Writing for the mind’s movie screen
Do you know about ScriptShadow? It’s one of my favorite blogs lately: a smart, snarky, insidery screenplay review. It focuses (as best I can discern) on screenplays that have been bought by a studio but not produced yet. There are some exceptions, but that seems to be the core of it—and as such, it’s actually an odd preview of the next 2–5 years of releases.
Anyway, I mention it now because it’s sci-fi week, and you can read the review of the script for the Ender’s Game adaptation that will probably still never be produced. You can also download the script in its entirety!
Reading screenplays, like reading plays, is actually pretty fun in its own right. They’re always tight and terse: very consumable. And I find the descriptive language of screenplays sort of charming. That is, not the dialogue, but the parts that go
EXT. NEW JERSEY COUNTRYSIDE - MORNINGThe train hurls straight at us.
NEW ANGLE — Skimming alongside as the train twists and turns, sucking up track — feet, yards, miles of it.
Beneath it, the curving rails, which the rushing train barely seems to touch. They vibrate with an eerie, dulcimer HUM.
It’s never particularly good prose—but it’s not supposed to be, right? It’s supposed to be descriptive and conversational. These are words that will never be seen or heard by the public! Their audience is all agents and producers and, ultimately, a director and production staff. They’re the dark matter of storytelling.
That section above is from the first page of Source Code, one of the most popular scripts on ScriptShadow, and one that I enjoyed reading.
I often find myself reading scripts before bed. Maybe that tells you something about their sensibility and heft. Actually, I think it has a lot to do with their look: a scattering of lines, lots and lots of white space. They’re light and airy. The words flow fast. The film strip plays. Ahh.
‘Joy, interest, empathy’
The attraction here, as before, is less the subject and more Sam Anderson’s articulation of it. I mean, okay, the subject is a site where you connect via webcam to random strangers, which is not uninteresting. But I feel like there are 99 versions of this article that are boring or predictable or “ZOMG internet,” and one that is patient and subtle and great, and this is that version. (Via Joanne.)
Show me the internet
In a fit of curation and ingenuity, Noah Brier whips up a gallery of visualizations of the internet. And no, it wouldn’t be complete without The Net, circa 1995. Wow.
Noah points to this piece over at The Baffler which poses the same question—what does the internet look like?—and ends with this bit of disenchantment:
The problem isn’t really that we don’t know what the Internet looks like. It’s that what it looks like is so horribly ugly: not a glistening Tootsie Roll pop, not an open freeway, not a shimmering clear pool of chlorinated water nor a siren-littered sea, not even a chiseled movie star, but giant, hulking factories dotting the landscape of the Pacific Northwest and the Eastern Seaboard, covering old landfills, sprawling, like dozens of Costcos smashed together, stacked with metal and diesel generators and powerful cooling systems, crossed by power lines that deliver 2 percent of the world’s energy to the so-called cloud, where your tax returns and credit card statements cross paths with Medicare files and corporate budgets and your old love letters and the photos of Jennifer Aniston’s newest boyfriend.
So, I totally disagree.
I think the internet is the screens. Without the screens, who cares? Without the screens, it’s just a bunch of derivative-trading-bots talking to each other. The screens make it interesting—they’re the magic portals, the magic mirrors. My visualization of the internet ignores the server-farms and the network spaghetti. Instead it’s a mosaic of all those screens, some on phones and some on laps and some on walls, but more and more of them over time, all getting bigger and brighter.
Yeah, actually, I think my internet might be the Transparent City.
The new senators
Annie Lowrey suggests some new ways to slice and dice the Senate:
Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets — with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.
Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.
Imagine trying to convince someone — Michael Bloomberg, perhaps? — to be the lonely senator representing the richest percentile. And what if the senators were apportioned according to jobs figures? This year, the unemployed would have gained two seats. Think of the deals that would be made to attract that bloc!
