#but it’s also fascinating to see how the script evolves between what’s written & what makes the final cut

[armageddon-generation]

Articulating Why His Dark Materials is Badly Written

A long essay-thing with lots of specific examples and explanations of why I feel this way. Hopefully I’ve kept fanboy bitching to a minimum.

This isn’t an attack on fans of the show, nor a personal attack on Jack Thorne. I’m not looking to ruin anyone’s enjoyment of the show, I just needed to properly articulate, with examples, why I struggle with it. I read and love the books and that colours my view, but I believe that HDM isn’t just a clumsy, at-best-functional, sometimes incompetent adaptation, it’s a bad TV show separate from its source material. The show is the blandest, least interesting and least engaging version of itself it could be.

His Dark Materials has gorgeous production design and phenomenal visual effects. It's well-acted. The score is great. But my god is it badly written. Jack Thorne writing the entire first season damned the show. There was no-one to balance out his flaws and biases. Thorne is checking off a list of plot-points, so concerned with manoeuvring the audience through the story he forgets to invest us in it. The scripts are mechanical, empty, flat.

Watching HDM feels like an impassioned fan earnestly lecturing you on why the books are so good- (Look! It's got other worlds and religious allegory and this character Lyra is really, really important I swear. Isn't Mrs Coulter crazy? The Gyptians are my favourites.) rather than someone telling the story naturally.

My problems fall into 5 main categories:

Exposition- An unwillingness to meaningfully expand the source material for a visual medium means Thorne tells and doesn't show crucial plot-points. He then repeats the same thing multiple times because he doesn't trust his audience

Pacing- By stretching out the books and not trusting his audience Thorne dedicates entire scenes to one piece of information and repeats himself constantly (see: the Witches' repetition of the prophecy in S2).

Narrative priorities- Thorne prioritises human drama over fantasy. This makes sense budgetarily, but leads to barely-present Daemons, the Gyptians taking up too much screentime, rushed/badly written Witches (superpowers, exposition) and Bears (armourless bear fight), and a Lyra more focused on familial angst than the joy of discovery

Tension and Mystery- because HDM is in such a hurry to set up its endgame it gives you the answers to S1's biggest mysteries immediately- other worlds, Lyra's parents, what happens to the kids etc. This makes the show less engaging and feel like it's playing catch-up to the audience, not the other way around.

Tonal Inconsistency- HDM tries to be a slow-paced, grounded, adult drama, but its blunt, simplistic dialogue and storytelling methods treat the audience like children that need to be lectured.

MYSTERY, SUSPENSE AND INTRIGUE

The show undercuts all the books’ biggest mysteries. Mrs Coulter is set up as a villain before we meet her, other worlds are revealed in 1x2, Lyra's parents by 1x3, what the Magesterium do to kids is spelled out long before Lyra finds Billy (1x2). I understand not wanting to lose new viewers, but neutering every mystery kills momentum and makes the show much less engaging.

This extends to worldbuilding. The text before 1x1 explains both Daemons and Lyra's destiny before we meet her. Instead of encouraging us to engage with the world and ask questions, we're given all the answers up front and told to sit back and let ourselves be spoon-fed. The viewer is never an active participant, never encouraged to theorise or wonder

 Intrigue motivated you to engage with Pullman's philosophical themes and concepts. Without it, HDM feels like a lecture, a theme park ride and not a journey.

The only one of S1's mysteries left undiminished is 'what is Dust?', which won't be properly answered until S3, and that answer is super conceptual and therefore hard to make dramatically satisfying

TONAL INCONSISTENCY

HDM billed itself as a HBO-level drama, and was advertised as a GoT inheritor. It takes itself very seriously- the few attempts at humour are stilted and out of place

The production design is deliberately subdued, most notably choosing a mid-twentieth century aesthetic for Lyra’s world over the late-Victorian of the books or steampunk of the movie. The colour grading would be appropriate for a serious adult drama. 

Reviewers have said this stops the show feeling as fantastical as it should. It also makes Lyra’s world less distinct from our own. 

Most importantly, minimising the wondrous fantasy of S1 neuters its contrast with the escalating thematic darkness of the finale (from 1x5 onwards), and the impact of Roger’s death. Pullman's books are an adult story told through the eyes of a child. Lyra’s innocence and naivety in the first book is the most important journey of the trilogy. Instead, the show starts serious and thematically heavy (we’re told Lyra has world-saving importance before we even meet her) and stays that way.

Contrasting the serious tone, grounded design and poe-faced characters, the dialogue is written to cater to children. It’s horrendously blunt and pulls you out of scenes. Subtext is obliterated at every opportunity. Even in the most recent episode, 2x7, Pan asks Lyra ‘do you think you’re changing because of Will?’

I cannot understate how on the nose this line is, and how much it undercuts the themes of the final book. Instead of even a meaningful shot of Lyra looking at Will, the show treats the audience like complete idiots. 

So, HDM looks and advertises itself like an adult drama and is desperate to be taken seriously by wearing its big themes on its sleeve from the start instead of letting them evolve naturally out of subtext like the books, and dedicating lots of scenes to Mrs Coulter's self-abuse 

At the same time its dialogue and character writing is comparable to the Star Wars prequels, more childish than media aimed at a similar audience - Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Avatar the Last Airbender etc

DAEMONS

The show gives itself a safety net by explaining Daemons in an opening text-crawl, and so spends less time showing the mechanics of the Daemon-human bond. On the HDM subreddit, I’ve seen multiple people get to 1x5 or 6, and then come to reddit asking basic questions like ‘why do only some people have Daemons?’ or ‘Why are Daemons so important?’.

It’s not that the show didn’t answer these questions; it was in the opening text-crawl. It’s just the show thinks telling you is enough and never shows evidence to back that up. Watching a TV show you remember what you’re shown much easier than what you’re told 

The emotional core of Northern Lights is the relationship between Lyra and Pan. The emotional core of HDM S1 is the relationship between Lyra and Mrs Coulter. This wouldn't be bad- it's a fascinating dynamic Ruth plays wonderfully- if it didn't override the Daemons

Daemons are only onscreen when they serve a narrative purpose. Thorne justifies this because the books only describe Daemons when they tell us about their human. On the page your brain fills the Daemons in. This doesn't work on-screen; you cannot suspend your disbelief when their absence is staring you in the face

Thorne clarified the number of Daemons as not just budgetary, but a conscious creative choice to avoid onscreen clutter. This improved in S2 after vocal criticism.

Mrs Coulter/the Golden Monkey and Lee/Hester have well-drawn relationships in S1, but Pan and Lyra hug more in the 2-hour Golden Compass movie than they do in the 8-hour S1 of HDM. There's barely any physical contact with Daemons at all.

They even cut Pan and Lyra's hug after escaping the Cut in Bolvangar. In the book they can't let go of each other. The show skips it completely because Thorne wants to focus on Mrs Coulter and Lyra.

They cut Pan and Lyra testing how far apart they can be. They cut Lyra freeing the Cut Daemons in Bolvangar with the help of Kaisa. We spent extra time with both Roger and Billy Costa, but didn't develop their bonds with their Daemons- the perfect way to make the Cut more impactful

I don't need every single book scene in the show, but notice that all these cut scenes reinforced how important Daemons are. For how plodding the show is. you'd think they could spare time for these moments instead of inventing new conversations that tell us the information they show

Daemons are treated as separate beings and thus come across more like talking pets than part of a character

The show sets the rules of Daemons up poorly. In 1x2, Lyra is terrified by the Monkey being so far from Coulter, but the viewer has nothing to compare it to. We’re retroactively told in that this is unnatural when the show has yet to establish what ‘natural’ is.

The guillotine blueprint in 1x2 (‘Is that a human and his Daemon, Pan? It looks like it.’ / ‘A blade. To cut what?’) is idiotic. It deflates S1’s main mystery and makes the characters look stupid for not figuring out what they aren’t allowed to until they did in the source material, it also interferes with how the audience sees Daemons. In the book, Cutting isn’t revealed until two-thirds of the way in (1x5). By then we’ve spent a lot of time with Daemons, they’ve become a background part of the world, their ‘rules’ have been established, and we’re endeared to them.

By showing the Guillotine and putting Daemons under threat in the second episode, the show never lets us grow attached. This, combined with their selective presence in scenes, draws attention to Daemons as a plot gimmick and not a natural extension of characters. Like Lyra, the show tells us why Daemons are important before we understand them.

Billy Costa's fate falls flat. It's missing the dried fish/ fake Daemon Tony Markos clings to in the book. Thorne said this 'didn't work' on the day, but it worked in the film. Everyone yelling about Billy not having a Daemon is laughable when most of the background extras in the same scene don't have Daemons themselves

WITCHES

The Witches are the most common complaint about the show. Thorne changed Serafina Pekkala in clever, logical ways (her short hair, wrist-knives and cloud pine in the skin)

The problem is how Serafina is written. The Witches are purely exposition machines. We get no impression of their culture, their deep connection to nature, their understanding of the world. We are told it. It is never shown, never incorporated into the dramatic action of the show.

Thorne emphasises Serafina's warrior side, most obviously changing Kaisa from a goose into a gyrfalcon (apparently a goose didn't work on-screen)

Serafina single-handedly slaughtering the Tartars is bad in a few ways. It paints her as bloodthirsty and ruthless. Overpowering the Witches weakens the logic of the world (If they can do that, why do they let the Magesterium bomb them unchallenged in 2x2?). It strips the Witches of their subtlety and ambiguity for the sake of cinematic action.

A side-effect of Serafina not being with her clan at Bolvangar is limiting our exposure to the Witches. Serafina is the only one invested in the main plot, we only hear about them from what she tells us. This poor set-up weakens the Witch subplot in S2

Lyra doesn’t speak to Serafina until 2x6. She laid eyes on her once in S1.

The dialogue in the S2’s Witch subplot is comparable to the Courasant section of The Phantom Menace. 

Two named characters, neither with any depth (Serafina and Coram's dead son developed him far more than her). The costumes look ostentatious and hokey- the opposite of what the Witches should be. They do nothing but repeat the same exposition at each other, even in 2x7.

We feel nothing when the Witches are bombed because the show never invests us in what is being destroyed- with the amount of time wasted on long establishing shots, there’s not one when Lee Scoresby is talking to the Council.

BEARS

Like the Witches; Thorne misunderstands and rushes the fantasy elements of the story. The 2007 movie executed both Iofur's character and the Bear Fight much better than the show- bloodless jaw-swipe and all

Iofur's court was not the parody of human court in the books. He didn't have his fake-Daemon (hi, Billy)

An armourless bear fight is like not including Pan in the cutting scene. After equating Iorek's armour to a Daemon (Lee does this- we don’t even learn how important it is from Iorek himself, and the comparison meant less because of how badly the show set up Daemons) the show then cuts the plotpoint that makes the armour plot-relevant. This diminishes all of Bear society. Like Daemons, we're told Iorek's armour is important but it's never shown to be more than a cool accessory

GYPTIANS

Gyptians suffer from Hermoine syndrome. Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves' favourite character was Hermione, and so Film!Hermoine lost most of Book!Hermoine's flaws and gained several of Book!Ron's best moments. The Gyptians are Jack Thorne's favourite group in HDM and so they got the extra screentime and development that the more complicated groups/concepts like Witches, Bears, and Daemons (which, unlike the Gyptians, carry over to other seasons amd are more important to the overall story) needed

At the same time, he changes them from a private people into an Isle of Misfit Toys. TV!Ma Costa promises they'll ‘make a Gyptian woman out of Lyra yet’, but in the book Ma specifically calls Lyra out for pretending to be Gyptian, and reminds her she never can be.

This small moment indicates how, while trying to make the show more grounded and 'adult', Thorne simultaneously made it more saccharine and sentimental. He neuters the tragedy of the Cut kids when Ma Costa says they’ll become Gyptians. Pullman's books feel like an adult story told through the eyes of a child. The TV show feels like a child's story masquerading as a serious drama.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA

Let me preface this by saying I genuinely really enjoy the performances in the show. It was shot in the foot by The Golden Compass' perfect casting.

The most contentious/'miscast' actor among readers is LMM. Thorne ditched the books' wise Texan for a budget Han Solo. LMM isn't a great dramatic actor (even in Hamilton he was the weak link performance-wise) but he makes up for it in marketability- lots of people tried the show because of him

Readers dislike that LMM's Lee is a thief and a scoundrel, when book-Lee is so moral he and Hester argue about stealing. Personally, I like the change in concept. Book!Lee's parental love for Lyra just appears. It's sweet, but not tied to a character arc. Done right, Lyra out-hustling Lee at his own game and giving him a noble cause to fight for (thus inspiring the moral compass of the books) is a more compelling arc.

DAFNE KEENE AND LYRA

I thought Dafne would be perfect casting. Her feral energy in Logan seemed a match made in heaven. Then Jack Thorne gave her little to do with it.

Compare how The Golden Compass introduced Lyra, playing Kids and Gobblers with a group of Gyptian kids, including Billy Costa. Lyra and Roger are chased to Jordan by the Gyptians and she makes up a lie about a curse to scare the Gyptians away.

In one scene the movie set up: 1) the Gobblers (the first we hear of them in the show is in retrospect, Roger worrying AFTER Billy is taken) 2) Lyra’s pre-existing relationship with the Gyptians (not in the show), 3) Friendship with Billy Costa (not in the book or show) 4) Lyra’s ability to befriend and lead groups of people, especially kids, and 5) Lyra’s ability to lie impressively

By comparison, it takes until midway through 1x2 for TV!Lyra to tell her first lie, and even then it’s a paper-thin attempt. 

The show made Roger Lyra’s only friend. This artificially heightens the impact of Roger's death, but strips Lyra of her leadership qualities and ability to befriend anyone. 

Harry Potter fans talk about how Book!Harry is funnier and smarter than Film!Harry. They cut his best lines ('There's no need to call me sir, Professor') and made him blander and more passive. The same happened to Lyra.

Most importantly, Lyra is not allowed to lie for fun. She can't do anything 'naughty' without being scolded. This colours the few times Lyra does lie (e.g. to Mrs Coulter in 1x2) negatively and thus makes Lyra out to be more of a brat than a hero.

This is a problem with telling Northern Lights from an outside, 'adult' perspective- to most adults Lyra is a brat. Because we’re introduced to her from inside her head, we think she's great. It's only when we meet her through Will's eyes in The Subtle Knife and she's filthy, rude and half-starved that we realise Lyra bluffs her way through life and is actually pretty non-functional

Thorne prioritises grounded human drama over fantasy, and so his Lyra has her love of bears and witches swapped for familial angst. (and, in S2. angst over Roger). By exposing Mrs Coulter as her mother early, Thorne distracts TV!Lyra from Book!Lyra’s love of the North. The contrast between wonder and reality made NL's ending a definitive threshold between innocence and knowledge. Thorne showed his hand too early.

Similarly, TV!Lyra doesn’t have anywhere near as strong an admiration for Lord Asriel. She calls him out in 1x8 (‘call yourself a Father’), which Book!Lyra never would because she’s proud to be his child. From her perspective, at this point Asriel is the good parent.

TV!Lyra’s critique of Asriel feels like Thorne using her as a mouthpiece to voice his own, adult perspective on the situation. Because Lyra is already disappointed in Asriel, his betrayal in the finale isn’t as effective. Pullman saves the ‘you’re a terrible Father’ call-out for the 3rd book for a reason; Lyra’s naive hero-worship of Asriel in Northern Lights makes the fall from Innocence into Knowledge that Roger’s death represents more effective.  

So, on TV Lyra is tamer, angstier, more introverted, less intelligent, less fun and more serious. We're just constantly told she's important, even before we meet her.

MRS COULTER (AND LORD ASRIEL)

Mrs Coulter is the main character of the show. Not Lyra. Mrs Coulter was cast first, and Lyra was cast based on a chemistry test with Ruth Wilson. Coulter’s character is given lots of extra development, where the show actively strips Lyra of her layers.

To be clear, I have no problem with developing Mrs Coulter. She is a great character Ruth Wilson plays phenomenally. I do have a problem with the show fixating on her at the expense of other characters.

Lyra's feral-ness is given to her parents. Wilson and McAvoy are more passionate than in the books. This is fun to watch, but strips them of subtlety- you never get Book!Coulter's hypnotic allure from Wilson, she's openly nasty, even to random strangers (in 2x3 her dismissal of the woman at the hotel desk felt like a Disney villain). 

Compare how The Golden Compass (2007) introduced Mrs Coulter through Lyra’s eyes, with light, twinkling music and a sparkling dress. By contrast, before the show introduces Coulter it tells us she’s associated with the evil Magisterium plotting Asriel’s death- “Not a word to any of our mutual friends. Including her.” Then she’s introduced striding down a corridor to imposing ‘Bad Guy’ strings.

Making Mrs Coulter’s villainy so obvious so early makes Lyra look dumber for falling for it. It also wastes an interesting phase of her character arc. Coulter is rushed into being a ’conflicted evil mother’ in 2 episodes, and stays in that phase for the rest of the show so far. Character progression is minimised because she circles the same place.

It makes her one-note. It's a good note (so much of the positive online chatter is saphiccs worshiping Ruth Wilson) but the show also worships her to the point of hindrance- e.g. take a shot every time Coulter walks slow-motion down a corridor in 2x2

The problem isn’t the performances, but how prematurely they give the game away. Just like the mysteries around Bolvangar and Lyra’s parentage. Neither Coulter or Asriel have much chance to use their 'public' faces. 

This is part of a bigger pacing problem- instead of rolling plot points out gradually, Thorne will stick the solution in front of you early and then stall for time until it becomes relevant. Instead of building tension this builds frustration and makes the show feel like it's catching up to the audience. This also makes the characters less engaging. You've already shown Mrs Coulter is evil/Boreal is in our world/Asriel wants Roger. Why are you taking so long getting to the point?

PACING AND EDITING

This show takes forever to make its point badly.

Scenes in HDM tend to operate on one level- either 'Character Building,' 'Exposition,' or 'Plot Progression'.

E.g. Mary's introduction in 2x2. Book!Mary only listens to Lyra because she’s sleep and caffeine-deprived and desperate because her funding is being cut. But the show stripped that subtext out and created an extra scene of a colleague talking to Mary about funding. They removed emotional subtext to focus on exposition, and so the scene felt empty and flat.

In later episodes characters Mary’s sister and colleagues do treat her like a sleep-deprived wreck. But, just like Lyra’s lying, the show doesn’t establish these characteristics in her debut episode. It waits until later to retroactively tell us they were there. Mary’s colleague saying ‘What we’re dealing with here is the fact that you haven’t slept in weeks’ is as flimsy as Pan joking not lying to Mary will be hard for Lyra.

Rarely does a scene work on multiple levels, and if it does it's clunky- see the exposition dump about Daemon Separation in the middle of 2x2's Witch Trial.

He also splits plot progression into tiny doses, which destroys pacing. It's more satisfying to focus on one subplot advancing multiple stages than all of them shuffling forward half a step each episode.

Subplots would be more effective if all the scenes played in sequence. As it is, plotlines can’t build momentum and literal minutes are wasted using the same establishing shots every time we switch location.

The best-structured episodes of S1 are 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8. This is because they have the fewest subplots (incidentally these episodes have least Boreal in them) and so the main plot isn’t diluted by constantly cutting away to Mrs Coulter sniffing Lyra’s coat or Will watching a man in a car through his window, before cutting back again. 

The best-written episode so far is 2x5. The Scholar. Tellingly, it’s the only episode Thorne doesn’t have even a co-writing credit on. 2x5 is well-paced, its dialogue is more naturalistic, it’s more focused, it even has time for moments of whimsy (Monkey with a seatbelt, Mrs Coulter with jeans, Lyra and Will whispering) that don’t detract from the story.

Structurally, 2x5  works because A) it benches Lee’s plotline. B) The Witches and Magisterium are relegated to a scene each. And C) the Coulter/Boreal and Lyra/Will subplots move towards the same goal. Not only that, but when we check in on Mary’s subplot it’s through Mrs Coulter’s eyes and directly dovetails into the  main action of the episode.

2x5 has a lovely sense of narrative cohesion because it has the confidence to sit with one set of characters for longer than two scenes at a time.

HDM also does this thing where it will have a scene with plot A where characters do or talk about something, cut away to plot B for a scene, then cut back to plot A where the characters talk about what happened in their last scene and painstakingly explain how they feel about it and why

Example: Pan talking to Will in 2x7 while Lyra pretends to be asleep. This scene is from the 3rd book, and is left to breathe for many chapters before Lyra brings it up. In the show after the Will/Pan scene they cut away to another scene, then cut back and Lyra instantly talks about it.

There’s the same problem in 2x5: After escaping Mrs Coulter, Lyra spells out how she feels about acting like her

The show never leaves room for implication, never lets us draw our own conclusions before explaining what it meant and how the characters feel about it immediately afterwards. The audience are made passive in their engagement with the characters as well as the world    

LORD BOREAL, JOHN PARRY AND DIMINISHING RETURNS

At first, Boreal’s subplot in S1 felt bold and inspired. The twist of his identity in The Subtle Knife would've been hard to pull off onscreen anyway. As a kid I struggled to get past Will's opening chapter of TSK and I have friends who were the same. Introducing Will in S1 and developing him alongside Lyra was a great idea.

I loved developing Elaine Parry and Boreal into present, active characters. But the subplot was introduced too early and moved too slowly, bogging down the season.

In 1x2 Boreal crosses. In 1x3 we learn who he's looking for. In 1x5 we meet Will. In 1x7 the burglary. 1 episode worth of plot is chopped up and fed to us piecemeal across many. Boreal literally stalls for two episodes before the burglary- there are random 30 second shots of him sitting in a car watching John Parry on YouTube (videos we’d already seen) completely isolated from any other scenes in the episode

By the time we get to S2 we've had 2 seasons of extended material building up Boreal, so when he just dies like in the books it's anticlimactic. The show frontloads his subplot with meaning without expanding on its payoff, so the whole thing fizzles out. 

