Outro S5 E6
Hello survivors – here we are well into season five of your favorite apocalypse podcast. Who would have imagined?
The thing about this that really tickles my whiskers is that this was indeed my plan. I was going to write and produce five seasons and consistently push out an episode every two weeks.
So that makes me happy. And if you’ve had one or two moments of joy or mild amusement or just a slight itching sensation under your left eyebrow – then I have succeeded!
In retrospect it all sounds very simple, and even rational and organized.
But, nothing ever is. The resistance is always there, no matter how well laid your plans are, waiting in the shadows to leap out and garrot your dreams. And the chaos ever swirls. Vortexes, eddies and rips to navigate in your tremulous coracle made of reeds and spit.
Yet, we did it. You and I.
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Quick updates for this week are – I’m expecting the first season manuscript back from the copy edit this week. Then I submit it to the publisher. I’ve got a cover design that I like, so with the holidays, that’s probably a 2 -4 week lead time, which lands us into beginning to middle December for that release.
Once I get some dates and links I’ll share and come up with some asks for you all to go out and shamelessly pump glowing reviews into the atmosphere like so many aggrandizing shiny butterflies.
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As far as what I’ve been reading and listening to that you might be interested in – I’m just about finished with book five of the Expanse series. I might have mentioned before that I joined the science fiction book club at the local library. Last night I dialed in remotely from a business trip in Milwaukee to geek out with a couple guys around book four. And I have to tell you I really enjoyed it.
My people!
I also watched the movie 1917 on a plane ride to Dallas. I had watched it before on TV. But, the experience of watching on television with commercial breaks was so much poorer than watching as intended, end-to-end immersivity it was like two different movies.
It’s a beautiful, immersive film. On the surface it’s a war movie but the craft of it makes it so much more.
The screen play and photography is so rich. It puts you in the narrative.
The point of view is like an omniscient character, where you follow the characters and the plot, but at the same time comments on the beauty and the horror of the landscape as they progress through it. It’s like a carnival ride through Dante or a Pilgrim’s Progress allegory.
It is the hero’s journey, but more than that, like Hercules’ Journey through Hades. The framing and lighting of the scenes are ethereal. The shadow play in the bombed-out city like a fun-house mirror with the flares falling and casting shadow and light – wonderful.
The opening long cuts of trenches that dwell on characters’ faces and the emotions – it’s not the war or the action it’s in impact or reflection of that on the characters. A great example of ‘show’ versus ‘tell’.
There is gore, but not in a titillation or body-horror sense. The body horror serves to show the even the most horrible can be made more horrible when it becomes commonplace.
And on my rewatch I picked up the storytelling devices. The cherry blossoms, the meadows, the river. In the opening scene the protagonist is at rest against the trunk of a tree in a meadow – and in the end, after all his trials, he returns.
The lesson here is that when you have a powerful bit of storytelling like this, you owe it to yourself and to the craft to watch with engagement and focus.
To appreciate its depth you need to lean in and not be distracted.
Don’t watch it with commercial breaks. Shut off your phone.
Give the movie a chance to reveal its subtleties and craft.
And with that my survivor friends, I am approaching my word limit.
So…Huddle tightly against the muddy walls of the trench, pull your helmet straps tight, brush off the curious rats and keep surviving.
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