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Posts tagged as “Crazy Rants”

Scribosphere Carnival #1 – Time Capsule

Scribosphere Carnival #1 – Time Capsule

The Scribosphere Carnival is a weekly discussion from a variety of screenwriting blogs around a rotating theme.

And this is our first edition! Yay!

Instigated by Shawna over at Shouting in the Wind, this week’s topic is:

TIME CAPSULE — This topic is actually a 3-parter. First, recount your journey in screenwriting up to this point in time. Second, tell us where you are on your journey now. Finally, for the really fun, creative part — blog as if it is one year from today. What has the past year of your journey been like? What has changed? Be as realistic or not as you like — it’s your time capsule! One year from now, we will revisit our time capsules to see how we did with our predictions… Your post can be as long or as short as you like — the most important thing is to have fun with it!

My travels have been well-documented on this blog, so I’ll just give you a TL;DR version.
I created A TV Calling over five years ago to chronicle both my love for and odyssey towards television writing.
In 2010, I was finally able to move across the world, to Los Angeles (from a little town called Paris). That is, after winning the green card lottery (Serendipity? Fate? Who the hell knows). It is true that in the months following my arrival, I wasn’t able to blog as much as I used to. I went from pretty much a post a day to less than one a month. Fortunately, I’ve jumped back on the horse this year. I’ve also been working on my own writing (of course). As you saw last week, I’ve even decided to experiment with distributing some of that work online (through Star Trek: Terran).

In the few years I’ve been here, my professional experience, like anyone’s in Hollywood, has been full of ups and downs. One thing did not lead to another.
For me, “looking back” on such a short and recent period of time (in the grander scheme) seems hard to do without seeming pompous (rather than reflective), so I won’t expand. It has been frustrating at times, to say the least, but also rewarding, thanks in large part to the friends I’ve made along the way. We’re all our own worst critics, and measuring what I’ve accomplished to what I want(ed) to accomplish is more than a difficult task.

So, where to next?
Simply put: A writers’ assistant position on a show within the year; AKA the most coveted job in TV land.
(By the way, if you’re in a sharing mood and have potential leads, you should totally contact me! ;) ).
At the end of the day, this is an ongoing adventure. A journey. I could make another trite analogy–something about a race and marathon–but we all know the point already. When it comes to this industry, there’s only one quote that sums everything up: “Never give up, never surrender.”

A TV Calling blog entry from an alternate future: September 24, 2014

It has been ten years since Oceanic Flight 815 crashed and I’m still stuck on this goddamn island!
As I’m typing this, I’m wearing my Memoto camera. It’s awesome living in the future, where I have the technology to log my life. If only we had ways to transcribe, status-update, or even tweet about it in the days of yore. We were just a bunch of cavemen back then.

I miss Breaking Bad, but I’m glad I’ve found a worthy replacement in the fresh NBC series, Cop M.D.
A ground-breaking criminal/medical procedural featuring Christian Slater as a cop who goes undercover as a surgeon in a Boston hospital to root out a secret drug-trafficking operation. He also struggles with alcoholism, has a shaved head and scruffy beard, so you know he means business. Literally. They created his character to fit the network’s larger business plan of bringing the edgiest characters from five years ago. Classic NBC.
I’m glad they picked this over that Wizard of Oz-inspired drama (not that one, the other one. No, the other other one).
Now that I think about it, I don’t even know why I’m writing about this show since everyone has seen all the amazing ads that aired during the August Emmys.
In fact, I’m sure Cop M.D. will get the post-Super Bowl spot in February. They know people will chime in for this stuff.

Where was I? Oh, my life.
Good time were had by some.
Being in the room = best thing ever. Just being able to sit there and observe the process from the inside is, well, amazing. And, yes, everyone is still impressed with how fast I type things. What can I say, I’m like a writing machine. Tom Jones is on the verge of making a song about me.
I’ve had a good run with my spec, in that it didn’t make it into any of the fellowships (0.40% chance of that happening anyway).
I’ve begun work on an epic adventure feature involving space and time. But I’ve had this idea for a really cool pilot, so I may put both projects on hold and write a one-act play instead. Looks like I’ll be creatively busy for the foreseeable future.

