download For The Win at manybooks.net

Of the recurring aspects of Cory’s writing my favourite is his consistent use of consequence. In his young adult work it would be easy to steer this directly into moralizing. Thankfully, that’s not the case. Consequences are frequent and frequently violent but (largely) not made with any judgment as to their value. They are the potential consequence of the fight for anything worth fighting for. A reflection of reality.

For The Win offers consequence up handily. It’s an important and bloody reflection of a story that’s already been told. One that is important to retell in a context accessible to those that may not be interested otherwise. The blending of elements and social structures very foreign to western sensibilities into that story is further impressive. Exposure and education isn’t always easy to provide without preaching.

The scope of the cast is where I lost a bit of footing. While there’s not a remarkably large list of primary characters it’s wide enough that I never felt connected to any of them. When consequences arrive they feel very real but the characters suffering or sacrificing do not. That made the type of emotional connection I had with Makers or Little Brother, both very focused on a small cast of primary characters, impossible to conjure.

The author’s website is at http://craphound.com/

david shute - 06.07.10 @ 20:21 - permalink

download His Robot Girlfriend at manybooks.net

There are inklings of an interesting plot in here that never really come to fruition. There are hinted at possibilities and the world occasionally comes crashing in but that’s where it ends. The title spells out what this entire book is about. Readers approaching this should bear that in mind. The relationship stars directly up front and the book suffers for it. The more plot minded will reach the final page and likely wonder what happened to the proper ending. It more stops than reaches a completion point, the byproduct of a tenuous plot.

The author’s website is at http://amathar.blogspot.com/.

david shute - 05.07.10 @ 21:00 - permalink

The most important moments in peoples lives

the most touching

the most scarring

the most significant

seem the be the ones we care the least about. For real people at least. We care so much more about these moments are catalysts for other things. Tragic that the individual moments are footnotes for less significant things to make them more easily digestible.

Our stories are very linear and well defined. We care as much for the syringe as the medicine it contains. Caring very little if the syringe is actually necessary.

david shute - 27.06.10 @ 22:21 - permalink

I’ve been working on a small five piece collection of some of the flash fiction I’ve written over the years. I had initially intended to make it longer but chose against this inclination. Instead I pared it down the five I like the most. Not a single one longer than two pages. I’m posting an early copy of it in case anyone is interested in poking through. I’m open to feed back and would really appreciate a couple eyes proofing.

Shallow in PDF.

david shute - 11.06.10 @ 23:13 - permalink

My Facebook account is officially dead. This is now the second time I’ve killed it. When I first started using Facebook a little over two years ago I felt like it was a huge privacy sinkhole. I wasn’t connecting with the people I wanted to be and was linked up to people I hadn’t talked to in over a decade. It didn’t seem like a good place for me to be so I killed the entire thing. I felt good about it.

I attempted to preach the gospel but everyone seemed intent on being Internet flashers and voyeurs alike. I was alone… Come the KWLT production of my play  A Brand New Hell I was convinced of it’s usefulness by one of my actors. It seemed to be a good solution to organizing people for projects and keeping in touch with those people. I was sucked back in.

A year and a half later I found the ground that I found tenuous to begin with continually eroding  beneath my feet. It was definitely time to kill my Facebook account again. This time for good. So I have done so. It’s dead and gone. The link from here to my profile has died along with it. I hope a reasonable replacement appears soon. As much as I like the idea of Disapora it’s still in the, “thank you for our funding,” phase. It could pan out to exactly nothing.

If you’ve got a good Facebook replacement that isn’t a thin front for datamining to be sold to anyone with a cheque book drop me a line and let me know.

david shute - 24.05.10 @ 22:03 - permalink

The Sintel trailer is looking really promising. I haven’t really been big in 3D animation or Blender but I remember when this was going on with Big Buck Bunny. I had grabbed Blender around that time. I probably noodled through about one or two tutorials before I promptly forgot that it was installed on my system.

Although it’s been quite the gap I’ve been trying to remedy that. About two weeks ago I was reminded about Blender and grabbed it again. The nice thing about Ubuntu, an apt-get later and I’m set. I started playing around in it and really didn’t remember any of the very minor things I’d picked up a couple years earlier. It was time to start from scratch.

I’ve been picking my way through some tutorials as I get a feel for the program and start getting things together. My basic process has been to open up the program, walk through a tutorial, and then play with it for awhile. Incorporate some other things I’ve learned in to the project created off the tutorial I just worked through. I still have a metric fucktonne to learn. There’s a long way to go but I can see this being beneficial.

The long term goal is to actually animate a short using Blender. Nothing wildly amazing. Quite simple and cheesy, honestly. I’m setting aside three months to learn enough to, hopefully, put together the project I want to do. I was initially intending on doing this project I’ve got in mind using stop motion and toys. Good idea but I fucking despise set building. It’s tedious and I don’t want to do it. I’ve already got the actor’s dialogue recorded. I still want to do it. Doing it with Blender gives me a good motivation to chunk through it. If it continues to serve me then it’s a good basis for creating more complex projects or to composite CG effects in to live action video.

So far I haven’t really done anything spectacular. A lot of testing and playing with features. I haven’t embarked on anything. One of the tutorials created an abstract penguin. I took it a little further and added colour. I liked what I had so I rendered out a quick desktop of it. It’s now in my rotation of desktop backgrounds.

