'Toward a Coherent Comic Dramaturgy' on Wordplay

Here's another great recent find..... a screenwriter's website: Wordplay.

This post in particular is excellent (unfortunately the link goes to a frameless page without navigation.... use the top link to see the site properly). And keep in mind.... though the tone is strictly tongue-in-cheek and written in such a way as to poke fun at intellectual film analysis articles, the information itself is excellent! It was refreshing to run across this after all the pure dramatic story stuff I've been ingesting. In comedy there's no need for a character arc or for strictly adhering to dramatic guidelines.... it can be episodic and the characters can be simple.... in fact it's best done like that. Comic characters generally have one powerful obsession that's responsible for all their problems. So without further ado, read on good folks (oh, and feel free to skip the first three paragraphs if you want.... they're purely psuedointellectual gobbledegook).....

Kickass Screenwriting Blog

My latest discovery....

MysteryManOnFilm
I've added it under Blogs - Other in the sidebar. I discovered this while googling for something about Subtext to add to the Storytelling Explained Briefly thread at SMA. Many of the posts don't relate directly to writing as we know it (for animated films that we'll most likely be making and shooting ourselves). But he's got some good stuff in HIS sidebar, in particular under Best Of. Online posts and blogs like this are a great introduction to the art of writing or can add depth and breadth to existing knowledge, but really, anybody interested in becoming a good filmmaker should buy a few good books on screenwriting. I've mentioned a couple already - my latest (both highly recommended) are Story by Robert McKee and The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. I'll go into more detail on them soon, promise.

OH.... and apparently the Bruce Ingram site is NOT functioning, as I stated it was in the last post!!! Sven mentioned under Comments that my link now goes to a password-protected page (and it still does!). So I assume he figured out that people were getting in and ordering (why on earth was the page fully functional and showing up on Google if it wasn't functional???!!!). So.... I wonder what's going to happen with my order? Paypal informs me the money has gone through.... Brett now has it. And yet I've received no confirmation that any DVD's are being sent??!!?? Or any email alert that he was in error to have his store online and working when he isn't actually selling DVDs yet??!!?? I'd try the Contact form if the site was still online.....

Bruce Bickford delivers fire to the mortals

At long (long) last, the gates to Prometheus' Garden are thrown open.... or rather sort of left askew. I posted some time ago that I had discovered the Store page at the as-yet (still) unfinished Brettingram.org site. At that time I felt like I had rather illicitly crept into sacred ground through some hidden back way. And now it still feels that way, because he hasn't made any official announcement at his own blog about it, nor is the new site operational aside from the Store section. Seems like a strange way to sell something if you ask me!!!! But apparently others have also stumbled into this strange paradise, because when I decided to try it out and placed an order, not only did it go through all the way to the obligatory "Thank you for your order" page, but my order # was 4! Which implies that 3 others have ordered before me.

I partook of the combo deal, Prometheus' Garden along with the new Collectors' Edition of Monster Road. I don't mind double-dipping on something as good as Monster Road, especially knowing that some of the money goes to Bickford and Ingram. These guys deserve all the support we can drum up for them!

To help support them, and to have your mind bent in bizarre and probably dangerous ways, here's the link: Hang out with Bruce in the garden

I still have no email!!!!!!

Hopefully anyone who's been trying to reach me will see this.... (Mark Brown in particular!!!). I haven't been able to send any mail in about 2 weeks. Some mail is coming in..... it doesn't seem like enough to be all my mail, but every now and then a few emails will get through. But I can't send any out!!!!! I feel so cut off and isolated!!!! The problem is with my provider.... SBCglobal/Yahoo. Apparently they made some kind of changes lately and a lot of their customers are just cut off like me. I'll keep trying, but if this continues I guess it's time to switch to somebody else.

2 great books

I got both of these recently and I'm very impressed with them both. Click the pics to go to Amazon, where you can search inside both books and read reviews to determine if it sounds like something you'd like.


I've read several books on screenwriting, and there's some info that's almost universal to them.... and as I now know, it's essentially the story structure handed down to us by Aristotle. Michael Tierno knows his Aristotle, and is adept at translating his immortal words so we can understand it the way he intended. At one point I intended to buy the Poetics book in translation, but as many people have learned, it's very opaque and difficult to understand. Tierno does an excellent job of explaining exactly what the Stotle-meister meant by each of his mysterious utterances and how they apply to today's drama, which DOESN'T include naked choruses and dithyrhambic chanting!

