Guest Post at SF Signal: Keep It Stupid Simpleton

A new article of mine has been published over at SF Signal. A new trend in high-tech, called GOP (“Guest Post Optimization”), brands SF readers as stupid. Here’s a taste:

 

A few days ago, I got a phone call from an unknown caller.

“Am I speaking to Guy Hasson?” The woman was cordial.

“Yes,” I said, wary.

“I read your guest post in SF Signal,” she said as if we’re old friends. “The one about the zombies.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Strangers don’t usually call me about these things. There’s a reason God created email.

“And I saw no one left any comments,” she continued.

“Yeah?” I said, warier and warier.

“We can help you with that.”

 

Read the entire post here. Oh, and read the comments, too.

Guest Post at SF Signal: The Zombie Apocalypse Vocabulary

SF Signal was kind enough to publish a guest post I wrote about the zombie apocalypse vocabulary. It’s a comedy piece. Enjoy.

Confessions of a Science Fiction Author

The blog tour continues!

The blog AllwaysUnmended has published a guest post by me: Confessions of a Science Fiction Author. Here’s a little taste:

I got myself in a jam.

A year ago I came across a great idea for a science fiction story. But, innocently enough, since like many of my ideas it could actually be implemented today, I thought to myself: Why should I write a science fiction story about it when I can just create a start-up and potentially earn millions?

Well, that’s what I did, and that’s how the trouble began.

Read the whole thing here.

Guest Post: What Makes a Good Science Fiction Story?

As part of The Emoticon Generation blog tour, I guest-posted at Over the Effing Rainbow. I talked about what makes a good science fiction story and how science fiction can change the world.

Here’s a little taste:

There are many, many types of good SF, and there are many, many criteria that make a good SF story. But the more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that through all the different genres, through all the different stories and books that I love, runs one common theme: Science fiction can change the world.

 

Read the guest post here.

The Indestructibles Film Journal #6: Most Memorable Rehearsal Moments

Time for Some Comic Relief

Writing a film journal makes you retrospective. As we’re edging towards the end of rehearsals for The Indestructibles, my low-budget epic SF film, I think it’s time for some comic relief.

Here are the three most ridiculous moments had over the years, rehearsing for theater and film.

The Indestructibles – Poster

Ridiculous Moment #3: Getting Out of the Cage

At third place, we’ve got a moment most of us have experienced, though perhaps not in such an extreme way.
You know how sometimes, when you get very nervous, your brain seems to leave your body completely and things you knew very well for all your adult life are suddenly beyond your ability to grasp? This was the case for the actress we’ll call H.

H was playing a lead role in a comedy I wrote for the theater, The Kid Who Turned into an Egg, playing the little kid. In this scene, she was put in a small cage. Halfway through the scene, she would slip through the cage’s bars and get out. This was never a problem. The distance between the bars was great and she was so small she could fit in her own purse.

One rehearsal, she was sitting inside the cage, when suddenly the show’s producer came in. The producer was kind of a bigwig, which already made H nervous, and, in addition, H wanted the producer to hire her for other shows as well. The second H spotted the producer, her brain left the building.

The director called H to come out of the cage. Now, slipping through a set of bars seems trivial to normal, non-nervous people such as yourselves. The task, however, is not trivial, to anyone whose brain has left the building.
Wanting to follow the director’s direction, H put one leg between one set of bars and another leg between another set of bars, then tried to pull herself out of the cage. She tried this again and again, not understanding why she wasn’t out of the cage yet.

Once I literally picked myself up from the floor, where I had dropped from laughter, I explained to her that both legs had to go out of the same two bars. She then got out safely.

As a small side note, I’ll just add that H indeed became one of the producer’s favorite actresses, and she worked for her many times in future shows.

Ridiculous Moment #2: Turning Around Is Hard

At second place, we’ve got a ridiculous moment, which proves that direction, when given, should be precise, or bad things could happen.

This time, two men were carrying a woman on their shoulders. The woman had one leg on one man’s shoulder and another leg on the other man’s shoulder. They were carrying her like a queen from place to place.

As they were carrying her, the director yelled: “Now, turn around!”

I’ll let you guess what happened next. Go ahead. Take a moment.

That’s right: The man on the right (his right) turned right, and the guy on the left (his left) turned left, immediately threatening to snap the woman’s legs like a wishbone. She screamed, they stopped, and no one was hurt.

Now you see why it’s important to be clear when talking to actors.

Ridiculous Moment #1: Concocktion

This one is my fault. Actually, it’s no one’s fault.

Sometimes things look one way when they aren’t, and sometimes things sound one way even though the speakers’ intentions are completely different. This is one of those cases.

As happens once in a while, since I am a writer of science fiction, I happen to use the word ‘concoction’. It happens. There’s nothing wrong with it.

