SaveTheCat.com is ending the year with a big meow! Anyone is invited to enter the Save the Cat!® Logline Contest of 2009. To enter, use the STC! rules of a well-written logline to rework the logline of a well-known movie and turn it into a Holiday classic.

For example, these are the five entries I have submitted so far:

Paranormal Holiday: After moving into a suburban home, a loving couple becomes increasingly disturbed by a nightly jolly presence and it’s noisy reindeer. (Paranormal Activity)
Christmas Now: During an on-going winter, Captain Taylor is sent on a dangerous mission into the North Pole to retrieve a renegade soldier who has set himself up as Santa Claus among a local elf tribe. (Apocalypse Now)
SE7ENTH: Two obsessed detectives desperately hunt for a serial killer named “Donner” who justifies his crimes as clearance for the world’s ignorance of the seventh reindeer. (SE7EN)
Blank List: By accident, the 12-year-old Pierce is given a blank Christmas list from a runaway elf and when he fills it out, he is able to get what he asks for! (Blank Check)
Ornament: A struggling mall Santa, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes, Polaroids and nostalgic ornaments from the last Christmas he remembers to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife. (Memento)

It’s that simple!
“Keep your loglines short — try for no longer than two lines. The original movie must be universally recognized, and the rewritten movie must be clearly made for a Holiday release. Contestants may place multiple entries, but each entry must be separate. No grouped entries, please. Please include the title of your “remake.” You may alter the original title if you wish, as long as we can determine the original source. Deadline for the contest is December 19, 2009, Midnight PST. Winners will be announced on the Save the Cat! blog site December 21. So get your paws — and your brains — a flexin’, and post your entries in the comment section of their blog!!!”

A logline is one to three sentences that says everything about your story and can be used as a point of reference during the screenwriting process. Your logline should be able to break out every element in a successful screenplay. A good logline has a Protagonist, an antagonist and a an adjective for each of these characters. A lunatic Taxi-driver flows a little better than a brand-new one.

A great logline sparks curiosity with irony, add a twist at the end of the line, something the reader  or an audience member wouldn’t expect.  A good logline should have a great title attached to it, a sense of market and a solid concept. Who will watch this movie? Why will they watch it? And what’s it about?

For more information on prizes and rules visit the Save the Cat!® Logline Contest of 2009

The last story structure software you’ll ever need and it’s on your iPhone! Based on the screenwriting bestseller, Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder. Available for iPhone’s and iPod Touch.

Look for Blake Snyder’s new book “Save the Cat! Strikes Back” November 25th. In “Strikes Back” Blake lists and addresses many writing techniques and problems such as…

• The 7 warning signs you might have a great idea ─ or not
• The sure-fire template for can’t-miss loglines
• The difference between structure and formula
• The Transformation Machine that allows you to track your hero’s growth step-by-step
• The 5 questions to keep your story’s spine straight
• The 5-Point Finale to finish any story
• The Save the Cat!® Greenlight Checklist that gets to the heart of every development issue
• The right way to hear notes, deal with problematic producers, and dive into the rewrite with the right attitude
• Why and when an agent will appear
• How to discover the potential for greatness in any story
• How to avoid panic, doubt, and self-recrimination… and what it takes to succeed and dare to achieve your dreams

Patient: Louise Swanson
Sex: Female
Age: 28

My Name is Louise Swanson. I’m getting close to thirty. If you ask me, thirty is as old as you can get, like one of those Nolan books… Logan’s Run, wasn’t it? My “light” is flashing and my time is up. I might as well forget that masterpiece I was attempting. Don’t you think thirty’s old? Jacob doesn’t think so. He says the only time jealousy shows up in our relationship is when I get carded at bars…  Masterpiece… Who am I kidding? I haven’t been able to paint an honest emotion in ages.

I’ve lost a lot of weight lately, I haven’t been exercising or anything special like that, I just haven’t had much of an appetite. Don’t get me mistaken with those carbon-copy, enquirer lip-sinking bitches you see on the music channels. I’m not anorexic or bulimic or anything peculiar like that, I’m just not hungry. I feel like when I am most creative the rest of me kinda takes the back seat. Does that make sense?

