Dave Olden Online

We’ll be redesigning things around here, a new look.

Dave Olden

Every time I revisit Lawrence of Arabia, it’s the same thing.  I know how long this movie is. “My god, this is going to be four hours of my life. Four hours! Am I sure I want to do this?”

And every time it concludes, every time: “Oh, that went by fast.”

I should know better.

Freddie Young and Director David Lean photographed Lawrence of Arabia for release in Super Panavision (70 mm) release, and the images are gorgeous.

I mean, look at the Bedouin camp: All the way into the distance! Not a model, not a matte painting. If you wanted to extend a set or location in those days, you had to do it in front of camera. Painting on glass, a hole in the painting to shoot through? A carefully sculpted model in front of the camera, a forced-perspective miniature?

When they take Aqaba, it that epic pan? It’s hundreds of horses and riders. How’d they do it?

For the tents, Lean got everyone to erect tents on location. What you see is how they did it.

And for storming Aqaba with all those horses? They got … hundreds of horses and riders. What they got, is what you see.

My resources are spare, these days. An old Powerbook G4, barely working, and I’m broke.

And, I see this gorgeous 65mm imagery (that’s the format they shot in).. and I want to do that too.

What to do?

Remember a master, from years ago…

 ”Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.”      Michelangelo

We really don’t have a quality way to archive digital imagery. The best way to archive digital imagery is on film.     - Bill Dill

There will be a resources page here soon, with all my recommendations together in one place, but here are some good books on screenwriting.

Adventures in The Screen Trade, by master screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Misery, All The Presidents Men).

The Elements of Screenwriting by Irwin R. Blacker. The late Mr. Blacker was Screenwriting Instructor at USC. This is a lean volume, but that’s great (true with great screenplays, too).

And read screenplays. (Make sure they’re not transcripts). Just put what we can see and hear.

Note: Revised 23 June, 2011.

“Just write what people say and do. Don’t put in any camera directions, the director’s going to change all that anyway.” – Stanley Kubrick’s advice to screenwriters.

And Richard Bach said that any story is this:

1. A character wants something.

2. Something gets in his way.

3. What does he do about it?

Those are good tools to get going, especially for short films.

Project Gutenberg offers books in the public domain. Especially good for really old cool stuff. (Cool stuff is not always a new thing). While you’re there, you can download Poetics by Aristotle.

Terry Rossio is a working screenwriter, with some fantastic articles on writing screenplays. They’re free, a wonderful resource on the craft and business of screenwriting. The columns can be found at Wordplayer.com.

We’ll need room on our shelf for Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations.

The Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lagos Egri. A widely recommended book.

Those are some online resources to check out, just a few. But, never stop writing, reading and watching and shooting stories.

While making little tweaks to this site (such as revising the “About” and “Projects” pages), I thought about film music.

It’s a natural follow-up to a post on production sound, since music is a large part of what we hear, and sound is such a large part of the experience of film.

The little iPod Nano still with me, I’ve been happily losing myself in a cue from Alexander Courage’s score to “The Cage,” the first pilot to Star Trek. (For those who don’t already know, a “cue” is to a score, what a track is to an album; an individual piece of the whole).

The piece is called “Picnic,” and in the space of 2 minutes or so, evokes so much.

In the story, Captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) and the crew of the Enterprise have been baited to Talos IV. There, they find Vina (Susan Oliver), lone survivor of ship that crashed there many, many years before.

The Talosians have the power of projecting illusion, and in the attempt to get them to mate, place Pike and Vina in a variety of romantic scenarios.

One of those scenarios being, a picnic.

Picnic

For this moment, Courage uses the simplest of arrangements: two woodwinds, and guitar. It’s a singular melody, overlapping, tentative harmonies, then lonely again. Getting to know each other, curious, scared, delicate, simple, beautiful, loving, hopeful.

2 woodwinds, and 1 guitar.

It doesn’t take much, and that gives me hope.

(Last person out of the Scoring Stage, can you turn out the lights please?)

Note: For next time, I’ll see if I can find a link to either the whole scene (remember, film music doesn’t stand alone), or, failing that, the track itself. I’ll have a little more to say about context, too.- Dave

Even in a 90-second short film, such as the ones we are planning here at daveolden.com, sound is supremely important.

A few years ago I was invited guest on set for a feature film that was shooting here. Late in the production day, I was chatting with Mike, the film’s sound recordist. He’d written and directed a little monologue, shot it with a gifted actress, and when he showed it around, not one viewer mentioned anything about the fuzzy poor video.

Content means everything, sure, and her performance had a lot to do with it, but Mike had made sure to have properly recorded and mixed sound.

Audience will forgive bad picture, but they won’t forgive bad sound.

Have a good one, and you’ll hear from me early next week.

- Dave Olden

Ah, much better.

We have a fresh new banner image today. And you’ll see other changes as daveolden.com evolves. As it should be.

Computer is still in the shop. For now, I’ll post when I can. You can be certain that we’re working toward daily postings as soon as we possibly can.

Added: So, I post this, and forget to title it. A title is put in… “39″ and I scratch my head. There haven’t been 39 posts yet!

But it stays….

… ’cause it’s one of my favorite Queen Songs, written by Brian May. The world’s first spacefarer’s lament.

Enjoy…

I’m going to talk about The Doctor’s Wife, again.

But really, it could be any story. You can do the same. I’m sure you’ve had stories that charge you up, fill you with enthusiasm, quote to others until not a few roll their eyes, watch again and again, relive them even though they’ve been burned into your retinas.

All that’s needed is close eyes, remember, smile.

It’s like that for me, and The Doctor’s Wife. It came along, no coincidence, to float parallel with the conception of daveolden.com, its scope defying the tinyness of that screen, and since the 4th or 5th time viewing, I’ve found so many starting points for postings I don’t know where to begin. I could write about it for some time yet.

Does it have personal significance for me?

Yes. Oh, yes.

Do I have an Idris who exists across all time in my life? Perhaps. There’s certainly a private meaning for me. But the most powerful stories are like that, aren’t they? We see ourselves in them, living reflections of who we are, only seeming to be the adventures of others, when it’s really about us.

Near tears at the end —  am I ever not ashamed to tell you — I like to feel my entertainment.

If you, like I, have chosen to tell stories, then get some of those in front of your retinas. Let those stories be that moment….

“You have what you’ve always had,” those stories will say, “You have me.”

Then let them energize you.

Tell stories. Not only true for audiences, but creators, too. We are in our stories.  Tell them back through those retinas out to others, project our stories as though they were the next best thing since TARDIS-unfolded moments.

Within a day, I had new energy for stories I have on my plate. You’ll read about them here from time to time, although the very first will be little vignettes. But size can be deceptive.

For now: if that totally unique, unmatched genius Neil Gaiman can do it, so can we.