MediaTaser is a Multimedia Web, Sound and Film Venture
Disappear, a short story by Chief Taser Eduardo Eusebio, was published in The Chicago Reader, a leading alternative weekly with a circulation of 120,000, as well as in Hairtrigger 14, Best of Hairtrigger, Puerto Del Sol, and Hyphen Magazine. In other words...a whole mess o' times.
MediaTaser is turning this award-winning story into a feature film. Please join us on the journey as we wind on down that road. Our goal over this year, is to Shoot the Trailer!
Pre-production Step 1: Write the script adaptation...blogging and updates to follow.
I snapped this photo of a cicada emerging from it's shell. It was attached, about waist high, to the bricks on the side of my house, illuminated by our car headlights. I also have video of the moment, which I edited together with a Dusty Springfield song (that oddly fit the footage well), and some moving graphics. Watch "The Look of Cicada Love" here.
The purpose of my recent photography and video shoots is to learn to shoot more "filmic" pictures. I'm applying the "rule of 3" as much as I can, to my pictures (horizontally, vertically, and depth). And because my DSLD allows it, using defocus when I can.
Taken using my Sony Nex-5 DSLD, with the 2.8f-16mm pancake lens (love that camera!).
I built this site on RocketTheme.com's Gantry Framework, on top of Joomla CMS 1.7. What's that mean, you ask?
Well, I think that such template architectures, on top of Open Source CMS (like Joomla), are revolutionizing web development and fast-prototyping. Why spend a week prototyping a site for a client, when you can spend less than a day? Why custom code a template, when template building companies can build a multitude of professional variations for you to choose from?
RocketTheme is a company that provides fantastic website templates (this site uses their Nebulae template), that far exceed most custom sites in appearance, customizability and basic function. They define Gantry as, "A comprehensive set of building blocks to enable the rapid development and realization of a design into a flexible and powerful web platform theme." Gantry and Nebulae work hand in hand.
To a web publisher like me, Gantry allows for the fine-tuning of a website's structural appearance, without having to mess with CSS code. I push a button and modules appear, disappear or get resized.
The 65 base module positions are pretty fantastic too! More choice and options are better.
Or, "Am I Filmmaking yet?"
Ok, so I spent the day (12 hours) building out this new website - MediaTaser. What's this have to do with Step 1, writing the screenplay adaptation for Disappear?
Not a lot. Not directly at least. It's a container for this blog and for sharing the work we're doing at MediaTaser. I guess I could have put the blog over on EdEusebio.com, but that didn't seem quite right.
OK, so I think I'm avoiding getting the real writing going. I'm not sure what I'm afraid of. It almost always turns out well.
Maybe I don't trust that talent anymore. Maybe that dark and whispering voice of disdain and doubt are always there. Failure. Worthlessness. The stir of depression.
But I'm moving. I just have to keep moving and give myself a break. And quit writing depressing blogs in the middle of the night when I'm exhausted.
Or maybe I don't trust auspicious beginnings. And this is certainly a beginning.
I know this is what you writers have been waiting for! A brief plot analysis of Dr. Seuss's fabulous kids book Green Eggs and Ham. I wrote it up for a writers group I belong to, for fun. (Yes, this is one of those odd things I do for fun.) A seemingly simple children's story, Seuss's book actually has perfect plotting and exposition. It illustrates (pun intended) a lot about what a good writer can do with limited space and words— write a book that lives on for generations!
Exposition
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Setting:
Unnamed public areas in and around possibly Whoville. This book is essentially a Road Story, taking place walking, in a car, train and boat. Note: Book first published in 1960 (during Civil Rights, Cold War, Vietnam conflicts). This book reflects the conservative establishment vs. liberal youth conflict at the time, as well as the Establishment / Hippie generation gap.
You Know You're a Writer When:
- You are awakened in the middle of the night by a story that insists you tell it RIGHT NOW...and you do.
- You have to think things over...by writing them down.
- You got books for your birthday...or gift cards to buy books.
- You've belonged to writers groups...plural.
- The people who most influenced your life...are fictional characters.
- You have notebooks, scraps of paper, bits of paper napkin...with writing on them.
- You can't remember all the stuff you've written or published...and are pleasantly surprised when you rediscover it.