I like this line of thinking because it denaturalizes our system of government—makes you realize how arbitrary it is in the first place. It also makes you realize how much things have changed. Two hundred years ago, it seemed natural to assume that your primary allegiance was geographic. The United States was still a patchwork in that way. Today: is your primary allegiance, in fact, determined by income? If not: by what?
I mean, my primary allegiance is probably determined mostly by RSS feed, but I realize that’s not going to get much traction.
(This, by the way, is the kind of discussion that side-steps my policy ennui entirely. Call it meta-policy.)
Every house is haunted
As established, I’m a Grant Morrison fan, but apparently I’m a bit out-of-the-loop because I didn’t know about his new project Joe the Barbarian. There’s a great preview and write-up over at Super Colossal. The series chronicles a teenager’s travels through his own house:
[…] the next seven issues […] will document parallel journeys through the house. One where we follow Joe descending through the house from the attic to the basement (where I am assuming his medication is?) and the other where he follows a Narnian/Wizard of Oz like adventure populated by his toys and the contents of the house.
And I love this bit of context from Morrison:
So like I said, it’s really quite grounded, because it’s all about this journey down from the attic to the basement of the house. And I think we can all relate to that, because man of us will have had those moments when we were sick or feverish and had to venture down to the kitchen to get something that would make us better. And we all know how difficult it can be to cross familiar ground if you’re weak or injured or delirious. The terrain of an ordinary home can easily become larger than life and apocalyptically meaningful.
What a great hook to hang a story on! There are shades of Toy Story and The Indian in the Cupboard here, or even Home Alone. It’s that same denaturalization.
Click through and check out the last panel. It alone makes me want—maybe even need—to check this series out.
Textbook remix
This is super cool, both in content and process: Python for Informatics is a new textbook that Chuck Severance, a professor at the University of Michigan, compiled in eleven days. It’s based on an existing Python textbook that was released under a Creative Commons license; Severance culled, sharpened, and extended it.
And if you were one of Severance’s students in Ann Arbor, you could get a physical copy printed on the university library’s Espresso book machine.
I find every part of this scenario really exciting. It’s like the pieces are all starting to click into place.
(Via Publishing2.)
Quantum biology
Oh wow. Photosynthesis depends on quantum effects for its amazing efficiency:
The quantum wizardry appears to occur in each of a photosynthetic cell’s millions of antenna proteins. These route energy from electrons spinning in photon-sensitive molecules to nearby reaction-center proteins, which convert it to cell-driving charges.
Almost no energy is lost in between. That’s because it exists in multiple places at once, and always finds the shortest path.
Two things:
- The lead researcher “predicts the emergence of an entire field of quantum biology.” YES.
- The observations in this work were made with femtosecond lasers. Back in college, I worked in a femtosecond laser lab for a semester. These things are so insanely high-tech, and really one of the absolutely essential tools in modern chemistry. Think of a femtosecond laser as a camera with the fastest shutter speed ever. Events that would otherwise be bright smears are captured frame-by-frame, a quadrillionth of a second (!) at a time.
I find myself gazing at the vines on the cement wall outside the cafe here—now blowing in the wind and rain—with newfound awe. Quantum biology!
Found Functions
It’s one thing to have a neat idea like this; it’s another to execute it so perfectly. The quiet images, the chalky lines… all just so. Click through for the whole series.
I think I’m going to go take walk on Clement Street now and hunt for parabolas.
(Via Nat Torkington.)
A very significant object
I’ve got a Significant Objects story-let up today! Check it out here; get some more context here. There’s a very strong indication that it has something to do with the mysterious disappearance of Annabel Scheme… can you spot the clue?
As with all Significant Object stories, you can actually bid on the object, now laden with the pleasant weight of narrative. All proceeds go to 826 National.
Where’s the spawn point?
Places that look like levels from first-person shooters:
- This new water filtration plant on San Erasmo Island in Italy.
- Sutro’s Scepter. Er, I mean. Sutro Tower. (See also.)
Other nominations?