Dickens

Today is Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday, as anyone who pays close attention to Google's homepage doodles will have realized by now.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine, including the important detail that the man is my favorite author. She's a novelist, and she said, "It's funny, everybody respects him, but not very many people say he's their favorite author." I said I guess that's true. It's because people don't read him.

"Yeah, what what is Mark Twain said about classics...that they're books 'that people praise but don't read.'" That about sums it up. I contended that if more people read Dickens, he'd find his way into more Favorite Author slots.

An aside: I know there are people who legitimately don't like the man's style. To them, I extend my pity, and a pass. If you've read him (and I mean more than one book in high school), I suppose you're allowed to dislike his writing. The sentiment baffles me, and always will, but it's allowed. Just like all bad opinions.

Last semester, one of my professors distributed a collection of basic screenwriting "rules" by James Dalessandro. There were ten of them. Here is number 10:

READ.
I saved the best for last. I know a screenwriter in Los Angeles who has written one successful movie and has yet to find a second commercial idea. He confided in me once that he has not read a book in fifteen years, since he graduated from college. I was speechless. Listen, and listen well. The keys to knowledge are called "books." The province of dreams, the wellspring of wisdom, the storehouse of human drama is books. All things marvelous and terrifying are in black and white on bound pages. From "Les Miserable" to "To Kill A Mockingbird" to "Forrest Gump," the great characters began on the printed page, not the silver screen. To write films, you must love films and read screenplays. But if you do not read books, if you missed Dante and Satre, Chekhov and Faulkner, Steinbeck and Kesey, you are missing cards from your deck. You can not play poker with a short hand.

Why don't people read? Have you asked them? I have. The answer is always the same: "I want to read, but I can never find the time."

OK. Do you eat? How do you find the time, I wonder? Well, you find it because you need to eat. If it wasn't essential, plenty of us wouldn't do it nearly as often as we do.

You won't read until you need to read. The sad truth is that few people are convinced it is actually a need. To the vast majority, reading is a luxury. It is one of the first things to get nixed from the list of to-do's when time gets short, and life gets crunched. If we don't make time to read, then deep down we don't think it's essential, and we are wrong.

It's a spiritual thing. You don't notice what you're missing when you fail to read great literature. But when you really start to dig in, you wonder how you ever survived without it. The fact is, we don't. There is, everywhere, evidence that our culture is perishing in what Mother Teresa called "a famine of the spirit."

It is an inadvertently self-imposed famine, though, for we are surrounded by that which could so easily satisfy, and deeply.

For instance, I have the complete works of Charles Dickens on my iPhone. It was $2.99.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dickens.

Student Film Purgatory

Once upon a time, I made a goal to write and direct four short films, each less than 2 minutes, in one semester. Each of them, I decided, would take approximately four hours to shoot, and they would all be ready to show by the end of the semester.

Here's what happened: I made one, and it took a year.



The irony is that Stage Fright really did only take a few hours to shoot. I put a crew together, got a location, and cast it in something like two weeks. Then it went into post production and...disappeared. The guy I had editing it was overcommitted, and this little side project was just about his last priority. Then, when it was finally cut, my sound guy (who had been expecting it months earlier) was busy getting married. And so on.

There are three kinds of student film:

1. Those that get finished
2. Those that don't get finished
3. Those that are currently in purgatory, whose final state is unknown

The films in purgatory are sort of like Schrödinger's cat, existing in both states, progress (life) and termination (death), simultaneously. Unlike the poisoned animal, however, the student film cannot be observed in this state. The box, so to speak, is sealed shut. 

Remember Weighted? Well, it never went into purgatory, thank goodness, which is why it got finished about eight months after I started writing the script. That kind of thing is vanishingly rare for student films--in fact, I know of no other capstone project that finished so quickly. It was a charmed project, in many ways, and I'm grateful.

