Desire

I tried to write a screenplay tonight.  As happens to me sometimes, I was listening to some music and a scene popped in my head.

It was an odd scene.  A concert pianist intercutting with a breakup.  This girl was breaking up with the pianist, yet he was oddly detached.  The whole conversation was driven by her need to be honest and open that she was seeing someone else.  Meanwhile, he's staring at a similar conversation happening across the restaurant.  He was so detached.  So... empty.  (Even though I'm sure he was thinking quite a bit...)

As I kept writing, I just realized that this scene wasn't really going anywhere.  He was sitting there, angsty and pensive.  She was talking and about to make an excuse to go.  Really, even though he was the "main character" of this little scene, she was the most active one.  She had a desire: break up with this guy and get out of here.  What did he want?

A couple of thoughts arose from all this.

1. Wow.  This is angsty.  I kept wanting to follow the scene, but I realized that this pretty much falls into the "20something accidentally writing their own directionlessness into a script".  It's a proud tradition.  I'm lucky he wasn't a screenwriter.  

2. Man, is it important for characters to have desires.  This guy is getting tossed around by the scene.  When I stopped writing, the girl across the room had just bought him a drink so they could commiserate together.  So he goes from one woman's desire pushing him forward to another woman's desire pushing him forward.  How much more interesting could the scene be if he actually wanted something?  
Maybe he wanted his girl to leave him.  Maybe he saw it coming and is using apathy to try to hurt her.  

Maybe he just studies people.  The relationship and the breakup are all part of this detached, observer-artist personality he has.  This other girl buying him a drink is just a chance to observe another type of human.

Maybe he just wanted a chance to work in peace tonight.  The breakup will hit his semi-autistic, hyperfocused brain later.  Right now, he just wants her to be done breaking up with him so he can sit in the restaurant and be creative.  

3. Man, it's important to have desires in life.  Every time I start working on a character, I am reminded that I want to be my best character.  I want to want things badly enough to risk for them.  I want to pursue my dreams, whether they be every day (I'm going to fix this problem on Avid for this student.) or bigger (I want to be a professor of new media.).

It's only when we want something badly enough to risk for it that we stop being tossed around our life's story.

I think I might go at this little scene again tomorrow.  I kind of like writing this super detached artsy guy whose desires transcend what a normal person would respond to in a situation.  But one thing's for sure.  I'm not going to let him drift through, desireless.

"Kate should hold the gun."

One of my goals for the summer is to keep a journal of sorts of things I watch and play. There is much to be learned from things that have already been made, right? Naturally, spoilers abound below.

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In Episode 3 of Lost, the audience and a few of the characters are aware that Kate has some kind of criminal background. Her escorting officer keeps telling Jack over and over again that she's dangerous and can't be trusted. But at that moment, she is in the mountains searching for signal.

Sawyer has a gun. Sayid has the clip. No one is happy. Tension is high. Eventually, someone says, "Kate should hold the gun."

An interesting thing was going on at this point in the scene. To the characters in the scene, the conflict was over. There was some tension in actually giving it to her, but, overall, it was a good solution. She seemed, to them, to be the most level-headed and unlikely to use it against the wishes of the group. Scene over, right?

This is one of the moments where the writers are using the knowledge the audience has to make a moment more tense than it is to the characters. For the characters, the tension arises from the interpersonal conflict and clash over what to do with the gun. But in the minds of the audience, we have a much higher conflict: we have now given a gun to a person with a criminal past who is probably very dangerous. Whereas the characters' tension is resolved, ours is just beginning.

Luckily, the scene still ends there. If it had gone on, I doubt the tension would last. Instead, it pushes another wedge of distrust into our minds and another variable that could change at any second in the character of Kate.

Again, this storytelling device may not work as well when it comes to game stories.

Most games are told from a single perspective: the player-character's. Sometimes they are a true character, sometimes only an avatar, but it is rare for the player's perspective to shift between multiple points of view in the same story-line. This means that usually, the player has the same information (sometimes less!) as the character.

Maybe that should change. Maybe let the player - at any point - shift between characters. I dunno. Just an idea.

Megaman: the Fan-Made Movie.

I was reading Kotaku the other day and found a link to a fan-made Mega Man movie. I was, naturally, dubious. Fan-made things, while filled with passion, are not well funded. (Grayson, a fan-made Batman movie trailer (yeah, just a trailer) is probably the highest quality fan-made product I've seen.) But still. Mega Man is a property ripe for the picking when it comes to film adaptations and I wanted to see how well the filmmakers did with its potential.

There were some things that this film did right. Some good cinematography, for example. Some darned decent CG stuff for a film with (probably) a shoe-string budget. And really, the production design was pretty impressive (again, with the caveat of the shoe-string budget). All of these things were good enough.

What wasn't good enough was the script.

Many things could have fixed this script.

1. The story needed to start in media res. As I recall, the original Mega Man story begins after Wily has already done damage to the city. Mega Man runs through levels that are populated with Wily's robots, eventually ending up at the work-sites of the robot masters. I think these writers confused the idea of a first act with exposition. The action - and, therefore, the story - doesn't begin until 30 minutes into the film. So for 30 minutes, the audience is treated to every boring detail and meaningless conversation that makes up character motives. Starting in media res would have been a much more conflict-driven way to see those motives played out, not have them explained in a monologue.

2. Dr. Light should have died at the end of Act 1. Or, at the very least, taken away from the Hero. This would propel his actions, leave him without a mentor, and would give a lot more credence to Wily's insanity and threat. As it was, Light stayed on and didn't do much besides equipping Mega Man to fight the Act 3 battles.

3. Wily, while goofy in the original games, should not have been so ridiculous... His faux accent, poorly dyed hair, and constantly sweating face did not leave any sense of threat or depth to his character. Now, a goofy looking guy actually being threatening - actually being cruel - that I can get behind. For example, his lines after kidnapping Roll are a small sample of how crazy, cruel, and evil he should have been. Mocking. Sneering. A little immature, but also willing and able to do evil, evil things. I think Kefka from Final Fantasy VI would have been a good model for this kind of villain.

4. The dialogue was painful. I didn't know people could even try to play some of these cliched lines as seriously as these actors did. Do I remember specific examples right now? No. But just imagine. Every "I'll get you next time!" and "Thank God you're alright. I didn't think you'd make it" played out over and over again in different contexts. The only way to fix this is to take a harder look at each character, their flaws, and to actually speak the lines before the actors getting in front of the camera...


Don't get me wrong. I am really impressed by the director, Eddie Lebron. He clearly has some chops in pulling together a technical team to pull a 96 minute fan adaptation of a popular video game franchise. They really did accomplish a lot. It just pains me to see the script in such shambles. Without a solid story, all of the resources go to waste.

My question is this: how do I find these filmmakers? I honestly think that Mr. Lebron's resources could have been much better used had he a better story and screenplay. I also honestly believe that I could have helped make that story and screenplay better. How can I get to these directors early enough to help them tell the story they want to tell?

Moral of the story: let Kemp read your screenplays! Please? I like doing it. I think it'll be better afterward....