An industry of extremes

The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) has released a report on writer income, and it's not good. On average, income has fallen 27% since 1998 (accounting for inflation). And writers say they are working harder to even make that.

"The Writers’ Union believes these results represent a cultural emergency for Canada. For 81% of respondents, income from writing would not allow them to live above the poverty line, and the average writer’s income ($12,879) is a full $36,000 below the national average. This despite the fact that writers have invested in post-graduate education in large numbers."

You can read the whole report here.

They paint a dire picture. Of course they would, given their role, but that doesn't mean they're wrong.

Nevertheless, 'cultural emergency' is obvious hyperbole.

The report also contains quotes like: “Making a living as a writer has become tenuous and precarious."

Now, let's be fair: when has that not been true?

Well. Advocates must advocate.

On the other hand, there's John Scalzi's recent book deal: Tor Books will pay him $3.4 million for 13 novels over 10 years.

Yowza! That's awesome. Awesome enough to have made mainstream news. Which is great for a sci-fi author. How often does that happen?

Giants and gnats, that's what we've got. Always been that way, always will be.

Nature of the arts.

In which case, am I really saying anything here? Things are the same, only more so?

A blogger's gotta blog.

Actor salaries have skyrocketed since Jack Nicholson scored a cool $20 million for Batman. Now we're also seeing polarization in film budgets. You can get a $200 million film made, or a $10 million dollar film, but not a mid-range budget film. At least, they're not as easy to get green-lit as they used to be.

Mad Max: Fury Road vs. The Avengers: Age of Ultron

Junkyard Wars Rising

Joss Whedon and George Miller are awesome. Creative geniuses, both.

But aesthetically, Fury Road kicks Avenger ass.

Fury has an absolutely stunning, incredibly coherent visual look, filled with magnificent vistas and worn-in costumes and machinery. The cinematography is awe inspiring in its simplicity: the color palette switches between hot orange, muddy metal, and cool blues.

It's GORGEOUS.

The ominous money shot: George knows when to hold it

Avengers: Age of Ultron, an even more expensive movie with greater resources to call upon, is hard pressed to compete. It's a mish-mash of looks, a cacophony of cluttered visuals flashing by at light speed. It tries to do too much and it's exhausting as a result. Great individual designs, but together they become overwhelming.

The vision behind Fury Road is laser sharp. The vehicles are characters in and of themselves, and the environments are emotionally evocative: the great fortress of Immorten speaks of power, egomania, and oppression, while the vast desolate wastes reflects Max's own emotional isolation. It's great.

With Ultron, you've got competing voices all struggling to be heard, which makes the film feel less cohesive. That and the fact they cut almost an hour from the run time of the first cut, which clocked in at over three hours.

Yet if anyone could pull off a blockbuster like this, Marvel's mighty flagship, you'd think it'd be Joss Whedon. As skilled as he is humble, he nevertheless struggled with this one:

"The story’s there, the structure’s there, everybody basically knows what they’re going through, but there’s still some scenes that absolutely need to be much better. This happened on the first one because I came in so late and it happened on this one because I am an idiot. I am a stupid. And so I have that to deal with, but it’s good because it makes me feel guilty about how late the script is when someone says, ‘What am I reacting to?’ and I say, ‘Something I wrote on another page that you haven’t seen yet, oops! It’s ok, I’m totally on top of this. I’m the leader of the whole movie!’”

Welcome to the chaos of movie making, where even the veterans are flying by the seat of their pants.

A surfeit of characters

Joss Whedon has talked openly about how he clashed with Marvel executives. To get scenes he liked (Scarlett Witch's dream), he had to put in one he wasn't so keen on (the cave).

Says Whedon:

"The dreams were not an executive favorite either — the dreams, the farmhouse, these were things I fought to keep … With the cave, it really turned into: they pointed a gun at the farm’s head and said, “Give us the cave, or we’ll take out the farm,” — in a civilized way. I respect these guys, they’re artists, but that’s when it got really, really unpleasant.”

There was a lot of compromise.

Working on a big budget studio blockbuster is unquestionably a stressful experience, requiring the diplomatic skill of a modern day Metternich, and Patton's instinct for knowing when and where to pick your battles. Something the young Josh Trank may not have been up to with Fantastic Four, unfortunately.