Apparently a lot of people misunderstand Aristotle's ideas, and a lot of screenwriting books are based on these misunderstandings. Looking around the web a bit I see a lot of hate for the 3-act structure - mostly by people who seem more focused on equal length for each act rather than the actual functions of them. Well this book gets right to the basics.... it doesn't dwell on number of pages per act or length of screen time between turning points. Instead it goes into the drama itself.... how to set it in motion effectively so that people clearly understand what's happening and what needs to be accomplished, and how to resolve it so there are no lingering questions and so it makes a powerful emotional connection with the audience.

I know.... for making short animated films we probably don't need to use Aristotlian story structure! But I believe before you can effectively bend the rules to your own purposes it's good to learn them first, otherwise you're operating from sheer ignorance. When you know the rules, you can manipulate them the way you want - and when you've absorbed Aristotle's awesome wealth of knowledge about what makes drama work you have a much stronger understanding of how to tell a story. I believe even if you want to do more experimental films it's still important to understand how to give an audience what it wants.

The Visual Story is about how to use visual elements to accent the flow of your story. Verticals, horizontals, diagonals, flat space and deep space, color..... these are all powerful visual elements that every filmmaker (every visual artist in fact) uses all the time, whether they think about it or not. And when you DO think about it, they can be used intelligently to make your film affect people the way you want it to, rather than working against you.

Corky Quackenbush jingles his keys in response

Some time ago (Thursday, July 19, 2007 to be precise) I did a post called Cheap Ripoff Post in which I posted some YouTube links for the Clops episodes that aired on MADtv, directed by Corky Quackenbush. I really dig these little flixks! I'll repost those at the bottom in case you missed them or want to revisit. But that's not the focus today....

Someone (no idea who) posting as Anonymous responded under that original post thusly (I always wanted to use that word):

"Anonymous said...
Roy T Wood and Kevin Coil (and some others?) pretty much animated/lit/set up cameras/supervised these without much input from Corky other than him jingling his keys at them! True Story"


Well today Corky responded. Here's what he said (I wanted to repost here so it isn't buried way back in my archives):

"Corky Q said...
Hey, that was a fun trip down memory lane!

Darkstrider, I appreciate the appreciation for the details we put into Clops, and the same for the "handmade" quality of all the stuff I did for Mad TV.

But I have to laugh at "anonymous'"
comment! I usually don't get credit for "key jingling" but he (or she) obviously doesn't know anything about me or my operation

Kevin Coyle and Ray Waad (as I affectionately know Roy Wood) did contribute a lot to the MADtv stuff in varying degrees, but, for instance, Roy wasn't even around for many of CLOPS episodes... Kev was employed at Space Bass Films much more consistently, and though he probably worked on three of the five CLOPS his talents were spread among one of many projects we had going at the time.

You are right though about them not being solo projects - television is unforgiving when it comes to deadlines - it would have been impossible to deliver the more than 4 dozen short films I produced and directed for MADtv without the help of the many talented artists with whom I have been privileged to work, Kevin and Roy being two out of dozens.

I am proud to have been the person who gave Kevin, Roy and others their start in the business. My long time friendship with Kevin was how he moved into stop-motion animation from the art department of major A-list feature films (will he ever forgive me?). Kevin's brilliance is obvious in my films, mostly in the area of set decoration. So much of the detail in props which you noticed came straight from Kev.

But it would be inaccurate to give Kevin and Roy all the credit when there were many others who worked hard on the CLOPS episodes.

One of the wonderful things about stop-motion animation is that usually the people who work in the field are multi-talented. Everyone seems to have done a little bit of everything in the creation of a stop-motion film. Most everyone has some specialty, but they can also jump into almost any position in the crew.

Kevin, for instance, though his forte (in my opinion) was his keen eye for detail in sets and props went on to animate tons of stuff (including some CLOPS characters) at Celebrity Deathmatch and The PJ's among others). Kevin is also a talented director.

