Homophobia: A Dialog of Ideas

| September 1st, 2010 | View Comments | Homophobia

“Self-Acceptance leads to Strength” will be the controlling idea of Homophobia. This will be the message that I want to express and that I have to prove throughout the short film. Influenced by the rise of philosophy, telling a great story has become a dialectic activity since the ancient greece. You can think of it as writing an essay on a certain topic. You have an opinion on a certain topic that you want to express and that you have to prove. In order to prove it, you also need to present an argument against your argument and explain why it’s a misconception.

Writing a great screenplay is pretty much the same. If you only try to express your contolling idea, it will become a morality tale. We don’t want that. We, as artists, should serve truth and truth is usually more complex than that.

The difference between writing an essay and writing a story is that an essay is build upon reason and the abstract. A story is the exact opposite. It expresses an idea and a counter idea through emotion and the concrete. Therefore, these two arguing ideas have to be translated into an emotional and concrete story. This is also why stories are so powerful and why Plato proposed to get rid of all storytellers in the ancient greece. He said that storytellers are dangerous because they express and incept ideas like philosophers but not through logic and reason but emotion.

Idea and Counter-Idea argue

This means, in order to write a solid script, I need to find the counter idea to my controlling idea and prove, that the controlling idea is true. My controlling idea is that self-acceptance leads to strength. The counter idea than would be that self-acceptance leads to weakness. If I flip my counter idea to self-denial leads to strength, which expresses the same idea but from a different perspective, I already have the development of my main character on top of my dialectic argument.

This means that my character starts out believing, that self-denial leads to strength. He suppresses his feelings due to anxiety of judgement. Now I need to show that suppressing your feelings does lead to a false kind of strength, that easily can crumble because of pressure e.g. I need to lead my character to the understanding, that self-acceptance leads to true strength, that provides inner stability instead of burning energy. This not only will prove my argument along the way but is the development of my main character at the same time.

Additional Information: A more complex dialectic approach is to present an idea (thesis) and a counter idea (anti-thesis), have it argue back and forth over the course of the film, to be resolved into a new idea (synthesis) at the end of the film. This usually is a third kind of ending. Instead of a positive ending, that I chose for Homophobia, or a negative ending, it’s both, resulting in a so called ironic ending.This kind of ending describes life in more shades and will be closer to truth I guess. It’s only a bit to complex to put it all into a short film. This is why I decided on the basic dialectic approach. I can assure you though, that I will construct a strong synthesis with an ironic ending for The Boy Next Door.

Homophobia: A Premise

| August 31st, 2010 | View Comments | Homophobia

What if a young soldier is confronted with homosexual feelings towards a comrade?

That’s the premise of Homophobia. The initial idea. The magic “What if …” that was proposed by Stanislavsky and is one of the most important tools not only as an actor but also as a writer. That is from where I am starting my journey of writing the story.

Can I already start writing the actual script now that I have an idea? I could but it would not be very wise. This is because of two reasons. First of all because I haven’t done enough research and developed the characters enough that I could already start writing. If I’d start now, I would write in concepts which would result in cliche. More importantly though, I don”t have a spine for my story yet. As Robert McKee proposed “Story is first, last and always the experience of aesthetic emotion”. But, what does this mean?

It basically means that a story consists of two elements that are interwoven. The two components are emotion and meaning. In life, emotion and meaning are usually not interwoven. We do have an emotional experience which doesn’t contain any meaning. Only when we reflect on the experience afterwards, we can apply meaning to the emotional experience. This means emotion and meaning usually don’t occur simultaneously. If they do, they might be experienced as a religious or spiritual experience.

Art units emotion and meaning and thus provides a rich and multilayered experience of life. This is why we enjoy art that much.

What is more important, emotion or meaning? The answer is neither. Both elements need to be in balance for a rich experience. It is wise though to make meaning the core and wrap the emotions around it. Why? If we have a strong and simple meaning, which is also called the controlling idea, we can develop all the characters, scenes, sequences and acts in relation to the core. The controlling idea will be the seed of the story. This helps staying focused on what the story really is about which will make the story a strong story. It won’t get wishy-washy. Later, when we develop all the elements and ask if they are necessary, we can answer it by answering the question whether they correspond to the controlling idea or not.

