Contour At The Movies

Found a cool site for scripts and bibles.  Take a look!

http://tvwriting.googlepages.com/index

Love it or hate it, WATCHMEN is now out on Blu-ray and DVD.  Running out to get the Blu-ray version, I discovered it contained the absolutely coolest, most jaw-droppingly great feature: Maximum Movie Mode.

Watching the film with MMM turned on, you are treated to countless seamless transitions from the film to a variety of additional information, all in context.  More than “pop-up videos”, the film shrinks down to a picture within the picture and director Zack Snyder walks on and offers commentary on what’s going on.  He’ll often pause the movie (playing behind him on single and double screens) to point out interesting and amusing production details and anectdotes.  And when he’s done, the picture-in-picture readjusts and you’re back to watching the movie once more.

Beyond this, you frequently get a timeline view of “Our World” and “Their World”; what was happening for real at various times compared to the alternate reality of Watchmen’s time.

Capping it off are invites to watch production videos as they become relevant to the story, and frame-to-scene comparisons between the film and the graphic novel.  All seamlessly presented.

Maximum Movie Mode is definitely NOT the way to watch the movie the first time around, however for a second viewing where one wants to dig into the mind and craft of the filmmakers in a more contextual way than the typical “making of” videos, MMM is worth running out and buying a Blu-ray player for.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Just wanted to say WELCOME! to everybody who’s gotten on board with MY STORY CAN BEAT UP YOUR STORY! so far.

In particular, special thanks to Yan Krupnik for helping us reach over a THOUSAND TO-based film and TV peeps with news of the seminar.  Check out the trailer for Yan’s new feature “Drink Tea Outside” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdMcTs6AMb8

Thanks all!

It’s official…Contour for Windows officially goes on sale Monday, March 30!  Pre-sales are going amazing, and there will be a discount available for registered owners of the TotallyWrite Development Suite.  If that describes you, keep your eyes on your inbox for details.

Thanks again to the great gang at Mariner Software for all of their hard work.    EXCELSIOR!!

I love this!  It demonstrates how the brain is hardwired to make sense out of story.  You may have bits and pieces of  a story inside your head, but if you don’t know how to structure it properly you’ll never be able to make it make sense…and one of your friends might just make a video about you.

It’s called the Storitel Beat Machine and it’s a new spin on an old idea about randomizing ideas. I’m not sure how useful it is, but as far as the implementation this thing ROCKS!  CLICK HERE to check it out.

UPDATE (March 30, 2009) — Looks like the Storitel Beat Machine has been taken down.  I saw something about “legal action” being threatened!  I’d love to find out what happened, and if I do I’ll do another update.  Stay tuned…