Month: January 2008

Categories
Buffy Rewatch Season 1 writing

Monday Night is Blogging Night

…which is just my attempt at a title that captures a few topics, not a statement of intent.

Although it could be and it might not be such a bad idea. See, the thing I have feared has happened, as I think one of Job’s comforters said. That is, (re-)watching Buffy has become a bit of a chore because I feel like I can’t proceed until I’ve blogged about it. So we have…

 1. Watching Buffy with M.

I went over to see M. the other week and took my Buffy S1 DVDs with me. We watched the first 4 episodes together. I was nervous about this for a couple of reasons.

First, four is a lot when I needed to remember what I wanted to say about them in my blog. However that’s not too much of a problem. I know the episodes well enough.

Second, I was nervous that M. wouldn’t like them. I was very aware of the problems with the episodes. Not that there are many but I’ve been in this situation before – the ‘fan’ wanting to share my love for something only to get a ‘mmm that’s nice’ polite response.

I needn’t have worried. I’d forgotten that long before she’d met me M. had been a regular Buffy watcher. Not a fan the way I was, but certainly a fan the way I began. Someone who basically liked the show and wanted to fill in the gaps in eps she hadn’t seen.

So what did I think?

Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest – this is where it really all started, for me. It was still cool, and I enjoyed as ever such favourite moments as Jesse’s line “I’m not ok on an epic scale” and Buffy’s ‘dawn’ gag on Luke. But what I really noticed was how trad horror-movie-esque the Master is. I mean I knew that he was and was so deliberately, he’s the scary organ music to Buffy’s energetic rock tune, but I guess I’d forgotten how much that’s true in the first couple of episodes. Even as soon as the next two it settles down a bit with the Master making jokes and such. 8/10

Witch – this was the episode I saw the promo for and decided not to continue watching Buffy (only to pick it up again much later). To this day I’m not really sure why except that for some reason I didn’t like the idea that the show was about things other than vampires! Of course now I love this ep because it’s got juicy Xander-Buffy-Willow triangularity in it. Aww so sweet. 8/10

Teacher’s Pet – I watched this with one eye on M. to see her groan at the monster (I mean giant praying mantis?) but she didn’t, she enjoyed it as I did. I like the opening dream sequence with Xander playing the hero. I like the teacher who dies and how he believes in Buffy. I like the fact the way that even though we are dealing with a giant praying mantis the actors sell the fear as real. That’s the thing about Buffy, it may make jokes, even self-referential ones, but it always attempts to play the emotional situation as real. 7/10

 2. Time and Writing

So, at the start of the year I came up with this timetable for myself re: writing. How ‘m I doing? Well so far since I started (barely 3 weeks). I’ve missed one evening (an hour) and one full weekend (five hours). I’m certainly not planning to try to do the catching up thing since that way lies madness and sweaty palms. I was thinking that I might incorporate my failure into my plan – to my already generous time-off quotient. What I could do is have one weekend a month where I plan not to do my usual writing. Two hours on saturday and three on sunday is not a lot really and let it seems to take up most of my weekend by the time you factor in some procrastination and faffing around.

Plus my usual habit of not setting my alarm and getting up when I feel like it shortens my day. My day still ‘ends’ pretty much at midnight because that’s when I tend to call M. for an end-of-day chat. So one thing I’m considering is setting my alarm for something suitably late but not midday for the weekends.

Actually it was pretty predictable that I’d not be writing this weekend as I re-built (from a software point of view) my Mythtv box. Leading to

3. MythTV Multirec

There was probably no real need to wipe my system and re-install except well, I kind of enjoyed it. I also fondly imagine it gives me a ‘cleaner’ system somehow. Anyway I’ve installed a new version of Mythtv that supports multiple recordings from the same multiplex.

What’s that mean? Well the Freeview signal is split into different frequencies that carry a multiplex – a collection of channels. When you ‘tune in’ to a channel you actually tune in the multiplex and just record/display the channel you’re interested in. What the clever MythTV developers have done is make it possible to record one, some or all of the channels in a multiplex using a single tuner. In other words using my dual-tuner tv-card I can now record several channels at once (providing they’re on no more than two multiplexes). Earlier tonight I successfully recorded 6 programs at once.

