Welcome to the Future I: Virtual travelling

Because it's being a while now, I thought I'd post something clever-sounding today, so that I can justify why I'm still wearing those horrible glasses of mine.

Companies like Google push us through the future, causing or facilitating changes that could not have happened otherwise and changing our lives at the same time. The change is sometimes minor. And sometimes we cannot even begin to imagine the implications. When months ago I used Google Street View to show a colleague our company's offices in the USA, her reaction was "Wow, this is scary". It is scary, I guess, but isn't it also beautiful the fact that we can walk around the world from our office/home? (and that this was unthinkable 1 year ago?).

Current coverage of Google street view

And this is hardly the limit of the adventure. As virtual travelling keeps evolving, and more features are incorporated to the experience, may we one day see a situation in which we have to decide whether it's really worth it to physically travel?

Let's just imagine for a second and go one step further. Combine Street view (or Google Earth, for the 3D version) with the concept of virtual worlds (like Second life), where we also have a virtual 3D avatar who "plays us" in the virtual environment. Now, let's meet in Paris. Today, why wait? Let's have a nice chat there before contemplating the Eiffel tower in all the possible lights (morning, dusk, illuminated in the dark) in a matter of seconds. And since we are not subject to physical limitations, let's fly (yep, fly, just like we would in a video game) or teleport to the Grand Canyon and spend the evening there.

Of course it's not that simple. Attempts have been made at making this possible, but no clear success as emerged of them. Graphics are not yet that realistic. Screens are still 2D. Computers are not yet as fast, and it is annoying to wait for Google Earth to load all the buildings and textures in Manhattan. This is NOW though. Computers evolve quickly.

Also, we see and hear, but we cannot touch. We all who live away from our loved ones love applications like skype. We love talking to our family or friends without barriers, or even have a conversation face to face. But it's not quite as good as being there, right? You may just need a hug that day, and all the available technology won't be able to help you. But talking about scary, I don't see why that too won't evolve. Tom Cruise's Minority report dream gloves for computer interaction have already been made. And virtual reality interaction devices are by now an old friend.

Ok, these are not the gloves I was talking about, but isn't it as cool? :-)

I believe one day, we will actually be able to kiss someone from the other side of the world. Or simply shake hands and actually feel it. That day distances will have disappeared, and everything will have changed .


Also, I'm one of those naive dreamers who really believed we'd have flying DeLoreans by now after watching Back to the Future II. It feels very good to be able to look towards the ever-mysterious tomorrow with documented hopes that we might get there after all. It's exciting to be living this age of technological change.

Welcome to the future.

The joys of feedback

Interestingly, sometimes people see films in a radically different way. Just yesterday, I got a completely different perception of Dan Brown's latest film adaptation to those of the two friends I watched it with (fact which incidentally led to quite an enjoyable debate).

It's not surprising that the feedback I'm receiving from the people that are kindly reading the shortfilm I'm working on (thanks for that!) is so varied too:

- "I don't know what you want to say".

- "The characters' motivations are weak".

- "What script? Mnn, probably went to my spam folder" (where it belongs, he seemed to say, silently).

- "Have you ever heard about script conventions?".

- "Have you ever heard about grammar?".


Not all have been as positive, though:

- "You should be in a mental hospital".


In short, a very useful eyes-opening feedback that I will be using to get to a third-draft (and hopefully last) stage.


In the mean time, I keep struggling to finalise the DVD of "It did happen" ("Eso que pasó"), which seems to be encountering all the possible difficulties in the history of having difficulties when making DVDs.

If you don't believe DVDs are evil, ask this man.
He just spent several hours wrestling violently
with the DVD of the picture, before immobilising it
with the popular Vulcan finger pinch.

I have also been busy with drafting the storyline for the online comic book I mentioned here. In principle, the whole thing will have no dialogues, which is quite challenging. As I understand that this affects every single scene and try to find my way around explaining things in a different way, my heart -unreasonable as ever- hopes the results will eventually be good!

Thanks for reading.

Writing is rewriting

"The first draft is always shit" - Ernest Hemingway

Out of the three shortfilm scripts I had started, I decided on the one that I'm most comfortable with and seemed to provoke a better reaction in the people I told about it. By far the weirdest too. A half-absurd (and only half!) comedy with sci-fiction overtones told for both the geek and the average human being.

At this point, two aspects potentially differentiate "The Entity!!" from the average short film: the undeniable attractive of the exclamation marks in its working title (which at the same time would avoid undesirables copyright issues down the line with a similarly-titled old film) and the fact of portraying the most surprising life form in modern film history. Or maybe not.