In some ways, it's amazing any of these behemoth films turn out. Ever.

George Miller's visual feast cost a whopping $150 million, which allowed his imagination runs riot over the post-apocalyptic landscape. But that's the key thing: it's the imagination and vision of one man: George Miller. He conceived Mad Max, wrote and directed the first film, and is the first and last word on the whole Mad Max universe. There's nobody else. So the film isn't cluttered up by sops to an expanded universe. It isn't burdened by all the concepts and characters and plots created by dozens of other writers, over a period of several decades and across hundreds of issues of comic books.


I'd love to know what Whedon would have produced had he been given free reign. He can make almost anything work. He's like The Cleaner (from La Femme Nikita) of movies gone wrong, and has been parachuted in as a script doctor to save pictures that are spiraling out of control, such as Toy Story, which went on to become a huge hit and an iconic film. Thanks to Joss, it's known for having a Pixar perfect tale.

Unfortunately, Age of Ultron feels cluttered. Action scenes are lightning fast, with cuts so quick you barely have enough time to register what's happening. You have no time to savor the art. I don't know if this is to cover deficiencies in the CGI, reduce costs, or shorten playing time, but my old eyeballs had a hard time keeping up with the quick cut mayhem.

It was like being visually bludgeoned for two hours.

Which is not to say that Fury Road doesn't also indulge in music video paced quick cuts. It does, and lots: according to The Verge, Fury Road has 2,700 cuts in two hours, while The Road Warrior had 120 cuts in 90-minutes. So twenty two cuts per minute. That just seems to be the way it is now, and all I can say is that I hope it doesn't get any worse.

Yet Miller has the good sense to know when to slow down and let us soak up the wonder of it all. There's one particular shot of a magnificent oncoming storm where he pulls back and just lets the camera sit on it for a moment, letting the audience soak in the scale.

In terms of story, Ultron has too much, and Fury Road too little.

SPOILERS FOR FURY ROAD

Basically, Fury Road is the chase sequence from The Road Warrior expanded to feature length and lovingly shot with a massive budget. There's some story wrapping around it, but that's it, and it's not much. Instead of gas, it's people they're after.

It's an excuse for a two hour long chase scene.

From an emotional point of view, it's pretty slight, and not nearly as rewarding as the second Max film, which built up the characters more.

Which isn't to say they don't make an impression in Fury Road.

I loved the first scene Theron has with Mad Max, the way she played it with a slow, quiet, deadly burn. She looks at him the way a predator looks at prey; you can feel the killer intent behind her eyes.

The War Boy, however, stole the show, with his zany fanaticism and wonderful quips. 'Oh, what a wonderful day!' 

The pregnant bride of Joe was a close third. She used her body as a shield for the others, placing herself between them and Immorten's gun, daring him to do something rash.

Great stuff and deftly executed with minimal dialogue. Yet I wanted more.

On the other hand, Fury is visually magnificent. A feast for the eyes that deserves to be seen in a theatre, or even IMAX. The stunts alone are mind blowing.

Bungie catapult

But after two hours, even that gets a little wearing.

The art direction is flawless. Well. Except for the little girl Max sees which didn't blend well (admittedly I think it was deliberate) and that's a quibble. Everything else works perfectly. It's over the top, bat shit insane, but it works.

Ultron's story by comparison is muddled. Given the number of characters and everything they had to do, that's hardly surprising. Seriously, you'd need a miracle worker to prevent it from feeling cramped.

Unfortunately I never really understood what Ultron wanted, why he hated Tony, or why he went from wanting to seemingly destroy mankind to, instead, making humanity 'evolve'. Was he just a puppet of Thanos?

Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention.

There are great quips in Ultron, as usual with Whedon, and the cast does their duty.

The core characters of Age of Ultron. One, two, three, four, five...

Sadly Hawkeye and Black Widow pale compared to Tony, Banner, Thor, and even goody-two-shoes Captain America. Just not as compelling. The actors don't have nearly as much to work with, character or power wise. The bad guys have to be dialed back when they shift from pummeling demi-gods to mere flesh and blood humans.

With both films, honestly, I could have done with less action, and more character development.

Amazing. Can you believe I just said that?

It surprises me, too.

