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...by which you could show (in a short film), cinematically, the way that various people's lives are impacted by the events on a board such as this one?
Film, of course, is driven by two things: character, and action/plot -- and they only really count as one, considering that the former is generally articulated mostly through use of the latter. The main problem with a text-based messageboard is that it's only metaphorically active, and that doesn't translate easily to pictures.
I would want to avoid the "You've Got Mail" method, by which characters sit down at the end of the day and type into their AOL-sponsored email client, accompanied by voiceovers of what they are typing. It's Been Done. Badly.
Yup, just me being lazy again and hoping someone else will come up with a BAFTA award-winning idea so I don't have to. 
David
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Shame on you David. lol I think it might be pretty easy to do something like you suggest, altho im not much into making films. Take a boy, with few if any friends, a less than happy family, who knows hes gay and feels hes alone, no-one to talk to or confide in. He has tried to talk on AOL and ask questions, but when his age is found out he is told to leave that he is not old enough or hes a bother, adult gays dont have time for him. Then he finds a forum. He watches the postings on the forum and how different people are interacting with each other. He takes a tentative step to join in. He is welcomed by all who frequent the MB. Thru the weeks he becomes bolder and more sure of himself. He has found a small family of friends. This has built his confidence in himself and he has learned that he is not alone. Some if not all the guys on the MB become close and are helping shape his life. In the end he knows that he is not alone and that the world will be full of friends and those who would be his family.
I think this can be done by showing one boy the story revolves around and several of the others of different ages responding to his questions or his emails. Showing how the boys self worth increases, how his confidence grows. How his life improves because he now knows and realizes that there are and will be those that do and will love him. That unlike his real family, will accept him for who he is, and not be disappointed in him.
dont know if this is a good idea or not, cause Im not in the film business or study. so now you dont have to strain as hard. lol
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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If you know anything about computers and the internet.....
As I know you do......
You would know that the bandwidth constrictions would make a free site based on video messaging impossible.....
and that being the case, who would pay for it?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Brian,
Have you ever considered writing for film?
Seriously, that is indeed the sort of story that would be well-placed to take advantage of a messageboard as a mechanism -- and it would be all the more powerful for being true for so many of us. The thing is, by dwelling entirely on one person it sidesteps the issue of how you show the interactions -- the real drama, the close-ups, the bread-and-butter of film -- that would otherwise take place face to face. In the story as you suggest it, the real interactions would have to be between the protagonist and his family, and the messageboard would no longer be core to the story -- it could be replaced (with not too many amendments) by, for example, a new real-life friend, or social circumstances, or a change in physical location. All of which, unfortunately, translate to visuals better than email. (Incidentally, the original "Just Hit Send" would make a good screenplay, I always think, because, while ostensibly being about an email relationship, it dispenses with the email side in favour of physical presence and physical action quite quickly.)
By contrast, I would like to emphasise the way that a messageboard can become central to people's lives -- as real a location to the people who participate as any social gathering. This means showing people interacting through it -- creating conflict, happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety, as well as resolving existing problems -- all within the board itself, not just seeing the board as a backdrop. That's why I posed the question -- is there any mechanism by which one could show the real emotions that are visually obscured by having been forced into cold, hard text?
The answer may be that it is impossible, and I'm fully prepared to accept that -- after all, long-distance relationships (post, telephone etc.) have existed for many decades, and there are, presumably for a reason, not too many films about them. (Where they exist, the characters are usually physically reunited before the end of the film.) If I can't find a mechanism, then plan B would be to develop a film along the lines you suggest, in which there is still a messageboard, but where it becomes increasingly less important during the film, as the characters become steadily more rounded: the messageboard is the inciting incident that starts the story off, but is sidelined once the characters and issues are clearly defined in physical terms.
David
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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One thing about film is that the audience can be willing to suspend disbelief. Currently impossible, yes. But so were mobile phones a few decades ago.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Marc,
I was not suggesting anything to do with video messaging, so that's not really a concern: any unusual use of technology by the characters would alienate viewers who would otherwise identify with their use of the internet as a medium for interaction.
However, I might point out that MSN Messenger and the Passport network are free, and support realtime video messaging. So it is certainly possible, even if you have to be Microsoft to offer it. Long-term storage of video, and multiplexing to more than one person at a time, are more complicated, but Youtube and other sites have proven that it works (even if they don't seem to have a valid business model at the moment). I have no doubt that it would be possible technically to base a forum on either or both technologies -- especially where the core membership of the forum is only a few dozen rather than millions. Bandwidth is very cheap these days.
David
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Well then what's keeping you......
Set it up....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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David, if the boy lived in an area that was very hostile to his orientation and he found the MB to ease his mind. Grasshopper has made me cry more than just a few times. So, emotions can be felt over the internet. If the boys only gay world was the MB, he would be sad when a friend is sad, joyfull when one of the posters is joyfull. The anger or frustration of the friends on the MB. To bring it full circle. the boy growning to his majority, making the trip to get all his friends and mentors together, to be able to touch and hold the people who made his life bearable and let him know no mater where he went in the world, he was never alone.