I hadn't written a short film script in years. At least, not with the idea of actually finishing it. Taking notes and throwing words and characters onto a paper sheet (or the ever-practical cofffe shop napkins) is one thing; writing drafts, fixing what doesn't work and slowly, painfully progress through weak dialogue and blurry characters, another completely different. Writing is rewriting, they say.

In my attempt for understanding what the hell I was trying to do when I wrote the previous version of the script, and clevery moving away from the computer screen I'm spending so many hours with in any case, I decided to put my lovely wall to good use.

Since I wrote "La Sopa" ("The Soup") and "Eso que paso" ("It did happen"), through writing unfinished scripts, short stories and the occasional comic-book, I've become a freak of structure. Laying out your story bit by bit is a great way of seeing where the plot gets boring, or where the hell your characters are going (they'd better go somewhere). It also helps a lot when seeing the need of merging scenes (once you realise in horror that they both should have actually been the same scene in the first place!) or, when necessary, weeding scenes out in bitter tears.

In short, the second draft is now ready, no one got killed in the process so far and I'm enjoying tremendously. And while I leave it aside for a while I'll be starting doing some calcs for the budget.

Soon, from any sort of funding I can qualify for to the less glamorous-still-effective begging down your local grocery store, chances are that I will be trying anything and everything.

Thanks for reading.

Blogger loves Facebook

There's an easy way of automatically creating Facebook notes with each entry of our blog. It took me a while to figure it out myself. Now that I know how to do it though, I can't help but wanting to scream it to the world.


On Facebook, go to Notes (Click on Applications, bottom left of the screen, then find Notes among all the rubbish that we add there). Good luck, this is the most complicated step!. Now find a Section named Notes Settings (right of the screen) and click on Edit Import Settings.

If you can't get this done, don't call this guy.
He'd probably just make things worse.

Now you'll see a big blank space after Web URL. It's sad to see it like this, so go paste your blog's feed in there (the minimum expression of your posts, without format or anything). If you use blogger, your feed line is:

http://ENTERTHENAMEOFYOURBLOGHERE.blogspot.com/
feeds/posts/default

Just be lazy, copy the lines above, change the capitals to your blog's title and paste it in the Facebook box. If you use any other blog system, all you have to do is find the feed line (it will depend on your blog system) and paste it here.

Now tick the box and merrily click on Start Importing. (NOTE: If you are nicking somebody else's blog, you don't need to tick the box. Instead, go and bang your head against the nearest wall until you come up with something to write about yourself).

And that's it. Facebook will now import your blog (unless you messed up :-S). Next time you add an entry to your blog, it will cleverly transfer it to Facebook as a note too. It may take a few hours sometimes.


The method is not brilliant in the sense that it doesn't really drives traffic to your blog. Well, unless people click on the "View Original Post" link. But who does, huh? Anyway, you don't HAVE to do it, but I personally think it's a way to make blog-reading easier for those who spend time in Facebook and maybe don't find the time to chase up blog posts (more on doing this more easily soon though, having options is always good :-)

Happy blogging.

Current projects

Although still outrageous, I do find that having quite a few projects going on at the moment makes up for my lack of posts for the last 3 weeks. Some of you already know about them, since these days I seem to indefatigably tell every living soul about them, hungry for feedback. Well, it's either that OR more general talk about films and (Saint) Google as usual. Thanks everyone for enduring it, and for the good ideas.

Coming back to the projects, for those still in the dark and wanting to know, here is a quick list:

• A DVD of Eso que pasó ("It did happen"): My latest shortfilm (filmed in 2004, right after the dinosaurs where wiped out from the face of the Earth). Finally subtitled in English, it also includes a "Making of" feature and even some never-ever-seen before secret material. It's pretty much ready by now. After some finishing touches I will only need to alleviate (or somehow mask) my current lack of knowledge on platforms such as ebay and amazon. As soon as I can solve this thorny issue, I will make it available for everyone who can't wait to have it. My mom assures me she'll get two copies, for instance (don't let me down, mom!).

• 3 shortfilm scripts: That is NOT to say that, after 5 long years of non-producing I've embarked myself in a triple project. Rather, I've been writing in an uncontrolled manner and now find myself with all this material that, I think, I'd really should do something with. I'll pick one to start with and off we go. More on this soon.

