Saturday, January 31, 2009

Sample of Friday the 13th Avatar Comcis Submission Script

FRIDAY THE 13th
REQUIEM
WRITTEN
by
Lee Gooden

PAGE ONE

(1 PANEL)

PANEL 1:
The night is illuminated by cold stark stars that salt a foreboding sky and a crescent moon tilted like an idiot's smile. There is something off about the night. We see the scene like the shots Orson Welles filmed of Xanadu in Citizen Kane; from the bottom up. We see a cornfield that has gone to rot after the corn season. There are dried corn stalks in random spots, the roots of the stalks are almost completely above the ground as if they were tentacle like legs that have tried to escape the earth. The stalks contain rotten ears of corn and fuzzy but black and grey corn silks. Jason is center stage. He is wearing a threadbare work shirt. The pocket is almost torn off. The sleeves of the shirt are ripped off just below the shoulder, showing Jason's considerable sized arms. His hands, arms and shirt are brownish red with dried blood. Jason is hefting a large blood stained machete. Jason's pants are ripped and frayed at the cuff. His boots are mud and blood splattered. His hockey mask is cracked in the upper left corner above the eye, revealing some blackened rancid flesh. This is Jason in all his frightful glory, Jason in his prime, a terrifying ass kicking Jason.

1-CAPTION
(On the top left side corner of the panel,)
THE NIGHT...

2-CAPTION
(On the bottom right side corner of the panel,)
...IS WRONG.

3-TITLE
FRIDAY THE 13TH
Bottom left corner of panel that stretches to the bottom middle of panel, (note to colorist: these letters are black, with tiny droplets of crimson to represent blood. I know, I know, cliché...but it works damn it.)

4-SUBTITLE
REQUIEM
(Directly below FRIDAY THE 13TH, some of the droplets of blood from the top have dripped down onto the word REQUIEM. And then more words below REQUIEM that read PART 1: DOORWAYS.

5-CREDIT INFO

(No dialogue)

PAGE TWO

PANEL 1

The panel stretches across the top of the page. Jason has reached the outside of the perimeter of the corn field. We can see the cornfield behind him. He has stopped his rapid walk towards his next murdering rampage, a ramshackle farm house, we can just make out the outline of the structure and rusty, beaten chicken wire fence is in the foreground. Framed by the wire is a crooked sign that reads, CRYSTAL LAKE FARMS.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 2
Cut to: A close up of Jason from the shoulders up.
He is a juggernaut of death. Behind him, near his shoulder we see the disembodied spirit of his mother whispering in his ear.

1-CAPTION
HIS FRENZIED RAGE HAS BEEN SPURNED ON FOR ALL THESE YEARS BY HIS MOTHER'S VOICE.
2-MRS. VOORES
KILL THEM JASON, KILL THEM ALL, MAKE THEM PAY!! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!
3-CAPTION
A VOICE SO COMPELLING, SO POWERFUL, A SIREN SONG THAT HAS BROUGHT HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD COUNTLESS TIMES, BACK FROM THE EDGE OF THE PITS OF HELL, TO KILL AGAIN AND AGAIN.
4-MRS. VOORES
KILL THEM! KILL! KILL! KILL!

(Until specified, Mrs. Voorhees spirit will be in every panel taunting Jason)

PANEL 3
Jason grasping the door to the farm house pulling it from its hinges.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 4
A rear view: Jason flying backwards away from the door. His body is bent at an impossible angle. His back is blackened and smoking from powder burns, rancid and raw meat bursts out from his body, including ropes of gangrened intestine; all of this is caused by the double blast of an over and under sawed-off double barrel shot-gun fired from inside the doorway by a stereotypical farmer dressed to the nines in stereotypical farmer duds; including, shit-kicker boots and bib-overalls. He has a big bomber joint attached to his lower lip. His face is covered with a scraggly beard and there is a wild look in his eyes as he peers over his granny- glasses, a ball-cap rests precariously on his head that reads, 'Git R done.'

5-SFX
BLAM! BLAM!

