"Quitting my job and starting as a writer was a tremendous risk. It was a fool's leap, a shot in the dark. But anything of any value in our lives, whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap.

And in order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely purely without fear, without desire. Because things we do without lust or result, are the purest actions that we shall ever take."

-Alan Moore

I just successfully completed the most amazing visual effect I've ever done, and no one will notice it. Therefore, I have no choice but to brag about it here.

You see, I've been working on the first telephone conversation of "Portal", and there was one shot where the actor looks at the camera. The funny thing it's that it's not a direct stare, and if you watch it carefully, he's not actually looking, but when you see the shot for the first time, it kind of seems like he is. So for all practical purposes, he is.

So, after considering all my available options, I decided to give digital alteration a try. I decided to change the way the eyes were looking using After Effects. And, against all odds, it looks great (and it wasn't as hard as I thought).

Basically, I took his eyes from another part of the shot, and superimposed them on the few frames his pupil faces the camera. I had to align them by hand, as the automated tools didn't deliver, but as they were just about 10 frames, it wasn't that a big deal.

I wish I could show you how it looks, but as I have the compositing machine outside any network; you'll have to wait until the short is done. =P

I remember reading somewhere that film is the only art people expect to be perfect in the first try. Honestly, I can?t remember who, or how the actual quote goes.

In the spirit of going against the current, I'm taking my time with "Portal". I'll re-write and re-shoot it till it?s as good as it can be. Funny enough, the special effects shots are coming great right off the bat. It's the other stuff I'm having trouble with.

For example, I'm having problems with the "safe frame". For those of you who don't know, TV monitors cut a bit of the image around the corners. So, the image is bigger than what you see in your home TV, but when you see it in the computer monitor, that over-scanned area is visible.

My previous short was shot using a Cannon XL-1. This camera's viewfinder crops the edges of the screen, just like a TV. And I knew that. Still, we got things in the hidden area (like booms and lights) that we didn't saw the day of the shooting. This is a problem because if you watch the short's DVD on your laptop, for example, you will see the boom in some shots, even though you won?t if you watch it on a TV screen. 

Well, the problem in Portal is different, but still rooted in the same area. I'm shooting it using a Panasonic HVX-200, and this camera's viewfinder doesn't crop the edges (mostly). So what I see in the viewfinder is (basically) the whole image. So now I don?t have unwanted things hiding in the corners of the frame. Now I have wanted things hiding in the corner of the frame!

I know. It?s stupid. But even though the viewfinder has some nifty white lines that show me where the safe frame is (the area that a TV will cut), I still ended up with important action taking place at the very edge of the frame. So now, if you watch Portal on a TV screen, there are shots that make no sense (because you?re not seeing what?s important). These are the kind of things you don?t know can go wrong until they do.

But hey, that?s why I?m doing this short anyway, to get the kinks out of the way. It?s not easy being a one man crew. Hope this weekend I can do some more shooting, cause I have quite a few things to do over.

I shot a short film this new year. It was a fun little peace I did with my brother, shooting and writing as we go... went... on the spot if you will. It's some kind of film jam that took us about half a day.

The end result was a one and a half minute short film with some sci-fi elements. Nothing fancy. But I got a chance to try a special effects shot for the ending and it ended up pretty good. The general response was "wow", actually.

So, in the days that followed I re-shot some things that weren't as good, for lighting conditions, and stuff, and eventually ended up trying some other effects. Those turned up rather nicely as well, so I ended up writing a proper script for an extended version of the short film. So far is 10 pages long, and it has a proper story and all.

After reading it, my brother pointed out that I tend to write technical dialog... well, too technical. And that is something that has transpired on most of my other scripts.

The thing is, it seems I get an urge to explain the unusual elements of my stories. Maybe it's because I think they are wonderful, and maybe because I'm unsure how successful I've been explaining them indirectly along the story.

I'm always very conscious of three things when I write dialog:

1. Does it sounds natural?
2. Is it giving new information?
3. Is it interesting?

And when I'm explaining something, it is "exposition", which is a big no-no in dialogue writing. But because I'm such a technical person, this kind of mambo-jumbo techno-babble does sound natural to me, and I find it interesting, I excuse myself on writing it. But that doesn't mean it's ok.

Having that conversation with my brother, I remembered the thing I hated the most about Star Wars Episode I: "The miticlorians". In one single line of dialogue, George Lucas murdered the magic of The Force. I don't know if he thought of the miticlorians in 1977, the fact was that for twenty-something years, Star Wars was a fantasy movie in space. Then in 1999 it was decreed that it was purely science fiction, all along.

Granted, the story has little to do with my case, but it got me thinking on the power of "not explaining". Maybe if I let the audience figure out what the thing is, and how does it work, they can make up their science in their heads, and, because it's their science, they are going to like it more.

On the other hand, having a good explanation of how a time machine works, instead of just saying "it's a time machine", could set my  time machine story apart from the others. Maybe the solution is to keep working on a more user friendly way of writing technical, expository dialogue.

 

As I write this, I realize, maybe you could do with reading the particulars of my case. So, here are the particular  lines I'm talking about.

            TÉCNICO
Have you upgraded the system lately?

            JUAN
Eh... Yes. We installed a garden last week.

            TÉCNICO
I think that might be the problem.

            JUAN
A virus?

            TÉCNICO
No. The thing is this house has too many dimensions.

            JUAN
So?

            TÉCNICO
The system can't load the adjacent rooms because it's overloaded. I say you need to buy more RAM, or we could uninstall some dimensions you're not using. You tell me.

I'm really distressed for inspiration is only arriving at 3:00 or 4:00 am, and at that time I'm too tired to do any productive work. I end up writing a few lines of this and that, and taking a few notes of what I need to expand in the morning, but by the time I wake up, all the creative juices have dried. It might have something to do with time constraints I'm currently under. There is this deadline and I have so much to do before it, that I don't know where to start, and I spend my days all over the place. I really need to get my shit in order.

It is 3:00 in the morning and I have to write something to get the juices flowing. I've been doing budgeting and going through numbers for the past few days, and before that I have been busy doing the pre-viz of "the book of blood". Oh, and let's not forget, I've been procrastinating like hell.

Well, Now I'm watching Bloodrayne, and my God, what a bad script. What is the deal here? Why is that this kind of movie always suck?

Anyway, my brother pointed put that after the last re-writhe of the book of blood, he felt the movie stopped after the first act. This seems to be a sensitive spot, as I've heard that comment before, but the fact that two people pointed out the same place, worries me. At this point I think the script is relatively error-free, but I can't shake the feeling that I might need to take things back to the drawing board. This is kind of hard, as I've already done quite a few storyboars.

While I see this woman, Rayne, fight whatever it is she's fighting, I can't help but wonder If I really need to fix things. I mean, If this thing got the Hollywood summer thing, why should I need to make my script perfect?