Funny story… one time I spent two days in my studio. I was inspired by a dream I had of Icarus falling into the water. In my dream, Icarus had just achieved what no man was able to do and flew with birds. He cut through the sky on wings made from feathers and wax. In my painting, Icarus, on top of the world, intoxicated by flight has realized the only place he can go now is down and hard. You would call that a moment of clarity, I’m almost positive about that. The image of the picture hit me harder than a man from Athens breaking the ocean’s surface after being suspended in the air, dancing at the feet of gods. I saw the picture from the sun’s point of view.

Anyways I got really excited and had to paint. The idea of waiting until morning made me nauseous. I’m always worried I’ll forget my ideas. I threw on my slippers and locked myself in the studio, I wouldn’t even let Jacob in. 48 hours later I opened the door to the studio. Jacob was waiting in a lawn chair with a book on his lap and a cup of coffee in his hand. (My studio is in the backyard.) He said I looked like Doc from Back to the Future after he stepped out of the Dolorian for the first time. My hair was saturated with orange and blue acrylic. Look at my hair, it’s long and dark so you can pretty much imagine the mop I was producing after my sabbatical. Somehow my arms acquired bruises-I don’t remember how-I never do. Needless to say, my clothes looked like they were brought in from war trenches simulated by a confederate paintball league. I was never considered a clotheshorse; most of my wardrobe was owned by someone else before.

Jacob handed me the cup of coffee. I thought he was going to be furious with me, mad that I wouldn’t leave my studio. He was so calm, he said, “Good morning, I whipped up a stack of flapjacks. You’ve got to be hungry, busy-bee.”  Jacob supports my art. I remembered he asked if he could see what I had painted. He asked it in a concerned tone, I hate that tone, it sounds like expectations and doubt. I think I really hurt his feelings when I told him I destroyed the painting. I drank some coffee and left the pancakes.

(The answers from Miss Swanson’s therapy session were recorded by Dr. Calvin and edited together by Dr. Graham.)

Take a peek at the first couple pages of storyboards for our next dramatic film.
Page 1

Page2

This is a “flip” video of Royce “FooRay” Southerland and I working on the storyboards. To watch more “flip” videos check out hdillasflip.

I bought this tiny video camera called “Flip” the other day, it’s a very basic point and shoot camera. It doesn’t take professional quality footage, it has a low bit rate for its HD frame and there are no manual settings. It has the capacity to capture audio, however it is not the best quality. Its main purpose is designed for streaming media, it is a camera that shoots for the web and I love it!

This pocket-sized camcorder has changed my point of view. I work with professional videos on a daily basis. In my day job at www.crookedlp.com quality takes a predominant seat; we produce things designed to sell and entertain. So when I come home and rest my hat, the “Flip” offers a fun, creative world where all rules can and should be broken. Something I would never do in the field is encouraged when I put the “Flip” in my hand. The funny thing is I feel like “Flip” strengthens me as a video producer, it challenges me to try new things and see how far I can take it. This may sound weird, but I feel like with the “Flip” as my tool I get to explore and even expand my boundaries as an artist. Whatever new things I discover with the “Flip” I can stash in my memory banks and find fancy ways to incorporate them in my industry videos. Things such as interesting angles, images, innovative story ideas, intriguing locations and interviews with influential characters can all be recorded to my “Flip” diary from the convenience of my pocket.

I don’t mean to sound like an infomercial; needless to say I am quite addicted to its experimental methods… I think it may trump the iphone for Dilla’s favorite toy and I find the word “toy” fitting because I feel like a child would when he explores the cardboard campus of a refrigerator box; this device inspires me. I can compose a video diary entry of just about anything at any time. I can take it scouting with me, set up storyboards, and capture thoughts and moments. It is a brilliant pre-production tool that makes a filming set much more organized and comfortable for our multi-thousand dollar cameras to come in and do work. That is why I set up my new Youtube channel “hdillasflip” (http://www.youtube.com/Hdillasflip) outside of Crooked Lake’s channel (http://www.youtube.com/CrookedLakeProd). The “flip video” will be my companion for the next year or so as I plan to capture and upload daily routines and new experiences to my channel as a way of logging and documentation. Sometimes these sequences from my life will be edited; sometimes they will just be raw clips from something I deemed as intriguing or fun. I suspect that most logs will be under a minute and won’t exceed five minutes. I don’t plan to upload every day, but I will commit to a biweekly period and I promise that everything uploaded there will be from the “flip’s” perspective, so I can share my new found points of view with you.

