Author Archives: David Wahl

Bribing People With Art to be Happier

February 21, 2007 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

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Bren Batlan is an artist who leaves his work around cities for people to take for free. (He also sells it if you really want to own one of those adorable paintings) Attached to each is a note that reads, “This painting is yours if you promise to smile at random people more often.”

Check out the feedback on his site to see how deeply this simple act can change people’s lives.

One example:

One winter afternoon I was walking through Holyoke Center in Harvard Square after coming from the doctor’s office and realizing that I was going to have to take a leave from my job at the university. I was crying and nothing that my sister seemed to say to me was giving me any solace. As I was walking by one of the benches I saw someone smiling at me. I smiled and kept walking in a daze. As I was about to exit out of the door, I unhitched my arm from my sister and turned around and started walking towards the bench without saying anything to her – something was pulling me back. It was what had made me smile and what had caught my attention from the corner of my eye. It was the green finger-smiling-good mood maker-alien cartoon. There he was sitting on a bench waiting for me. I couldn’t believe it. He had the whole bench to himself and the center was packed with people milling about. Attached to him was the note ‘This painting is yours if you promise to smile at people more often’. I stopped my crying and started laughing. I swear to God that this meeting gave me something that I hadn’t felt in months – lightness and I know this sounds cheezy but hope. It felt like a sign or something. And it broke my darkness. Even my sister was laughing – kind of uncontrollably. It was the best mood maker and as we left with it, it seemed to give us the lift we needed or sent out some sort of vibe to other people around us because we met like 3 awesome dogs that night, a bunch of super nice people, and kind of kept running into random good energy ‘stuff’. I kept it in my bedroom for six months. I’m in a much better place now and felt like it was time for him to work his magic on someone else. My friend just had a baby. They named her Nelly but her real name is Prunella – the poor thing – she needed some magic. So now its in her baby room. And I told her older sister Bernadine (I know, I don’t know why they are obsessed with naming their kids with these names that belong to great-Aunts) who is five now that when she wanted to she could take out the painting – which still has the sign taped to it – and put it in some random place in Jamaica Plain for someone else to pick up. She liked that idea. — Catherine

Pulp Master Fiction Plot

February 21, 2007 By in Writing Leave a comment

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This essay on how to write the perfect 6000 word pulp story was written in the 30s by Lester Dent. Dent created Doc Savage which was the best selling pulp magazine of its day. He wrote quickly, a novel a week, and rarely rewrote. Reading this is like reading the pitch for Law and Order or CSI. The only difference is that current pulp shows ignore the warnings about getting to strange or grotesque. Strange and grotesque are the two main characters on CSI.

Why are we attracted to this structure? Is the difference between good pulp and bad pulp how closely it sticks to this structure? Is it the originality of the details?

FIRST 1500 WORDS

  • First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a problem to be solved–something the hero has to cope with.
  • The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)
  • Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on in action.
  • Hero’s endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the end of the first 1500 words.
  • Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development.

Where do you get your ideas? Part two – Philip K Dick

February 20, 2007 By in Creativity, Quotes, Writing Leave a comment

PhilipDick

From Selected Stories of Philip K Dick:

The majority of these stories were written when my life was simpler and made sense. I could tell the difference between the real world and the world I wrote about. The stories in this collection are attempts at reception–at listening to voices from another place, very far off, sounds quite faint but important. They only come late at night, when the background din and gabble of our world have faded out. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star. Of course, I don’t usually tell people this when they ask, ‘Say, where do you get your ideas?’ I just say I don’t know. It’s safer.

Video Game Dictionary – Half-Real

February 20, 2007 By in Games Leave a comment

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This dictionary of video game terms contains some common phrases, but it also has some new ideas for concepts unique to the video game world. His book is called Half-Real . I imagine that you can infer the rest of the book from this list of definitions.

