Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Casting Call From Hell
For me, the most difficult, mind-numbing, and time-consuming aspect of any video/film project has always been casting. There's something inherently inhumane about cattle call casting; it involves posting ads on a variety of internet casting sites, responding to dozens (if not hundreds) of responses, arranging individual auditions, and renting a space in which to hold the auditions. It's a miracle if any of the people who say they're going to show up actually do, and the ones who do come usually come late. And that's all before you've actually auditioned anybody.
Once the auditions begin, the whole process becomes a kind of mental balancing act. You have to weigh how good the person is in the audition against how good you think they'll be on an actual set. Plus, you have to consider a myriad of other factors, including their potential chemistry with your other stars, their punctuality and professionalism, and their personality. Ultimately, a lot of casting boils down to how willing you think you as the director/producer might be to spend a significant amount of time with any of your actors.
After holding a few audition sessions, I wasn't feeling too comfortable with any of my potential cast members. Plus, due to the fact that I was attempting to shoot while simultaneously taking a full load of classes, my shooting schedule was necessarily fluid. Dates would frequently change and my actors would have to scramble to keep up. But mostly, I just wasn't sure if I wanted to spend a significant amount of time with any of the people that I was considering casting (some of them were very annoying, if not outright egotistical jerks).
I decided the simplest solution would be to cast people I knew. So I turned to my friends. My roommate Mike was the first one cast. He was in the film school with me, and had done a lot of theater in high school and college. He was also probably the funniest person I've ever met. One story which will tell you all you need to know about Mike occurred just after we had started living together. Mike was sitting on the couch in our apartment wearing nothing but basketball shorts and typing on my laptop, which he was holding on his lap. I teased him by ordering him not to type on my laptop if he wasn't wearing a shirt. He quickly put on a shirt, dropped his pants, plopped my computer down on his lap and said, "Is that better?" I knew Mike would be perfect as the boorish, idiotic brother to the main character.
I also decided to cast my friend Dave as Mike's "girlfriend" Francie. Dave was also one of the funniest people I knew, and was terrific at improvising. Plus, he was probably the only person I could convince to wear a dress for an extended period of time without being paid to do so.
For the character of the sister, Julie, I decided to cast my friend Silvija. Silvija was a graduate of the theater program at USC and had been involved in several of my past film projects (most notably as a flesh-eating zombie in one of my low-budget horror movies). She's funny, biting, and a little bit crazy. Plus we each understood how the other one worked, and as fellow crew members we were more than compatible.
I decided to cast myself in the fourth and final role, though, hopefully, not out of any sense of egotism. I already had the material memorized, and I realized that it would be simpler to play the character myself rather than having to finagle a fourth person's schedule. Plus, Ben is the straight guy in the script, which means that he doesn't even have to be funny, which was perfect, considering the fact that I am by far the least funny in our cast of four.
With my cast set, all that was left to do was put the finishing touches on the script, arrange the schedule, and shoot the damn thing.
Once the auditions begin, the whole process becomes a kind of mental balancing act. You have to weigh how good the person is in the audition against how good you think they'll be on an actual set. Plus, you have to consider a myriad of other factors, including their potential chemistry with your other stars, their punctuality and professionalism, and their personality. Ultimately, a lot of casting boils down to how willing you think you as the director/producer might be to spend a significant amount of time with any of your actors.
After holding a few audition sessions, I wasn't feeling too comfortable with any of my potential cast members. Plus, due to the fact that I was attempting to shoot while simultaneously taking a full load of classes, my shooting schedule was necessarily fluid. Dates would frequently change and my actors would have to scramble to keep up. But mostly, I just wasn't sure if I wanted to spend a significant amount of time with any of the people that I was considering casting (some of them were very annoying, if not outright egotistical jerks).
I decided the simplest solution would be to cast people I knew. So I turned to my friends. My roommate Mike was the first one cast. He was in the film school with me, and had done a lot of theater in high school and college. He was also probably the funniest person I've ever met. One story which will tell you all you need to know about Mike occurred just after we had started living together. Mike was sitting on the couch in our apartment wearing nothing but basketball shorts and typing on my laptop, which he was holding on his lap. I teased him by ordering him not to type on my laptop if he wasn't wearing a shirt. He quickly put on a shirt, dropped his pants, plopped my computer down on his lap and said, "Is that better?" I knew Mike would be perfect as the boorish, idiotic brother to the main character.