(No dialogue)

PANEL 5
The farmer reloads his shot gun. Both barrels are smoking.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 6
Cut to: Spent shot-gun shells falling to the ground.

(No dialogue)

PAGE THREE

PANEL 1
The farmer is standing over Jason's body. He is using the shot gun as a probe, pushing it into Jason.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 2
A close up on the Farmer's face. His grin is all yellow teeth.

1-FARMER
DAMN, IF YOU AINT ONE BIG UGLY SON OF A BITCH.

PANEL 3
Farmer pulls the trigger and fires both barrels into Jason point blank range. Pieces of Jason fly up into the air.

2- SFX
BLAM! BLAM!

(No dialogue)

Panel 4
The farmer hawks up a loogey from deep in his throat and spits phlegm and a gooey mouth full of chewing tobacco juice onto Jason.

3-SFX
HAAAAWK!
4-SFX
SPLOOCH!

Panel 5
The farmer has turned to go back inside. The door to his house is hanging from a single bent hinge. There is a blast hole through the door where the farmer fired. Jason has sat up, but the farmer is facing away from Jason.

4-Mrs. Voorhees
GET UP! GET UP AND KILL HIM JASON!

Panel 6
POV from inside the house looking towards the door. Jason's machete followed by his forearm bursts through the farmer's stomach.

(No dialogue)

Panel 7
Jason slices the farmer from stomach to the top of the head.

(No dialogue)

Panel 8
The farmer's body separates into two clean parts like an anatomical cross section. His brain is visible in both sides of his cleaved skull.

(No dialogue)

PAGE FOUR

Panel 1
Interior of the farm house: A rear view of Jason standing inside the doorway just across the threshold in a rustic foyer. A banister and some worn steps to an antiquated staircase can be seen through a large, gaping, dripping, hole in Jason.
(No dialogue)

Panel 2
Jason's POV: To the left of the staircase is a well lit but small hallway. At the end of the hallway is a set of large black steel double doors with a video camera moving back and forth. It is mounted above the upper frame of the doors.

(No dialogue)

Panel 3
Jason's POV:To the right of the stair case is a huge stuffed raven perched on a log. Think Poe and the Addam's Family.

(No dialogue)

Panel 4
Jason climbs the stairs.

(No dialogue)

Panel 5
Cut to: The black double doors spring open

1-SFX
Slam!

(No dialogue)

Panel 6
Jason pauses in mid-step on the stairs and leans slightly over the railing to see and listen in the direction of the double doors.

Priest uncovering beginnings of Final Solution

Priest uncovering beginnings of Final Solution


By MARIA DANILOVA and RANDY HERSCHAFT, Associated Press Writers Maria Danilova And Randy Herschaft, Associated Press Writers – 2 hrs 25 mins ago
This file photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial shows a German soldier AP – This file photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial shows a German soldier shooting an Ukrainian Jew …

KIEV, Ukraine – The Holocaust has a landscape engraved in the mind's eye: barbed-wire fences, gas chambers, furnaces.

Less known is the "Holocaust by Bullets," in which over 2 million Jews were gunned down in towns and villages across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Their part in the Nazis' Final Solution has been under-researched, their bodies left unidentified in unmarked mass graves.

"Shoah," French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's documentary, stands as the 20th century's epic visual record of the Holocaust. Now another Frenchman, a Catholic priest named Patrick Desbois, is filling in a different part of the picture.

Desbois says he has interviewed more than 800 eyewitnesses and pinpointed hundreds of mass graves strewn around dusty fields in the former Soviet Union. The result is a book, "The Holocaust by Bullets," and an exhibition through March 15 at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Brought to Ukraine by a twist of fate, Desbois has spent seven years trying to document the truth, honor the dead, relieve witnesses of their pain and guilt and prevent future acts of genocide.

Some 1.4 million of Soviet Ukraine's 2.4 million Jews were executed, starved to death or died of disease during the war. Another 550,000-650,000 Soviet Jews were killed in Belarus and up to 140,000 in Russia, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.

