The Continuing Adventures of Dr Dzoe

I’m taking weekend classes this month on film production.  This weekend was all about scriptwriting.  I had a good time, though have kind of mixed feelings about what I learned.

As part of the class, we had a short time to write a script.  I put together the following in about half an hour.  I doubt I’ll ever do anything with it, so I hereby offer it to the Internet.

It’s called “The Stapler.”

INT. AN OFFICE - DAY

ROGER, a young man wearing a shirt and tie, is sitting at a
desk in an open-office typing on a computer.  TINA, young and
pretty, comes up to the desk.

                    TINA
          I need to use your stapler.

Tina reaches for the stapler on Roger's desk.  Roger snatches
it away before she can get it.

                    ROGER
          That's my stapler.

                    TINA
          I know it's your stapler.  I need
          to borrow it.

                    ROGER
          I'm going to need it later.

                    TINA
          I only need it for a minute.  The
          stapler in the copier is broken, so
          I need it to staple my DS-22's.

                    ROGER
          I know the copier is broken. 
          That's why I'm going to need it.  I
          have my own DS-22's to do.

                    TINA
          I'll bring it right back.

                    ROGER
          Wait a minute.  You mean you want
          to take it with you?

                    TINA
          Well, yes.

                    ROGER
          There's no way that's going to
          happen.

                    TINA
          I'll bring it back in a minute.

                    ROGER
          Look, you're a nice person.  I like
          you.  But Cindy Benson is a nice
          person too.  Last August she
          borrowed my stapler. 
          Just for a minute.  And she never
          brought it back.

                    TINA
          I'm not Cindy Benson.

                    ROGER
          She borrowed my highlighter too.

                    TINA
          I don't need a highlighter.

                    ROGER
          That's not the point.  It took me
          three months before I got another
          highlighter.  I had to fill out a T
          49 to get the new highlighter.  In
          triplicate.  With a letter cosigned
          by my superior explaining what
          happened to my highlighter.  Which
          needed to be stapled to the T-49's. 
          Which I couldn't do because I
          didn't have a stapler because Cindy
          Benson never brought mine back.

                    TINA
          I don't need a highlighter!

                    ROGER
          You can't take my stapler.

                    TINA
          Suppose I brought over my DS-22's
          and stapled them here. 

                    ROGER
          I suppose that might work.

                    TINA
          Well thank God.

                    ROGER
          You'll have to bring staples,
          though.

                    TINA
          What?

                    ROGER
          I don't want to run out of staples
          when I do my DS-22's.  I only have
          18 staples left, and I'm going to
          need 7 of them for my DS-22's.

                    TINA
          Who the hell counts their staples?

                    ROGER
          I do.  So you'll have to bring your
          own.

                    TINA
          Look, I have only ten DS-22's.  So
          between my ten and your seven,
          we're good.

                    ROGER
          What if a staple breaks?

                    TINA
          What?

                    ROGER
          What happens if a staple breaks.  I
          may need two staples for one of my
          DS-22's.

                    TINA
          You have a spare.

                    ROGER
          What happens if the stapler jams?  

                    TINA
          What if it does?

                    ROGER
          Whenever my stapler jams, it ruins
          three staples.  If I let you staple
          your DS-22's and the stapler jams,
          then I won't have enough staples
          for mine.

Tina glares at Roger, then grabs at the stapler.  Roger grabs
it back.

                    TINA
          I need your stapler!

                    ROGER
          That's my stapler!

The two wrestle with the stapler.  After a tussle, the
stapler breaks.

                    TINA
          Look what you did!

                    ROGER
          That was my stapler!  Now neither
          of us will get our DS-22's in on
          time!

Tina brushes her clothes off.

                    TINA
          That's okay.  I hear Cindy Benson
          has a stapler.  I'll just borrow
          hers.

TINA walks off as Roger stares at her.

I love getting out the camera and experimenting with stuff.  Today: what’s the effect on depth-of-field and apparent closeness of changing the focal length of the lens?  There’s strong implications on filming here.

First off, on apparent closeness.  I’ve been reading all about planning movie shots of late and one thing that is stressed is that a longer lens will shorten the apparent distance between objects.  So I set up the camera, took pictures of three dolls, and found the following, all of which are at F22:

First, at a focal length of 25mm:

Next, at 70mm:

And finally, at 200mm:

Yeah, they’re grainy.  I could have been more careful with ISO, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that in the first shot, you can clearly see the great distance between the dolls, but in the third, it looks like they are right next to each other.  There was no change in the placement of the dolls – there was around four feet between the first and second, another five between the second and third.  You can see that in the first shot, not in the third.