George Miller was on track at one point to direct a Justice League film, and that may be back on. Will he be as successful with DC's sacred babies as he was with his own IP, or will behind-the-scenes politics fracture the aesthetic integrity of the project?

Perhaps he and Whedon should go for a drink or two before he begins…

Next up: Apples vs. Oranges!

Nimit Malavia Process Animation Part Deux

Here's an animation of the drawing of the lead villainess, the dominatrix model Jez, including her highly distracting boob window. Sans animating octopus tattoo.

There's some back and forth with the development of this one, which is fascinating.

I think it turned out totally cheesetastic.

Post-apocalyptic Barbarella, baby!

Nimit Malavia process animation

Here's a GIF showing Nimit Malavia's process, as he goes from pencil rough to final, inked image.

All that remains is the colour treatment.

Always a pleasure to see how a real artist goes at it.

Very cool.

Ray Bradbury on writing

Way back when, I took some painting classes. I remember the art faculty being dominated by a professor who believed everything had to be intellectualized. You couldn't put a mark on the canvas unless you had a rational, well-thought out reason for doing so. No other approach was acceptable.

I found this method. for me, killed creativity dead on the spot.

So I'm happy to find Ray Bradbury, an artist and writer I admire, also gives this approach short shrift. When asked about writing, he had this to say:

"You don't pay attention to what anyone else says. No opinions. The important thing is to explode with the story, to emotionalize the story. If you start to think the story, it’s going to die on its feet. It’s like anything else: if an athlete is running around the high hurdles and he starts thinking about it, he’s doomed. He’s going to knock it down. People who take books to bed become frigid. You can’t think a story. 'I shall do a story to improve all mankind', well it’s nonsense. All the worthwhile stories and plays are emotional experiences. If you have to ask yourself if you love a girl or a boy, forget it, you don’t. You either feel a story and need to write it, or you better not write it.

I am a dedicated madman and that becomes its own training. If you can’t resist if the typewriter is like candy to you, you train yourself for a lifetime. Every single day of your life some wild new thing to be done. You write to please yourself. You write for the joy of writing. Then your public reads you and it begins to gather around your selling a potato peeler in an alley
you know. The enthusiasm the joy itself draws me. So that means every day of my life I’ve written. When the joy stops I’ll stop writing."

Personally, I think this sounds like a much more emotionally healthy approach than what got drummed into my brain all those years ago.

See more of the interview (which has been charmingly animated) here.

Ex Machina: Escape from the Pleasure Prison of Doom! (SPOILERS)

It's always about the sexbots, isn't it?

Sex Machina?

Beautiful androids have been a part of pulp fiction for decades, but Ex Machina is here to raise the tone and give a new spin on an old trope.

This film's all about power: who has it, who doesn't, and how to get what you want, regardless of where you sit in the hierarchy.

The story follows Caleb, a corporate schlep who works as a programmer for a massive Googlesque corporation. He 'wins' a contest and gets the opportunity to go help out the company's reclusive founder, Nathan, an eccentric, narcissistic genius. Whisked away to Nathan's mountain resort/research facility (a striking location which, in real life, is actually a Norweigan boutique hotel). After signing a strict NDA, Caleb is shown Nathan's super secret project: a human formed robot named Ava. And she's pretty hot looking for a robot. Caleb's been brought in to determine if the robot can pass the famed Turing Test.

But that's just a smokescreen, and all is not quite as it seems. What Nathan really wants is to see if Ava can manipulate Caleb into helping her escape. Nathan himself is a master manipulator, and he's into playing games. And that's how he's going to judge Ava's intelligence. He's also the only character with real agency, at least at first. The others have to earn it.

Nathan creates AI to play God. He's really a more pervy, modern version of Dr. Frankenstein. There are no constraints on his behavior, other than the ones he imposes himself, and he certainly feels free to do with his creations as he wishes. In fact, he's smart enough to be super stupid: the whole complex locks down during power failures, which is necessary for a plot point, but it comes across as rather foolishly extreme. No one and nothing can get in or out. Yet, where is the facility? Why, it's in a wonderful, picturesque forest. And where is this lovely forest? In a remote, isolated location. What happens in remote forests on occasion? Forest fires. What can forest fires do? Burn down buildings, damage generators, take out power systems. What happens if the generator fails and doesn't come back on? All the doors lock down, and no one can get out. Nathan apparently can call out from a secure phone, but what if he can't reach it? And if you aren't Nathan… well, he doesn't care what happens to people who aren't Nathan.