Kelly Kucharski, Katy Bowen, Emerick Conrad, Christiane Cegavske (who has also single-handedly created a stop-motion animated feature which continually screens at festivals, wins awards and gets great reviews), and Cameron Gray all have names as fine artists, but joined me in the creation of CLOPS, either making props, sets, and puppets, animating or all of the above. Brett Johnson, Michelle Darnell, Shannon Wade (now working in the art department of major network TV shows and features), Lorelei Pepi (who, last I heard, is still a fantastic college art professor), Simon Lampard (who would take time off from his main gig as a commercial location scout to come and play with us), and Tim Johnson (who has become my associate producer when he's not doing voices, acting, producing live-action) - all of these people not only made contributions in various degrees to CLOPS, but to making the grueling work of churning out ultra-low-budget animation out, on schedule and on budget, and still making it award-winning stuff - making it so much fun!

And of course, so much credit has to go to people like Fred Howard who built the sound tracks from the ground up, and Greg O'Connor who wrote and recorded the "Bad Toys" rip of "Bad Boys"... not to mention the incredible cast I got to work with ad-libbing and riffing off marvelous scripts by the likes of my good friends and writing partners Blaine Capatch, Spencer Green, and Mary Villano, among others...

All I did was direct ("key jingling," I guess)... oh, and build props and sets and lighting design (specifically my favorite part of stop-motion fun), animate, edit, and produce... oh, and to come up with a way of animating video to give it a "reality" look, which had never been done before... nothing more than any other stop-motion dude would do...

But to me, the heroes of the whole thing were the show's producers who pretty much gave me carte blanche to do the shorts the way I wanted from start to finish. Never before or since in the annals of television has one person, such as myself, been given the freedom to take the material off the lot, and with no oversight of any kind, create the film that I wanted to make the way I wanted to make it, turn it in a week before it would air, and see it broadcast pretty much unchanged (except for those dang censors!)!

Thanks for giving me a chance to give credt where credit is due!"

5:20 AM (Heh... I included this because it's just cool that Corky keeps the same nocturnal hours I do!)

Not a problem Corky! Glad you could come in and straighten things out.


Ok, here's the link to the 1st Clops episode on YouTube... once there you can easily find the rest. Enjoy!!

Let's go deeper into MTP... + Prometheus' Garden (delayed AGAIN!!!)

Click the above pic to see a cool blog I just discovered about character animation. I haven't really looked at it yet aside from this one post, but it looks interesting. I've added a link under Blogs - Other (since it's not technically stopmo).



Great interview with Chris and Maciek about Tutli-Putli and their work in general. What really fascinates me is that they say, now that they've become the finest animators I'm aware of, they don't plan to do any more stopmotion films!!! Wha!??!?! Wow... talk about a one-hit wonder!!! Also, loads of insight into the film, might help if you're trying to figure it out.

Also maybe you noticed that Brighteye Pictures still hasn't listed Bruce Bickford's Prometheus' Garden for sale yet!!! It's been pushed back a few times now, and it's driving me crazy!!! He posts only very rarely about it, and in between we must suffer through long bouts of complete silence.... but hey, it means he's working hard, and that's a good thing.

What he did post in his last blog entry was the addy for his upcoming site where the release will now take place: http://www.brettingram.org. So far, if you try it you get a blank page that says only "coming soon". Frustrating!!! But being impatient I did a little snooping.... I tried on a hunch typing in "/store" after that addy, and lo and behold: http://www.brettingram.org/store. You can also see he's releasing a new "Collector's Edition" version of Monster Road.


Here's a direct link to Prom's Garden with full description: Prometheus' Garden + Luck of a Foghorn DVD.

So.... I'd say it's a pretty good bet we'll see the actual release of Prometheus' Garden with the documentary Luck of a Foghorn on March 15! It was exciting finding this, but it feels kind of naughty.... like I found a secret gate into the garden and I'm not supposed to be there yet.... hope nobody tells!

Also, it took me about 2 and a half hours to make this #$%^@@@** post because my *@$@!!$$ computer shut down on me about 15 times.... but this frustration is at an end at long last! I finally took the plunge, went to the Apple Store website and configured a sweet new iMac that will be delivered soonest!!! It's been well over a year since I was able to do any animation with this paperweight.