Click the image to download a copy if you’d like. Forewarned, the actual desktop was made to fit a dual monitor setup and is 3360 x 1050 in size.

david shute - 22.05.10 @ 21:46 - permalink

Got a new pair of shoes in the mail the other day, other being Friday. Picked up a pair of the Vibram Five Fingers for a number of reasons. I really, really hate wearing shoes. I don’t know why I just don’t like them. I was the kid that walked around barefoot. A lot. It’s probably also a large part of the reason why I lean towards flat, thin skate shoes over anything else. As an adult I spend most of my time at work walking around in my socks. Even socks I’m not a fan of. They tend to come off shortly after I’m home at the end of the day.

I’ve been running a lot lately. I finished my first 5K race a couple weeks ago. Having a race in front of me has helped to keep me running, a bit of exercise I’m in desperate need of. I’ve had some problems with running. I get pretty bad shin splints. Back in December I had to stop all together for several weeks. Shortly after my race I doubled up my morning runs and had to back off for a week. Shin splints is a major issue for me.

I know it all comes down to my gait. I run like a lumbering fat guy. It’s difficult not too. My feet kick out at the sides and I slam down on my heels pretty hard. I’ve gone to both my doctor, who tells me to exercise but not to run so much, and to a running store, where I’ve been fitted with two different pairs of shoes that were to fix the problem, to no avail. This past week I’ve been working on my gait and focusing on what my feet are actually doing. The good part is that this is working. If I land mid to forefoot and don’t take as long strides I do just fine. The down side is that the shoes are actually working against me. They are designed, weighted, and padded to continue how I’m running right now.

I think, for me, the answer is running as close to barefoot as possible. That’s where the Vibrams come in. I’ve been wearing them a lot since I got them. Very comfortable. They change how I walk, how I drive, how I do everything. They’ve also pointed out that my feet are weak. The change in my gait has also exposed my calves, hips, and lower back as weak as well. All those things normal shoes are “protecting”.

It’s nice to actually have that feeling. it’s different from the shin splints and knee pain I normal get. Those pains are tendon, joint, and bone. Muscle pain, on the other hand, means shit is getting worked and will get stronger. It means I have a way to go before I can trust my body will be able to run a couple miles without the support but I’m looking forward to getting there. I have a feeling that running will be a lot more fun when I don’t have to focus so hard on how every single step lands and just enjoy being out on the road.

david shute - 17.05.10 @ 23:36 - permalink

All around, just a kick in the ass kind of day.

Woke up this morning and ran my first 5K race. I know who I am, I’m the guy who’s 60 lbs overweight, smoked for 15 years, and gets out of breath really quickly. I know people finish 5Ks in 15-20 minutes. I am not one of those people. Quite frankly I was just hoping to finish in under 40 minutes. Coming in just 22 seconds after my wife at 32:39 was a very welcome surprise.

Took some time to work on a new short script this afternoon while my wife and daughter were napping. Nothing special, just a three page short that we can shoot in an afternoon this summer. Should be a fun shoot. It’s a simple concept out in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road. Not much more to say about that right now.

Had a meeting with a new DP/camera operator about the reshoot for THE NEW FACE OF SECURITY. He brings a lot of experience with him so he picked up on what I wanted to do really quickly and brought his own ideas to the mix. We still need to hash out some details and do some test lighting scenarios on set but I think this will work out well for us.

david shute - 02.05.10 @ 22:05 - permalink

Had some free time today to get working on rebuilding the set for THE NEW FACE OF SECURITY. It’s a pain in the ass that we even have to reshoot it but gives me the opportunity to fix some of the smaller things that I wasn’t happy with in the set design the first time around.

I’m only about 60% done, the down side to not really having any carpentry skill and working alone is that it goes slow, but the basic shape and requirements are there. I imagine that I will be done the majority of the set design work by the end of next weekend.

This is very good as the sooner that’s the done the sooner I can start putting a new shooting schedule back together. Get moving on filming again.

david shute - 11.04.10 @ 23:20 - permalink

Had a story consult today, where I was acting in the role of consultant. I enjoy talking about storytelling as I consider myself, above anything else, to be a writer first. Talking about building narratives and character and exploring options and ideas is a really good time for me. One overriding thing came out of today’s consult and I think it bears repeating here.

Know your story.

If you don’t have an ending, or at the very least the inkling of an ending, you don’t have a story. You have events that build to nothing. The escalator to nowhere. If you don’t have an ending it’s simply not possible to know what is relevant to your script and characters.

This doesn’t apply to all forms of writing. In the world of screenplays? Absolutely. Screenwriting is a terse and compact form of writing. The point is get the job done well with the least amount of extraneous fluff. Nothing is more unsatisfying than a meandering film that doesn’t have an ending.

I don’t mean closure but an ending. Not everything has to be neatly tied up and everyone lives happily ever after. Far from it. It’s good to have unanswered questions where the audience has enough to extrapolate an assumption based off clues provided. Something to think about when everything is said and done. Not everything needs closure but your script needs an ending.

It should be inevitable. It should be clever.

How do you do both? That’s a great question… that means nothing if you don’t have any ending at all.

Even a bad ending is better than no ending in that at least it clarifies the intention of the narrative. A bad ending can always be changed and the accompanying content right along side of it. But if you don’t have an ending you don’t have anything to talk about other than ideas for characters and perhaps a few scenes you’ve got stuck in your head.

david shute - 11.04.10 @ 02:42 - permalink