Remember, fun is elusive and defining fun is by definition, not fun. Also, subversive play is an interesting concept. Video game characters rebelling against their creator and questioning their role in the seemingly unbendable rules of their world. Here are some examples:

Ant farming
“‘Ant-farming’ is when you design with a gods-eye view in mind – it’s when you throw around concepts which are ‘interesting’ or ‘provide fascinating social dynamics’ or ‘would really feel like a virtual world’ – but fail the basic ‘fun’ test. This is when the designers are designing a game that’s more fun to observe than to actually live in.” (Schubert 2004)

Subversive play
Subversive play is play against the intention or authority of the game design/game designer. (Flanagan 2005). The concept presupposes games that have a dominant authority that players can revolt against.

Fun
While fun is an elusive concept, the most popular school of thought claims that video game fun comes primarily from the enjoyment of problem solving.

Sid Meier claims that “A [good] game is a series of interesting choices” (Rollings & Morris 2000, p. 38).
Koster (2005) claims that fun arises from trying to understand the pattern of a game.
The idea of fun as a result of problem solving is also present in the concepts of interesting choices and aesthetic index.
A second school of thought describes video games as a combination of a number of different types of fun, where different games emphasize different types of fun.

Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek (2004) list 8 types of fun: Sensation, Fantasy, Narrative, Challenge, Fellowship, Discovery, Expression, and Submission.
Garneau (2001) list 14 forms of fun: Beauty, Immersion, Intellectual Problem Solving, Competition, Social Interaction, Comedy, Thrill of Danger, Physical Activity, Love, Creation, Power, Discovery, Advancement and Completion, Application of an Ability.
Concerning game design, Shelley (2001) emphasizes that “The Player Should Have the Fun, Not the Designer, Programmer, or Computer”.

Child Prodigy?

February 20, 2007 By in Genius Leave a comment

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The story of Marla Olmstead raises a lot of interesting questions about art, what is a prodigy and how far parents will go to further their own stifled ambitions. Marla’s art (Be careful of that link, the website is irritating and loud) was unique among child artists because it is abstract. Obviously, it’s rare to skip representational art and go straight to abstract, but her father swears she just picked up a brush and paint beautiful swirling abstractions. Not only that, but she covers the whole sheet of paper, another very rare thing in a child. So rare, that her paintings have gone for $24,000 and she was hailed as a genius.

60 Minutes taped her while she was painting and it turns out, in their expert’s opinion, that it was probably her failed artist father who was doing the paintings. The article linked above says, “He can be heard on the tape, directing her, sometimes sternly:  “Pssst …. Paint the red. Paint the red. You’re driving me crazy. Paint the red.” “If you paint, honey, like you were … This is not the way it should be.”  Only to have her produce a painting that was inferior to all the paintings she had done before. But, the family swears they are hers.

A documentary filmmaker was following Marla’s family around during this period. His film, which premiered at Sundance, is called “My Kid Could Paint That”.  I can’t wait to see it. To me either story is fascinating. Whether it’s an actual child prodigy or a father using his child to succeed where he failed, it’s the stuff of high drama.

Very close to the truth

February 19, 2007 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

As usual, The Onion nails it.

Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination

WASHINGTON, DC—”By constantly reminding kids that they’re human children with no magical skills, you ensure that they will live a long life”, said child-safety expert Kenneth McMillan

Although no cure has yet been developed for childhood imagination, preventative measures can deter children from potentially hazardous bouts of make-believe.

“Many of the suggestions are really quite simple, like breaking down cardboard boxes or sewing cushions to couches so they cannot be converted into forts or playhouses,” McMillan said. “Blank pieces of paper, which can inspire non-reality-based drawings, should be discarded unless they are used in one of our recommended diagonal folding and unfolding activities. And all loose sticks left lying in the yard should be carefully labeled ‘Not a Sword.'”

Unfortunately, removing everything from a child’s field of view that could stimulate his active young mind is extremely time-consuming, and infeasible as a long-term solution, McMillan acknowledges. “To truly protect your children, you must go to great lengths to completely eliminate their curiosity, crush their spirit of amazement, and eradicate their childlike glee. Watch for the danger signs: faraway expressions, giggle fits, and a general air of carefree contentment.”

Added McMillan: “Remember, if you see a single sparkle of excitement in their eyes, you haven’t done enough.”