• A film script: Selling a script for a feature film is an idea that I have been recently entertaining (as opposed to producing it myself, which certainly isn't happening any time soon). Sadly, I literally have dozens of half-finished scripts (and of course mountains of notes). So actually finishing one looks like the logical next step now, process that I'm enjoying enormously, necessary pain aside. It's a sci-fiction story, more on this soon too.

• A website: After making a few in the past, none of them for me, it's about bloody time I had mine. The kind of thing you never get around too, isn't it? Well, it's happening now. I'm putting it together with my brother, it will cover both individual and common projects and it will be pretty pretty pretty.

• An online comic-book: Inspired by the sketch below, will be drawn by (again) my brother. After we get over the initial research-and-preparations stage, we'll start producing pages (or its online equivalent) on a regular basis. I'll keep you posted.

Well, there are some more projects on, but nothing in the realistic pipeline for the next few months. If you are even a little bit excited about any of this, I am already delighted. If not, well... (not even a little??) you obviously have no heart...

Tragic.

In any case, I'm terribly ashamed by the length of this post.

Peculiar x 2

A few weeks ago I had the extremely unoriginal occurrence of taking the bus on a Sunday morning. Why I write about this today (and not bloody then) can only be attributed to my failing memory and the fact that the napkin where I took some original notes on this was playfully hiding from me under a growing pile of paper, most of it useless, that sits on my desk. I usually spend the bus ride reading, except when there's entertaining people-watching to do. That morning, a couple of original occurrences awaited me, in the form of two curious men.

The first one got on the bus two stops after I did. Despite his obvious intention to disguise himself as a younger man with the cunning use of a "Primark" coat, I reckon he must have been over 40. His cheeks were of a very intense red, for some reason. I like to think that the merry tones weren't caused by ruthless drinking that early in the morning. Although come to think of it, it might have. He had this whole Don Quixote look (literally, goatee and crazy eyes). He started angrily preaching, directly to the driver, about how outrageous it was that it was Sunday, 11-ish (as if this was paramount data for his speech, uncalled for anyway) and that a "female" was driving the bus. There's no moral or social message here, I just find it so hard to believe that people like this man are still around, wandering the world and hopping on buses.

Seriously: if THIS had happened that morning,
do you think I wouldn't be telling you about it instead?
Look at the smiling woman, she is hilarious.

The second strange man got off the bus (okay, I probably missed him getting on, give me a break) when the driver pulled off to take a phone call. This one was a bit older, and his cheeks clearly weren't as red. If you are in a hurry, this may not go down well, that I understand. Although, if that's the choice, I personally prefer them to stop: sure, stop and take your call, by all means, rather driven around by someone with two hands available, thanks very much. But this man in particular seemed to suddenly burst into pure anger for just a few seconds, he then got up from his seat and off the bus (the driver had no choice but opening the doors before he'd destroy them by using his pure instant-developed rage). Then he just stayed there, giving his back to the bus, silently making his point. His wrath had turned into calmed dissatisfaction by then. I may have seen a touch of regret in his eyes when we set off again, maybe in response to the chilly whether he had come to forget about, enveloped by the comfort of the bus. Or simply to the prospect of the long wait for the next vehicle. Luckily, there was some construction work in the pavement, right where he had got off. And he soon seemed to find in closely, thoughtfully examining it the new purpose of his life.

Now you might think this is not curious at all. Maybe it wasn't that interesting and I was just looking for excuses to keep my book in my bag. In all fairness, it's quite a thick book.

Creating or trying to: Love, hate and commitment

If you struggle to become a writer or to produce any other form of minimally creative or art-like piece of work too, you have probably figured it out already: it's VERY important to learn to control the process itself before it controls you (whatever this means). Creating is a funny thing. At least it is for me, and I find it very interesting how it all comes to be... and sometimes even comes together.

It usually happens this way:

You have an idea. You love it. It is unlike anything else you've heard, seen or experienced before. You feel sky high. Yeah, it's the one, THE idea, no doubt. The one you'll finally get some serious credit for. Probably some money too. Big money. That idea you want to tell all your friends about so they can look at you in awe and tell you how incredibly creative you are. And it was so sudden, as well, you probably took quick, condensed, powerful notes on some Starbucks paper napkin. Or on toilet paper, or stolen post-it notes (anything is valid, remember you had THE idea). Hardly a few intelligible words anyway. Damn, that's just scribbling, isn't it? Will you even be able to even understand your own cryptic writing when you take on the task -and surely you can do this blindfolded- of making this idea a palpable reality? Well, never mind, you are still amazed at yourself for having such a great occurrence, the sun shines brighter than ever, and you want to dream on.

