What Editing Can Do to Feeling

Many people have seen the popular she show the seriousness, like the emotion of the actors in the scenes, what the actors are doing within the shot, how the show is composed, what music is chosen, and so many more. You can really give a show a certain feeling by the way you edit it. A perfect example of this is Breaking Bad The Sitcom. Many people have seen the popular show Breaking Bad. The show is a very serious crime drama. Youtuber Sacha Proctor created many videos from many different episodes of Breaking Bad. It is funny, but at the same time really hard to watch. Here is an example of Breaking Bad The Sitcom and an original clips from Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad The Sitcom

Clips from the original Breaking Bad

So as you can see there is a huge difference in the feeling, even though many of the same scenes were used. The way it's edited can really set the mood. I definitely recommend watching some more of Sacha Proctor's videos.

Pixar's Rules of Storytelling

In late 2011, a former story artist for Pixar tweeted 22 tips for storytelling that she learned while working for the company. Her name is Emma Coats (follow her on Twitter - @lawnrocket - for her thoughts on film and storyboarding) and after working for Pixar on both Brave and Monsters University, she plans on moving on to directing feature films. She's only 26 years old.

While her 22 tips are by no means representative of some kind of "Pixar story bible," they certainly give a good idea of how most people in the company go about trying to tell a story. Having worked with masterminds like Lee Unkrich and Pete Docter (director of Toy Story 3 and Up, respectively), she's picked up the overall tone that Pixar uses in their films, as she explains in detail in this article from the Washington Post. Since I'm so fascinated by the writing process, I went through all of her tips and picked out a few that I thought were especially useful or interesting.

As a writer, you want your main character(s) to succeed - in one way or another - by the end of your film. Unless you're some masochistic person who finds joy in torturing the people you've created, this is almost always the case. However, an audience is not going to appreciate a character who has everything handed to them; that's no fun for anybody. We want to see our characters fail. It makes them infinitely more human and relatable. If my best friend brags about not studying for a test and still gets an A on it, I'd be like "hey man, good for you" while secretly loathing him behind his back. If that same friend studied his ass off for the test, got a D, studied some more for the next test and still failed, I would admire him way more than if he didn't study and did well. Like your grandma always says: nothing else matters as long as you give your best effort.

Endings suck. Every writer will tell you that it's a blast to create characters and toss them into ridiculous situations, but you always have to be careful about writing yourself into a corner. Vince Gilligan and the writers of Breaking Bad are actually kind of notorious for this; to every writer's jealousy, however, he always seems to find an ingenious way to get his characters out of high octane, high stakes situations. Something that every writer needs to be aware of (myself included) is that we are not Vince Gilligan.  We need to know how our stories end. Not only will it help to flesh out your story and let you do things like foreshadow and plant items for later payoff, but it also just makes your life a hell of a lot easier.

This rule really struck a chord with me, probably because I'd never thought about surprising myself with my writing. It makes a lot of sense though. I want to write something that I would personally enjoy, which means that if I want to surprise my audience, then I have to surprise myself as well. Part of me hates the idea that I have to get rid of so many ideas, but that's what writing is; revising and revising until you find something that is truly great.

My personal favorite rule: #19. It sums up everything that a great film or piece of writing should be. While it's great when coincidences get you out of trouble in real life, it's a terrible, terrible thing to do when writing. For example, say I have two characters with the same gray Volvo and neither of the driver's side doors can be locked. One car is fairly average, but the other car has 10 million dollars of drug money hidden inside. The characters park next to each other and end up accidentally swapping cars. Great plot. A little unrealistic, but hey, let's go with it. That's a coincidence. If, however, the same exact thing happens at the end of the film and each man ends up getting out with no repurcussions, that's not fair. Your audience has been waiting 2 hours to see some kind of payoff; not only will they be disappointed by a clear lack of character development, they'll feel cheated and will probably hate everything about you. Yeah. Everything.

While nobody is perfect (no Pixar, not even you) I think all 22 of these rules/suggestions can be helpful to anyone who aspires to be any kind of writer. They're definitely something that I'll keep in the back of my head and on the favorites bar of my laptop for a long time.

