RPG Storytime is at Last Coming Out

I started my series RPG Storytime on Youtube with the intention on doing one season of four different shows every year.  Each show would have six episodes per season.  Star Trek would be in the spring, D&D would be in the summer, Outbreak Undead would be in the fall, and Star Wars would be in the winter.

Somewhere deep down in me I knew this was unrealistic, but I hoped I would rein myself in enough to make such a schedule possible.

I didn't.  So it's taking longer to make the videos.  But something bigger has interrupted the schedule.

At a certain point I found myself writing one series while planning a game for another series while playing yet another and recording stuff for the other.  Added to that was another future series I'm planning on doing, and some other games I simply like to play.  It was getting confusing!

I also discovered that the Star Wars game, which I admittedly overdid a bit, has grown into many storylines, all of which need to be clear to the audience.  In fact, they all have multiple storylines, but the Star Wars one is the most complex.  I started realizing that if I told that in 6 episode chunks, no one would understand it.  I didn't even know what 6 episodes to play with one another.  Added to this was the fact that I wanted to get Outbreak Undead out of the way to make room for Deadlands.

So the decision was made to run entire series together, rather than 6 episode chunks over several seasons.  Outbreak Undead is first.  Its first episode back is today and will run until Halloween.  There will be a break while I finish the rest of those episodes, which will come out in December.  I'll have a couple other games, then I'll be running my Star Trek series until it reaches the end.

The one exception I'll have to this is Dungeons & Dragons.  I want to have some episodes come out when Game of Thrones plays, so I'll have a few episodes of it in the spring.  Then, once I've put out some other game videos I've meant to edit for a really long time, I'll begin releasing the huge epic of Star Wars, which will run until the end of the year, coinciding with episode 9 in theaters.

I'm planning on doing a separate channel that is only RPG Storytime which will play all the videos in order without interruption.  I'm not sure when I'll do that, but I won't start shows on that until the last ones are finished.

If you'd like to see Outbreak Undead from the beginning, you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpaiVtbtoQQ&list=PLJ55yyr7uUQCa9GdXrvG7dhrEsh30kDV_

Why Watching Online Movie Critics Makes Me Feel Better

Some of the most popular channels on Youtube are movie critics.  Their rise has come because of how much a producer could get with the smaller investment.  A content creator can tape him or herself in a room, or even just record their voice, and let the clips of the movies provide the higher production value.  Since these movies have their own marketing departments, audiences already know what they are.  And since Youtube worked out a fair use clause to utilize movie footage, they could air their reviews and even monetize them.

In some ways I feel guilty for watching so many of these shows rather than searching harder for more original content by people who are willing to take the risk and not ride on the coattails of premade products.  However, I've found that there's something very cathartic about watching the critics slam on bad movies.  There were obvious reasons for this, but as I got to thinking about it, there were more reasons for me that go beyond the usual viewer.

When my own scripts and projects got rejected, I was willing to accept that there could be something better.  Whatever they did choose would probably be a better film, something that I would aspire to with my own writing.  Whenever a film got accepted into a festival mine didn't get into, I thought the same thing.  Then I would watch them...

My discouragement came from the fact that there was nothing to look up to; nothing to aspire to.  What I had presented may not have been perfect, but it was certainly better than what they were choosing.  Added to my frustration was the fact that I was then told that no, I was wrong.  The production companies, studios, and film festivals were right in their choices.  After all, they were the ones in power.  They made more money than me.  Their careers were going great.  They're right and I'm wrong.

Channels like Nostalgia Critic, Lindsay Ellis, Red Letter Media, and Your Movie Sucks beg to differ.  In fact, they've specifically taken on some of the movies that I got rejected in favor of.  Being outside of the industry, they feel no need to conform, or kiss the ass of anyone "important."  They actually scoff at Hollywood's self-importance.

THAT is cathartic.  It may not give me a career or change Hollywood, but it definitely makes me feel better to see movies that are objectively bad and producers who believe they're right about everything get called out on their bullshit.

The Screenplay Formula and Why Movies are so Homogenized

You might hear a lot of people question why so many movies have such a similar tone; as if they're all of the same genre, or made by a few filmmakers with exactly the same tastes.  You may have noticed this yourself and added your voice to the plethora of bloggers, vloggers, and other fans who have expressed their frustrations at how all movies seem alike now.

This might seem a bit like the old man going, "it' ain't like the good ol' days," but there's a strong truth to it, and a reason for it.  As an example, when Star Wars and Star Trek movies came out in the late '70s and early '80s, there was a strong distinction between them.  You went to Star Wars and got an action packed adventure.  You went to Star Trek and got an intriguing mystery.  Even the action scenes were completely different.  In Star Wars you got fast cuts with small ships or individuals shooting rapid fire shots at one another.  In Star Trek you had longer wide shots of large ships laboriously turning on one another while their crews discussed the best way to win.

Neither style was better.  It was like going to a restaurant.  No one wants the same food every day.  If you want Mexican food, you go to a Mexican restaurant.  If you want Italian food, you go to an Italian restaurant.  You switch it up to have a variety.  Hell, even films made by the same director had very different feels.  Take for instance Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark versus Jaws.  Their tone and style was so different that they seem like they're made by completely different filmmakers.

