Moved On

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On consistency

Here is the deal, I’m sorry if I may hurt some people around me but NO, I don’t like Korean dramas, they are frigid to orginality and they lack REAL drama. Now, that said, every once in a while, there is one drama that comes out and is actually very good and quite addictive. Do you know which ones I’m talking about? The ones with an actual story.

Now here’s what I mean, first exemple for 2010: A Man Called God.

Story: A man comes back years later to destroy the heads of the mafia who killed his father when he was a boy. The plan: destroy them financially and moraly so they can find a way to kill themselves as to keep him out of suspicion and out of prison. The extra characterial touch: through a woman reporter he meets, he discovers what a real family life, that he never had, feels like.

Now, there you have a story, a definite start, a definite end and a true character conflict.

Second exemple  (sorry I couldn’t find any good teaser): The Kingdom of The Winds.

Story: The king’s son, born in the wrong circomstances must be sacrificed to please the gods. However, the king will make sure he survives and will hide him. He will come back, years later, unbeknownst of his past, and will access the throne through courage, honnesty and a will to bring the kingdom towards peace.

Here again: beginning, ending and character conflict (who is my family? Who am I? Why didn’t you keep me with you?).

Yes, I here you say that the main actor for those 2 dramas is the same. He’s good, what can I say.

Now, let’s talk about something that doesn’t work for me. Quite often, I watch the first few episodes of drama with a good concept OR at least an original one. The first Korean drama I ever watched had a singularity: it looked like a real life drama but the character could jump incredibly high (for some reason) which is how they actually meet: the girl jumps over a very high wall and fall on the guy who was on the phone behind that wall. Not realistic but still original. After the 1st episode, that jumping thingy never came back ever again in the whole drama! Why? Yes, it looks a bit strange but aye, you are taking me into your world so please don’t change the rules half way through your story.

Next, the most recent exemple is the most popular drama at the moment: Secret Garden. (no interesting teaser here either)

First, 2 people who have nothing in common  find their spirit exchange bodies. He is the big boss of a big company, she is a stunt actress. Now, here is a great concept for me, it’s been done before and not always so successfully. First they hate each other but of course they HAVE TO learn how to work together is they don’t want to ruin each other’s life. Now why, did they have to let go of the concept after a few episodes? I lost all interest as I saw this show becoming another push-and-pull love story UNTIL they changed body again after a few episodes and now, people around them start discovering that they don’t behave as usual and something looks quite wrong.

Here is the deal, they developed some sort of love story between those 2 characters when they got their own body back but why all the bullshit? I’m sorry but the wayKorean dramas depict the discovery of love is just beyond me. Now the change back to normal was indeed essential but it shouldn’t have been so long before changing back because THAT IS the true appeal of this show.

I think that consistency is essential to a good show. If you have to bring your characters through 20 to 30 Hrs of screen time, you’ve got to give your world some rules and then follow them through to the end. Also, please give your characters a purpose and a definit ending because watching them argue around chicken wings is just painful for the audience (not the Korean audience however) and painful for the characters themselves. Would you want to spend 20 hrs of screening time arguing around chicken wings? I wouldn’t.

Just a Sweet Day

A while ago, when I woke up, I used to make my way through the realms of sleepyness towards the window and see what the weather would be like for the day. Nowadays, when I can’t be bothered getting up right away, I check facebook on my phone in the warmth of my bed. Damn I give a fair share of love and hate for this technology!

So today I read on the phone that it was snowing so I got up and had a look outside and there it was:

I’m happy because I really like snow. It has its ways to make anything look pretty, the countryside, the city and the people. It also increases the light and for some reason, the world around seems to quiet down.

Then, when I got to the office, I turned on my computer to discover that Ecosia had changed. This great search engine is growing and that is good news. I let you discover its purpose if you don’t know it already.

