Open Hatch

[Update Jun 1st: there were several inaccuracies in this article now corrected, and I’ve added some too - all in bold.]

I just ordered a Canon VIXIA HD30 camcorder - this is a higher end HD consumer beast. I’m excited about it. There are many things I’ll do with it.

I’ve been asking around and doing a lot of research about HD and particularly how it may transfer to film and/or project on a big screen, and I want to say I notice a fairly sharp divide between people who insist video should never imitate or copy to film vs. people who say go for it. What’s odd to me is that folks against it seem to usually describe that as the more realistic or practical approach, or that copying video to film is only “dreaming.”

Well, gee, imagine any film maker dreaming.

I’m in no mood after writing my thesis to cite the sources of facts I present and form my conclusions on. Suffice it to say I believe you could verify these facts.

My take is that in truth it is more practical to go digital if you can. We are in a digital cinema revolution, and physical film stock may always have its place, but the reality is that the blockades to shooting digital film which audiences don’t perceive as different after transfer to film - never mind the options to just distribute digitally increasing every year! - blockades to that quality break down steadily every year.

[Why am I speculating? With a ruler I drew a grid on a post-it note at the resolution of HD - 3 pixels an inch assuming a 30 foot screen - and filled it with alternating black-and-white squares, and looked at it from 40 feet back. There would really need to do be some image processing and projection magic with the way pixels transition into each other to make it look good. Fairly obvious “I am pixels” look at that resolution. But I need to know. I’m looking for sources that give a lot more detail on this, and I’ve also simply got to do real application visual tests on all this theory myself, somehow.]

About digital film projection, I’m going to speculate now. I don’t know how this actually plays out, this is theory, and I’d love to know of the real-world tests that certainly are playing out on these questions. But my speculation is that depending, digitally projected high-definition video could look not only anywhere from sufficiently as good as film to just as good, but better. Consider resolution available from the Red One. Here’s a picture of a 2006 model with some kind of super-exo-death-armature-skeleton-frame thing around it.

………………..

[This section had inaccuracies about the resolution of the Red One when I first wrote it - it’s fixed now.]

It shoots 2k (just over 1080 vertical pixels). That’s a bit more resolution than George Lucas thought was good enough (snobs have turned against him after the Star Wars prequels - yes, I will make that abusive statement, anyone who derides Lucas over his Star Wars prequels is a snob - I have qualms with the stories and writing on Star Wars Episodes I, II, sorta III and totally VI, but IV and V still rock the world, and I give Lucas full faith as a technological pioneer: arguably, he has single-handedly initiated the special effects revolution, and then the digital cinema revolution. Whether he simply vanishes like a good Jedi or makes it to heaven or not, before and if you pass the pearly gates, you’ll at least have to give him a hearty “thank you”.) Never mind that the Red One looks like a Star Wars Tie Fighter or something, and has a name reminiscent of Luke Skywalker flying the Death Star trenches - they have their market down - but it can record 1152 vertical pixels (or rows) at 120 frames a second, so that if projected at the same rate, it’s showing images exactly five times the frequency of standard film. I’ve read of tests going back to the 1970s demonstrating that people see a difference between 24 frames a second vs. 60 frames a second, and 120 is twice the upper range of those tests. I’d think that would probably look brilliant. Or you can do about a five hundred more rows of pixels at 60 frames a second, or again about five hundred more than that (or 2048 rows) at 30 frames a second - still a better frame rate than film. And digital projectors that do this are steadily spreading to theaters worldwide - my dear local Wynnsong has some now

Interesting math: that highest resolution mentioned (4x) has 4,096 vertical pixels, and if you divide that into 30 feet (for the typical height of a theater screen, and that link passes those paramaters into google calculator), and express that in inches, it’s about 8 pixels an inch. The math for x1080 resolution gives 3.333… pixels an inch. How does that look when you’re sitting 30 or 40 feet back (or further) from the screen? Losing detail and size for distance, they’d likely appear a lot finer and closer together I’d think. How does the density of pixels multiply across the visual range with distance? [When I first posted this I wondered if ten inches would shrink to 1, visually, so that what used to look like 3 pixels in an inch would be 30, and whether that would be enough - but no, 300 pixels an inch (or 100 times as many as 3 per inch) would correlate with the usual baseline for digital images.] That would seem like a reasonable baseline they’d go for in apparent density for “digital film”. If the visual density multiplies by about a hundred - would it? - I haven’t done that math or looked it up - but if that were the case then x2 resolution might be effectively 600 dots per inch, and x4 resolution maybe 1200 dots per inch?]