So this experiment demonstrates what the books are telling me: a long lens compresses space and makes all sorts of interesting effects possible.  If the second doll were to swing a doll-sized axe in the direction of the first (I wonder if American Girls has a battleaxe accessory), the 200mm version would make it look like she was braining the first doll even though there would be a couple of feet of space between doll and axe.

Let’s look at another question: what’s the effect of focal length on bokeh?

I’ve read some conflicting stuff on this.  Most books say that a longer length lens leads to a shorter depth of field, and thus more bokeh if you keep the aperture open.  But one book that I greatly respect, Cinematography by Blain Brown, says that while this is true, it’s deceptive.  Yes, a longer length lens will lead to a shorter depth of field.  But if you move the camera back so that the size of the subject remains the same, you lose depth of field.  The math works out such that the loss of depth of field exactly offsets the gain of depth of field from a longer lens.  So if you want your subject at a given size, the lens length doesn’t matter for depth of field: a shorter lens that is closer will have the same depth of field as a longer lens that is further away.

Let’s test that, shall we?

All of the following are shot at F2.8.  For the longer lens, I moved the camera back so that the apparent size of the subject was the same (which I also did in the above shots, BTW).

Here we are at 25mm:

A nice bit of bokeh on the dolls in the background.

Here it is at 70mm:

And here at 200mm:

I don’t see a significant difference in the bokeh on the dolls in the background.  So for this one, I have to say that Brown is correct.  A longer lens is not going to miraculously give more bokeh.

Unless, of course, you do what I did on this one, also shot at 200mm:

Now that’s some serious bokeh.  But I shot that one at the same distance as I shot the 24mm shot.  (It’s worth noting that the 24mm version is cropped.  This one is not.)  So at the same distance, you get a much shallower depth of field with a longer lens.  But you also get a larger subject.  There is no magic that will give you shallower depth of field.  The only real solution is this:

That’s done with a 50mm lens, and the pre-cropped photo has the dolls at about the same size as the others.  There’s more bokeh than the original three examples, though not as much as the last 200mm picture.  But this one is taken with a prime lens – my one prime.  The zoom lenses that I used to take all the other pictures have a maximum aperture of F2.8.  This one opens much further – this was taken at F1.2.  There’s a lot more bokeh (though not as much as the 200mm close-up).  So the only way that I seem to be able to get serious bokeh is by using a lens that can open up really wide or by taking a close-up shot.

Useful experiments, and fun too.  And special thanks to my lovely models.

Can’t believe I haven’t added this here.  Anyway, this is a couple months old now, but back in November I participated in the National Film Challenge.  In this, we made a movie in three days, including writing the script, doing all the filming, and doing the editing.  This was the entry of the team I was on, Discordian Films.  I directed and edited, and a bunch of other talented people helped.  Here’s the credits:

Top Dog

Starring:

• Sam David
• Amy Davis
• Kate Smith-Morse

Crew:

• Director and editor: Me
• Producer and camera work: Mikki Barry
• Assistant Directors: Carol Calhoun and Covert Beach
• Written by: Amy Davis
• Story by: Mikki Barry, Carol Calhoun, Sam David, Amy Davis, me, Joe Kubinski, Marcia Litt, Kate Smith-Morse
• Production design and camera and sound operations: Julie Dzikiewicz
• Sound operator: Chris Horn
• Props: Kate Smith-Morse
• Dog Wrangler: Wes Worrell
• Dog training consulting: Ellen Engel, Marc Shepanek

And here’s the movie!

I am proud to announce that here is the first movie by Crimes of the Art Productions.  It’s called “Shutdown,” and it’s my satirical take on recent political events.

It stars Donald R. Cook and Caitlin Williams.  Amy Davis directed and produced.  Julie was camera and sound operator and provided invaluable advice on color.  Plus, she designed the kitchen, where it is set.  I wrote the script, was cinematographer, and edited it.

It’s far from perfect.  But I like it a lot.  Can’t wait to start on the next one!

As I mentioned, I’ve started working on some video projects.  In preparing for this, I’ve read a lot of books lately about all aspects of making movies.  Here’s a special edition of What I’ve Been Reading that covers those books.  I haven’t finished all of them yet, didn’t read all of each of them, but here they are anyway.