Course then I might be missing something in your meaning. But you can show the emnotions of the people asking or answering questions on the MB.
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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If I am once again reading attempting to read this correctly.....
A film featuring a series of vignets, each from the perspective of the persons involved in the message board.....
filmed from each location.... and then blended into a thread like compilation......
Is that more of what you had in mind?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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How do you show what they are typing? A screen is hackneyed, and reading it out is artifice.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Dont read it out. show the screen and whats being typed, just like the people on the MB would be reading it.
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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Oh, I know emotions can be felt over the internet. The problem is showing them to other people in film, especially if they've never appreciated them themselves. That's what my original question was asking.
To be honest, Grasshopper's story aren't really internet/forum posts, but short stories and novellas -- a medium that has developed for hundreds, if not thousands of years. While I'm not experienced at adaptation, adapting them would be much, much easier than adapting a set of forum posts, even when in retrospect there is a clear narrative.
David
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An audience usually ends up getting irritated if it has to read more than a line or two. If you put too much text on screen you might as well make it a short story. So, while showing posts is fine, you have to convey character and intentions in more than just text.
I expect it can be done if you can make the concepts very clear, and show them through expression and actions at each end, though it would take a genius script-writer and director to convey enough information from one character to another to make the audience empathise.
David
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Marc said,
>If I am once again reading attempting to read this correctly.....
>A film featuring a series of vignets, each from the perspective of the persons involved in the message board.....
>filmed from each location.... and then blended into a thread like compilation......
>Is that more of what you had in mind?
That is it, Marc, in a nutshell.
However, the characters must affect each other, directly or indirectly, otherwise one might as well make the thing into a serial on a running theme, rather than a single film. The idea is that one character's changing circumstances have a "knock-on" effect, which in turn cause another character's life to change -- bringing some people together, some people further apart, and if possible (though not compulsarily) bringing everyone (spiritually or physically) at the conclusion.
The problem is that the "switching point" in the middle -- the messageboard -- is very sterile: everything has to be condensed into text. And text doesn't show up well on film.
David
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Ha, well...
Part of the reason people like these boards is that they can lurk, they can remain anonymous, they're quick and easy to load, and you can dip and skip what you don't want. Text works nicely. Video, or even audio, is technically complicated to record and access.
That said, podcasts are quickly becoming popular, and it's quite possible that video will follow sooner or later.
If I had another life (i.e. I could devote all the time I devote to film-making to programming) I would have a go, even if just to come up with a technology demo.
David
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timmy wrote:
> (snip) A screen is hackneyed, and reading it out is artifice.
I don't honestly see that that matters much - the important thing is to establish a convention, and stick to it, so that the intended audience accepts it without thinking, and therefore without the convention getting in the way of the story. Much like the way you say in your 'guide to successful writing' "Don't: ...Search for variants on 'he said', just say 'he said'".
Its suprising how quickly such conventions become invisible, in any medium. And novelty is usually a distracting mistake ... like writing in phonetic dialect, unless done for a very specific point.
Personally, I'd show a quick shot of the screen, going into relevant visuals with a voiceover of the words - a convention often used for diary entries, letters, etc. But that is probably my background in Theatre showing - "just get out there and tell the f*cking story", as one of my favourite Directors used to say!
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... if you really want to do it! Your immediate difficulty is that you are jumping from an idea to a film without going throught the usual (though not, admittedly, inevitable) intervening processes of writing the story and then converting the narrative into a screenplay.
Think of the 1985 film '84 Charing Cross Road'. Can you imagine anything more inherently unlikely as the basis for a film than the exchange of letters between an American customer and the proprietor of a second-hand London bookshop? But Helene Hanff set down her 'side' of the story in a very successful book; this was duly adapted as a screenplay and filmed to considerable critical acclaim.
And Brian's suggestion is as true as Helene Hanff's collection of letters; he is telling you exactly how this forum has helped him. It's a very moving story, and I hope that all those who were involved appreciate the value of what we have here. It's certainly worth celebrating!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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>is there any mechanism by which one could show the real emotions that are visually obscured by having been forced into cold, hard text?
Uhh, yeah.. a video camera! Video chat.. ( :
Teddy8-)
Life's a trip * Friends help you through * Adventure on life!
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The whole world is a messageboard & we are merely posters.. Teddy 
Life's a trip * Friends help you through * Adventure on life!
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A Character could speak the lines being written, as he is thinking/typing them if need be.. perhaps show the person from the back, with keyboarding sounds & his voice saying the words ..a la USA old TV show "The Waltons" John Boy character with his diary entries...
Teddy
Life's a trip * Friends help you through * Adventure on life!
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Cossie said,
>Your immediate difficulty is that you are jumping from an idea to a film without going throught the usual (though not, admittedly, inevitable) intervening processes of writing the story and then converting the narrative into a screenplay.
We-ell, the screenplay is not the story. The screenplay is just the "bare bones" so that the actors can learn their lines, and crew members can have a basic understanding of what is going on. The story is the film, and the film is the story, so until the film is made the story exists only in the director's head. A director can have a very clear idea of his (or her) film without ever having written it down, and provided that he (or she) can communicate to the cast and crew what he wants out of any particular shot, that's fine.
