Don't get caught in the woods alone. Trailer for Laughing with the Storm's Four Points Film Project 2014's entry, the horror film 'Dead Woods'.
CAVEAT: I usually write fiction, or about fiction. But while in Hong Kong over the past few weeks visiting family and working on a couple of projects, I ended up experiencing a real life story that I wanted to help tell, of the protests in the streets and the people taking part in them.
It was a rainy friday in Admiralty, the cars that usually filled the streets replaced with pedestrians and protestors. Yellow ribbons fluttered in the breeze, as did posters ranging from supportive statements to subverted ads on bus stops to zombified caricatures of city officials.
The tall tan wineglass shape of the PLA Forces Hong Kong building towered over people walking down the middle of the street. Most of the protestors sat out of the occasional drizzle in tents, or in clusters under elevated walkways lined with banners.
The protests had a rhythm like the tide, with relatively few people out in the morning, others slowly gathering over the course of the day to form large rallies in the evening. Police kept watch from the barricades of tangled portable fences the protestors had pushed together across the roads. Rows of open umbrellas decorated most of them, symbols of the movement since protestors used them to block police pepper spray several days before.
Around noon things were relatively quiet. The city appeared rigidly split between areas where life continued on as normal and territory totally disrupted by the protests. Office workers ate seemingly ordinary lunches at a 2nd floor Fairwood fast food place just a few feet away from a supply tent on a highway overpass. Two women sat among cases of water bottles and canvas bags. I didn't get their names, only their ages, 19 and 21.
"I want true democracy." The 21 year old woman (on the left) said, "We were promised true democracy when the British returned [Hong Kong] to China...that's why we're here...to have what we were promised."
Further on, at a first aid tent under a pedestrian bridge, a man in a teal shirt with two pieces of red tape making a red cross on his shoulder jumped up to answer questions. His name was Ivan.
"I'm a nursing student, so I think I am responsible for helping people here." Ivan said when asked why he was part of the protests. As to why the others were here, he replied, "I think they can't stand the government any more...they want the government to listen." He added, "We're still waiting for the government to respond. I don't think there will be a very good result, but it's good to be pulling people out here, to let the government pay more attention to how we think and what we want."
Towards the eastern edge of the protest area, at one of the last tents before Wan Chai, a 23 year old legal student named Tony had a similar assessment of the protests, "Even if this doesn't go further, I think it's a good experience this time, next time we have something to ask for or something to pursue, we will do better."
Tony requested that I not photograph him, because he didn't want his grandparents to see him at the protest.
The drizzle became a steady downpour. Reporters and protestors alike found shelter under an overpass. Just across the road and over another barricade, police officers stood in the rain, water streaming down their dark blue jackets and uncovered faces. Camera operators snagged shots from a trio of tripods.
A jaunty young protestor named Libby stood next to me as we both watched the police at their exposed posts. I asked her if she felt bad for them, being out in the rain like that, "For some of them," she replied, "Some of them probably agree with us, and are just doing their jobs.
She'd been involved for two weeks, from before the protestors had taken over the streets outside city hall. "Originally we were Occupy Central, but we don't use that name anymore. We're the Umbrella Revolution now."
In a lot of ways, my adolescence (and early adulthood...and current adulthood) was defined by Bungie games on a Mac. Today, both those companies passed massive milestones, the iPhone 6 and Watch for Apple, Destiny for Bungie.
Evolution(?)
I know I'm gonna be cliche here, but I was using Macs even before it was cool. And it definitely wasn't cool when I was back in elementary and middle school; being a mac user meant fighting a never-ending war of insult attrition against the vasty more numerous Windows using kids. Still, I took being different as a badge of honor. It was something Apple celebrated too, with commercials like 'Here's to the Crazy Ones'. We mac users were a rare breed, fanatically loyal to our computers to a fault.
One of the very first games I ever got into was Bungie's Marathon 2, passed onto me by a friend in fifth grade. It started my lifelong love of gaming, but more importantly, was the first story I really fell deeply into. I was hooked on most of the early Bungie games: The Marathon Trilogy, Myth and Myth 2, Oni. I even played Pathways into Darkness, one of the original first person shooters. Being a Bungie fan meant being different from most of the other kids too: Instead of Doom, I blasted away at pfhor. Where a lot of my friends would play Warcraft and Starcraft, I fought the Fallen lords (though I found plenty of time for those other two as well).
Marathon 2, circa 1996, aka Elementary school for me.
And Destiny, circa last week.