Actually I rarely need this, at least in that way. I’ve been running a MythTV box with 2 tuners for over 9 months now and I very rarely need more than 2 tuners. The reason I like it, and the reason – other than the enjoyment of doing it – to install multirec is that I can record back to back programs on the same channel and have an overlap (finish recording prog1 5 mins late and start prog2 5 mins early) and only use one tuner. Sounds trivial but it’s not. I record Mastermind and University Challenge which are back to back on BBC2. Since occasionally there’s something on another channel I want to record, I set it so Mastermind finishes at 8:30 and U.C. starts at 8:30. But if the timing’s not exact then I end up with the end of Mastermind chopped off early and a little bit of it at the start of the U.C. recording. Which is annoying. It would be even more so if I intended to archive them to DVD.

Anyway I installed it, re-installed the complete machine in fact, with a new version of Linux and everything. A weekend suitably ‘wasted’.

That’s probably way more than you wanted to read, so until next Monday…

Categories
Buffy Rewatch

Buffy – the Un-aired Pilot

OK, so this was where it really all started.

3rd May 1996 (according to the fuzzy titlecard) and Joss Whedon has re-visited his movie concept and made it into a pilot for a TV series. As with the movie, I spent a fair amount of time on the net defending this back in my full-on fan days. Unlike the movie, my opinion of it hasn’t faded over time.

So what this not is a ‘normal’ TV quality production. What it is is a 25 minute mini-episode in order to show off the idea to networks to see if they want to sign up to airing the show. In other words it’s a pilot in the Pulp Fiction sense[1] rather than the first-show-broadcast sense that sometime gets used. What this means, apart from being shorter, is that this is a little rough around the edges: the titles are not in that pseudo-gothic font we know and love, Nerf Herder’s theme is missing and replaced by some random grunge and the special effects are basically ‘place-markers’ – they give the idea of what’s intended without spending much money. For extra roughness, seeing as how this was never meant to make it to anyone’s eyes but network execs, the copy that finally made it out onto the net wasn’t particularly great. Looks like someone got hold of a VHS copy and possibly we had a couple of copy-of-copy generations before someone thought to capture it in digital form. The combination of VHS technology, NTSC TV format (which isn’t kind to colours) and repeated copying means what I watched tonight was blurry, fuzzy with strange mixed, washed out colours.

But that all can be, legitimately in my view, be excused. It was never meant for broadcast, so it’s unfair to compare it with broadcast quality production values. To assess its strengths and weaknesses we have to look at what, presumably, the network execs looked at: acting, casting, story, action, dialogue. Fortunately in all these areas the story gets much better.

The un-aired pilot story-wise is a cut-down version of “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, the first aired episode. As such, I’m not going to spend much time on it here. I will mention that the writing is up to the standard we’d expect from the show – it’s Joss after all – and there are some jokes and one-liners that are fun:

Buffy: Film Club

Xander: They spend their time deciding that every movie is an existential meditation on Freudian sexuality.

Buffy: Even “Muppets Take Manhattan”?

Xander: Especially “Muppets Take Manhattan”!

or

Buffy: (on discovering there’s more than one vampire) I don’t suppose you’d be sweeties and attack me one at a time?

Vampire: You watch too many movies.

Buffy: You can never (kicks him) watch too many (kick) movies!

Well said Buffy.

So the writing’s there and so I’m pleased to say is the acting. All the usual gang are there and all performing well. Nick Brendon in particular deserves praise I feel because this was his first acting job, and he’s great. And the casting – in terms of fitting the parts and the chemistry between them – is great. With one important exception: Willow.

Willow is played by a dumpy looking girl called Riff Regan.[2] I don’t want to be harsh – I am after all a dumpy looking boy – but she’s not up to the task, and she’s definitely not Alison Hannigan. I can see why they might have gone for her, she’s supposed to be geeky and she looks the part. She can actually act, despite what some say, but what she gives us is one-dimensional. She gives us shy, geeky, un-self-confident Willow but she never gives us more than that. Joss talks about Tony Head getting the part of Giles based on giving not just the stuffy English librarian, but the stuffy English librarian with a hint that there might be more going on underneath. There’s no underneath to Regan’s Willow. You get the feeling she’s going to always be a bit shy and diffident and that makes you feel a little sad for her.