Other projects have not been so fortunate. For instance, the following is a trailer for a capstone project that got started more than two years ago. It's a short film adaptation of a couple of scenes from the book "Ender's Game." 

By Jacob Schwarz's account, it's...well, it's getting there. The CG effects in this thing have been his personal nightmare for what probably seems like an endless eternity to him now, but he's still working at it. That's saying something, since he graduated and moved on to getting paid for what he does over a year ago.

So, if I had to guess whether this film will be dead or alive when it finally emerges from purgatory, I'd guess it'll be kickin'. Jacob isn't the kind of person to let something with so much cool potential just fade away. But he's running out of time. One of the frightening truths of student filmmaking is that your projects have expiration dates. There is a point, and it changes from film to film, at which completing it becomes an abject impossibility.

Here's to hoping Jake can drag The Third out of purgatory, and soon.

From the train

There's no other way I'll be able to blog today, so I decided to take advantage of the Blogger app on the iPhone and post a thought. I took these pictures in the course of writing. So you know.

Anyway, life is great, but about as busy as it's ever been.

What about being a film student? Isn't that what this blog is about? OK. So lately I've been impressed by this process of artistic humbling. by that I mean: we are all really crappy at this stuff, relative to people who are better and more experienced, and certainly relative to our eventual abilities (assuming we continue to work and improve).

The trick, and it is a trick, is to both acknowledge and ignore this. There are two options: feel discouraged and give up, or feel humbled and work harder and more eagerly. Plenty of people victimize themselves into thinking discouragement is inevitable, and thus suffer the inevitable impoverishment of their work and passion.

I think most of us strive for the humility and succumb to the discouragement by turns, but I do believe there can be a point, with enough sustained effort, at which humility is the default, hard work the lifestyle, and discouragement the occasional hiccup in an otherwise productive career.


Anyway, I hope that. And the hope is encouraging. Directly self-fulfilling, in very fact.

This is where I am.

A List You Won't Care About

Here's what I have to get done this week:

• 6 script coverages
• Grade 23 8-page papers
• Create 9 multiple-choice questions for an exam
• Redraft 3 short scripts
• Write the first 10-20 pages of a feature
• Complete a 6-8 page (single-spaced) analysis of the film Ordinary People
• Read and critique screenplays from fellow students
• Study for and take an Acting final (I'm not real worried about this one)
• Write a final paper for same (again...)

I'm not doing one of those, "Everyone look how busy I am!" things. I just couldn't figure out what to post about, but I really wanted to keep my commitment. So I figured I'd present a good overview of what my experience with grad school will be this week, so close to what other people refer to as "finals." 

Also: as of a couple of days ago, it officially became OK to listen to Christmas music. I began yesterday with "Winter Moon," by Mindy Gledhill. 

If you want movie recommendations for Christmas, I published just such a list last year, when I was writing for Rhombus (which has unfortunately stopped updating entirely.) Here's a link. 

And here is a not-very-good picture I took:

Somewhere downtown. I can't remember precisely where. It was cold that day.

Where have all the film critics gone?

You may not know this, but it is nearly impossible these days to make a living as a film critic. We can thank crowd-sourcing for this. Go jump on Netflix and take a look at the user reviews. Some of them are reasonably well-informed, but even the highest rated reviews betray a kind of stubborn ignorance, in that they almost never break free of the "I liked it"/"I hated it" foundation of commentary. What is usually missing from lay-criticism is careful evaluation of the actual quality of a film, which should account for what the thing was trying to do, and whether it was successful. The personal response of the viewer/reviewer is a factor, but it is not the end-all.

The current landscape for movie reviews is a bit dismal. Film critics almost always get lumped together, as though they are in some kind of club that meets weekly and decides whether they liked a movie or not. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "I don't usually agree with what the critics say." What does that even mean? Are you aware that "critics" differ vastly from one another, and that their opinions represent a wide spectrum of valuable analytical thought? You can't disagree with all of them. It's not possible.

