Plump Tomato

Screenwriting Software II

Recently I posted a blog seeking advice on screenwriting software. I did get some feedback, with most recommending Final Draft. One person suggested that I take a look at Celtx, a free download at: www.celtx.com. As I noted in my first blog I am inexperienced with screenwriting software, but this program looks good, especially when you consider the price.

Have any of you used this program. Any pros/cons, comments.

Ronald James

March 1, 2008 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Add Comment

FIRE IN THE BELLY

FIRE IN THE BELLY

Years ago a self actualizing movement swept across the US and into Europe; EST (Erhard Seminar Training). Some of you older folk will probably remember it; some of you, I imagine, took the training. I did, but was never one of its supporters. One thing that has always stayed with me is something Werner Erhard (EST’S founder) said:

“The first three times that we ran these seminars, no one came. I gave the training’s to an empty room."

Those trainings lasted two and a half days, and I have little doubt that during those days Werner was able to convince the walls that they should be more than just walls.

Ronald James.

February 26, 2008 6:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Add Comment

Screenwriting Software ??

Screenwriting software:

I have started redrafting a screenplay that I started in 1968. Right now I am using Microsoft’s One Note, which, by the way is a good tool for organizing information. It is designed for students, who have to assemble a lot of information for academic papers. It is not a good word processor and is designed to be used with Microsoft Word, where students are encouraged to go to complete the final draft of their papers. As I am sure most of you know Microsoft Word is tedious at best for assembling a screenplay.

I read numerous reviews of Final Draft and Screenwriter. I could find multitudes of reviews covering Final Draft and a handful critiquing Screenwriter. The reviews of Screenwriter were far and away positive. Those of Final Draft were mixed with some loving it and others hating it. One rather successful screenwriter who had been using Final Draft, since version 4, went so far as saying, “I would rather write my next screenplay using chalk and toilet paper, than have to continue with this bundle of glitches.” He was referring to version 7.

I have downloaded the demos of both Final Draft and Screenwriter and found them to be equally user friendly. I could do a better job of copying and pasting into Screenwriter, but that seemed minor. Unfortunately the Screenwriter download was only good for forty-eight hours, so the time that I had to compare the two was limited.

As a result of reading many of the blogs on the site, I ran into a number of references to Sophocles, which I am downloading now.

I want to buy a screenwriting program and am hoping that some of you old hands might have some advice.

Ronald James

February 25, 2008 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Add Comment

CAVEATS

CAVEATS

BODIES: In the early sixties I met a brilliant woman, Ida Rolf. Ida was the first woman to receive a Ph. D. from Columbia. She then returned to Germany, where she obtained a doctorate in medicine. She involved herself in Osteopathic manipulation and developed a system that she called Structural Integration, which has come, despite her cringe, to be called Rolfing. I heard her say several times: “Any manifestation that has allowed itself to be entrapped in a human body, allowing itself to be subjected to 7.2 G’s and still has the audacity to claim that they feel great, is either insane, lying, or both.”

SLEEPLESSNESS: During this same period I attended a lecture given by Linnus Pauling, promoting the benefits of mega doses of Vitamin C. Despite my reverence for the man (big, big mind), many of his claims regarding vitamin C have not been substantiated. At that time I was attending the University of California at Berkeley and could not sleep, come hell or high water. If it wasn’t the classes, it was the women, one of my paintings, Reagan, the Vietnam War, social injustice, etc. I had tried exhausting myself by increasing my daily five mile runs to ten. Forget it; it will only make things worse. Exhaustion breeds exhaustion! Pauling advised taking six grams of vitamin C at bedtime. (Yes! grams, not milligrams). I have never had trouble sleeping, since. I have imparted this tidbit to many insomniacs, and as far as I know, it has helped all of them. One word of caution: Vitamin C in such doses can produce an acidic bowel. Vitamin C has an interesting biofeedback loop. An individual will absorb as much as the thalamus thinks that the body needs. The rest will drop into the lower bowel. Adjust your dose to where no lower bowel acidity is experienced.