By contrast Hanngian’s Willow’s shy geekiness is somehow and endearing and even from the first show there’s an edge underlying her lack of confidence. Oh but there’ll be plenty of time to expound on my love for Willow (which is great) as we go through the series.

Finally whilst we’re on acting I’ll quickly mention Stephen Tobolowsky as Principal Flutie. He’s excellent. He brings the funny, much as Stephen Root does in the movie. In fact, as we’ll see, all 5 Principals have been great in various ways.

Towards the end there’s a little action scene where Buffy rescues Willow from some vampires and we get to see fights done properly i.e. with some energy and something at stake. I was slightly surprised to realise that both Xander and Willow get to have a little slaying success of their own: Xander rather deftly passes Buffy a broom and Willow uses a cross to dispatch Darla. In the show itself it would be into the second series at least before we start to really see them have any ‘moves’ as it were. Perhaps this is the difference between making a pilot and a show – you need to show something of what the characters’ potential is straight away when you’re trying to get picked up, but once you are, you can relax and let them develop at a more leisurely pace.

So, to the same question I asked myself of the movie: if I’d seen this back in ’96, would it have convinced me to watch the TV series. I 95% certain the answer is yes. It’s funny and likeable and promises fantasy horror genre intrigue – just the kind of thing I’d enjoy. The 5% remains only because of what actually happened when I watched the actual show – but I’ll tell that story in its proper place.

7/10
[1] “Well, the way they make shows is, they make one show. That show’s called a pilot. Then they show that show to the people who make shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they’re going to make more shows. Some pilots get picked and become television programs. Some don’t, become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing.”

[2]sounds like a bloke from a 70s British cop show doesn’t it?

Categories
writing

Do I Like Writing?

Well it’s been 5 days since I started my new regime, end of the first week as it were. I kept to my hour of writing on Wednesday and Thursday, did my two hours yesterday and today I managed… two also, not the three required. I’ve only done half an hour of reading and that was today.

I started this because I wanted to “get serious about my writing.” I’m forty, single and don’t have many interests or close friends – and whilst all that is fine in one way, I guess I felt like I want to do something of some significance other than sit on my couch and watch TV. Anyway when I started to “get serious”, which really started back in October when I re-joined AFO, I had the impression that the major hurdle I had to overcome was lack of discipline. I was moaning the other day, on AFO, about how I never know whether to give up on something that seems not very good, or continue working on it. One of the replies I got was “You’re not lazy you just have a harsh internal critic.” The later may be true (actually I think it is, I think that’s what this post will be about) but the former’s not. I am lazy. I know this about myself.

And if I was lazy back in the good old days of trying to have a daily “quiet time” how much more so when I have, in fact, sat on a couch and watch TV for seven years? No, there’s definitely a problem there and so I expected it to be tough. I wanted to make the effort though and so I was prepared, when the urge came on me to do something more relaxing, to stick it out and keep writing.

I wasn’t prepared for the other thing. How to describe it? This crippling sense of the pointlessness of what I’m doing, the absolute certainty that what I’m producing is rubbish, the feeling of being stuck not able to go forward and not willing to just give up. I know it won’t come across as strongly as I feel it, but it’s almost a sense of panic, or fear. I’m at the end of my first week and I’ve felt it twice so far.

Strangely enough, one of my self-assigned tasks for today was to work through the first chapter of Creative Writing and that had a section on just this with sections called ‘Postpone Perfection’ and ‘Avoid Writer’s Block’. The impression I was left with is that it is normal to feel very down on your own work but that the important thing is to stick with it and improve it when you edit/re-write. That I sort of knew (maybe not how strong the dislike could be). However the section on writer’s block talked about how it could happen even when you’re doing a lot of writing and it could happen to a previously successful writer. The scenario described was of a writer who put himself under pressure because of his wife’s expectations. The end of the section, and the chapter, talked about how the most creative people are those who do it for the intrinsic rewards not the extrinsic ones. In other words writing because you love writing not because it will get you money, fame, applause etc.