I also decided to cast my friend Dave as Mike's "girlfriend" Francie. Dave was also one of the funniest people I knew, and was terrific at improvising. Plus, he was probably the only person I could convince to wear a dress for an extended period of time without being paid to do so.
For the character of the sister, Julie, I decided to cast my friend Silvija. Silvija was a graduate of the theater program at USC and had been involved in several of my past film projects (most notably as a flesh-eating zombie in one of my low-budget horror movies). She's funny, biting, and a little bit crazy. Plus we each understood how the other one worked, and as fellow crew members we were more than compatible.
I decided to cast myself in the fourth and final role, though, hopefully, not out of any sense of egotism. I already had the material memorized, and I realized that it would be simpler to play the character myself rather than having to finagle a fourth person's schedule. Plus, Ben is the straight guy in the script, which means that he doesn't even have to be funny, which was perfect, considering the fact that I am by far the least funny in our cast of four.
With my cast set, all that was left to do was put the finishing touches on the script, arrange the schedule, and shoot the damn thing.
Lest We Forget
I think it's very easy for all of us to forget that when I began this project three years ago, YouTube was just gaining popularity, and webisodes were a slowly burgeoning medium. Now, both terms have entered the cultural lexicon, with nearly every movie or television show accompanied by web-launched content designed specifically and exclusively for Internet viewing. There is yet room in scholarship for the untested and the innovative, and my project seeks to bring it to the forefront by exploring a new genre of multimedia communication within an academic setting, and to weigh its benefits and drawbacks from an intellectual and sociopolitical standpoint.
At its core, the project explores a new variety of multimedia information sharing. Documenting the creation of a serialized webisode series, "The Reunion" will help further our understanding of this complex new medium, helping to illuminate the creative process behind a webisode, some central themes and characteristics shared between them, and, ultimately, the capacity for this format to reach a broad, demographically diverse audience. The distance that has traditionally separated academia from its subject matter can be eliminated in this project, which examines an example of an art form as I create it.
As Gunther Kress notes in English At The Crossroads: Rethinking Curricula of Communication in The Context of a Turn to The Visual, a revamping of English curricula is needed to include a more expansive definition of “literacy” in light of emerging forms of media. Traditional narrative structures are breaking down, and as the visual becomes more essential, the ways in which we deal with video becomes more important. My project merely embraces this truth and seeks to explore an important new medium by working within its artistic and technical boundaries and engage with it creatively.
The story of my webisode series revolves around a single family. Dennis, Ben, and Julie are three siblings who spend every Thanksgiving together, despite the fact that they have an intense hatred for one another. Even so, they recognize the importance of family, and come together every year on this weekend to celebrate the holidays together. This year however, matters are complicated by Ben’s depression over his awful job, and by Dennis’ new girlfriend, who is actually a man (although Dennis is of course the last person to figure this out). As they come together, the series explores how they relate to one another and to themselves, delving deeply into how issues such as gender, career aspirations, and family effect contemporary individuals. Ultimately, the story illuminates a pervasiveness sense of cultural nervousness surrounding same-sex partnerships, and how this effects such unions.
At its core, the project explores a new variety of multimedia information sharing. Documenting the creation of a serialized webisode series, "The Reunion" will help further our understanding of this complex new medium, helping to illuminate the creative process behind a webisode, some central themes and characteristics shared between them, and, ultimately, the capacity for this format to reach a broad, demographically diverse audience. The distance that has traditionally separated academia from its subject matter can be eliminated in this project, which examines an example of an art form as I create it.
As Gunther Kress notes in English At The Crossroads: Rethinking Curricula of Communication in The Context of a Turn to The Visual, a revamping of English curricula is needed to include a more expansive definition of “literacy” in light of emerging forms of media. Traditional narrative structures are breaking down, and as the visual becomes more essential, the ways in which we deal with video becomes more important. My project merely embraces this truth and seeks to explore an important new medium by working within its artistic and technical boundaries and engage with it creatively.