Begun after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the slaughter by bullets was the opening phase of what became the Nazis' Final Solution with its factories of death operating in Auschwitz and other camps, all in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Desbois devotes his 233-page book, published by Palgrave Macmillan in August, to his work in Ukraine, where he says he has uncovered over 800 mass extermination sites, more than two-thirds of them previously unknown.

Since the book was written, he has expanded his search for mass graves into Belarus and plans to look early this year in areas of Russia that were occupied by the Germans.

Sometimes bursting into tears, old men and women from poor Ukrainian villages recount to Desbois how women, children and elders were marched or carted in from neighboring towns to be shot, burned to death or buried alive by German troops, Romanian forces, squads of local Ukrainian collaborators and local ethnic German volunteers.

Even then, it was methodical, Desbois' research shows. First, Germans would arrive in a town or village and gather intelligence on how best to transport the victims to extermination sites, where to execute them and how to dispose of their bodies.

"It was done as systematically as it was done elsewhere," said John Paul Himka, an expert on the Holocaust and Ukraine at the University of Alberta in Canada, who is not connected to Desbois' work. "You can read as they're figuring out best way to do this, the best way to shoot ... it's absolutely systematic, no accident here."

Desbois' interviews and grave-hunting tie in to millions of pages of Soviet archives, heightening their credibility, says Paul Shapiro, of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum who wrote the foreword to Desbois' book.

Father Desbois' work is also having an impact on efforts to preserve Holocaust sites. In December, the 26-nation International Task Force on the Holocaust called on European governments to ensure the protection of locations such as the mass graves Desbois is uncovering, according to Shapiro, who helped draft the resolution.

Among Desbois' key findings is the widespread use of local children to help bury the dead, wait on the German soldiers during meals and remove gold teeth and other valuables from the bodies. His work has also yielded evidence that the killings were most frequently carried out in the open, in daylight and in a variety of ways — shooting victims, throwing them alive into bonfires, walling up a group of Jews in a cellar that wasn't opened until 12 years later.

Desbois' witnesses are mostly Orthodox Christian, and he comes to them as a priest, dressed in black and wearing a clerical collar, taking in their pain and trying to ease their suffering. Many have never before talked about their experiences.

In the village of Ternivka, some 200 miles south of Kiev where 2,300 Jews were killed, a frail, elderly woman, who identified herself only as Petrivna, revealed the unbearable task the Nazis imposed on her.

The young schoolgirl saw her Jewish neighbors thrown into a large pit, many still alive and convulsing in agony. Her task was to trample on them barefoot to make space for more. One of those she had to tread on was a classmate.

"You know, we were very poor, we didn't have shoes," Petrivna told Desbois in a single breath, her body twitching in pain, Desbois writes in his book. "You see, it is not easy to walk on bodies."

Desbois, 53, a short, soft-spoken man with dark, thinning hair, says the stories give him nightmares. The most difficult is "to bear the horrors that the witnesses tell me, because often the people are simple, very kind and want to tell me everything," Desbois said in a phone interview while on a trip to western Ukraine.

"You have to be able to listen, to accept, to bear this horror," said Desbois. "I am not here to judge the people's guilt, we are here to know what happened."

Desbois' small team includes a translator, a researcher, a mapping expert, a ballistics specialist and a video and photo crew. He often joins his witnesses in their homes, leaving his shoes outside. He tends to a peasant's cow while the man tells his story.

Desbois has deep personal roots in his project, dating to 2002, when he first visited Ukraine to see the place where his grandfather was interned as a French prisoner in World War II.

When he arrived, the locals told him of a stream of blood that had run from the site where the Jews were executed and of a dismembered woman hanging from a tree after the Nazis threw a grenade in a pit full of people. When he was offered a visit to more villages, he did not hesitate.

"I am in a hurry to find all the bones, to establish the truth and justice so that the world can know what happened and that the Germans never left a tiny village in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia without killing Jews there."

The Holocaust is a divisive topic here because some Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis. Jewish groups are grateful for Desbois' efforts and lament the lack of government support for his and other Holocaust research and education programs.