Before I will present the controlling idea for Homophobia, I want to briefly mention the two elements of which a controlling idea consists of. A controlling idea consists of a value and a cause. Let me explain. A movie always ends with a certain value, it’s either positive or negative. We all know examples for that. So the value of a crime movie may end with the value “crime pays” (negative) or “crime doesn’t pay” (positive). This is the outcome of the movie. (We should know the outcome of a movie, that we want to write, before we start to writing) The second element, the cause, explains the value. It explains why crime pays or not. This might be due to the fact that the detective is “cleverer than the criminal” or the criminal “more ruthless than the detective”. So we can state a clear-cut controlling idea such as “Crime doesn’t pay because the detective is cleverer than the criminal”.

So, what is the controlling idea for Homophobia than? I need to distill the controlling idea from the premise. I know that the movie should end positively, despite it’s dark approach. I thought about what the value of Homophobia might be and could identify it. Homophobia should describe the anxiety towards someone owns homosexual feelings. This means anxiety is obviously a strong emotion that I deal with. For me, anxiety can lead to weakness. Paralyzed by his anxiety of judgment, the main character chooses the easier way of self-denial that makes him weak. He is too weak to face the truth. The opposite of weakness is clearly strength. So strength will be my value. Strength is a potent positive value. I like that. Now I need to define the cause that leads to strength. In order to find my cause for strength, I can look at the cause for weakness. The cause for weakness is self-denial. The opposite of self-denial is self-acceptance.  So self-acceptance will be my cause. This means, the controlling idea of Homophobia will be:

Self-Acceptance leads to Strength

This will be the meaning of Homophobia. It’s important to understand that this is not a morality approach. My job is not to indoctrinate the audience with this message. My job is to express and prove this message because I believe in it. Identifying the controlling idea of a movie reveals a great deal about the author. It usually is alway rooted in his belief system that is constructed out of his thoughts and experiences. It’s also important to not state the controlling idea as dialogue. This would be poor writing. We have to dramatize it through character behavior that leads to action. Show, don’t tell should come to mind now.

True Art doesn’t Judge

| August 29th, 2010 | View Comments | General

Yesterday, I started exercising a new skill that will help me become a better screenwriter – Drawing. “Drawing?” you might cry out now. “What does drawing have to do with screenwriting?”. I can imagine that it seems not to make any sense at all at first glance. I assure you though, as soon as you start to look a little closer, it will make a lot of sense. So why drawing? The theory behind the approach is the following: We do have two modi that we can operate in. We can use our left side of the brain that is associated with logic and reason. It represents the abstract that categorizes and creates concepts with which we perceive the world. The other modus is the right side of the brain. It’s associated with intuition and emotion.

Let me paint another picture for you. If the left side of the brain looks at the details, the right side perceives the whole picture. Both modi are important in order to “function” properly and both modi are important to create a screenplay. (Also known as working from the inside out and from the outside in) The problem now is, that we live in a part of the world that is heavily influenced by and trained for working with the left side of the brain. It’s the typical west-east conflict that we face here. This is why I want to exercise using my right side of the brain and this can be achieved by learning to draw.

Now, what are the concrete advantages of working with the right side of the brain? There are actually two. First of all, if we work on a creative problem, the subconscious is the source that we should work with in order to solve it. Probably all creative people, whether it’s in art or science, work this way. They face a certain problem, let the solution be worked out by the subconscious during the incubation phase which finally will bubble up to the conscious mind and is experienced as the typical AHA! moment. The difficult thing now is to put that experience, that the subconscious presents to us, to paper. It’s also known as the 99% of perspiration. It’s really hard work. Drawing can help us make this experience, that might be composed of pictures, sounds and feelings, tangible and concrete. This is called analogue drawing. I will examine this and other approaches of accessing your subconscious more in detail soon.

The second and way more fundamental advantage of learning to draw as a screenwriter is the reason of proper perception. This is important because it’s the most fundamental aspect of art. Art should be about expressing the truth. Perceiving the truth is not easy and makes the difference between a master and an amateur. Let me explain. The enemy of art is cliché. We usually use the word cliché to describe this kind of work. It simply doesn’t feel real. This is because the creator had a concept in mind that stood in the way of seeing the truth. We all have that mechanism and it makes navigating our world easier. We label things and create concepts. This is also how racism and any other form of classification is created. As artists, our goal should be to avoid any form of classification and labeling.

