the class from having been on a fieldtrip for the actual session two, I really feel like I got a lot out of the second session for me. I learned how to cover the book. We created the covers for our book and it wound up beig a valuable experience for me because I actualy got something done. I'm not often one to get thugs finished and finishing something has been a good feeling. It built my confidence and really inspired me to push to finish something else.

This Week: What I'm doing

This week I am continuing working on the Novella I started.

What i want to tackle this week is the movement of the story towards moving out of the originating town or at the very least presenting the conflict about leaving the town and temple. I am juggling the idea of who the argument about leaving should be between. Whether it should be between my main character: Reave, and his friend Yyral or if it should be between Reave and Cyelle, or even Yyral and Cyelle. I am leaning towards the first with Cyelle supporting their leave from the town in order to forget what happened there. My goal is to cover this in less than 4000 words because I know i can be very word heavy. There may be some editing going on but for the most part I want to generate text so that I can go back and edit on a large scale with what I know about a larger majority of the story.

Workshops: April 2010: Bookmaking

Initially when I heard I was in the bookmaking workshop I was disappointed. I had thought that I was going to be bored the entire time with the monotony of sewing paper together in order to make a concisely bound book. I had thought I was in the workshop down at the community center like Luke had said on Tuesday when he talked about the guy from the Gin Blossoms coming in. From what I understood the other guy was going to be more beneficial for me. I guess that idea got changed.

I went into the workshop lackluster. I didn't really want to do the work. I kind of wanted to just float by and half-ass it because I was not interested in learning to bind my own books. This was definitely a bad attitude towards this in hindsight. Once we started ripping the paper I guess I started kind of enjoying it. I was laughing with Keren about how terrible we both were at ripping the paper correctly and getting frustrated with how it would not rip on the line of the ruler.

Then we learned what signatures were, which I found to be a cool fact, and looking back. My favorite of the books I own are the ones with the hand made paper edges. I was becoming really into it when we began stitching our signatures together and was amused at how frustrated I got when I could not pull the needle through the paper. Lizy, Keren, Leah, and I had just wound up having a good laugh and enjoying ourselves. And now I feel like I have learned a little something cool that I could do in my spare time, like a crafty Hobby.

I cant wait until next time.

Fuel for the fire: What drives me?

Is it really that important to you that you get home everyday in time to play that hour of videogames before your dad walks in the door to enforce the policy of homework before leisure? How about having dessert every night? Is that important to you? Or is it valuable? I think that sometimes we hold things up that should not be put on a pedistal. We learned in STAC to analyse ourselves for three core values. As soon as I heard that this would be written down and shared, the gears began to turn in my head. I wanted to accurately represent myself. I wanted to dig deep down, past all of the matieral wants and aethetics. I wanted to wipe away the veil and layers in order to get to what really mattered to me. My values, as do everyones, represent who you are at the heart, who you are as a person, and they are, at least to me, something that had they not been in place I may not even be an artist or someone with ideas as much as I would be someone striving to find these missing components to my life.

The first one I came up with was the ability to choose. Choice is definately the mosty important value of mine. Without choice we are no different that the person sitting right next to you. If everything is set in stone and controlled, where would be the point in living. Free will is not a gift, or a privilage as is said in religious scriptures, it is not God's Devine gift, it is human nature to choose and to debate. It is the right of everyone to make choices and in fact to act upon them. Certainly there are those who do not make what would be considered to be the most sensible or right decision but none the less we are left with choice. Choice of what to wear, choice of where to go, choice of what to eat, choice of when to breathe, choice to be who we are. Without choice could I be Zach, the writer, the actor, the poet, the teenager, the ANYTHING? I could be no different without choice, and what drives me forward is that ability to chose and to be my own.

The second that I chose was Individual Expression. People need to be allowed to exemplify who they are to who they please to show it to. We all need to let the world know that we are all different and we are all unique and that uniqueness is what allows the world to progress and function. That expression that may come out in my writing or your painting or his acting or her singing, the list goes on and on. This individuality is something that I feel to be beyond necessary.

Third, I chose Strategic Application. Oddly enough everything I do has strategy, underling webs of circuits and wires that must be planned and placed before excecuted, like a tactision I go about my life, applying strategy to how I view the world. More often I enjoy a process more than I enjoy the finished product, for example, a play, I love working on the play, I love rehearsing, I even love getting yelled at for missing my cue for the tenth time. The plays are no where near as satisfying as all of the sweat, blood and tears put into creating that product. I feel that often the process is overlooked or underappriciated when someone gets to the final product, like even now, after STAC LIVE. I'm sure that the viewers loved the films, but have givin no consideration as to how they were made. They do not comprehend the vast amount of work that had gone into making those films. The strategy, and planning and excecution were all more important, at least to me, than the film, even though I did rather enjoy both films.

