What I Learned's blog

Lego Friends: Character Personalities Done Right

Wandering through Target with my daughter, she stopped me for the new Lego line "Friends." It's a pack of cute, Lego-sized dolls where you built them and their play sets. Brilliantly simple idea and a fine execution.

She asked me to read the descriptions of the four girls on display. What took me by surprise was that they actually had negative sides of their personalities. One of them loves to plan parties, but she can be bossy. One of them loves to perform, but is a bit of a drama queen.

This, I thought, was fantastic. Most of the times, personalities for kids' toys are very straight and narrow. They never have a bad side to them. "This one loves animals and the color pink!" That's about as much as you'll get from some of them.

It's so bad that the "books" that are put out to support the toys (or do the toys support the books?) just pick a toy as the main character and put words in her mouth. The characters are that interchangeable that it just doesn't matter who says or does anything.

So I was pleasantly surprised that, in just a few short sentences, the Lego Friends were well described and set up enough things for them to do.

What I Learned: For a story to happen, there has to be conflict. The best conflict comes from between characters. But they have to be different enough for that to happen.

 

How Beauty and the Beast Should Have Ended

We brought our daughter to see "Beauty and the Beast," re-released in the theater. (We saw it in 2D, however!) I got to thinking of a better fate for Gaston, the movie's villain.

He's probably one of the more personal villains in Disney movies. And his goals and the ways he goes about it are more cruel than the power-hungry villains like Aladdin's Jafar. But I was always surprised he died at the end.

What should have happened is that he falls....and lands on Lefou, the toady. Lefou is then seen as a hero in the people's eyes, and Gaston becomes his toady.

Jafar, Ursula, or Scar...they will never rest, so of course they die at the end of movies. But Gaston is the type of character that utter humiliation is worse than death.

 

 

Men In Black 3, and how to make a good parody

 

For a parody to be successful, it has to be both good and first.

The official trailer for Men In Black III (shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyaFEBI_L24) went online two weeks ago. My animator sent me a link and asked what we could spoof about it. I had a script done in two days. Within two weeks of the trailer being online, my video is online (shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-x0KkLjS0)

If you search “Men In Black 3 parody” in YouTube, my video is the first to come up. And it's the only one that's really relevant.

What I'm hoping by all this is that by being first to the party, I'll get a head start on views. The script is good, and I especially love the ending. And the video is first, or at least among the first if I missed the others.

So, take a look at it, and let me know if it's successful. Thanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-x0KkLjS0

 

Sick Joke

My animator had the idea of taking really messed-up jokes and turning them into skits. Here's our first try. It's offensive.

 

Dirtbag and Nun Joke

Submit your music for our movies

I make a video a week. And while most of the movies have the audio taken care of already, there are some that need background music.

Basically, I feel bad using www.Incompetech.com all the time.

This video will detail my basic needs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkLn7pzqAAM

Some of my videos have received thousands of views. Wouldn't it be nice to expand your audience that much? I need free music and you need free promotion, so let's work together.

I need professional-sounding recordings in these formats: .aif, .aifc, .aiff .asf, .au, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .snd, .wav, and .wma.

The recordings can't be live. And they have to be something that sounds like it would be the background to a scene in a movie. It has to convey an emotion without being distracting.

In submitting work, you agree to have your work used in a video that will only appear on the Internet. You understand that you will not be compensated for the work.

I can't promise I'll use it, or even contact you, so please don't send any follow-up messages. If I don't respond, I'm too busy with real life stuff. I'll definitely respond if I'm going to use your work.

Keep in mind, most of the time I'm only going to use a shortened version of the work, so viewers wouldn't be getting the whole thing for free.

So leave a comment here, or on my video if you want to share your songs. Leave a link to your work. Also, list your website if you have one. Provide whatever contact information you want to be public. Because other people will be viewing this link or watching my video. So, even if I don't use your work, someone else might.

Abyssinia, Harry Morgan

Doctors and nurses hustle through the surgery tent. The charismatic doctors deliver deadpan one-liners while digging through the young men torn up by battle. A young man walks into this whirlwind of activity.

“Radar, put a mask on,” one of the doctors yells.

“I have a message,” the young man says, faltingly. “Col. Henry Potter's plane...was shot down over the Sea of Japan, it spun and...there were no survivors...”

The doctors all fall quiet. Just the clank of scalpels dropping on metal trays.

 

From the Associated Press: Harry Morgan, who died Dec. 7 at age 96 after having pneumonia, was in the top ranks of actors who could take a small role, or a small scene, and bring it deftly alive. He added richness to any comedy or drama smart enough to call on him.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY4qSh3UWIU

I always loved M*A*S*H and wanted to give Morgan a send-off that Henry Blake had.