Giving Boreal, the secondary villain in literally every episode, the same death as a background character in about 5 scenes in the novels feels cheap. It doesn’t help that, after 2x5 built the tension between Coulter and Boreal so well, as soon as Thorne is passed the baton in 2x6 he does little to maintain that momentum. Again, because the subplot is crosscut with everything else the characters hang in limbo until Coulter decides to kill him.

I’ve been watching non-book readers react to the show, and several were underwhelmed by Boreal’s quick, unceremonious end. 

Similarly, the show builds up John Parry from 1x3 instead of just the second book. Book!John’s death is an anticlimax but feels narratively justified. In the show, we’ve spent so much extra time talking about him and then being with him (without developing his character beyond what’s in the novels- Pullman even outlined John’s backstory in The Subtle Knife’s appendix. How hard would it be to add a flashback or two?) that when John does nothing in the show and then dies (he doesn’t even heal Will’s fingers like in the book- only tell him to find Asriel, which the angels Baruch and Balthamos do anyway) it doesn’t feel like a clever, tragic subversion of our expectations, it feels like a waste that actively cheapens the audience’s investment.

TL;DR giving supporting characters way more screentime than they need only, to give their deaths the same weight the books did after far less build up makes huge chunks of the show feel less important than they were presented to be. 

FRUSTRATINGLY LIMITED EXPANSION AND NOVELLISTIC STORYTELLING

Thorne is unwilling to meaningfully develop or expand characters and subplots to fit a visual medium. He introduces a plot-point, invents unnecessary padding around it, circles it for an hour, then moves on.

Pullman’s books are driven by internal monologue and big, complex theological concepts like Daemons and Dust. Instead of finding engaging, dynamic ways to dramatise these concepts through the actions of characters or additions to the plot, Thorne turns Pullman’s internal monologue into dialogue and has the characters explain them to the audience

The novels’ perspective on its characters is narrow, first because Northern Lights is told only from Lyra’s POV, and second because Pullman’s writing is plot-driven, not character-driven. Characters are vessels for the plot and themes he wants to explore.

This is a fine way of writing novels. When adapting the books into a longform drama, Thorne decentralised Lyra’s perspective from the start, and HDM S1 uses the same multi-perspective structure that The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass do, following not only Lyra but the Gyptians, Mrs Coulter, Boreal, Will and Elaine etc

However, these other perspectives are limited. We never get any impression of backstory or motivation beyond the present moment. Many times I’ve seen non-book readers confused or frustrated by vague or non-existent character motivations.

For example, S1 spends a lot of time focused on Ma Costa’s grief over Billy’s disappearance, but we never see why she’s sad, because we never saw her interact with Billy.

Compare this to another show about a frantic mother and older brother looking for a missing boy. Stranger Things uses only two flashbacks to show us Will Byers’ relationships with his family: 1) When Joyce Byers looks in his Fort she remembers visiting Will there. 2) The Clash playing on the radio reminds Jonathan Byers of introducing Will to the song.

In His Dark Materials we never see the Costas as a happy family- 1x1’s Gyptian ceremony focuses on Tony and Daemon-exposition. Billy never speaks to his mum or brother in the show 

Instead we have Ma Costa’s empty grief. The audience has to do the work (the bad kind) imagining what she’s lost. Instead of seeing Billy, it’s just repeated again and again that they will get the children back.

If we’re being derivative, HDM had the chance to segway into a Billy flashback when John Faa brings one of his belongings back from a Gobbler safehouse in 1x2. This is a perfect The Clash/Fort Byers-type trigger. It doesn’t have to be long- the Clash flashback lasted 1:27, the Fort Byers one 55 seconds. Just do something.

1x3 beats into us that Mrs Coulter is nuts without explaining why. Lots of build-up for a single plot-point. Then we're told Mrs Coulter's origin, not shown. This is a TV show. Swap Boreal's scenes for flashbacks of Coulter and Asriel's affair. Then, when Ma Costa tells Lyra the truth, show the fight between Edward Coulter and Asriel.

To be clear, Thorne's additions aren’t fundamentally bad. For example, Will boxing sets up his struggle with violence. But it's wasted. The burglary/murder in 1x7 fell flat because of bad editing, but the show never uses its visual medium to show Will's 'violent side'- no change in camera angle, focus, or sound design, nothing. It’s just a thing that’s there, unsupported by the visual language of the show

The Magisterium scenes in 2x2 were interesting. We just didn't need 5 of them; their point could be made far more succinctly.

In 2x6 there is a minute-long scene of Mary reading the I Ching. Later, there is another scene of Angelica watching Mary sitting somewhere different, doing the SAME THING, and she sees an Angel. Why split these up? It’s not like either the I Ching or the Angels are being introduced here. Give the scene multiple layers.

Thorne either takes good character moments from the books (Lyra/Will in 2x1) or uses heavy-handed exposition that reiterates the same point multiple times. This hobbles the Witches (their dialogue in 2x1, 2 and 3 literally rephrases the same sentiment about protecting Lyra without doing anything). Even character development- see Lee monologuing his and Mrs Coulter's childhood trauma in specific detail in 2x3

This is another example of Thorne adding something, but instead of integrating it into the dramatic action and showing us, it’s just talked about. What’s the point of adding big plot points if you don’t dramatise them in your dramatic, visual medium? In 2x8, Lee offhandedly mentions playing Alamo Gulch as a kid.

I’m literally screaming, Jack, why the flying fuck wasn’t there a flashback of young Lee and Hester playing Alamo Gulch and being stopped by his abusive dad? It’s not like you care about pacing with the amount of dead air in these episodes, even when S2’s run 10 minutes shorter than S1’s. Lee was even asleep at the beginning of 2x3, Jack! He could’ve woken from a nightmare about his childhood! It’s a little lazy, but better than nothing.

There’s a similar missed opportunity making Dr Lanselius a Witchling. If this idea had been introduced with the character in 1x4, it would’ve opened up so many storytelling possibilities. Linking to Fader Coram’s own dead witchling son. It could’ve given us that much-needed perspective on Witch culture. Imagine Lanselius’ bittersweet meeting with his ageless mother, who gave him up when he reached manhood. Then, when the Magisterium bombs the Witches in 2x2, Lanselius’ mother dies so it means something.

Instead it’s only used to facilitate an awkward exposition dump in the middle of a trial.

The point of this fanfic-y ramble is to illustrate my frustration with the additions; If Thorne had committed and meaningfully expanded and interwoven them with the source material, they could’ve strengthened its weakest aspect (the characters). But instead he stays committed to novelistic storytelling techniques of monologue and two people standing in a room talking at each other

(Seriously, count the number of scenes that are just two people standing in a room or corridor talking to each other. No interesting staging, the characters aren’t doing anything else while talking. They. Just. Stand.) 

SEASON 2 IMPROVEMENTS

S2 improved some things- Lyra's characterisation was more book-accurate, her dynamic with Will was wonderful. Citigazze looked incredible. LMM won lots of book fans over as Lee. Mary was brilliantly cast. Now there are less Daemons, they're better characterised- Pan gets way more to do now and Hester had some lovely moments. 

I genuinely believe 2x1, 2x3, 2x4 and 2x5 are the best HDM has been. 

But new problems arose. The Subtle Knife lost the central, easy to understand drive of Northern Lights (finding the missing kids) for lots of smaller quests. As a result, everyone spends the first two episodes of S2 waiting for the plot to arrive. The big inciting incident of Lyra’s plotline is the theft of the alethiometer, which doesn’t happen until 2x3. Similarly, Lee doesn’t search for John until 2x3. Mrs Coulter doesn’t go looking for Lyra until 2x3. 

On top of missing a unifying dramatic drive, the characters now being split across 3 worlds, instead of the 1+a bit of ours in S1, means the pacing/crosscutting problems (long establishing shots, repetition of information, undercutting momentum) are even worse. The narrative feels scattered and incohesive.   

These flaws are inherent to the source  material and are not the show’s fault, but neither does it do much to counterbalance or address them, and the flaws of the show combine with the difficulties of TSK as source material and make each other worse.

A lot of this has been entitled fanboy bitching, but you can't deny the show is in a bad place ratings-wise. It’s gone from the most watched new British show in 5 years to the S2 premiere having a smaller audience than the lowest-rated episode of Doctor Who Series 12. For comparison, DW's current cast and showrunner are the most unpopular since the 80s, some are actively boycotting it, it took a year-long break between series 11 and 12, had its second-worst average ratings since 2005, and costs a fifth of what HDM does to make. And it's still being watched by more people.

Critical consensus fluctuates wildly. Most laymen call the show slow and boring. The show is simultaneously too niche and self-absorbed to attract a wide audience and gets just enough wrong to aggravate lots of fans.

I’m honestly unsure if S3 will get the same budget. I want it to, if only because of my investment in the books. Considering S2 started filming immediately after S1 aired, I think they've had a lot more time to process and apply critique for S3. On the plus side, there's so much plot in The Amber Spyglass it would be hard to have the same pacing problems. But also so many new concepts that I dread the exposition dumps.

#His Dark Materials #his dark materials hbo #jack thorne #mrs coulter #ruth wilson #lyra silvertongue #philip pullman #northern lights #the subtle knife #the amber spyglass #the golden compass #hdm #hdm spoilers #bbc #lin-manuel miranda #daemon #writing #book adaptation #hbo #dafne keen #james macavoy #lord asriel #pantalaimon #lee scoresby

[rocknvaughn]

New Colin Morgan Interview with Edge Media Network about Benjamin - UPDATED

I am reblogging this because, after the author was made aware of an error in the posting of his article (if anyone clicked through to read it on the site, there was a whole question and answer that was repeated), the error was corrected and another three questions and answers were added! I am correcting it here, but they were very interesting, so I suggest you read the full article again!

I shall post the link at the bottom, but I wanted to type it out so that non-English speakers could more easily translate it. (This article was listed in their “Gay News” section of the site, hence the focus on the gay roles.)

British Actor Colin Morgan: How the Queerly Idiosyncratic ‘Benjamin’ Spoke to Him

by Frank J. Avelia

In writer-director Simon Amstell’s sweet, idiosyncratic, semi-autobiographical comedy, “Benjamin,” Colin Morgan plays the titular character, an insecure filmmaker trying to resuscitate his waning career (at least it’s waning in his mind) after one major cine-indie success. Benjamin is also doing his best to navigate a new relationship with a young French musician (Phenix Brossard of “Departures”).

Thanks to the truly endearing, multifaceted talents of Morgan, Benjamin feels like an authentic creation--one that most audiences can empathize with. Sure, he’s peculiar, has a legion of self-esteem issues and an almost exasperating need for acceptance as well as an inconvenient talent to self-sabotage the good in his life. But who can’t relate to some or all of that?

“Benjamin” is one of the better queer-themed films to come out in recent years, in large part because it eschews emphasis on the queer nature of the story. Instead, the film is a fascinating character study with Morgan slowly revealing layers and unpacking Benjamin’s emotional baggage.

Morgan is a major talent who has been appearing across mediums in Britain for many years. His London theatre debut was in DBC Pierre’s satire, “Vernon God Little” (2007), followed by the stage adaptation of Pedro Almodovar’s “All About My Mother” (2007), opposite Diana Rigg. Numerous and eclectic stage work followed (right up until the Corona shutdown) including Pedro Miguel Rozo’s “Our Private Life” (2011), where he played a bipolar gay, Jez Butterworth’s dark comedy, “Mojo” (2013), Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” opposite Sally Field (2019), and Caryl Churchill’s “A Number” (2020), to name a few.

His TV work includes, “Merlin” (playing the wizard himself), “Humans” and most recently, in a very memorable episode of “The Crown”. Onscreen he can be seen in “Testament of Youth”, “Legend” with Tom Hardy, “Snow White and the Huntsman” and Rupert Everett’s take on Oscar Wilde, “The Happy Prince.”

He’s played a host of gay roles in the past on stage, screen and TV.

EDGE recently interviewed the star of “Benjamin” about the new film and his career.

Why Benjamin?

EDGE: What drew you to this project and were you part of its development?

Colin Morgan: It’s always the strength of the script for me on any project and Simon’s script was just so well observed, he managed to combine humor and poignancy in delicate measure and when I first read it I found myself being both tickled and touched. Then reading it again and from “the actor” POV... I knew it would be a real challenge and uncharted territory for me to explore. I auditioned for Simon and we tried it in different ways and then when I was lucky enough for Simon to want me on board, we began to work through the script together, because it was clear that this was going to be a very close working relationship... it was important for the level of trust to be high.

EDGE: I appreciated that this was a queer love story where the character’s queerness wasn’t the main focus. Was that also part of the allure of the project?

CM: I think Benjamin’s sexuality is just quite naturally who he is and therefore that’s a given, we’re on his journey to find meaning and love and there’s certainly a freshness to what Simon has written in not making sexuality the main focus.

Great chemistry

EDGE: Can you speak a but about the process involved in working with Amstell on the character and his journey?

CM: Simon and me worked very closely over a period of weeks, at that time prior to shooting I was doing a theatre project not far from where he lived so I would go to him and rehearse and discuss through the whole script all afternoon before going to do the show that night, so that worked out well. It’s so personal to Simon, and to have had him as my guide and source throughout was fantastic because I could ask him all the questions and he could be the best barometer for the truth of the character; a rare opportunity for an actor and one that was so essential for building Benjamin. But ultimately Simon wanted Benjamin to emerge from somewhere inside me and he gave me so much freedom to do that also.

EDGE: You had great chemistry with Phenix Brossard. Did you get to rehearse?

CM: Phenix is fantastic, Simon and me did chemistry reads with a few different actors who were all very good but Phenix just had an extra something we felt Benjamin would be drawn to. We did a little bit of rehearsal together but because it was a relationship that was trying to find itself there was a lot of room for spontaneity and uncertainty between us, which is what the allure of a new relationship is all about, the excitement and fear.

Liberating process

EDGE: Did your process meld with Amstell’s?

CM: I’ve said this a lot before and it’s true, Simon is one of the best directors I’ve worked with. Everything he created before shooting and then maintained on set was special. We always did improvised versions of most scenes and always the scripted version too. It was such a creative and liberating process. That is exactly the way I love to work. And for a director to maintain that level of bravery, trust and experimental play throughout the whole shoot stands as one of the most rewarding shooting experiences I’ve had.

EDGE: When I spoke with Rupert Everett about “The Happy Prince,” he very proudly boasted about his ensemble. Can you speak about working with Rupert as he balanced wearing a number of creative hats?

CM: Again, this was an extremely rewarding project to work on and quite a similar relationship as with Simon in the respect that Rupert was the writer/director and Oscar Wilde is so personal to him. And then we also had many scenes together in front of the camera, so Rupert and me had a real 3D experience together. It was a long time in the making. I was on board, I think, two years before we actually got shooting so I had a lot of time to work with Rupert and rehearse. He really inspired me, watching him wear all the different creative hats, such a challenging and difficult job/jobs to achieve and he really excelled--plus we just got on very well.

Playing queer roles

EDGE: You haven’t shied away from playing queer roles. Do you think we’re moving closer to a time when a person’s sexual orientation is of little consequence to the stories being told, or should it always matter? Or perhaps we need to continue to evolve as a culture for it to matter less or not at all...

CM: That’s a hard question to answer, I think certainly the shift in people’s attitudes has changed considerably for the better compared to 40 years ago, but there will always be resistance to change and acceptance from individuals and groups whether it be sexuality, religion, race, gender--we’re seeing it every day.

Evolution is, of course, inevitable, but if we can learn from the past as we evolve that would be the ideal. Unfortunately, we rarely do learn, and history repeats itself.

EDGE: You were featured prominently in one of my favorite episodes of the “The Crown” (”Bubbikins”) as the fictional journo John Armstrong. Can you speak a bit about working on the show and with the great Jane Lapotaire?

CM: I had an exceptionally good time working on “The Crown.” Director Benjamin Caron, especially, was so prepared and creative, and made the whole experience so welcoming and inclusive. It was an incredibly happy set, with extremely talented people in every department, and I admired the ethos of the whole production and have no doubt that’s a huge ingredient to its success, along with Peter Morgan’s incredible writing.

I was also a fan of the show, and it was an honor to be part of the third season. And I can’t say enough amazing things about Jane Lapotaire. We talked a lot in between filming, and I relished every moment of that.

EDGE: You’ve done a ton of stage work. Do you have a favorite role you’ve played onstage?

CM: I’ve been so lucky with the theatre work I’ve done, to work with such special directors and work in wonderful theatres in London. I’ve worked at the Old Vic and The Young Vic twice each, and they’re always special to me. Ian Rickson is a liberating director, who I love. It’s hard to pick a favorite, because the roles have all been so different and presented different challenges, but, most recently, doing “A Number,” playing three different characters alongside Roger Allam and directed by Polly Findlay, was a really treasured experience, and I never tired of doing that show, every performance was challenging as it was.

Miss the rehearsal room

EDGE: You were doing “A Number” earlier this year. Did you finish your run before the lockdown/shutdown?

CM: Just about! We had our final performance, and then lockdown happened days later. I feel very sorry for the productions that didn’t get the sense of completion of finishing a run. I mean, finishing a full run leaves you in a kind of post-show void anyway, even though you know it’s coming, so to not know it’s coming and have it severed must be even more of a void.

Memories of performing just months ago seem like such an unattainable thing in this COVID world right now. I can’t tell you how much I’m hoping we get back to some semblance of live performance.

EDGE: What was it like to appear onstage opposite Dame Diana Rigg in “All About My Mother?”

CM: Well, I think “iconic” is an apt word for both the experience of working with Diana and the lady herself. In between scenes backstage we used to talk a lot and we got told off for talking too loudly, so Diana began to teach me sign language and we would spell out words to each other, maybe only getting a couple of sentences to each other before she was due on stage and I had to get into position for my next entrance-- we did a radio play together two years ago and she remembered, she said, “Do you remember A-E-I-O-U?” signing out the letters with her hands.

EDGE: None of us knows the future in terms of the pandemic and when we might return to making theatre. I’m a playwright myself and find it all supremely frustrating but I’m trying to remain hopeful! Where are you right now in terms of the standstill we are in and what the future might hold?

CM: Yes, I’m so worried for theatre. It’s a devastating blow. I’m sure as a playwright, you know that the creative spirit in individuals hasn’t been diminished by this virus. People are creating important art in this crisis but we need the platforms to present it and bring people to some light again out of this really scary period, but it needs to be safe and it’s a worrying time. The virtual theatre approach must be looked at I think. We need to experiment and find new paths at least for the time being. I’m involved in developing some things right now and how we can work on things in both an isolated and collaborative way. It’s entirely counterintuitive to what the family-feel and close bond of a group in a rehearsal room is like-- I miss the rehearsal room so much!-- but we can’t sit still, we must create and we must act.

What’s in a role?

EDGE: Looking back on the great success of “Merlin,” what are your takeaways from that experience?

CM: Some of the most treasured memories of my life will forever be connected to “Merlin,” the cast, crew, production, everyone! The invaluable training of being in front of a camera every day! The chance to inhabit a character and live with him for five seasons! There’s too much to list and words probably won’t do justice anyway, but I’m truly grateful for everything the show gave me.

EDGE: How do you select the roles you play?

CM: I guess they select me in a way. I can’t play a role unless it speaks to me and provokes me in some way, but ultimately it’s the characters that I have a fear about playing, not knowing how I’m going to enter into the process of living them, when I don’t have all the answers it’s a good indicator of a character I must play. If I have all the answers, there’s less scope for exploration and discovery which isn’t as interesting for me.

Link here

#colin morgan #interview #14 july 2020 #edgemedianetwork #benjamin #transcription

[alindae-anne]

What Makes a Book?

I want to take a break from my novel and dive into a history lesson of books themselves. Why? Well first of all, I will be honest, this blog is for an assignment. But also because the way books have evolved over the last 5,000+ years is fascinating!

Of course no one ever really thinks about THE book, just the fact that the story within its pages--the mystery, the romance, whatever they happen to be enjoying--is a great read (or maybe not so great), but have they ever wondered what materials the book is made from? Who invented it? How the book has become one of the most common and most used items of all time?

No. Of course they didn't wonder any of those things. And if they did, they probably didn't take the time to research any of these burning questions, either.

How great, then, that I wrote this post?! Today is your lucky day! (Also, it is a good thing that Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters, decided to write a whole book about it (1).) I'm going to use the pages of a classic tale to explain some cool things you probably never noticed while reading a book before.

Gulliver’s Travels was originally published in London in 1726 by Benjamin Motte. The author, Jonathan Swift, used it to satirize London society and culture, poking holes at the social hierarchies and systems, basically making out everyone living in the 18th century to be fools--but mostly the wealthy and those who were obsessed with scientific progression (2). If you have not read it, I highly encourage adding it to your reading list, or at the very least there is a 2010 movie, featuring Jack Black as Gulliver, that you could watch. (It’s Jack Black, okay?)

This 2 page spread of Gulliver's Travels pictured above is actually found in The Franklin Library edition from Franklin Center, Pennsylvania, published in 1979. This is the first printing of this edition, and its pages, the way it is printed, and the way it is bound and presented, are all features of the modern 20-21st century book, plus some extra bells and whistles. The most interesting qualities come from the publishers themselves who specifically design their books to be very snazzy--meant for collectors’ editions! They include different kinds of leather binding, exclusive illustrations, and may be signed or part of a particular series specific to a certain author or genre (3). This makes the books published here very valuable and sought after.

Gulliver’s Travels is hardcover. Specifically, “fine leather in boards.” This means the spine and front and back boards (or cover) of the book are bound in leather. The leather is fine and and delicate and able to be decorated and engraved upon.4 Above you can see how fancy it looks with the gilt gold engravements. Even its pages are gilt!

This picture shows more clearly the binding, and of course the spine, which is “hubbed,” or ridged, for added texture.