"As a Ukrainian citizen and a Ukrainian historian it pains me ... that there is no policy of national remembrance," said Anatoly Podolsky, head of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies. "We are not responsible for the past but we are responsible for remembering."

Desbois leads a French association, Yahad-In Unum (the Hebrew and Latin words for "together"), which was founded by Catholics and Jews to heal the wounds between the two faiths. He believes that as a Catholic priest talking to Orthodox believers about the killing of their Jewish neighbors his work advances that healing mission.

"The book is meant so that people know ... that a genocide is simply people killing people," Desbois said. "My book is also an act of prevention of future acts of genocide."

___

Randy Herschaft reported from New York.

___

On the Net:

The Holocaust by Bullets book site: http://us.macmillan.com/theholocaustbybullets

Yahad-In Unum: http://www.yahadinunum.org/index.en.html

Museum of Jewish Heritage: http:http://www.mjhnyc.org

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: http://www.ushmm.org

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

John Updike has passed

Mr. Updike succumbed to lung cancer on January 27. He has left behind an amazingly prolific body of work in criticism, the short story, essays, novels, verse, a stage play or two and children's literature. The world will be a lesser place without him, but at the same time his work will keep him immortal. It will seem strange to me when I receive the next New Yorker in the mail and there won't be an Updike short story, book or art review or new verse. My personal favorites of Mr. Updike are his Rabbit and Bech series, the Karl Barth inspired A Month of Sundays and Roger's Version. I love, Of The Farm, The Poor House Fair, The Centaur, Pigeon Feathers, The Witches of Eastwick (currently reading the sequel, The Widows of Eastwick) Seek My Face and on and on, including his reviews and Non-fiction review and essay anthologies, like, Picked up Pieces, Hugging the Shore, and More Matter. I think his poetry was getting better, the poem, On Becoming a Senior Citizen was perfect. Recently he wrote a wonderful article in AARP magazine about becoming and aging writer. And so much more...He was always ready to offer his informed opinion about anything and he did it elegantly.

John Updike will be missed
L

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Teppes Engine Stargate/Stargate Atlantis Crossover Comic book script sample submission for Avatar Comics

Almost two years in the making, because I became ill last year and then I lost my notes and then I lost the actual manuscript and forgot about the whole idea, until I started to dream about the characters and the premise. When I finally sat down to really work on the script I decided that I was very ignorant to the craft and I hated what I wrote...a lot. And then, when I thought the rewrites were finished, I discovered my template sucked badly. So I studied and studied the script formatting of hundreds and thousand of established comic book writers and read copious amounts of books and gleaned zillions of websites about comic book writing. My script template is a combo of Alan Moore's, Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman and Duane Swierczynski. Thank you gentlemen, I'm indebted to you. Blah, blah, blah. Here is a sample of the final product.
L