Here's a link to all 22 Pixar rules and Emma Coats' personal blog.

Unoriginal Creativity

I like to consider myself a creative person. I find the ability to create and destroy universes under a shady tree on a late afternoon an extremely gratifying and therapeutic process. The stories I manufacture are an expression of who I am and how I'm feeling.  The thing is, these stories I create aren't mine; they've been told thousands and thousands of times before. As a self-proclaimed writer, I find it extremely disheartening to find that something I put so much stock in, something I identify with, is merely an emulation of something someone else created. The question the becomes: If every story that can be told already has been, what can I offer to the pool of creativity?

The answer: a lot. The same rule that has applies to my stories has applied to literally every story that has ever been told throughout time, save perhaps for the first story that was ever told. Arguably some of the greatest works of literature throughout history have merely been adaptions of something that came before. Virtually none of Shakespeare's content was original. His works had all been previously told, he just added his own personal spin to each story. For example, The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice, was based upon two books, "Hecatommithi" by Cinthio and "A Geographical History of Africa" by Leo Africanus.

His content wasn't his own, but we still laud him for his mastery of the written and spoken word over 400 years later. Inversely, Othello has lead to an innumerable number of modern adaptions. There have been many theatre adaptions, such as "Desdemona, a play about a handkerchief" by Paula Vogel. This modern adaption tells the same story, but this time from Desdemona's point of view. All the events of the "original" still occur, but you get the "meanwhile" action. Is it the same story? Yes. Does it still have merits for the way the story is spun? Absolutely. Othello has led  to other liberal adaptions, such as 2001's movie "O", where it's practically the same story, only in a high school setting. In the original, Iago may warn Othello "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! That is the green eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on". In "O" the Iago character says " Watch your girl, bro".

"Watcheth your wench, bretheren"

Perhaps that is the beauty of it all. True creativity stems from taking an existing piece of work an morphing into something fresh and your own. As seen in the "Everything is a Remix" video by Kirby Ferguson, some of the best movies of the 20th and 21st centuries have literally taken and copied scenes shot for shot and adapted them into their movies. Films such as "Star Wars" and "Kill Bill" all have adapted scenes from previous movies. Their stories too are adaptions on previous ones. Still, we still give them credit for being great movies.

Today, arguably some of the best creative pieces are adaptions. One of my favorite films of all time is called "Ikuru" (1952), co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. It follows a minor Tokyo bureaucrat, who is dying of stomach cancer and struggling to find meaning in his life.  "Ikiru" although arguably one of Kurosawa's lesser-known pieces, has influenced arguably the hottest show on television right now, "Breaking Bad".

Recently, Vince Gilligan, the creator of "Breaking Bad" was on NPR's Fresh Air, had a few things to say about Wantanbe-San, the main character of "Ikiru", and Walter White.

There’s a wonderful Kurosawa movie from the 50s in which a man, a mid-level, very much a Walter White-type, or rather, Walter White, I suppose, inspired by this man. This man is very much a mid-level corporate guy who finds out he’s dying of cancer. And in the last months of his life what he chooses to do is a very good thing, it’s to build is playground, a small playground in Tokyo for the children in his neighborhood.

And this haunting ending of this movie is this man swinging on a swing set in this playground that he’s managed to build after a surprisingly hard go of it. And the snow is coming down and he singing a Japanese children’s song, and it’s just haunting and beautiful. And, of course, Breaking Bad is anything but that. It’s the flip side of that. It’s a man doing terrible things once he is freed by this knowledge that he does not have long for this world.

But I think what the two stories to share in a sense is the idea that if we found out the exact expiration date on our lives if we found out when we were going to be checking out, would that free us up to do bold and courageous things, either good or bad things, hopefully good things, then I think there’s a lot of that involved in Breaking Bad.”

If you had to boil each of these pieces of media into a log line, they would both be extremely similar. "Dying man struggles to make something of himself in his last days". It's the same story, just taken in two beautifully different directions. One focuses on a man trying to build a playground, and the other focuses on a man cooking meth. Both great. The story is only one part of the overall piece, and ultimately the sum is greater than it's parts.


