Binnsy's Hovel

All is in readiness for the second day of filming of Unravel Me on Saturday. It was a mad dash to the finish line, with camera equipment availability and casting to be done up until yesterday afternoon!

But I’ll be picking up the camera, kindly being loaned to us by a friendly fellow production company, and the 35mm adapter on Friday, and all will be well.

Lastnight saw me finish my second short film in as many weeks. I’m just super-crazy-productive at the moment. I hope I can channel this sort of enthusiasm into my Ph.D. writing when it gets going in a month or two.

Work has seen me production managing a shoot in Pakistan, doing some great creative work for a rather large and well-known multi-national, and implementing a stack of new management systems, mainly JobBag. I’m also organising contracts for a stack of short films (not mine, sadly).

More soon.

Until next time…

Two of my projects have been submitted to Metro Screen’s Short Breaks program. I hope they do well – I’d love to see both of them made, and better still with someone else’s money!

I’m also submitting a couple of scripts to various other film festivals and grant schemes. In doing so, though, I’ve ignited this need in me to produce something simple. To write a short 5-10 minute script, set it in an easily filmable location (there are a couple around where I work), and film it in an afternoon. A simple edit, an upload to YouTube, maybe some film festival submissions, and the satisfaction of making something well-written and profound.

I caught the bus with a friend yesterday, and we got to talking about a few projects that we’ve seen or worked on, and it really drove home to me how the best stories – the ones that really stay with you – are the simplest. A simple premise, well-executed, can be the most effective narrative, and the most visionary.

I’m running away down south for a few days starting tomorrow. Expect simple things soon.

Until next time…

Here we are.

At WordPress.

This is genuinely strange. WordPress is very involved, but also quite simple. The layout, for now, will stay as it is now, but no doubt I’ll tinker over the coming weeks.

I played Mass Effect for a little while today, after updating the near-neolithic graphics drivers on my PC laptop. The game, for the most part, is very cinematic. I’ve yet to engage in any (no doubt RAM-chomping) combat or any in-depth sidequests, but I’m enjoying it thus far.

At present I’m backing up all the documents, music, pictures and such on the MacBook, in the hope of installing XP Pro via Bootcamp by the end of the day. Once that’s done, I’d love to install both Mass Effect and Vampire The Masquerade on there, just to see how they run on a nice new-ish Dual Core processor.

Anyway, nerdiness aside, I’ve almost completed writing the short film I’ll be submitting to Metro Screen in the hopes of getting a tiny but very valuable production grant. Channeling Abrams, I guess this would be my Cloverfield. I’ve mapped out the remaining 2-3 pages. I’ll let you know how I finish up.

Best get back into it. Writing, that is. Mass Effect I might hold off ’til I can get it cranked on the MacBook.

Until next time…

Well, I’m making the switch to WordPress… very soon, the Hovel will be hosted at www.danbinns.net/blog.

I’m not too sure how I feel about this. Blogger has been great, but I think I need to get rid of my old Google account – many aspects of it anyway – given that it’s been compromised in the past.

In other news I’m writing again – a few ideas inspired by television series I’ve been watching, and desperately wanting to cash in on something topical and/or bankable.

For now though, off to work I go (full time at the production house – very, very cool). Will update when WordPress goes live.

Until next time…

There’s been much talk at various blogs (well, mainly one) about the best kind of space for a writer. The consensus, as it should be, is that everyone is different, and inspired by different things, and work better in different environments.

For mine, I’ve written on planes, on trains, on the side of the road, in bed, on the floor, on the toilet, at work, on holiday and any other kind of scenario that can be imagined.

My ideal time for writing – my best writing, anyway – is between 11pm and 3am. Once, during this time, I wrote over 15000 words. Another time, I wrote almost an entire feature script.

Different things inspire me – music, good wine, decent food, a face spotted on the bus, a moment glimpsed from afar.

I guess these things, for all writers, are in a state of flux, and what works perfectly one day may cause ideas to fizzle up and die the next.

Do what works in the moment. And don’t argue with or get fed up with yourself when nothing works.

Until next time…

Well, this week I’ve managed – somehow – to find time to attend various events at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, around work and some personal stuff that cropped up at the last minute. The events I went to were diverse, and I gleaned many fascinating insights into the craft and some of its practitioners.

What I found perhaps most interesting, though, was the writing festival ‘aura’. I guess this can best be described as a combination of the general atmosphere, the people and the intellectual air of the place. You have many of your standard holier-than-thou artiste types – those who think that the best way to reach your inner writing soul is to be an aloof prick to all but yourself. You’ve got your 55-and-overs who come along because they love reading and want to see their favourite authors speak – mostly they’re fine but occasionally you’ll get a pair of 45-60-year-olds who insist on conspicuously nodding or ‘mmm’-ing their approval or assent to every seemingly valid point the speaker makes. What fun.