THE TEPPES ENGINE
A
STAR GATE SG 1/ STAR GATE ATLANTIS CROSSOVER
WRITTEN
BY
Lee Gooden

PAGE ONE

PANEL 1.
This panel takes up the majority of the top of the page that showcases the front of General Jack O'Neill's cabin in Minnesota. It is a beautiful day, the sun is high in a deep blue sky and the clouds are wavy that is almost an echo of the water and foam beneath it. Jack's cabin is rustic, a wagon wheel at the end of the dirt and gravel driveway, a mailbox with a sign underneath that says, ‘Gone Fishin’. Just imagine the perfect laid back get away.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 2.
Jack O'Neill is out on a long dock of his pond. He is sitting in a rocking chair. He is dressed in fishing garb, including a fishing hat pulled down low with the works, hooks, lures, etc. A beer bottle is nestled between his legs. He is wearing kakis and red high top Converse canvas sneakers. A fishing vest fits neatly over a blue t-shirt with green letters that read ‘Kiss Me I’m Irish.’ Behind him is a long wooden wall that spans the length of the dock and the hill the cabin sits upon. Hanging on pegs is a long green pole net and miscellaneous fishing gear. Also, behind his chair are two metal garbage cans, equipped with metal lids. They're labeled individually. The garbage can on the left is labeled “cans and bottles and the one on the right is labeled “trash”. To the right of his chair attached to the dock wall with some kind of strapping mechanism is large white first aid kit, emblazoned with a giant red cross attached to the back wall (the first aid kit plays an important part in the story). A tackle box and fly tying kit sits at his feet.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 3:
We cut too: Carter: (here's one for all the frustrated fan-boys) she is sitting on the dock next to Jack. Her beautiful face is upturned towards the sky. The sun plays light shadows on her countenance. Her hair is blonde and short like Madonna’s from her True Blue album. Her eyes are closed and she has a slight relaxed smile; a smile that shows no teeth, only her full juicy lips. She is wearing an over-sized tee shirt with the sleeves rolled up like 1980's Bruce Springsteen. Because the tee is so big on her, the neck of the tee on her right side has slid down slightly so we can see her toned neck muscles and creamy shoulder.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 4:
We cut to: Mitchell fishing on the end of the dock. He is wearing cami-fatigue pants, a white wife-beater, hip waders and aviator’s sun-glasses. We see his right profile as he is about to cast the line from his fishing pole. He has the body of an endurance athlete, think Lance Armstrong.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 5
Cut to: Daniel also on the dock. He is sitting in a deck chair. He is not fishing; he is wearing Bermuda shorts and an orange-lime vest over a blue Henley shirt. On his head he is wearing one of those beer hats with straws leading from separate cans of beer to his mouth. He is listening to an Ipod and reading a book. We can see Ipod headphones leading to his ears. He is reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, the book is in front of his face, and we can only see his glasses above the book. He has his left leg over the arm of the deck chair; his posture is slouched and relaxed.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 6
A thin rectangular panel, along the length of the bottom of the page; in big block capital letters on the left hand side of the panel near the top is STAR GATE SG1/STAR GATE ATLANTIS
Below that in the same letters, THE TEPPES ENGINE, and below that in smaller letter capital letters, BETRAYED: PART 1. On the right of the panel is
The team credits and whatever other misc. credit info we need to include.

(No dialogue)

PAGE TWO-THREE

Splash Panel
We see the entire team on the dock in relation to the first page, POV is from the water. The entire background consists of a continuation of the background of Page 1 Panel 2 of the wooden wall that was behind O'Neill, with a variety of fishing and boating paraphernalia attached through out its length. In the foreground that runs the length of the two pages in front of the dock is the pond which is calm. On the far left of Page 2, Daniel is exactly the way he was in the previous page and panel (Page 1, Panel 5) he is still slouched in his deck chair, but now his legs are stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. To the right of Jackson, O'Neill is sitting in a white birch rocking chair. Empty beer bottles sit upright near his feet and the rocking chair along with some burnt out cigar stubs on the dock floor on the side of the chair opposite to the dock floor on the side of the chair that contains the tackle box and fly tying kit. To the right of O'Neill on Page 2 that overlaps the far left side of Page 3 Carter sitting on the dock. Her jeans are rolled up to her knees and her bare feet are submerged in the pond. A fishing pole lies on the dock floor to her right, the line of the pole trails out to the pond. Her t-shirt has the logo and album cover for Type O' Negative's, Bloody Kisses. A beer bottle sits next to her in easy reach. Her body language reads of a woman who is relaxed and in love. Further along the dock to the far right of page 3 we see Mitchell standing by the railing of the dock. A few beer bottles rest on the railing. He is in mid cast, his arm muscles are corded, and his fishing pole is slightly above his head. He is chewing on a tooth-pick.