I am excited to embark on this experiment and I hope you will walk with me and my flip.

To subscribe to Hdillas Flip Youtube Channel please click here:
http://www.youtube.com/hdillasflip

The latest flip video I shot on location scouting…

This Memorial Day weekend Crooked Lake Productions decided to take a vacation! This lead to a Honda Element, three dogs, a po-dunk karaoke bar and a fabulous beach at Birch Bay in the northern most hemisphere of Washington State, just shy of Canada.

A couple years ago for Memorial Day weekend I went to Seaside Oregon, a marvelous area that borders Astoria and Washington. Cinematic classics such as Goonies, The Ring, Cthulhu and Kindergarten Cop were shot in the same territory as our camping grounds. The vacation was fun but it took a day’s worth of traffic to reach and leave our destination. A day of driving is a lot of time spent for a seventy-two hour trip. It became clear to me that Birch Bay must be Washington’s best-kept secret because it came with most of the perks that Seaside has and it only took four hours collectively to get there and back. For this reason alone I feel somewhat guilty that I am sharing this bit of valuable information but vacations come few and far so I feel like I should take the chance to boast when offered the opportunity.

We got to the beachfront house Saturday, “she who must be obeyed” rented the house earlier that week (my gal has an eye for deals and engineers Craigslist like a pilot maneuvers aircrafts). The face of the house pointed to the Pacific, and the rear overlooked a river that streamed into the ocean; we had water on both sides of us. The house came with two and a half rooms, a patio with a barbeque, two televisions and one VCR. Next to the VCR were two dubbed tapes with programmed loops of a burning fireplace and rolling waves manufactured to set the mood for those romantic nights…this perplexed me for a moment because our rental home came with a fireplace and the Pacific was in our front yard.

We claimed our beds and Colin took the cot that the website sold as a twin but was obviously a single unless by “twin” they meant one of those creepy seven year old girls from Kubrick’s adaptation of the Shining. Our friend Meagan got an actual twin bed and a comfortable closet to sleep in. (No joke, that’s where the two and a half part comes in). Our newfound friend and next-door neighbor, Brenda, slept in one of the bedrooms with her pug, Chet, and part Labrador, part horse, Rasta. Natalie and I took the other room with her dog, Jack.

I know by description the house sounds like if anything it came with…“personality.” But with the great group of people we had it could not have been a better location. We rocked that house out and achieved an A+ at life. We dropped our bags off and hit the grocery store to buy enough barbeque to last us a week that we compressed down to two days. Another great thing about the “Crab Shack,” (that was the name of our beach house) was that it was conveniently located three blocks away from a liquor store, naturally that was our 2nd stop. Colin bought a bottle of Glacier Vodka; we assumed it was local or Canadian. I bought a bottle of Smirnoff Vanilla, a 2-liter of diet coke and a Romeo and Juliet Cigar. Natalie purchased some bourgeois brand of pomegranate liquor and Meagan held it down with Tequila and margarita fixings, then we put the rest of our booze budget into a case of beer.

We dropped the booze and grub off at headquarters, changed into beachwear and hit the beach. I forgot to mention somewhere in that time period I shaved my head to blend in with country folk. We also mixed cocktails inside of liter-sized soda bottles to take with us on our quest for sand, we always travel prepared, Natalie’s an anthropologist, she knows these things.