At this point you may have notice that this version is much different than the original published in 1726. That is because over time, the materials involved in making books have changed slightly or the processes have become more efficient or cost worthy, etc. Either way, the anatomy of the book has not wavered. Keith Houston has dissected the book into certain components and we can see them in each book we read:

I have attempted to label it as best as I can, so hopefully you can follow along:

Chapter Number

a) this seems to be a description, more or less of the chapter, or the Chapter Title. b) “A Voyage to Lilliput” seems much more title-like to me, although this is technically called the “Recto Running Head.” The recto running head is a condensed or abbreviated chapter title, repeating on every right-side page to the end of the chapter.

Drop Cap. This would be the first letter of the first word of a chapter, which is usually exaggerated or embellished in some way.

Opener Text

Head Margin - the space between the top of the page and text

Foot Margin - the space between the bottom of the page and text

Folio - page number

It has taken quite a while for books to become so sophisticated. Because it was published in 1726, Gulliver's Travels is technically what you could call "modern" in terms of how long ago books began their journey to what they are today, but even between 1726 and 1979 the quality has improved. This edition published by Franklin Library is a perfect model for the modern book of today.

The 2 page spread we analyzed above is made from paper. But books were not always made with paper, or even in the book form, bound with anything at all, and they were not printed either. They were written by hand on papyrus.

Papyrus was the first material used as "paper" beginning in Egypt. The reeds were stripped, strung side by side and pressed together. Papyrus was durable and sturdy, and the water of the Nile was abundant in aluminum sulfate, which brightened it so that writing and scribbles could be seen better. There is no particular origin of when Papyrus had first been invented but it must have been around the end of the 4th millenium BCE (Houston 4).  

Parchment is made from animal skin that has been soaked, scrubbed, dried, and stretched for days and days, creating a more flexible, yet still durable, material for writing. It was also thinner and could be made "cleaner" and brighter by chemical means. Religion heavily influenced its distribution; some parchment use was literally banned because the type of animal skin used to make it wasn't considered "holy" or "good." For example, the lamb or a calf was acceptable, but how dare you use parchment made from goat skin? What is wrong with you?

Besides the fact that parchment is kind of gross if you think about it (although to be fair, you can’t be too choosy in times right before the common era), it was also expensive to keep certain cattle only for paper making, and the reliability of having new cattle at the time you may need more paper was not very high.

Paper was first introduced in China. It is made from bits of cloth and rags soaked in water, and after breaking down into pulp, strained through a wire grate and pressed to dry. Fun fact-- the Rhar West Art Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin has held classes showing how to make paper using this exact process.

There is a trend here: the materials used to make paper (and papyrus and parchment before it) become scarce or too expensive, or they are just not “good enough.” People want their paper thin and smooth, but still strong and durable; crisp and bright, but still able to last years and years without crumbling. There have been times that processes used to ensure these preferred qualities of paper included using chemicals that ended up negatively affecting some other quality. For example, the paper would be white as snow, yet the chemical that did this broke down the natural adhesives which kept the paper intact.

Have you heard that paper grows on trees? Well, that is partly true since after rags and cloths were nowhere to be found (unless people were about to start donating the shirts off their backs), wood pulp has now since been used... the higher the demand for paper, the greater demand for those materials used for its creation. 

This brings us to printing side of things. The first ways of printing weren’t of how we think of it now. Even before papyrus, people were still writing and making inscriptions on pretty much anything they could get their hands on. The earliest forms of writing were rather indentations or markings on clay tablets. Found across the Middle East, it is a cuneiform script of the Sumerian people from 3300 BCE (Houston 79).

Similarly, the Egyptians were also keen on developing their own writing system which today we recognize as hieroglyphs. A lot of these were found carved on the walls of tombs but also began to be used on papyrus in 2600 BCE (Houston 82-83).

The Egyptians celebrated their scribes and believed those who wrote with brush and ink on papyrus to be channeling power--that it was a gift from the gods--”wielded with respect and humility” (Houston 87). The hieroglyphs not only showed the intention of the writer, visually, but often the picture would be associated with or connected to certain sounds which emerged more formal use of letters as time went on.

The alphabet we use today can be traced back to the Phoenician alphabet (used by the Egyptians) which had evolved into the Greek and then Roman alphabets (Houston 91-92). At this point in time, scribes were using water based ink which was fine for papyrus, but during the transition to parchment they realized that ink smudges quite a bit. This led to the creation of iron gall ink that would darken and adhere to the parchment as it dried due to its chemical makeup in contact with oxygen in the air.

Jump ahead to 1400s and we are with Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press! One thing Keith Houston make sure to mention is that although Gutenberg invented the printing press itself, to help moveable type and mass printing, the idea of printing had not been new. Clay pieces used as stamps and similar objects had been excavated and dated back thousands of years before the clay inscribed cuneiform tablets were made. And a primitive version of a sort of printing press is mentioned being made by a man named Bi Sheng during the reign of Qingli from 1041-1048 AD (Houston 110). Obviously nothing great came from it, most likely because he was of unofficial position. Even so, movable type was still possible, although painstakingly slow with wooden blocks used as stamps. This was common for the next few hundred years in China.

Even though Gutenberg's press completely revolutionized the transmission of knowledge, it was still quite slow in comparison to the versions which came after, only being able to print 600 characters a day (Houston 118). From Gutenberg's printing press came other types of presses that improved the speed or efficiency of movable type immensely. These all came after the original publication of Guliver's Travels, starting in the early 1800s with the Columbian press, eventually the Linotype, and then lack of precision called for the Monotype, which could produce 140 wpm (Houston 149).

The 2 page spread above then, could possibly have been printed by the Linotype, but most likely, however, the Monotype, which is the more accurate of the two. Another possibility could be "sophisticated photographic and 'lithographic' techniques" or "'phototypsetting'" (Houston 151). Houston mentions that the printing press age has died and now faces a digital future.

I'm at my 10 image limit which means I better wrap this up with some interesting facts about bookbinding. On BIBLIO.com I was trying to see exactly what "fine leather in boards" meant which is apparently how Gulliver's Travels is bound. I didn't find any phrase that matched, but from my understanding, the leather is very supple and pliable, which is why it was able to be gilt with gold, and it was able to form nicely to the hubbing on the spine.

The website also explains that the first "book binding" was technically just putting the pieces of paper or parchment together and pressing them between two boards. Literally. Like just setting them on a board and putting another board on top of that. Eventually leather was introduced, first as a cord wrapped around the book to keep the boards in place. As time progressed, the practice was improved and perfected so it was less crude. This involved the creation of the "spine" where the pages meet together and can therefore open and close in a v shape without flying away.

This website helped explain some of the other embellishments and extra flair that can be added to a book's binding. It mostly goes over leather binding which is from most animal skin but there is a unique leather bound book that can be bound with seal skin. Some of the books on the website are so expensive because of the materials they are bound with and the effects that have been created in the cover, for example, Benjamin Franklin's observations on electricity, which has had acid added to the page, discoloring it for a lightning strike effect, and includes a key to represent his famous experiment.

Gulliver's Travels, although not quite so fancy, is still a very beautifully bound book with decorated endpapers, meaning the inside cover is laden with designed paper rather than boring white or some other neutral color.

I hope you found this journey of the book as interesting and as exciting as I did while writing this post! You must really love books because even my attention span isn't this long. I will admit I took at least 3 different breaks.

I'm back to my novel for now, thanks for listening😎

Bibliography

Houston, Keith--Author of Shady Characters, which I used extensively in my TikTok “history of punctuation” project--also wrote -> The BOOK - a cover-to-cover exploration of the most powerful object of our time, 2016.

British Library Website -> works -> “Gulliver’s Travels overview”

Masters, Kristin. “Franklin Library Editions: Ideal for Book Collectors?” Books Tell You Why, 2017 (blog).

BIBLIO.com -> “Leather Binding Terminology and Techniques”

#bookbinding #papermaking #printing #book history #keith houston

[hideawayintheimaginationworld]

Hello Freddy and Handeemen Friends Chapter 1

Another big day of filming has officially come to a close for those who worked at the studio where a popular kids show named Mortimer’s Handeemen was filmed. The show had a cast of four puppets teaching kids and engaging them in the segments, it would film episodes over six days a week for about five hours per day with lunch breaks and “staged” rehearsals happening in between.

Mortimer himself was very aware of things going on, he was capable of his own thoughts and expressing his feelings like the other puppets who had evolved from being operated by puppeteer to being fully independent and going about on their own accord, just as long as they listen to their creator Owen Gubberson, which was an agreeable enough condition.

Mortimer in between filming and rehearsals liked reading the paper, that why if he went to the front reception and couldn’t find the paper where it should be on the desk, he would get irritated. Today such hasn't happen so he was happily reading the newspaper while having tea with milk and sugar.

He had come into the annual six month TV reviews in the kids category he saw his own show was now rating second below a show called Freddy Fazbear and Friends. He was annoyed, he had seen the name before, from what he understood and heard, the show was about four friends who were different animal types like a bear, bunny, chicken and fox, they had unique adventures about their world and the human world.

He didn’t quite know how Freddy and Friends had suddenly become so much better than his show, it was educational too but not exactly as entertaining, maybe because they had more merchandise than them, and they had a big friendly bear, that seemed to fascinate kids, despite Mortimer knew bears in reality were actually quite vicious and should never be approached in the wild.

Maybe a word with Owen wasn’t out of order, maybe he could suggest an idea to ensure kids were watching his show and not Freddy and Friends.

Owen was often busy and finding a spare minute to talk to him wasn’t easy, he was almost always writing scripts, ideas and talking to other cast members. Usually he would only have a few minutes in between tasks he was doing to be able to have a short conversation.

“Greeting Owen! Could I have a moment with you to have a word with you alone?” Mortimer asked him.

“Well of course, what is on your mind Mortimer?”

“It’s come to many attention that-”

“Excuse me Mr. Gubberson?” Mortimer saw a female human in the doorway, he knew she worked at the front reception as he would see her every morning at the desk answering the phone when it rang and even handing the paper to Mortimer, “You have a phone call from Henry Emily, said it's about the concept you said, he said he can only speak to you now due to the recording schedule,”

“Oh shoot, sorry Mortimer, this phone call is important, I'll get back to you once I'm off the phone,” Owen spoke.

“It's fine to attend to your business!” Mortimer understood perfectly well why the phone call was important. Any phone call Owen needed to answer was very important due to the schedule. Owen walked away and the woman vanished from the doorway.

So whilst waiting for Owen to conclude his phone call, Mortimer went to see what Riley Ruckus was setting up in the science experiment set.

Owen walked pass all the sets and entered his small office which was situated at the back of the building. The room had blue prints and episode cards all over the walls, and a desk full of post it notes he had written, all ranged from ideas of episodes to things he needed to do like “Talk to Riley about allowing her to walk Roscoe around the studio”. On the desk was a corded telephone, he lifted up the receiver and spoke, “Front Reception please transfer my current call to this one,”

“One moment Mr. Gubberson” The person on the other end replied.

“Hello?”

“Hello Henry” Owen replied

“Owen! I do apologise for not being able to get back to you until now, having twin kids and running my own television show is hectic!” The voice on the other end replied.

“How are your children anyway?” Owen inquired just being generally curious, he had no interest in being a parent himself but he saw what joy it brought to other people.

“Good… I mean I do lose sleep but they're normal kids….. So I thought about our cooperation!” Henry spoke.

Owen was surprised, “You did…..? Forgive me, I thought you forgot….”

“Like I said twin children and a show, I have barely no time on my plate! Anyway, my wife has the in-laws to help her and we can get the crew set up by tomorrow! We're just putting the final touches on the next episode!”

“So…. We can do the friendship day special?” Owen asked.

“Of course! I think the kids will love it! Two different shows coming together and doing all sorts of wonderful friendly activities!” Owen sensed, as he knew Henry quite well, that he was smiling.

“Really? We can do it here?”

“We'll all be there on Saturday! So everyone can get acquainted! I look forward to it Owen!”

“Me too! I'll see you on Saturday!”

“Goodbye!” Henry ended with a cheerful tone that suggested he was indeed beaming from ear to ear. Owen put down the phone, he himself was quite happy, this could bring a lot of attention, but then realised he needed to address the puppets about this. Only him and Henry knew about this idea as far as he knew, maybe Henry already told them what exactly would be happening.

Riley was showing Mortimer how she had invented a cute sock puppet rat that could glow in the dark that would help kids who were afraid of the dark. Riley always came up with such ingenious concepts that amazed Mortimer, and she had such an indescribable passion for it, she'd ramble for hours without taking a single breath if she wanted to. Owen walked into the set where Riley's lab was set up, and saw the design she drew up on chalk board, he took a minute to look at all the writing Riley had placed on the chalk board and nodded.

“Are you interested?” Riley inquired noticing his attention being on the design.

“It’s simple and cute,” Agreeing with what Mortimer was saying about it, “I see the concept you're creating, I need to have a word with you two,” Owen said.

“Should Roscoe stay?” Riley asked gesturing to her large dog, Roscoe was asleep on the ground, curled up near the heater, one of his favourite place to sleep at any given time.

“He can come if he wants,” Owen responded walking out the set, Mortimer and Riley followed.

“Nick Nack! Daisy! Can you come here for a minute?” He yelled in the general direction of their dressing rooms.

Nick had appeared from his room, holding a paint brush, obviously he was in the middle of painting, whereas Daisy just appeared from her room humming a little tune. All stood in front of him, waiting for what he’d say, so Owen finally spoke, “So you know how we always so something special for Friendship day?”

“Of course!” Mortimer's favourite episodes were when they did Friendship day specials, so many interesting storylines and many friendships could be created between the kids in the episodes, better than Christmas. Friendship was important to every child.

“Well I did something really good, have you heard about Freddy and Friends?”

“Yes and I was going to inform you that they're ranking better according to the summary of the last six months,” Mortimer had finally told him what he read.

Owen had ignored his comment it seemed as he continued, “Well you know a guy called Henry Emily? He use to work in the studio as my understudy so he could understand how to create a TV show, he's creator of Freddy and Friends. I just got off the phone with him.”

Where would this lead? Everyone was wondering.

“He’s going to bring Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy down here to the studio! We're going to cooperate and make a crossover Friendship day special that shows unity across different shows! Isn’t it a wonderful idea? It's unique!”

Silences.

“I beg your pardon?” Mortimer asked in a seemingly extremely annoyed way, the tone instantly caused Owen to carefully think his next few responses.

“We do a lot of fun things but they're all kind of the same concept, I consider Henry a great acquaintance. We need to keep kids engaged, I have a rough plan for each segment which will include things like a joint painting between Nick Nack and Bonnie, who is also really artistic. “

“I do apologise, but I refuse to share with a giant rabbit, No, it won’t happen, he is not allowed in my studio,” Nick had snarled at the very idea.

“Bonnie is also a very clean rabbit, he won’t make a mess if that's what you concerned about,” Owen answered, he wanted to make sure he was answering any questions they asked.

“How would you know that?” Mortimer asked in an accusingly tone.

“I sometimes…. Watch it with my nephews, you know… you haven’t actually met them…. Maybe you should meet them, and my sister also… They enjoy the show, they are the biggest fans of Foxy… They also watch this show, but it's mainly because your shows are on different times, this show is on Tuesdays and Fridays at 4:00pm, their show is on Fridays at 6:00pm.”

“I do see that reasoning, how old are your nephews?” Mortimer questioned, this was his first time hearing of these kids who were related to Owen.

“Five and twelve. Would you be okay if I invited them to come into the studio?” Owen did wonder if he could let them come by when they weren’t in school as they appeared intrigued by his show and the characters.

“If they don’t disturb anything, they are welcomed!” Mortimer nodded, always having a unspoken policy of allowing children on set just as long as they behaved, “But back to the problem at hand-”

“Mortimer, I don’t see any problem,” Owen said. He honestly couldn’t see any problems that couldn’t be solved.

“I don’t think we would get along,” Mortimer countered, “We’ve never met and one of them is a bear Owen! Bears in real life are vicious!”

“They might surprise you, even if you might have nothing in common with them, but some friends just don't have anything in common but they still like talking to one other, just… try and see if we can all get along, they'll be here on Saturday after filming, alright?” Owen asked.

They muttered in agreement.

“And if anything is very wrong, we can just shut down the idea,” He suggested, Mortimer nodded at him and both him and Mortimer felt some reassurance.

#five nights at freddy's #hello puppets #Hello Freddy and Handeemen Friends #FNAF—Hello Puppets Crossover Story #more to come #just some fully independant puppets meeting sentient animatronics #obviously an AU

[mst3kproject]

The Strange World of Planet X

The Strange World of Planet X, also known as Cosmic Monsters, was released on a double bill with The Crawling Eye and stars Forrest Tucker of the same.  It’s got a giant spider and a deep-voiced 50’s narrator droning about the terrors of the atomic age, in a film so dry all my plants shriveled up and my contact lenses adhered to my eyeballs.

Mad Dr. Laird, with the help of his assistants Gil and Michele, is baking things in intense magnetic fields in order to rearrange the molecules and turn metal into putty – the general idea is that someday this will allow them to melt enemy planes right out from under their pilots. Would that melt the pilots, too? Gross.  At the same time and perhaps related, flying saucers are being sighted over Britain and a mysterious man named Mr. Smith is wandering around in the woods and getting worryingly chummy with local children.  After a lot of standing around and talking, Smith reveals that he is from outer space and has come to warn us that Laird’s magnetic fields are tearing apart the Earth’s ionosphere, letting in cosmic rays that will mutate humans into murderers and insects into giants!

Since my last ETNW was fairly well-paced and entertaining, the law of averages tells us that this one’s gonna be a real turd, and sure enough… remember all my griping about how Radar Secret Service was literally unwatchable, as in I could not force myself to keep looking at it?  The Strange World of Planet X is like that but with a British accent.  Most of it is just ugly gray people in ugly gray rooms, droning on about whatever at far greater length than necessary.  Everybody sounds like they’re reading their lines off cue cards, the photography was awful to begin with and the degraded print makes it really hard to tell what the hell is going on. Fuck this movie.

The film’s general insufferability is made all the worse because normally giant bug movies are among my favourite types of crappy old sci fi.  What could possibly be more fun than giant grasshoppers crawling all over postcards of Chicago?  If the bug bits were fun, that would go a long way towards saving this one, but of course, they’re terrible.  It’s mostly too dark to even see the giant insects, and when we do see them, they’re nothing but close-ups of live (and sometimes dead) roaches and grasshoppers.  Only a couple of shots even attempt to composite them in with live actors and those are so dark and blurry that it frankly wasn’t worth the effort.

The other main ‘effect’ in the movie is a couple of flying saucers.  These are unidentifiable white blobs when far away, and ridiculous tinfoil models dangling from strings up close.  The pie pans in Plan 9 from Outer Space are worse… but not by much.

What should be the most exciting part of the film is the battle in the woods between the soldiers and the giant bugs, but it’s mishandled in the same sort of way as the supposedly climactic fight in Invasion of the Neptune Men.  There’s no narrative or any characters we care about – just soldiers running around shooting at things.  Where are they?  How close are they to the town?  Are there civilians in peril?  We don’t know.  To be effective on screen, a battle needs a story.  The battle in Army of Darkness is about the need to protect the Necronomicon.  We can see the Deadites getting closer to the tower, as Ash pulls out more and more ridiculous secret weapons to keep them back.  The Strange World of Planet X is just random people and bugs, not even in the same shot.

There is some half-decent magnetosphere science in the movie, I guess.  The Earth’s magnetic field does protect us from the harsh radiation of outer space, although all the most harmful components of that come from the sun rather than from further afield, and such radiation can damage DNA.  This is why the ozone layer was such a big deal in the 80’s. This space radiation is much more likely to give bugs cancer than to make them grow huge, but in a movie I can handle that.  The really weird thing here is that, because they say it screens out the heaviest of the cosmic rays, they call the ionosphere the ‘heavyside layer’.  I would not have thought it possible that Cats could make less sense and yet here we are.

If you want some proper Crap Movie Science, there’s their explanation of how the monsters grew so big – mutations for size were able to pile up quickly because insects breed fast and therefore evolve fast.  I guess this makes more sense than individuals growing out of control as a result of whatever… but they appear to have applied it to a whole range of creatures regardless of their actual life cycles. Some insects do breed quickly, but quite a few of them have specific seasons and conditions for it.  This feels like a nitpick, though… I mean, by watching a giant bug movie I’ve already accepted that they can become huge so I should probably just shut up.

As an interesting note, Smith mentions that on his home planet there are giant dragonflies.  He doesn’t say how giant, though he implies they’re big enough to ride on. Firstly, man, I wanna ride a giant dragonfly!  Second, this tells us that Smith’s home planet has more oxygen in its atmosphere than Earth, because the reason insects can’t get bigger than they do is because they don’t actively breathe, but have to let oxygen diffuse into their tissues on its own (this is why there were six foot millipedes during the Carboniferous era — more oxygen in the air). The writers, sadly, do not seem to have known or cared about this, since Smith himself shows no signs of having to adjust to our atmosphere.  Missed opportunity there.

Since this is me, of course I’m gonna talk about how the movie treats women. Click the back button now. There are several female characters in The Strange World of Planet X, and while they're pretty bland they do manage to have conversations with each other about things besides men, and the honest impression I get is that the writers are trying really hard not to be assholes.  The first woman we meet is Michele, who has been assigned as Dr. Laird’s new computer operator after the previous one was electrocuted in a lab accident.  When he learns that the replacement is a woman, Laird complains about it loudly, protesting that ‘this is skilled work!’, and Gil gripes that female scientists are dour and unattractive.  Michele, of course, proves them both wrong – she is both brilliant and pretty, the latter mostly so that she can be Gil’s love interest but also at least in part to shatter the stereotype. It's thanks to movies like this setting the precedent that modern films are up to their eyeballs in hot but useless science women… but like I said, they tried.

The script is actually at great pains to emphasize that Michele is intelligent, educated, and the equal of any of the men, at least where science is concerned. Unfortunately, its way of going about it is to have them praise her for every little thing she says and does, to the point where it starts to sound awfully patronizing.  They call her ‘clever girl’ like she’s six years old and it frequently comes across as their complimenting her intelligence in order to deflect when she asks awkward questions.