(No dialogue)

PAGE FOUR

PANEL 1
A close up of O'Neill taking a sip of his beer. His eyes are closed and he is enjoying that beer. The fatigue and age lines on his face are a sharp contrast to his good mood.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 2
A close up of O’Neill aging, semi-liver spotted hands attempting to tie a home made fly. His fly tying kit is balanced on his knees. His hands have a slight tremor.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 3
O'Neill has dropped his fly tying kit onto the dock floor. He is bent over in his chair and is picking up his equipment. Carter has removed her feet from the pond, she is still sitting on the dock, and she has her arms wrapped around legs pulling them to her chest. She is resting her chin on her knees, water droplets are on her feet and lower legs dripping down to the dock. She is turned towards O'Neill

(No dialogue)

PANEL 4
A close-up shot of Daniel he has removed his Ipod and his beer can hat. His book is lying on the railing of his deck chair. He is holding his glasses with one hand and rubbing his face near his eyes with the other hand. He has a day or a day and half's growth of beard.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 5
Mitchell is in mid-cast again. His face is a grimace of concentration. He is wearing aviator sun-glasses, but we can still tell that he is intent on catching a fish. His beer bottle that rests on the railing refracts sunlight through its brown visage, casting a somber light.

(No dialogue)

PAGE FIVE


PANEL 1
Mitchell seen from another angle and a wider view, he is sipping from his beer and nonchalantly holding his pole. He has one foot resting on a lower support of the dock railing. He has pushed his sunglasses up onto his head. He seems so relaxed.

1-MITCHELL
DON'T GET MUCH BETTER THAN THIS GENERAL.

PANEL 2
We see a front view of O'Neill. He has finished tying off his fly and has cast his line. He is sitting in his rocking chair, rocking and fishing. We need to show the rocking motion of his chair. The lines in his face are so clear. He is still handsome as hell; his face has that rugged, wind blown, almost leathery look. Think Sam Shepard or Scott Glenn in the movie Silverado.

2-O'NEILL
OUT HERE SON, ITS JUST JACK.

PANEL 3:
Carter is lying on the dock. She is on her side, her feet towards O'Neill, her head is propped up on her elbow. She has a shit eating grin.

3-CARTER
SOUNDS LIKE A LINE FROM WILL AND GRACE.

PANEL 4
Jackson. Has his I-pod is draped over the arm of the chair. His glasses are held between his fingers. He also has a big shit eating grin. Like the character Jack on Will and Grace, he exclaims with flourish.

4-JACKSON
JUST JACK!

PANEL 5
A close up of O'Neill's face. He attempts to keep his composure but cannot help but allow a wry smile. He is trying very, very hard not to encourage the line of conversation, but he cannot resist temptation.

5-O'NEILL
OK, THAT'S ENOUGH OF THAT...BUT, JUST OUT OF CURIOUSITY, WHICH ONE OF YOU IS WILL AND WHICH ONE OF YOU IS GRACE?

PANEL 6:
An entire body shot of Carter. She has pretty much abandoned any attempt at real fishing. She is sitting up on the dock one leg folded under her butt; the other is hanging off the dock. She is laughing and in mid-stretch which makes her chest stick out.

6-CARTER
DON'T JUST ASSUME BECAUSE I AM A WOMAN THAT MAKES ME GRACE.

PANEL 7
Daniel is doubled up in his chair laughing. We can actually see a tiny balding spot on his head. The Dracula novel has fallen onto the dock; its pages are being blown by a slight breeze. He plays along with the whole Will and Grace Scenario.

7-JACKSON:
WELL, DON'T ASSUME JUST BECAUSE I'M A MAN THAT I'M WILL.

PAGE SIX


PANEL 1
O'Neill has pushed his rocker back and has it balanced against the back wall. He has his beer tipped up high and he is taking a long pull from his bottle. He is obviously enjoying the nonsense and banter. His fishing pole is locked tightly between his legs.

1-O'NEILL
DON'T LOOK AT ME...I'M...JUST JACK.

PANEL 2
Mitchell is still fishing, but he is good naturedly looking over his shoulder at SG1.

2-MITCHELL
YOU GUYS, YOU'RE SCARING THE FISH.

PANEL 3
A close up of O'Neill pointing at Mitchell's fishing pole.

3-O'NEILL
LOOK'S LIKE WE SCARED A FISH RIGHT ONTO YOUR HOOK. WATCH YOUR POLE.

