Category Archive: 'Directing'

I told a younger friend Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a good way to jump into the franchise. Then, in a late-night, wine-fueled moment of paranoia, I re-watched the movie to make sure it holds up. Good news: it does. It’s a great film. Not as many LED volumes as modern Trek […]

Just finished watching the first season of Arcane on Netflix and…I was surprised how much I absolutely loved what is ultimately: a video game adaptation of a game that I played for years that I couldn’t remember two story or lore beats from* So perhaps, just like I did with Neon Genesis Evangelion, we can […]

I’ve become somewhat known as a person who writes solid action, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on ‘fight scene theory’. In other words, what do I think I know about how to make fights in stories dramatic and compelling? This theory is the result of a process I call ‘modeling’ – that is, […]

This went out as a newsletter recently, and I thought the subject matter was worth saving for posterity… Did you see the new YouTube video I put up at the beginning of the month? I’m really fond of the format. I’ll confess: this is modeled on a format on music producer YouTube, created (perfected?) by […]
Yay, I have an excuse to talk about the new Half-Life game. I played through the original Half-Life in software mode on my parents’ old Pentium 2 machine. I played through its sequel on my PC shortly after I graduated film school way back in 2005. I still remember the immensely satisfying, filmic ending of […]
We did another episode of the wizard talk show. Then we got cancelled. Channel 101 is cruel. The episode turned out very silly and the production value is a huge jump from part one. I imagine a Wizard’s Corner show that is essentially Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, just a ton of bizarre characters and creatures in this […]
New year, and I miss posting blogs, on account that some of them turn out well and I like finding them years later. I’ll continue to YouTube sporadically; I’m fond especially of New Gods and the silly character I play when I host it. I think, in 2020, blogs will be where I say hopefully […]
It’s a new year. And with that new year I’m running through my creative works-in-progress. Evaluate, stop, go, that sort of thing. At any given time I’m ‘marinating’ several stories. I’ve talked in a YouTube video how there’s a moment a project feels right to me to begin real work on it. Before that it’s […]
It’s been a long time coming, but somehow, I’ve started directing again in earnest. It’s a good feeling. I’ve known for about a year now that I wanted to shoot something, but I took my time to be smart and deliberate about projects. Channel 101 is great fun but ultimately a chance to practice…a distraction. […]
Learning From Evangelion The END of Learning From Evangelion It’s time again for another list of hot storytelling techniques gleaned from Evangelion, which remains a slick and complex TV show. And now we can all watch it on Netflix. Use Inversions! As in, when something good happens, something bad happens. And vice versa. Traditional writing […]