Robert Rodriguez quote on creativity

February 19, 2007 By in Film, Quotes 2 Comments

I just finished reading Robert Rodriguez’s Rebel Without a Crew, which deals with the making of his acclaimed low budget film El Mariachi. Rodriguez has some strong views on creativity, which include the following points:

1. Lack of money and resources leads to creativity. When films have a high budget, they try to solve every problem with money.

2. Do as much as you can yourself instead of leaning on partnerships
(or in the case of film, a big crew), because you have to learn more
and also, it’s too easy to blame someone else for any mistakes that
come up in the process if you’re collaborating.

3. Don’t believe the cliche about “learning the rules before you break
them”; just jump in and learn as you go. Always question the accepted
method of doing things.

Post by Suzanne Castillia

Where do you get your ideas? Part One – Neil Gaiman

February 19, 2007 By in Creativity, Quotes, Writing Leave a comment

How do creative people answer the question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

From Neil Gaiman’s site, click on this link for the full, wonderful essay:

‘I make them up,’ I tell them. ‘Out of my head.’

People don’t like this answer. I don’t know why not. They look unhappy, as if I’m trying to slip a fast one past them. As if there’s a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I’m not telling them how it’s done.

And of course I’m not. Firstly, I don’t know myself where the ideas really come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they’ll stop. Secondly, I doubt anyone who asks really wants a three hour lecture on the creative process. And thirdly, the ideas aren’t that important. Really they aren’t. Everyone’s got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.

Every published writer has had it – the people who come up to you and tell you that they’ve Got An Idea. And boy, is it a Doozy. It’s such a Doozy that they want to Cut You In On It. The proposal is always the same – they’ll tell you the Idea (the hard bit), you write it down and turn it into a novel (the easy bit), the two of you can split the money fifty-fifty.

I’m reasonably gracious with these people. I tell them, truly, that I have far too many ideas for things as it is, and far too little time. And I wish them the best of luck.

The Ideas aren’t the hard bit. They’re a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you’re trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.

Useful Comedy Shorthand From ZAZ

February 19, 2007 By in Writing Leave a comment

David Zucker, Jeff Abrams and Jerry Zucker (known as ZAZ), of Airplane! fame, developed a list of phrases to use as shorthand when discussing comedy. Rather than just explaining a concept every time it came up or trying to describe the intention of a joke, these terms let them move on quickly.