But now you could replace the title of one film with another and hardly anyone would notice.  In computer gaming terms, it's like changing the skins.  So what caused this?  Well, there are numerous theories, and I'm sure many of them have truth as any subject of this magnitude will naturally have a lot of answers.  But I've come to believe there's one overall reason.

Screenplay formulas.

For decades, filmmakers and theorists have been trying to narrow down what makes a film "work."  Understanding this will cause filmmaking to be less risky, and solve psychological mysteries of taste.  So people set about writing books on screenwriting, observing what has been respected and loved in movies, and trying to capture the reason for the magic in them.  The result of all this research was a multitude of formulas.  Books from Adventures in the Screen Trade to The Foundations of Screenwriting to Story to the Writer's Journey all try to identify the genie in the bottle.

These books do provide a basis for good practices in screenwriting.  For instance, they remind a writer to not linger too long in their introduction of the characters and the situation.  They provide guidance on moving the plot forward, and ideas for creating dynamic story beats.  These are positive guidelines to follow.

However, somewhere along the way people started taking these books as rules rather than guidelines.  Rather than suggesting that the screenwriter shift into the second act before the audience gets bored, the screenwriter is now required to move onto the inciting incident by page 15, no exceptions!  Rather than the third act being a point at which the characters focus on their goals, it MUST follow the lowest point of their lives, where they were worse off than when they began the story, and the antagonists must now move in on them.  NO EXCEPTIONS!

Let's put 2001, A Space Odyssey to this test.  The opening of this movie, which is widely considered a classic, even by those who swear by the formulas, follows a group of apes, none of whom are main characters in the rest of the movie.  We get an entire story about them, and how they discover the monolith, which takes us into the main part of the story.  This story does involve the character getting into a worse and worse situation until things are really bad for him.  But he's still reaching his goal, and no conscious villain is closing in on him.  Ultimately, he doesn't have a dramatic ending where his heroic action saves or destroys the day.  He experiences something that speaks to the existence of humanity.

This movie fails the formula test in every way possible.  Hell, even Star Wars would fail as it doesn't introduce its main character until nearly 20 minutes into the film; a major taboo in screenwriting formulas.

But somewhere along the way, I believe in the mid to late '80s, the industry became populated by people who saw these formulas as indispensable.  This belief has permeated every nook and cranny of the industry.  Not only do producers believe in the formula, but so do their assistants, (who must if they want to keep a job,) and executives and agents and people who run film festivals, and people who decide what gets accepted into festivals.  In short, the gatekeepers to the industry all worship the formula, and anyone who does not conform is kept out.

And thus, films have become very homogenized because filmmakers are not allowed to do anything different if they want careers.

The Hypocrisy of the Academy Award Popular Film Category

This year the Academy Awards tried to add the popular film category; an attempt to appease viewers that ultimately got mocked and failed.  This category is widely seen to have been added because of two things: the popularity of Black Panther, a bandwagon upon which the Academy wanted to jump without actually considering it for best picture, and lower ratings of the show in general.

I'm actually not going to talk about whether or not Black Panther deserves to win, or even a nomination.  It was a very good movie, and it also had some glaring flaws.  Most of all, though, the whole subject of its merit brings out the absurdity of what a "best picture" is.  Can we really declare a single movie to be the best when there are so many genres and styles?  Isn't it like comparing apples and oranges to a degree?

But what I find particularly ludicrous is the hypocrisy that created this apparent need for a popular category.  The idea that something popular needs a separate category from best implies that if something makes a lot of money, it is inherently inferior to something that doesn't make a lot of money.  While certainly the motivation for wealth can be separate from the motivation for art, the idea that something that is popular can't be great is the very wrongful thinking that caused Hitchcock to never win a regular award, and why one eluded Spielberg for so long.

But what of you, Academy Awards?  Isn't the major reason why you're doing this so you keep your audience?  We all hear you every time you complain that the audience numbers are shrinking.  If the Academy Awards really believed that art and commerce are so separate, why are they so concerned with their own ratings?  It seems to me that if you're going to frown upon popular films that make money and smugly hold films that don't on a pedestal, then you shouldn't be so concerned about your own wealth.

But if ratings are so important, maybe stop looking down on those producers who are literally doing the exact same thing as you.

Relic Worlds 3, Part 3 Has Now Released

The final serialized part of Relic Worlds book 3 has finally released and is available on Amazon.

Over the past year I've been releasing parts of the latest Relic Worlds book as a serialized trilogy.  Part 1 was in April, part 2 was in July, and now is part 3.  It's also going to be released on other mediums over the next couple days, such as Drivethru, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and others through Smashwords.

As part of this whole push, I'm also going to be releasing the other books on these sites.  Many of them have been exclusively on Amazon, but I haven't noticed much better sales there, so I'm sending them out to everywhere else.

I'll be combining all three parts for a full release in January as an ebook and a paperback.

You can find everything at our website: www.relicworlds.com