– The blog of Film Crit Hulk.  Okay, this is cheating, as it’s not technically speaking a book.  But Film Crit Hulk has to be about the best film critic online.  And the stuff he writes is huge – long essays that are in effect short books. ften these are on different aspects of making movies, things like cinematography.  His two-part series on scriptwriting is superb.  And it’s all written in a style that you’ll either find amusing or annoying – he writes in the persona of the Incredible Hulk from comics.  I found it amusing.  Highly recommended.  Google Film Crit Hulk to find him.

– “The Lean Forward Moment: Create Compelling Stories for Film, TV, and the Web” by Normal Hollyn.  This studies the making of movies, focusing largely on directing but also covering some cinematography, looking at how a scene focuses on a pivotal moment, what the author calls the lean forward moment.  Enjoyable, but not earth-shaking.

– “Recording and Producing Audio for Media” by Stanley Alten.  A fairly dry but informative book on all the details of audio.  I learned a lot about a subject that I did not know.  Never did finish this one.

– “The Visual Story” by Bruce Block.  This looks at the various visual elements that go into a scene.  It breaks it down into seven different elements including things like color, movement, line, and shape, and shows examples of how these elements can be used to create desired moods in movies.  Very good stuff.

– “Cinematography” by Blain Brown.  I loved this book.  It’s a detailed description of the elements of cinematography, including detailed discussions of the technologies involved.  I learned things here about photography that I didn’t know.  A bit dry at times, but amazingly informative.

– “In the Blink of an Eye” by Walter Murch.  This is about film editing.  Wonderful philosophical stuff, a great theory of editing, lots of interesting stuff.  A quick read as well.  Highly recommended.

– “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” by Peter Biskind.  This one’s a history of the New Hollywood movement of the late 60’s and 70’s, a movement that brought us such masterpieces as The Godfather and Raging Bull.  There’s no lessons about making movies here, but marvelous stories about the people who do it.

– “Down and Dirty Pictures” by Peter Biskind.  A follow-up on the above, this one covers the rise and fall of the independent movie movement of the 90’s.  Not as much fun as the other one, but entertaining enough.

– “Adventures in the Screen Trade” and “The Big Picture” by William Goldman.  William Goldman’s an incredibly accomplished screenwriter whose works range from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Princess Bride.  In these books he gives a gossipy discussion of how Hollywood makes its movies, including detailed stories of the films he’s made.  Again, not much help for the actual making of movies, but quite entertaining.  The first of the two was much better than the second.

– “Directing Actors” by Judith Weston.  A very nice book about how one should give direction to actors to get the best results from them.  I’ve learned a lot from this.

– “Film Directing Shot By Shot” by Steven Katz.  All about laying out shots in a movie.  Really useful – in addition to discussing general elements of shots, it takes you through various situations (e.g., scenes between two characters) and discusses all the ways they can be shot and how the shots can be combined.  Recommended.

– “Making Movies” by Sidney Lumet.  Lumet directed a whole bunch of Hollywood pictures in a bunch of different genres.  In this book, he takes you through all the steps he goes through in directing, from selecting a project to what he does to help market the movie.  Really quite excellent on directing.

– “Acting in Film” by Michael Caine.  This is based on transcripts from a bunch of conversations Caine had about acting.  Good stuff, emphasizing a lot of the differences between acting for stage and film.

– “The Art of Dramatic Writing” by Lajos Egri.  More about playwriting, but applicable to screenwriting as well.  A nice solid approach to making sure that there’s drama in your dramas.

– “Screenwriting 101” by Film Crit Hulk.  As noted above, Film Crit Hulk is an analyst of films who writes in the persona of the Incredible Hulk.  In this book, available only as an e-book, he has put together a bunch of stuff from his blog, all about constructing stories and films.  I found it excellent.

– “Master Shots vols 1-3,” “Master Shots” the various iBooks versions, by Christopher Kenworthy.  I absolutely loved these.  Each of vols 1-3 look at 100 shots from various movies and discuss the effect they have and how to make the shot.  Then the e-books are even better – each one takes 25 of the shots from the other books, includes the information from the paper books, and then Kenworthy re-made the shots with actors.  The iBooks versions includes the video of the shot, then includes a version of the video with Kenworthy providing voice-over commentary discussing it.  All in all, consider this a set of cookbooks of useful shots.  But even better, after going through these, you start to understand what makes for good shots.  These books gave me a better understanding of setting up shots than anything else I’ve come across.  Special bonus: I sent Kenworthy a question about this (his email is on his website) and he sent back a nice friendly note that answered my question.  So special bonus.

There’s probably more, and I’ll add to this list as I read more.  But that’s a good start.

My latest obsession these past few months has been making movies.