The story of my webisode series revolves around a single family. Dennis, Ben, and Julie are three siblings who spend every Thanksgiving together, despite the fact that they have an intense hatred for one another. Even so, they recognize the importance of family, and come together every year on this weekend to celebrate the holidays together. This year however, matters are complicated by Ben’s depression over his awful job, and by Dennis’ new girlfriend, who is actually a man (although Dennis is of course the last person to figure this out). As they come together, the series explores how they relate to one another and to themselves, delving deeply into how issues such as gender, career aspirations, and family effect contemporary individuals. Ultimately, the story illuminates a pervasiveness sense of cultural nervousness surrounding same-sex partnerships, and how this effects such unions.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Communication Means Talking, Not Just Listening
I want to talk a little bit about why it's so important to be able to converse in a given language (whether it be linguistic or technological in nature) through the creation of original content. To my way of thinking, true comprehension does not really exist until you are able to understand a language and use it to produce something truly original, whether you're writing a short story in Spanish class or working on a new line of code.
I think that it is the immediacy of my thesis project that makes it so vital. Rapidly shifting technologies and new forms of discourse have changed the ways in which we live, learn, and lead. The common and the comfortable are quickly being replaced by the new and the innovative, requiring new pathways of examination. The markets for print media and radio are hemorrhaging clients, thanks largely to the introduction of a vast array of communicatory web-based mediums. How we deal with such media, both in terms of what we say through them and how we learn to utilize them responsibly, depends upon careful steady and measured introspection. Such issues are at the forefront of our political and social landscapes, informing nearly every aspect of our culture.
In today’s complex political and social climate, little is more important than the capacity to effectively communicate. We live at a time when a blogger writing from his basement can drive the national debate, when a politician with intelligence and talent can mount a successful Presidential campaign using little more than stirring rhetoric and social networking sites. The Internet and global markets have left the world a smaller, faster, intensely more complex place, requiring multifaceted, broadly educated leaders.
Communication speaks to every major issue confronting contemporary society. In China, where you can be persecuted for accessing restricted Web content, communication speaks to human rights. In Pakistan, where disrupted discussion between uncooperative governments has hobbled our military’s ability to pursue the Taliban, communication speaks to national security. And in the US, where the divide between rhetoric and action, between politics and policy has become so wide as to seem nearly unbridgeable, the ability to communicate forcefully, morally and truthfully can mean the difference between an active, engaged polity, and an unwitting mob.
Communication is the modern political battleground. Communication can instruct, provoke, inspire, clarify and illuminate. It can also be used against us by those who value personality over politics, distraction over debate, pettiness over substance, and who invoke the veneers of sex and race to disguise inexperience or mask ignorance. Television, print media, film, and the Internet all offer immediate access, implied authority and political power; as a society, we have an important responsibility to utilize them ethically. In his essay, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology, author Dennis Baron makes an intriguing point. Baron argues that because the internet in particular is a source of information on many topics, both accurate and falsified, it is the responsibility of the user to verify the credibility of information as they interact with it. If we simply allow ourselves to be distracted consumers rather than passionate and engaged purveyors of web-based information, then we risk restricting both the veracity and direction of web-based content. Those who are “truly literate in the twenty-first century will be those who learn to both read and write the multimedia language of the screen," as Elizabeth Daley points out in Expanding The Concept of Literacy. In other words, we cannot merely converse within a new format, we must also work to actively construct it. Which is why working on that short story in Spanish class, or writing that new piece of code is so vital to comprehending the languages of computer programming and Spanish. Before we can comprehend we must create, because communication is more than just listening; it's taking the time and energy to synthesize what you've heard and to talk back.
I think that it is the immediacy of my thesis project that makes it so vital. Rapidly shifting technologies and new forms of discourse have changed the ways in which we live, learn, and lead. The common and the comfortable are quickly being replaced by the new and the innovative, requiring new pathways of examination. The markets for print media and radio are hemorrhaging clients, thanks largely to the introduction of a vast array of communicatory web-based mediums. How we deal with such media, both in terms of what we say through them and how we learn to utilize them responsibly, depends upon careful steady and measured introspection. Such issues are at the forefront of our political and social landscapes, informing nearly every aspect of our culture.