I’ve read of cinema house worries over the fickle and perhaps difficult to manage aspects of digital media, and there may be a lot of kinks and things to figure out with digital cinema along the way - but what do we expect? - it’s a brand new medium. Besides, those kinks will probably be worked out fairly fast. It took a good 60 or 70 years or so to figure out how best to technically work film, but vast improvements with digital film are advancing over stages of years, not decades! Ten years ago nobody would have thought you could buy a camera that shot at 1080 vertical pixels for under a thousand dollars. Three years ago the same camera would have cost several thousand dollars. If the trend continues the same quality camera will be available in a few years for half the price, and a camera twice as good will be available at the same price. Expanding that trend to decades it’s easy that around, say, 2020, teenagers from middle to low income families could be armed with camcorders that shoot at a resolution you can blow up to an IMAX screen - and by then there may be some bid-to-rent digital distribution network in place so that they can show their independent film at a local theatre for costs low enough that independent filmmakers of today might gasp. You can distribute for what cost? That low?

That all sounds like a dream, and it could be, but again, given the way these specific technologies have advanced in the past decade it’s easy they may advance to that stage in another decade. In my book digital cinema has to be the way motion pictures go. (I think high definition and beyond will also radically transform home entertainment.) We’ll still use film a lot, I think, especially for long-term storage because digital storage is notoriously destructible and fickle.

It was an odd coincidence, after watching so many episodes of the new BattleStar Galactica on DVD, that after I penned that essay yesterday I watched an episode where the abortion debate was raised.

(By the way, I waited five weeks checking three different Blockbuster video stores for the right disc of the right season of BattleStar Galactica to be checked in - there was a conspiracy to keep me from checking out that disc - and then one day my wife brought home the entire season of the show, checked out for far less a price, from the Orem Public Library. Now, as well as for the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, I have a testimony that the Orem Public Library is true.)

The premise of the show is that the Cylons, robots created by humanity but which betray humanity, wipe out all the planetary colonies and drive and hunt the very small remainder of humanity into space. The entire show is humanity outsmarting, outmaneuvering, thwarting, and seeking to destroy the malevolent forces which they themselves created - while the evolved Cylons who are indistinguishable from humans fool people into David/Bathseba fiascoes.

In this episode (Season 2.5, “The Captain’s Hand”) President Rosylin is presented with a young pregnant woman who stowed away on the fleet command ship (Galactica), seeking asylum from her evil, fanatic, controlling parents to abort a child she apparently doesn’t want and/or can’t support. Rosylin has begun campaigning for re-election to office (she became President de facto as the highest ranking surviving political officer of the human race), and apparently the majority of the fleet is “pro-choice”, and her whole life Rosylin has fought to support the right, as she puts it, for a woman to control her own body. But General Adama reminds her that after the Cylon struck and nearly destroyed humanity, one of the first things she said to him was that “..if humanity is to survive we need to start having babies now.” Adama points to the number of humans still alive which Rosylin has kept on a whiteboard behind her desk since being sworn into office - around 54,000 - and says “That number hasn’t gone up for a long time.” Despite her position on abortion, Rosylin issues an executive order declaring any interference with the birth of a child as subject to criminal penalty - she makes abortion illegal. At the same time, since the executive order occurred after the young woman’s abortion, and the woman had already claimed asylum, Rosylin does not hold the woman subject to criminal penalty, which outrages the religious, fanatical representative from Gemenon. This principled compromise also outrages the eleven of the twelve colonies who support abortion (uh, how reflective of America or humanity would that be in real life - not very - the issue is very divided, and pretty equally). It also opens the way for a former political ally to come out in opposition and betray her in a factioning bid for the Presidency. Not bending to either extreme, Rosylin outrages everyone. Huh. Sounds like prexy Bush, dudn’t it?
The episode, in my opinion, underscored what Orson Scott Card said of the Science Fiction genre, in his main address at Life, the Universe, and Everything XVII (which symposium I very much enjoyed attending). Card sought to answer the question of why so many prominent writers of Sci-Fi and Fantasy happen to be Mormon. Apparently Mormons have been heavily dominating winners in the Writers of the Future contest for many years - and the contest is run blind. None of the judges know the names of any of the writers who submit, as the names are stripped from the entries before judging. Card argued that Science Fiction often embodies both the American plain narrative style and the American pragmatic hero - the hero who tests and tries things for himself until he finds the best solution - and, Card argues, Mormonism is also an embodiment of both of those, or more specifically, of the Scientific Method in harmony with religion. Mormonism does not ask its followers to simply blindly accept the religion, but to try it out.