Naturally there’s a love triangle in this movie.  It appears only to be immediately and peacefully resolved, and Gil’s rival for Michele’s affections is dead shortly thereafter. Why fucking bother?

A tad better-treated is Jane, the little girl fascinated by arthropods (she describes them as ‘bugs’, saying all insects are bugs, but not all bugs are insects.  While entomologically incorrect, this same definition of bug was used by David Attenborough in Micro Monsters, so I’m okay with it).  One of the reasons I think the writers were earnestly trying to be feminist is because they place a girl in this role rather than a boy.  Susan Redway isn’t any better than any of the other actors, but the character was definitely written by somebody who knew what appeals to children.  I love the bit where Jane promises to show her new teacher her favourite type of beetle, delightedly informing her, “they’re horrid-looking!”

The teacher, Miss Forsyth, is another attempt to buck a stereotype. Jane complains that she hated her previous teacher, who was appalled by her interest in crawly things.  Miss Forsythe makes a good first impression by encouraging her instead.  Again, this feels like the writers really were trying.  They want to say that the right thing to do here is to support Jane’s interests and ambitions, and someday perhaps she’ll be a talented entomologist, just as Michele is a computer whiz.

From a twenty-first century point of view, this makes for an odd contrast with one of the other notable features of how women are portrayed in this movie – they don’t come alone.  Adult women in The Strange World of Planet X must have a male partner, and if they don’t start out with one they will be assigned one! Michele pairs up with Gil, and Miss Forsythe accepts a date with the man who saved her from one of the mutants.  This second budding relationship has no effect on the story and indeed is never referenced again, it’s just there.  All the other women we meet are either dating or married… although now that I think of it this may be less sexist than it is a way to make a point of Dr. Laird’s single-minded obsession with his work. Everybody else, even scientists, has time to be a human being – but not him.

I should also discuss one more interesting tidbit offered by Smith. He says his people have been watching humanity and studying us basically since we invented ourselves, and they have never interfered before now.  Why now? Out of ‘enlightened self-interest’, he says – this is the closest humans have yet come to destroying ourselves, but it’s also the closest we’ve come to being a threat to our extraterrestrial observers.  One of Dr. Laird’s experiments, intended to destroy enemy planes, brought down a flying saucer instead!  The fact that Smith is willing to admit this suggests that he is extremely confident about the aliens’ ability to strike back if humanity should decided to start shooting down saucers on purpose.  The finale then bears this out… although it also left me thinking that the film could have ended very differently if only hacking had been a thing in the fifties!

So yet another instance of good ideas, unexplored and badly executed.  Also yet another black and white movie… what is that, six in a row?  Yikes.  See you in ten days, when I promise I will have something for you in colour.  It’ll be like slogging through the beginning of Season Eight and then finally arriving at The Giant Spider Invasion!

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the strange world of planet x #cosmic monsters #fuck this movie #50s #tw: spiders #giant arthropod hours

[reconditarmonia]

Dear Chocolate Box Author

Hi! Thank you for writing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3. I have anon messaging off, but mods should be able to contact me if you have any questions.

Dishonored | Fullmetal Alchemist | Machineries of Empire | The Penumbra Podcast | Simoun

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, manual sex, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity; stories whose resolution isn’t the sex scene.

A note: if we matched on an / ship, I generally don't require you to include a kiss, sex, or overt romantic language if you feel that you'd have to shoehorn it in. I'll trust that you wrote it with shippy intent.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships.

—

Fandom: Dishonored

Ship(s): Delilah Copperspoon/Billie Lurk; Breanna Ashworth & Kirin Jindosh; Emily Kaldwin & Delilah Copperspoon

I find Delilah such a fantastic and fascinating villain, and I'd love to read more about her relationships with Billie or Emily. I’d love to know more about Billie’s time in Delilah’s gang - what does she see in Delilah, or Delilah in her, beyond using each other to get ahead, what do they want from each other? I imagine it might fascinate and please Delilah to have Billie’s submission and maybe even some level of trust - to do what? It'd be neat to read an AU of the end of KoD where Billie stays in Dunwall, whether she's won or lost against Daud - or even of the end of Brigmore Witches, if you want to AU Delilah's plot into something that doesn't put her into a child's body. Something addressing clothing (given the iconic costumes of both the Witches and the Whalers) and/or nudity? Something in the timeskip or DH2 timeframe? With regard to Emily, I'm specifically interested in adult Emily here - what happens if Emily doesn't escape at the beginning of DH2? (Or is captured at some point, I guess.) Delilah seems happy enough to keep her alive - does she make her a witch, want her in court as her niece? How does Emily feel about any of this as she learns about Delilah's past? Or, does Emily maintain a relationship with her aunt after the end of DH2, whether because there's a way to visit or communicate with her or in an AU where she's defeated differently and sticks around? How might Delilah's art fit into any of these scenarios? The differences in how they fight?

I would also love fic about Breanna and Jindosh's terrible friendship/working relationship. Is their distaste for everyone else enough to overcome their distaste for each other? Put them at a fancy party (Luca's or otherwise) kvetching about other people. Tell me more about the lead-up to the seance, or mutual projects where Breanna contributed more of the magic and Jindosh more of the science - or vice versa! Breanna's got a very scientific mind and career herself and Jindosh isn't above dabbling in Void shit. Get them drunk together one night. If you can futz with the numbers enough for it to make sense, write me an AU where they're in an arranged marriage and end up as a (secretly? idk) platonic power couple. (If you go with this version I'd prefer that you write Jindosh as gay or asexual.)

Fandom-Specific DNW/Exception: Please do not touch on Jindosh's nonlethal option in any way whatsoever. With regard to Delilah/Billie, I have dubcon in my general DNWs but with Delilah’s...everything it seems potentially unreasonable to categorically DNW it here. Billie going along with things because she feels like she should or must is fine (although I’d also be very game for fic about her desiring and wanting Delilah/this), but I still don’t want to read anything involving altered or removed ability to consent such as mind-altering magic, sex pollen, drugs, etc. Additionally, Delilah/Breanna is an exception to my unrequested ships DNW - feel free to include it in any of these requests.

—

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist

Ship(s): Scar & Original Ishvalan Character(s); Scar & Miles; Olivier Mira Armstrong & Miles & Briggs Soldiers

One of the things that really hit close to home about canon was the Ishval plot; I like that it’s important and not just backstory or setup for other stuff, and that there are multiple characters who are Ishvalan or of Ishvalan descent, rather than a genocide plot being a convenient reason to have one or no Ishvalan perspectives in the story. I’d really be interested in reading anything about, well, what do you do during or in the wake of a genocide: Miles’s seemingly increasing identification with his Ishvalan background; one or both of them in the post-canon rebuilding; what is is to be Amestrian *and* Ishvalan; what Scar (or OCs) are able to keep from their culture and community and what was lost (and what evolves), whether that’s in “Amestrian” cities and towns during or after canon, or in post-canon Ishval; saving the testimonies or the culture. Doesn’t need to be angsty if that’s not what you’re into; indeed, surviving/building a new life/finding joy/celebrating one’s culture and heritage after that kind of thing are meaningful too.

Or, Briggs and its mixture of heartwarming and id-satisfying loyalty kink. (The watch! Buccaneer handing Olivier a clean pair of gloves after she kills Raven! Constant and deeply sincere saluting! And Olivier's lack of patience for anyone's shit.) Either ordinary or extraordinary circumstances - daily life in the fort, a battle with Drachma where they work together seamlessly, surviving a storm or the typical winter cold - would make me happy, but I especially love those shows of loyalty. Entire Briggs Is Gay would also non-ironically be neat, as would other ways of exploring the idea of Briggs being a united wall made up of people with a lot of secrets and/or racial and gender differences.

Fandom-Specific DNW: Please don’t give Scar a name; I personally am fine eliding any narration issues with “how would he refer to himself in his own POV?” in my brain. I would also prefer that Ishvalan culture be worldbuilt rather than borrowed wholesale from a real-life culture.

—

Fandom: Machineries of Empire

Ship(s): Ajewen Cheris & Garach Jedao Shkan; Ajewen Cheris & Original Mwennin Characters; Ajewen Cheris/Neshte Khiruev; Moroish Nija/Shuos Feiyed; Vauhan Mikodez & Zehun

I've just recently gotten into this fandom, and I love the loyalty kink and the worldbuilding so much - I just want more! I'm partway through Revenant Gun now, so my prompts are somewhat unspecific, but I expect to be done with Glass Cannon by the time of reveals, so don't worry about spoilers.

Anyway, as I said, I love loyalty kink, including platonic loyalty kink - trust, gestures of loyalty, the times that trust or willingness to follow/lead is put under severe situational strain and holds, or the places where these things get thorny instead of straightforward because one character has to betray or hurt the other for the larger goal that they both believe in and work towards, or to keep the other safe. Some of the things I like in canon along these lines are Mikodez's showing Zehun the contingency plans in Raven Stratagem, and everything with "I'm your gun" (which I'm vaguely aware that I'm going to love even more by the time I'm caught up). Any story for Cheris & Jedao, Cheris/Khiruev, or Mikodez & Zehun that involved these tropes would be wonderful.

I'm also interested in the Mwennin subplot. I would love to know more about Cheris, Mwennin culture, and other Mwennin at any point before, during, or after canon. I also like the idea of Nija and Feiyed staying in touch after Feiyed rescues/recruits Nija, and Feiyed gradually learning about Mwennin culture as they start/continue a relationship - we know it can be adoptive, so does she even at any point start to consider herself part of it? (Or have them work together on a covert mission, no reason we shouldn't get loyalty kink in here too.)

Fandom-Specific DNW: I have dubcon in my general DNWs and would like to reiterate that I don't want to read formation instinct playing a part in a Cheris/Khiruev relationship.

—

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Ship(s): Miasma/The Proctor

What can I say? Criminal older female academics would be a GREAT ship. I'd love to see their first meeting at some conference or academic event (or criminal thing), or their first date, or the two of them working together on some scheme - does Miasma "consult" the Proctor, or does the Proctor want to create an exam based on Miasma's field of expertise, or are they both going for the same goal? What do they like about each other, or find frustrating about each other? (If you need to fudge the timelines to make it work, that's fine, but I'm definitely interested in the characters as middle-aged or older. Also fine by me if you want to somehow AU their fates to get them together in the "present" timeline.)

—

Fandom: Simoun

Ship(s): Any (Aaeru & Neviril & Paraietta & Rodoreamon & Floef & Vyuraf; Aaeru/Neviril; Mamiina & Neviril; Mamiina/Neviril; Neviril/Aaeru & Neviril/Paraietta; Paraietta & Neviril; Paraietta/Rodoreamon)

This is a perennial request for me and anything (other than, I guess, the slice-of-lifeiest slice-of-life) would make me very happy, but I'm particularly interested in the military side of the canon - how the war changes all the characters and their relationships with one another, how Everything is Beautiful and Then Shit Gets Real but amidst the war-is-hell there’s still the creation of bonds of trust and loyalty and chances to do what’s right (the bits with the Plumbish priestesses, for instance). Every character gets a chance to develop and make choices that are all brave in different ways. I'd love loyalty kink here, but I'm also up for Magic, for an exploration of the characters' adult lives on the other end of the series's coming-of-age, or nearly anything.

Some ideas - what happens post-canon if Neviril and Aeru make it back to the main world when war is brewing again, but Neviril has no one from the old cohort to lead because they can’t fly anymore? What does she do, or see her role as being - a leader for peace, for war? How do she and Aaeru interact with Paraietta, Rodoreamon, Floef, and Vyuraf?

What happens if due to magic or time weirdness, Mamiina is brought back? What happens between her and Neviril late in canon or post-canon? How do they see or value each other as fighters and leaders?

What's Paraietta and Rodoreamon's post-canon relationship like? They're building a life together and finding purpose in helping the war orphans, but they're also both veterans and neither of them is the other's lost love. Or I'd also love to see a during- or post-canon look at a situation where Neviril has relationships with both Paraietta and Aaeru, how she maybe needs different things from them, and how they also work together differently on the battlefield - or just a story about the relationship of Neviril and her long-loyal second-in-command Paraietta.

#dear author letters #dishonored #fma #machineries of empire #juno steel #simoun

[aion-rsa]

From Dog Soldiers to The Reckoning: Neil Marshall Revisits His Filmogrpahy

https://ift.tt/3eedpk3

Ever since launching his career in 2002 with the independent action-horror thriller, Dog Soldiers—a bracing, fresh werewolves-vs.-soldiers exercise—the writer and director Neil Marshall has been devoted to genre filmmaking. His second film, The Descent, is a generally acknowledged modern horror classic, and since then he’s branched out to post-apocalyptic action, historical thrillers and high fantasy before returning again to horror.

His sixth and latest film, The Reckoning, stars Charlotte Kirk (who co-wrote the script) as a young woman who is accused of witchcraft in northern England in 1665 after losing her husband to the Great Plague. With its period setting and story of unjust persecution and hysteria directed against women in particular, The Reckoning (which just premiered on Shudder) channels some of the old Hammer Studios vibe, as well as that of iconic British films on the same topic like Witchfinder General.

For Marshall, The Reckoning represents a return to the genre that gave him his start and to his early independent days, following 2019’s poorly received reboot of the horror-themed Hellboy franchise. The latter film was his first feature in nine years, during which time he directed episodes of high-profile TV shows like Westworld, Hannibal and most notably Game of Thrones while trying to get various theatrical projects off the ground.

With The Reckoning now making its premiere on Shudder, Marshall is already at work on his next film, a horror outing called The Lair. He says it’s “a bit different from The Reckoning… it’s going to be full-on action, monsters, guns, explosions, the works, blood and guts.” With Marshall now seemingly back on track with feature films, we thought this would be a good moment to take a look back at his career to date.

The Beginning

Marshall was born in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England, and he says that he was inspired to become a filmmaker when he saw Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time in his youth:

“I’m definitely a product of the nerd generation of the ’80s, and proud of it,” he confirms. “Raiders is the movie that got me into making movies. I was already a big movie fan, just like anybody. But when I saw Raiders, it just changed everything, as did watching The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark on TV. I just thought, ‘That’s what I want to do with my life,’ and never looked back.”

Interestingly, Marshall says that his one unrealized dream project to date harkens back to the impact that Raiders had on him:

“There’s one in particular, a project called Eagle’s Nest…I always wanted to do my Indiana Jones project, my Raiders kind of project, and Eagle’s Nest is very much in that vein. It’s set during World War II, but it’s not a war movie as such. It’s an adventure/action movie. It’s kind of like Die Hard meets Where Eagles Dare, or Indiana Jones meets James Bond. Spies and soldiers and things. It’s full-on action adventure. That’s my dream project, and I still dream of one day getting it made.”

Pathe

Dog Soldiers (2002)

After attending university, Marshall spent a number of years as a freelance film editor before finally getting the chance to direct his first feature film, Dog Soldiers, from an original screenplay he had written. The taut, low-budget thriller revolved around a squad of British soldiers who are attacked in a remote house by a pack of werewolves. For Marshall, it was his chance at last to pursue his dream of making films.

“It was a six-year process of getting it written and getting it financed and getting it made, and it was just stubborn determination,” the director says. “But finally getting there and finally getting on set was just amazing, so satisfying. It was finally achieving a dream that I set about 20 years earlier, really.”

On whether anything surprised him about his first time as a feature director, he adds, “Well, I had directed stuff before. I’d done some short films and some TV things. This was my first feature, but it wasn’t completely new to me. But I was so well-read at the time. I’d spent my teenage years reading nothing but Starlog and Fantastic Films, and all that kind of stuff and learning how these things work. So it wasn’t a complete surprise. I think the main thing was, is just how exciting it all was.”

Werewolves, which were the film’s monsters, hadn’t been seen on the screen in a while at that time. Marshall suspected this would make the film a refreshing change of pace.

“I didn’t want to do the classic Curse of the Werewolf story, which is essentially what all werewolf films had been up until that point,” says Marshall. “I wanted to do essentially Aliens with werewolves, in which they’re just a ferocious enemy and really difficult to kill, and who they are as people is irrelevant.”

Pathe

The Descent (2005)

Next was Marshall’s 2005 film The Descent, in which six women go exploring in a cave system and discover that the tunnels are inhabited by cannibalistic humanoid creatures. A staple of “best horror of the 2000s” lists ever since its release, The Descent was not only genuinely terrifying but groundbreaking in its use of an all-female cast, which was originally not the case.

“I think when I wrote the first draft of it, it was mixed,” Marshall recalls. “When I pitched the treatment, I think then it was a mixed group. I’d done such a testosterone group of men or whatever with Dog Soldiers, part of me was like, ‘Well, let’s just do the complete opposite of that.’

“Then the more research I did into the world of caving and climbing and outdoor sports, it turns out, it’s a really heavily populated by women, and they do everything that the men do. So I just kind of figured, well, why not? Why not have an all-female group? It makes it very different. It made it different from anything that I’d seen for a while, and it came about that way.”

On the inspiration for the horrifying creatures in the caves, called “crawlers?”

“The creatures just came from trying to pare things down to a very, very basic form. I had great difficulty with the werewolves on Dog Soldiers. The guys in the suits, they couldn’t see very well. They were on stilts, so they were really limited in how they could move. Even for a practical effect, they couldn’t move around that well. I wanted to dispense with all that and have the crawlers be as freeform as possible.

“The whole point of the crawlers was that they were meant to be humans who evolved to live in caves,” he continues. “They’re the caveman that stayed in the cave. Whereas the rest of us left and evolved, they stayed in the caves and devolved to live in darkness. They were always essentially going to be human, so that really just required some basic prosthetics. But beyond that, they would just be people. That gave me so much more freedom of movement and allowed them to be fast and agile.”

Universal

Doomsday (2008)

The Descent was a critical and financial success, earning some $57 million on a budget of less than $5 million. It opened the doors for Marshall to begin entertaining offers to direct bigger films, and soon Rogue Pictures (a division of Universal) gave the director a budget of more than $24 million to make Doomsday, his homage to post-apocalyptic action movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s in which Scotland is sealed off due to a deadly virus.

“Doomsday touches upon two things that have cropped up in later work,” Marshall says. “One was the building of a wall to separate two countries, particularly England and Scotland. And then the other one is a viral outbreak, which comes into play in The Reckoning, as well. And the wall reappears in Centurion. It also, I guess, figured in my Game of Thrones episode.”

On the eerie relevancy of doing a movie about a country sealed off because of a viral outbreak, he says, “It was very strange that end of last year, I think it was, when the second wave [of COVID-19] hit, that they closed off the border between England and Scotland. I just thought, ‘This is Doomsday. It’s happening right now. Only a matter of time before they build a wall.’ But yeah, it has been quite scary, especially with The Reckoning, as well. Who could have seen it coming, you know?”

Doomsday was also the first time Marshall had major Hollywood studio resources to work with, which made it a strikingly different experience.

“It was great having much better resources to do a lot more crashes and explosions and things like that. It was a big action movie, it required all those bells and whistles, and we got them all, so that was fantastic… We had more time to shoot it, which was great. I loved that. Because we were filming it down in Cape Town, in South Africa, we didn’t really have the studio on our backs at all. We were let loose to do it. It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had making a movie.”

Magnet Releasing

Centurion (2010)

For his next film, Marshall turned to the early history of Britain and its resistance to the Roman Empire for inspiration. The result was Centurion, which starred Michael Fassbender, Dominic West and Olga Kurylenko in a violent tale based on the legendary disappearance of the Roman Empire’s Ninth Spanish Legion in what is now northern England and Scotland in the second century. A.D.

“It’s very loosely based,” Marshall explains. “It’s based more on a legend than the history. The history unfortunately disproved the legend. It’s a classic example of the quote, ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’ The facts aren’t very interesting, but that’s historians doing their thing. Until then, it was a legend that I really liked, the legend of the 9th Legion that marched into Scotland and disappeared without a trace.”

Even though historians have since argued that the Legion wasn’t wiped out in battle with northern England or Pictish tribes as long believed, Marshall was still fascinated with the story:

“My whole kind of thing was, ‘Well, why and how? If it disappeared, how did they disappear? Did none of them survive? If no one survived, how do we even know about it?’ So that’s when I came up with the story of the lone survivor and trying to explain it in logical terms. Nothing supernatural or anything of that, but logical terms of how they were massacred and why.”

As with several others of his films, Marshall also saw contemporary reflections in the story.

“When we were making it, it seemed very relevant to what was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the insurgents fighting the oppressors. Telling the story from the Romans’ point of view made it a bit more interesting, because they were the invading army and the other side were freedom fighters. Because we were telling the Romans point of view, it was kind of like, ‘Well, they’re our heroes—but are they?’ I just thought that was really, really interesting.”

Lionsgate

Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy, which was not a sequel to the two films made by Guillermo del Toro and which starred Ron Perlman, featured David Harbour as the title demon from Mike Mignola’s long-running comics. Marshall’s first feature in nine years landed with a loud thud both at the box office and with critics.

“It was one of those things,” the director says now. “The reason I was away from features for nine years was not out of choice. I was trying to get my features made during that time. But because of the revolution in television, there was a certain kind of budget level that I had been working in that disappeared from features and was now going into television, during a transition period of the last 10, 15 years. And I couldn’t find anybody to finance films at that kind of level.”

Read more

TV

Game of Thrones at 10: The Series That Changed TV Forever

By David Crow

Movies

The Best Horror Movies of 2020

By Rosie Fletcher and 4 others

Marshall says that when he was initially approached about Hellboy, the idea was to create more of a straight forward horror movie version of the character:

“That appealed to me, and obviously getting a chance to do a feature was a big thing. Despite my reservations or whatever, I jumped at it, because it was a chance to do a feature after nine years. I wanted to get back in the game. But I made an unwise decision, because I should have based my choice purely on whether the script was any good. Unfortunately, the script was never any good, and there’s only so much a director can do.”

Marshall notes that the problems with the Hellboy script arose from confusion over what kind of film it was supposed to be.