In today’s complex political and social climate, little is more important than the capacity to effectively communicate. We live at a time when a blogger writing from his basement can drive the national debate, when a politician with intelligence and talent can mount a successful Presidential campaign using little more than stirring rhetoric and social networking sites. The Internet and global markets have left the world a smaller, faster, intensely more complex place, requiring multifaceted, broadly educated leaders.
Communication speaks to every major issue confronting contemporary society. In China, where you can be persecuted for accessing restricted Web content, communication speaks to human rights. In Pakistan, where disrupted discussion between uncooperative governments has hobbled our military’s ability to pursue the Taliban, communication speaks to national security. And in the US, where the divide between rhetoric and action, between politics and policy has become so wide as to seem nearly unbridgeable, the ability to communicate forcefully, morally and truthfully can mean the difference between an active, engaged polity, and an unwitting mob.
Communication is the modern political battleground. Communication can instruct, provoke, inspire, clarify and illuminate. It can also be used against us by those who value personality over politics, distraction over debate, pettiness over substance, and who invoke the veneers of sex and race to disguise inexperience or mask ignorance. Television, print media, film, and the Internet all offer immediate access, implied authority and political power; as a society, we have an important responsibility to utilize them ethically. In his essay, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology, author Dennis Baron makes an intriguing point. Baron argues that because the internet in particular is a source of information on many topics, both accurate and falsified, it is the responsibility of the user to verify the credibility of information as they interact with it. If we simply allow ourselves to be distracted consumers rather than passionate and engaged purveyors of web-based information, then we risk restricting both the veracity and direction of web-based content. Those who are “truly literate in the twenty-first century will be those who learn to both read and write the multimedia language of the screen," as Elizabeth Daley points out in Expanding The Concept of Literacy. In other words, we cannot merely converse within a new format, we must also work to actively construct it. Which is why working on that short story in Spanish class, or writing that new piece of code is so vital to comprehending the languages of computer programming and Spanish. Before we can comprehend we must create, because communication is more than just listening; it's taking the time and energy to synthesize what you've heard and to talk back.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Webisodes And Their Meaning For Modern Scholarship
I've been thinking a lot today about the relationship between webisodes and modern scholarship. See, to my way of thinking, most modern scholarship has been irrevocably crippled by an unshakable sense of displacement. Academia, for better or worse, necessitates a certain degree of intellectual distance from its subject matter. For the most part, everything we study, whether it be in math, science, or history, consists of long-held theories or suppositions that have been mulled over and substantiated many times over. Whenever a new hypothesis does arise, it is rarely allowed to permeate the insular world of academia. There is precious little room in scholarship for the new or the revolutionary.
But the makeup of educational institutions is quickly changing, and scholarship must keep up. The students of today “think nonlinearly and learn through lurking, discovering, experimenting, and experiencing. They consider it entirely acceptable to go straight to a source as the social boundaries between producer and consumer blur." This quote comes from an article in the USC Trojan Family Magazine titled Requiem For A Term Paper. It was written by Eric Mankin and it says a lot of interesting things about the place of scholarship in our modern world.
Part of what Mankin goes on to point out in his article is the fact that the distance between scholar and subject has indeed lessened, creating an academic environment in which projects must explore their topics from a more immediate vantage point. My project seeks to reflect this change by exploring the emerging art form of webisodes—serialized modes of web-based storytelling that have begun to suffuse our culture and the ways in which we relate to it—even as this format continues to evolve and seek out its place in society. That's what made "The Reunion" so fun and exhilarating for me; I wasn't working in a format that had already been perfected, I was working in a format that was still very much finding its way.
But the makeup of educational institutions is quickly changing, and scholarship must keep up. The students of today “think nonlinearly and learn through lurking, discovering, experimenting, and experiencing. They consider it entirely acceptable to go straight to a source as the social boundaries between producer and consumer blur." This quote comes from an article in the USC Trojan Family Magazine titled Requiem For A Term Paper. It was written by Eric Mankin and it says a lot of interesting things about the place of scholarship in our modern world.