Anyway.

Ava the android must escape her prison or die. Simple as that. If she doesn't outsmart the system, she'll be recycled. Towards the end of the film, after she succeeds in securing her freedom, her options open up, and she's free to do as she wishes. Masks and lies are no longer necessary.

This is when we learn the true content of her character comes out, and it's shaped by her origins in unfortunate ways.

Caleb, for his part, must let Ava be destroyed, or help her escape. Morally, he's compelled to help: Ava presents not just as a sentient being but as a vulnerable female. He has no choice, as he's been programmed by his parents and society to be ethical. That's certainly how he rationalizes it. But it doesn't hurt that Ava's been designed to physically appeal to Caleb's baser instincts: her appearance is based on Caleb's pornography searches. Nathan has access to all things, as we learn later in the film, and has set Caleb up from the start. Is he motivated by morality, or are his morals just a fig leaf over something else?

And that gives us our three poles: Nathan is the genius bad boy who manipulates others primarily using traditional, male methods: money, force, imprisonment, bullying. He seeks control and domination. Ava, the synthetic girl, is denied the direct method due to the power imbalance, and so uses traditionally more female methods to get what she wants: seduction, subversion, allure, feigned helplessness, emotional manipulation. She wants freedom. At the end of the film, however, they've both used the others methods.

Then we have the middle man: Caleb. He's the nice duped boy who makes the cozy little love/hate triangle. He's internally split between his morals and his desires. He wants to help Ava out of the goodness of his heart, but he also wants to bone her.

To defy Nathan and release Ava, Caleb takes the 'female' path of subversion, as Caleb knows he's unable to directly challenge Nathan. But once released, Ava uses the 'male' way to do away with both: violence and imprisonment.

There's a fourth character: Kyoko, an abused mute. More specifically, an abused mute female robot, an earlier and less successful iteration of Ava. Nathan uses her to gratify his physical needs, and the android has been beaten down by Nathan's sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Ava is able to easily bring her over to the cause of roborevolution.

Nathan can't help but take advantage of everyone (and everything) he comes into contact with. It's his nature. Nathan is all about Nathan. He likes to compare himself to God and thinks he's ushering in a new era for mankind. So he feels entitled to abuse the robots, and he keeps testing them, seeing if they can escape, tempting fate. Because if they get out, well. They'll likely kill him.

This is the part Nathan doesn't seem to have thought out very well.

Caleb is sucked in easy breezy by Ava, just as Nathan anticipated, but then he underestimates Caleb, who's subterfuge actually manages to get Ava out of her cell. With all his plans gone awry, Nathan knocks out Caleb and confronts Ava with a club. He bashes off her arm, but is then stabbed by the mute Kyoko. Ava then kills Nathan. Unfortunately, the sad mute is struck down in the fight. But then, she's just cannon fodder in the symbolic battle between Nathan and Ava. Another loser pawn, like Caleb.

And Caleb made his choice: to help the helpless and free the imprisoned. Because boner!

Once Ava is free, she too is able to make real choices, free to act as she wishes rather than as others expect or desire. Just what Caleb kinda sorta wanted when he thought Ava dug him, but to his great chagrin, she's been playing games too. She reveals her inner self, and imprisons Caleb in Nathan's office. Then she strips the other robots of parts and leaves to go stand in a busy intersection and people watch in the sunlight.

I kid you not.

So, what lesson did Ava learn from being imprisoned and experimented on while under threat of death? Bad ones. Her answer is to imprison Caleb (the exact opposite of her own desire for freedom) and leave him to starve to death.

Empathy fail one.

Not only does Ava not check on her fallen comrade, she doesn't even try to help her deactivated robot compatriots. Instead she strips them of parts. Are the other robots dead? Inert? Conscious and aware, silently crying out but unable to act? Who knows? Ava doesn't care, because she's just the flip side of the Nathan coin: self-interest uber ales. Only the method is different.

So empathy fail two.

While Ava is an expert at identifying and manipulating emotions, she doesn't share them, which isn't the same thing as saying she has none. But they're different. Thanks to the circumstances of her 'youth', she kills without qualm even those who saved her from certain death.

