I miss the stage. I used to love performing. I still feel at home just standing on a stage. When standing on a stage, my instinct is not to go "oh my god, people are looking at me" but to go "I need to do something". For too long I have let fear take over that rush I get when I am actually on stage. That self doubt that crept in there when I was dealing with abusive situations and difficult people has made it hard to get back to a place where a stage is a stage, and what matters is the performance, not the person. Performing is fun. It is a huge adrenaline rush. Yes, for me performing is a selfish thing. I like to give people a good show, but the rush you get when you have been practicing hard, and the performance is going well, and there is good energy coming from the audience, and you feel it and it feeds your energy, and you finish with a huge applause and this symbiotic energy that doesn't go away for hours, sometimes days. It is the best kind of high. It was the kind of high I thrived on in high school.
So, remember a while back when I was posting about Chris Hardwick and the RL-RPG thing? No? Not surprised. It has been ages since I have posted about it. I haven't stopped working on it, but I really haven't been talking about it much either. One of the goals I set for myself was to write and learn how to perform as a storyteller. I have spent a lot of time listening to other storytellers and analyzing their styles. I have worked on writing out several stories. Now I have decided to move on to the next step. I have contacted Kevin Allison from the Risk! Podcast to negotiate one-on-one sessions. The price isn't too bad. I have decided I can afford 2 sessions a month. That will give me time to polish between sessions. Now that I have started the processes, I am a tad freaked out. This shit just wandered into real territory. I will be investing money into getting better at it. Someone else will be listening to my story and telling me what they think. I can no longer hide safely behind my computer, wondering if I could have been or what I could have done. I will have to shove myself out of my comfort zone, out of the little self-coddling cacoon of safety I created for myself while I was feeling it out. I will have to put aside my feelings of self doubt. I will have to stop fearing the possibility I will fail hard, and know that when I fail hard I will have someone to help keep me from failing so hard the next time. it is scary and exciting all at the same time.
I miss the stage. I used to love performing. I still feel at home just standing on a stage. When standing on a stage, my instinct is not to go "oh my god, people are looking at me" but to go "I need to do something". For too long I have let fear take over that rush I get when I am actually on stage. That self doubt that crept in there when I was dealing with abusive situations and difficult people has made it hard to get back to a place where a stage is a stage, and what matters is the performance, not the person. Performing is fun. It is a huge adrenaline rush. Yes, for me performing is a selfish thing. I like to give people a good show, but the rush you get when you have been practicing hard, and the performance is going well, and there is good energy coming from the audience, and you feel it and it feeds your energy, and you finish with a huge applause and this symbiotic energy that doesn't go away for hours, sometimes days. It is the best kind of high. It was the kind of high I thrived on in high school.
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So it has been a while. Again. It is surprising how fast time gets away from me when I am working at an actual job. I haven't done much more than last post. I have pulled out my stop mo stuff and gone through it. I need to figure out what I need for sets and props and start building. I need to do a run to Eugene Toy and Hobby and stock back up on balsa wood. I also need to decide how I am going to do foliage for the forrest. Am I going to try to do it with real plants, fake plats that look real, or plnt-ish representations. I think the reason I havebeen putting it off is I have an idea that may change how I am currently doing my stop mo. I think I may have posted about it before. I want to research and play around with the idea of stabilizing marionettes to use as my stop mo puppets. They would be much larger, so I would have to look for and/or make larger sets, furniture and props. it would be easier to find what I need, though.
Last night a friend and I went thrifting and I found a set of knitting hoops for $5. Not a bad buy, considering they are usually $30-$40 for a set like that. It was missing one hoop, but it did have the hooks and finishing needle. so now while I sit and watch my shows I have something new to play with. I plan on trying to make myself a sweater or something. At this point I am just palying around with them and learning how they work. they seem simple and straightforward enough. It looks like they make a very loose knit, though. I may have to see if I can get it to tighten up somehow. I am currently sitting at a cafe waiting for a friend to come join me for sodas, beer and brownies and ice cream. I probably should post this before she gets here. I will leave you with a pic of the 1959 Jewish cook book I found at the thrift store. Rosh Hashana is coming up, and it has some excellent recipes. I am happy withthat find. Another day of writing. I am housesitting this weekend starting last night, so I thought this would be a great weekend to sequester myself with my computer and write. I have a lot of writing to do. However, now I am here I am having a hard time motivating myself to get started. It's not like I don't want to write. I love writing. As hard as it is, and even with how much I struggle with getting it just right, I love it. This whole frustrating, maddening, wonderful process I call stop motion is love worthy. I admit, no job I have ever had has made me as happy. Or as frustrated. And yet, in spite of the frustration, I still want to do it. I have not the feeling of "Fuck it!" and the urge to walk away, kicking everyone in face as I do so. The frustration does not make me mad. As much as I want to have an income, after experiencing this, I don't want to go back to crappy day-to-day stuff. I am still looking and will take what I can get, but I am realizing more and more that I need to get my butt in gear and figure out a way to make THIS my job. I need to find someone who can help me figure out what is crap and what is good, so I can improve faster.