Part of what Mankin goes on to point out in his article is the fact that the distance between scholar and subject has indeed lessened, creating an academic environment in which projects must explore their topics from a more immediate vantage point. My project seeks to reflect this change by exploring the emerging art form of webisodes—serialized modes of web-based storytelling that have begun to suffuse our culture and the ways in which we relate to it—even as this format continues to evolve and seek out its place in society. That's what made "The Reunion" so fun and exhilarating for me; I wasn't working in a format that had already been perfected, I was working in a format that was still very much finding its way.
"The Reunion" All Six Episodes
Here are the six completed episodes of "The Reunion." All six, along with this blog, represent the culmination of my four years at USC and the IML. I hope you enjoy. And remember; family is a lot like herpes, once you have 'em, you can't get rid of 'em... Or so I hear.
Finding The Story
The first step in writing a script -- in writing anything, really -- is to come up with an idea. Now some people like to sit in a chair looking at the cursor on their computer screen until something comes to them but this approach has never really worked for me. I hate that blinking cursor, I always feel like it's mocking me. Personally, whenever I'm starting a new script the first thing I like to do is determine my influences. Thus begins the seemingly endless process of casting about for any and all pieces of art that I think might inspire me to come up with something. I rent lots of movies, listen to lots of songs, and read lots of books. In the case of "The Reunion" I wanted to look at lots of different webisode series.
I began perusing YouTube. I looked at professional creations and amateur ones. Some of the series with high production values turned out to have lousy stories, and some of the series that had obviously been shot in some guy's basement in Indiana had fantastic narratives and compelling characters. In the end I decided that what mattered to me most was not great lighting or fantastic cinematography, but snappy dialogue and fun, investing characters. So, my series had to be story/character driven rather than visually driven.
Another common problem I noticed was that many series got bogged down beneath the weight of their own elaborate narratives. Their were too many characters to focus on and as a result the viewer never got enough time with any one of them. So my story had to be restricted to 4 or 5 main characters tops.
I also didn't want to waste any time going over extensive back stories. Whenever I encountered a series in which the characters were meeting for the first time, I invariably found that the first few episodes were wasted with tedious exposition as the characters got to know each other. It made sense for the purpose of the story, but that didn't make it any more interesting for the viewer. So, my story had to be composed of characters who came into the narrative already knowing one another; that way I wouldn't have to waste any time showing how they meet and become acquainted.
To my way of thinking, the only story that could take all these factors into account was one about a group of siblings. The characters would come into it having known each other for their entire lives, their wouldn't have to be many of them, and it would open up some great topics (family dysfunction, sibling rivalry, latent anger) that would provide really interesting dialogue. Plus, being very close with my own brother means that I often like to write stories that revolve around siblings. It's the one bit of my own life that I can't help injecting into my writing.
The only remaining question was how to bring these siblings together. I considered having them all meet up to attend a funeral but I couldn't figure out the logistics of it. A funeral would require a coffin and more importantly, someone to lie inside of it. A dead body would mean damaged, emotionally unstable characters. Plus, a death is not always the greatest fodder for humor. So, I decided to pit my characters against one another by having them attend a weekend-long family reunion. In my mind I imagined this reunion as the only time during the year when these siblings saw each other for any extended period of time; it would be the perfect setting for bringing out all their little idiosyncrasies and annoying habits. Plus, I had very fond memories of my own experiences attending family reunions as a child, and it was something I hadn't really written about before. So, a reunion it was.
I began perusing YouTube. I looked at professional creations and amateur ones. Some of the series with high production values turned out to have lousy stories, and some of the series that had obviously been shot in some guy's basement in Indiana had fantastic narratives and compelling characters. In the end I decided that what mattered to me most was not great lighting or fantastic cinematography, but snappy dialogue and fun, investing characters. So, my series had to be story/character driven rather than visually driven.
Another common problem I noticed was that many series got bogged down beneath the weight of their own elaborate narratives. Their were too many characters to focus on and as a result the viewer never got enough time with any one of them. So my story had to be restricted to 4 or 5 main characters tops.
I also didn't want to waste any time going over extensive back stories. Whenever I encountered a series in which the characters were meeting for the first time, I invariably found that the first few episodes were wasted with tedious exposition as the characters got to know each other. It made sense for the purpose of the story, but that didn't make it any more interesting for the viewer. So, my story had to be composed of characters who came into the narrative already knowing one another; that way I wouldn't have to waste any time showing how they meet and become acquainted.