“Prove me now herewith“,

- echoes the Mormon God in the Book of Mormon,

“..if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.“

And again in Moroni:

“..And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.“

If you are showing faith in Christ, if you are sincerely seeking Him, if you have changed your life already, if you are experimenting on the word (Card didn’t mention the verses that say that), and you have a sincere desire to follow these things if they are true, God Himself will manifest the truth to you by the power of the Holy Ghost. If you sincerely try Mormon principles and doctrine in your life, Mormonism promises, you will know for yourself whether the doctrines are true. That, Card argues, is the Scientific Method - run tests, try things out for yourself, experiment on a hypothesis until you have an idea whether it seems true or false - that is the Scientific Method in complete harmony with the Mormon religion.

In summary then, Mormons who are raised with these values of pragmatic experimentation find themselves very easily at home in a body of literature where pragmatic experimentation is the norm.

And what pragmatic truth does this episode of BattleStar Galactica unfold to our view? (By the way - I heard asides from Card that he doesn’t like the overt references to Mormonism made in BattleStar Galactica - because the leaders of the 12 colonies are more like the 12 idiots.) When the human race is driven to near extinction by evil robots, abortion is not a good idea

I’m looking for people to form a group in the Provo/Orem (or even wider Utah) area which will work through the excellent creativity (and unblocking) workbook THE ARTIST’S WAY (cover pictured below). If you may be interested, please email me.

Also, I decked out a Creative Reference wiki page listing this and other very useful books.

I am attending the whole of Life, the Universe, and Everything at BYU (courtesy work vacation days). If you know who I am, perhaps I will be delighted to run into you.

The last time I attended was many, many years ago, and I asked David Farland (pen name for Wolverton - who commented here recently) a question. He had presented with other authors (Barbara Hume and Kevin J. Anderson) their recent works in the eternally expanding Star Wars literary universe. Afterwards - and I was quite young - I asked him this question:

“If a Star Trek fan is a Trekkie, what is a Star Wars fan?”

He stammered a bit and answered

“Uh.. I dunno, I guess a.. a ‘Warrie‘.”

That is an excellent answer

I added this to the “about” page - here’s a link to display (in random order) all the psychedelic images that rotate through the banner of this blog.

I went to look for Movie Magic Screenwriter and typed in the wrong URL. I found this page. Something it says is so good I’m going to reference it in Google’s cache in case the page changes.

They’ve got these blurbs from guest speakers who are very successful screenwriters. I believe the one, Paul Haggis, is the type that a certain book I’m reading sneeringly refers to as a “Creative Protectionist” type; one who makes art for art’s sake, and who happened to be one of the one in fifty thousand who made it big doing so. Because such successes are rare (or are they just a matter of lining up the right business plan behind the art?), folks on the purely business, pragmatic side of the spectrum (who are in the habit of deluding themselves that they can “eliminate” risk) advocate going with what is tried and true - in other words, what has been done before and made money. That approach by definition demands formulaic, unoriginal, and therefore to the audience, drab films.

Which is what Haggis’ comments get at. And whatever else I might be - I think my film ambition may demand more pragmatic people at my side - I think I’m a “Creative Protectionist”. Now mind, though I counter-sneer at that term, the book from which it comes (THE PRODUCER’S BUSINESS HANDBOOK) has some absolutely indespensable loads of details on the actual operational and organizational procedures of the most successful independent film production businesses. I will not ignore the loads of wisdom and business know-how in that book. It’s just a matter of deciding what of it to take for granted and what to question, if your insticts ever tell you otherwise on anything. Because film is a business of risk, and I would think that sometimes you have to know when to knowingly take a risk, do something “untried” and “unproven”. The same kind of thing goes for listening to what folks on the fiercely independent creative artist side of things have to say; decide what to take for granted and decide what to challenge. And I don’t mean to say make rules out of any of your conclusions; I mean feel it out for every work of art you want to put forward.