I feel stupid just figuring out what I want to be when I grow up at age 37. I wish I had figured my life out sooner. Looking back on my life, I don't think I could have. I went from one abusive situation to another. I wasted my 20's on an abusive man who wasn't worth my time, and wasted most of my 30's getting away from the shit he lay on me. Only now am I realizing what I can do, and what makes me happy. Only now can I look at what I do and see the good as well as the bad. I guess I am getting to a point in my life where I really am getting too old for other people's shit, and their negativity no longer completely shuts me down. Granted, I have a long way to go before the fear monster sitting on my shoulder dies. He may never die completely. But it feels good to look back on something I made, even if there are flaws that need to be corrected, and be excited and happy with what I see. It feels good to make myself laugh. It makes me feel like running around yelling "Look what I did!" like a five year old. Actually, I take that back. I am not just discovering now what I want to be when I grow up. I am only now rediscovering what I wanted to be from a young age. When I was in elementary school I used to write little stories all the time. I used to amuse my teachers with them. One of them even encouraged me to submit one of my stories to the district wide writer's conference. Somewhere there is a published volume of elementary school kid's stories from 1984, and one of mine is in there. I believe it was a story about a witch. I LOVED melodramas, and as an extension British pantos. One summer I wrote a melodrama, and I roped my siblings and my cousins into performing it for all the adults. I think I was 10 at the time. When I was a teenager I wrote books to take with me babysitting. I had what I called my babysitting bag. I found that although kids had books and toys and videos at their houses, usually they had played them all to death and didn't really want to do any of that stuff. So in my bag I put a bag of chocolate chips with which to make cookies, a jump rope, paper and colored pencils, dress up clothes and cheap McDonald's toys. And, of course books. My mom wouldn't let me take our books out of the house, so I wrote my own and my best friend illustrated them. We made several for my bag and several for hers. So what happened? Several things. There are circumstances I don't want to bore you with, but mainly the end result was me giving up on myself. I honestly thought that the best I could do was be someone's wife and raise kids. (The ironic thing is I still don't have any kids) That I was too stupid and incompetent to be creative. That my ideas were cliche and stupid. And it has just taken me this long to wade through all the bullshit and realize what I have known all along.....that I can do this, and whether or not I am good enough at it NOW for people to pay me for it, it makes me happy. "It" being stop motion animation, storytelling, writing, comedy....anything and everything that I have been working on the last year to keep myself sane. Because in the end, all THAT, is what makes me happy and sane. Well, look at that. I think I just knocked my motivation loose. See ya either when the weekend is over or when I hit another rough patch. Enjoy your weekend. :) BIG SIGH. I think I have a good draft of my first episode. For the series I am going to do. I am kind of excited. This is fun. There is probably a lot that needs to be done to modify it, but I like it how it is. I would love to have people read it and give me feedback, but I am not ready to make it public for everyone. If you want to read it and give me your opinion, go to the contact form and send me a request. I will send you the private link to it and you can let me know how bad it stinks.
As is evidenced by my fragmented sentences and half formed ideas, my brain is fried. It has been fun, but a challenging fun. I know what I want to do for the second episode already, so tomorrow will be fleshing out episode 2. It would be nice if I could finish it tomorrow, but I don't see that happening. Sometimes it takes me longer than I like to get me into writing mode. I have to get past the "Oh my god what if it blows" wall that my brain throws up every time I try to write. I am hoping the more I do this the easier it will get to tear that wall down and start something. The fact that I got through it, whether it is trash or treasure, makes me so happy at this moment. Ok, this post is because I am stuck and I need to kick myself out of my stuck spot.