To my way of thinking, the only story that could take all these factors into account was one about a group of siblings. The characters would come into it having known each other for their entire lives, their wouldn't have to be many of them, and it would open up some great topics (family dysfunction, sibling rivalry, latent anger) that would provide really interesting dialogue. Plus, being very close with my own brother means that I often like to write stories that revolve around siblings. It's the one bit of my own life that I can't help injecting into my writing.
The only remaining question was how to bring these siblings together. I considered having them all meet up to attend a funeral but I couldn't figure out the logistics of it. A funeral would require a coffin and more importantly, someone to lie inside of it. A dead body would mean damaged, emotionally unstable characters. Plus, a death is not always the greatest fodder for humor. So, I decided to pit my characters against one another by having them attend a weekend-long family reunion. In my mind I imagined this reunion as the only time during the year when these siblings saw each other for any extended period of time; it would be the perfect setting for bringing out all their little idiosyncrasies and annoying habits. Plus, I had very fond memories of my own experiences attending family reunions as a child, and it was something I hadn't really written about before. So, a reunion it was.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
IML Senior Thesis
Hello and welcome to all. My name is John Visclosky and for the past four years I have been an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California working towards attaining my Bachelor of Arts in Film/Television Production. For the same amount of time I have been a student at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML), a truly unique institution that operates within the Annenberg School of Communication. What the IML does is promote professional and educational growth through the use and mastery of various forms of multimedia communication including, but not excluded to, video editing software, garage band, videogaming software, second life, photoshop, and powerpoint. The point is to manipulate sound and image and to learn to combine them in new and interesting ways that expand our ideas about how to communicate.
Each IML student must design and successfully complete a Senior Thesis Project. Mine was to examine the newly minted multimedia genre of webisodes by creating my own webisode series. I wanted to learn by doing and show that the true mastery of any language -- whether verbal or technical in nature -- can only be demonstrated once a person has shown their capacity to not only understand said language but to use it in the creation of a new and original work. So I crafted "The Reunion," a six episode webisode series documenting one weekend in the fictional lives of a disfunctional troupe of siblings. I wrote, shot, starred in, and edited all six episodes before posting them all on the internet.
But that was only half the battle.
The other half of my project was to create a blog that would detail the creative process driving this webisode series, a blog that would examine "The Reunion" in close detail from inception to completion. But more than simply provide some sort of on-set diary, I want to use this blog to discuss the viability and longevity of this new multimedia genre. Do webisodes have a life beyond the present? Are they merely tools for entertainment or can they also act as sources of learning? And why do the most popular series always look like they've been shot over a single weekend using some poor schlub's cell phone camera? In this blog I seek to discuss and answer some of these questions, and present a few of my own. But don't worry. Just because the point of this blog is to facilitate lively discussion and learning doesn't mean it can't also be fun.
And that I can't share gross stories from the set. I mean, come on, who doesn't like those?
Each IML student must design and successfully complete a Senior Thesis Project. Mine was to examine the newly minted multimedia genre of webisodes by creating my own webisode series. I wanted to learn by doing and show that the true mastery of any language -- whether verbal or technical in nature -- can only be demonstrated once a person has shown their capacity to not only understand said language but to use it in the creation of a new and original work. So I crafted "The Reunion," a six episode webisode series documenting one weekend in the fictional lives of a disfunctional troupe of siblings. I wrote, shot, starred in, and edited all six episodes before posting them all on the internet.
But that was only half the battle.
The other half of my project was to create a blog that would detail the creative process driving this webisode series, a blog that would examine "The Reunion" in close detail from inception to completion. But more than simply provide some sort of on-set diary, I want to use this blog to discuss the viability and longevity of this new multimedia genre. Do webisodes have a life beyond the present? Are they merely tools for entertainment or can they also act as sources of learning? And why do the most popular series always look like they've been shot over a single weekend using some poor schlub's cell phone camera? In this blog I seek to discuss and answer some of these questions, and present a few of my own. But don't worry. Just because the point of this blog is to facilitate lively discussion and learning doesn't mean it can't also be fun.
And that I can't share gross stories from the set. I mean, come on, who doesn't like those?
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