John August

Archives for 2004

Other interests and hobbies

First Person, QandA

Do you play guitar, or do some other type of hobby in order to get inspiration for your writing?

— Jesse Leal

I don’t play guitar, though I’ve always wanted to learn. I tried to teach myself on my father’s guitar, but never even mastered tuning it, which made the rest of the process painful to the ears.

I can read music, and play piano and clarinet on a grade-school level. But I wouldn’t say either of them inspire my writing. So, for the truly curious, here’s a quick run-down of John’s Other Interests:

  • Gadgets Treo 650? Check. TiVo? Check. (Early Adopter points: I got my first digital video recorder in 1998.) Toyota Prius? Check. (We have two in the family.) Wireless Weather Forecaster? Check.
  • Languages I like to travel, but my interest in languages is borderline obsessive; I spent six weeks learning Japanese in preparation for a 72-hour visit to Tokyo. I’ve spoken Spanish since grade school, and French since high school. I’m fascinated by the evolution of languages, particularly how English lost its Germanic declensions and re-imported so much of its vocabulary from French (which resulted in having both ‘regal’ and ‘royal’).
  • Warcraft My name is John, and I have Warcraft problem. Kudos to the good folks at Blizzard for their digital crack.
  • Reality Television If I only watched The Amazing Race, no one would question my taste. But my TiVo also holds Big Brother, The Real World, and The Real World/Road Rules Challenge.
  • Home improvement I’ve renovated two houses in four years, by which I mean telling a contractor what I wanted and blissfully ignoring the actual labor involved.
  • Information architecture Beyond the work I do designing and running this website, I also love to keep up on XML, RSS and other emerging standards.
  • D.C. heroes I know there’s a lot of love out there for the Marvel pantheon, but I’ve always been a D.C. guy. Ever since I watched Superfriends as a kid, Superman and his brethren were my gods on Mount Olympus. I was never much of a comics reader, but somehow I learned all of the heroes’ mythology.

Blind man’s point of view

Genres, QandA

What do you think of a film made from a blind man’s perspective? By that I mean a completely black screen all the way through the film — which means a dialogue heavy film.

Do you believe this would be a good short film or would it be to dull for the viewer?

— Lewis Dickson

Lewis, welcome to the world of experimental film, where you invite mocking simply based on hubris.

Yes, you can make this film — though many would argue it’s simply a radio play. Derek Jarman’s Blue had a similar conceit: “Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman’s experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.” (IMDb)

The real question is how far you want to carry your capital-a Art. I’d argue that the strongest artistic statement would be to have an acclaimed D.P. like Russell Carpenter shoot 70 millimeter film with the lens cap on.

I know Russell. I’d be happy to ask him for you.

Cover page artwork

Formatting, QandA

Is artwork that only appears on the title page of a screenplay frowned upon?

— Darryl McD

Yeah, that’s kind of cheesy. If I had to choose between two scripts in front of me, I’d probably pick the one without the artwork.

That said, if you look in the Downloads section, you’ll see that I used a circle around ‘Go’, largely because the word itself is so small. And the cover page for Prince of Persia has the title in the logo font, but since it’s based on a hugely popular videogame, there’s a good reason for it.

For the other 20 or so scripts I’ve worked on, there hasn’t been any artwork on the cover. I’ll occasionally use a font other than 12pt Courier for title itself, but always something simple.

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Geek Alert

Due to some mysteriously high server loads, I’ve had to turn off comments until I get back from vacation. Hope everyone is having a great holiday.