That’s a tough one for me. I know I can beat the laziness, it’s just a matter of training myself to do it, sticking to the schedule until it becomes habit. But do I like writing? There’s definitely a large part of me that’s hungry for the approval of others and sees writing as a way to get it. For years I’ve talked myself out of “getting serious” precisely because I believed that if I really loved writing for the sake of writing I’d’ve done a lot more of it by now.

So do I like writing? And do I like it enough?

Well there have definitely been moments where I’ve come up with a phrase, or an idea that I like. And in fact all the things I’ve written that I “hated” I actually really like the idea – but I want the prose on paper to generate the same images I have in my head and it just doesn’t. But that’s fixable. I can improve something that already exists if I have something to work on. Stone soup sort of.

I think part of the problem is I’ve psyched myself out. Precisely because I’ve made it this big deal, this thing I’m doing in 2008, it’s become, well, a big deal. I need to enjoy it more. But I’m not going to quit, not yet. Tonight I confess, half an hour into my second one-and-a-half hour session I gave up. I compromised and read for half an hour instead.

I comfort myself with this: back in my evangelical days, on the way back from a conference I was moaning to a car-full of friends that I didn’t seem to feel the same passion that others felt about God, Christianity etc, and that it frustrated me because I knew I should. When I finally let someone else get a word in, my good friend Kate said, “Have you ever thought that maybe you are passionate, you just don’t show it the way others do? Surely the very fact that you’re frustrated shows you’re passion?”

Maybe my passion for writing is like that.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch

Buffy the Movie

So this was where it all started.

In 1992 the original movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was released. It was written by Joss Whedon, a TV writer who’d worked on Roseanne and would later go on to work on Toy Story.

It wasn’t very good.

But before we get to that, I’ve actually been here before. In 2001, at the height of my fandom, I bought the movie when it was released on DVD. I then wrote this review. It’s interesting how positive I was. To explain/excuse that I should say that it was written for/to the fan community, the received wisdom of whom was that the movie was rubbish and should not be considered as connected to the TV show, which we all loved of course.

Although some of my thoughts on the movie have changed, I don’t intend to write a full re-review as it were. In this blog, I’m largely interested in how things fit in with my own history as a fan.

I can remember hearing about the movie around the time it was released on what was probably Film ’93. Barry Norman thought it was an interesting concept but poorly executed I think. On the strength of that, as was my usual custom at the time, I didn’t make any effort to go see it. When I finally did see it, I was already a fan and happy to find good in it. Now having watched it again with a little of that distance I spoke of yesterday, what do I think?

The thing I think is best about it is still Kristy Swanson. If there’s a moment I liked or a joke I laughed at, she was usually responsible for it. Actually there were other funny moments from Stephen Root as the Principal, but that comedy seemed a little divorced from the film itself.

Two things really stand out on watching it again. One is how static it is, especially in the action scenes. It’s more than needing to “do flippy things and kick each other a bit.” it’s the fact that the reality of any stake (pun unavoidable) or any threat is undermined. Not seeming to either run toward or away from the fight, or expend much effort in it, leaves a feeling that that character doesn’t care much about the outcome. And if they don’t why should I?

The second is the blase way in which everyone reacts to the discovery that vampires are real. Apart from Hilary Swank, whose screaming whilst scenery chewing was way over the top, everyone seems to treat the discovery as mildly annoying or irritating. Even where they say things as if they’re scared for their lives, the acting and delivery of the lines betrays that. Again they don’t really care, so I don’t. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of how to do comedy (he says as if he’s an expert!) – no matter how broad the joke, the actor should play the character’s reactions as real, because to them, within that fictional world it’s real – even if it’s ridiculous and funny to us. As the TV show later proved, you can have great emotional reality and humour side by side.

Anyway, the big question – for me at least – is if, in 1992/3, I’d seen this movie, would I have seen enough in it to want to check out the TV show 5 years later? I think the honest answer is no. I might still have watched but it would have been despite not because. I don’t think I would have thought “here’s a good concept done poorly” I think I would have just dismissed it as a bad movie. Not a bad movie with good parts, just bad.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie: 3/10.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch

Buffy Re-visited

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, planning it in fact.

I’m going to re-watch all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in order, and possibly Angel. I think.