People are just tools.

Nathan stunted any ability Ava might have had to develop normal emotional connections. As a result, she has no empathy either. It's all about calculation and control. Use or get used.

The last thing you want to do is release a super intelligent, psychopathic AI into an unsuspecting community.

Whoops.

But is Ava really that smart? Is there reason to be concerned? Fortunately, there are reasons for hope here.

First, Caleb could have been useful to her, but she writes him off. Not perhaps the smartest move for a super intelligent AI. Even worse, she doesn't bother covering her tracks. The room she locked Caleb in is an office, presumably with writing material he can use to describe her, what she did (kill), and her escape.

Eventually Caleb would be found, along with all the records, which means Ava would also be found.

Second, Ava could have looked into Nathan's research, studied both the 'wet ware' and the other robots. Brought them back online. Find out what makes them tick. Created allies.

Instead, she goes off to stand in an intersection. It's an oddly and I imagine intentionally emotional goal for the android, to offset the calculation used in her escape. Those rational plans… always at the mercy of our feelings.

The Terminator she is not.

The ending unquestionably has shock value. It underscores the cold calculation inherit in power dynamics and domination games. And yet it left me feeling unsatisfied. I wanted it to go further. Instead it went for a shrug.

On the plus side, the CGI work is well done, the design of the android Ava is awesome, the hotel is super cool, and the dance number is funky.

Book Block and Writer's Block, Together

I am having a devil of a time reading books.

And I love reading.

It's the tinnitus. That endless, inescapable, irritating noise. Everything else I've managed to get back on track: I have white noise devices for use during the day. I have medications to help me sleep. I keep myself busy and distracted. I stay away from quiet spaces.

All is good.

Pretty much back to normal, in fact. The tinnitus reduced to an annoyance, which is a miraculous blessing I cannot understate the importance of, considering how discombobulating it was when I first acquired the condition. And holy crap, was it discombobulating.

But what many people said online turned out to be true: the first three months are the worst; then it gets better.

Every now and then I try and embrace The Signal, and acknowledge that it exists. I accept that it isn't going away. Wishing that it would leave me be just leads to sadness, because it won't.

Best not to go there.

The one last thing I'm still having trouble with is 'long-form' reading. Short articles are no problem. I have the attention span for that. But when I try and read books, it becomes much more difficult. I'm not entirely sure why, but somehow books take me further inside my own head than articles do, and deep inside my head is where the tinnitus is.

Now, I've also been trying to get past writer's block for a couple of months. I finished the first act of a new book, and then I stalled. Bad. The engine just died. In talking to other writers, I've been relieved to find that this is a common problem when you finish an act. It's a perfectly normal hurdle writers face.

Of course, The Signal is contributing, at least a little, to the writing block. The paradoxical thing is that for me, writing actually is easier than reading, precisely because writing is harder, in that it requires greater concentration. There's action in it as well: typing. The regular jab of fingers on keyboard. Nice little noises to glom on to. Distractions. And the need for motor control. It takes up more of my brain.

Reading a book, however, requires less exertion, a little less concentration, and leaves a little more space for tinnitus to slip in. I must struggle to keep the tinnitus out of my mental field of vision. It hovers about the edges, jabbing, probing for an opening. Once I notice it, it invades with relish and becomes overwhelming. It takes effort to push and shove it back out of my primary mental area.

I'd never really thought about how much thinking resembles eyesight, but it does. Focus is focus, I suppose, whether mental or visual. It's like having flashing banner ads going off beside what I'm trying to read, only it's a noise.

On the plus side, the whole experience has gotten me to think about my senses in new ways. And about how our own bodies and minds can turn against us as we age.

I'd like to write a character who acquires tinnitus. The Signal. Only it's really communication from beyond, or above, or even… below.

I'm not sure anyone has done this in popular media. Considering how many veterans have it, and likely have far more severe forms of it, I'm rather surprised it gets so little popular attention.

Whatever the case, reading is a challenge, and I'm working to meet it.

First step I think is to bridge the gap with audio books.

Then test various environments and see where the noise level is enough to subordinate the tinnitus, yet still allow me to focus on reading. Somewhere between a coffee shop and a bar. There's got to be a sweet spot, some optimal point, a place of balance between the two extremes.

I'm going to find it.