For some reason, whenever I write, the place I always get stuck is the names. I may put too much emphasis on the importance of names in fiction. However I feel that the right name tells the audience the right things about your character. I also have an affinity for names that are clever double meanings, tells you something specific but covertly about the character's personality, or has obscure ties to something in the storyline. It doesn't help that I am a fan of such authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Gaiman. Tolkien was a linguist, and used words and names accordingly. In American Gods, the king of character development Neil Gaiman uses names to help tell the story. He uses them to obscure the identities of the gods, and uses the ambiguous name Shadow for the main character to emphasize his ambiguous roots and the fact he is basically lost at sea after the death of his wife and release from prison. As he learns more about himself and his origins, we learn more about his name. In The Graveyard Book he uses names like Miss Lupescu for the Hound of God or werewolf. The ghouls, who have obviously lost who they were before they became ghouls, receive names that are obviously ridiculously not theirs. So, those are all serious fiction. They are well written novels by talented writers. Why should I have such a hang up on names? It would be really easy to write the whole thing then add in names afterwards. For me, though, the names will help me A. keep track of the characters and B. keep each character's, um, character in mind so I don't have them doing things out of character. That annoys me the most about poorly written fiction. Once you establish your character, you had better give me a good reason why that character does something that is outside the already established parameters. Just having them do something because it pushes the story forward or because you have written yourself into a corner and need a magic story bandaid takes me right out of the willing suspension of disbelief. You may be writing about invisible aliens attacking talking animals in anti gravity boots, but what will make me call bullshit is an action or bit of dialog that doesn't fit. It is jarring. I equate it to that moment in the Wily E. Coyote cartoons after he has walked off the edge of the cliff. At the beginning he stays up in the air, because he hasn't realized that the ground is no longer underneath him. The moment he starts falling is the moment he realizes he should be falling. Now if you give a good reason for this out of character action and/or dialog, that is something else. In the Hobbit, Bilbo does a ton of things that are way outside his established character. However we also see how he is struggling with it, and he doesn't do anything completely out of character from the beginning. He doesn't charge into the encampment of trolls brandishing his sword and shouting. He considers his precarious position with the dwarves, and how the uncharacteristic action of stealing the trolls pouch would aid in establishing his position with the dwarves. Both actions are out of character, but one illustrates his evolution into doing the out-of-character action. But I digress. My point is that establishing the correct names from the beginning helps me to keep my characters in character. It helps to remind me of what I had in mind for them in the first place and not make that jarring mistake. Should I even care about this if I am just writing a silly little stop motion video? Am I being over conscientious? What's in a name? Everything. I think I have successfully kicked myself out of the stuck spot. Now that I have articulated my reasoning I can now just do instead of agonize. Thanks for the help. I am very good at learning lyrics to songs. I pride myself on how fast I can learn them. My mom was music teacher and had me performing from the age of 3, so I guess after this many years it just comes naturally to me. Now I forget them if I have to perform in front of someone, anyone, but generally I am good at learning them.
Then today, my ego was crushed. I was listening to No Rain by Blind Melon. Whether or not you like the song, it was one of the iconic songs of my high school years. It came out when I was a senior, and just learning how to tell my mom to fuck off when it came to her control over what I listened to. I LOVE the song. That was the year I finally burst out of my music plastic bubble and learned about other types of music. Other than classical, 40's, 50's rock, 60's rock and folk, and of course humor (Weird Al and Dr. Demento will always have a place in my heart). So anyway, I was listening along, but this time I did not sing with it as usual. I was typing, so I just listened while I was typing. When it got to the chorus, such as it is, I finally HEARD the lyrics for the first time in nearly 20 years. I stopped typing and rewound it (well, placed the cursor at a previous point. Still stuck in the 90's). I listened again. Wow. The words that I had taken for granted for nearly 20 years were wrong. He was singing it wrong. I couldn't have learned it wrong. So I went backwards again. Nope, I was WRONG. You see, I used to see this as an asshole slacker song. This guy wanted to sit around all day doing nothing, expecting his woman to go out and support him, AND he wanted her to let him cheat on her. Asshole slacker. Not really that surprising, considering some of the other songs other groups were doing. The words I heard are "I just want someone to say to me, oh oh oh oh, I'll always be there when you wake, yea ah ah ah./You know I'd like to keep my cheating strategy yeah yeah/ So just stay with me and I'll have it made" Sounds pretty douchy, right? Well, turns out the lyrics are mostly the same, except that middle line is "You know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today". That totally changes the song. Completely takes the asshole right out of it. Then I started thinking.....maybe I am not as good as I thought about learning lyrics. Maybe I am just a schmoo who doesn't know anything. One of my few talents? Gone. I don't dare go through and find out what else I have misheard. I know of only one other in my entire life. That was Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I used to think it was Dirty Me and the Dunder Chief. What the hell, they were high anyway. Didn't need to make sense. but this? He wasn't a tad clearer in his enunciation. Not much, but still. And when I read the Bloggess's post on this very topic I think a month ago I was SO smug. I only had one. Ha ha losers. She is so funny. But now I am beginning to doubt myself. My abilities as a lyric memorizer...are they false? Have I become one of those douches who thinks everything they do is awesome, even when it is total shit? That is the question. My generation tends to be very smug. When I started school they were doing the "EVERYONE gets first place because we want everyone to feel good about themselves" method of teaching. The problem with that is we didn't really learn the difference between shitty work and quality work. We were raised to think that no matter what we did, it was the AWESOMEST THING EVAR!!. It has annoyed me over the years how entitled and full of themselves so many people my age are. It annoyed me way back in high school. I vowed never to become like them. Granted, there are a few that aren't. But still, DON'T want to be one. Ya know, I like my version of the song better. I like the douchy statement. I am going to keep singing it my way. There is a difference between being bad at something, and being stubborn. As my mom used to stay, I choose to be stubborn. I know it's wrong, but I don't care. That isn't the same, is it? I finally stopped playing around and just sat down and wrote. It is amazing how fast it goes when you stop procrastinating and just do it. There are 6 short scenes, 8 pages of dialog, so approximately 7-8 minutes of video.