As also happens once in a while, when using an actress whose original language is not English, even though her English is perfect, a word here or a word there may get the stress on the wrong syllable.

Case in point: When the actress read the word ‘concoction’, she stressed the first syllable (CONcoction) rather than the second (conCOCtion). She was reading the line, I immediately corrected her, and the following dialogue ensued. Neither of us (I hope) was aware of what the dialogue sounded like until after the fact:

She: Line line line CONcoction—

Me: Coc.

She: Coc?

Me: Coc.

She: Coc?

Me: Coc.

She: Line line line CONcoction.

Me: Coc.

She: Coc?

Me: Coc. Coc.

She: Coc?

Me: Coc. ConCOCtion.

She: Ah, coc. ConCOCtion.

Me: Right.

And then, as she read the next line, I thought, “Good thing this wasn’t recorded. I could have been sued.”
I hope you enjoyed this comedy relief moment in the film journal.

Next time, we’re going to go back to talking about what happens when superheroes go bad, how Earth can be saved, and how to film it all with no budget.

The Indestructibles Film Journal #5: The Rehearsals

Hollywood Wouldn’t Like the Way I Direct

We’re at the rehearsal stage right now. After deciding to write, direct, and produce an epic SF film about superheroes with no budget (henceforth: “The Indestructibles”), after finding actors, and after shooting the poster ahead of time (with the tagline “Even gods must die”), we’re finally nearing the end of rehearsals.

Most of Hollywood wouldn’t like the way I rehearse.

In fact, they wouldn’t like the fact that I rehearse, and certainly not for months. Not only do they not have time for it, but there is a sense in Hollywood that actors that rehearse can’t give you truth. If they only just learned the text, then when they say it for the first few times, they appear genuine, their acting ‘real’. If they say a line more than a few times, it loses its freshness and the actors appear to be acting.

Setting aside the fact that this approach means that acting in the theater can never be good (of course it can and is), and setting aside the fact that good actors have known for thousands of years how to deliver a line again and again and always find a way to keep it fresh for themselves, my approach is that, as a general rule, delivering lines without rehearsals leads to a lack of depth while good rehearsals lead to complexity.

Complexity Is Anti-Hollywood

Hollywood has a stock of actors that directors know ahead of time what they’re going to give when the cameras are pointed at them. Their first delivery, even when they work hard at home on building a character, can only have so much complexity. Expecting stock acting, you get stock acting.

My approach is different. First, we begin reading the script and adding a layer to the character that appears throughout: an aspect of the character’s personality, a pervasive mood, an important action, etc. Then, when that’s done, I let the back of the actors’ minds deal with it and let it sink while we tackle different aspects that can be found in the text. Then we put in another layer on top of it, then another layer, then another layer.

What you get is a character that can give you conflicting emotions, conflicting actions set next to each other, time and time again in the film. The actor can also show experience with some of the subject matter, as if some things are old news while others are fresh. The actor can jump from one emotion and one mind-set to another quickly, then back again, since both have to do with what the character is going through.

The Indestructibles – Coming Soon

The Indestructibles, as you may recall, is built of seven six-minute one-shots, meaning that there is no editing, no pauses in acting, no chances to do a line twice: The actors have to get complex characters, complex situations and complex text without stopping to shoot again. You can only get that with rehearsals.

Intimacy, Intimacy, Intimacy

When Mike Nichols, who is a master at getting great acting out of actors (and, yes, he rehearses), was a guest in The Actors Studio, he explained his approach. His trick is to tell stories about himself, intimate stories that place him in the emotional place of where the characters presently are in the script. He leaves it to the actors to understand that place and to adapt it to their acting.

A good friend of mine, who is a great theater director, though you’ve never heard of her, has a slightly different approach. She says, “I tell a story, they tell a story.” The first step is what Mike Nichols does. But when she finishes telling her story, the other actors feels it’s only natural to tell an intimate story as well, about the same emotion. The director then uses that honesty to show where the actor should be.

My approach is somewhere in the middle. Sometimes I use the first method, sometimes the second, depending on the person in front of me and what I think they need.

There are different stories that get told for different layers of the same text.  The same line can have conflicting stories told about the character’s emotional place when saying it.

Hopefully, the result is equal to the weight I’m giving it. But you know what? Wait a couple of months and you’ll be able to judge the result for yourself.

The Indestructibles Film Journal #4: Writer Vs. Director

Dan: You’re acting like a crazed psychopath.
Roseanne: [snorts] Well, the voices in my head disagree.
Roseanne. “Daughters and Other Strangers.” (1993)

The War Begins

There’s a war going on. And it begins every time a film director is doing his job. If the drums of war are missing, the director isn’t doing his job right. I’m happy to report that this war has finally reached the rehearsals of The Indestructibles, my indy, no-budget, epic sci-fi flick for the web.

The Adversaries

Let’s observe the two adversaries as they get into the ring.