“I’ve said it a few times before, you can’t polish a turd. Even the best director in the world can’t make a masterpiece out of a script that was substandard. This was a confused script from the start, combining different stories and sticking rigidly to the comics, which worked fine as graphic novels. But when you translate them to the screen, there are gaping plot holes.

“Unfortunately, the producers just didn’t care. They brought me in so they could tell me what to do. They didn’t really want to make a horror version of it at all, because I was the most experienced horror person involved in the entire production, and I wasn’t allowed to touch the script. I wasn’t allowed to bring any kind of horror essence to it. So it just ended up as a disaster, really. It was just a mess, and a deeply unpleasant experience. That’s the price that I paid for making the wrong choice, or making it for the wrong reasons specifically.”

Shudder

The Reckoning (2021)

Going back to his roots with The Reckoning was a “breath of fresh air” after Hellboy, Marshall says in 2021.

“It was the complete opposite,” he explains. “On Hellboy, I had lots of money and no creative input. On this one, I had full creative control over the piece and no money. But that was a good sacrifice to make because the experience of making The Reckoning—even though we had less money, less time, whatever—was just creatively way more satisfying. It was good to just get back to my roots and get stuck in there and make this little movie that I’m really proud of.”

The director says that he wanted to capture the tone of some of the iconic Hammer horrors from the ‘60s and ‘70s with The Reckoning while the subject matter touched on themes expressed in horror classics like Witchfinder General or Mark of the Devil.

“I felt that there hadn’t really been anything made in that particular period or about that kind of subject matter, the witch hunter in particular,” says Marshall. “There have been witch movies obviously, but not the witch hunter. That kind of vibe, and that Hammer kind of vibe as well, hadn’t been done for a while. But the reason to do it at all was because I felt that it was relevant today for a modern audience… witch hunts are still going on today. They just take on a different form. And certainly, misogyny and female persecution has not gone anywhere in the intervening hundreds of years since our story took place.”

Marshall also notes that he missed being part of the horror film festival circuit, a thriving subculture in its own right.

“I actually wanted to get back on the horror circuit, as far as the festival circuit is concerned, because I loved that experience with my first movie,” he explains. “Going around the world, going to these incredible festivals, meeting the fans, engaging with the fans and also meeting other filmmakers. It’s so inspiring doing that. That was my hope with The Reckoning, but of course, all that went out the window with COVID. But fingers crossed, we’ll be back full strength and next year will be great.”

The Reckoning is currently streaming on Shudder.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post From Dog Soldiers to The Reckoning: Neil Marshall Revisits His Filmogrpahy appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3oAjqMS

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[vileart]

Burrowing Dramaturgy: Andy Edwards @ Tron

 In Burrows

A new performance in BSL and spoken word, created by Andy Edwards, presenting at Tron Theatre on March 23rd and 24th. 

credits: Julia Bauer

The performance frames the act of description through a series of choreographies, investigating the relationship between spoken language, sign and meaning, and exploring perspective and how we engage with the world around us. In Burrows will be accompanied by a number of guest performances. Musician Blair Coron will perform a composition developed especially for the event. Petre Dobre and Adriana Navarro will present the short performance Words, who needs them?  What was the inspiration for this performance?

In Burrows began as a short piece, first performed at Only Skin’s SCRATCH back in October 2016. In the work I would describe an image to the audience, an image that was placed onstage so that they couldn’t see it, in 1500 words. What inspired this performance was a desire to make the easiest piece of work I could possibly make, that offered the maximum amount to the audience it could while carrying with it as little as possible. So it made sense to work with an audiences imaginations. Then I also wanted a piece of work I could just turn up and do, make up on the spot, so it made sense to play with improvisation.

The method of improvisation I employ was developed as part of the ground, the highest point a duet of text and dance I performed with Paul Hughes at a couple of festivals during 2015. Initially it very strongly drew from (or, less charitably, stole) Tim Etchell’s solo practice but since then it has departed considerably, and I’ve improvised poetry across a wider range of contexts, developing my own particular set of enquiries. Those enquires are primarily linguistic – I’m interested in how language works.

When offered to present In Burrows at Tron I was posed with the problem of how to take a very solid short work and evolve it into something three times the length, without just dragging it out. I’d been curious about working with a British Sign Language interpreter for a while, largely out of a desire to make my work more accessible to an audience I’d previously not made any work for and also because I was curious about the language itself. Placing Amy Cheskin into the work has been brilliant. A simple act that has produced lots of tensions, questions, that have driven the work forward.  Thinking about translation, interpretation and the fuzzy areas in

between has given the project a new lease of life – and certainly inspired me to push forward with it. Rehearsals are thundering along and we’re both pretty buzzed by how fascinating language is, and how it intersects – both producing and being produced by – what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, how you’re trying to position yourself to others and the world around you.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

It is a good launch-pad for the public discussion of ideas – and then, that discussion, happens after the performance has taken place. Any good discourse is advanced by someone making a claim about something, and then other people assessing that claim. Me saying that I think this gives you something to react off of.

The way I go about making performance is to think that each performance I make is an act of making a claim about something, taking up a position, and that by taking up a position I’m inviting others to observe, discuss and criticise that position. That’s the basic task that I’m up to – trying to hold someone’s attention long enough for them to know what it is I’m claiming but with a relaxed enough grip so that they can react to it. And then things that I’m doing are hugely informed by the ideas I’ve previously discussed that have led me up to this point.

I think that’s why art in general is a good space for the public discussion of ideas – because it is often people making statements about the world that have a smaller impact on that world. That isn’t to say that impact is negligible. Not at all. Or that it doesn’t have a significant impact on the world. It most definitely does – and that isn’t always a positive one. But there’s something both flimsy and robust about art that means the stakes are low enough so that we can discuss it but that also our discussion of it won’t kill the thing stone dead. So yes, in that sense, it’s has the potential to be a great space to discuss ideas.

That’s all potential though, because if only a small segment of people can access the space in which the discussion takes place then it won’t be much of a discussion at all. So, it depends on what the performance is, where it is being held and who is allowed in.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I’m not particularly sure. I came about it the long way around and avoided it for a while, in part due to a certain type of pressure applied to me when I was younger, and in part due to being scared that I’d be totally rubbish at it. As a teenager I found acting, with characters and lines and arcs, such a release for a build up of emotions I’d not learnt how to deal with. I did a GCSE, then A-Level, in drama. Then fell in with the theatre crowd at University – after a brief attempt to avoid doing it – then did a masters – after another brief attempt to avoid doing it – and since then I continually flip flop between wanting to knock Shakespeare off his perch and “getting a job in a bank”, forgetting of course that getting a job in a bank is probably quite difficult / the banks might not be particularly in desperate need of my services.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Me and Amy work in a manner where the creative responsibility is a little imbalanced. Given Amy is a translator, that’s a really necessary thing for her to do her job, but it leads to the interesting tension where if the work is crap it isn’t her fault, it’s mine. So it is interesting how labour divides up as a result of that. The pattern is that we meet once a week and for three hours throw things about, try something and note what happens. Then I’ll go away and write something, some notes, a script, or whatever – and then we’ll come back together again and throw what’s left together again. So we move forward like that – and it’s going super well I think.

Thinking about our general approach, we spend a lot of time asking what the audience will be getting from the work, and how audiences with different abilities will receive the work differently. The work will be accessible to a range of audiences including those who are D/deaf, hard of hearing, partially sighted or blind, with integrated BSL interpretation and audio description. This desire to make a piece of work that offers a rich theatrical experience to these audiences informs a lot of decisions we make. Rather than to offer one blanket experience of the work, we’re curious as to what we can offer each of these specific audiences in turn. The work, as a whole, is concerned with a very specific relationship to each and every one of its audience members. It’ll be a bit different for everyone, given that a lot of it will take place inside their heads.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

While I’ve performed my work before, most recently as part of Andy Arnold’s group show NOWHERE during Take Me Somewhere 2017, I am more commonly found as a playwright. Typically I write text for others, in a ‘New Writing’ context, whereas for In Burrows I’m speaking text that has never been written down.

There’s a thread that runs through all this work though, which is about being in control of language. That sentence sounds a bit gross, reading it back. With In Burrows I’m making that process more explicit to the audience then if I were to write a play, which I’d typically do out of sight.

So while it will look very different to a lot of my other work, I think the underlying mechanics are fundamentally the same.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

The dramaturg for In Burrows, Paul Hughes, wrote this note to me after a development weekend: “I’m looking at a photograph by Andy Goldsworthy currently on display in the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art: a line of upturned leaves placed on dense patch of bracken, the stark white undersides standing out from the vivid green of the forest. It doesn’t impress the viewer in how it has acquired huge or rare or precious materials, or on how many people the artist holds in their command, or even in how it has hoodwinked and mocked the institution that houses it. No sustained physical commitment was required to produce this; in fact, the action so simple that we can imagine the exact steps with which it was undertaken. The gesture points towards the artist themself as much as any material circumstance or image.

Is this an alchemical transformation? Do we perceive the artist as a magician, effortlessly transforming reality around them? This can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the individual viewer’s tastes, affiliations and readiness to go along with the trick. What’s more clear is the particular sense of romance, of the poetic, within the artist: of the ways in which they read charm and delight in the world around them. Perhaps in this work - and obviously I’m talking about In Burrows too - the artist is inviting us to briefly see the world through their eyes - not as a way to seduce us, but to share with us a way in which we might allow ourselves to be seduced. We stand before an intimate proposition; the individual’s un/abashed offer of their very personal relationship to beauty”

So perhaps that sums it up, perhaps it doesn’t. I’m wanting the audience to have the experience of observing something very personal to themselves, namely their relationship to language, memory, imagination and image. It’ll be small, quiet, and hopefully full of stuff for them to latch on to and play with.

Both In Burrows and Words, Who Needs Them? have been created for the enjoyment of hearing, hard-of-hearing and D/deaf audiences. In Burrows also features integrated audio description for blind or partially sighted audiences. from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2ohvYuv

#Theatre #Blogger #visual art #Edinburgh Fringe #Experimental Critique

[baileydremel]

THE LECTURE SERIES (W5) : CTRL + P

For today’s lecture, we looked into the transition between humanistic scribal activity in which books were hand-written by scribes into a more mechanical form of printing, which helped in the mass production of books. We also looked at the transition to mechanical type and using maths to create typefaces. Also grids.

It was interesting to see how far printing and communication has come ever since cuneiform. I could not imagine how slow it would be to hand draw every single letter of a book over and over again. If we had to hand write some of the books we have today it would take months, if not years to write a single book. That was probably why books were a luxury.

Then Gutenberg’s invention changed the perception of books and typefaces. Now books weren’t perceived as a luxury and could be mass produced. It also just dawned on me how insane it is that everything we do today and take advantage of was the result of years of work.

For the mass production of books to occur, there would have been print shops where people would use Gutenberg print press to make pages for books. You would think that since everyone would probably have a printer in their homes that print shops don’t exist, but they still do, they’ve just evolved. I still need to go to Office works to print out my works and only print shops have the materials I need for my work. Much like everything else, stuff doesn’t disappear, it just evolves.

Fig 1: My crappy home printer, which has a little Gutenberg in it.

Another thing we talked about was the use of mathematical proportions and grids to generalise type. Mathematicians would also compare typefaces to the human form, which at first I found very odd. What would be the connection between the human body and a letter? This might relate to our previous project in which we had to create letters from objects. Maybe you can create a typeface with different parts of you body. What letters can you make with your hands? 

The grids mathematicians used to balance type and ensure that all the letter forms were the same or equal is very similar to why we use grids in our works and in society in general. Their mathematics and drawings correlate with come of the practices and programs we use today and I found it very fascinating the similarities between Academie Royale and Adobe’s postscript. The use of grids and lines to determine the placement of type.

Fig 2: The comparison between Academie Royale and Adobe Post Script, which were 300 years apart.

Case and Point: Nothing disappears entirely, it just evolves. 

#thelectureseries

[michaelfassbenderonline]

One thing you can’t say about Alien: Covenant is that it didn’t spark conversation. While filmmaker Ridley Scott’s Prometheus follow-up amassed a somewhat divisive response among fans, it certainly posed a lot of fascinating questions for folks to argue over. So it’s a good thing the Blu-ray release of Alien: Covenant includes a full audio commentary from Scott, along with plenty of other bonus features that dive deep into the conception and making of the film.

Scott’s commentary for Covenant is, somewhat disappointingly, a bit of a mixed bag. There are times when he spends a bit too much time discussing things that are obvious to the viewer, but it ends up being a worthwhile listen for the insights he does give. He addresses some of the criticisms, from the scientists touching things to the particulars of A.I. anatomy, while also offering some great insight into some of the decisions he made and the backstory of the characters. It’s clear in the commentary, as in the film, that Scott is really interested in Michael Fassbender’s David, and there’s a lot of time spent discussing the philosophy of A.I. and the characters of David and Walter.

But the Blu-ray has even more to offer, as a nearly hourlong series of featurettes called Master Class – Ridley Scott go deep behind the scenes of the conception and making of the film, with interviews with Scott, the cast, and writer John Logan. There’s a lot of great stuff to be found there, especially for cinephiles, but for now I’ve put together a list of some of the more glaring insights that Scott offers on his audio commentary below:

Ridley says David wasn’t an A.I. that was an embryo and grew up—when we see him in the prologue, he’s freshly “born.”

David realizes in the prologue that his creator has limitations (i.e. will die), and when Peter asks him to pour him tea after David points out that Peter will die, it was a challenge—his first “order” to David. Scott says that David’s choice to pour the tea immediately, with no reaction, shows that he’s political, and therefore dangerous. He’s biding his time and choosing his actions wisely.

The opening title font, information about the ship, and even the score all harken back to the original Alien directly after the prologue.

Scott says the nail necklace represents the idea of the cabin on the lake that Katherine Waterston and James Franco’s character’s planned to build.

There’s no random choice in the crew members—they all had to earn their spots on the ship.

Danny McBride’s character was inspired by Slim Pickens, down to the hat. Scott calls him his hat tip to Stanley Kubrick’s Strangelove.

The holodeck on the Covenant is meant to be an evolution of the holodeck from Prometheus.

Scott says on the set of Alien his actors would get fussy with him about not having any backstory or motivation beyond surviving the titular menace, so Scott sat down and wrote a page of backstory for each character.

In the original script, Shaw’s transmission was a prayer. But Scott felt it was corny and instead changed it to the John Denver song because of its purity and focus on loneliness, despite not actually being a big John Denver fan himself.

Scott acknowledges the plot point of receiving a transmission and going to its source is from the original Alien: “I think there’s a comfort zone when a film is so popular and is popular for 30 years, that it’s good to slightly revisit old ideas.”

Scott says this planet, Origae-6, has two moons and is roughly the size of Earth. 

All the landing shots are actual location shots from New Zealand.

Scott confirms the planet we saw in Prometheus was a military research outpost, which he based on what he learned about Anthrax Island where they developed anthrax during World War II.

Scott says he storyboards everything, noting that he went through many years of art school and can thus storyboard incredibly quickly.

The neomorph literally grows as he’s running after Amy Seimetz’s character.

Scott develops almost everything he makes, but he says The Martian came out of the blue as something he didn’t personally develop.

Scott says on the commentary that Covenant is the middle chapter for this new series of Alien films: “There’s a platform for what we’re doing right now. It’ll be Prometheus, Covenant 1, and Covenant 2, then we’ll probably come in the back end of Alien 1, and that’s already kind of been worked out. Covenant 2’s already being written [by] John Logan.”

The big statues inside David’s stronghold are probably the six elders of the entire civilization: “The intellects, the artists, the wise men.”

Scott says he thinks the Engineers have a lifespan of around 150 years.

The flashback that shows what happened to the dead Engineers wasn’t in the original script. Scott insisted they needed to show who killed all of them and why.

David has been marooned on the planet for 10 years.

Scott has answers for all your David body hair questions: “Does the hair of an A.I. grow? If David’s a super A.I., they’ll want his hair to grow. They couldn’t quite work out the red blood—they wanted to differentiate with white blood—but hair will grow, beard will grow… Does he get dirty? Probably, but he doesn’t have body odor or anything like that, so he probably just keeps the parts clean.”

The building David is housed in was based in part on the beauty of the Pantheon. 

Scott says the entire film boils down to issues of A.I. and creator/creation: “The subtext of this whole story is the evolution of an A.I. will eventually demonstrate his superiority to their human intellect, and if we invent a perfect A.I. and the next thing you do is have that A.I. create or invent an equal A.I., from that moment we’re in trouble, unless we can control it.”

Scott says there were about 2 million Engineers in the plaza when David released the biological weapon. The weapon can kill a planet entirely in months, flora and fauna, then the planet will take years to rebuild.

Visually Scott originally wanted Alien: Covenant to be like Black Hawk Down, but once they dug into it he felt Black Hawk didn’t look “cosmetic” enough for what he needed, so they found a middle ground between that look and Prometheus.

Scott defends Billy Crudup’s character’s decision to touch and look in the eggs noting that John Hurt’s character did it in the first Alien.

Daniels gradually taking over the group in Covenant harkens back to Ripley’s arc in the first Alien.

Scott’s first cut was 2:20, 2:15 and he removed about 15 minutes of footage: “Half the time it’s when shots are too long or the sequence is too long, but I’m quite good at judging where I am and have I done too much and do I waste money by shooting stuff I don’t use.”

The alien that comes out of Crudup’s chest was a puppet on set, then replaced with a digital version in post-production.

Scott says David’s love for Elizabeth is real.

Scott was worried people wouldn’t buy the fact that David stabbing Walter didn’t kill him, and he explains that the “kill button” that David thought he hit was already starting to evolve in this new version of the A.I., thus he comes back.

There was debate over whether to keep the scene in which Daniels flips through David’s drawings, which Scott thinks gives us insight into how David’s mind works. 

Scott wanted to keep the A.I. fight short and violent because we’ve seen similar kinds of fights before.

Scott says he wants the audience wondering if the A.I. is Walter or David on the ship.

On the original Alien, as written, when Ripley gets into the shuttle the movie ends. “I felt it was flat, it needs another evolution, so you need a fourth act. So I sat down and wrote the fourth act, which is what happens inside the escape shuttle, and it cost money so they didn’t want to do it, but I think it’s the whole difference in the film.” It constituted an extra five days of shooting, and Scott wanted to tack on a similar “extra ending” for Covenant.

David sneaking the embryos onto the ship in his stomach was inspired by research Scott had done for a film called Cartel, where he learned that girls were swallowing drugs and carrying them across the border.

David’s final walk down the corridor used to have a kick inspired by Adolf Hitler, but Scott removed it.

For much more on the film, Alien: Covenant is currently available on Digital HD, 4K Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD.

#michael fassbender #Alien: Covenant #ridley scott #films #news #behind the scenes #katherine waterston

[ogmosis]

Crime Fiction Interview: Sandrone Dazieri

Kill the Father and Kill the Angel are two of the most enjoyable crime fiction books that I have read in the last few years. Buzzing with wit, invention and pop culture references, Sandrone Dazieri has established an arresting series that will hopefully run for longer. Aside from these two international bestsellers, Dazieri has been a prolific author of other books and screenplays so it was an honour to be able to quiz this fascinating Italian wordsmith on what makes him tick.

1) Do you prefer the often restrictive nature of screenwriting or the unlimited scope of novel writing?

They are different fields and I live them in very different ways. I love the speed of execution of screenplays - their amazing conciseness and storytelling through images. I also like to see how a script changes in the hands of a director and actors. When it works, it's wonderful, because it multiplies the power of the written word. When it doesn't work... it is still a pleasant way to make a living. Novels, instead, are my home. I grew up in them, first as a reader and then as a writer, and they are the only place where I can truly do whatever I want. All the rest was coming and going, but over the last 20 years I have written novels almost every day.

2) How important is a strong, malevolent antagonist to underpin a riveting crime series such as yours?

It is extremely important, but my real antagonist is never a human being. Yes, there is a murderer and they need to be found, but both in the first and second novels of the 'Uccidi il padre' trilogy, the person who carries out the act is only a piece of a larger system, a corrupt and compromised system, linked to the state. It is a thriller, not a spy story, but I try to represent an idea of crime that goes beyond our borders. By now, evil is globalised.

3) Did you imagine actors when you were writing Caselli and Torre as they truly jump off the page?

Thank you for the compliment. In order to move a character through a novel, I need to know how they would behave in a given situation without having to think about it too much. I need to hear their voice in my head when they speak. In short, I have to identify with them, even if they are a monster. It's like Stanislavski's system applied to writing. If I had to stick an actor's face on them, it wouldn't work for me.

4) Your pop culture references are hugely enjoyable, which help to give the characters and story depth. Are you surprised more authors do not pepper their books with them to infuse more of a human touch?

Actually, many writers do that, and many do it better than me. For example, authors such as Stephen King and Niccolò Ammaniti. And then it is true that we always try to show off classical culture and not pop culture. Unfortunately I am lacking in classical culture, I had no choice.

5) Do you outline your books rigorously or do you meander off on tangents as the writing day evolves?

I don't meander off, but I don't do treatments or outlines. If I'm getting to the end, I do a list of the missing chapters, to check that I am not leaving anything out. I know that the story I want to tell will come only after I have warmed up and have had the characters move around a bit. I don't meander because I know where I am going, even if sometimes I end up in dead ends and end up throwing away many pages. Every time I know that, to reach my goal, I will have to learn some new tricks and this is gratifying.

6) Which authors and filmmakers have influenced you the most, both when you started out writing and now?

There are hundreds, to tell you the truth. When I like a novel, a film or a character, they continue to work inside me for a good long while. Lately I have been ordering again the novels I read between the ages of 12 and 14. Of some of these I am able to quote lines by heart and I remember they key scenes as if I had been there. I have also been influenced by comics, songs, animations etc... so let's mention one name per category. Stephen King for novels, Alan Moore for comics, David Bowie for music, Yoshiyuki Tomino for anime and Hideo Kojima for video games.

7) How important was your background working in several professions before you settled on writing?