ANXTETY, ETC: Next time you feel like jumping out of your skin, committing suicide, homicide, or any one of about a hundred other things I can think of, try taking two to three grams of vitamine C and watch your inner-self carefully. I will be very supprised if those ragged edges don't start to melt away in an hour or so. Vitamine B5, Pantothenic Acid, will often enhance the calming affect. It works in conjunction with Vitamine C to increase the bodies output of cortisol. If you have ever had an injection of corticosteroids to reduce inflamation you may have experienced it's additional effects of mild euphoria, calm, and increased energy. And for heavens sake, don't start shooting corticosteroids: your bones will fall apart. Just take vitamin C and Pantothenic Acid (about 500 mg. Q/4 hr.).

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, PARANORMAL EXPERIENCES, THE ATMAN, ETC: Early in my life I did a stint in San Francisco’s Height Ashbury. During that time I frequented gatherings at a small North Beach bookstore, The City Lights. It was there that I met a then obscure poet, Allen Ginsberg. Allen had just discovered LSD and was touting its wonders. He took a small group of us to Parkinson’s Cannon, just south of Big Sur, where we all took a small dose of the stuff. Like so many others, my little cocoon of what I thought sane, milted into, shattered bits. After experiencing what seemed to be my literal birth, I emerged into a wildly hallucinatory world that ended with a vast outpouring of what sounded like thousands of harps singing from the heavens. I can still hear those magnificent sounds: The Music of the Spheres. When the music dimmed, I found myself in a non-hallucinatory world of heightened awareness. My senses were stimulated beyond belief, i.e., I could see sparrows jumping from limb to limb in trees that were a thousand meters away. I could remember clearly every moment of my life and my world view had expanded, experiencing layer upon layer that I never knew existed.

I know this tale is old hat and mundane. I am not recommending that anyone take LSD. That's like going to an exciting movie that is fundamentally empty. You go up, get excited, buzz alot when you walk out of the theater, and go home to face your bills, bumper to bumper traffic, a job you detest, etc. What I think may be of value is to discover that one can experience similar states, that have significantly longer lasting effects, without using drugs.

In 1966 I found myself headed to Vietnam on an old reconditioned Victory Ship The Victories were small freighters that had been constructed during WW II, mothballed at the end of the war, and recommissioned during the U.S.’s illustrious efforts to suppress Communism, in Vietnam. On the aft section of the ship was an elevated platform, which during the Vietnam War had supported two 120 mm cannons. These had been removed, creating a small open area. At noon each day I was relieved of my duties at the wheel of the ship, and rather than eat, I would go to the platform and run in small circles for an hour or so. One day, with no deliberate intention, I kept going and ran, stopping only to urinate and drink water, until eight that evening. At that time I was running about seven miles an hour, so I probably covered somewhere between fifty-five to sixty miles. During that run I once again heard the Music of the Spheres and emerged into a state of heightened perceptions very much like my earlier LSD experience.

In my youth I was captivated by Tai Chi. At that time I was residing in the San Francisco Bay Area and had the good fortune of studying with four Chinese masters. Three of the four were very keen on having their students hold a meditative stance that they called, the post. The last master that I studied with claimed that it was the highest form of Kung Fu. He would have us stand firm on one leg with the other leg slightly extended. The arms would be raised, shoulder high, forming a circle. I once heard Master Chang refer to the form thusly: “When you can hold the post for ten minutes you are a person who can hold up one-hundred pounds. When you can hold it for thirty minutes you are a person who can hold up five hundred pounds. When you can hold it for one hour you are a person who can hold up a thousand pounds. When you can hold it for ninety minutes your hands will become like the claws of the eagle. And with a laugh he said that at two hours the eagle flies away. This man was no fool. He was the first person that I ever saw do an open double back flip. It was twenty years after this, that your better Olympian gymnasts were even attempting such things. Chang was fifty-six when I saw him do that double back. My study with him was for a very brief period, since I left San Francisco to return to my home in Mexico to study medicine. It was there that I decided that I would get serious about this post business. I started doing it early each morning. Without a doubt it increased my strength dramatically. We had been instructed to gaze at a distant object. I was in a small room so choose to focus my attention on a deep cavity in a bronze statue of Shiva that I had brought back from India. It took me several months to reach one hour. It was then that I started experiencing increased sensorial awareness. The dark cavity was becoming luminescent, as if someone were shinning a flashlight into it. Over the next month that luminescence grew, enveloping the entire room. At ninety minutes I was able to discern portions of the molecular structure of the statue. At one hundred minutes my back exploded. While standing there the disks between L3, L4, and L5 literally exploded. After the event I was unable to stand for several months. An old Mexican chiropractor finally got me to a point where I could stand, but I could only walk with the aid of crutches. I returned to the US where I underwent twenty four sessions of Rolfing and have had almost no lower back problems ever since.

