Story time

What's a living room (family room) for when most of your adult life you see yourself as a zombie, undead, and single for the most part? Not being one to hold lavish dinner parties, I transformed my dining room into a room with desks, computers and lots of pencils and pens. Now way would eating ever take place in that room if I had anything to say about it.

So, as time went by, I would prepare my dinners on a little tray and sit in front of the TV while I ate. The problem was, after eating, I would become too sluggish to do anything else other than channel surf. So it isn't that I have anything against TV per se. I've had Direct TV ever since I banned Adelphia (or whatever their former name was back then). Whenever I couch potatoed my entire evenings, including weekends, my concept of television became more and more hypnotically passive.

I like watching TV, but it's conflicting with my aspirations to write. And yet, writing is harder than I ever imagined it would be. I forgot to bookmark a digg article about the way movies were filmed to give audience the perception of progress.^† In other words, scenes that cut from one action sequence to another and manage to leave the viewer with a sense of flow. A for instance would be a close up of a cowboy's hand reaching for his gun, then the sound of gun fire while the camera has panned out to a wider shot. So, without taking note of the color of the cowboy's shirt that reached for his gun, unless he was the only person with a firearm, the viewer puts two and two together. However, in a gun fight, the first shot could've been from one or the other cowboys seeing that a distant wide angle shot wouldn't capture the smoking gun.

My stupid ipod touch wasn't able to stream the videos properly from this digg article. I can't even recall whether I pressed dugg. It got me thinking of action scenes and how I would do them differently. For instance, most movies depict violence as kill or be killed perspectives. Nothing is said for the difference in point of view (POV) of a serial killer other than, you know, possibly showing him getting off before he kills his victims. I'm talking action, though! The chase.

The LA Times had a story about Brent Zubek. I read some of it, but developments pursuant to the names of Brent Zubek's victims is yet to be released as far as I know. In any case, I got the impression that Brent escaped capture, but that isn't accurate.

Movies with high action scenes usually end the same way, the good guy wins. The good guy survives. The good guy triumphs over the bad guy. Whether he conquered by killing the bad guy or simply by using his cunning intelligence, the action scenes fail to define his beastly perspective. I mean, running down the alley in pursuit of somebody with a gun results in suspenseful scenes upon turning the corner of a building where cover from flying bullets is lost. There is an element of surprise that I would like to emphasize in chase scenes. In the split second that it takes for a bullet to travel from barrel to torso, which takes about forever in the eyes of the victim, as he then ponders his mistake in taking the corner too soon, or awaiting only one pursuer. The winner of a shoot out should go to the grisliest persona, whom escapes his own fate by jumping the gun and shooting first, asking questions later. So, had there been a woman dialing a telephone number on her cell phone just as the pursuer, gun in hand, takes the corner with full consciousness that his suspect might be waiting for him, the bullet cannot be stopped.

All those movies that show action packed scenes where innocent bystanders escape uncertain death, or not, don't pin the error on the good guy. And yet, it's the good guy with the hairy trigger finger that wins in the situation of surprise.