We were in search for the sand we saw when we first arrived, but alas, the Pacific’s tide rose after our arrival. This did not stop me and Colin from stripping down to our skivvies and swimming into the bay. Tipsy hit us quick because even though we swam pretty far, both of us decided we didn’t have the distance we used to, and after an hour of treading water with little movement we decided to beach.

Back at the house Meagan cured the cobs of corn while I set up the pit and started barbequing: chicken, burgers, steak and pork. At that time Brenda and the dogs joined us, coincidence? I think not. The women sat on the porch and drank while relaxing to the sounds of rivers, oceans, dogs and country whispers from small town gossip. Colin and Brenda confabulated about Microsoft for a while and I cooked to the soundtrack of Nine Inch Nails. That night we drank, ate and stumbled over to “Bobby’s Place.”

“Bobby’s Place” was an eccentric little karaoke bar populated by locals that looked like they had just graduated high school three years ago. Everyone was young, aside from a few, and not one townie there was sober. The bar felt like it should have been in Hawaii or Key West and most of the dwellers seemed as if they were lifted off of alternate substances. Being a creative non-using crowd we sat back and people watched. Brenda sparked a vendetta with the obnoxious DJ and then did a great rendition of Patsy Klein. I witnessed a couple getting kicked out of the ladies bathroom; a man attempt to steal said DJ’s girlfriend; a David Lynch look-alike hit on my girlfriend and her best friend, and the class of Birch Bay High ’06 show me what a high school diploma really achieves.

The first night was brilliantly amazing and very inspirational. We went back to the “Crab Shack,” drank some more and said our good nights. The best part was at that point, I had nothing to think about… recently I have been having trouble sleeping because there has been so much going on in my mind. But in Birch Bay there were no agendas, no computer screens that demanded my attention, just a collection of some of my favorite people in an awesome house overlooking a fantastic beach. I was relaxing and it was only the first night.

That night set the tone for the rest of the vacation, things changed from here to there; instead of swimming we went burning (our version of tanning.) Instead of “Bobby’s” we stayed at home base and ate grilled chicken kabobs, had fabulous conversations and competed over intense matches of “Spoons.” We even managed to catch a couple episodes of Six Feet Under. On the last day we scored some “Little Caesars” next to Birch Bay’s water slide park. We were all very excited about discovering the “Pizza, Pizza” empire; I personally thought the place was extinct. I forgot how good Crazy Bread was…Mmm Mmm…delicious.

When we packed up to leave vacationland and return home we were advised to follow a check out sheet. At the end of the list it asked us to fill out “Crab Shack’s infamous guest book” and document some of the highlights from our vacation. I found it necessary to write the perfect entry that could do justice and immortalize our one of a kind trip, I wrote…

“I did not realize Mako sharks lived on this side of the Pacific Ocean or that they could go so shallow. We lost our favorite dog Pebbles. P.S. The couch was very comfortable and the “Fireplace” VHS helped us cope with the loss. Thank you for a trip we will never forget. – The Motley Crew, Barrow, AK”

I can’t wait to go back next year!
Tune in next time for Memorial Day Weekend 2010.

XOXOX Henry Darrow McComas

When I first got into the entertainment industry, I really had no idea what I was getting into. I had no idea, because I was a child. I was 12 years old. My parents were two years into a nasty divorce procedure that was going to last another five years. Before I turned 16 years old, I made the painful decision of moving in with my father, as my mother chose to leave the country and go back to Australia to live with her family. I was left with my little sister, and a father who worked 16 hour days, a man with little to no experience when it comes to raising two teenagers on his own.

It’s a long and complicated story spanning three continents, the details of which are ultimately unimportant. By the age of fifteen, I realized that while nobody can realistically state that they’re alone among the other six billion people who live on this rock called Earth, every individual is always alone to some degree. To which degree is irrelevant; it’s always at least a degree more than we’d like.  Those were not great times.

When I look back at my teenage years, I can see how much of the success in my life is tied to instincts I developed back then. Namely, my instincts of “performance”. By performance, I’m referring to the choices one makes in all aspects of life, choices that are passively conditioned by the external world, and actively manipulated by the people around us, ourselves included. I’ve always said a person is the combination of “who they are” and “who they want to be”, in some way or other. As a single individual, all one can interact with is the result of that combination, the evolution of it. All we can ever know about our neighbor is their performance of themselves.
In hindsight, I was at least twelve years old when I started performing.