Two brief caveats related to the above. I studied with Chang for about six weeks in 1965. Recently, by happenstance I found myself near Chang’s old studio. I thought that I would go and see if it was still there. And, low and behold, there it stood, almost unchanged from forty years earlier. I went in, and there was Chang, now in his late nineties, conducting a class. When I entered he walked briskly up to me, looked me directly in the eyes and said, “You have studied here before.” Shocked, I acknowledged that I had. I was dumbfounded. When I studied with Chang I weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds, had a full head of hair, and was clean shaven. I now weigh about two twenty and am bald with a full beard. After my initial encounter with the man, he turned and scurried off to a back room, emerging about a minute later and proceeded to present me with a photograph he had taken of me forty two years earlier!

One other passing shot: Master Choy, the first master that I studied with (a small man weighing perhaps one hundred and fifteen pounds) loved to delight audiences by selecting the four brawniest males in the audience to come to the stage. He would take the post stance and have two of us grip him under each shoulder and two of us under each thigh. He would ask us to try and lift him. I was involved in this demonstration on numerous occasions. We were never able to budge him from the floor. It wasn’t as if he was a rock. You could feel him struggling against us, much like two arm wrestlers struggle against one another, but eight hundred pounds of youthful brawn could not dislodge this small man!

Enough of this. I hope I haven’t bored you. I have dozens of interesting caveats that I am willing to share if any of you find them the least bit interesting.

In the mean time, keep the faith, persist and persist and when you are done persisting, persist a little bit more.

Someone wrote: "What does this have to do with making movies." I wrote back, lots and lots.

Ronald James

February 23, 2008 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Add Comment

Storylink Search Engine Questions

I recently discovered Storylink while I was trying to track down David Trottier. Having found Storylink and David, I registered, created a personal profile, and started this blog. I was also excited about my new venture, and Emailed a number of people, suggesting that they might want to get involved. Several did. Yesterday I received the following Email: "Went to Storylink, as you suggested, plugged in Ronald James and Plump Tomato and found nothing." Not very long after receiving the Email, I got a call from my daughter who had a similar experience. I tried the same and plugged in both Ronald James and Plump Tomato into the Storylink search link and found neither. Is this about par, and to be expected? Does it take a week or two for new member profiles to post; or perhaps we are all doing something wrong.

Any suggestions?

Ronald James

February 22, 2008 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Add Comment

Copyright Questions

Recently I returned to working on a screenplay which I started in 1968. It is a partial adaptation of a novelette that was published in 1883, with the author dying in 1925. My understanding of copyright law is that copyright protection expires seventy five years after the death of the creator of the work. David Trottier, in his very excellent book, The Screenwriters Bible, is adamant about: "Don't adapt it until you own it." In a section on movie clips he states, "Do not write the sequel to Snow White unless you control the rights to Snow White." Snow White was a story that circulated amongst the Northern European countries in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries. The German rendition was incorporated into a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales that was published in 1857. Walt Disney leaned heavily on this rendition when he produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Can Disney own rights to anything more than the screen play and movie? Can corporations circumvent copyright laws and control the exclusive right to an age old fairy tale?

Help, Ronald James

February 20, 2008 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Add Comment