  1. Shoe Leather Physical traveling or action of a character in a scene. If not in direct service of a joke, it’s superfluous.
  2. Drive-By Joke that appears briefly and then out, as opposed to filling up an entire page or two.
  3. Bric-A-Brac Jokes not intrinsic to a plot or scene that only serve to detract from the point the scene is trying to make.
  4. Gilding the Lily Taking a joke so far that it’s no longer funny.
  5. Hair Under the Wings Joke that compromises the integrity of the plot. A joke proposed for AIRPLANE! involved a shot of Ted Striker’s plane taking off with hair under its wings. Funny, but not good for the audience’s investment in the reality of the story.
  6. Ya-ta-ta-ta-ta-da Joke so hokey it needs washboard and kazoo music.
  7. Knocking Down the Posts It’s not enough to set up a parody, you have to do the jokes. In AIRPLANE!, mere recognition that the girl chasing the plane was a spoof of a particular movie was not in itself funny. The laughs came only when she began Knocking Down the Posts.
  8. Floocher Dialogue Filler lines recited by foreground characters to enable the audience to focus on a background joke.
  9. But, I Wanna Tell Ya Extra beat of Floocher Dialogue added to a punchline to make it less of a swing, or to help the audience hear the next line.
  10. Ba Dum Bump Obvious sitcom-style punchline.
  11. Transplant and Whack Joke is the organ we save. Transplant it to a scene that can live and whack the rest.
  12. Blow Joke funny enough to end a scene.
  13. EAT Setup so obvious that it might as well have one of those restaurant neon signs with the blinking arrow pointing right at it.
  14. Cumulative Effect Too much of one thing is never a good thing. One sex joke may be funny, but too many and it’s diminishing returns.
  15. Manic Dumb Show Slapstick for the sake of slapstick, but without character/plot motivation or wit.
  16. People Talking in Rooms Concept that witty dialogue in confined spaces can often times be as effective as huge comedy action scenes.
  17. Turn the Play Inside Use existing characters in all possible instances instead of creating new parts and endless residuals.
  18. Off Message Line or scene that steers the movie off its main plotline.
  19. W.P.A. Scenes so extraneous to plot that they merely serve to fill up pages. Like those old FDR New Deal programs, they’re strictly “make-work”.
  20. Eating Your Young On second draft and beyond, cutting one’s own jokes or scenes that only seem unfunny because of repetition.
  21. Dynamite Plunger (hand signal): At the end of the movie, you can get away with things that you couldn’t in the body of the movie. With only moments until credits roll, it’s often okay to blow the bridge, getting broader and sillier with characters previously grounded in a lot more reality.
  22. Schmuck Bait A twist ending that makes the audience feel cheated, such as the old “It-Was-All-A-Dream”.
  23. Bridge Too Far Taking a joke to its illogical conclusion.
  24. Cheese Factor W.C. Fields once said, “If you’re going to smash a car, make sure it’s a beat up car. If you’re going to stomp on a man’s hat, make sure it’s a tattered one.” Thus, in “Scary Movie 3,” the best aliens were the cheap ones (Ed. note: semi-robotic aliens were used for initial scenes, but time and budget constraints forced us to use crappy Dr. Who-quality aliens for reshoots. The resulting aliens were absurd, flimsy, obviously fake…and much much funnier.).
  25. Black Hole Some actors just aren’t well disposed to be funny. Often producers think they’ve scored with two A-list actors but are surprised when the result is “Ishtar.”
  26. Broken Field Running Saving a scene by improvising fixes on the set.
  27. Outlet Pass (to avoid a #33): An alternate shot, usually in a master, with no attempt at a joke.
  28. The Extra’s Socks A small detail obsessed over by the director, diverting his attention from a real problem.
  29. Apollo 13 Saving a scene without reshooting through the ingenious use of loop lines, outtakes, footage before “Action” or after “Cut,” reversing film, inserts, etc. Anything to avoid a reshoot.
  30. Dailies Laugh Hilarious in dailies, crickets at a preview.
  31. Cutting Out the Cancer Eliminating dud jokes or superfluous story. The most pressing task after a first preview with Angry Villagers.
  32. Flywheel Theory Keeping the audience laughing is a lot easier than starting them back up from scratch.
  33. Swing & A Miss An obvious attempt at a joke that doesn’t work. It is essential to get enough coverage so that every joke attempt connects. Also avoided by shooting an outlet pass.
  34. Angry Villagers The reaction at a first preview when a succession of jokes doesn’t work. The lost momentum inevitably results in the audience turning against the movie, conjuring up the “Frankenstein” image of a mob carrying torches and pitchforks.
  35. The Director’s Rail At the old Sherman Oaks Galleria – the third floor balcony rail outside the multiplex. After a first preview, most directors want to vault over it.
  36. Sonny on the Causeway Thinking a joke is a sure-fire winner, then getting ambushed by the silent audience reaction.
  37. Filling up Compartments Each bad joke, like a torpedo hit, fills a compartment. Too many in a row sinks the ship.
  38. Hail Mary Usually after the last preview (no time left on the clock), an ADR or an edit thrown in as a last ditch effort to make a joke work. The risk being, of course, a Swing & A Miss.
  39. The Lion Telegraphing a joke. In NAKED GUN 2 1/2, a lion attacking Robert Goulet didn’t get a laugh until a third preview Hail Mary, in which the set-up was eliminated.
  40. Going Through the Guardrail Any outrageous comment, joke, or statement in the writing room that results in absolute silence and appalled looks.
  41. Calling in an Airstrike (On Your Own Position) Saying or doing something self-defeating.
  42. Dancing Around The Calf Rejoicing over some idea or concept that seems great at the time. Dancing typically continues until a wiser voice arrives to point out how stupid the idea or concept actually is.