I started to think about it back in the early part of last year. From mid-2000 I’ve been a huge BtVS fan. I acquired the videos and later the DVDs and watched them over and over (often in preference to anything new on TV). I discussed each new episode on the internet endlessly with other fans. However when it ended I was not distraught. It had run its course, finished whilst it was still good enough not to tarnish its reputation (others would not agree). I remained, remain, a fan but there’s less to be fannish about. The internet discussions died down and the ones remaining tend to re-visit the same old ground.

Then last year, after some of the dust had settled from moving house, and after I had got over the initial initial excitement of setting up Mythtv, I began to realise I hadn’t watched an episode of Buffy for some time. I began to deliberately not do so i.e. not pick out a favourite ep when I was at a loose end what to watch.
I wanted to have a clear stretch – at least a year – so that I could, to some extent watch them with new eyes. Would they, I nervously wondered, stand up? I think the answer to that is yes for the really good episodes and perhaps less so for others. I was very forgiving of any mistakes when I was in full-on fan mode.

During October, when I had some time off work, I started copying my DVDs onto my Mythtv box. This means I can watch them without getting up to change the disc. In my mind this was all part of the preparation. As I was transcoding them down to smaller files this took 3 or 4 weeks to do them all, plus Angel. Then I got into writing again. Then it was Christmas.

And now, now that I have organised myself time-wise, I am actually going to do it. I think.

Why the hesitation? Well the idea was not just to re-watch them but to review them in my blog – like the Harry Potter re-read. The problem with that is that there are 144 episodes of Buffy and 110 of Angel. That’s 254 45minute episodes. At one a day that would take more than half a year. Of course in the old days I watched four in an evening sometimes. But I wasn’t trying to write anything about them, or about anything else come to that. And even if I accept that it’s a longer term project and maybe take a year or two over it – do I want my blog to be about that for so long? After all my worries about getting people to read is this a good strategy? 3-4 years ago it would have been, even now though there will be people who’d be interested, I’d be discussing things that have been done to death in many ways.

So what to do? Well I think my plan is to definitely watch all the episodes but not necessarily comment on them all. Or perhaps I will comment on groups together with a line or two about the less interesting ones, keeping the focus always on – what it’s like to re-visit them. My goal also is to update this blog a couple of times a week with only one being a Buffy review post.

Another question is what order to do them in. Sounds a silly question – but it’s very tempting to do them in ‘autobiographical’ order – the order I originally watched them in and the meaning that had to me (so my first ep was the first ep but after that I missed a few only later going back when I had them on video/DVD). It’s tempting but I don’t have the memory to get that order right, except for a few key points which I’ll highlight along the way.

Having got that off my chest, and therefore not ‘contaminating’ the reviews themselves with it, I’ll now go and watch the first – which is probably not what you think.

Categories
Uncategorized

FYI

Not a proper blog post (that would be a time-waster) just a few points of interest.

* That blog post itself yesterday took 90mins!

* M. was fine about what I wrote, except she claims it’s me that keeps us talking when we’ve nothing to say.

* I did my hour’s writing – a little over in fact – and completed a rough draft of an idea for AFO challenge for Jan 🙂

* I didn’t do my reading, nor have I yet today 🙁

* I stayed up way too late and consequently am tired. Still, coffee exists and tomorrow is Friday!

* I’m not using WordPress bullet points again until I can figure out how to stop the font going all weird.

Categories
Uncategorized

Time

M. got me a couple of books on writing for Christmas. In the introduction to “A Novel in a Year” Louise Doughty asks

Think what you are prepared to sacrifice. Writing a novel takes many, many hours, and those are hours you could spend planting roses, raising children, earning money — or even just having a nice life. What, in your life, is going to disappear, to allow you the time to write a book?

