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Script Frenzy Report Card 2009

Just in time for the 2009 Script Frenzy I’ve updated the Report Card. It’s more or less the same version as the one from last year, with just the dates adjusted.

This is an modified version of some of the report cards from NaNoWriMo to suit the needs for Script Frenzy.

• Script Frenzy Report Card 2009 (Microsoft Excel 2003).

I did not create this. I merely modified it for Script Frenzy. All credit for creation and idea goes to the original creators.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Big changes are coming.

First of all, I quit my job at NNIT. This Friday is the last day at work.

This upcoming Monday I’m starting as a Project Manager at the design company 1508 A/S, which I’m looking forward to as a little kid is waiting for Santa to swing by on Christmas Eve.

1508 is located smack in the middle of central Copenhagen, which also means that my commuting time will be cut in half (NNIT is located around 14 km north of Copenhagen).

The last 6 months or so, I’ve been longing more and more to work in a creative environment again. And I think I can claim without hurting anyone’s feelings that there are very few creative people employed at NNIT. This is a good thing for them and their services. However, it just wouldn’t cut it for me. I need people with crazy ideas and urge to draw and create and try out new approaches. Even as a project manager I’m much more comfortable in these kinds of environments.

It’s also a direct extension of the topics covered in my master thesis, and the kind of roles I’ve previously held in the entertainment business (movies and games).

In a time of financial crisis and the entire world collapsing around us, the sensible thing to do would be to stay with one of the larger IT companies in Denmark with solid profits and growth, but my parents always thought me to follow my heart in all matters in life. Lately my heart has not been with me when I was working at NNIT.
Nevertheless, I’ve liked working there, now was just the time to move on and try something new (or something old, depending on your view).

On another note of change, we have also sold our 3 room apartment, and will April 1 be moving into a huge 5 room rented flat that seriously defines description. Even if you look at the images on their website, you really do not get a full understanding of how nice these flats are.

Things are changing indeed.

I hate computers

No, seriously, I hate ‘em. I’ve said it before elsewhere, I think they are fundamentally flawed.

They are slow, expensive, confining and proves overall a huge hinderers for how the human mind works.

Mind you, this is not a Windows vs. Macs vs. Linux kind of argument. I hate ‘em all equally.

There really is something wrong with the way computers are designed. The basic premise of computers is that they’re meant as a way of assisting you in your work. But compared to other objects, computers are very sensitive and extremely dumb. Further more you need quite a level of knowledge to operate them properly.

They offer very little in the way of real assistance. You have to learn their language and their way of seeing the world. And even though that multi-touch interfaces are a huge step in the right direction I still feel that computers are designed wrong.

Remember this is coming from a guy with a master degree in computers. Not to flaunt my feathers, but I’ve been dealing with computers for the better part of 20+ years and even make my living by consulting others about their organizations and IT systems.

Compared to (paper) notebooks, there is very little knowledge required in order to use them. Heck even my three year old son have been using pen and paper for most of his life.

The very notion that computer can “crash” is just wrong. My pen and paper don’t crash. I can ruin them by spilling water all over them, but then it’s my own fault and I would expect that spilling a cup of coffee all over my notebook would render it unreadable. That’s “My bad”.

But computers crash and even have the audacity of sometimes tell me that “An Unexpected Error Occurred”. Fuck yeah, it was unexpected! I paid $2.000 for this piece of crap and I was actually working on something important, so yeah, it was fucking unexpected.

If my computer crashed because I spilled coffee in it, so be it. That would be expected. But just crash, because you fell like it, or because I did “An Illegal Action” that is not fucking okay. Okay?

I think it’s truly sad that the modern world is so assimilated by computers, when they’re working so badly. Any other tool we use in our everyday life would never survive two days if they worked as bad as computers. But for some unexpected reason computers have.

I’m ranting and rambling here. Nobody will properly listen anyway, but I just had to get if off my chest. There.

… although I’m not really feeling any better. So I’ll just sing along with Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie; Every OS Sucks.

Amen, brother, amen.

Apartment for sale in Copenhagen

If you’re in the market for an apartment in Copenhagen take a look our wonderful one at its own website: Haraldsgade-KBH.dk (it’s in Danish only)

Sold!

Story Trick #5: The Prestige

While we’re all in awe of Christopher Nolan’s most recent film, I picked up his previous one, The Prestige, from my online DVD retailer the other day.

At what a pleasant surprise it was. A great and very unusual¹ story with strong pacing, perfect structure and great dialog.

And it contained a Story Trick that I’ve seen many times before, but here it was very clear and concise.

And now is the time for a warning before you read any further; there are major spoilers in this article, so if you haven’t seen the film, please do not read any further. Consider yourself warned.

Okay, you’ve seen it? Great! Let’s continue.

Today’s Story Trick² is all about the Foreshadowing and Payoff trick³.

And that line “Nope. Not today”, or versions of it, is repeated throughout the movie. And at first it just seems like Borden is the kind of man whom is only capable of loving one thing at a time. One day it is wife and other days it is his work, the magic, that he loves. This makes perfect sense because of the way he is portrayed in the movie.

But the Nolan brothers up the ante later in the script with this scene⁵ :

Again it seems perfectly normal because they live in a very unsanitary time in London. A cut or wound could very well keep bleeding or catch infection.