It is possible, however, to take note of some kind of critical consensus, if and when it happens. If a whole lot of critics seem really enthused about a particular film, it's probably worth some consideration. If you find yourself in love with a film that most critics seem to hate, it might be time to acknowledge that you have  something of a guilty pleasure. Loving a film doesn't make it good, and hating it doesn't make it bad.

I digress. The point is that film criticism is a dying profession. It's now the hobbyist's world, and the hobbyist doesn't have to be any good, just passionate, and Internet-savvy. But it stands to reason that as the professional critics go, so goes the professional criticism.

Thankfully, we've still got Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic. Sure, they house a good number of idiots masquerading as film buffs, but those review aggregators are the last bastion of hope for professional film critics. To get included in the "tomatometer" requires significant accreditation, and so Rotten Tomatoes' scores maintain a certain value.

Unfortunately, that value doesn't seem to affect the box office over-dramatically. Here is a telling snapshot:

Striking, is it not?

Anyway, I was motivated to write this ranting, disorganized post because, despite the thanklessness of it, I can't seem to stop writing movie reviews. And while I try my best to make them meaningful, whether I succeed in that effort is not really my call.

Here's my latest. And it provides a great illustration of that thing I mentioned. I had major problems with Hugo, but it's got a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Does that mean that I think all critics are wrong and stupid? Of course not.

Anyway. I'm done.

A Man Named John August

Because I am deeply generous, I have decided to share some things I recently found -- they are primarily the brain products of a man named John August. Have you heard of him? I hadn't, until several days ago. Though I probably should have.

Anyway, he's notable because he's doing what I'm sort of trying to do, albeit on a much grander scale. He's working in a craft he loves, and he's doing his best to help out anyone else who's interested in learning from him. I admire this so much I can't even describe it.

Here are the things:

• The Blog
• Screenwriting Q&A
• The Facebook page for his podcast: Scriptnotes

If you have any interest in screenwriting at all, I think these are invaluable resources. Check it all out.

Also, my Mormon.org profile went up over the weekend. WARNING: It has absolutely nothing to do with film studenting. But I am pleased about it nonetheless, and figured I'd share.

Lastly, a picture I took.

Taken with my iPhone, using the Pano app, at the Boston Public Library. Click for full size.

Have a lovely week.

Pulling a fast one on Failure.

What do I mean by that? I mean that I completely forgot about today's post until 10:45pm, which was 26 minutes ago. (The time is 11:11.) I spent all that time trying to figure out how to get scrippets (which is supposed to be, and, I trust, actually is magical) to work for me on Blogger. (Note: soon this blog will move to Wordpress, but until then...) No dice.

So now it's 11:13, and I don't really have any pressing things to talk about.

Well, I had an interesting experience today.

A couple weeks ago, I was in a bad mood in one of my classes. Everything that was happening in the class felt like a frustrating waste of time, and a not insignificant amount of it, too, since the class is three hours long. My bad attitude was largely a product of frustration with my own failure to write consistently, which was subsequently projected on, well, everything else. I'm talking here about a really bad mood. One of those inner-tantrums that you sort of let escalate to the point of not caring if it shows.

This is always bad form, by the way. Such bad form, that I got an honest to goodness email from the TA, suggesting, with respect and affection, that I check myself and get my act together. Thankfully, I wasn't as sour when I got the email, and was therefore able to immediately realize that what he was suggesting was very sound advice. A duality of gratitude and shame washed over me, and I resolved that I would grow up and get over my issues before I invariably burned some important bridges.

Today, two weeks removed from my disrespectful display of insolence, I had a chance to talk to both the professor and his TA. The conversation went very well. I apologized and attempted to explain my behavior, and they encouraged me to come to them often with questions and the like--to use them as the resource they are, with a very personal understanding of how wretchedly difficult this whole business of writing can be.

Things aren't easy yet, nor will they ever be, I imagine. But I am both learning that I need to mature, and finding ways to go about doing it.

