A Day in the Life vs. A Life in a Day

Preparing for a meeting, Lisa came up with an interesting thought.

A TV show is, fundamentally, about the sort of things that happen to your characters every day. They may be extraordinary things, but then your characters are people to whom extraordinary things happen every day.

A movie is, fundamentally, about the most remarkable time in the character's life. The turning point, the moment they change, the time they face their greatest challenge.

When you're trying to figure out if your idea is a movie or a TV show, these criteria might be helpful.

Wanna See How a Comic Gets Made?

I'm always interested in other media. Kody Chamberlain is documenting how his new comic gets made -- it's a production blog. Check it out!

Digital Media

I read in today's Playback that Stratford, known for its theatre festival, is launching a digital media festival. Banff keeps sending me promo material about their digital media festival. Is anyone actually making money off digital media? I mean, aside from people in the festival business?

Part of the problem is, presumably, that people expect things on the Internet to be free. They'll tolerate banner ads, and even ads at the beginning of a video, if they have to. But advertising doesn't scale well. The really lucrative ads are corporate sponsorships, and you have to be a smash hit, à la Têtes à Claques or 30 Second Bunny Theater, to get it.

People also seem to want things on the Internet to be short. Anything longer than, say, 6 minutes feels interminable on the Net. I hate to watch TV shows on my computer, though I'll happily watch the same shows on my TV. On my computer, I keep wanting to go check the Wikipedia or read news articles about Miley Whatsername that I don't even really care about. It's like the computer actually hurts my attention span.

Lots of producers are out there trying to figure out the Internet. They rarely intend to pay you. Because it's a new business, they generally want you to "invest" your time in the project, so that at some later date you'll get a chunk of the huge windfall your little flash animation or whatever will generate.

Sometimes old school producers will try digital media just to show they're hip. The results are often Quarterlife.

There doesn't really seem to be a business model here, is there? Just wildcatting.

Anyone know anything different?

Peeking is Fun

Jill Golick is trying to use the full Internet for storytelling. Story2Oh is an attempt to tell a story through Facebook pages, Twitters, Youtube videos, etc. ... which you, the reader, can access in whatever order you choose. It's like peeking in on your friends' lives as they unfold, only hopefully, more fun and scandalous.

One of the most moving theatrical experiences I ever had was when I was in college. I went to see an adaptation of THE REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST into a sort of play. The creators basically took all the naughty bits out of Proust's very long novel and put them on their feet in a (temporarily empty) house on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven. The exciting thing artistically was that several scenes would be playing at once, so you could wander around the house and see different things each time you went to the play. (I went twice.)

The difficulty with Alternate Reality Games is there's no narrative, as such. People like to be told a story; it takes more work to discover the story yourself, by poking at the Net. Most people want to watch the detective, not do the detective's work.

But it can be fun to imagine yourself into a world. I was once foolish enough to mount a one-night live-action role-playing game set the night before Camlann, the final battle of the King Arthur saga. Camlann Eve was a month's work for me to put it together, not counting what the thirty or so players did to put together their characters. But I'm glad I did it. It was fun to inhabit that world, just for a night. (Now if only the Wandering Jew had bothered to tell anyone where the Grail was stashed...)

Check out Jill's site, and let us know what you think!

My Week In Media

Andy Diggle tagged me with this damn meme, "My Week In Media." So, what have I been absorbing this past week?

DVDS

Almost all TV these days:

Band of Brothers - for the fourth time. Lisa got it for me for the Solstice. Beautifully made series, just perfect every which way. And it looks four times as good on our new HD TV.

The Tudors - which didn't work for me on TV, but that's because the editing hacked it up. It's still more acting and spectacle than storytelling, but it's pretty good acting and spectacle. They take a few too many liberties with the real story, which ought to be a good enough story as is. And there's way too much gratuitous sex (did we really need to see Henry VIII jerking off into a footman's hankie?). But as historical popcorn, worth the rental.

West Wing, Season Three -- nice to see a beautifully done show about characters I care about.

Northern Exposure, Season Five - picked it up at the library on a whim. Didn't realize that David Chase was running the show!

Checked out Season One of Saturday Night Live to remind myself what Samurai Hotel was all about.

Up next: Time Bandits, Life of Brian

BOOKS

Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars -- probably because of watching ROME

Neal Stephenson, The System of the World -- retro science fiction about a fellow who works at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of the Technologickal Arts, among other things. Stephenson is a genius at bringing alive the 18th Century and telling a rollicking, ganglia-tickling tale in it.

Steve Martin, Born Standing Up -- a tightly written, thoughtful memoir about how he created his act. As he says, he spent ten years figuring it out, four refining it, and four in wild success. If you're wondering after a year and a half if you should quit, read this book. Read it if you're not.

Lorenzo da Ponte, Mémoires -- Mozart's lyricist, 'nuff said

O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm -- couldn't resist the title when I saw it in the library stacks

Writing the TV Drama Series -- Pamela Douglas. Review book. So far, nothing new.

MAGAZINES

The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Economist

TV

Not much here, guess why? We taped the THE BORDER and JPOD pilots, assuming the rain didn't kill the satellite signal.

CINEMA

Hah! Nothing's inspiring me to go to the movies, though now that Hunter is back I'll see what's out there. We did see Charlie Wilson's War before the holidays, a fine intellectual popcorn movie.

ONLINE

I've been reading Slate obsessively during the election, especially the political markets page and the polls. Trying to wean myself off Reddit, since it's all Ron Paul mania now. I read DMc and Jane Espenson off the feed. Facebook of course, and now and then I check my Zip.ca page to see what DVD's are coming down the pike.

So who shall I tag ... McGrath, you're "it." So are you, Lisa!

Thank Heaven For Little Girls

In this charming pictures by Carlos and Jason Sanchez the nice man is giving the little girl some presents.

In a windowless attic room. And that's her backpack. And she doesn't look that happy to be getting presents; she's wondering what's on the card.

The photo is called "The Abduction."

The Sanchez Brothers currently have a really disturbing exhibit you ought to go see if you're in Montreal. It's of posed large-format photographs, and it's at the Parisian Laundry. There's a picture of a way-too-young beauty queen, and a lovely white building in the snowy woods that turns out to be a crematorium. Some of the pictures don't set off your alarm bells until you see the title; others are immediately upsetting, like the body being dug out of the mudslide, and the dogs snarling.

I find the exhibit intriguing because many of the photos are staged. Most photography is meant to be documentary. The photographer is only meant to be choosing the frame and the exposure. If he moves items in the frame for a better composition, he's cheating.

Then, of course, there are art photographs whose elements are arranged, but with no pretense otherwise: still life photos, abstracts, surreal collages, etc.

The Sanchez Brothers belong to a tradition that originated in Vancouver about thirty years ago, where the photographer stages and then shoots the scene. He has to imagine the scene, cast and costume the actors, rig the lights, direct the emotions and only then start shooting. If it's effective, it can feel like the photographer just happened to be there at the right time and the right place. Or it can raise disturbing questions like, What is the photographer doing there? And why isn't he calling the police???

We just bought this Amy Stein photograph, of a girl facing a bear that has just appeared next to her swimming pool. It feels entirely like the photographer lucked into an amazing shot, except she would have to be about three feet behind a bear, which seems unhealthy. In fact the bear in the photograph is stuffed and mounted. (You can get away with that in a still!) The photo is even more striking in person. I would buy one of the Sanchez Brothers pics, too, because they're going to be famous soon. But I don't think I could have their quietly alarming pictures up on my wall!

What's real? What's staged? Can a staged photo get to a level of truth that a documentary photographer will never see?

Go check it out.