You hear that, Mr Andersen?

48 Hour Genres, Goths, Jello

"Thinking about lunch (oo, oo-oo, oo-oo)
Thinking about tea (oo, oo-oo, oo-oo)
Thinking about, just lunch and tea, lah-dah-dee-dee,
There ain't no place I'd rather be..."

(with apologies to The Swingers)

***

I've been thinking a lot about the 48 Film Competition. If you're not familiar with the competition, the basics are -- you get assigned a random "genre", and must include three things specified on the night (commonly a prop, a phrase, and a person). You must then make a film in 48 hours that's between three and seven minutes long... and it's a lot easier to run over time than you think.

I've volunteered to concentrate on finding music and sound, which has resulted in me learning a lot more about copyright than I've ever wanted to. For example, did you know that NZ extended protection for writers/composers to be another twenty years after their death. (Because, after all, there are thousands of people that would be writing novels if only they could continue to make money for seventy years after they die, instead of fifty. And now Cliff Richards wants to extend performance copyrights to death plus seventy years in the UK, instead of the current 50. And don't get me started on US copyright... argh. I have no problem with people being rewarded for creativity, but there comes a point (say, fifty years on) where they should be putting back into the cultural pot that they drew on.)

Erhm. Anyway, I was chatting to various people about the genres that the competition uses, and it occurred to me that, in some ways, the genres are too broad. That is, if you get a genre -- say, Blaxsploitation -- there's no real guide to what kind of story is needed. (In fact, many of the genres are either strongly style, or strongly content, and only give a weak guide for the other.) Now, this is fine, and quite useful, if you have a story in mind that you want to tell; but it can mean that you're flailing around for a while to find a story if you don't have a useful preconception.

However -- if you combine a Content Genre with a Style Genre, possible stories seem to practically write themselves. A War Movie/Buddy Flick? No problem! A Science Fiction/Coming of Age movie? Interesting... Pretty much anything with a Fairytale seems to work, especially if you use an existing folktale -- I banged out the following in a couple of hours to try a Blaxploitation/Fairytale combo, including the limitations for last year. (Last year you had to include a banana, the phrase "Please don't do that", and the character Bodil Derezney, animal lover.)

fairytale.pdf 75k

It's pretty rough -- there was a point where I had Monkey speaking in an overly formal kung-fu movie style with subtitles that translated him into Jive, or vice-versa; maybe Bodil or Monkey whould be female; and the dialogue needs to be even more Jive, methinks. And there wasn't a chance to do a "argue with the narrator" joke. Oh, and it's the first time I've ever tried to write in a vaguely TV-script style, which shows more than a bit. But it gets the idea across, and would be pretty easy to film (one location, four actors, two speaking parts) and wouldn't run over the time limit (on the "minute per page" guideline).

Anyway, I throw it out there as a thought.

EDIT: Total credit and copyright for the Baby Banana song belongs to Margie. Sorry I didn't say so earlier. Margie, hope it was okay for me to use it!

***

Isn't it nice that New Scientist likes the Goth subculture? To whit, "it is a strongly non-violent and accepting subculture, which teens may find offers a supportive environment."

And to follow on from the Goth nihilist aesthetic -- how about
Exit Mundi: collecting End-of-the-World Scenarios so you don't have to!

***

On the off-chance people haven't seen it, here's a little java applet designed to show a bunch of information in an intuitive way. This is the kind of thing that's bread and butter to HCI (human/computer interaction), and showcases one of the big advantages of presenting this information via computer -- to whit, you can play with it, sliding sliders around and clicking on things to drill up and down to the data of interest (or whim). Not all information can be presented like this; but it's very useful when it can.

***

A test of the foam extinguishing system in our aircraft hanger? Okay... yep, that works, now shut it off... we can shut it off, right, guys? Guys?

***

Is there a reason not to make a model of San Francisco in jelly? (Or "jello", as the Americans insist on calling it.) No, there is no reason.

And speaking of crazy Americans -- Urban Ninja. I bet he didn't get filming permission for some of those shots.

Posted by svend at April 23, 2006 6:35 PM