The writer’s gait is an interesting aspect of the festival too. The odd writer, usually middle-aged, perhaps into early old age, will have developed a kind of lumbering almost-waddle, carefully nurtured by years of sitting at desks or tables surrounded by notes or feverishly, desperately glaring at a blinking cursor or empty page sitting ready in a typewriter, sipping whatever is close at hand and more alcoholic than water, eating microwave meals straight from the microwave. And in contrast you have the young, fit, cool writer type fresh from uni or SoHo – you can usually never tell which.

Overall, though, at writers’ festivals there’s a creative energy that permeates the atmosphere and the spirit, punctuated by an air of superiority that at times can be bitter, at other times selfishly satisfying to be a part of. I felt like I fit in there, and that’s a nice feeling.

I went to a few talks, and heard from David Dale, Hugh Mackay (completely by accident; I went to the wrong talk!), Catherine Therese, Jennifer Mills, Gary Bryson, Alex Ross and Graeme Blundell. I ended up buying books by Bryson and Blundell – Turtle and A Life In Parts, respectively – both signed by the authors, with each of whom I was able to have a lovely, albeit brief chat, after their talks.

I guess there’s something about hearing an author speak about their work, or read some of their own work, that inspires you to investigate further, to make a purchase. And I think that goes beyond hearing them discuss story or method, inspirations and the like. I guess it’s that when you read their work, you can almost hear their actual voice in your head, and that can convey so much gravitas and meaning that would otherwise be lost on you, or at least remain undiscovered. This is particularly true of Gary Bryson for me, who I’d never heard of before. Turtle is his debut novel, and it is a very dark, grim story that I would probably never have picked up had I not heard him read some of it in his slightly Australianised Scottish brogue. Hearing it in that accent made it darkly funny, ironic and witty, but also deeply melancholy. So it was that I was compelled to purchase. Odd indeed.

The Writers’ Festival in Sydney is usually great, but it was most grand this year. Bring on 2010!

Until next time…

I had a good day at uni today. Look, I’d probably even go so far as to say today was a great day. Not the least of which because a night at the Ezy doesn’t have to follow it. Basically I had to do a presentation on an article by the late Michelle Kendrick, interpreting it pretty much however I wanted, which was lucky, but I did some pretty wild interpretation.

Where the onus of the piece was on the advantages of printed text (books etc) against those of hypertext (archaic 1990s term for websites), I took it in a new direction, bringing in modernism, postmodernism and Romanticism and fashioning my own model of the contemporary technologised individual, the Hypermodernist Gentleman.

This model is based on the idea of the hypertextual author, one who is disembodied from his work due to its networked, intangible, virtual nature. Add to this a healthy dose of consumerism and tech savvy, and you have the guy.

It was a great thing to make people laugh and to bring in all sorts of random stuff, such as Coleridge and Hamlet, to make my point. It probably wasn’t quite what my tutor expected, but it generated a healthy discussion, so she can’t complain!

I’ll be developing the idea of the Hyper-Modern Gentleman further for the 2000 word exegesis due in next week, so no doubt I’ll keep you up to speed with my thoughts and ideas as this happens.

Until next time…

Q: So, Dan, a number of people in the know say that your blog has been abandoned, that you’ve moved on to further your writing and directing career, leaving dozens of loyal readers and newcomers in the lurch. How do you respond?

A: Ha! I say, good sir, that you are mistaken. To pillage and slightly alter a blog post by the esteemed Keith Gessen, this blog isn’t dead until I am paid to write a regular column in The Monthly or The Bulletin.

Q: Touche. So what have you been up to of late?

A: Work, uni and more work. Video Ezy’s still around, still fun, despite countless bogans and the odd bout of verbal abuse; free DVD hires help me put up with the shit. Onion Media is flat out with a bunch of projects which I’m pretty heavily involved in where I can be. Uni’s very busy – still in pre-production for my upcoming political satire; my role as producer on a friend’s war mini-epic is now done as principal photography is complete, now he’s madly editing and VFX-ing. I’m also in the middle of composing an essay on media literacy, which is quite painful. And I have to come up with a thesis for next year by mid-October. Tops.

Q: Have you had any spare time to fill, and if so, what have you been doing to fill it?

A: I just recently acquired The Force Unleashed for both Wii and DS, so I’ve been playing the hell out of that. I’m presently in Melbourne for a few days’ R&R, though, so I’m catching up on reading – Keith Gessen’s All The Sad Young Literary Men was begun on my last trip down two months ago, and remains unfinished, so my goal is to finish that by the flight home on Friday. I’ve also been watching Aaron Sorkin’s most recent attempt at TV, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, which is naturally brilliant, despite the fact it flopped and died after a single season. But for now I’m just enjoying the city and the rest and doing as little as I can, trying to gather my thoughts and write as much as possible.

Q: Well, I guess that’s about it. When can we expect another post?

A: As soon as possible, I promise. Will update you on The Writers in the next few weeks, for sure.

Q: Thanks for your time!

A: No problem; the Hovel will always feel like home.

Q: You’d better sign off…

A: Oh right, yeah.