So today I turn 25, and when I look at my “performance” thus far, I question which audience is more valuable: the spectators or the self? I would venture to say “the self”. Because at the end of the day, if the show must go on, I want to know I’m first and foremost communicating with my Self constructively. Only then can one aspire to what I consider the Holy Grail of the entertainment industry: communication with one’s spectators.

So there’s this book that I love called Save the Cat that I recommend to anyone who shows interest in writing. Even though it is directed towards screenwriters, a novelist could get a lot of knowledge out of its pages as well. This book is about telling stories and it articulates its points professionally and still manages to entertain. I consider it the driver’s manual to screenwriting.

You most likely know Save the Cat’s author, Blake Snyder, from my generation’s Disney hit, Blank Check.

I recently discovered Snyder’s new webpage, http://www.blakesnyder.com/

This site is a great tool for creating fresh scripts. The best part is the Forum where writers from around the world can share ideas, log lines, plots, and discuss films and genres. I encourage anyone with an interest in these subjects to check out the Forum and I insist that you read Save the Cat.

I am currently logged on the forum as crookedlakeprod206

In the What is it? section on the Fahrenheit 451 and Gattaca subject line, come discuss films.

I am almost certain that when time is victorious, I will be forced to stand at that isolated fork in the road. This will be a strange place that will seem new but feel familiar like I have seen the same set staged in old Kurosawa films. My body will lie on a hospital bed in an unmanned room or on the pavement of a grimy street corner during a thanksgiving parade. I will rest under snowflake-confetti and bloated character balloons. Maybe I will be slouched at the kitchen table with my relinquished head left down to marinate in a full bowl of lukewarm Campbell’s Classic Chicken Noodle Soup.  My soul, however, will post at the intersecting streets of destiny and judgment. At the crossroads I will see frames from my peculiar past flashing interactive cinescapes that document the highlighted events from activities I formerly lived. I will stand and stare down a narrow tunnel with an odd-little-bright-light guiding me to salvation. Memories will broadcast on the walls of the tunnel like the television screens depicted from Bradbury novels.

My flashback will undoubtedly project blue bars indicating the time I spent in front of render screens posting many a project. Perhaps I’ll see the sleepless nights I chose to stay awake to dedicate countless hours for shameless self-promotion on corporate sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter. I will see scattered cursors from endless script edits and constant email threads setting up tomorrow’s events. I’ll think, (while floating down the corridor) I could have commandeered a ship and become an experimental pirate captain that lead a crew to a life of exploration through vast oceans to discover brilliant civilizations. Instead of the boundless seconds I racked up sitting in front of a glowing computer monitor I could have been a musician. A magnificent minstrel that manifested mood-moving music built to ignite a revolution. I would have been a great cowboy with a nice set of spurs.

I imagine at that time I would start to squint from the incandescent beams that are now distractingly powerful and much closer. The beams would create some sort of organic light show produced by an unorthodox arithmetic from another world. I would say something; I would have to say something, I would feel obligated to deliver a concluding testament even if no one was there to listen. I would say something for my conscious to record, I would say.

“I created, you know? You bet your bottom dollar I did, take a look for yourself.” I would point at the televised walls passing me by as I gravitated down the tunnel.

“All those flashes from computers build up to something more powerful than the pasty monitor tan. Thank god!” I would pause and nervously look for omnipotent spectators that would object to my irresponsible use of their name and than I would continue.

“I created messages printed to thin strips of film, video tape; burned thoughts to DVD format. I uploaded opinions to the web, projected portraits onto theater screens, broadcast statements and backed it all up to terabyte sized hard drives. Not only did I create messages but I also bundled up those forms of media and stuffed them in a little glass bottle manufactured by a local soda company and tossed it. I threw that bottle into a body of water for the sea to take!” At this point my chest would start to swell with pride and a side of hysteria from the closing and now uncomfortably hot light.