Issues for me was a little bit easier, Because I write alot, I often notice commonalities within my writing. Most specifically, a blurring of the lines of reality. I greatly dislike writing strictly within fact and will take any opportunity to slip in aspects of fantasty and fiction, to pepper them over the writing that I have presented. I am a fiction writer, and so I do have the constant urge to push facts past their factual limits. I also often have to deal with Pariah in my work. The main character is often exhile in some way or another from where they had originally come from, whether by their own doing or by the fiendish interests of another, each time the character seems to be forbidden to return to where he had started and whether or not he defies this unwritten law of pariah. Not only those, but there was the issue of losing a loved one, whether it be death, or a break up, or even just a parting of ways. Strong bonds are severed multiple times in my writing if not all throughout it. I guess it adds to tension, I'm not sure, but I always see these things coming up.

Being a fantasy writer I have a hard time seeing those lines of reality, and this was a huge thing for me when I was thinking about my Koan. The idea I came up with for my own was: Where do the lines between reality and the fantastic blurr? This to me was one of the strongest question I have always asked myself in my writing. I'm not too sure whether it is a suitable Koan or not, all I know is that this question comes up more than once per piece if not every time I set to work artistically or even just generally in life.

How do I say "Come in" in Swedish?

Question answering time for a STAC movie! After watching "Let the Right one In" I felt almost numbed. The simplicity and beauty of the film simply blew me away. The final shot of Oskar on the train made we wanted to cry tears of joy. An interesting point was how the backstory was handled. Not much was givin but rather suggested by the way characters interacted. The way the father and the creeper interacted suggested what had happened to the marriage of Oskar's parents and why the mother got to keep Oskar. The scrapbook of murders suggests how tortured Oskar had been throughout the years. Another cool thing is camera movement. The Camera is not moving unless the shot is a close up on a specific character, and even when it does, it is a slow following, keeping the character in focus for the entirety of the shot. The also brings up the question of camera distance. Large distances are used frequently. I think this was to display a bit of a panoramic idea, like a full view, pulling in the viewer to me more, more like an observer. I felt tugged in by the use of the distance. Also, shots could get very close, making it fell like my own point of view.

Characters are not solely developed by dialogue. Much is in how the look at each other. Eli looks longingly at Oskar, as if she misses being like him, a young boy, not a vampire who must feed to stay alive. The father looks at the son in a similar way, but it's a longing look of companionship. It tells me that he misses being a full time father of his son. Eyes, to me, revealed so much more than just that Eli was a vampire in this movie. Sound was also heavily used. Sharp sounds were used at times of fear, which tied together the anxiety and the choice missing images to create a whole sense of fear within the viewer. Not only are harsh sounds used but soft orchestral music was also used during times of intimacy to show the romance in the air. Often these are the scenes where Eli and Oskar are alone and close in proximity.

Hakan, I suppose, was the man who posed as Eli's father. I do not understand his devotion to Eli, or did not until I saw how strongly Oskar felt. It to me, is almost mimicing the affection toward Eli of Hakan. This leads me to believe that Hakan was once in Oskar's possition. Falling in love with Eli and running off to help her feed so that they can remain together, although I do not really want to believe Eli could be so cruel. He was so sweet during the scene with the rubix cube. I feel like this puzzle was representative of Eli's ability to reveal herself to Oskar. When she solved it for him, hw also showed him how to do it, which to me made sense in that slowly after she was revealing himself to Oskar. The cube itself, I suppose, the puzzle, was Eli.

Plot points for me were not the easiest thing to pick out. There were a lot of important things that happened over the course of the movie and a lot happened within the timeframes in which the plot points should be revealed. I had come to the relative conclusion that the first plot point was when Oskar signs up for the strength building class. From here he has decided not to deal with the3 bullies anymore. Oskar had been a changed person. The second point, although late in the movie, I felt was when Oskar prevents Eli's death at the hand of a vengedful man. At this point it was as if Eli was indebted to Oskar and owes him her life. He saved her after all of the disturbing things that Eli revieled.

The ending to me, definately was a happy ending. The two were running away together. They both overcame difficulties and hinderances to wind up together in the end. The both, I assume, stay together. To me the ending is sweet and showing so much devotion in their unorthodox love that it's practically tear jerking.

I loved this movie. Period. The End.

Screenplay 2.0

During the most recent workshop with Steve we had the time to examine the some of the edited and refined work that the other people in the workshop have begun to come up with. My edits were not yet complete for this date so I would now see the changing of someone's original script into something new and something far different yet miraculously thr same. Cassie's piece interested me from the start. It was a piece where a man and woman in suits had a bad day at work and then race to the ends of the earth, only to kiss at the end. So much was left unsaid but the ideas and questions that rose while reading it seemed to mean more to me than actually know the entire world of these two racers. We'd spoken about shortening and about cutting what was uneccesary and from how I saw Cassie's and Elisa's work grow, I knew that all of the advice Steve gave was golden. I cannot wait to show off my work the next time around.