She is Risen

I’d make a lousy parent.  This blog is proof.  If it were human, it would have already suffered TRAINSPOTTING crib death.  

Fortunately, I’ve been fattening up “Baby Girl” proper and that’s what it’s all supposed to be about (for the moment).

I’m still a little bit confused as to how much I really want to reveal here since we’re talking about a project that’s under construction and in flux.  It’s a sign of the times and my oh-so-trendy immediacy issues that I want to share it now, now, now!!  It’s also painful insecurity and thanks to the internet, I can now share my insecurity with the world (or a handful of readers if I’m lucky).

Speaking of the readers and modern attention deficiencies, I’ve noticed a recurring response to the inaugural entry.  In short, it’s too long.  No one wants to read that much crap.  Especially not from some long-winded egomaniac like myself.

So, what this site really needs is a sense of economy (which is easy when you’re working with no budget) and more visual stimulation.  Perhaps if I can chop my ramblings into bite-sized chunks and insert them in between fun pictures, it’ll be easier to digest.

Aaaaand, sadly, that’s not going to happen on my laptop since my browser is giving me grief.  Bear with me.

I do want to quickly discuss a few things that I hope to have happen with this project.  

First and foremost, I have to get it written.  Over the summer and into the fall, I was writing it as first-person prose in a notebook.  That was really great and it yielded some strong results, but I really wasn’t getting anywhere. 

It’s still very much a product of my head space from this past summer, but I’ve developed it enough to the point where it’s taken on a life of its own.  It’s not QUITE divorced from its obvious real life inspiration (not in the least bit, quite frankly), but it has a cozy new home in my head which is a full county away from where it began.

This is all rather vague and probably boring to anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.  That’s where this blog is going to get a little bit tricky.

I’m tempted to start sharing actual substance of the story as well as the odd structure I’ve come up with.  If you keep in mind that a few of my most obvious inspirations for this project include David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE (as well as most of Mr. Lynch’s back catalogue) and ETERNAL SUNSHINE FOR THE SPOTLESS MIND, you can probably guess the type of mindfuck I’m going for here.  

You’ll also notice that I’m citing movies here rather than books or printed stories.  That stands to reason since I think in a very visual and cinematic way.  I’ve done fan edits of other people’s movies just for fun and have confidence (however unfounded) that I have an instinct for cinematic rhythm.  

This is why I’ve started writing “Baby Girl” as a screenplay.  Actually, I’ve long since started doing that.  It’s grown into a much more substantial and fully formed narrative since I jumped over to a medium I have a lot more of a taste for.  The idea is that I’ll take this script and use it as the basis for a future prose version of the story.  In other words, I’m going to write the novelization for a movie that doesn’t exist.

Well, for now.  

My immediate plan is to solicit trusted artists to start visualizing “Baby Girl” for this website with the intention of later including this artwork as illustrations for a printed edition.  Nothing teases like images and while “Baby Girl” is going to be ruled by my language fetish (among others), I can’t wait to start giving curious users a peak at what I think these characters look like.

Um, wait?  What characters?  Have we talked about the dramatis personae or what this damn thing is even about?  Not yet.  I’m still skittish about this part, but the bottom line is that if I don’t share SOMETHING, the few of you who are reading this will simply cease to care.

In terms of taking “Baby Girl” to the next level, I’d love to assemble a small game cast who wouldn’t mind adopting my main characters.  The idea would be to at first do simple read throughs to see if the dialogue has any flow to it.  If it works like I hope, I’ll give the actors room to improvise and help me hash out how these characters SHOULD be talking.

And once we do that, I’d like to look into shooting some “Baby Girl” short videos to post on the website as a teaser and, more ambitiously, as a “demo reel” to use as the basis for a possible “Baby Girl” movie project.  That latter idea is way, way, way down the road.  For now, I’d like to have actors providing models for my characters and I do want to shoot short videos to hide around the future “She Is Risen” website as easter eggs for curious users to unlock.  I have no idea how feasible this is, but it seems like it should be possible.

The original (and enduring) reason to get actors was also to provide models for artists to do the illustrations.  That’s still the plan, but I wonder how tricky it would be to shoot videos of the actors and to put a rotoscoping effect on it to look like animation (like those Richard Linklater movies, WAKING LIFE and A SCANNER DARKLY only way more cheap and crude).  

In the coming days, I’ll start to share character and story info here.  Only people who know me or already know what I’m doing with this story have any reason to be excited by it.

The rest of you just have to take my word for it.  But considering how cluttered the internet is with vanity projects, that’s simply not good enough.  So, in the coming days and weeks, I’ll invite everyone to dip their toes in the water and come on in.

There’s a narrative in here worth experiencing.  And once we reach a certain point (that being the completion of “Baby Girl” and the prepping of “She Is Risen”), there will be a role for fledgling writers to participate and contribute.

At least, that’s the plan.

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