I am a kind of minestrone with lots of different bits in it but, if I have to mention a job that certainly shaped me, I'd have to say a reviewer of TV movies for a magazine. Every week, I had to summarise the plot of a hundred films into five lines each. I only had the title for about half of those films because they came from obscure American cable TV channels and, at the time, we didn't have the Internet. I made a lot of stuff up, and it was a great exercise.

8) What aspects of journalism have informed your writing the most in the creative and editing phases?

None. I have a press card, but I don't consider myself a journalist. I got the card when I was working in TV magazines, but the peak of my career was interviewing a few presenters. I had the feeling I was bothering them and I would freeze. I never got any scoops.

9) How did the big success of the Gorilla series change how you approach the craft of writing?

It didn't, apart from second novel wobbles. The first had done well, but it could have been a fluke, and with the second I would discover if I had what it takes. When the second did well, I told myself that confirmation would come with the third one, and so on. Until the fourth novel, if someone asked me what my job was I would say I worked in books, but never that I was a writer. I felt like a self-taught fraud, someone from the street. Even now, compliments embarrass me and I struggle to talk about what I am writing.

#amreading #amwriting #scriptchat #books #crime #crimefiction #italy #italia #sandronedazieri #screenplay #screenwriting #film #sceneggiatura #killthefather #killtheangel #publishing #simonandschuster #mystery

[clivestandennetwork]

Vulkan Interview

  VULKAN – UK talent, Clive Standen, is a jack-of-all-genres in the entertainment industry; he’s played multiple roles on historical dramas and is none other than Rollo on critically acclaimed “Vikings.” In 2017, he’s set to star in Alex Cary’s “Taken” and zombie thriller, “Patient Zero.” Lucky for us, the actor took some time to talk to VULKAN about everything from his character prep, to the joys of fatherhood, and doing his own stunts!

  What are some of the key differences in the acting industries in the USA vs the UK?

  One of the main differences is in the UK, were far more encouraged to go to drama school and do three years of training in acting. In the US, it’s not really a thing; it’s more about learning on the job. Some British actors seem to be made in acting school, and some American actors seem to be made in the gym…which makes sense when you spend more time working on what you look like than getting into character. The way that the industry works is completely different too. It’s a far bigger country, and with the amount of casting directors and projects going on, you can get lost if you don’t have the right representation or don’t get that lucky break. England is a much smaller country and it’s a far smaller circle and you tend to bump into the same people a lot more on auditions and castings.

  You’re a married father of three! How do you juggle an international acting career and being a father and husband?

  I don’t think anyone has the answer to that one! The amazing thing about being a parent is that it’s the only unconditional love you’ll ever find. You mess up all the time and you wake up and your kids turn around and say, “I love you, Dad!” And so you try and be better, not mess up so much, and learn from your mistakes. There’s nothing easy about being a parent, working abroad, and being away from them. On the downside, when I’m away, I don’t get to see them very much; working with time differences and long hours on set, I’m trying to catch them on Skype whenever I can. Sometimes I miss out on the nicer things that if I were home I’d get to enjoy with them-after school clubs, football matches, and school plays. On the upside, when I am back, I’m completely there! There are fathers who get home at 8pm, when the kids are already in bed and only get to spend weekends with them. When I’m resting as an actor or done with a job, I get to be at home permanently with them and make up for lost time. I give them my undivided attention, turn off the phone and just be dad! We’ve got three children, and I look back to when I had one and I know I’m a seasoned veteran. It’s tough being a parent, even if you’re not working away; finding that balance between giving them your attention and having fun but also remembering you’re not always there to be their best friend. It’s about finding time to do the homework and other things that aren’t so pleasant that mum had to do. It’s not a 9-5 job, it’s 24/7. Sometimes all you want to do is play with the kids because you’ve been away and you feel guilt for having to do the not so fun jobs. It’s also hard to find a balance with your partner again…that might be one of the toughest things.

Was it at all challenging to break into the Hollywood scene coming from across the pond? Why or why not?

  As an actor, you go to drama school for three years and all you really want when you’re there is to leave with an agent. Then you get an agent and you want an audition. Then you get an audition and all you want is a small part. Then you get that part and you want a bigger one! You never really know where you’re going and have to take everyday as it comes. Ultimately, you obviously have those days where you dream about getting that big job that’s going to change your life, that character that you can really run with, that person who has the faith in you to play that character. The thing about acting is that it can change on a dime! Some great actors spend their whole life chasing it and they don’t manage to get that big role until their late 40s…like Kevin Spacey. If you get into acting, you never really know, and it’s for that reason you wake up disheartened, and you have to go with what’s been thrown at you and make the most of every job. I get really annoyed with actors that seem to just complain about everything on set. And so with all due respect, I think, “why do you do this?” You’re knocking down doors to get the job and when you actually do, it seems like you don’t enjoy it! Embrace it! There’s an old joke about an actor that’s been out of work for 2 years and he’s tried so hard to get a job, and then one day, his agent calls and says he’s got a job. He’s jumping up and down and the first thing he does is ring his wife and says I have two bits of news; it’s good news and good news! The first is that I got a job, the second is that I got the first week off!  You meet so many actors like that and it’s strange. Acting has to be a part of you…you have to wake up every morning and go to sleep every night wanting to do it because that’s the only way you’ll survive in this industry. You should be happy doing a fantastic play in front of 20 people, or a massive movie with Charlize Theron. You get out what you put into it.

  What’s one of the most valuable lessons your career as an actor has taught you?

  I learned to not judge people so quickly. Acting is all about looking deeper and trying to figure out why somebody does what they do and the reason isn’t usually what’s on the surface. When someone has villainous qualities, you have to ask why they’re doing that! Still waters run deep and that’s what acting has taught me. Some people do make mistakes in life and they deserve second, third, or as many chances as it takes for them to change. Some people are capable of doing it in a day, and it can take others a whole lifetime.

  You’ve starred in an array of historical TV series, “Camelot,” “Robin Hood,” and most recently, “Vikings.” What draws you to this genre?

  Sometimes you see these actors in interviews, and they get asked why they took this role in a big movie, and they say, “well, when Kenneth Branagh calls you up, you never say no!” But the thing is, he never calls you…you audition and so do others and they go down the list and end up with you. That’s not to say it’s not deserved, but why aren’t they just honest about how they really needed that job, it was a great character to play and you’re not going to turn it down? In my case, I had been doing sword fighting, horse riding, and stunts since I was thirteen years old, so that really gave me an edge on my resume and brought me to a place where they’d be silly not to employ me, and that’s what got me my first break. Jobs like “Camelot” and “Robin Hood” were exactly that, and I probably wouldn’t have been chosen for the role had I not known how to sword fight. Those were a dress rehearsal for the real deal, which for me, is “Vikings.” It just so happens that my first few roles were historical in nature; I’m not necessarily drawn to the genre but it was just my way in to be taken seriously and known as a credible actor.

  Speaking of “Vikings,” can you tell us a bit about your character, Rollo, and how he’s evolved over the last four seasons of the show?

  Rollo has been a joy to play because, what’s fascinating to me, when I first got the role, as I do with all of them, was research…especially when you’re playing a real person, you have a responsibility to do your best to get it right. My character was the great great great great grandfather of the Duke of Normandy, this amazing ruler, responsible for changing the way we live and the feudal system within Europe. Lots of people, including the Royal Family, have got lineage to Rollo and the Duke of Normandy because of William the Conquerer. On paper, he’s a leader, a warrior, and an incredible person in history, but when I got the first two scripts for “Vikings,” he wasn’t that guy…he was this horrible, duplicitous man who lived on the margins and did some very questionable things. He seemed very ugly on the inside, very lost and I knew it was going to be an incredible journey as an actor-if the show were to get picked up-because I knew how Rollo ended up.

  Because I started at such a base level, I had the opportunity to make him grow; smash him into 1,000 pieces and then build him up again, season after season. It’s been a joy over the last four and a half years to see his transition-Season 1; the audience hated him, Season 2; they loved to hate him, Season 3; they’re drawn to him, and Season 4; they understand and relate to him more. It’s great writing and it’s great to be able to play all the different dimensions of such a multifaceted character.

  What are some of the difficulties with portraying some of these historical figures?

  You just have a great responsibility to get it right. I immerse myself in the world of the character, which is part of the fun for me, and in doing the research, I learned a lot about a time period that I didn’t know much about. Once I got into the world of the Vikings, I realized it hadn’t really been explored on screen before. The Vikings have always been misconstrued as villainous devils that came from the sea, and raped and pillaged everything in their sight. There are obviously two sides to every story, and in this particular story of history, it was recorded by the invaded, not the invaders. It’s a very one-sided view that’s written down, and a lot of is Christian propaganda written by the monks at the time, but there’s not much from the Vikings side. If you actually go to Scandinavia, start researching the Sagas, and piecing together through their art and archeological digs, you get a better idea of who the Vikings really were. I feel like we have a massive responsibility to present the discursive story on screen because with history, often the truth lies in the middle somewhere. There’s a famous historian who was writing about Rollo, 400 years after he lived, and says that he was an amazing ruler who was lovely to his people, and ruled with an iron fist but was always fair in judgment…but he was commissioned by the Duke of Normandy to write all of this stuff, so it’s not necessarily true. Then there are other things written about Rollo, portrayed in Season 1 of the series, about a man who was banished for stealing from the king; he was quite villainous. In the Sagas, he was a warrior, so you kind of piece all of those bits together and find the truth in the middle somewhere. That’s what part of the fun for me!

  You star on “Taken,” as Bryan Mills, which is a TV series based on the popular Liam Neeson franchise of the same name. What characteristics does the show share with the film? How do they differ from one another?

  Alex Cary, who wrote many episodes of “Homeland,” took the first “Taken” film as a base, because we didn’t really want to include the second and third ones. They’re a bit more polished, and the first one is rough, gritty, and real. The Bryan Mills in the first film is a father who’s had his daughter kidnapped and he’ll do anything he can to get her back, just like you and I would do…the difference between us and Bryan Mills is that he has that particular set of skills. He gets knocked down and he gets back up again; nothing will stop this man! That’s what we took on board for the TV show; he bleeds, he sweats, he cries, you feel his pain and you’re with him because you need him to succeed…we’ve lost all humanity if he doesn’t! In a world where there are horrible terrorists, kidnappers, and money launderers, this guy is trying to sweep the mess of America under the carpet. What I tried to do with Bryan is make him human; he lives in the grey. Sometimes his moral compass is tested and he looks at the people he works for and wonders if they’re that much better than the people he’s being told to track down, hunt, and sometimes kill. When someone makes a mistake, it’s about what they do when they get back up again; do they lie in their bed because they made it, or do they do everything in their power to change the mistake they made? In the film, there’s a lot of collateral damage, but you don’t seem to care so much because you’re in it with him and you know he’s doing it for the right reasons. For example, when he shoots his ex best friend’s wife in the arm just to get information. A good way to describe the show would be a cross between “24,” for its pace and its drive all the way through, and “Homeland” for its integrity of the realness of a situation. I call it a covert action show; it’s about getting in there and getting out without being seen-making silent noise! Everything that Bryan does in the film feels like it could be happening in real life, which extends down to the action. I’ve done everything I possibly can to do my own stunts-within reason, of course. When it comes to the fighting, falling, jumping, rolling, and Parkour, I’ve done it all myself. Not because I have a death wish, but because I realized that when you put the camera on me, and you can show my eyes in the middle of this action scene, they can tell the story; you can see his pain, anger, and frustration. I think that’s what’s original about the show-it’s not James Bond, it’s its own entity and it’s nice to have a writer like Alex Cary with real credibility.

  Jennifer Beals, iconic actress of “Flashdance” fame, stars in a few episodes of “Taken.” What was it like working with her?

  She’s a maniac! Just kidding…she’s fantastic. It’s been great working with her! All you can ask for in an actor is someone who gives it their all on and off camera, and she’s definitely one those actresses. She plays an important role to Bryan Mills’ story. In the first episode, something really tragic happens to Bryan and his family and Bryan goes on a wrecking ball mission to try and make it right. He hasn’t got the particular set of skills yet, and Christina Hart, played by Jessica Beals, is the head of a secret black ops agency within the CIA. After using Bryan as bait for a little while, they realize he’s going to stick around and she takes him under her wing. She’s the woman in a man’s world.

  What’s your process like when choosing new roles? What about a script or a character grabs your attention?

  I like characters that burn brightly, that are strong willed and speak for themselves. Something where you can just exist in physicality and you don’t have to do too much. If we were talking about people in real life, we’d probably just say they have that “x factor” and sometimes, there’s a character “x factor” that sings off the page and I can just see him, he’s burning, he can’t be kept in the cage. And that’s all it takes. Sometimes, that results in taking on a really bad project because you’ve chosen this fantastic character. The key is finding great script writing and a character that makes you feel joy, everyday! That character could be one of the most ruthless, horrible villains, or it can be a romantic comedy with lovely dialogue; the genre or type of character doesn’t really matter, sometimes it just speaks to you off the page and you have to play that character!

  Can you tell us about your new project, “Patient Zero” and what drew you to it?

  I believe it will be released in February 2017. It’s a zombie film, and is almost a commentary on the future of humanity, where Mother Nature has decided that our time on this earth has come to an end and she’s replacing us with a genetically mutated version of the rabies virus, which pulls out this latent anger inside us all. It’s not necessarily a virus that’s wiping out the human race, just the next generation. Humans are living in bunkers underground, trying to escape, but also trying to find patient zero; the first person who was bitten. The faction of zombies has this rage inside of them, and adrenaline pumping through them at all times…which makes them very dangerous. I play Colonel Knox, one of the last people in the military, who if he had his way, would just kill them all, but him and others are trying to find a cure.

  I’ve added the other photos from this shoot to the gallery.

    Gallery Link:

Photoshoots > #032

var hupso_services_t=new Array("Twitter","Facebook","Google Plus","Pinterest","Tumblr","Email");var hupso_background_t="#EAF4FF";var hupso_border_t="#66CCFF";var hupso_toolbar_size_t="small";var hupso_twitter_via = "clivestandencom";var hupso_image_folder_url = "";var hupso_twitter_via="clivestandencom";var hupso_url_t="";var hupso_title_t="Vulkan Interview";

[aurelliocheek]

Writing and localization of Ghost Of A Tale

What makes a good tale? Memorable characters you can relate to? Check! Thrilling adventures? Check! A world brimming with stories and legends? Check!

SeithCG‘s »Ghost of a Tale« has it all, and it‘s no wonder the game was critically acclaimed for its writing by gamers and game ciritics alike. But how do you create a world so rich and immersive with a team which can be counted on the fingers of one hand? And how do you make sure your story meets its audience across borders? After all, great tales are famous because most people have heard of them…

In this interview with Lionel Gallat and Paul Gardner, we dive into the writing and localization process of Ghost of a Tale, a stealth-RPG in which players follow Tilo, a mouse minstrel on a quest to find his beloved. From early drafts to last minute font issues, the two creative minds behind the game’s impressive lore look back on a 5-year journey.

Hi, Lionel, thanks a lot for taking the time to tell us about the writing of your game. I know you started working on Ghost of a Tale’s artistic assets back in 2013, but when did you actually start working on the game’s story, world, and characters? LG: I’d been thinking about this world for many years while I was working on all those animated features. But the creation process of Ghost of a Tale is a very holistic one. The art I was creating, the models I was rigging, the technical tests I was doing, all of these were aimed at creating a sort of cushion for what the game would become. I had even written a script several years ago with a friend of mine in hope of maybe pitching it to a movie studio. However, ironically, when I started developing Ghost of a Tale on my own, as a game, the whole story changed and characters disappeared. Only Tilo remained. In older drafts he was younger and not quite the main protagonist. Of course, all of this evolved as Paul got involved in the project.

Magpies alone possess a set of Codex Feathers, concealed beneath their wings, and preened in such a way as to function as a mnemonic system. It’s said the Codex contains the knowledge of their forebears, and the history of all things.

Hi Paul, thanks for joining us. So, how did you get to work with Lionel? PG: We were introduced by Mike Evans, a mutual friend. Mike and I had worked together at Namco, and one day he told me about this guy who was making a game by himself. We met with Lionel on Skype, and we ended up talking for around three hours – it was a really good conversation. I was just really fascinated by his concept, and what he was trying to do. I promised I‘d help in whatever way I could. Initially it was just casual, giving feedback on design and story ideas or whatever, but later Lionel asked me if I would help out with writing and design on a more formal basis. Still, we didn‘t meet in person for more than a year.

Pangeia, the fictional world in which Ghost of a Tale takes place, has a pretty tangible past and hosts myriad animal species. It’s also a relatively dark world, which contrasts with its rather cute inhabitants (for the most part). Where does Ghost of a Tale draw its inspiration from, and what is it fundamentally about? LG: The game is obviously inspired by older animated movies from Disney, and particularly by »The Secret of NIMH« (both the book and the movie). It touches upon several themes, like casual racism, prejudices, and loss, but at the same time it does so very organically, through humor and empathy. We’re not preaching anything: the animals that are the characters in this story are but a mirror to us human beings. And through them we talk about what it means to know the past.

PG: »History is built upon the ruins of the truth.« Tilo is told this by one of the characters he meets in the keep, and for me it summarizes one of the most interesting themes of the game. The decision to make the protagonist a mouse really profoundly influenced the design of the game. It gave us a vulnerable protagonist, not physically strong, which meant he wouldn‘t be using combat as his primary way of interacting with the world. Every other design and story decision started from there. Using animals to tell the story helped us in a lot of ways. It makes what otherwise might be a pretty grim story much more accessible. The established relationships between creatures, the hierarchy between them – who‘s predator and who‘s prey, for example – gave us something to work with, or subvert. There‘s also a level of abstraction that comes from using animal characters, so any parallels between our history and Pangeia‘s history are made less directly. We can write about subjects and themes allegorically, without straying too close to real world events.

Was the story clear in your mind from the start? How much did the lore, characters, and plot of the game change from your initial idea? PG: The heart of the game hasn‘t changed since the time Lionel and I first spoke. Tilo has always been a minstrel, searching for his family. We‘ve just expanded on that core, sort of fleshed it out. I always really loved that we begin with a classic video game scenario – escape from jail, and rescue the princess – and then kind of subvert that over the course of the game. Because we were starting from such a strong foundation, there was actually not that much revision, which is really rare.

Players are given the choice of reading footnotes that provide further information on the lore.

This certainly explains why everything from the game’s world feels so genuine and coherent… Ghost of a Tale was unanimously praised for the richness of its lore and the quality of its writing. What’s your creative process like? How do you ensure everything meets high quality standards? PG: The very first time Lionel and I met in person we spent a few days developing Tilo‘s story and the history of the world, and figuring out where our characters fit into it. From that we wrote a long, exhaustive timeline that became the foundation for everything else. Lionel and I talk through everything in a lot of detail – motivation, tone, meaning, etc. – before I start writing anything. I try to get the dialogue into a state where we can review it in-game as quickly as possible. Once I have a solid draft, Lionel will go through it, giving comments and feedback. It‘s an iterative process.

There’s a lot of humor and poetry in the game, which was both a challenge and a real pleasure for our team to localize, given the great quality of the original material. What’s your secret for writing a moving story and witty dialogue? LG: One thing I said to Paul at the beginning was: we’re treating the game dialogue the same way it would be written for a movie (or TV series) script. Every line needs to be necessary or else it’s out. I personally hate it when, in an RPG, I get three pages of text for something that could have been expressed with two sentences. Also, we paid a lot of attention to characters’ voices. The way they express themselves. Although there are no voice-overs in the game, we made sure the lines could be read aloud by an actor and not feel overly written or fake.

PG: One of the first things we did when we were developing the story was map out a dialogue for Ravik, the Magpie. Looking at it now, it‘s pretty bad, but it let us quickly find out what did and didn‘t work, and helped us find the right tone. We realized brevity was really important to us – avoiding unnecessary dialogue and exposition as much as possible – so the player wouldn‘t be wading through pages of text. Actually the idea of writing footnotes to efficiently incorporate lore into the main text came from creating that first dialogue. Overall we worked hard to make sure the story remained honest, that the characters behaved in an internally consistent way, that things remained simple, and that the tone never got too melodramatic. The jokes are almost all contextual, and come pretty naturally from understanding the characters, and how they‘d respond and react to each other and their situation. We wrote biographies for each of the characters that we could always refer to, to make sure we were never straying too far from who the character was.

»Every voyage I took with a Mouse on board ended in tragedy – and there was always a Mouse on board.« Kerold Redwhiskers

I guess you don’t come up with a game like Ghost of a Tale that has such impressive lore and colorful characters with just a couple of days of writing and sketching. How long did it take to write all the game’s content? PG: We wrote and designed the game in parallel, as much as possible. Ideally the two disciplines should influence and inform each other. In that respect we were writing and designing pretty consistently for around three years. Lionel designed and implemented the dialogue system relatively early in production, which enabled us to start seeing the flow and structure of the dialogue in-game. We did a lot of planning of the game‘s structure and story, first on paper and later in flow diagrams. Every so often we‘d stop for a reality check, and try and rein in our scope a bit. But I think almost everything we cut actually made it into the final game in some form or other.The game‘s content was locked not long before the game was released. Level Up Translation really helped us organize our schedule to give us as much time in test as possible.

You told your fans early on that you wanted to give the game proper localization. Why was it important to localize your game in the first place, and why did you need professional localization? LG: Well, after spending five years carefully developing the game and its lore we were not going to hand it off to a non-professional staff. If players were not going to read our words because they’re not fluent enough in English, then they would get the next best thing. And as you know, that requires professionalism and dedication!

PG: It was, of course, important to localize the game so we could reach as wide an audience as possible. Lionel and I would write in English, and we used a lot of puns and wordplay. Sometimes Lionel would joke, ›The localization team is not going to be happy‹. I‘d worked on a number of games before where that was an issue, but in my experience the best localization teams are creative individuals in their own right. You have to be available to answer any questions they have and give feedback, of course. But if they‘re given the freedom to run with it, a great, professional localization team can create a true adaptation of the story. The wordplay and songs still work in the target language: it’s not just a literal translation.