Today, I finished yet another first draft of a short script. If I can ever figure out how to more effectively post "scrippets" here, you'll get to read something. Maybe. I make no promises. ... Leave me alone!

So, I consider that I've pulled a fast one on failure, and in several instances. It is 11:24, which means I'll get this post published before the day is out. Is it a great post? Is it an essential addition to this blog, considering all of my interlocking mission statements?

At this point, I don't care. The point is that I promised to post every Monday and Friday, and, so far, I've kept that promise.

Maybe next time I'll remember earlier.

ALSO! I've been wanting to include pictures I take of Boston. I haven't been out playing the photographer like I'd planned, but I have grabbed a shot here and there. So, to that end:

Taken with my iPhone from a bridge over the Charles.

Bad Writer, Bad Writing

I had two choices:

1. Continue to avoid writing a new post because I technically don't have a new scene to share this week.
2. Admit my failure and post anyway, favoring consistency over humiliation (and cowardice).

I am now hiding behind door #2. 

It's not that I haven't been writing at all, but what little time I have spent writing I've sunk into the short, for which I'm supposed to be turning in the first draft this coming week.

Wow, what a sentence. I can actually feel myself getting worse at putting words together. It's becoming a neurosis. You are witnessing a slow, excruciating collapse of a once-creative mind. What's it like, from your perpective? This is what it's like for me: sinking into a pit of loose, soft sand. I'm panicking, of course, but what can I do? It seems like the more I struggle, the deeper I sink, and plus there's all this sand, which, even if I get out, is going to be all up in everywhere ok I think this analogy is breaking down.

And now here's some venting:

I frequently (and unfairly) blame my failure to stake out more time to write on my job as a TA. Specifically, of late, grading papers. Like I said, it's unfair, because if I was more dedicated, I'd get my &#!+ together and quit whining. I'd have plenty of time if I'd stop wasting so much of it.

But that's not what I want to vent about. I want to say that the level to which we, as a nation, have allowed our standard, public education to sink is unforgivable. I don't blame the freshmen coming into a prestigious college for their utter inability to write coherently (I'm one to talk)--I blame the system that so recently regurgitated their ill-served brains. The sad fact is this: public high schools are failing utterly to teach the vast majority of their students to write at even the modest levels of competency. 

This is the pen I use to grade. I know, right?

Is writing really that important? 

Have you ever heard Lewis Black scream the word "YES" in an explosively incredulous rage? Well, that's my answer. 

Not only is an inability to write clearly and effectively an indication of a poor education, and a terrible handicap in the professional world, it is also, alas, directly related to stunted critical thinking. Writing is thinking, and vice versa. The two are inseparable. Learning to write well facilitates much better thinking. Without the one, the other stagnates. 

And so most of us are coming out of high school barely functional. It's not an age thing, it's a systemic failure thing. If our eighteen-year-olds are well-meaning idiots, it's not because they haven't seen two decades, it's because they have seen one decade of "no child left behind." 

I'm going to stop now, or I never will. 

This blog is supposed to be a place to talk about being a film student/maker/person. So I've typed out my passionate plea for better writing with fear and fury, and now I want to ask you, am I overstating it? Am I alone in my anguish? Are there other perspectives outside of mine? I tend to assume there aren't, which, I recognize, is a problem. Help me fix it.

A Scene

I really like Blogger's new format. It feels less like an unfortunate collection of misplaced html. I approve of Google's new branding and design efforts. I know, Google, it was a long time coming, but I'm finally giving you the validation you were so craving. Now stop blubbering and get back to work.

I'm not very good at writing consistently. I know, this isn't news. So here's a development: I'm getting better! Further, the rate at which I am improving will ensure that I finish the first draft of my next feature sometime in 2018. Of course, I'll have to pick a story first, but that's a small detail in light of such unmitigated triumph.