Write on.

Scribosphere blogs also on the topic:

Shouting in the Wind | Red Right Hand | Jonathan Hardesty | Bamboo Killers

Luck of the Draw

Next Saturday marks a full year since my move to Los Angeles.

As you may or may not know from one of my tweets yesterday, I received last night a depressing email:
an “automatic Delivery Status Notification” telling me that “delivery to [email protected] has failed.”
Translation: my NBC/Writers on the Verge 2012 application was not delivered.
The kicker is that I’m getting this message a full month after I sent out said application (for the two people who don’t know, the deadline was end of June).
Yes, I did e-mail WOTV back, just in case, but who am I kidding here.
It’s over a month too late for any “new” application to be accepted, regardless of when it was originally sent out.

In between the tears and hair-pulling, I began to curse the heavens.
Why me?!

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna go into a philosophical debate right now.
Well, not entirely.

Let’s go back to me yelling at an imaginary person in the sky:
Why me?!
Why is the world against me? Why did the delivery notice not arrive minutes after the e-mail pinged back, but literally a month later? Why did HD DVD lose to Blu-Ray?

And then, like [insert tired simile about a bolt of lightning, a slap or a ton of bricks], it hit me:
It happened to me because it happened to me. It is what it is.
What I mean by this very generic assembly of words is that, in my case, I could as much curse my luck as bless it.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, right?
And on my side, it’s plenty green.
After all, I did get my own Green Card (Green? Get it?) a little over a year ago.
Not a lot of people can say that in these neck of H-woods.
(As far as I know, only Dominic Purcell won his. No, really.)

“Why me?!” works both ways.
You can be thankful or ungrateful.
Pour yourself another half-glass of vodka and you’ll get it.

The end?
Not yet.

This isn’t a tale about how everything happens for a reason.
Hell, this isn’t a tale.
This is life.
I could whine all day about how everything’s going wrong.
Or I could suck it up.

Even if the application was never received, was it a waste of my time?
Did I really write a spec only to impress a nameless judge?
Do I have to continue asking these obvious rhetorical questions for dramatic effect?
Of course not.

I write because I want to write. Nay. I write because I have to write.
I don’t need a reason, I don’t need an excuse.
Whatever happened to my application, at least it allowed me share my writing (even to the Internet ether).

No tears will be shed at the loss of my Writers on the Verge application.
Better luck next time.

In conclusion, there is no conclusion.
You don’t have to see this industry (or life) as an everyday battle, but know this:
Fact: Setbacks happen.
Fact: You will be remembered by what you do, not by what you shoulda coulda woulda done.
Fact: Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

Clearly, this long-winded (and hilarious) post was meant more for me than anyone else.
But maybe, hopefully, it was a little helpful for you as well.

Catharsis: unlocked.

The iPad: Where’s the objectivity?

The iPad: Where’s the objectivity?

I came across an article by New York Times’ David Pogue about the polarizing aspect of the iPad.
He writes:

The haters tend to be techies; the fans tend to be regular people.
Therefore, no single write-up can serve both readerships adequately. There’s but one solution: Write separate reviews for these two audiences.
Read the first one if you’re a techie. (How do you know? Take this simple test. Do you use BitTorrent? Do you run Linux? Do you have more e-mail addresses than pants? You’re a techie.)
Read the second review if you’re anyone else.

Besides the fact that this article is stuck in a 1999 cliché of what a “techie” is, my problem with this is Pogue gives a false sense of objectivity (showing both sides of the coin).
The thing is, not only is the so-called “anti” review comprised of just a basic spec list, but the whole article is overwhelmingly biased towards the iPad.
The “pro” review (three times the size of its counterpart), praises the same aspects of the tablet that, well, everyone else seems to praise (regardless of if they’re actually good/relevant/comparable, or not).

As I was reading through the review, it became clear that the author was enamored with the device – and so was the rest of the press corps.
Save for those few “techie” websites, every news outlet raves about the iPad, totally disregarding its many flaws.
Everyone is saying how “revolutionary” is is. And both Newsweek and Time have made iPad their covers.

