Goodness endures

Every year Mom used to draw and print a Christmas card for the family to use. My dad sent out hundreds of cards each year to colleagues and fellow-clergy in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, so it was probably a real budget-saver as well as being a card recipients looked forward to year after year.

My sister Mary evidently came across a stash of unused cards recently, so today we received in the mail a card that was created for a Christmas in the early 1970's (lookit the telephone on the corner of the piano!):

That's me in the background, with the youthful figure and the dark curly hair. Mary is in front of me; my wife, Rebekah; is at the piano, and Robin is doing her best to help the dogs keep on pitch.

This card reminds me that the good stuff we do can reach far beyond our expectations for it: another good reason for making good stuff (or trying to) whenever we can, without knowing or needing to know who shall become its audience, or how. Thanks, Mom! And thanks to Mary for using the card.

Writing for odd circumstances

I've done a lot of writing of scripts for odd circumstances. I once created a murder mystery that was performed in the first and third cars of a three-car historic steam train running between Holyoke and Westfield, Massachusetts. People in each car had to see all the characters, get enough clues to what was going on, and be entertained. Then we mixed up the seating for the second half of the ride, so people could consult and try to figure out whodunnit.

My current writing project is three short scripts on "flipping the classroom" for an education conference. We are filming using Moviestorm (moviestorm.co.uk), which calls itself "the world's first video sketch tool".

All the elements of creating an animated movie are there, at a fraction of the cost. Moviestorm movies are animations, or more specifically machinima. Will share some with you soon.

We're putting together what we know via a shared whiteboard at realtimeboard.com:

I am creating the scripts using Celtx (celtx.com) with both the offline editing tool and the online shared space (so stakeholders can see how the scripts are developing).

Celtx also makes it easy to set up the shot sequences and build a shooting schedule.

Suppose I should underline that I am a happy user of the technologies I mentioned above, but not employed by any of the firms that make them. Their existence (plus the Internet) makes it possible for me to attempt exciting stuff from a little house in rural Nova Scotia, far away from the hotspots of the film biz. The technologies also let me collaborate with people in California and the UK, removing almost every barrier except the time-zone issue from our project's path.