And in both, I found a community rabidly protective of the things that brought them such immense joy, but that also set them apart from the wider, more shared experiences of others (and keep in mind this was before it was cool to like things before they were cool. Back then being a nerd wasn’t chic, it was just kind of lame. Still awesome, but lame to most). Our identity was defined by thinking differently, by being part of this sliver of subculture. We were the few, the proud, the strange.
Which is why I found it bittersweetly coincidental that both the iPhone 6 announcement and Destiny release happened last week. Both events were talked about all around the world. Both companies are raking in multi-million dollar success, so recognizable they’ve become part of the mainstream culture. I don’t want to go all hipster and say that things were necessarily better back in the days where they were less well known. I don’t know that that they were. But it’s a strange feeling, an exposed feeling, to see these two pieces of my identity, something that used to set me and others like me apart, at this worldwide level. They’ve changed, they’ve evolved over time, and part of me is glad to have been right about them. I’m glad the team at Bungie is experiencing the kind of success they are now, and it’s cool to know that Apple-fanboy-recess-me can now point to Apple as one of the most successful companies in the world. But another part of me misses when these two companies both felt like they were somehow more mine, like we were closer back then, made intimate through our shared detachment from the wider culture, our status as the weird and different ones.
While working on story ideas for our 24 Hour Film Festival entry this February, we struck upon a particularly peculiar and intriguing idea that managed to combine both of our assigned genres, Women and Road Movie. The basic pitch was that in a world where men were turing into rage-zombie-esque murderous monsters, a group of two woman and a man would have to decide whether to stick together or leave the man behind. Ultimately it seemed a bit beyond the reach of both our time constraints, and our newly gathered team, and we made ‘Jenny Goes To The Murder House’ instead.
However, a few of the team kept working on the idea, and before the end of February had completed the first script of what would become XY. After a couple barroom planning sessions, we decided to make it our next project. After a grueling shoot in Winchester, VA, I’m pleased to present the finished movie:
As someone who watches a lot of youtube movies (probably more than I should) and as someone who makes a few youtube movies (definitely fewer than I should), I’m curious about what actually makes for a captivating (or even just watchable) video online, especially short narratives.
Through deep introspective analysis while watching several youtube videos, I’ve managed to decipher 6 components that get people (ie, me) interested in watching a video. A video doesn’t need all of these components to be successful, but in my experience a successful video will strongly tap into two or more.
Comedic: The video makes you laugh, or smile. It’s comedic. I think we all know what comedy is. One of the easiest to do, as long as you don’t have a terrible sense of humor.
Horrific: College co-eds being chased by a hockey masked chainsaw murderer! Or maybe a creepily slender man standing just outside your window. Good horrific videos shock us, frighten us, freak us out. Perhaps they work through psychological horror that gets under your metaphorical skin or physical horror that literally gets under your skin (and then bursts out through your chest in a shower of gore). A video that scares us has a strong horror component.
Clever: Think Sherlock Holmes. The story folds back into itself. Things that happen in the beginning come back around in unforeseen ways by the end. A clever solution to a complex problem. This is one of the hardest components to get right, because cleverness takes a lot of mental work and planning. Technical mastery also forms part of this component, through exceptional editing, well thought out color design, etc. Clever movies grab your attention because of how well put together they are.
Puzzling: Who is Keyzer Soze? Puzzler movies set up a mystery and the search for an answer drives us to keep watching. Sometimes the answer is explicitly revealed, sometimes not, but a good puzzler will provide enough clues for people to come to a reasonable conclusion. It’s a mystery with a satisfying (and possibly debatable) answer.
Spectacular: Anyone who’s ever gone to a summer blockbuster has seen spectacle. Something you don’t see everyday. Explosions. Car chases. Crazy Kung fu fighting. Hot people. Maybe even just good editing set to a thumping beat. Something with spectacle is cool, it’s awesome, kickass, and it wows the audience.
WTF?!: Inexplicable moments that seem to defy all reason and explanation. The bizarre, the surreal, the stuff that makes you ask “what the f***?” Something so strange that you’re not sure what you just saw (or why you even kept watching). While the Puzzler is a mystery in search of an answer, the WTF?! element is something that defies any answer.
One of my big takeaways from trying to figure out these components is knowing what kind of movie we’re trying to make, and playing to its strengths. So, if we’re making a horror movie, really focus on the elements that make it scary. If we’re making a spectacular movie, make sure to get the stunts look just as amazing as they should. By figuring out what elements are most likely to keep people watching, we can (hopefully) make our movies the best they can be.
But I’d also like to give others the chance to weigh in. What gets keeps you watching videos to the very end?