Next day. The same idea that you loved to bits just hours ago, now you absolutely hate it. Moreover, you hate yourself for even liking the idea once and thinking that you could create something worth being seen/read/whatever. How could you not realise that the idea was rubbish, or a simply impossible project? Or maybe both. Were you drunk? Maybe you were so drunk that you can't remember being drunk? Were you an idiot? Are you still??

Two things are true about this creature: it's just too weird
and it has nothing to do with the content of this article whatsoever.

You then probably decide to leave it aside for a while. Then one day you come up with something to make the story work again. Obviously, it's a great "something", the "something" that will finish with all the plot holes and undefined characters, the "something" that will finally give the story the spark that it was lacking. You are obviously happy with all this, but for how long? Will it last one, two days? The cycle repeats itself a few times through the process, threatening to leave you with yet another unfinished project.

So, as of late, I've added a next step. And I suppose this is what I wanted to say (damn, you really are a loyal reader if you are still here after all the rambling). Passion is good. Coming up with ideas, a necessary source of material. But commitment, discipline, and actual time spent in developing and making all these ideas come true, is the only way of... well... of making them come true.

Do it! One think is for sure: you will never know whether the idea was good or not if you never bloody make it happen!

Not expecting that surprising ending, were you? :-P

The Man from Earth

Screenwriting lesson.

Jerome Bixby's script (apparently finished not long before his author's death) almost starts like a joke to unfold in a most engaging and fascinating story that challenges all sort of preconceptions. Some of the most elaborated dialogue lines of all-times cinema, excellent characters, emotional performances and beautiful, seemingly irrepetible moments, contribute to this ode to humanity, this triumph of reasoning over beliefs, to this pure message of hope for the future.

If you see it with an open mind, The Man of Earth is, I believe, all the above and more. And all with a very low budget, one set and a bunch of actors.

I saw this film recently in DVD, nearly by mistake. I then found out that it had only been released in some countries and always at a small scale. I didn't have high expectations, and I'm delighted to have found gold. As I said to a good friend recently, I'm still pondering whether this might be the best script I've ever have enjoyed.

Then again, you may hate it. Anyway, still worth watching and decide then.

Revolutionary Road

Leo and Kate's world of pure suffering.

One of the reasons I keep devouring stories in general, and films in particular is that I firmly believe that the authors always have something to say, something worth being heard. A powerful message, if you may, about their view of life. A revelation to present the audience with, so we can leave the room with that “wow, life is just like that” feeling.

This message may be positive or negative, but it should always be believable within the reality of the film. I confess I rather prefer a positive one. Or, if negative, at least with a tiny bit of hope hidden somewhere, I rather not leave the room feeling miserable. But I understand some audiences may enjoy this and, in any case, it doesn't matter: it's your message, isn't it?

According to Justin Haythe (writer) and Sam Mendes (director), life is just too painful to be lived, too full of suffering and sorrow as to find the time to enjoy, create or love. We are hit with a most melodramatic picture of everyday events in a script that fails to create actual conflicts and believable drama. In such a farce, the luxury of the intense performances given by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio are outrageously wasted.

Fans of the actors will undoubtedly enjoy it, of course, and such an effort certainly deserves recognition. But the story itself contributes nothing, neither to the film history wealth, nor to the poor audience's expectations, that are likely to feel rather down after the show, or even mad at the whole world for no apparent reason, just like the protagonist couple.

Frost/Nixon

Television battle for the best film.

The latest Ron Howard’s was something more than a pleasant surprise. It was an example of how performance-based films and historical recreations (and by extension other so-called “smaller films”) can have other excellent features. And indeed should, in order to become memorable films like this one.

Although I increasingly enjoy this type of film more and more, I must admit that they are not my first choice, and I get to the cinema fearing for the worst case of inedible yet sophisticated boredom.

Instead, you are delighted with a profoundly human story about men the size of giants, with a story of responsibility, about facing one’s mistakes and weaknesses and making tough decisions with in an enormous and most enjoyable script. An script that is, not very surprisingly, nominated for an Academy award on February 22nd.

Especially delicious is Frank Langella’s Nixon (effort which, too, has been nominated for the popular award). His unbeatable presence makes you wish he were onscreen every minute of the film. But then again, I though that he was outstanding even as Skeletor, so I suppose this is not much of a valuable piece of data coming from yours truly :-)

It doesn't matter whether Frost/Nixon ends the Oscars night with any of the five prizes it's been nominated for. Whatever happens, YOU should see it.