Fun fact: In the Italian version of the game, Merra (Tilo’s wife) became Marna because »Merra« sounded very similar to an Italian curse word.

How did you decide which languages to localize your game into? PG: We had fans of the game requesting that the game be localized for their region for a long time, and we’re still receiving requests to add new languages. Also, because two-thirds of the core team is French, I always assumed that the game would be localized, at least into French. We found during our initial IndieGoGo campaign, and later during early access on Steam, that so much of our support came from Europe and Russia, so it made sense to do the work to try and reach that audience.

With 80,000 words, Ghost of a Tale is pretty »wordy« for an indie game, which represents quite an expense in terms of localization and a financial risk for a small studio. How did you evaluate the profitability of localizing your game? LG: It simply came down to the fact that we needed to be able to sell a certain amount of copies in a given language in order for it to make sense financially. We simply budgeted for as many languages as we could at the game’s release. Localization is not a cheap process by any means, but we didn’t want the result to be cheap either! So let’s call it a carefully planned gamble, a financial investment based on how many copies we expected to sell in each language. I’m happy to say it all paid off! We always emphasize the importance of keeping localization in mind and including it as early as possible in the development. When did you start preparing your game for localization?

PG: We‘d had some preliminary discussions about the best format to use earlier in development, and decided on using a parallel series of directories – one for each language – each containing localized copies of our text files. A good week before the localization process began we discussed it with Damien at Level Up Translation to test our workflow and make sure we were providing files in an appropriate format.

What was your localization process like? PG: Due to the nature of our dialogue tools we ended up with a lot of individual files – one for each quest, one for each dialogue, one for each book page, etc. Fortunately Level Up Translation‘s tools were able to keep track of each of these files, including any changes we needed to make during localization. Damien had created an exchange folder where I uploaded batches of files that were ready for localization. He would then give me an estimated time for delivery for those files, and I would retrieve them from the exchange folder when they were ready. Whenever the localization team needed further information, they logged a query in an online Q&A file, or Damien would reach out on Skype if anything was urgent or required clarification. Once the translations were ready and implemented into the game, our engineer Cyrille and his partner, who spoke four of our six languages, were our first line of defense when testing the localized files. This was supplemented by bilingual members of our GoaT community forums.

Game development is very much about problem solving, and localization comes with its own share of challenges. Can you tell us about some problems you bumped into? PG: The localization process itself went surprisingly smoothly, thanks to regular communication with Level Up Translation throughout the process. One thing I hadn‘t really considered while writing, though, was the issue of having gendered words in other languages. We have a character that everybody assumes is male, but is later revealed to be female. Originally the reveal of that information was an optional thread in the conversation, but that made localization into some languages impossible. So I had to rewrite that thread, to make the discovery of that information unequivocal. Our dialogue trees were created in a mind-mapping application that Lionel wrote a parser for. The external application gave us a lot of functionality, and made the process really visual and intuitive, but its text editing functionality wasn‘t great and caused some problems during the editing process. In fairness, we were using it for a purpose it wasn‘t intended for, but that‘s something we‘d like to address in the future.We also had a last-minute issue with some of the fonts we used, which were not compatible with Russian and Chinese.

Test your fonts in all languages: A couple of days after release, the team discovered that some of their fonts were not available in Cyrillic.

I know your team actually developed custom tools for Ghost of a Tale. Can you tell us about the documents and tools you created to make the game’s writing and localization easier? LG: I wanted Paul to have all the tools he needed in order to have a fine degree of control over each aspect of the dialogue, so I wrote a fairly simple in-game dialogue system that evolved over the course of the development. Towards the end of development Paul could actually script game logic directly from the dialogue itself. In other words, Paul could work in an unrelated external mapping tool, but everything he did in there was parsed at run-time and translated into game logic. In a sense it was neat, but in the future we’ll eventually have to develop a proper dialogue application that will be integrated into the game’s inner code more tightly.

PG: We provided the localization team with as much information about the game as possible before they started their work. In addition to keys for the game itself, we created a style guide that gave an overview of the story, and provided references that helped give a sense of the spirit and tone of the writing. Since we had branching dialogues, we gave the team PDF copies of the dialogue trees so they could follow the conversation and have a better understanding of context. We also provided the team with our character biographies, and created a lexicon that gave a definition for any unfamiliar or made-up words and names, including the gender of the word.

This is the »1 million copies« question every indie developer asks themselves before taking the leap: was localizing Ghost of a Tale worth it? LG: Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. The return on investment was almost immediate. I can’t share any numbers, but almost half of our sales came from non-English speaking countries.

PG: Absolutely! Many of our reviews came from the European press, and the fact we had localized for those countries meant we received a lot more exposure than we otherwise would have.

If a dev team with a project the scale of Ghost of a Tale came to seek your advice regarding localization, what would you tell them? LG: From a technical point of view, localization is not an afterthought. Right from the beginning of the game we planned to support multiple languages in all of the game’s text elements. At first it felt a bit like overkill; after all, we could have just included the English text and been done with it. But we had heard about the importance of planning early for localization support and I can say it’s one of the best decisions we made at the beginning of the project. It’s a time investment that we recouped MANY times over when the moment came to swap languages.

PG: Start thinking about localization early, even if just at a high level. Talk to the localization team as soon as possible, to establish workflow.Give the localization team as much background information about your game as possible, before you begin – character biographies, a glossary of any names or words unique to your game, etc. Make sure you take time to discuss the style and tone of the game with the localization team. Be available to answer any questions the team has. It will make the project stronger, and allow the translators to move forward with confidence. I really enjoy this part of the project, as you get a good sense of how others see what you‘ve written.

The game’s upcoming release on PS4 and Xbox One should be the last stage of this 5-year journey. Is there anything that didn’t make it to the final product that you regret? LG: The game reflects exactly what we were able to do with our limited budget and (speaking for myself) experience. I’m actually proud that we were able to bring this project to fruition without getting lost on the way. I think we created something special here. And on a more personal note, I got to meet and work with terrific people like Paul, true professionals who dedicated their creative energy to making Ghost of a Tale what it is today simply because they believed in it.

PG: Sure, there are a few game mechanics and enemies that didn‘t make it into the final game, but we told the story that we set out to tell. If you look at what we originally planned, it‘s very close. In that respect this is the happiest I‘ve ever been with any project I‘ve worked on. Working with Lionel has probably been the most fulfilling creative experience I‘ve ever had.

Can we expect a sequel to Tilo’s adventures? PG: Well, we have the rest of Tilo‘s story mapped out. I hope we get the chance to tell it.

LG: It would indeed be wonderful! ;)

Interviewer: Damien Yoccoz www.leveluptranslation.com

Lionel Gallat is Creative Director of Ghost of a Tale

Lionel Gallat’s professional background is in animation. Lionel worked many years for DreamWorks on their first 2D (»The Prince of Egypt«, »The Road to Eldorado«, etc…) and then 3D movies (»Sharktale«, »Flushed Away«). He was also the animation director for movies like »Despicable Me«. And then one day he thought, ›Hey, why don’t I make a game?‹

Paul Gardner is Writer and Designer of Ghost of a Tale

Paul has been writing and designing for games for almost 20 years now, and he has worked on games like »Crash Twinsanity« for Traveller’s Tales, »Afro Samurai«, »Splatterhouse« for Namco, and »Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite« for Capcom. He’s currently based in the Bay Area in California.

The post Writing and localization of Ghost Of A Tale appeared first on Making Games.

Writing and localization of Ghost Of A Tale published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[mrmichaelchadler]

Sundance 2019 Interview: Julius Onah on Luce

Questions of identity, power and perception are smartly absorbed and considered in “Luce”, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday in the US Dramatic Competition section. Director Julius Onah, who co-wrote the screenplay with J.C. Lee (in an adaptation of Lee’s stage play), says he was never interested in judging the characters or making a didactic film in telling the story of the black teenager Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and his white adoptive parents Amy and Peter (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) as they grapple with certain allegations brought on to their star-student son by an over-concerned teacher named Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer).

A sophisticated drama that engages with timely themes around race, class, sexism and sexual trauma, and morphs into a subtle psychological thriller of sorts, “Luce” is more concerned with raising questions for smart audiences instead of providing neat answers for them. We recently sat down with Onah to discuss his latest film, currently seeking distribution at the festival.

What we bring to a movie as the audience always counts, but I felt like, in “Luce”, it counted for a little bit more. You play a lot with certain perceptions, presumptions or assumptions one might have. It was fascinating to see the movie operate on those two planes; what’s on the screen and what I, as an audience member, thought I knew about those characters. I just kept questioning myself.

It was something that came on a couple of different levels. First, it was in the writing. We worked really hard to make sure that, as we were telling the story, we weren't judging the characters. And that, as we were giving you information, as you were learning about these people, comes in a way that it's very carefully laid out but also feels organic. And then that there would be moments to build an expectation and then subvert that expectation in terms of what people would do. A big part of it was in the camera as well. 

The film plays in long takes, uses a more objective camera, and holds back a little bit as opposed to constantly asking the audience to feel this or feel that for a specific person, so that you just have time to take these people in. And then, as a result of not being told what you should feel about that one way or another, then you start questioning it when new bits of information come in. I wanted the movie to feel elegant and be great to look at, but then also not be something where the camera or the music or the performances became didactic. 

“Luce” was first a play by your co-writer J.C. Lee. What felt cinematic to you about it? How did you two get together to work on a film adaptation? 

I never saw the play. I was working on another movie in Los Angeles and I got a call from Imagine Entertainment and Brian Grazer there to take a look at this script they had written. That was written by J.C. Lee and I had never heard of him before. They sent me a writing sample, which was a play. When I read the play, I jumped on the movie just because I was like, "This play is fantastic!" It had that same sense of ambiguity and mystery and it was actually probably better to get to see it on text as opposed to seeing another director's interpretation of it. It just reminded me of the filmmakers who I really look up to. Everybody from Michael Haneke to Götz Spielmann; a lot of filmmakers who I think explore moral and social issues in a really complicated way. Even some early movies of Spike Lee as well. I just felt like, "Okay, there's an opportunity here to make something, influenced by those films, but hopefully make it my own thing as well.

When was this, when did you read the script?

I read the play in 2014.

A very different time politically.

Yeah. Very different time.

I mean; the themes and topics of the movie aren't new all of a sudden. These issues existed in 2014, too. But maybe they carry a little more significance and urgency today than they did back then. Did your journey as a writer and filmmaker shift or evolve over the years, in the way you engaged with the material? 

As you said, these issues have always been here, and I think they've just been right underneath the surface. And, obviously, when you have somebody like Barack Obama as president, the symbolic power of that is something that gives people a lot of hope that we're moving forward. And if Hillary's presidency came in, we'd be in a completely different place. We would continue to feel like we're having that march forward, but I don't think these issues would have gone away. Perhaps the tenor of the conversation would've been a little bit different.

And I think it was the right decision to [not] fundamentally try to change anything drastic about the play other than the organic adaptation from one format to another. The last thing I wanted was to be sensational or feel like, "Okay, we're going to capitalize on this movement." Because that was never the intention [behind] making the movie. The intention was just to be honest about things that affect my life, my family's life, my friends' life, and “people-I-care-about”s life.

It's interesting, obviously, now that we're living in a very different world with Trump, [certain] elements of the film are going to resonate differently, but I think those core questions are the same. And that's where it was always driving us because we were just passionate about these kinds of characters and these issues, regardless.

The relationship between Octavia Spencer's character and Kevin Harrison Jr's character is a really complex one. I mean, on one hand, I really sympathize with him because he wants to be free from the obligation to be perfect. But I see her point of view in pushing Luce, too—she's a person of a different era. 

It's a real conversation that I think we're having now on a number of different levels. If you look at the generation that somebody like Harriet is coming from, it was just a very different way to deal with social justice. If you were black, well, you know what? It's about being colorblind. You look at what's happening in the military now, what was happening in the '90s with Clinton, if you were gay, well, "Don't ask, don't tell." And I think what was really interesting for me, and just looking at younger people today, there's a freedom that they want to have.

They're saying, "If your generation was fighting hard for us to have the opportunity to be human, then we need to be able to experience the full spectrum of humanity. And I know you're trying to protect us, but if we're not going to take that next step from the step that you took, which was a step forward from the people before you as well. How are we going to make progress?" And there's no easy answer to that question. I don't have the answer to it. And if I did, I don't think I would have wanted to make this movie. I think it's such a worthwhile, dangerous and delicate conversation, that I really wanted to make this movie and tell the story.

[Harriett’s] is a tough-love mentality: "Look, I know you kids want to be able to express yourself this way, but the world might not accept that." It's a heartbreaking thing for me as well because I've dealt with versions of that too, both with my parents. It was something that when we would rehearse scenes Octavia and Kelvin and I would talk about. And Naomi and Kelvin and I would talk about. And I think it's also just a big part of the conversation we're having right now across this country on every level, on every spectrum of my identity. It's also on the basis of class. Luce is an immigrant. I'm an immigrant to this country. I didn't move here until I was 10. I think we're going to continue to be in this very heated moment if we can't find a way to start having honest conversations about what's going on. 

How did you cast Kelvin Harrison Jr. to play Luce? I loved him in “It Comes At Night” too.

My background is in theater. I studied theater for my first degree and I grew up all over the world. My sister lives in England and she married a Brit and I traveled a lot. You look at Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Oyelowo, and John Boyega. There are so many great young actors of the African Diaspora who are growing up in England and Australia and all these other places. And I assume that, because there's a very specific theater tradition in some of those countries that we would find somebody from there. We did a casting call and we were getting things from all over the world. And one of the tapes that came in was Kelvin’s, and then his agent had reached out to our casting director, and he and I had breakfast and, I just always want to be open minded. I knew nothing about him. We went and we talked for 30 minutes. He seemed like a sweet guy. And then his tape came in and I was like, "Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa! Who the hell is this kid?" And he just blew me away. He's such a good guy and I'm so proud of him because he worked really hard.

How did you help him internalize Luce’s back-story? It’s a complicated one.

We talked about everything. I love the process of building a character and I knew with something like this, because he's such a specific type, it would have to be built. And one of the first things I did with him was, he came over to my office when I was in LA and we started working on dialect. How does this kid talk? I'm originally from Nigeria, so there was a guy who I knew was a Nigerian-American. I hired a dialect coach and he recorded that guy speaking and then he started helping shape the dialect for Luce.

We would work on his body language; we would work on his posture. I was a debater in high school as well. So I brought the podium in and he and I would meet and I'd tell him, "This is the posture, this is how you carry yourself professionally." And then in terms of just the ideology of the character, I had him read several Frantz Fanon books, philosopher and psychiatrist and postcolonial thinker. Kelvin read those books. He actually wrote the paper in the movie and Octavia graded it. It’s the paper he's holding in the film. That was just a portion of living the character. 

And then the other thing I did was, I tried to find models that I think were similar to what Luce has to do and the idea of being somebody who's black in a prominent position. Because he's prominent in his community, in America and walking a fine line between being acceptable to people who aren't black, but then also being authentic to people who are black. And I felt Barack Obama, obviously is a massively transformative figure and Will Smith was I think, the first black major superstar—you can go to China, you can go to Nigeria, you can go to Germany, and people embrace him the same way they embrace Tom Cruise and other stars like that. So I had him look at the performative quality of those types of people, the way they're able to engage in public with people in a way that is nonthreatening and feels authentic and joyful, and use that to be one side of Luce. 

I want to talk a little bit about Luce's parents' journey. They are definitely liberal, well-intentioned people but they both handle the allegations against Luce differently. It also made me turn a mirror to myself and ask, “What would I have done?” 

I grew up with people like that. The movie is set in Arlington, Virginia, which is where I moved to when I was 10 years old. Especially being here with parents who weren't American, so much of what I had to learn was from other people's friends, from friends' parents. Or also from teachers. And then, these were all people who have the right liberal values, they are open minded and progressive, but they're not perfect. They're messy. And what I find, and I think it happens to me as well when I'm put in a situation that I'm uncomfortable, there's a defensiveness that sometimes just automatically snaps up. I could recognize a version of myself in those parents too. We're all struggling to grapple with the world that is changing so fast when it comes to how identity is defined, and when it comes to recognizing who has power and who has privilege. It’s really fucking hard. And I just wanted the humanity of these people. I have no interest in telling the story just to villain-ize them. I love Amy. I think she's an incredible character and trying to be an incredible person, even though she might do things that you and I might not like.

Honestly speaking, the ex-girlfriend character and her choices in the end is probably the only thing that I struggled with. But maybe her reaction is a coping mechanism too. Maybe she doesn't want to be victimized.

What happened to Stephanie Kim is terrible, but she's also a 17-year-old girl. And much like Luce who does not want to be put in this box on a symbolic level, [she might think], “Why do I have to be the perfect symbol of victimhood?” I think what she does is complicated and messy, but these young people are still in progress. Stephanie and Luce and DeShaun, they're all living that dichotomy and it's really hard. And having lived a version of it myself, it's really confusing and painful and, sometimes, especially when you're still 17, you don't know how to react. It's tricky and it's tough, but I felt it's also probably the most truthful thing.

I tried to be very thorough with everything I do. We did a lot of friends and family screenings where we brought all different kinds of people. We brought women of color, between J.C. and I; I'm originally from Africa, grew up in Asia and in Europe and moved here when I was 10. J.C. is part black, part Italian, part Chinese, and gay. So we brought every walk of life into the room. But what was interesting is, there were a number of Asian-American women in their 20s, who came up to us afterwards and they were just like, "Thank you so much for making a Stephanie Kim character, somebody who looked like me but just wasn't only the stereotype of the victimized girl." I wouldn't even say that we overtly were trying to do that. We just wanted to make characters that felt honest to people like us, and the people we knew.

With your previous movie, “The Cloverfield Paradox”, you went the Netflix route and the film was in everyone’s living rooms at the same time. Now with “Luce”, you’re 180-degrees on the opposite end of the spectrum. You’re starting traditionally, with a festival like Sundance and seeking distribution. I'm wondering what you make of those two very different pathways as a filmmaker. 

It's confusing and so complicated. I love movies. We shot “Luce” on 35mm. Larkin Seiple is a really talented DP. So, that process of telling the story, it's just so important to me. When I saw “Roma”, I was like; "I'm not watching it at home." I had to come into the IFC Center and wait in line and got my ticket. But there was a long line; I just remember a long line. I had to see it in the theater, [because] that's the way I fell in love with movies. And that's the way I always want to experience movies first. Even “Mandy”, I know that was on VOD at the same time, but I had to go see it in a theater. But the world is changing. For some kinds of movies that might not be able to be created any other way, what Netflix is offering is obviously very valuable. For a story like “Luce”, I feel like part of the experience of it is being uncomfortable with a group of people you might not know. And sharing that experience and then processing that. Cinema is about that communal experience and it's something that I always want to see preserved. But then I just recently saw “Shirkers”, which I loved. I thought it was terrific. And I was like, "Thank God for Netflix." So, again, I totally see the value of it. I hope the “Roma”s of the world are movies that we still get to see in theaters. And I think that's the thing that makes me the most conflicted.

What are you ideally seeking in a distributor who might be interested in “Luce”? 

I want it to be somebody who really believes in the film, and believes in the questions that the film is trying to ask. And believes and respects the audience enough to receive it. I really wanted to respect the audience, treat them within intelligence. Sometimes from a creative and/or distribution standpoint, people get taken for granted. I think there is a smart audience out there that wants to grapple with these types of ideas in a way that is messy and complicated. And I really want to find the right partner who's committed to that. Everybody; Octavia, Naomi, Tim, Kelvin, the whole crew was just in it for the right reasons. We were very lucky to have just an incredibly diverse group of people. Most of our department heads were people of color and women. Everybody came in really caring about the questions the story wanted to ask. I would want a distributor who can continue that spirit.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2MHdgYw

[topmixtrends]

THE OTHER SIDE of the Wind, directed by Orson Welles between 1970 and 1976, was intended to be his great Hollywood comeback. It was a movie for the New Hollywood era about exactly what it was: a legendary director trying and failing to make his great Hollywood comeback. It was also so patently Welles’s own situation that he cast John Huston as the lead and talked a good game about how the director was actually a stand-in for Ernest Hemingway, as if by layering all that other life over his own he could generate a fog of dissimulation that might convince anyone it wasn’t his story after all. Welles’s protagonist would commit suicide, like Hemingway; and he would be pushed to it by panic at his own repressed homosexuality, perhaps like Hemingway, certainly like Welles’s understanding of Hemingway. But he would talk, and leer, and smirk, and smile, like Huston.

The film’s frisson of autobio-bio-biography, of bioallegorical industrial psychoanalysis, of scattershot score-settling directed at Peter Bogdanovich, John Milius, Pauline Kael, Michelangelo Antonioni, and so many others would have swamped the coverage of the movie had it been finished in Welles’s lifetime. But it wasn’t so it didn’t.

In 1975, Welles was given a lifetime achievement award by the AFI. With The Wind basically shot and several sequences edited, he took the occasion to announce that all he needed was “end money” to bring the production to a close. No one came through, and the film remained unfinished. By now, though, you know that it is finished and streaming on Netflix. If it is the sort of thing you want to watch there is a good chance you have watched it, or you may have watched They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, the feature-length documentary directed by Morgan Neville that accompanies it and tells its backstory. Or you may have watched both. If you are a completist, you may also want to watch A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making, a fascinating, 40-minute making-of directed by Ryan Suffern that you can find under the “Trailers and More” tab. All three, according to producer Filip Jan Rymsza, were included in the 2015 term sheet they signed with the studio/streamer. The Wind is finished and then some.

For us, today, after the scores no longer need settling, and after the layers of biography are largely antiquarian, The Other Side of the Wind arrives as a muted lesson about Hollywood’s past and as a contemporary landmark available for immediate, and intensive, critical attention. It is not simply the movie Welles would have made had he completed it; it is the movie Welles would have made had he been the digital filmmaker he was not.