Finally, to put a little cherry on top of this sweet morning cake, I found in my email inbox, a newsletter from music2work2 with a video of their staff pick: Halus – Music to wish to. It is just a perfect way to start the day:

The Unknown Screenwriter

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

Oh no wait! On this blog actually, I wrote a post about the fantastic Unknown Screenwriter’s website. Now, I decided today to go and have a look at the website since I didn’t receive any email update for a while. Well, I was at first surprised to see that I just coyldn’t find it, the website was dead. So I ask daddy google about this website and got to his Twitter. From the twitter I got to the new website: Unknown Screenwriter.

I could go on and tell you more about this change of address and what and why and so on but hey, he says it best himself. The site is quite empty at the moment but it’s always good to keep an eye on it. I wrote to him a couple of times for screenwriting related questions and he never failed to reply with a great answer.

 

Mixing up the languages

I just realized that I wrote part of the timeline chart in Franch and in English. Sorry about that! He is the necessary translation:

Avant l’accident: Before the accident,

L’accident: The accident,

Après l’accident: After the accident,

Présent: Present time.

It’s all pretty straightforward but the timeline explanation was confusing enough…

So Do I

I have been lucky enough to meet fellow filmmakers through the South River Toastmasters club I visit every week. We’ll been talking about writing, directing and producing and I started to get my old stuff out. First, I showed my short screenplay ‘Drifting Away’ to one of them who pointed out some issues that I didn’t see. I thought that it was a good screenplay but now I can see the major flaw: it’s confusing. I’ve therefore put it out to work on it again. I also made a copy of the short screenplay ‘So Do I’ that I wrote only through this blog. I’ve put it through Final Draft and printed a copy of it. I will work on it in the coming weeks. The idea is to present one of them to a sponsor as to be able to produce it next year.

Now, what makes ‘Drifting Away’ confusing and how does ‘So Do I’ escape that same confusion? Does it escape that confusion? Not so sure… It seems that I can’t write in a linear time line. Both scripys follow their own timeline jumping back and forth to tell the story in a more compeling way. That type of writing requires that I don’t seem to have quite yet. Let me give you an exemple. Here is how ‘So Do I’ timeline goes:

Feeling confused yet? For the last scene, it jumps in different parts of the timeline through flashes. That last bit is not that important because it all comes together and the audience isn’t confused anymore, hopefully. Does it work then? Can we actually jump back and forth in time successfully? Yes, I’m sure we can but we need to keep a driving thread (I’m not sure that expression works in English). There must be something that drives the story through time. That is what I have tried to do with the music playing in all the scenes.

I still need to work on it more before I can submit it around. I will keep you guys updated on how it goes.

Lumière Dans La Maison

In last week’s post, I talked about the upcoming videocopilot.net renewed website. Well, it is done now and as I was expecting an outstanding new website, I found a slightly updated one, with some changes in the design while the main layout stayed the same. I didn’t know at first if I was disappointed or just surprised at the very small change but I looked into it more and found the few news features.

First, everything is almost accessible from the home page: blog, tutorials, forum, shop. The subcategories are also easily accessible: presets, blog show. Now the main change was really about the marketing. Now it is more obviously a shop with discount coupons and catchy vignettes for products. You’ll find your usual bundles and a full range of great video and AE plugins. Now, there is this one thing that is consistent on the website and that is the awesome content. I was amazed when I first went to this website and I still am. Andrew Kramer is giving so much time and energy to put free tutorials out there, I find this incredible.

On wednesday, seeing the new Videocopilot website and other stuff in general made me a little sad. Yea, that’s weired but here is why: I keep seeing stuff improving like this website and indie movies coming around that I keep reapeating to myself ‘damn, you’re not doing anything, you’re not making movies and you suck!’ Yea, I’m hard on myself like that. So when I came home that evening, I kissed my girlfriend and said that i’d be doing FX for a while, to cheer myself up. It felt good to do it but took longer that expected and then 2 days later, here is what I ended up with:

It is a combination of different tutorials from Videocopilot: the latest one for the MOANA SONG title and the reflection, some camera movement linked to a null object and some particle work with Particle World. I quite like it. I’m not entiely convienced by the sound effects I used but the overal works allright. Which brings me to do something I haven’t done yet, introducing my girlfriends photography blog, check it out it’s awesome: Lumière Dans La Maison.