I have known directors who, as soon as they get on set, dispense with the script and the storyboard entirely (which existed, perhaps, soley for the purpose of gaining funding) and compose the film on the spur of the moment inside their heads. Not a method that works for the inexperienced, of course -- and I'm one of the most inexperienced. But there's nothing the matter with a middle position, where the script emerges only once the story is set pretty much in stone. It saves on (a few) rewrites, at least.
Honestly, when I emerge to ask these questions, I'm not really asking everyone else to come up with the story for me! I have various ideas of my own, but sometimes it's easy to miss a vital, perhaps even obvious, plot or character point and the story flounders around for a while. New perspectives are helpful with that.
David
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NW quoted,
>"just get out there and tell the f*cking story"
Well, indeed. I do tend to get caught up in technicalities like this one. Admittedly I tend to ask technical questions on this board because they are not the major creative ones, which are more valuable to me (as I don't come up with them that often).
Internet messageboards are a relatively new technology, and if there were an interesting and novel (the danger of novelty notwithstanding) way of telling a story involving one, then it might be a good idea to use it. The answer, probably, is that there is not: film hasn't changed much in the last 90 years, despite rapidly changing technology, and the conventions, by now, are pretty much set in stone.
David
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All the world's a messageboard,
And all the men and women merely posters;
They have their offline periods and their logins,
And one man in his time posts using many usernames,
His membership being seven ages. At first, the newbie,
Mewling and puking in AOL's arms.
Then the whining Myspace user, with his LOLs
And bloody-minded ignorance, creeping like snail
Unwillingly towards proficiency. And then the luser,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Of his Windows's viruses. Then a hacker,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the MOD's computer network. And then the Scot
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. [Didn't think this one needed changing, Cossie!]
The sixth age shifts
Into the anxious and baffled technophobe,
With spectacles on nose and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Computing by his side;
His floppy disks, well saved, a world too old
For his CD-ROM drive, and his big manly IBM,
Turning inevitably towards obsolescene, beeps and
chimes its incompatibility. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is loss of network access and mere oblivion,
Sans keyboard, sans mouse, sans login, sans everything.
With apologies to William Shakespeare.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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WOW!
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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No Message Body
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... but how the hell did you find out that I had a fair, round belly and a beard?
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... but I suppose that my real point was that, in bringing a film like '84 Charing Cross Road' to the screen, three different people have looked at the situation from three different angles. The author of the original book tells the story in purely narrative form, without regard to the possibility that it might be the subject of a film. The screenwriter prepares a treatment which translates the (frequently heavily-edited) narrative into a dramatic context within the constraints of time and convention. The director adapts, expands or possibly even ignores the screenwriter's treatment - but even in the extreme case he will have read both the book and the screenplay and, whether consciously or unconsciously, the exercise will have influenced his imagination.
I have been interested in art and design throughout my life and, although treating the subject as a week-end hobby, I have over the years handled a number of fairly large contracts. During this period it has become clear to me that my personal strength lies not in creative thinking but in developing to perfection the results of the creative thinking of others.
I think that's what lies behind my comments; it doesn't always pay to multi-task!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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Well done. Bravo! Bravo Deeej! * clapping *
Life's a trip * Friends help you through * Adventure on life!
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I've only thought about this for, like, three seconds, but what about subtitles?
You can still show the ACTOR'S face, but superimpose subtitles to "translate" the conversation and make it more of a live process, something we can see develop and not something we have to read as a block.
-Matthew
viðrar vel til loftárása
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Also, I don't believe that audiences get THAT annoyed when forced to read text. Look at foreign films, for example - the whole THING is written out.
viðrar vel til loftárása
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Hi Machelli,
>Also, I don't believe that audiences get THAT annoyed when forced to read text. Look at foreign films, for example - the whole THING is written out.
Ah, yes, but there you still have the original picture and the original vocal performance, which make up for it. It's not the reading per se that would be problematic -- it's the lack of visual storytelling. And an internet conversation is really rather boring to the observer.
Subtitles would, however, be as good a mechanism as any for showing silent conversations. Thanks for the suggestion.
I've basically come to the conclusion that all of these methods -- voiceover, subtitles, reading text off the screen -- would all work, when used sparingly, provided there is something more -- the conversations are only a small part of the story, and the rest is made up by conventional means. I.e. the messageboard is the catalyst, but the actual drama happens outside it, even if directly in front of the computer.
Actually, I'm driving myself crazy, because, until a few days ago, I only had one story under development, and now I have about half a dozen, all mutually exclusive. (I have to come up with a decent 10-minute script for a film to make later this year for my degree.) Even worse, the one that was most promising has, to my horror, suddenly turned itself into a tale of heterosexual unrequited love. Nothing the matter with that -- the film would, regrettably, work better that way -- but it was not intentional, and was not the story I wanted to make.
Ah, well -- there are still four or five alternatives, all half-finished. Such as this one.
David
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