PANEL 4
A small square that overlaps Panel 3 and the right top side of Panel 5. A close up of Mitchell's white knuckled hands holding tightly to a bent and straining fishing pole.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 5
Is a rectangle that takes up the entire middle bottom of the page, except where Panel 4 over-laps. Mitchell is struggling with his fishing pole. The fish that he has landed is huge because he is using all his upper body strength, his muscles are straining; their size and fitness are emphasized by the wife beater. It rides up in front and shows his perfectly sculpted abs.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 6:
Is pretty much the same shot but from a distance, POV from the water looking towards the dock. A fish that looks like a great pike is hooked and flying through the air. SG1, the cabin and the dock are in the background. To the far right of the fish the aft of a row boat is visible.

(No dialogue)

PAGE SEVEN


PANEL 1
Cut to a close up on Mitchell trying to reel in the fish. His teeth are very white and gritted in exertion pulled back lips as if he were an animal in mid growl.

1-MITCHELL
GENERAL O'...UM, JACK, A LITTLE HELP HERE. GET THE NET!

PANEL 2
A small panel, a close up of O'Neill's sneaker nudging a beer bottle, tipping it over.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 3

Cut to O'Neill, he is in mid-leap over Carter. She has ducked down low in fear of being trampled by him. His fishing hat has fallen off and he has dropped his own fishing pole. One of his hands instinctively has found the fishing net on the wall and is removing it by its green handle from the hooks.

2-O'NEILL
COMING KID, HANG ON.

PANEL 4
Carter is sitting the way she was in Panel 3. The only change is that she isn't sunk down so low and her eyes are looking up as O'Neill’s leap sails him above her. His shadow passes over her face and part of the dock.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 5:
A small panel, we cut to close up of the beer bottle, spilling its contents on the deck of the dock. It resembles blood flow.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 6
Mitchell face is twisted in exertion furiously fighting the fish. Jack is attempting to get the net under the fish. The fish is huge. It is flopping around and straining on the line, bending the pole to the point of breaking the line.

(No dialogue)

PAGE EIGHT


PANEL 1
Carter and Daniel have created a kind of semi-circle around O'Neill and Mitchell similar to the patterns of kids flocking around a playground fight. They're near O'Neill and Mitchell, but they hover outside of O'Neill's and Mitchell's range and are pretty much useless as help landing the fish.

(No dialogue)


PANEL 2:
The fish has made another incredible leap, snapping Mitchell' line.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 3:
A flabbergasted SG1 watches it as it lands 10 feet away from the dock, its rear fins are about to submerge and the rear of the fish gives a little shake as if it flipped Mitchell off.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 4:
Same scene as above, but the fish is gone and Mitchell is holding onto the broken end of his line.

1-MITCHELL
DAMN IT! THE HOOK IS STILL IN HER TOO.
2-O'NEILL
THAT WAS A 100 LB LINE.
3-CARTER
REALLY? IT WAS BROKEN SO EASILY.
4-JACKSON
DO YOU NORMLLY STOCK YOUR POND WITH PLESIASAURS JACK?
5-O'NEILL
FUNNY, REAL FUNNY, WONDER IF TEAL'c IS HAVING ANY LUCK?

PAGE NINE


PANEL 1
Cut to: Teal'c and Vala in a row boat with a small outboard motor. It is the rest of the boat we saw a few pages back. Teal'c is in the back of the boat, he seems serene, he is dressed his usual muscle shirt and fatigue pants and army boots, his fishing pole is held loosely in his hands, a tackle box, small can of bait and a cooler are near him. Vala sits on the far side of Teal'c. Her boredom is more than evident on her face. She is wearing SG 1 regulation “cammie” pants, a blue sports bra and contemplating an empty wine cooler bottle that she is holding in both hands. Neglected, her fishing pole is draped over the boats edge, but the line is not cast. Instead, the hook is embedded in the cork joint of the pole. We can see the cabin in the background.

