I  my voice actors.
They're easy to work with and, although they are amateurs, get almost everything to my satisfaction on the first take. I can't thank them 
enough for their incredible generosity in helping my stories come alive.

My first story, a game machinima, has no actors voices and I had to tell the story in written dialog. (I admit to being scared of use my own voice at the time.)
Luckily, I had an extensive library of period background voices available from the game which I was able to place in the soundtrack to add atmosphere.
I don't mind subtitles as I watch a fair number of foreign movies. [Mostly Chinese Kung-Fu flicks. ]

pete





http://www.youtube.com/user/peterblood50?feature=mhee

“Respectingcausalities is kind of a basis in any story telling. I certainly wouldn't reador like any story that does not respect that.” Grabiller.

@grabiller

I agree, of course; how could anyone disagree?

Thereason I looked a little askance at the ‘and then, because of that’ flow of events in a screenplay or in any other work of fiction is that this simple pattern seems to me to run contrary to the contemporary experience of life and to the contemporary pattern of storytelling.

I suggest we experience our lives and tell our stories more as a mosaic of unconnected events that we contrive to parallel, compare and contrast, consider as metaphors and so on, in an effort to extract meaning. Consider the A,B and C plotline structure so favoured by continuing dramas. At the transfer points when the writer switches from A to B surely we are not at that moment saying ‘and because of that’? There is IMHOno ’and because of that’ about ‘Meanwhile back at the ranch’.

William Goldman of ‘Adventures in the Screen Trade’ tells of an incident where he, ascreenwriter, and another man, a producer, were driving along the freeway talking over the sound from the car radio when there was a coincidental radio announcement that cast a light on the subject of their discussion. The two men simultaneously turned towards one another and each said ‘A Movie Moment!’

The A,B and C braid structure can interweave in a craftsmanlike fashion to add value to stories that would otherwise be too simple to entertain adults. I am not knocking simple stories. They have their place, especially, I suggest, in short form narratives.

Thank  you for the ‘no offense’, and I assure you no offense was taken. I am happy to discuss these subjects with those who have clearly thought deeply about them. I respect their opinions  and do not expect them to coincide with mine.I hope we can all learn from one another.

 

 

Causality allows you to do exactly that. Causality helps you to enforce the causalities *you* create, it does not enforce any story structure or pattern, this is what you don't understand - or rather what I failed to clearly explain, my fault.

You can do A, B, C, you can do A to Z if you want and cross cut anywhere you want. But *this because of that* remains valid, not in terms of *actions* but in terms of *status*. In the case of A, B, C, you create one *Arc* or a chain of *Arcs* for each plotline, and you enforce consistency internally in each plotline  (and even internally to each plotline you may decide to add rules between story points or not, you can have both, it's all up to you), but then you are free to cross cut between A and B and C anytime you want (unless you added rules between A and B or C and this is where it becomes very helpful). You can even brake all the rules of storytelling if you want it to, but at least, with this tool, you will do so knowing you are doing it, on purpose, and not because you forgot something.

I'm not trying to sell you Causality, I'm just trying to encourage you to have a second and better look at it - free of the writing patterns tunnel vision issue you seems to have developed towards this tool - because you may have missed something otherwise you may have found, in fact, very useful, interesting and powerful.

Sorry for insisting : ) I'm not a Causality evangelist, but what bothers me is that currently you are not seeing Causality as it really is and you are developing a false opinion about it that may spread over the forum or elsewhere over the Internet and I found that very unfair, so I'm trying to "restore the truth* ; )

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Hi grabiller

Thanks for that.

What can I say? You may well be right and I should take another look at Causality.

I do admit being addicted to the braid of A, B and C, and I was not aware that there was any way to link the strands other than storyboarding.

I'll see how it goes.

Regards

I went through the Causality tutorials yesterday and I can see it being very helpful for structuring a story. It indeed allows you to become very sophisticated if you so choose. What I like is the visualization, which I think would help me.

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I was going to try to pull this into the "Structure" thread, but will reply here...

A couple comments based on some recent posts in this thread:

a) Neither software (such as Causality) nor using a structure to the story forces you to write from beginning to end in a linear fashion.  You can still jump around to any part of your story as inspiration hits.  The tools just help ensure you don't have missing things or "flow" issues.

b) The "Because of that..." approach doesn't need to be used like a club on your audience's heads.  The point is that, in addition to entertainment, things should be in the story to move it forward, and major events in the story should be a "natural" result of what's happened before.  Random or "Dues ex machine" (god from the machine) events are too-often the result from weak writing.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

So much great discussion here. I'll need to gather my thoughts before jumping into the pool. But... a FRIGGIN BILL PLYMPTON reference!  Awesome!!! Id urge fellow forum members to do yourself a favor and youtube his animations if you're unfamiliar with his work. They’re really entertaining and in a style pretty much his own. I had no idea this book existed. Huge fan of his work! Thanks for the tip Ani, I'm heading to Amazon stat!



My "NEWEST" Latest  Movie Made With Amaaaazing iClone


—> High Noon”ish” in Narrow Valley<—