Utopia in Four Movements | The Film, A Live Documentary

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From the site:

"Throughout human history, people have had giddy dreams and fantastic notions about what the future would bring. Today the future has become more of a threat than a promise—a knot of intractable problems looming menacingly on the horizon. With a powerful sense of poetry, Utopia in Four Movements uses the collective experience of cinema to explore the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

In this “live documentary,” filmmaker Sam Green cues images and narrates in person while musician Dave Cerf performs the soundtrack. From the establishment of a man-made language designed to end war and cultural conflict and the undying optimism of an American exile in Cuba, to the current economic boom in China and the desire to give the remains in mass graves a dignified burial, Green and Cerf sift through the history of the utopian impulse with audiences and search for insights about the way to build a vision of the future based on humankind’s noblest impulses.

Sam Green introduces a “live documentary”

The world is facing so many huge problems and challenges today, that utopia—as a way to illuminate possibilities, stir hope and the imagination—seems more important than ever. Utopia is for this project both a subject and a creative aspiration.

This “live documentary” form—I narrate the film in person and use Keynote to cue images while Dave Cerf mixes a soundtrack on his laptop—started out as just a way to put all the material together and screen it for people, sort of a live rough-cut. But over time, I’ve become quite fond of this as an approach.

The ‘live-ness’ seems especially fitting. At its heart, utopia is almost always about collectivity, about transcending the boundaries of our individual lives to connect with something larger. In this era, when there are so many forces pushing us into private and mediated experiences, the simple act of getting together with other people to talk, catch up, drink, and have a collective experience is a small utopian gesture.

This kind of live event is also a response to the crisis facing cinema today. Most of my students rarely consider going to see a film in a theater. They can see a film more cheaply at home as a DVD or for free on YouTube. It seems as if filmmakers either have to embrace the notion of people watching their work furtively, in stolen moments, on laptops and iPods, or create something that cannot be reduced to a digital file...."

The [Un-official] 10 Film Commandments of Edward Burns « Grazie! to Screenwriting from Iowa #infdist

1) Find up and coming actors who are talented and hungry. (And willing to do their own make-up/wardrobe.)

2) Use a crew you’ve worked with before, and shoot digitally.

3) Find free locations.

4) Don’t worry about film permits.

5) Don’t worry (obsess) about continuity.

6) Don’t mourn what you don’t have & ask lots of favors.

7) Pick locations where you can use little or no lights.

8.) Hire people for little money who can wear multiple hats on production. (But give them a cut of any profits.)

9) Even if you wrote the script & are the director— don’t be afraid to hold the boom mike when needed.

10) Don’t fall in love with a continual shooting schedule. Chip away shooting days and hours when you can.

how handy! Grazie Screenwriting in Iowa:

http://screenwritingfromiowa.wordpress.com

Love the Innovation of This Multi-Platform Motion Picture: HERE | A Braden King Film | Official Selection Sundance 2011

HERE [ THE STORY DREAMS ] is a live, dynamic deconstruction of HERE [ THE FEATURE FILM ]. A multi-screen, hybrid film-concert that explores the dreamlife of cinematic narrative, HERE [ THE STORY SLEEPS ] functions on several formal, narrative and conceptual levels at once, transcending all manner of media and audience borderlines.

As a continuing series of live events produced in association with Pomegranate Arts, HERE [ THE STORY DREAMS ] represents an evolving collaboration between filmmaker Braden King, composer Michael Krassner, the Boxhead Ensemble and projection designer Deborah Johnson. An early version of the piece, THE STORY IS STILL ASLEEP, premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival (while HERE [ THE FEATURE FILM ] was still in development); an interim version was recently featured as the sold-out opening night event of the Creative Capital exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Work on the piece continued during a residency at Mass MoCA in June, 2010; HERE [ THE STORY DREAMS ] will tour internationally in 2011.

HERE | A Braden King Film starring Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal | Official Selection Sundance 2011

The Fate of the World (Is Resting on You): Computer Game based on Climate Models

Transcript

GELLERMAN: In the coming decades, global leaders will deal with problems that will test our civilization: intense storms and droughts, famine, and social upheaval. Time is running out. Now the Fate of the World is in your hands.

GELLERMAN: “The Fate of the World” is a new computer game that puts you in charge of the global effort to respond to the challenge of climate change. Your goal: to confront the effects of worldwide warming, save the planet, and have some serious fun in the process. Ian Roberts played a pivotal role in determining the Fate of the World - he designed the game.

VIDEO: Watch a trailer for Fate of the World:

ROBERTS: There’s no reason why you can’t make a good game about something that matters....

Must Read: Great Practical Post from Mike Jones: Mapping a Storyworld Timeline - Journal - mikejones.tv

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Excerpt from original post: Monday May 9, 2011

"World first, then Plot. This is the mantra I think is so important for developing an episodic series. The principle being that a series lives and dies by it’s dramatic sustainability and if you focus on plot before fully considering the rules, contexts and natural pressures of your story-world, you run the risk of writing your series into an unsustainable hole. A good series should become self perpetuating by the natural dramatic momentum generated by it’s story world. Get the Story World right and Plots should just flow…

So, then the question becomes How to build an effective story world, how to conceive and articulate that world and it’s natural dramatics? My Celtx Series Development Bible Template (which you can download here) lays out categories and an approach for constructing a series bible and a recent reading of an article about journalism info-graphics has me considering another useful tool as part of that kit - the Timeline.

In a previous post I broke down the important distinction between Settings, Contexts and Background: Setting is the here and now of the story world, it’s present. Contexts are the rules behaviors and cultural conditions of the story world at that Setting point. Background is how the world became as it is, what transpired to bring about the circumstances of the story’s here and now. Whilst there’s nothing revolutionary or rocket science about these definitions they are very useful for articulating a storyworld. And they also allow us to see the usefulness of a Timeline as a potential way to build and construct a compelling story world with enough fuel to sustain your series.

Defining the setting here and now of a storyworld becomes a more effective and sustainable dramatic vehicle if you can clearly articulate how the Here and Now came about, what events and circumstances transpired to bring the current situation Setting to bare?..."