It really started when I took the summer of 2011 off from work, in what I called my pretirement summer.  Among the things that I did that summer was to get heavily into photography.  I learned a lot, bought a lot of camera equipment, and took a lot of pictures.

Flash forward to six months back.  I got a part in a local community theater production of “Twelfth Night.”  I had a terrific time and I think we put on a good show.

Some of the people I met through the play were participating in the Washington DC 48 Hour Film Project.  This is a short film competition in which you have 48 hours to make a 4-7 minute movie.  At the beginning of a weekend, you get a random genre.  You are given a character name, a line that must appear, and a prop that must be used.  Then you’re off, and you have to deliver the finished movie 48 hours later. It’s an endurance test, but a whole lot of fun.

I got into it to act, but given that I had some fancy cameras that could also do video, I ended up taking some footage as well.  This in spite of the fact that I knew next to nothing about taking video.

Here’s a link to the film that we made, a short horror movie called “Influenced”:

http://vimeo.com/65947813

Honestly, it wasn’t great.  There’s very little sense of visual story-telling.  The technical stuff is far from perfect, the script could use a few more rounds of polishing, and the acting shows a lack of sleep.  All not surprising, given that we had very little experience in making movies and very little time.

But the relative ease of the task with equipment that I already largely owned was a revelation.  You really can make a movie these days with the kind of cameras that I own, and the other equipment that is needed is well within the grasp of a hobbyist.

I got to talking with another person working on our film, and she was similarly amazed at how possible it was.  So we decided to put together a group to try it ourselves, only this time without the 48 hour deadline.

And so my film obsession was born.  More shortly on what I’ve done since, and what’s in the works.

Sheesh, it’s been almost a year since I’ve updated the reading list.  Let’s see what I can do…

Ebooks on iPad:

- The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver.  If you paid much attention to the election, you’ve heard of Silver.  This is an interesting book about making predictions based on statistics.  Good stuff.

- Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.  I love Stephenson’s work.  I had read Snow Crash before, one of the great cyberpunk novels.  This was my first time reading The Diamond Age, which is all about nano-technology.  Both good reading.

- The Big Short by Michael Lewis.  A non-fiction that covers a bunch of guys who managed to make fortunes from predicting the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.  Also a rather scary window into the world of high finance.

- The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond.  Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, is one of my favorite non-fiction authors.  This one covers the way traditional peoples live (traditional meaning that they live in societies that have not yet reached the level of a fully organized nation-state), what we can learn from them, and how our societies have evolved since that phase.  Interesting stuff, but I enjoyed his other books more.

- Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold.  One of my favorite fiction authors.  This one is the latest in her Vokosigan series.  A fun book, but not as good as others in the series.

- The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.  A fun little literary mystery with fantasy elements, set in a world where reality and novels overlap in interesting ways.

- The Commitment and American Savage by Dan Savage.  Savage is one of my guilty pleasures.  He started as a sex advice columnist, and still has that gig, but also writes on a number of political topics, most of which are related to sex in one way or another.  The Commitment is about gay marriage (Savage is gay and, now, married), American Savage a collection of essays on various topics.  Savage is an entertaining author, but there’s certainly strong sexual content in both of these.

- John Quincy Adams by Harlow Giles Unger.  An excellent biography of one of the giants of early America.  Also, this is far different from any other biography of a former president that I’ve read.  Most such bios spend most of their words on the presidency (except for those where the president has been a general in one of our wars: in those cases, the wartime may take up most of the book).  In this one, by contrast, Adams’s presidency is dealt with in one short chapter, and instead the book focuses on the wide variety of other things that Adams did for us, from when he became a US diplomat at the age of 14 until his death, which took place in the Capitol.  This was a lifetime of service indeed.  A fascinating figure, and a great book.

- NOS4A2 by Joe Hill.  I actually like Hill’s books better than that of his famous father, Stephen King.  I enjoyed this one, which was horror with some fantasy elements.  A big book, but a fun read.

On paper:

- Light, Science, and Magic by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua.  I actually read a lot of books that don’t make it here, books that I read to learn more about the various hobbies and passions that I’ve picked up over the years.  In the last two years, that’s been related to photography, movie-making, and various programming tasks.  As I said, I won’t go into those in details, but this one really stands out.  For my way of learning (I prefer to go from theory to practice), this has been the best book on photography I’ve ever read.  It explains how light behaves, then goes from that to detailed discussions of how to light and photograph different types of subjects.  Absolutely terrific, and strongly recommended if you want to get serious about photography.

Audiobooks

- Agent Zigzag by Ben MacIntyre.  The true story of a master thief who became one of the most effective British spies during WWII.  Very interesting stuff.