But seriously. I had this idea. I will write a random scene every day. I will never spend more than one hour on this scene, and it does not have to relate to any particular project. It'll be sort of like writerly jamming. See what I come up with, remove the neurosis that typically accompanies, well, all of my efforts.

To nail this commitment into place, I now promise to post one scene here, right here, on this blog, here, every week. In keeping with the loose, calm atmosphere I'm trying to implement, the only guideline I'll make for myself is that I won't post anything I didn't write within the preceding week. Keep it fresh...Jeff. (I just made that up.)

To start: "Two-Man Job"

(HINT Click on the link to see the scene.)

Also, in the time since I last posted, those quietly dignified rock stars back in Provo graced the YouTubes with another video. It's funny. And short. In fact, very funny, and very short.

Bam:

Et Cetera

Here is the direct transcription of the pertinent task on my Wunderlist task list:

Blog! Sick, focusing, academia, QD, etc.

In an effort to keep things simple:

Sick

I got sick on the very first day of classes. Felt it coming on, then fought like crazy to keep it from getting bad. A few days later, I was feeling mostly fine, so I tried to jam way more into my days, and ended up getting sick again, but much worse. Took a week to find the end of it, where I found a sinus infection waiting for me. Getting rid of that was a pain, and now I'm...mostly ok. Still teetering, but trying to treat myself right with fear and trembling.

Also, herbal remedies. The next time you find yourself with a sinus infection, try this (apple cider vinegar tea). It works. Several times a day, for several days. It'll clear you out and allow your body to do the heavy lifting of actually getting rid of the infection. Seriously. I did it. It was great.

Being sick, by the way, is horrible. Not that you didn't know that, but I was reminded very forcibly of this most fundamental truth after the year (almost) I spent forgetting it.

Focusing

Back in the Utah, I divided my time between so many and such varied activities that I never really got good at anything. By now, I'm sure it's clear that I came here to focus on writing. I told myself that I needed to pick something, focus on it, and stick with it until I really developed the talent. Easier said than done, just like everything. It turns out that I still want to do all the stuff I was doing, and not doing it feels a little like giving up on life.

Of course, that sentiment is only exacerbated by my failure to write as often and as consistently as I VERY MUCH NEED TO, so that has been, or is becoming, my primary focus, as it were. I must write write write write. More on that later.

Academia

I'm not used to this. I feel like I spent a couple of years being a semi-professional, not getting paid, but doing all kinds of project-oriented things. I was doing things I loved, and things for which I would have been paid had I been out in the real world, but now I'm back in classes. Homework is hard, I'm rediscovering. Going to classes. Following syllabi. Frankly, it sucks. But I've only got a couple more years. They'll go by quick, and then it will be, quite literally, over for good.

QD (or, Quiet Dignity, for the uninitiate)



So proud of these guys for keeping it going after I left. I've been putting out feelers for how to go about setting up a coordinating group here in Boston. If you're a Bostonite, and you're reading this, and you're interested, let me know.

Et Cetera

Life is busy, and it's good. Quality. Full of good work and shining possibilities. But I'll admit I miss my old life pretty desperately sometimes. OK, often. But I brought it on myself by getting so close to so many wonderful people. And here I go again, trying to do the same thing here. I'll never learn.

Well, anyway. Check. Time to move on to my next task.

On Graduating

I walked because my mom demanded it. She's a single mother and I'm her only child, so of course I had to do the cap and gown thing. Here's some stuff that happened:

1. Lots of sun and heat and sweat
2. A long exodus from a distant parking lot to a huge auditorium
3. Re-learning how to walk single-file
4. Astonishingly dull speech-making by people I've never heard of and will likely never hear of again
5. A bemused regard for the teleprompter that fate placed right behind me and to my right
6. Immense gratitude for iPhones (and Sudoku)
7. Admiration for Sarah and her GoPro camera

And that was just the first day. 