In the making-of and in person, everyone involved with getting The Wind finished says it couldn’t have been completed until now. It took new digital tools to find the right snatches of the original negative to match up with Welles’s workprint. It took Industrial Light & Magic to complete and composite shots of a bunch of dummies being shot. And, of course, the production made use of the whole range of now-ordinary digital processes to get the score ready, to loop missing dialogue, to edit and color correct and execute the final shot in which a drive-in screen fades to white as a dawn train rolls by.

In this mishmash of now and then, of state-of-the-art digital processes and radically innovative analogue processes, Welles has indeed made and been made into a portrait of the industry — today’s industry. “We are only here tonight because of Netflix,” producer Frank Marshall explained at a USC screening. “They stepped up; they never wavered; they supported us all the way.” They were the end money, at last.

The central conceit of The Other Side of the Wind has remained consistent from its first elaboration until now. The film contains two movies. The first is a piecemeal documentary set on the last day of the life of Jake Hannaford, played by Huston. The second is an eponymous film-within-the-film that exists in an incomplete state. Following the credits, the movie launches with Hannaford grabbing the final shot of the day — a group of laughing, naked women in a steam bath introducing our heroine (Welles’s companion and co-writer Oja Kodar) to a strap-on. It isn’t a single shot, but a dozen, giving the lie immediately to the faux documentary, but the rapid editing continues into the mad dash to the director’s ranch where there will be a party for his 70th birthday. Subsequently, we see extended portions of the nested film in three locations. One chunk is shown to a potential funder in a studio screening room. The funder passes. A couple more installments are screened at Hannaford’s ranch. Those screenings are punctuated by power outages and party overflow. Finally, after everyone has given up trying to get the power back at the ranch, the whole party decamps to a drive-in for the last bit. There, Hannaford’s relationship with his successful protégé Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich) will come apart; after, Hannaford will die in a car wreck.

The phony Antonioni of Hannaford’s film is visually stunning. Low horizons, blue-black skies, vague intrigue, and lots of sex. It’s also vapid, intentionally so. Hannaford is losing it, and despite his conviction that he can shoot the thing without a script, he has missed important shots. The would-be funder (a shot at Paramount’s Robert Evans, the subject of The Kid Stays in the Picture) is put off by the missing details about a kidnapping/robbery/bomb plot. The partygoers (who are usually playing themselves when not playing analogues of New Hollywood icons) encounter “SCENE MISSING” intertitles more than once. And the drive-in audience is treated to reels out of order. The upshot is clear from beginning to end: having driven away his young male star in a spate of sexual provocation, there’s no chance Hannaford can finish the film.

Just as stunning, but radically different, is the pseudo-documentary that surrounds the Hannaford film. A crazyquilt of different stocks, sound sources, and levels of craft, the assemblage is fun and assaultive, giving dozens of speaking characters the chance to break the fourth wall, giving Hannaford the chance to perform and be caught performing, giving the film a sense of the New Hollywood scene, this re-professionalized society, breaking down in full auteurist self-obsession.

Whatever Hannaford’s plan, the diffused production of The Wind was not the result of a principled commitment to improvisation. Welles’s film wasn’t unscripted. It was tightly written but constantly evolving. Everyone involved in principal photography was amazed at his ability to track what footage was still needed — to remember that there were reverse shots to be picked up across several years and a couple continents. And Welles’s editors were amazed by his work in postproduction, a more radical version of the work he’d been doing in Europe, swinging, incredibly quickly at times, from decentered and theatrical social portraits to tight, realist psychological revelations. Everything about the production of The Wind bolstered the notion of an auteur at work, endlessly. Only a studio with endless money could possibly keep up, and, for now, Netflix has endless money, a stream of monthly subscriptions and a willingness to spend it on content, up to $13 billion in 2018.

Both The Wind and They’ll Love Me bend toward death, yet both comfort themselves that the great directors miraculously direct from beyond the grave. Wind gives the very last word to Huston, after the final credits roll: “Cut.” And They’ll Love Me cagily suggests that our interest in the endless obsession with Welles-not-finishing might be exactly what Welles imagined all along. (There’s footage of him saying as much in 1966. There’s also a late interview in Josh Karp’s book, Orson Welles’s Last Movie, where Welles suggests that if he did get access to the film again, he’d add a third layer of self-reflection. Then again, there’s footage of Welles saying or imagining doing everything. “Don’t look for keys,” he said about the search for his biography in the movie. That goes at least double for multi-decade-spanning strategery.)

Neville and Karp and plenty of reviewers besides depend on the idea that the decades of struggle to get the movie finished are colorful and fascinating, replete with interesting characters and dramatic turns. I’m not inclined to agree. The frittering away of the film in a thicket of negotiations and legal actions is just a drag. The real-world characters never quite come off. Welles’s French producer relied on Iranian funding courtesy of the Shah’s brother-in-law. He might have been the bad guy, but over the years, everyone who met Mehdi Bushehri was taken with his gentlemanliness. When the Shah fell, the new Iranian government — certainly bad-guy candidates! — might have seized or destroyed the film. They didn’t. They simply requested a decent accounting of its chaotic budget and wondered if they might make a return on the people’s investment. Presented instead with a bill for past-due taxes, they dropped the whole thing. The other conflicts over The Wind simply waste themselves in drawn-out contract negotiations while the negative sits safely in Paris.

The lawyers never appear in They’ll Love Me. Instead, Neville’s documentary makes use of a nifty trick that pulls you in precisely by making you self-aware. When interviewees are recounting conversations with Welles, instead of having them continue to speak and deliver Welles’s words as they remember them, Neville grabs a version of Welles saying them from somewhere — from Kane or Lady from Shanghai or Filming Othello or a TV interview or a recording made for Bogdanovich’s book, or, really, anywhere. It’s cute when we’re only getting a single word from Welles, but it’s uncanny, and almost deep, when we get a full line. The documentary all but declares that Welles’s entire corpus is not just of a piece, but a piece of continuous performance, rendered in just a few tones. As a result, the context is always erasable — because it is a corpus — and the great lines are always quotable.

The technology that makes They’ll Love Me’s infinite quotability possible may be simple enough (text searches on transcripts), but when that technology is scaled for “enterprise” uses, it produces the equally uncanny reality of uniform, ideological discourse. When The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight, for example, patches together a string of Fox News talking heads maundering on about “the caravan” or whatever the issue of the day might be, they are relying on a tool like SnapStream. In days gone by, and still for the underfunded, clip montages took the efforts of dozens of bleary-eyed tape loggers. Now, those lowly assistant producers can conduct non-linear searches across the text of vast transcripts. The results will then take them right to the exact moment in the video file which they can then clip and export — to a reel for the show or to social media.

The technological similarity between Neville’s nonlinear searching and the political comedians’ presumes and instantiates a baseline claim: there is ideology here. Yes, there is the ideology of the auteur, but there are also Welles’s political commitments. So far no one has been talking about those, but they, too, are remarkably consistent across his career. The politics of The Other Side of the Wind are very nearly Welles’s version of the politics of the Popular Front. As Michael Denning has argued, Welles is fascinated by the psyche of the great man, ideally the great media magnate, and he remained so. Like Kane, The Wind begins with its protagonist’s death. Like Kane, The Wind involves a lot of drunken stumbling by its aging hero. Like Kane, The Wind revolves around documentary practice. In Kane, that is the “News on the March” sequence that gets the investigative narrative rolling. In The Wind, the documentary is essentially everywhere, and the film-within-the-film centers on the explicit sexuality — the nudes on the march — that was prohibited in 1940s Hollywood.

Denning contends that “Welles’s gigantic hero-villains were both fascinating and repulsive, tricksters that disobeyed any straightforward political logic.” At the same time, the Popular Front context of Welles’s work in the ’30s and ’40s made it clear that despite any ambiguities, these were fascist showmen — fascist because they were showmen. But as Welles evolved into a perpetual showman himself, the political equation had to be rejiggered. Where the analogy between Kane and Hearst was irresistible, no one involved in making The Wind drew any comparison between Hannaford and Nixon, much less between the chaotic party scene and the political ferment in the wake of the ’68 revolts.

To put it more polemically: The sort of politically prophetic credit extended to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation with its magic anticipations of Nixon’s taping obsession doesn’t seem to apply to Welles and his equally tape-obsessed movie. Instead, just as so much Welles criticism forgot his Popular Front politics until Denning put them back at the center, so the broader significance of The Wind has been unexplored, and the film, perhaps, already reduced to a guessing game of autobiography.

The nearly empty “Zabriskie Pointed” politics of Hannaford’s film seem to short-circuit any political reading. Still, the shadow of Vietnam appears in Kodar’s vague role as a bomber in the film-within-the-film and in her spooky silence, playing to and playing up the taciturn Indian stereotype. (She is in redface without makeup.) That colonial/genocidal undertone comes to the fore on several occasions at the ranch, but, again, critics seem to have ignored it in favor of formal fascination. At one point, Huston smashes his glass against a wooden Indian. At another, he viciously recounts a story of white genocidal violence to Kodar before presenting her with an engraved Indian bone. This, too, Welles loved about his great men: their power and their arrogance make them ideal candidates to confess the violence that underlay the whole place. That such confessions take the form of verbal abuse captures the ambivalence at the heart of the project.

In They’ll Love Me, Welles explains that although his protagonist is a he-man, “This picture we’re gonna make is against ‘he-men.’” Welles makes that rejection real by showing that Hannaford’s sexuality is a mask for his repressed homosexual attractions. He puts the insight in the mouth of the Pauline Kael figure (Susan Strasberg), and for her insight Hannaford smacks her across the face. Repressed homosexuality as biographical key is cliché, but within Welles’s lingering, post–Popular Front conception of the tycoon, that cliché overwhelmed a longer reckoning with mass-mediated populism.

Stepping back into the autobiography, it is clear that Hannaford’s sexuality isn’t Welles’s, but his relationship to Bogdanovich’s Otterlake is. As Alan Cumming explains in his voiceover narration to They’ll Love Me, over the course of the production “Peter Bogdanovich went from playing exactly who he was in 1970, a young writer, to exactly who he was in 1974, a celebrated movie director.” Bogdanovich, in character, provides the tag: “My book on Hannaford’s been cancelled. Indefinitely.” (He published This Is Orson Welles in 1998.)

For a time, Rich Little played the young critic-acolyte-turned-director, but he left the movie after three weeks (accounts differ as to why: his time was up, he was fired, the usual Wellesian fog). Bogdanovich, who’d been playing a documentarian while doing his Jerry Lewis impression, stepped in to replace Little. With that change, the mania or broad comedy of the initial conception of the film gave way to a more comprehensive sad-sackery. (The mania survives in some bullhorn addresses, a sequence where Hannaford and Kodar shoot up dummies, and, regrettably, a pair of wandering “midgets” who break into the wine cellar and also set off fireworks.) The final stretch of Hannaford’s movie (and nearly the movie as a whole) suffers from this tonal shift. We see a naked Kodar standing amid the titular wind. It blows the head off a dummy, and it knocks over the giant flat of a building facade, very nearly crushing her. The scene is a hyper-Freudian vision of Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr. Kodar then takes a pair of scissors and Psycho-stabs away at a plastic-shrouded, chicken-wire Watts Tower that is ludicrously phallic, but, alas, not actually ludicrous.

Those around Hannaford seem to see his films as confessing the sexuality he can’t admit to himself. That is the reduced, if not entirely depoliticized, version of Welles’s 1930s politics, where the Mercury Theater struck a series of what Denning calls “compromises between Popular Front struggles and the culture industry.” To escape, or at least dwell in those compromises, Welles amplified his ambivalence about his heroes and turned reflexive. “Kane’s story becomes a hall of mirrors in which the cultural apparatus sees itself,” Denning explains in one version. By making his tycoon a media baron, Welles “allows the mass media to reflect on the mass media.” The Wind takes to heart that reflexive auteurism and so short-circuits its power. The Popular Front contradictions — between populism and dependence on mass media, between horror and admiration for the tycoon — have lost their purchase.

In place of contradictions, we now find an endless ordering of preferences, a vast bibliotechnological apparatus that promises to allow us to locate ourselves according to protocols constantly reinvented and reprioritized. Last year at Netflix, that looked like American Vandal, with its own stunning party sequence. This year, it is The Other Side of the Wind. Welles was the wetware version of the algorithm, constantly reconfiguring his movie to serve his own evolving preferences. Watching him work, his collaborators saw the future.

That future takes many forms. One is the humanist narrative of The Wind, with its impossible coherences and endless prolepses. Another is the contradictory omniscience of They’ll Love Me, with its ability to cash any prediction or any retrospection at the bank of Wellesian discourse. A third appears in the short making-of documentary, Final Cut for Orson, in which Video Gorillas, a gutty startup in an L.A. garage, saved the production, or at least saved it a lot of money. Welles left behind a workprint including several fine-cut sequences and several other assemblages. But he also left behind 100 hours of negative, a pile of reversal film in smaller gauges designed to simulate the documentary footage, and a patchy, largely handwritten, logging system. Finding the original negative for the edited sequences in the workprint would have been tremendously time-consuming and, as a result, prohibitively expensive (according to market logics, which, again, are taken for granted in this process). Enter Video Gorillas, which has developed a way of largely automating the intensely laborious processes of conforming and comparing. First, all the negative (and reversal) was scanned in. Then it was digitally compared with the edited, positive footage through the use of some very complex math and the reduction of images to “Frequency Domain Descriptor Interest Points.” (It only pays attention to the things that change.)

At one end, then, Neville treats Welles’s entire corpus as a means of narrating its endless and endlessly predictable auteurism. They’ll Love Me gives voice to the sense that it’s all just waiting for a voiceover. At another end, Welles’s own chaotic improvisation of the party reveals itself to his collaborators as endlessly, surprisingly a means to his prescripted-yet-evolving ends. In between, we have Video Gorillas, where that evolution finds its source and destination.

Inside the New Hollywood, The Other Side of the Wind might have found its place alongside mode retro entertainments and downbeat genre exercises, and it might have signaled Welles’s continuing political commitments even in the wake of their relevance. The Wind arrives already accompanied by its avatars, whether those are its trailing documentaries or its corporate neighbors. Welles never finished it — thwarted, of course, but also enamored with the endless process of preferring: this shot to that, this cut to that, this actor to that. Now at Netflix, the movie takes its place in a matrix of possible preferences, where our own endlessly monetized processes of preferring have been part of the plan all along.

¤

J. D. Connor is an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Hollywood Math and Aftermath:The Economic Image and the Digital Recession (2018) and The Studios After the Studios (2015).

The post Finish Him appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2JRFXAi

#Los Angeles Review of Books #topmixtrends

[vileart]

Dramaturgy Blooms: Patrick Morris @ Edfringe 2018

Menagerie Theatre Company  presents

bloominauschwitz Leopold Bloom breaks free from Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ to travel through history and re-discover his Jewish roots Winner – Best New Play Award, Brighton Fringe By Richard Fredman, Something is going very wrong for Leopold Bloom, the hero of James Joyce’s great novel ‘Ulysses’ and a worldwide phenomenon. He is plagued by visitations from the future, ghosts from the past and the burning question ‘Who am I and where do I belong?!’ His only clues lie in the 24 hours of life he occupies on 16 June 1904, as written for him by Joyce. So to discover the answers, his answers, Leopold escapes the pages and confines of his famous book, embarking on a rampage through the storm of 20th century European history. Bounding back and forth through time and crossing Europe he attempts to discover his true identity and his Jewish roots. In doing so he bumbles into the dark heart of the 20th century and the dangers that lurk within.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

The inspiration for playwright Richard Fredman was twofold: a visit to Auschwitz in the same summer as he first read 'Ulysses' by James Joyce.  As a playwright, he was fascinated by Joyce's central character in 'Ulysses', Leopold Bloom, a man of indeterminate identity whose father had been Jewish and who had come to Ireland from Hungary following pogroms in the 19th century.  

His father converted and had Bloom baptised 3 times.  However, Bloom holds on to these distant memories, and is often referred to as Jew by other characters in the book - even though, he's not Jewish!  So Richard, our intrepid playwright, was inspired to bring these two experiences together to create a piece about how we construct identity, about how we remember and forget, and about belonging: all highly contemporary concerns, and clearly ones which have an enduring appeal.  Bloom is at the centre of our play, as a man divided between his self from the book (set in 1904) and his future self from 2018 - between the two lies the European Jewish experience of the 20th century.  

Menagerie, our company, commissioned Richard to create the play and we have been developing it for the past 4 years, with the same creative team at the heart of it - Rachel Aspinwall, director, and myself as the performer, both working with Richard to evolve the script and its realisation on stage. Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

Performance itself does not 'discuss' ideas - at best, it distills them into the stories, the characters, the bodies and the fictional worlds that we create for the stage.  Sure, the aftermath of any performance worth its salt should be brimming with ideas - we know that 'bloominauschwitz' is crammed with ideas, often competing with each other.  It is a piece inspired by a great novel, which was itself inspired by Homer's Odyssey, so it comes from good heritage!  I would like to think that the piece makes old ideas new - ideas about migration, about home, about family, as well as the themes mentioned above.  

Performance can often seem like a space for playing out personal neuroses - nothing against that in principle, but it's rare to find a play/performance which really digs into ideas which matter, which play into people's lived experience. How did you become interested in making performance?

It's almost too long ago now - it's such an accretion of influences, experiences and chance events.  From experiencing the first thrill of the live interaction as a teenager, to getting first few meaningful audience experiences such as the Market Theatre's 'Woza Albert', or seeing Dario Fo's performance of 'Mistero Buffo', to my own development and unpredictable route as a performer & director, my interest has so many roots.   Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

We are dealing with a script which is complex, deep and constantly revealing itself to us (Rachel and me) even after 4 years.  We made some early decisions which have stuck - such as seeking inspiration for the set, and therefore for the mode of storytelling, from Joyce's book.  The piece requires so much from the performer that it doesn't resort to just one approach - there are elements of vaudeville and music hall, there's comedy  there's horror, there's epic drama, there's audience participation.  

The role requires me to play up to 16 different characters, yet within the rehearsal process we have to remember that it's really about the one character of Bloom, and the voices, the demons, the angels, and the ideas, that he is entertaining.  

In one way, it reaches back to the ancient storytelling tradition that Dario Fo - him again - employs in 'Mistero Buffo'.  The subject is deadly serious, yet the play employs comedy as one of its weapons.  And that comedy is often cheek by jowl with tragedy, being fought out in the body of Bloom as he seeks out his true identity and what that actually means for him as he experiences the 20th century. 

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Menagerie always creates new work - our choices of production are dictated by our responses to writers' ideas and work.  If there is one thing which runs through our work, it is a deep concern with asking questions about contemporary human experience.  There isn't a  'usual' stylistic or aesthetic approach, at least not one which is articulated.  What 'bloominauschwitz' does is appeal to my own senses of what theatre is best at doing: reaching deep inside our individual and collective experiences to join us together in a fictional experience which resonates with our lives both in ways we can articulate and in ways for which we have no words.  More than any other play I've worked on, it creates its own world so completely and so convincingly.  It is the most difficult play I have ever encountered as a performer, partially because it is for a solo performer - but also because of where the story takes us.  

We are bringing some very sensitive historical material to the surface - it is not documentary theatre though.  Quite the opposite - as I said, it creates its own world, its own rules, which transport the audience on a journey that constantly surprises.  It takes joy in its fiction while holding out a hand to real life. What do you hope that the audience will experience?I would like them to experience the heart, guts and brains of the play.  There is an overwhelming quality to the play - I don't want to say anything more about that, except to approach it with an open mind.  Some might hear that it's a play inspired by James Joyce's 'Ulysses' and immediately be turned off.  But as I said above, its greatest quality is that it creates its own rules and its own world, and whether people have read Joyce's novel or not is immaterial within the first ten seconds.  I do not wish to impose a particular experience on the audience - it will be what it will be.  

But I believe that the performance has the capacity to create strong reactions from audience members - it has the capacity to awaken all the body's emotions, sometimes simultaneously.  What can I say?  Take a look at the title: 'bloominauschwitz' - simply put, it will not be what you might expect from that title.  It will be so much more.

A celebration of defiant open-heartedness, bloominauschwitz is an explosive piece of theatre that confounds audience expectations mixing clownish antics with high drama, rich text and powerful imagery. As Bloom confronts his chief antagonist – his future self from 2018, it resonates powerfully with the current migrant era and the rise of xenophobic nationalism in parts of Europe. ‘Theatrically on point and cleverly written, this play has the potential to be a huge hit’ A Younger Theatre New writing specialists Menagerie return to the Fringe for the first time since 2014. Their own Patrick Morris delivers a Herculean performance as Bloom in this brilliant new play written by Richard Fredman and directed by Rachel Aspinwall. bloominauschwitz won the Best New Play Award at the 2015 Brighton Fringe. In addition to the Brighton Fringe and selected UK dates bloominauschwitz was invited to play the DSB International Festival in Czech Republic. It will perform more international and UK dates following in 2018 and into 2019. Menagerie Theatre Company is the leading independent new writing theatre company in the East of England. Based at Cambridge Junction the company has been creating theatre for over eighteen years and enjoys a regional, national and international reputation for the development of first class new writing for the stage. They seek out and support talented writers in order to develop and produce innovative new theatre. As well as touring widely, they run workshops, writer development courses and produce the annual Hotbed Festival of new writing in Cambridge. bloominauschwitz was created and developed at the Hotbed Festival in association with Cambridge Junction. ‘charming, funny, and heart-warming theatre’ Everything Theatre on Menagerie www.menagerietheatre.co.uk Listings information: bloominauschwitzVenue: The Just Festival @ St John’s  (Venue 127)    Dates:  3-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 16, 19) Tickets: £12 - £10 (preview 3 Aug £6) Time:   17.10 (80 mins)    Box Office: 0131 226 0000 Online: www.edfringe.com     

from the vileblog https://ift.tt/2LwhLGZ

#Theatre #Blogger #visual art #Edinburgh Fringe #Experimental Critique