To push an argument further, "Ikiru" was in fact inspired by a Leo Tolstoy short-story titled "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".

Everything is built off of something else. Once I realized, I became confident in my "unoriginality" and now can take little bits of things and fashion them into a "script collage" all of my own.

Breaking Bad, Breaking Fans, and Breaking Binge Watching

I'm well aware of the fact that I've written about Breaking Bad in nearly every one of my blog posts this semester, but let's ignore that for a second and focus on what really matters here; last Sunday's blisteringly painful (and antepenultimate) episode of the series. The buildup for this particular entry of the show had been approaching astronomical levels. Amid rumors of creator Vince Gilligan calling it his favorite episode ever and the extreme, cut-to-black cliffhanger ending of the previous episode, Twitter and Facebook users alike were collectively - excuse my language - losing their shit. The title of the episode alone is an homage to, appropriately enough, Percy Bysshe Shelley's Poem "Ozymandias," about a former "king of kings" that has since fallen from grace and disappeared forever in the sands. I'm no poetry major, but the similarities are enough for any fan of Breaking Bad to see.

I'll try and keep this summation/rant/love letter to Vince Gilligan as spoiler free as possible, but there are some events I'll just have to mention, so be warned. I've spent the past three days trying - and failing - to explain as eloquently as possible my opinion of the new developments on the show (If you want a truly great recap of the episode, check out Grantland's Andy Greenwald's take on things) but I think I'm finally ready to get my thoughts out there. At the very least, this may be a bit therapeutic for me: God knows I need something to dig me out of the funk I've been in.

To be blunt, "Ozymandias" made me feel things that I didn't know a TV show was capable of making me feel. My emotions ran the gamut of terrified to devastated to hopeful and then back to terrified. I was watching this show in a room full of 4-5 generally rowdy college guys, and each time the show cut to a commercial break there was dead silence. What started out five seasons ago as a fun (if very dark and gritty) "TV" show now felt extremely real. Too real. All Breaking Bad fans knew that everything was always pointing in this direction, but the sudden realization that it was all happening at the same damn time was too much to handle. Just thinking about it now has my adrenaline pumping.

From one of the first shots of a younger, oblivious Skyler talking on the phone to Walter, I knew things weren't going to end well (that knife rack anyone? Breaking Bad never foreshadows a weapon that it'll never use). And I was right. Any hope left for Hank - excuse me, ASAC Schrader - was gone within the first 15 minutes of the episode. And things just went downhill from there.

So much can be said about the decline of Walter White; how, no matter what, he failed to take responsibility for the hole he dug himself into or how the family that he sacrificed everything to protect no longer recognizes him as one of their own. How he rats on Jesse (poor Jesse, who ended up being the wisest, yet most tragic character on the show) and then almost kills his wife and son with a knife. "WE ARE A FAMILY," he screams, as his crippled son stands between him and his trembling wife, who is currently being held at knife point.

Let me repeat that. Walter is holding his wife and son at knife point. 

The acting was as top notch as ever (Bryan Cranston absolutely nailed the telephone call scene, filling his voice with loathing to throw the police off the scent of Skyler - thereby taking all the blame - while simultaneously breaking down in tears at the thought that he was about to lose his entire family forever. Seriously, I've never seen a better piece of acting.) but so much credit needs to go to Gilligan, writer Moira Walley-Beckett, and director Rian Johnshon. Kudos to Johnson for letting the characters tell the story - including the town of ABQ, which has become a character in and of itself - and for just

Heisenberg and Ozymandias

absolutely killing it cinematically.

