In the interests of sanity - and consistency - I'm consolidating my blogging activities in 2007. From now on I'll make new posts at my blog, Mad Young Thing.
What this doesn't mean:
I haven't given up on Gribblehickey - he's still on the shelf.
I certainly haven't given up on learning the art of filmmaking - I've just been shocking at keeping this blog up!
What this does mean:
You'll still find archived info about filmmaking at this blog - there's a good archive of stuff here which (hopefully!) is interesting reading.
I'll still definitely be talking about the films I'm watching and being influenced by on the new blog.
I guess it's just a matter of taking down the dividing walls between aspects of my life.
Interesting piece which shows that social networking has increased people's internet time overall, at the expense of TV (which we all knew was dying a slow death) and video games (the heir to the movie industry).
Okay, so this is just one study, and one conducted by MySpace, but it's an interesting piece of data nevertheless.
I wanted to like this one. Good trailer, but unfortunately that was the entire sum total of funny bits in the movie.
Damn.
I like Jane Fonda. I like J-Lo. Kinda. Michael Vartan is great in Alias, and is quite funny in the behind the scenes bits for this movie.
But it's the script that lets this one down. It felt like a first draft - needs way, way more work.
What can I learn from this?
Don't spend too long on a set up - it was 15 minutes before there was any meaningful conflict. Way, way too long.
Follow a three-act structure. Don't just have an episodic series of painful encounters between your protagonist and antagonist. This was painful to watch.
There was a good moment - this is a bit of a spoiler I guess so don't read on if you don't want to know that J-Lo's character Charlie decides to call off the wedding, which makes Fonda's Viola character have a change of heart. That was a nice moment, but that was all it was. And it wasn't a movie moment, it was a sitcom moment.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - okay, so I'm not the target audience, but this just didn't grab me. I liked it, but kind of didn't at the same time. I couldn't be bothered sticking around for the commentary - very unusual for me!
Jour de Fete - classic, loved it. Episodic, but funny.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith - I know I shouldn't like this, but I still do from a Star Wars story point of view. The comments I've heard from others about the wooden acting and awful dialogue are all true, but not enough to ruin it completely for me.
Also some very compelling special features which make you wish you could work on a huge megaproduction like that - as many thousands of people did!
Story listener, story teller. Seeks truth. Sometimes wishes he didn't seek truth. Seeks anyway.
Founder of SimonYoungWriters and cofounder of social media consultancy iJump.
