Err-Humm. Excuse me? Anybody there? No? Woo hoo. Party time.
So what am I going to talk about today? There seems to have been a lot of flux in the blogs recently. Some have died and will be sorely missed. Some have revamped and others are still considering what they are doing and why they are doing it. Hmmm.
So should I write something deep and meaningful? Something enlightening fellow readers and directing them to fame and fortune?
Problem is I'm no expert in writing so it would be blind leading the blind, everyone holding onto the one ahead, marching in circles to nowhere. And there are lots of people with oodles of knowledge to guide you already. See the list of blogs to the right for a start.
Should I write about my latest projects? Not much to say on that front because I've been in a bit of gloom and they haven't progressed. Need to get them sorted, I know.
So I was lying there last night, listening to the Tropical Rainforest. It's a recording sadly, not some exotic holiday. One day…Anyway I thought maybe I could write about this thing "Enter late - Leave early". Again Hmmmm.
I've worked hard on this one and have chopped off beginnings and ends until it feels my scripts race along so fast that the viewer will be gasping for breathe before Act 2. But I do wonder why we do it.
Yes it keeps the pace up. Yes it makes the writing concise. Yes it gives you those precious turning points fast…faster… fastest. But why the rush?
Is it a Hollywood thing? Race in, snatch the prize, race out. Rush here, rush there. No time to waste. I want it all and I want it now…now… now. Is this low attention span real or is it just that someone somewhere decided they couldn't sit still more than 5minutes and conned everyone else that it was normal?
At first I thought, definitely. It's an American thing. You won't see it in Europe. But looking along my DVD shelves I don't think that's really true. You can't call Nikita or les Visiteurs slow paced. Nor do Lost in Translation or Sideways go at a break neck gallop.
So is it genre? Action should be fast paced and drama maybe slower? I looked for a slow paced action, never scared of a challenge, and I found Three Days of the Condor. It has its fast bits but most of it is slow and steady. I then looked for a fast paced drama and found le Diner de Cons. I defy anyone to call that slow paced. I count it as drama but I know someone out there will be screaming "Thriller and Farce." My blog. I win.
Maybe it's tied to budget? A higher budget demands a faster pace or the audience won't turn up and they won't get their money back. Only if that was true then how could a low budget film slip in and swipe the audience?
I think it is all a big conspiracy. Probably by the twitter creators. Get them used to short, sharp shocks and they'll be easy prey to twit …. Ahh used up the character limit. For heaven's sake where does 140 come from? Too long for a putdown and too short for a decent conversation. I want a discussion, not a sentence. Am I becoming a luddite in my old age?
Is the art of conversation dead? Will a film get a decent budget without insisting we are too thick to concentrate longer than 3 minutes? Will Jessica ever persuade Benson to serve poptarts?
So where have all these ramblings taken us? Nowhere really. But here's the thing. Didn't you enjoy the stroll through thoughts and musings? Wasn't the journey more interesting than the destination? Didn't you find starting early and leaving late a refreshing change? Wasn't the distraction more entertaining than sharpening pencils?
No? Who said that? Well if you are frustrated at wasting a few seconds of time on scenery and wish you'd stuck with charging after the holy grail then as the caramel bunny would say "Just take it easy."