To get back to where I was going, I find myself more inclined to first listen to the “creative protectionists” for creating stories, and then use the business side of things to decide what to do with my art.

So here are three excellent answers to questions by Paul Haggiss via screenwriter.com, referenced in google’s cache:

QUESTION:
Sometimes I go to sleep at night and say to myself that this isn’t working and I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m not going to write anymore. The next morning I get up and my characters are yapping again. At this point in your career, do you ever have such insecure thoughts?
ANSWER:
Every single day. You deal with it by writing. You just sit your ass in the chair and write through it. It’s the only way to solve your problems. When you come upon a problem, write directly into it. Embracing the problem is often the way to find a really interesting scene. My other trick is to say, ‘What awful thing could happen to them right now?’ Because sometimes, things are going too well for your characters and you have to give them the worst possible thing that could happen to them. [Ah ha ha! This sounds like God meddling with his lazy children who are too comfortable. “Let’s give them a trial!” - RAH]

–

QUESTION:
What type of scripts are hot in Hollywood right now?
ANSWER:
Never ever ever ever ever ever think that way. That is the road to failure and hackdom. I just met with Linda Obst this afternoon, and she bemoaned the fact that all young writers are looking for a payday and therefore are writing what they think she wants to see rather than writing what is in their gut, something they have to say. I cannot stress this enough.

I wrote two spec scripts that I was absolutely sure no one would ever buy: Million Dollar Baby and Crash. They both sold within a couple of years of me writing them, which is very fast.

If you try and second guess what people want and then provide it, YOU WILL FAIL.
Guaranteed.
And never listen to any agent who tells you any different.
You want to write something unique, something only you know.

–

QUESTION:
How does an unknown make it to Hollywood?
ANSWER:
You have to understand that for all intents and purposes, I was “unknown” to the film business four years ago. I had no more advantage or disadvantage than you have. You may not think that truth, but it absolutely is because I had no “heat” coming off any great television show. It was all about the script. If you write a great script and put it in your drawer at your cottage in Muskoka Lake, someone will track it down and find it. If you write a bad script and send 100,000 copies out, it still ain’t gonna sell. The trick is really simple: write a great script. And I don’t mean to be flip. That’s just the truth. Write something that’s in your heart, and if you have your craft down and if you’re really honest with the characters, it will sell. It just may take some time. I guess that’s what you should ask yourself. Not how to sell or market something, but have I written enough and experienced enough to write a good screenplay? You write, you research, you write, you research… What makes a good writer is thousands of pages written.

Where I am dubious of these comments: excuse me Haggis, but at some point someone picked up your work and put a lot of money behind it. And then audiences loved it and got more money behind it. Don’t discount that. Your success was not all pure art. It was pure art with filthy money behind it.

Other than that, he sounds just like the writers in this “ZEN” book I constantly refer to, which Richard Dutcher recommended to me - and I like what I hear. Haggis doesn’t say it’s easy, he says it’s a lot of work, but he says to go with your gut. I should also say, though, that the whole premise of sharing ideas before they are even written in first draft form - sharing them in schools and for example this online-organized writer’s workshop - that goes against what I read in ZEN. There are ideas I’d share with others, and there are ideas I won’t until I’ve got a first draft written.

One more against “doing what has been done before” - what is one of the major complaints about films? That too many of them are FORMULAIC. What does this imdb reviewer of Napolean Dynamite have to say positively about it?

I think where the film ultimately succeeds, aside from the casting of Heder, is that it doesn’t fall into the traps of predictability and stereotyping.

Whatever the writer’s gut tells them to do will be original. Actually, that could mean doing something that has been done before. Maybe in a different way, but still.

Oy. So, a first draft.. oh yeah. That’s why I went to get a program that will output screenwriting format (right now there’s Haggis again at that page: he’s hot, he’s everywhere, he’s the Indie Hero); ZEN recommended writing 120-ish pages of pure rubbish in screenwriting format to defeat the fear of the written page. That’s what I need to do, and that’s what I’m going to do.