Seeing is a very concrete and sensual example of perceiving. Usually, we tend to think what we see is what is real. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is, most of the time, we see what we expect to see. This means, we have a predefined concept of something that is applied to an object. For example, we do have a concept of how a lemon should taste. If we see a lemon, we instantly apply this concept and think this lemon will taste exactly the same way as all the other lemons we have tasted before, although the lemon could taste completely differently. This is called conceptual thinking. This is what creates cliché. This should be the enemy of every artist.

Drawing is a good way to overcome conceptual thinking. Most people think in order to draw something realistically, you need to have talent. It’s this ambiguous thing that is not tangible and thus creates anxiety which leads to the fact that most people don’t even bother trying to learn drawing. What most people don’t know is that drawing is not so much about your motor skills of moving your hand than rather the way we see the object we want to draw. Let me explain. If someone, who never learned how to properly perceive the world visually, is asked to draw the face of a person will use his left side of the brain to draw the face. He will see the concept of a nose and draw it. He will see the concept of eyes and draw them. Most likely, the picture won’t look realistic, maybe not even remotely similar to the person that was drawn. There is a great chance, that it will look like the drawing of a child. It’s because he didn’t look what the nose really looked like and instead drew the concept of a nose.

Now, by learning to draw, thus perceiving the world the way it really is, we can learn expressing the truth. We simply need to apply the way we perceive visually to all the other ways we perceive the world. I got a great book on learning to draw (actually see) and using your right side of the brain. It’s called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Step by step, it leads the reader through the process of abandoning conceptual thinking while creating art. The first exercise that you have to do is to draw three picture. You draw them before you do any of the exercises that will show you how to see properly. The first picture should be a self-portrait of yourself. You should sit in front of a mirror and draw your face. The second picture should a portrait of someone that you have to draw from memory. The third picture should simply be your hand. These are the pictures that I drew yesterday:

My self portrait.

My hand (l) and my partner Chris from memory (r).

I think you can easily see, that it is not very realistic yet. I might be not too bad since I studied four years of drawing during my high school years, but I really didn’t learn how to see properly though. You can especially see my conceptual thinking on the picture, where I tried to draw my partner Chris from memory. It doesn’t remotely look like him. It’s composed of generic concepts of a male human face with some individual characteristics from Chris.  (Funny enough, he got my nose)

Anyhow, the exercise demonstrates, that I still think conceptually a lot and don’t perceive properly. I am sure I do the same when writing a script which is reflected in its believability. I will of course document future exercises and will reflect on how to apply this approach on screenwriting.

At the Fortune Teller

| August 28th, 2010 | View Comments | General

Yesterday night I had a chance to meet a fortune teller. At the Richtig bar in Linz, they held an event called Astro Night. One of Austrias Top fortune tellers Ursula Heitzman, known from shows on Puls 4 and Sat.1, told everyone, who was interested, his future. She does that with the help of cards and reading your palm.

I had to wait for a while since a lot of people wanted to have their future told. She is a very interesting woman, with a cute little dog that had to stand the noise and bad air all night. First of all, she asked me to give her my left palm. She took a pen to redraw the lines of the hand. This looks like this.

The very bottom of the triangle represents my birth. This is where everything started. Moving upwards represents my life. On the left side, you can see the life line. This line tells you how long you will be alive. Fortunately, my life line isn’t too short. So I don’t have to worry about that at the moment. ;)

On the right side, you see the line that represents success. The arrow, that says success, represents the point where I start to have success. Mrs. Heitzman told me that this will not be before another seven years. This means that I will be successful when I am around 32 years. She thought that’s not so good news for me – but hey, if we recall the 10.000 hours we need to master a craft which equals approximately 10 years – I will be three years ahead. Hurray! :)

She also told me a lot about my personality, my childhood and my family. For that, I had to draw cards that she interpreted for me. She told me that I am a very top-heavy personality. (Surprise!) That I have a strong personality and that I am a tumbler. That I can cope with drawbacks pretty good. This means that I might be down but not for too long, which is a result from my zodiac sign that is associated with fire – thus energy. My biggest problem is to be impatient. That is true as well. Her recommendation was to focus on one thing after the other.