The problem is that they’re buying their own hype.

Apple declares the product “magical”, and then on the other end the press emphasizes it to the point where you don’t know if some massive brainwash has occurred.

It’s as if people are more than happy to jump on the Apple bandwagon instead of taking a step back, and provide reasonable critical thinking.

The press is duping the public in thinking that a severely limited $500 tablet is better than a versatile $300 computer.
We all know people love to touch their stuff, but come on.
You can’t throw away all your other devices (laptop, home-computer, phone), and just use the iPad (that kinda looks like a clunky iPhoto Frame).

Apple knows their niche and exploited it to the max.

Wall Street Journal‘s Walter Mossberg says:

After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop.

If I understand this right, a tablet with a 4:3 screen and the same processor as my phone will replace my computer that has ten times the specs and power.
I’m sorry but intuitiveness is not the only thing that should make or break a technological device. Especially one that is positioning itself as a laptop-killer.

Going back to the New York Times article:

The iPad’s killer app, though, is killer apps. Apple says that 150,000 existing iPhone apps run on the iPad.

How are phone apps working on a fake laptop supposed to be a “killer app”?
For that matter, how is a laptop having apps anything new?
Ever heard of something called “software”? You know that your netbook can run programs too, right?
And they’re not limited by the iTunes store.
I can understand why having exclusive apps for the iPhone that no other phone can do might be interesting, but if your laptop-killer can’t even run laptop-level apps (Photoshop?) , you’ve got a problem.

And no, it can’t handle Adobe Flash.
What’s the reasoning? Steve Jobs says it’s “buggy.”
Nice personal vendetta.
Again, I can understand why the iPod Touch might not be able to handle Flash, especially seeing that web-surfing is not its primary component.
On the other hand, the iPad is marketed as a device made for web-surfing. And yet it can’t fully access it.
Steve Jobs called the iPad “the best web experience you’ve ever had,” though why shell out $500+ to only access a tenth of web content?

There’s also no multitasking, or more specifically app concurrency.
This is not hyped to be a one-app device, and yet you cannot run two apps at the same time (despite the size and speed).

Regarding its e-book capabilities, and the fact that the iPad is not an e-Reader, we’ve already covered that part in full detail.
Though I do get annoyed when the iPad’s e-reading function is praised for details like:

When you turn a page, the animated page edge actually follows your finger’s position and speed as it curls, just like a paper page.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that an animation of a page turning was more important than the actual book page.
When you read a book, do you spend much time looking at how cool the page turning is, or more time reading the actual thing?

This ode to the iPad has even reached television, with Modern Family dedicating this week an episode to the device.
I don’t know what is scarier: the fact that an entire storyline was crafted around the iPad, or that Apple didn’t have to pay for it.

Time Magazine’s review does have an interesting point towards its very end:

The iPad shifts the emphasis from creating content to merely absorbing and manipulating it. It mutes you, turns you back into a passive consumer of other people’s masterpieces. In that sense, it’s a step backward.

The iPad is a media consumption device, but it’s too damn limited.

Which brings me to Final Draft.
You’ve probably heard by now that the company is developing an app for the iPad.
The Final Draft app will primarily be designed to make small edits here and there, but I get the feeling that, even with a great screenwriting app, the iPad isn’t comfy enough for script edits.
Typing pages of text on a virtual keyboard? You must be joking. You can’t even write on your lap.
Except for short e-mails or messages, not much will be able to be done it feels like.
I’m still waiting to see how this one plays out though.

I think Engadget‘s Ross Miller nailed it when he described the iPad as:

A jack of some trades, a master of none.

The press felt bummed out they didn’t call the iPod or the iPhone as the game-changer they were, so this time around they’re all too keen to declare the iPad as the greatest gadget that ever was.
I’m not saying the iPad will bomb (it probably won’t), I’m just expecting a little more neutrality from a medium that is supposed to be unbiased and shouldn’t get “all tingly inside” when reporting about a flawed device.

And as for why ABC and CBS putting their TV shows on the iPad for free is a dangerous thing, that’s a story for another time.