I am also reading another indespensable book on independent film marketing: THE COMPLETE INDEPENDENT MOVIE MARKETING HANDBOOK. Though I have the same singular criticism for it that I have for the (afore-linked) PRODUCER’S BUSINESS HANDBOOK - it takes formula way too seriously - I emphasise that it is indespensable.

Lastly, I haven’t forgotten the other two books I mention here (though I haven’t finished reading them), one of which an anonymous commenter mentioned helped him get his first film off the ground, picked up by Fox Searchlight. Who left that comment? One of the folks who made Napolean Dynamite?

Look at this! Look at this entry! LONG! This is my contract with the world.

I got a clip from HaleStorm entertainment of my scene. Here it is. But first, when I was converting it from .mp4 to .mov format, I got some weird warping effects on me when the process didn’t work because my quicktime pro was outdated. Here they are.

This inspires a character (brief audio clip). “Why don’t you take a look at me? Does it look to you like I don’t know the difference between an ogre and a human?”

Okay so here’s my clip. Do not watch this clip of me in Mobsters and Mormons. Go see the movie. DO NOT WATCH THIS CLIP OF ME IN MOBSTERS AND MORMONS. GO SEE THE MOVIE. DO NOT WATCH THIS CLIP OF ME IN MOBSTERS AND MORMONS!! GO SEE THE MOVIE!! HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE TO SEE A MORMON FILM TO APPEASE THE FILM GODS?! ALWAYS MORE THAN YOU HAVE, IT’S NEVER ENOUGH ‘TILL IT HURTS!! DON’T LIE TO ME LIKE I’M JUDGE JUDY, YOU KNOW YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT ENOUGH!

My self-review: I think I acted my first and second lines well, and the third maybe a little iffy. But quirky in an interesting way. I know in a marketing sense it’s evil to proclaim any potential flaw in what I do when others are involved. However, this doesn’t trouble me, because I’m evil.

I’ve created levels for a video game. It’s a cartoony space station simulation, on the Xbox 360. Here’s a list of reviews. My levels are a love story. The goal is to date any or all of four girls and marry one. These are excerpts of dialogue I wrote for the levels. Player responses are in brackets.

Ann, the Librarian
Would you like to hear part of a poem I started?
[Yes]
Brutish swagger, mop my heart,
Flooding sorrows ‘ere thou part . .

Great Museum! Look at those kids just sucking in the knowledge! I wish I sucked as much as they do!
[You do!]
Really? Oh, I’m so flattered!

Are you enjoying our romance?
[Yes]
Does it sometimes seem like there is only one possible response to anything I say?
[Yes] [No]
What about now?
[Yes]

Poppy, the Hippie
I realized I was a robot when my third boyfriend contracted tetanus. My parents tried to blame my braces, but I knew better.
[Okay]

Will you build me a Comedy Club? It would be only for me. But it would reach out to everyone. Except for the people I make fun of.
[Okay]

Want to hear a joke?
[Yes] [No]
Okay. How many robots does it take to change a light bulb?
[ 3? ] [I don’t know]
None! The enslaved humans do it for them! A ha ha HA HA HA WRAAAA HAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
[Heh. . .]

Figures. They didn’t program you right.
[Okay]

Blenda, the Cheerleader
So that you know, my favorite drink is deep fried oil.
[Okay. . .]

Did you know Poppy said I was a bad, bad human in her.. journal? .. Isn’t Poppy awful?
[No]
But I thought you hated everyone I do! I hate you! No, I don’t, because then if you hated everyone I do, you would hate yourself! I’m so confused. . .
[All Right]

Wanna be my boyfriend? I’m not jealous or judgemental like those other terrible girls.
[Yep] [Sorry, no]

Wraeth, the Goth Chick
It’s very nice that you liked Ann’s poem, but I had a thought. If her heart flooded, wouldn’t it be a river of blood?
[I guess so]

Here’s a poem you inspired:
Black Hole spins, devouring all
Matter binding to the fall
Inward screaming, mute I call
None can hear the crushing pall.
[Thanks?]

Want to go on a pretend date?
[Sure]
Wahoo! That was fun.
[It was?]

Mobsters and Mormons is out in theaters - here is a theater listing.

I am credited in the movie by my full name, Richard Alexander Hall.