That’s about it. I am not quite sure what I should think about it. I most definitely prefer reason and logic over ambiguous and generic statements. On the other hand, science won’t ever know it all and Dominik, the owner of the bar, told me enthusiastically that most of the stuff she saw and predicted for him actually happened. Let’s see if I finally break in at the age of 32. :D

Getting a Day Job

| August 27th, 2010 | View Comments | General

Today I had my trial day at a new media agency. Since I can definitely not live from writing alone at the moment, I have to get a day job. This is not a bad thing because most successful writers started out writing with a day job and as soon as they could afford to only write, they simply switched. I want to try the same approach and that’s why I was looking for a day job that pays the bills while studying at UCLA.

I could possibly do anything, which also would mean working as a cashier at any store. My approach was a little bit different though. I thought that I would like to get a job that I enjoy, which is always better. Not only for me because the day job doesn’t become a pain in the ass, but also for my future employer, who gets a motivated employee that will pay in quality and speed. I thought about what I want to do and quickly new that I want to do something in the media industry. (Surprise!)

About a week ago, I stumbled upon an ad of a new media agency called Team sisu, that is looking for a web-designer. The job requires to design websites, banners and online games as well as work out online marketing strategies and conceptual work. Sounds perfect right? I applied for the job right away with an application in the Facebook design. What I did is that I took all the information that you’ll find in a cover letter and a resume and put it into an interactive PDF designed like the well-known Facebook design.

They seemed to like the idea and called me a day later inviting me to an interview. I had the interview this Tuesday and think that it went pretty well. They asked me if I wanted to do a trial day so that they can see what I can do. I agreed and had my trial day today. I was really looking forward to it since I enjoy tinkering around in Photoshop and thinking up stuff.

I was at the Etech Center at 9am sharp. I was introduced to the team an received my first task – designing a web banner for an office supply company. My second task was to come up with a website layout for an online marketing company. The two tasks took about three hours to complete and I think that I completed them satisfactorily. (Wow, never used this version of satisfied before) It was definitely not the most creative approach, but I think it works pretty good for the daily business.

After lunch, I got my third and last assignment. We had to conceptualize a Facebook application for a travel agency trying to gain as much scope as possible. This was a lot of fun and easy for me. I realized that I really really enjoy conceptual work. I think Susanne, who is the boss of Team sisu, was also very satisfied with my ideas and contributions.

I also made a photo of the office space for you guys. It’s located on the fourth floor of a tech center that accommodates different tech and publishing companies.

Now I have to wait until next week before I will know if I get the job or not. Susanne told me that she wants to invite another applicant for a trial day. I really hope I do get the job since I think the team is great, the location is comfortable and I really do like the duties. Wish me luck. :)

Published Interview

| August 26th, 2010 | View Comments | General

I briefly mentioned it in one of my previous posts, that the interview, that I did with the German writer-director Marco Kreuzpaintner, was published in a German magazine called Zoom. It’s a magazine that aims at the aspiring and independent filmmaker and covers a broad spectrum of topics from technical aspects to how to develop a script. That’s what the final layout looks like:

Currently, I am writing an article about how to direct actors for the October issue. I am going to talk about the general approach on working with actors and will give concrete tips. It’s actually going to be my first real article that I am writing for a magazine. I am excited!

A Writer’s Apprentice

| August 25th, 2010 | View Comments | General

After I kind of abolished the whole concept of talent in my last post and replaced it with a mere 10.000 hours of practice, I want to have a closer look at another aspect before I want to explore the whole concept of deliberate practice a bit more in detail. Since writing should become my profession, I want to compare it with a “regular” job. How does someone start out in a job. No matter whether you went to university or not, most people start out in a kind of a teacher-apprentice relationship. It’s practical and not theoretical. The idea behind an apprenticeship is to learn your job by watching, imitating and guidance. That’s how you learn a job. How things are done.