The next scene that uses the trick is this one⁶:

See, again Bordon is portrayed as a man with a temper: “I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”. This is about halfway through the movie and we’ve seen him numerous times loose his temper. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

Later, the relationship between Bordon and Sarah is, to say it mildly, not very good⁷ :

That just a relationship gone south fast. And we have already seen that Bordon is having an affair with the young Olivia (played by Scarlett Johansson), so it, again, makes perfect sense. The scene is even followed up by this one right after⁸ :

Is he having second thoughts? We don’t know yet, but it would make sense, since he just declared his true love for his wife. By now the Nolans start to hand out the clues about the underlying plot of the whole movie, we just don’t know it yet.

The next thing that happens is that Sarah hangs herself in desperation.
Later Bordon is sitting with Olivia at a restaurant and having this conversation⁹ :

Again, we think we’re witnessing the confessions of a man torn between his passion for his art and his love for his wife, but little do we really know.

And then, and then ladies and gentlemen, comes the Payoff, behold¹⁰ :

Et volá. The payoff. “We were both Fallon. And we were both Borden”. Bordon even says it in his voice-over, the very first line in the movie:

He’s changeling us, as the viewer, but it isn’t until the end we realize this. Even though Cutter’s voice-over that accompanies the start of the entire movie clearly states what is going to happen¹¹ :

That’s Foreshadowing and Payoff. And as simple as it looks, as simple it is. All the piece fall into place. That little line of dialog (”We were both Fallon. And we were both Borden”) explains why he can’t remember what knot he tied. Why his fingers keep bleeding. Why his wife sometimes could see if his love for her was real or not. Why he changed his mind about buying the house. And how the Transported Man really worked (he used a double). Bordon and Fallon were twin brothers¹².

The Nolan brothers have with this written a superbly structure screenplay and perfectly illustrates the Foreshadowing and Payoff trick in absolute clarity. They are truly masters of this technique. Watch also Memento and their two Batman films.

If you want to know more about Foreshadowing and Payoff, I would highly recommend Linda Seger’s classic book “Making a Good Script Great“.

>>> Read the entire screenplay here. (direct link to PDF file).

+——+——+——+——+——+——+——+——+——+

1. stories about magicians don’t come along that often
2. For the rest of the Story Trick articles see #1 on Eastern Promises, #2 on Michael Clayton, #3 about the basic structure beatsand #4 on Refusing the Call technique
3. aka the “Luke I am your Father”-trick or “Verbal Kint is Keyser Söze”-trick. Read on, you’ll understand. Often this trick is referred to as Setup and Payoff.
4. to read the full scene go to page 22 in the script
5. in the script it’s on page 38
6. starts on page 57
7. see page 92 for the entire scene
8. starts on page 94
9. this scene starts on page 104, and also see the scene on page 99 were Sarah warns Bordon that she will tell Olivia who Bordon really is
10. starts on page 122
11. here greatly condensed just to show the dialog
12. don’t think too much about the validity of this. Anyone who knows identical twins knows that even if they are as identical as they can be you can easily tell them apart. I would at least feel that the wife would be able to. But leave that be, this is fiction and anything goes

It’s done

If you by any chance would be looking for the proudest person in Copenhagen at the moment, look no further, because here I am.

I just uploaded my latest¹ version of my feature length screenplay Downfall to the wonderful website TriggerStreet.com².

It has really been a learning experience to write this screenplay. I loved the month of April when I was witting the script as part of the Script Frenzy event, but was so exhausted afterward that I had to leave it alone for some weeks before looking at it again.

And when I finally did, I found a screenplay in need of some serious rewriting. And that is what I’ve spent most of my free time doing for the past months.

The structure of the story is somewhat unchanged, but the pacing, the dialogue, the descriptions have all been changed, corrected or rewritten completely.
Even some of the main characters where merged into one to keep the entourage down to a minimum.

So now, all I have to do is wait for the hungry review vultures of TriggerStreet.com to rip it to pieces and tell me why and where I need to revise the script.

But right now I’m happy as a lark and above proud. Very proud.

1. Latest, not final… it’s never really final [↩]
2. if you’re a member of TriggerStreet, fell free to give it a spin, but please be truthful as that’s the only way I’ll learn anything [↩]

Story Trick #4: Refusing the Call

This new installment in the Story Trick series¹ is not even written by me.

For some time I’ve been reading up on Joseph Campell and his Monomyth theory and how it could be applied to modern storytelling. Christopher Vogler² has written an excellent introduction on how to apply it to screenwriting.

Now David Anaxagoras has written a really good article about one of the stages of the monomyth, Refusing the Call.

>>> Read David’s article here

There is no need for me to write about this when David has already written such a good and explanatory article. Be sure to check out some his other articles on his newly launched website. It’s all great stuff.

1. For the rest of the Story Trick articles see #1 on Eastern Promises, #2 on Michael Clayton and #3 about the basic structure beats [↩]
2. His book The Writer’s Journey have just been released in it’s 3rd edition [↩]

Teknokratiet

The wonderful site Teknokratiet has accepted my article on multi-touch interfaces, so for all the Danish reading people out there I proudly urge you to go and read my article and some of the numerous others at the site.

It’s all great stuff.

3 years

Today is the birthday of my son Carl. He’s three. He’s one of the big boys now.

He has developed a great sense of humor; the other day we’re reading some books sitting in the couch and he suddenly curled up and said “I so so teeeerrible sad” and looked away. I of course asked him what was wrong and he just started to giggle and turned around to face me again and to show me that he had taken two pacifiers in his mount. “I’m double sad” he said smiling from ear to ear. That, of course, could only be cured by 10 minutes of intents tickling.

Oh, and he laughs at my jokes as well. I’ve been waiting quite a few years for a fresh audience.