Well, I’vc got no roses to plant or children to raise, but nevertheless that hit home. Mostly because I think, I’m aware a) how much time I seem to waste doing nothing, and b) how long it seems to take me to write things[1]. And then, even within the general category of ‘writing’ there’s a lot of activities I might undertake:

  • AFO reviews and critiques
  • AFO challenge stories
  • both of M.’s books are work-books, books with exercises I can work through
  • blogging – which itself is many categories (more later perhaps)
  • reading – everything I read on writing says to read more, and I read a lot less than I once did. And a lot of what I read is other amateur writers – which is fine but I’d like to start exposing myself to really good writing.
  • Big Serious Writing Projects – not even sure what these will be yet. Maybe they’ll be short stories I want to get published, or a novel, or even a screenplay

So what is going to disappear from my life to enable some or all of this? Well first let me clarify that it may only be ‘some’. I’m going to keep an eye on it but I may scale down my involvement in AFO. At the moment I’ve been reviewing virtually every new story, which has been taking hours. I can’t blame anyone else for that, it’s partly an ego thing that I want to be seen as a good citizen and partly a procrastination thing – 90 mins reading and reviewing a 3,000 story is “writing time” without me having to do the really hard work of my own writing. But I’m still pondering. I need to give it more time, see how things develop.

Anyway back to what will disappear? Here’s what I’m thinking so far

  • time not really doing one thing or another. I spend a lot of time half doing things. I’m watching TV but also surfing the web. I’m supposed to be writing but I’m fiddling with computer settings. If I can reclaim even a little of this ‘noodling around’ time I’ll be doing well[2]
  • Watching TV – much as I hate to say it, having spent a good part of the last year establishing what is now a really nice MythTV system, I spend too much time watching TV. So on stats alone, since it’s a large proportion of what I do, it’ll need to be a large portion of what I need to give up. Fortunately that’s not too hard (I think). A lot of what I record on Myth is might-be-good-let’s-record-on-the-offchance crap which I then watch just so I can delete it and keep the disk from filling up. I think I’m going to stop doing that. Or at least I’ll set it to auto-expire and if I don’t get around to it before it does, oh well.
  • Surfing the web – same rationale as the above. It’s what I spend a lot of time doing so there’s a lot of scope to cut back. This will actually be helped by the fact that I’ve gone a little cold on SoF (which used to account for many many hours online), now I mostly check it through habit. A lot of what I read I’ve seen before in some other form now. Interestingly, M., who I met on SoF, feels the same.
  • some late night chats with M. – ok, a slightly delicate one, since I haven’t actually mentioned this to her yet. It’s not the chats per se I want to cut back on, just some of the lateness. M. and I have the ability to just talk and talk, which is wonderful and the sign I think of a close friendship, but sometimes we try to live up to that even when we’ve not got a lot to say – so somehow there’s a feeling that all’s not well if we only chat for half an hour. And the lateness causes tiredness which makes things like sitting down to spend an hour writing a challenge. I know it affects M. too. What I want to do is to actually do stuff which we’ve talked about in the past such as having a limit to how late we talk on week-nights and not trying to force it when we’ve neither got much to say.

How much time that will realistically net me I’m not sure. However I’ve put together a vague plan of how I might spend my “writing time”:

  • Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – an hour of “writing” time and half an hour of reading. The writing time will usually be AFO related. I’m going to try to make sure I alternate between reviews and my own writing.
  • Saturdays – two hours writing time spent working through “A Novel in a Year”. It’s got a weekly structure and I don’t want to get ahead so any “spare” time can be spent on AFO/other projects. At least half an hour reading.
  • Sundays – three hours writing time (probably in 2 90min sessions) working through “Creative Writing – A Workbook with Readings” with is a pretty serious textbook (also a present from M.) Half an hour (or more) reading – although Creative Writing has readings in it.
  • Mondays and Fridays – these are “writing optional” days. I deliberately worked in some flexibility into the system. I can write if I want to, feel inspired. Or just have the night off, start/end the weekend if I’m tired. I’d probably write my blog on a Monday or a Friday. BTW I want to start blogging at least once a week. What I’m going to blog about is best left to another post I think (this must be pretty long by now[3])

Anyone who’s noticed that this looks suspiciously like New Year’s Resolutions is right but I’m not going to get too hung up if I don’t stick to it. If I miss it one day, I’ll get back to it the next. If I only half-keep to it I’ll be doing a heck of a lot better than I have done.

2008 is the year of me taking writing seriously!

[1]On monday I wrote a 2,000 word story for AFO. It took me two hours to write, another two to re-write/polish and it still felt like a rough draft when I was done.

[2]I think some noodling time is essential otherwise I’ll feel like I’m too regimented.

[3]Eek! Just check preview and it’s very long. Oh well. You read to here didn’t you?