I didn't name the characters, just put in a placeholders for the names. I did put some action in, but not much. My plan now is to break down each scene into what I would like to actually see in the scenes. Then I will decide approximately how long I want each scene to be, and maybe get some better descriptions written down for the voice actors. And, well, name the characters. Then I get to look for voice actors. The way it is written now I will need 3 girls and 1 guy or 2 girls and 2 guys. I am kind of excited. It is coming together. This is fun, when I actually stop getting in my own way. The last scene is based on a comment I made on a The Bloggess blog post. She was talking about taxidermied squirrels. She mentioned a squirrel phone cover. My comment was about using that to scare off bad dates. And now that concept will be personified in stop motion form. I have no idea how I will make it happen, but I will. I am excited about the challenge. I also have looked around at other video contests. I am considering finding one to work towards. I don't know. Maybe I should wait and see how the Douglas Adams contest goes. I think if I start doing video contests on a regular basis I need to learn how to make my own puppets. I can't just keep submitting the same toys to a bunch of different contests. Maybe I will take a little time out today to play with that concept. I have armature wire. I don't have a history of being good at sculpting though. Frankly, I am shit at it. But I can build them up with foam and figure out something else for the heads. Maybe I will make one for each and just paper mouths with different positions to approximate dialog. I don't know. SIGH (but a happy one) So I was taking a break from scriptwriting and I found this little beauty: AAA! I SO need this, or something similar. It also comes with an arm to hold a camera instead of an iPhone. $700. Ouch. But if I replaced the bottom pad with a metal one for anchoring and the iPhone arm for one that holds an actual camera it would TOTALLY help my animation efforts. I bet I could make something similar that would work. If I had money, tools, materials, etc. I throw my envy in this direction. One of my biggest problems is getting the damn camera to sit still. Of course, buying a camera that would allow me to trigger it remotely would also be tremendously helpful. Might as well throw that in as long as we are dreaming.
On another note, there are an alarmingly low number of podcasts out there talking about stop motion. By "alarmingly low" I mean none that I can find that have posted anything after December 2010. I have been looking for something like that to listen to while I am writing. No such luck. Lots of anime podcasts, several animation fan podcasts, a few animation mechanics/business podcasts, but none dedicated to stop motion. And most of those don't have any episodes where they are actually talking about stop motion. I realize this obsession of mine is a very narrow niche, but it can't be that narrow. I mean, there are many very popular stop mo movies out there. Shaun the Sheep's Facebook page has over a million followers. It is a difficult medium to work in, but there people out there doing it. Frankenweenie is about to come out, which is another Tim Burton stop mo. (Yes, I am excited.) I suppose I am not really bitching about it, just making a sad panda observation. Ok, back to writing. I hope to have scripts finished by Monday and start blocking them out. OH...and in case you haven't had a chance to, go see my latest video at the Douglas Adams Tribute video contest. You can vote for it by number of bookmarks under the video. Now I am really back to writing. Until I get distracted again. :) |
AuthorEleanor...nerd, musician, stop motion animator, techy, crafty. But not in the crafty crafty way...I just like making things. You can find me on Twitch & Twitter @TeaWeaselStopMO & Tiktok. If you feel like contributing to help me upgrade equipment or pay for building supplies, feel free to click this button. Anything you contribute is appreciated muchly.
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