Unfortunately, there is not the possibility of an apprenticship as a writer. Writing happens in solitude. Even if you were sitting next to a writer, you wouldn’t have to imitate a lot except of staring out the window, sipping some coffee and sighing from time to time. As you would for sure have guessed it, writing is a heavily thought-oriented process. So what can we learn from other writers than? We can learn from their thoughts and perspective but more importantly, their habits.

Habits are a very powerful thing because it’s them that mostly define what we do and how we do it. Most of us do not choose their habits consciously. I have to admit that I have tons of habits that I didn’t chose consciously. Some of them are necessary to stay sane and healthy, others arise from procrastination and again other from other sources. I think it’s important to know your habits. As a writer you need a strong sense of discipline in order to make it, especially if you need to do it next to a day job (like me). That can be achieved by Habit Management. (Okay, I admit that sounds like another of these self-guidance book)

Let me give you a quick “Habit Management 101″. I will try not to bore you to death. Managing habits isn’t that difficult and there is not a lot to know. So it’s simple. The first thing is to uncover your habits. Your day is probably filled with a tons of habits. If we want to introduce new habits, we need to get ride of others. That is by the way one of the principals of Habit Management. (Okay, I enjoy this too much, I should really write a self-guidance book one day). You can not really get rid of a habit if you do not replace it with another one. The second principal is that it takes some time before you really integrate a habit fully. A thumb of rule is that it will take approximately 30 days. My experience is that it is kind of easy and fun at the beginning since it’s new. After three or four days tough, it really becomes work before it will ease out towards the end of the 30 days and finally become a habit.

Alright, I think we aced “Habit Management 101″ and can finally move on to the hands-on part. Now how do we got to know what habits other writers have. After all, we can not observe and imitate them, right? The answer is through interviews. I once stumbled upon a great book that does exactly that. It gathered up a bunch of interviews with different writers, spliced them up by topic and stitched them together. I think it should most definitely complement the library of an aspiring writer next to all the structure and How to Writer a Killer Script in 30 Days or Less. (The last one was a joke, just to be clear) I at least think it’s a great idea. It’s called 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters by Karl Iglesias and is available at Amazon.com for $10.36. (And now, I don’t get any kind of revenue from Amazon or the author)

I will most definitely use this book to try and hopefully successfully integrate some habits for myself. Let’s see how that will turn out for me. I of course will post any progressions or pitfalls as soon as they arise and will let you know about my favorite habits.

Let me know: Are you aware of your habits? Have you ever tried to consciously establish a habit?

Getting Started with Homophobia

| August 24th, 2010 | View Comments | Homophobia

As I told you already, I am currently working on a new project, that is funded by the Upper Austrian federal government. The project, with which I applied for the grant, is called Homophobia. I also told you, that it will take place in the setting of the Austrian Military Forces and will obviously deal with homophobia.

I always wanted to make a coming-out movie and incorporated the topic in Borderline. I have to admit that I was not very satisfied since I had no chance to properly develop and resolve the conflict. Thus, I thought I want to deal with it again on its own. Coming-out is probably one of the most influential phases of a person with a homosexual preference. I am well are that there are a ton of coming-out movies out there. I was sure that I didn’t want to make another one of them. I also realized that most coming-out movies are about telling other people about their sexual preferences and how the environment responds to it.

Then, I thought the process of accepting your own homosexual feelings is way more important than actually telling other people. As soon as you tell other people, you already accepted your feelings. This means, I want to focus on the process of being confronted with and later accepting ones own homosexual feelings. Homophobia therefore should deal with the anxiety of your own homosexual feelings.

I of course didn’t chose the setting randomly. First of all, the military environment provides an uber-masculin environment where such feelings are completely suppressed. On the other hand, it’s an environment where a bunch of 18 year old guys spend a lot of time on a very small space with little privacy and restricted access to girls. In Austria, we still have a border patrol on the border to Hungary. Some recruits are sent their as border patrol for seven weeks as part of their military training. It really is a very extreme situation, since they have to patrol in troops of two for sometimes 12 hours in a row. Sitting in a dark, cold and silent wood, staring into nothing, with an unlimited amount of time to think and a weapon on your back can really push your limits.

As you already guessed, the tone of the film will be dark and the speed probably slow. I really want to capture the feeling of these recruits and push one of them into psychological depths where he will be confronted with homosexual feelings towards one of his comrade.