- Alas Babylon by Pat Frank.  A classic post-nuclear-war story, written in 1960.  The racial attitudes are a bit dated (not terribly so – Frank was based on this a liberal on racial matters, but a 1960 liberal on race is still backwards by today’s standards), but otherwise a good read.

– Bel Canto by Ann Pratchett.  A group of Latin American revolutionaries capture the audience at an opera recital.  Fascinating character interactions ensue.  A terrific book, and one that is not well-served by this brief description.

- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.  One of my favorite books ever.  I’ve read it before, never listened to the audio book.  If you haven’t read it, do so: it’s both hilarious and heart-breakingly tragic.  The audiobook was well worth the time too.

– The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.  All about the great Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893, and a serial killer who ran a death-hotel nearby.  Wonderful stuff about the brilliant minds who built the exposition and the monster who killed many young women who came to Chicago at the time.

- State of Wonder by Ann Pratchett.  A great take on Heart of Darkness has a doctor from a drug company going into the jungle to find a researcher who is not reporting back.

- Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis.  A maddening story about a religious huckster.  American classic, and worth the time.

- The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.  Science fiction set in a post-global-warming world where the icecaps are melted and biotech rules the day.  Quite enjoyable.

Phew.  Gotta keep up with these better.

For our last stop, we drove through South Carolina to North Carolina where we stopped for the night at Raleigh, visiting our last special guest star, Kate.

I surprised her by showing up at her door in full-cowboy:

We visited the Raleigh Museum of Science, which sponsored Kate’s recent paleo dig and where we got to peak at the lab where they are preparing the samples.  Then a couple of meals, a bit of shopping, and a grand time was had by all.

Then after one night in Raleigh, we hit the road for one last leg, got home, and the Great Confederate Road Trip was over.

Here’s the scorecard:

– 11 states traveled through: Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida (briefly), Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia.

– Seven different hotel rooms in seven different cities: Nashville, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, New Orleans, Atlanta, Raleigh.

– Around 4000 miles driven.  (I’m sitting here in the Lexus dealership waiting for maintenance to be done on my car – I’ve past 5000 miles on this car in record time.)

– 14 days total.

– We criss-crossed Virginia: we started on the Bay and drove west to the Tennessee border on the way out, came from the southern border to Northern Virginia on the way back.

– Two truly great meals (in Austin and New Orleans), lots of other good meals, lots of bad road food eaten.

– Four special guest stars (Lucy Kirkman, Andy Dzikiewicz, Jen Bon, Kate Dzikiewicz).

– An uncountable number of dead bugs splattered across the front of my car.

– Plenty of fun and good memories.

But all in all, I’m ready to be home for a while…

From New Orleans, our road trip took us across several of the Confederate states.  Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama to Florida to Alabama to Georgia.

Wait – did you say Florida?  That’s not on the route.

Well, yes.  But I really wanted to be complete, to hit every Confederate state.  And we were going within five miles of the Florida border, so it was a quick detour, cross the state line, turn around and go back to the highway, and voila, we’ve hit every Confederate state.

Julie thought it was daft.  Ah well, not the first time I’ve done something she thought was daft.

Then, after a day’s driving, we hit Atlanta.  And had much fun, including our next road trip special guest star, Jen Bon.

Jen has been daughter Kate’s best friend since pretty much kindergarten.  She’s now in grad school for chemistry at Emory outside Atlanta, so we took the opportunity to take her out for sushi.  And a delightful meal it was – Jen’s good people.

For our full day in Atlanta, we did the following:

– Took the CNN tour, where I got a chance to play newscaster.

– Saw the Atlanta Cyclorama, a painting the size of a football field of the Battle of Atlanta.  Here’s a small piece of it, complete with tour guide to give a sense of scale:

– Visited Stone Mountain, gigantic carving of the heroes of the Confederacy.  (Atlanta is the city of Big Art.)

– Visited the High Museum of Art, a marvelously designed art museum with lots of good stuff.  (Julie called this her favorite of the many art museums we visited on this trip.)

– While we visited the High Museum, we found that it was in an arts center that included several theaters.  We took the opportunity to see “What I Learned in Paris,” a new play being put on there.  The play was a romantic comedy set against the election of Maynard Jackson, the first African American mayor of Atlanta.  The play had a real Shaw feel to it, being about an arrogant smart guy who is outdone by the life force of a dynamic woman.  Any resemblance to your author is entirely coincidental.  Great stuff.

– Enjoyed the view of the Atlanta skyline from our hotel room.

All in all, Atlanta was much fun.