I was a voracious reader as a child and even through middle school until high school (aka sex & alcohol) took over my lizard brain. As an adult I found movies to be a great story substitute and my reading habits almost disappeared entirely. The writer in me struggled during these dry periods without any real sustenance to keep my creative muscles healthy. When I decided to bring back writing as a priority I knew I’d have to dive into books with the same hunger I once had in my childhood.
Being an IT consultant made book reading more difficult than usual. My infatuation with dead trees limited how much I could read while traveling. I’d sometimes stuff a paperback into my laptop bag, but if the book only came in hardcover, forget it. If I wanted more variety I couldn’t justify the extra weight (my work bag was already loaded with tons of cables and gadgets). This meant that the most I could read in a one week trip was ONE book even though I could easily knock out a book in a day or two. With all the hassle I’d often forego a book entirely. Reading on any kind of LCD screen was no better and would kill my eyes. I stare at LCDs all day long for work, so the last thing I wanted to do is stare at them when I’m supposed to be relaxing. If I absolutely had to read something lengthy off of my computer I’d either print it out or skip it altogether.
This was my dilemma, how could I devour books at a breakneck speed if I could only bring along one paperback at a time? My desire to consume more words along with my travel restrictions were what finally drove me to join the e-reader club. We all have different reasons for making certain decisions, but I wanted to share mine and show how a rabid bibliophile could morph into a fanatical Kindle user.
I’m a movie nut in all conceivable ways. If allowed, I would spend thousands of dollars to build up my DVD collection, in a single purchase… every couple of months. One of the few topics I still speak passionately about is film and my knowledge of it is more encyclopedic than my knowledge of Information Technology (shhh, don’t tell anyone). My ultimate goal, which I’m actively working on, is to become involved in the film industry (creating and producing not acting or directing). Movies have always been a natural extension for a kid who’s been obsessed with stories since the moment he could read.
Reflecting on all this I asked myself, Just how fanatical am I about movies? My answer is this little experiment which I will start conducting on January 1st: I will keep a log of every single movie I watch for the entirety of 2012. I’ll also keep track of their run times in order to determine how many hours of my life I’ve spent consuming film. The idea came to me when I stumbled across an old list I kept from when I first bought my plasma TV. I was trying to determine when I had crossed the first 200 hours of use which is when plasma TVs are most prone to burn in.
It’ll be interesting to see just how much of my life is dedicated to movies. Quite possibly it’s one of those sobering statistics that no one pays attention to until someone crunches the numbers. Hell, I hope I have the dedication to keep on track from an entire year. Compiling statistics is not what I would consider a good time, but hopefully I can bring some of my RPG nerdiness to bear and it’ll keep me motivated.
Are you just as nutso about films as I am? Want to join me in this experiment? Let me know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo. If you enjoy these articles then have them delivered to your inbox.
A group of strangers banding together to fight a relentless evil is nothing new in the horror genre. There have been many great movies made in that vein (i.e. From Dusk Till Dawn, Demon Knight, etc.) so I thought it was pretty difficult to inject fresh blood into a worn out story. That’s where a little film called Feast proved me wrong.
Directed by John Gulager and written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, Feast was a Project Greenlight winner. Not exactly the pedigree you’d expect for a gore splattered horror film. Somehow the creators of Feast were able to pull off an original film by taking all the assumptions an audience typically makes with horror films and turning them on their head.
For those of us writing horror stories or even horror films *raises hand*, Feast is a solid example of how knowing the rules allows you build an engaging film and then lets you screw with the audience in all the right places.