I expect to have a clip of my scene fairly soon. Meanwhile, praises and criticisms of the film are collected on this page, and clips of it also. There are a few other entries on it in this Mobsters and Mormons category.

The Cast

I think all the leads did great work, particularly the ones portraying parents (which now strikes me) - Marc DeCarlo, Jeanette Puhich, Scott Christopher, and Britani Bateman. IMDB has a cast listing. Marc DeCarlo is praised in most of the reviews as really carrying the piece, and I agree.

Praise

It won best Actor, Actress, Screenplay and Director against three other narrative films in the 2005 SpudFest.

Writes John Moyer of the response at SpudFest:

.. perhaps most exciting is the overwhelming response from those people who are not Mormon who live far outside the proverbial Utah-Idaho Jell-O Belt. It was great to have these people come up to me and provide such a wonderful response and wanting to know if it would come to their local theaters in various parts of the country and when they could get the DVD.

Here are a slew of overall positive reviews - especially the first I think - all-encompassingly (Probably the first formal review in any media, too), Ogden Standard Examiner (gives away many of the gags), The Salt Lake Tribune, BoxOffice, Meridian Magazine, The Movie Show on KSL (Real Audio File - Doug Wright: “Laughing my butt off.”

I have heard both a theater-goer and theater owner at different times describe it as “cute”. That bodes well with the women - both these people were.

Pseudonymous Flog’s entry on it backfired beautifully! - in the comments.

Criticism
Read More »

Last night I saw myself in a big movie, speaking lines with big actors, thus enlarging the size of my head. At least, my head was really big on a big screen.

I enjoyed the film a lot. I thought there were a lot of very funny scenes, that it was a riot on the whole, and also that it held together while being poigniant, which is a very difficult thing for a comedy to do.

Afterwards a friend asked if it was weird to see myself on the screen. Yes, it was disorienting - the shots for my scene were assembled with a timing and sequence different from what I imagined, and the improvised lines weren’t used. I was so distracted wondering about the cause it took me a long while to suspend disbelief again.

Good shots and lines can be taken out of films if they break editorial continuity - not matching other shots, etc. It can be painful but better the film.

I’ll look forward to seeing the official Utah premiere without my distractions, on the 7th.

If you read clear down somewhere in the middle of this thread at a web board, someone who went to a test screening of Mobsters and Mormons (my first speaking role in a major film) thought it was “a breath of fresh air” and “very funny”. My neighbor heard (somewhere, I don’t know where) that it’s “supposed to be pretty good” (well - everything is always “supposed” to be - I’m just a stickler for that phrase. You get the meaning). And in an email conversation with the director, he told me it’s been very well recieved in test screenings. Someone at this blog is dismissing it with prejudice for its film peers. At least let’s be clear that’s prejudice - they haven’t examined the film at all. Apparently those who have examined it like it. So I’m encouraged.

A book drove a good point home to me: if there aren’t a lot of people who know you would bleed for them, you won’t have a lot of people bleeding for you (there were a lot of other useful and disturbing things in that book).

.. I’ve realized I need to volunteer on small independent crews on weekends. Folks working on small projects can be found all over the place. Some of them online at the Yahoo groups Utah Film and Theater and Utah Extras Community. If I’ve helped someone else they won’t mind lending direction or help in small ways.

I need to find a bluescreen stage for Applicant to Hell.

Outside of a bluescreen stage for now, I’ll do a very fun splice screen test of Neverending Story.

And.. the day before yesterday I realized my focus is too narrow. I’ve awakened an acting ambition, but that’s not the “whole mell dell”. I feel that I must write and direct. For the writing, at least, I can actually participate (not lurk) in critters.org.

Another strong point: don’t count on people who don’t have your interests at heart, or have wrong interests at heart against you. I’ve met them. The things they do are not pretty.

I just put this blog up. This is for short film scripts and philisophical ramblings related to art and creating it. I love hearing other people’s perspectives on anything, and at this blog it’s easier than at a wiki).

Anticipating [later insertion: fearing] a wake of grief for the death of Star Wars, I may soon create and begin archiving older correspondence into another blog dedicated to a Return of the Jedi Rewrite.

This Moveable Type tool manages multiple blogs (making it easy to create a blog for larger script projects) - cool!