Even as a kid, I liked how that show could go from goofy to serious and then back again. The seriousness made the goofiness that much more important and the goofiness made the serious parts all the more real.

What I Learned: If you want to balance comedy and drama, it starts with the characters. They have to be funny because they are reacting to the sad parts. The two feelings go hand in hand.

 

New publishing companies get swamped with submissions

I always check the publisher of the books my daughter brings home from the library. “When a Dragon Moves In” was published by FlashLight Press. (http://www.flashlightpress.com/index.html) I had never heard of them before. I assumed it was an imprint of a larger, impenetrable publishing company.

I was pleasantly surprised that it was its own company. A little bit of research showed they were owned by a company that published adult books, but it was still small. It was still approachable.

Which means it's approached by EVERYONE.

Their submission guidelines had changed in that they only respond if they really like it. They said it was because they got way too many submissions, and they couldn't respond to them all.

That's the way it is with us writers: Once the door opens a crack, we all rush toward it so the door cracks off its hinges.

There are so few publishing companies out there that actually accept unsolicited submissions that those who do get swamped very quickly. I only hope that my submission stands out from the herd.

What I Learned: There's huge competition even at the little publishers. The same rules apply: Make it your best effort, and make your book stand out. (This is better than the big ones, in which you can't even enter the competition.)

Don't abuse the little publisher that could. They're nice enough to offer you chances to have your work published. The least you can do is buy their books and keep that door open.

“It's OK to steal from the Internet,” they say

I wrote a short story for a client, and it turned out really good. Then, after all was said and done, my client mentioned he stole the idea from the Internet.

If all you need to do is right-click on something, why be original? Creativity isn't rewarded, it's just copied. People who want to copy something because they like it, but don't realize there's a value there.

There's an assumption that if it's online, it should be free. If this was the case, no one would be making any money off their creations and you'd see much less of it online.

Anything can be ripped off. That's why it's even more important to be 100 percent original. Don't fall into the easy trap of generating content mashed up from other people's ideas. You won't stand out. You'll be exactly like everyone else who is doing it.

We don't revere people like Steve Jobs because he copied other people. He got the respect he did because he created something new.

When anything can be copied off the internet the only thing I have is originality. People want original content, not the same old thing. That's why, for instance, Charlie Sheen jokes got old very quickly.

My writing might not be much, but at least it's my own.

 

Here's my YouTube channel. You'll find some bizarre but funny and very nsfw material:

 

YouTube channel

Write about poop? I have a degree, damn it!

An animator I've been working with asked me to come up with some R-rated jokes to animate. He wants to sync into the popularity that comes from Family Guy and especially Seth McFarlane's private channel.

I already created a character who plays movie-based video games and makes fun of them. So, all right. He wants adult humor. Fine. What terrible movie should become a video game?

“2 Girls, 1 Cup.”

Yes, the 4-year-old Internet meme that won't die...it just keeps on going...If you haven't watched it already, don't. Seriously. It's disgusting. This isn't reverse psychology.

So, I came up with a few jokes and wrote it. It took me an hour, probably. I figured the idea was worth an hour. I have a college degree. I've been a professional writer for about 10 years. I didn't want to spend any more time on this than I had to.

Then came the actual production. It takes a lot longer to animate, and the back-and-forth e-mails as we narrowed stuff down took quite a long time. We had to agree on character and background designs, an intro to the series, and I did the voice acting.

End result: NINE hours to create this video. And that's just my half.

So, watch the video. Let me know if it was time well spent.

 

2 Girls, 1 Cup the video game

How to write about Twilight without knowing anything about Twilight

When something as popular as Twilight invades pop culture the way it has, it's not hard to write about it with at least a passing knowledge.

I recently wrote a parody of it for an animated sketch. Here's the video. I hope you like it. But you should be warned there's some disturbing footage in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncjwZ2CJoTQ

When I wrote this parody, there were certain truths I kept to:

1. It's about the characters. A lot of people rip on Twilight because of the drama. However, the drama is what drew fans to the series. Critics whine that vampires and werewolves should be more visceral, not lingering in love triangles. So I played on that.

My parody is about a Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn video game. So I made the first part of the gameplay about relationships, which I see as the strength (not the weakness) of the books.

2. Take it too far. Parodies work if you take it just far enough outside of the spectrum of what's acceptable in the book's real world. The second act of the video you'll see just how far I pushed it.

3. Prey upon people's preconceived notions. The interaction between Edward Cullen and Jacob at the end is based upon what pretty much every guy thinks Twilight is. It's an easy joke, and I'm not proud.

4. End with a 180 degree change. The problem with some parodies is that they just keep doing the same joke over and over. So, I wanted to make sure the last thing my protagonist says is a surprise.