I already started my research today meeting two friends of mine who actually spent seven weeks on the Hungarian border. We talked a lot about their duties, experiences, perspectives and how everything is hierarchical  structured and organized. They also showed me photos of their daily lives in the barracks. I think I got a pretty good overall impression. I already have some structural approaches to the story that perfectly correspond to what they told me. I most definitely have to do more research, needing more experiences, anecdotes and details – especially concerning the military language, since I wasn’t lucky enough to serve my country. I might actually try to contact the press department of the Austrian Military Forces and hope to get a chance to actually go there and spend some time with the recruits.

Win “Long Island Expressway”

| August 23rd, 2010 | View Comments | General

I will give away several DVDs over the course of the next weeks. In the following week, you have the chance to win the critically acclaimed movie “Long Island Expressway”. It’s about “a 15-year-old Long Island boy [who] loses everything and everyone he knows, soon becoming involved in a relationship with a much older man.” (ImdB.com)

In order to win the DVD, leave a comment in the comment section below telling me what your all-time favorite movie is and why. Make sure to log-in with any of the available accounts or leave your proper name and E-Mail address. (Your E-Mail address will not be published!)

Last day of participation is Monday August 30th 2010 23:59pm (CET).

Becoming a Master

| August 22nd, 2010 | View Comments | General

Slowly but for sure, it’s getting serious. Over the course of several years I arrived at the point where I decided to become a writer. To be more precise, a screenwriter. The funny thing is that neither me nor any of my teachers probably would have recommend me to take this step. In contrary. I didn’t much enjoy writing for most parts of my life but not because I don’t have talent than rather for reasons that have to do with our school system and how students are rated and judged.

This brings me right away to the discussion of talent. I am sure most people think you either have talent to write or you don’t. If you don’t, don’t bother to try. Well, I think talent is overrated. I think you can master style (not to be confused with the unique voice of a writer), spelling and all the other stuff that our school system is so obsessed with. But, I am sure you can’t acquire the urge to write and to express yourself. By writing The Boy Next Door, I realized that I do have this urge. That I do want to express myself and my perspective on life. I am pretty sure that this is the most important aspect – the rest is simply deliberate practice.

Several studies and even more personal experiences claim that in order to master a craft, you need about 10.000 hours of practice. (Translates to about 10 years). Now that’s a lot. If you want to become a professional football player you need to exercise. A lot if you want to play in the NFL. If you want to play the piano, you probably take lessons with a teacher and practice, practice and practice. I mean Mozart had had practiced the piano and composing for 15 years before he wrote any of his masterpieces. Funny enough, like drawing, most people don’t think so with writing. The general opinion is that you can write or you can’t. This is a big misconception. Writing, like playing the piano is practice. From an early age on our environment creates a fixed mindset. This means that we have a certain amount of skills that we can develop a bit further but can’t change for the most parts. First of all, we need to adopt the growth mindset. This will not only provide us with an unlimited amount of possibilities but also ease out the neurotic behavior of constantly trying to prove ourselves. It’s okay if your first play is not as good as Shakespeare. (Btw, Shakespeare couldn’t spell properly either despite the fact that it’s not even sure whether he wrote the plays himself or not) After 10.000 hours, you might try to compare yourself with a masterpiece but do yourself a favor and don’t bother before that threshold.

Now a lot of people say: “But there are kids who can draw and kids who can’t draw as well”. This is of course a valid point but doesn’t really destroy my argument. We really need to examine what is going on underneath. Drawing is not so much about your ability to move a pencil but rather how you perceive what you want to draw. If you don’t look properly at the object how should you ever be able to draw it properly? It’s not really possible. So there are kids that have the advantage that they found out or were taught how to see properly. Ergo, they can draw better. I am pretty sure the same works for any art whether it’s music or writing. As a fictional writer, you need to properly perceive what’s going on around you – people that later become your characters, discussions that later become your dialogue and situations that later become your scenes. I can’t sit down and imagine it out of the blue. Creativity is, among others, the reassembling of existing “things”. Nothing more. That’s all there is.

What do you think? Does talent exist or is talent a misconception?

Photo by Peter Morgan