| Monday, February 18, 2008 |
| ENTRY 41: Rusty Reason |
I have the bad luck of being interested in too many things, and a person can really only focus on a few things at once. As such, I tend to rotate the activities and hobbies I partake in every year or so. Right now, it's screenwriting and movies in general, as well as youth group.
Recently, however, I've started to delve back into one of my other major hobbies: music. It started when I was approached by a few of my co-workers who also are musicians, suggesting that we all put our heads together and collaborate for some awesome stuff. I was all in, but the truth is that I haven't touched my music in over a year. I completed an album back in November of 2006 and haven't really done anything since. I had lost my music program when we re-formated our computer and since I didn't have any way to regain it, I turned my attentions elsewhere.
Well, thanks to my new, ridiculously awesome E500, I was able to get my hands on the program again: Propellerhead Reason 4.0. Now I had used version 3.0 in the past, so I was excited to see what this new version brought to the table. Imagine how dismayed I was when I realized how much of an effect one year of standing on the sidelines can have. Not only have I not done any production in over a year, but I haven't done any song-writing in that span of time as well. As a result, I'm EXTREMELY rusty -- so far my attempts at both have been laughable, and frankly very embarrassing. I just hope I can get to the level I had been at when I stopped...!
In any case, I'm very very very excited!
P.S. This doesn't mean screenwriting and film school is going to the back burner; I'm still actively writing both scripts I'm working on at the moment :) yay!
BLOG PLAYLIST
"Where You Gonna Run" - Talib Kweli & Jean Grae
"What Happened to that Boy" - Baby feat. The Clipse
"Whereareyougoing" - Musiq Soulchild
Labels: music, playlist, Reason, screenwriting |
finished by Carter @ 8:11 AM   |
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| Wednesday, January 16, 2008 |
| ENTRY 32: Getting into a Groove |
Now that I'm getting into film school, I'm trying to get into sort of a writing groove. The more I delve into the mindset, the more prepared I'll be for the classes and the better I'll perform. That's the theory anyway.
Thus, I've taken up a little side project along with one of my World Vision co-workers. He's had this idea for a movie for a while, and has enlisted my help in writing it. It' s been a couple of days, and so far it's been a grueling process trying to flesh out the characters and setting down a concrete plotline (we haven't finished the latter yet). All in all, though, it's a heckuva lot of fun. My co-worker is really excited; I cranked out a couple of pages of script for the end of Act 1, and he exclaims "This is exactly how I pictured it!" Which was pretty awesome.
Gonna go home today and try to finish more of the first act. We still need to work on themes, characters, and plotlines, but for now I can work with what we've accomplished up to this point. Should be doubly challenging since it's supposed to be a comedic script, and I mostly do dramas & film noirs. I have done comedy, but those were just short skits. Overall, it'll be quite the journey!Labels: film school, screenwriting |
| finished by Carter @ 4:35 AM |
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| Monday, December 10, 2007 |
| ENTRY 15: Marcus James |
Well here I am at work, bored out of my mind. I've been trying to work on my screenplay, but progress is slow. I'm stuck on a very crucial scene, one where the true, darker intentions of the protagonists begin to reveal themselves. I know which characters will be involved, I know it takes place at the Ossa Harbor Ironworks in the dead of night (setting), and as I mentioned before, I know how I intend on using the scene to further the story. The problem is that I don't know how the action unfolds. There has to be a hint of mystery, foreshadowing, and surprise. It's tough.
So I'm trying to help myself out by fleshing out the story as a whole here in my blog. The screenplay is title James Black Investigations, and follows the exploits of a grim, haunted private investigator named Marcus James. Marcus James lives in unarguably the worst city in America. The mayor is a cowardly punk, crime and hypocrisy run rampant, and air and water pollution are so thick that it has started causing mutations in the general public. James refers to the Ossa City as a virus, a poison that hungrily eats away at your soul, a fate you have no choice but to succumb to.
To Marcus James, morality has become a hinderance in his endeavors to escape this Hell on Earth. Ambition has consumed him and lands him right smack in the middle of a grotesque murder investigation. Utilizing skills and talents honed through his experience as an Ossa City Police Department (OCPD) detective alongside Det. Patricia Black, James works to outsmart and outwit the OCPD to solve the case and to keep himself out of hot water.
James' motives are far from noble. Within him, ambition only gives way to vengeance; he still feels more than tad bit of resentment towards the OCPD's Commissioner Harold Ballow for unceremoniously discharging him after a botched narcotics case and the subsequent death of his partner. More than anything else, James hopes to humiliate and discredit the force via this murder investigation, and to do so he enlists the help of the actress Pandora, the victim's widow Ms. Martha Chepovsky, and her attorney A. Thomas Smith. To them he is their savior; to him they are no more than pawns at his disposal.
So yeah, that's the set-up, but things start getting complicated once the city starts imposing its poisonous will on everyone involved: police brutality, mutations, drug addiction, political corruption...time travel (yeah you read that correctly), etc. etc. It also makes things complicated when writing. Yeesh.
BLOGGER'S NOTE: Ossa Harbor Ironworks just wasn't cutting it as the setting for this next scene. Changing it to the St. Philomena Memorial Park (where Black is buried).Labels: Marcus James, screenwriting |
| finished by Carter @ 4:38 AM |
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| The famous words of Jesus Christ resonate with my person: words impressing me with total, victorious finality. Words that I hope to say down the road. |
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Home: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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