On the one side: the writer.The writer creates an idea out of nothing. He creates a world, its characters, their interactions, the plot, the surprises, the beginning, the middle, the ending, the history of what came before, and the hints of what must come later. The writer creates everything. And so the writer thinks he understands his creation and knows what’s best for the film.

But then his opponent steps into the ring, the reigning champion: The dirrrrrectorrrrr!

The director, being a completely different person, takes the writer’s script, which hopefully he likes and is connected to its different layers, and then adds his own interpretation. The director has a perspective the writer doesn’t have and adds more layers, more depth, and hopefully fills in the holes in the writer’s blind spots.

When a good director takes on a good script, his interpretation improves it in a way the writer never could. But to do that he has to stray from the writer’s vision to create something new.

The Catch

The question is, what happens when the director and the writer are the same person? In previous productions, I’ve never had a problem. When I wrote a script or a play I later directed, I was alone in the ring. When writing the piece I felt like I was king of the world, having no one to tell me my interpretation for the piece is lacking.

But the second I finished the play or the script and put on the director’s hat, the director (me) gave a knockout to the writer (me) and completely ignored anything the writer had to say.

It was a click in the brain. The second I put on my director’s hat, I saw my own script differently, causing me to put different layers than the writer (me) had thought were necessary.

Usually, during a first read with the actors, they would read what the parentheses (the writer’s instructions to the actors, indicating characters’ tone [sadly, haughtily, etc.] and attitude, or even pauses). At that point, I would stop them and tell them that the writer of the script (or play) knows absolutely nothing about film (or theater), and anything that is in parentheses should be completely ignored. The writer’s an idiot, I would say, and I should know.

The Indestructibles – Coming Soon

Case in Point: The Indestructibles

The knockout the director always gives the writer never came. In fact, I (the director) felt pretty good about my (the writer’s) vision. Sure, it bothered me a bit that I agreed with myself, since I knew theoretically it was bad for the process. But since I agreed with myself, I couldn’t find any flaw in my reasoning.

But then, as we slowly progressed towards the shooting, something nagged me (the director), something that told me that I (the writer) was wrong.

Let’s recap what we already know about The Indestructibles. It’s an epic SF film, designed to be filmed with no budget at all and to give almost the full effect of a high-budget Hollywood film. (You want to know how that’s possible? Check out the first film journal.) So the film is limited to one location, three actors (one of which never talks, and another who appears only for two minutes at the end), and is shot in eight long one-shots (thus eliminating the cost of the editor). Sound impossible? Well, there was another element I failed to mention in that first film journal: according to the script, the camera never moves. The camera, in the script, belongs to one of the characters. She puts it down, presses Record, then allows it to record what happens next.

I (the writer) thought I (the director) could actually find a way to do it: shoot a film that gives the equivalent feeling of an SF epic in eight one-shots in one closed location in which the camera never moves. And you know what? I (the director) still think I can. But I (the director) now think I shouldn’t. I finally had enough balls to stand up to myself (the writer) and tell myself what an idiot I think I am.

So a change was made to the script, a change the director wanted and the writer didn’t. The film takes place in the future, after all, which means that the camera has now become a smart video camera that can float. It takes instructions through speech (‘Camera on’ and ‘Camera off’, for example) and has modes in which it can shoot. In ‘personal mode’ it will shoot the person speaking in close-up, as if it’s a one-on-one conversation with whoever’s watching; while in ‘party mode’ or ‘crowd mode’, it will shoot scores of people, constantly turning around to catch more and more people, for example. This allows the director to move the camera during the film, to create action through camera, to add a ‘voice’ to the camera, to free the actors’ movements, and to play more with composition. This should create a much better film than the writer had envisioned.

Three… Two… One… The writer is down! The director wins by a knockout!

Thank goodness for that, because I (the writer) feel so much better now about my (the director’s) film.

Improving English: 12 Ways to Categorize Americans

We all remember with fondness the time Americans stopped calling some of their citizens the offensive word ‘black’ and started calling them ‘African Americans’.

Non-American blacks, even those visiting or working in the US, were still stuck with the offensive name, but somehow persevered.

Recently, one of the MSNBC anchors called teachers ‘Unselfish Americans’ and that got me thinking that indeed many offensive categories, like ‘blacks’ or ‘teachers’, could use a bit more protection from the PC police. And so, as a service to the public, here are a few modest proposals that will cause millions of American citizens to live happier, more fulfilling lives.