“I detached myself from that dedicated bottle while it fought its way across the atlas and you know what? My message connected. My messages changed someone. I should have, would have, could have, but most importantly, I did. So go ahead and take me, it’s time to start living.” Then I would die.

The other day I received an email from Dr. Megan Brown. (Dr. Brown and Dr. Munn are geneticists that have been helping with the technical aspects of the “Phoenix Falling” script.) Dr. Munn and Brown work in outreach programs based out of the University of Washington. Both specialize in professional development workshops targeted to life science and genetics for elementary, middle, and high school teachers. They are inspirational teachers that understand the gears of their craft and the exchange of information. Dr. Brown invited me to a medical lecture at the University branch of the Seattle Library, I was more than excited to attend.

Info on the talk:
Wayne Katon, MD
“Depression: A Modern Day Epidemic”
Dr. Wayne Katon will describe the high prevalence of depression and the relationship to stressful life events, chronic medial conditions, and genetics. He’ll review research-proven medication and psychotherapy treatments, and present provocative data on depression’s effect on our health habits. How does depression play a role in obesity, smoking, and sedentary lifestyle, and the potential premature development of aging disorders? We are in the pre-production stages of a short film that touch on similar subjects so attending the lecture was very fruitful. Katon’s lecture was extremely intriguing. Many questions were asked and it was interesting for me to notice the diverse spread of people; different ages, backgrounds etc. The lecture rapidly became a seminar. It was the seminar that inspired me to share some of my notes with you.

The Impact
Katon’s recurring theme was the impact of depression and making sure the public recognizes the mental disorder as a chronic illness. “The impact depression has on the quality of life is greater than most chronic medical diseases.” Dr. Katon took this idea and pushed it further when he said former medical patients in his medical center stated; “depression is worse than my heart disease.” Or “I can live with the cancer but I don’t know if I can go on thinking this way.” Depression increases morbidity/mortality from co-existing medical conditions, decreases work productivity and often leads to suicide, the seventh leading cause of death in the US. Seventy percent of suicide victims within the United States have had mood disorders. What makes these statistics especially scary is that depression is often not recognized, taken seriously or treated. It’s a lot easier to pinpoint a broken leg and list the immediate concerns as opposed to an invisible mental disorder. Fifty percent of the patients who have been treated by general physicians stop medication within the first three months. Medication that is prescribed to patients are often not used at an appropriate dosage sufficient enough to provide full remission.

Katon would go on to say that depression is not only visible but it deserves proper care and needs to be treated as a chronic illness.

The Symptoms
Some Physical symptoms are:
o Appetite or weight change
o Low energy or fatigue
o Psychomotor retardation
o Multiple aches and pains

That coincides with the normal psychological symptoms that are often ignored – Low self-esteem, insecurities, Poor concentration, constant worries that often escalate other problems such as headaches, migraines, soar muscles etc.

Notes from other sources:
Bipolar Disorder aka Manic Depression has episodes of mania or hypomania along with depressive episodes. This in simplest terms can be called extreme mood swings. The psychological effects of depression can reverse creating feelings of exuberance, immortality and extreme confidence. Bipolar depression is a genetic disorder.

Recently, radical advances in Molecular Biology have provided techniques to enable highly sophisticated searches for the genes. In 1987 a group of investigators studied a small community resulting in research that proposed a link between Manic Depression and Chromosome 11. Katon explains that there are multiple genes affiliated with Bipolar disorder. There is a lot of work going on with serotonin transport genes and geneticists have picked out five or six parts of chromosomes that show as markers.

I think it is important to notice the bright side of things as well. Many classic creators such as Hemingway and Percy Shelly have demonstrated sure shot signs of bipolar depression. Franklin Roosevelt made much progress for America when he was feeding off of a manic state of mind. However, he secluded himself in ranches, state parks and farms during his depressed times. Every high brings the lowest low like the pendulum penned by a temperamental Edgar Allen Poe. Depression is a serious condition that can create magnificent things, but the will to create disappears if you lose your will to live.