And of course, Mr. Gilligan. I'm not sure whether to love him or loathe him right now. This episode of television was so devasting, so hard to endure, so - as Greenwald puts it -  "designed to counter our cultural turn toward binge-watching," that it almost seems inhumane to say that one enjoyed it. And yet it was perfect. It made an entire audience stop and think about what had just happened. And I don't mean the kind of thinking that you do while you wait for the new episode of Low Winter Sun to start; I mean the kind of thinking that immediately makes you turn off the TV and then proceeds to keep you up at night. We'd been through 60 episodes of rising action, building building building, until finally, we reach this climax. Because this was indeed the climax of our story; the next two episodes, whatever they have in store, will be the show's Shakespearean denouement. Our "hero" has fled, and now all that's left is the cleaning up of loose ends, the products of some sloppy half measures. And we know what Breaking Bad thinks about half measures.

I feel as if I haven't touched on anything, and yet I also feel that no more can be said. Yes, this was just an episode of TV, and yes, I know that you're sick of reading my endless tweets about Breaking Bad. But as a TVR major...hell, as a human being, I know that this show is the most important thing happening in the entertainment industry right now, and "Ozymandias" will likely go down as one of the best episodes of television ever. Heisenberg may have gone the way of the King of Kings, but Breaking Bad will live forever.

Why I'm incredibly Excited about J.K. Rowling's New Film

I have absolutely no shame in admitting how much I love Harry Potter. It will always be an enormously important and influential part of my childhood, and I still rewatch the movies and reread the books to this day. So you can probably imagine my excitement this morning, when (while waiting to inevitably get denied for tickets to see Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse) I discovered that J.K. Rowling would be penning a script for a brand new movie set in the Wizarding World that I know and love.

Based on Rowling's short guide (which in itself was a required textbook for students in the Harry Potter universe), "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" will be set about 80 years prior to the events of the Potter series. The film will supposedly follow the adventures of the book's fictitious author Newt Scamander, and many people have been hypothesizing as to whether or not the movie will have cameo appearances by other iconic characters from the series, such as Albus Dumbledore. 

However, the prospect of returning to the world of Harry Potter doesn't excite me nearly as much as the fact that the woman who created the world will be taking us back into it.  Much how the newly announced Breaking Bad spinoff "Better Call Saul" would not be as exciting if Vince Gilligan wasn't attached to produce it, a new movie based on the books by J.K. Rowling would not be nearly as newsworthy if it wasn't written by....J.K. Rowling. There is nobody else that I would trust with the responsibility of bringing fans a satisfying and welcoming return to the Wizarding World. It's nice to see original creators (like Rowling or Gilligan) sticking to their roots and pleasing the fans that they've come to gain over the years. 

Which brings me to one final point: in a world where Hollywood is looking to adapt any kind of book, toy, or board game into the next huge blockbuster, it's interesting to see a mega company such as Warner Brothers take a (presumably unfinished) script from someone who has previously only written novels and turn it into a film. For the previous Harry Potter movies, the scriptwriters already had a plethora of material to adapt into a film, but now, with no source material and an obvious desire to keep the series going, Warner Brothers went straight to the source. To be blunt; I like this, and I hope it happens more in the future. Instead of making crappy summer blockbusters, give authors (people who know how to really tell stories) a chance to pen their own films. Take, for instance, the current Game of Thrones situation. With only two books left until the TV show catches up with the books, why not let author George R.R. Martin write the sixth season of the show? It would be interesting, and I think it is potentially something that we'll be seeing more and more of.

Either way, the ten year old in me was giddy with excitement when he heard that there was more to come from the Harry Potter universe, and the 19 year old pretty much felt the same way. Too bad we'll have to wait until 2015 (at the very earliest) to find out what comes next. 

Breaking Bad

In my media A&A we recently finished watching the pilot episode of Breaking Bad.  I thought it was amazing.  The story is very unique, the acting is out of this world and the show just draws you in.  I am still only five episodes in,  but every minute I am excited to see the development of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul's characters.  Despite both of their characters huge flaws, I can't help but be attached to them and want to see them succeed.

As you can see from the above picture they have both been rewarded for their portrayal Jesse Pinkman and Walter White.  I think that the strongest part of the show is the character development.  Where Walter White starts out to where he ends up even after five episodes is amazing and very believable.  I don't think that this show can work without these two actors.  I think if there were other people in the role the show would not be as successful as it currently is.

They are simply the team that cannot be beat.