Joel Ackerman, bless him eternally, provided much needed comic relief, complete with Harry Potter glasses and a glittery wand. Thanks to him, I now know the words to the graduation song/music:

I'm telling you white boy

Stay away from me

(repeated ad infinitum)

The next morning involved waking up at 6am to be at the Harris Fine Arts Center (HFAC) for convocation (I discovered that this word, literally translated, means "assembly"), which was much less wearying than commencement, since instead of football stories by Alumni Association cronies, we got stories from students about more relatable achievements and experiences. I've long suspected that "fine arts" students are more interesting, on average, than pretty much any other kind of student, and our college's convocation was further proof of that notion. 

And then I walked across a stage, got handed a fake diploma, hugged Amy Jensen (whose presence was extremely welcome), got my picture taken, and sat back in my seat until it was over and they released all of us into the wild. 

What lasts is the dismal feeling of closure. I know, closure is supposed to feel good. Not getting it is supposed to be that unsurvivable psychological condition that causes depression. But closure isn't always  pleasant. I wanted to avoid thinking about the fact that I was finished at BYU, and I was doing a pretty good job of it until they forced me to don cheap, scratchy fabric, put a board on my head, and heard me into a huge colosseum with hundreds of other students dressed in like manner. 

The most surreal component was the constant stream of always-surprising congratulations from family and friends. As if the entire exercise was actually some kind of victory. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have finished my degree, and I've loved--no adored the vast majority of my time at BYU, but the arbitrary pomp and circumstance of graduation ceremonies...where's the victory there? Most of my contemporaries didn't walk, evidenced by the vanishingly small number of us in actual attendance. So what was the point?

I'm sorry. I know what's happening here. I'm a little broken up about leaving what has become my home, dear to me in a way and to a degree that I cannot adequately describe. Graduation was a long and forceful reminder of it, and now I'm venting. It's hard, this leaving business. I don't remember signing up for it, though I know I did in the very act of coming here in the first place. But this time, this ending event, was always so far off. It was far off right up until the day it happened, and I found myself saying, "Wait a minute," with a frown, "I'm not comfortable with this." And then graduation had its way with me, and now I just feel...

Well, homesick.

Everyone Should be a Film Student

I've been a TA for BYU's introductory film class for three years now. I became convinced some time ago that this class (TMA 102) should be a general education requirement for all students. With each passing semester, I feel more passionately that this is true.

Here's my reasoning:

An "Introduction to Literature" class is a GE requirement in most schools, and for good reason--books are and have been a fundamental method by which society communicates with itself. The class's purpose is to attempt to open the door for its students to the world of literature, so that they can then become informed participates in the ongoing conversation of that medium. In short, books are really important, so any education worth anything must attempt to help students achieve a certain level of literacy.

Books used to be THE primary medium of cultural dialog. Popular books would enter into the public's awareness, and achieve a broad audience. Now, however, a "bestseller" will get ready by, comparatively, a tiny fraction of its society's population. It is very, very seldom that a book sells more than a million copies these days.

I'm not going to say that movies are more important than books, but it would be easy to make a strong case that they have become more relevant. If you ask a crowd of a hundred random people how many of them had read the latest "bestseller," how many hands would go up? How about if you asked them to raise their hands if they'd seen Toy Story 3? Or Inception. Or the latest Transformers.

Everyone should be a student of film. Yes, I also believe everyone should study literature, but I think it is imperative that we study the dominant medium of our era. I don't think everyone should go to college and major in film, but I do think it has become incumbent upon us as members of this modern world to become literate in our primary mode of cultural communication.

It's about keeping our freedoms of thought, and our intelligence. In other, older civilizations, the literate controlled the uneducated. It is no different today. If we refuse to study the language of our media, and instead content ourselves with consuming upon our lusts, as it were, we will lose our intellectual and emotional freedom. Not that anyone will take it from us--we'll simply give it away.

Perhaps you have some thoughts on the subject? Am I taking this too far? Not far enough? What are some ways that you study film? Share them in the comments below.