1. Models and supermodels will, from this point on, be called Photoshopped Americans.
2. Farmers, from this point on, will be called Cock-a-Doodle-Doo Americans.
3. Americans living in the South will now be called Fiddle-Dee-Dee Americans.
4. Singers of any kind will now be called Tra-La-La Americans.
5. Jews, from this point on, will be called Kosher Americans.
6. Asians of any lineage will now be called Kung Fu Americans.
7. Rapists will now be called Penised Americans.
8. Women called Edith will, from this point on, be called Dingbat Americans. (That’s for you folks over forty).
9. People who love Cher will, from this point on, be called Shoop Shoop Americans.
10. Lovers of Tolkien’s works will henceforth be called Middle Earth Americans.
11. Children between the ages of 3 to 6 will now be called Potty Trained Americans.
12. And lastly: Lovers of S&M will henceforth be called Slapping Americans.

If you have any more categories that you want to share, in order to make this a better and less offensive society, please put them in the comments.

The Emoticon Generation

The Indestructibles Film Journal #3: The Photo Shoot

The Photo Shoot

So we shot the poster.

A team of three went down to the beach at the very end of a sunny day. This was the team: Nathalie klein Selle, the supremely talented Dutch actress who plays one of the two leading roles in the film; Oren Hasson, who is, among other things, both a professional photographer and my father; and myself (writer and director).

The Indestructibles Poster

The concept for the poster was simple: Nathalie is a superhero who, though practically dead, cannot actually die. She’s been swept away by the seas and wound up on the shore. The original concept for the poster had her lying in the sea, half her face in the water, half out, eyes open wide, body dead. Working off the concept, Oren could start trying different alternatives to see what would work and what wouldn’t.

Oren picked the location. He chose a piece of beach that was almost completely covered with seaweed. It looks amazing in the photograph, but was actually pretty disgusting in reality. Though the day was scorching, the sea was freezing.  Nathalie got into the dress and into the water, quickly getting her head into position, half in and half out.

We spent the next hour putting her in different positions, putting the camera in different positions, trying out different lenses and variations, until we felt we had enough good shots to choose from.

We tried different angles and lenses

 

At a certain point I found myself grabbing two fistfuls of seaweed saying, “I want to put this in her hair. Can I put this in your hair? Can I put this in her hair now?” Okay, I may not have phrased it exactly like that. It may have been phrased with more poise: “I think we should put more seaweed in her hair. Nathalie, do you mind? Dad, will it work in the picture?” But I wanted to say it like a six-year-old.

Nathalie was a complete pro. She never complained about the freezing water and the wind, didn’t ask once to stop, and was completely there, emoting as her character, whenever the camera was shooting.

I think she had fun

 

During the following week, Oren went over the pictures, tweaked them, and sent me the best ones to choose from. I picked the one you see in the poster above, wrote the texts for the poster, and then met with Oran Almog, a gifted graphic designer. He turned the picture into a poster, and what a great job he did!

The Element of Luck in Shooting the Poster

As you can see, Nathalie’s red dress, which she brought from home, worked supremely well against the color of the seaweed, which neither she nor I knew would be there.

Luck plays a huge role when creating a work of art, whether it’s a film, a poster, a theater show, etc. I’m a big believer in the magical appearance of good luck. It’s not that I think luck goes my way in life or that good things are more likely to happen to me than not, it’s that when you’re working on art and you’ve done all your homework and you work with talented people, suddenly almost everything falls into place in a better way than you would have ever expected.

Here’s another angle. Looks great, but not what we were looking for.

I’ve seen this happen again and again. When we shot Heart of Stone, my last film, the actors were so talented and so prepared, that it seemed, magically, as if everywhere I put the camera was the perfect place to shoot from. In fact, we created an environment for the actors in which it seemed like every new choice they made was good, in character, and helped tell the story. It was a shock to a couple of them, when the shooting was over and they moved on to their next projects, that suddenly not every decision they made was a good one.

It was the same thing with shooting the poster. I didn’t get a chance to see Nathalie in the dresses ahead of time (remember: The Indestructibles is low budget, people are also working for a living, and free time is scarce). She picked a few, emailed me pictures of the dresses on a bed, and we picked three to bring to the location. I didn’t know what the beach would look like ahead of time, either. But this is why it worked: the original concept was good and represented the film; Nathalie is talented and completely grokked her role; and Oren is talented and understood the concept completely, but wanted to add his own element to it.

It’s not easy sitting in green…

So when we got to the beach we discovered that the red dress worked best with the seaweed green, and, as if by magic, everything clicked better than expected. I wasn’t worried, because I was certain that if the red-green coincidence hadn’t occurred, something else would have happened to make the photo shoot magical. When you’ve got the right people, magic happens every time.

The Indestructibles Film Journal #2: The Auditions

(As promised, I’m reprinting The Indestructibles’ film journal here at my blog. I’m going to republish about two a week, until we catch up. This was originally published at the Apex Blog.)

 

Pitching The Indestructibles to Actors

You might think it’s next to impossible to pitch The Indestructibles to actors, since they’re asked to do it for free. Most of the ones I approached actually jumped at the chance.

The Indestructibles – Poster