Until next time…

This is a reminder to myself more than anything that tomorrow I must go unto the great halls of Aldi Supermarkets, the office of postage, and the Shop of Reject. A glorious and hitherto unsurpassed day of thrills and enjoyments, to be sure.

Otherwise I’ve been mucking around a lot with the limited version of the Spore Creature Creator. More on that soon. For now, I must shower for I am stinky post-work. I must also partake of food.

Afterwards I think I shall write. Or keep going with the West Wing. Or watch a movie. Oh zegads. The possibilities are, of course, endless.

Until next time…

I’d like to direct your attention today to a number of fictional characters. For your convenience to make this easier I’ve compiled said characters into what’s commonly known as a ‘list’. Here is said list:

A short list, but an intriguing and most well-constructed one nevertheless.

My subject today is that of self-destructive characters, of which the four aforementioned are indeed. Very much so.

Take the first. Dr Holmes, a character – indeed, the titular character – of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s series of stories containing and detailing his exploits. Holmes is a brilliant and unequalled detective. His friend and colleague, Dr Watson, as well as the authorities, are generally at a loss to explain his spectacular expertise and knack for deducing the undeducible. Holmes is amazing, there can be no doubt whatsoever. But he is also terribly flawed. He is messy, neurotic, has fits of rage and snappiness. He is also addicted to heroin and cocaine. Perhaps the greatest screen adaptation of the character I’ve seen was that of Rupert Everett, who, despite being part of a terrible contemporarily-written Holmes tale, played the character perfectly.

The second self-destructive personality I’ve included is perhaps the greatest known in the entire canon of British literature – Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, from Shakespeare’s thus-titled play. ‘Hamlet’ is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest work, and as a character study is a piece unrivalled. This is bemusing and surprising considering Shakespeare was not unlike any other screenwriter today – writing for the masses, trying to make a buck here and there. However, his creation of the character Hamlet was nothing short of genius. Hamlet, a Danish high-flyer, and heir apparent to the throne when his father, the king, dies, his dreams are shattered when, no sooner has the King hit the deck than his mother is in bed with his uncle, Claudius, who therefore assumes the monarchy. Hamlet is naturally quite perturbed by all of this, and his perturberance is intensified when his ex-king father appears to him as an apparition and tells him that he was topped by Claudius. Oh dear. But anyway. The story is told with such depth, and Hamlet’s transformation – from normal everyday human being to lunatic (faux or for real is one of the biggest questions in literary discussion) to the greatest procrasinator the world has ever known – is amazing to behold.

Third on the list is a modern Sherlock Holmes. A brilliant doctor who is, like Holmes, drug-addled and a general pain in the ass to be around. I speak of the incomparable Dr Gregory House. Played with a comedic timing only the British can achieve, Hugh Laurie’s misanthropic medical detective cracks the cases no one else can, in a way only he could. Bedside manner is cast aside, an obstacle to brilliance, and Dr House is a thorn in the side of his team and his superiors. But the fact of the matter is that he saves lives. In early season three, which I’m just consuming as we speak, House regains the functions of his leg, and is able to run and gym and skateboard and do things he hasn’t done for years. His misanthropy is also affected, and, much to the shock of his colleagues, he’s nice to people. He also drops the painkillers. This is an interesting twist to the plot, as the people around him have no idea how to react. Used to being ribbed, jibed, poked, prodded and insulted by a dry-witted genius, they’re not quite sure how to take the new and improved House. Makes one wonder how people would have interpreted Hamlet had he refrained from killing his uncle and led a life of decency and honour – accepting his place on the throne when it was rightfully his.

The final character I wish to analyse is that of Hank Moody, from the TV series Californication. Hank is a loose cannon, a wild duck, and any other metaphor for destructive personality you can muster. He’s a pain in the ass to everyone around him. He’s drunk 20 of 24 hours in the day, he uses drugs semi-regularly, and his sexual misadventures are the stuff of myth. His partner Karen took their daughter away and is now with another man, whom Hank generally despises. Therefore you could say he has all the perfect material to write his next bestseller. But because of his lifestyle, he has chronic writers’ block. And the one good thing he does finish is stolen by the daughter of his partner’s new fiance, who is about to release it in her own name. But despite all this, Hank, somewhere deep down, is a decent human being. He loves his daughter more than anything else in the world, and wants another chance with Karen. I think all Hank wants is acceptance. He finds it in a glass of scotch or in the arms of a willing woman – something or someone that can’t argue with, despise or despair of him.

So with the exception of Hamlet, we have three self-destructive personalities who do what they do for the right reasons. Sherlock Holmes seeks to bring justice to evildoers and closure to the families they’ve harmed; Dr House wants to save lives; Moody wants to get back on his feet so he can win back his family.

I guess there’s a correlation between having noble intentions and having completely antithetical lifestyles; i.e. lifestyles that are the complete opposite to the ideal for your goals in life. I’ve got an idea festering for just such a character, hence I felt the need for this rumination.

Best get going on it then.

Until next time…