Camera Browsing

I have now been browsing around trying to get information to buy a new camera as to go from miniDV to HD. I like working with film but I also love beautiful image and I am not getting that out my camera anymore. The constant blur on the picture makes motion track difficult and when I work on post prod tutorial, going from the HD videos to my video is slightly disappointing. I like beautiful images and playing around with lens blur, in production that is. So I have been reading a lot and comparating and weighting and of course calculating what was simply possible on a tight budget. Now, here is the beautiful lady I want to get: Canon XL H1S.

Look at this beautiful lady, Canon Xl H1S

That is a 8,500,000 won camera and here is how long it would take me to save for it: 43 months (3 years and 4 months). That’s a long time when you want to make movies.

Now, there are other options until I can get something bigger. One of those options is DSLR. That means using a HD camera that has a film option. There are a lot on this emerging market that makes the buzz in the filmmaking community. They are a lot more affordable, a lot more portable and have, of course, interchangeable lenses. Now, the down side is the sound which is not that great but it can be compensated by an external recording device. So after a thoutough search with lots of questions and reading and comparing, here is the bundle I came up with:

Canon EOS 60D as advised on Prolost	1,250,000 won
Canon EOS 60D
Zoom H4n as advised on dpexperience	499,000 won
Sound recording H4n
Gun mike	167,900 won
Rode Videomic Gun Microphone
Total: 1916900 won

I took all those prices on Auction.co.kr and I might be able to get a better deal if I go to a retailer and negotiate. My girlfriend recently bought a Canon EOS 450D and I’m sure I can negotiate with the same retailer. However, the price I have seen might not include a lens and it would be the body only.  In that case, in the beginning, I can try to trade a few good meals against borrowing my girlfriend’s lens. As for the gun mike, I do have one but it’s not awesome quality. In the beginning I can still use it until I can get another one.

At my current saving rate, it would take me ten months to buy the whole set. I will try to find some side jobs to shorten up the savings time if I can. The problem is that in Korea, if I want to do some extra jobs in movies, for example, I need to have an F visa but I have an E visa. Therefore, I need to find some unrelated side jobs.

But, I am still confident that I’ll be able to afford the camera in about 7 months and just a little later I will be able to get the rest of the gears. I am already planning two documentaries for 2011. One will be done on my miniDV Sony DCR-PC120 Handycam and hopefully the other one will be done on the DSLR. More on that later.

My beloved Sony DCR PC120

Waiting for the new Videocopilot

Andrew Kramer has recently announced that his website Videocopilot.net would undertake a serious make over. He said early this week on his blog that it would be live later this same week. I am impatiently waiting…

Toastfever skit contest

For the end of October I was asked by the South River Toastmaster club in Seoul to make a short film about Toastmaster for a skit contest. Although I still don’t know what is a skit contest, I made a short video to promote Toastmasters.

It was an interesting experience because I had very little time to come up with something interesting and engaging. I thought about the message I wanted to put through and ways to get some shooting done in no time. The pre-production was very quick: let’s get something done fast. The production was done in 3 steps at 2 different Toastmaster meetings and in the street in Gangnam, shooting people speaking and behaving outside.

The post-prod was another piece of work all together. I used After Effects for the color correction and vignettes for the 3 first shots and the final flying videos with the Toastmaster logo in the background.  I also used the movement effect for the first sequence and a time wrap for the 3^rd. Finally, to tie everything up together and level the brightness between shots, I used Sony Vegas.

It was an overall good experience thanks to the people who volunteered and the people on stage who didn’t know they volunteered. I am happy that I had a chance to work on color correction which is something I wish to learn a lot more about in the near future.