1-VALA
HAND ME ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE EARTH BEVERAGES...THOSE, UM, WINE COOLER THINGS. SWEET, BUT NOT MUCH OF A KICK.
2-TEAL'c
INDEED.

PANEL 2
We now see from SG1's POV from the dock of Teal'c and Vala. In the background there is a glinting of many metallic objects moving quickly from the other side of the pond shore.

3-VALA
I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF LIESURELY FISHING. ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE ME A DRINK OR NOT?
4-TEAL'c
IF YOU COULD REMAIN QUIET AND STILL FOR A FEW MINUTES YOU MIGHT LEARN TO APPRECIATE WHAT ON EARTH IS CALLED THE ZEN QUALITY THAT IS SIMILAR TO THE JAFA...
5-VALA
...NEVER MIND, I'LL GET IT MYSELF.

PANEL 3
A tight close up sexy shot for the fanboys of Vala's rear, back, back of legs and head as she cautiously crawls towards Teal'c's side of the boat. Her skin is tanned. Her body is toned, low body fat content. She is gorgeous and has a MILF essence.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 4
A small panel that possibly overlaps 2 other panels in the configuration that show's Vala's feminine hand reaching past Teal'c's surprised face to remove a wine cooler from the igloo ice chest.

6-TEAL'c
SIT DOWN WOMAN, BEFORE YOU CAPSIZE THE BOAT.
7-VALA
RELAX, MUSCLES WE'RE FINE.

PANEL 5
A wide shot of Vala and Teal'c in the boat. Vala is sitting back on her side of the boat. She is sipping from her wine cooler. She is kicked back, legs up on one of the seats, feet crossed. Teal'c is still in a somewhat serene posture trying to fish. In the background the metallic objects are close enough to reveal themselves as 5-6 air swamp boats that are piloted by what appears to be Jaffa soldiers dressed in battle gear and turban like hoods similar to ninjas. They are moving quickly and quietly towards Teal'c and Vala's boat and the dock.

8-VALA:
BORED, BORED, BORED...BORED.
9-TEAL'c:
PERHAPS YOU WOULD PREFER THE ORI?
10-VALA:
ANYTHING WOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS.
11-TEAL'c:
VALA, IF YOU DO NOT ENJOY THIS ACTIVITY, PRACTICE YOUR SWIMMING SKILLS. I'LL HELP YOU INTO THE WATER.


PAGE TEN


PANEL 1
Two swamp boats are just upon Vala and Teal'c. Vala and Teal'c still haven't noticed the boats. Vala has stood up, hands on her hips ready to give Teal'c a piece of her mind.

(No dialogue)

PANEL 2
A tight close up of Vala's rant, interrupted by a tranquilizer dart in her throat.

1-VALA
LISTEN TO ME MUSCLES, YOU BETTER...URK!

PANEL 3
A close up shot: Teal'c is very aware of the enemy now. He is facing away from them. His eyes are cut to the right, face scrunched in intense concentration. In this shot we can tell he is gripping the oars, he is coiled and ready for action. We see glimpses of the enemy behind him; a Jafa warrior aiming a tranq rifle and bits and pieces of the swamp boats.

(No dialogue)

(author's note to the artist: In the next few panels we need to show that Teal'c is moving at an incredible speed)

PANEL 4
Teal'c has jumped from his row boat and is about to land in a nearby swamp boat. An over hand arcing swing of one of oars like a katana has caught a Jafa swamp boat pilot in the head, taking him out. Teal'c is bringing the other oar around in a swing near his arm like Tonfa. Teal’c is riddled with tranc darts

(No dialogue)


PANEL 5
Cut to: Vala unconscious in the boat. She is slouched over the edge. Her face is in the water.

(No dialogue)


continued...

Friday, January 23, 2009

EXCITING NEWS FOR SCIENCE FICTION FREAKS EVERYWHERE

This excites me in all sorts of ways I cannot even begin or want to describe. POD (Print on Demand) is something I've been looking into to possibly do a book of my plays and short stories, maybe even some sci-fi/horror novels that have been simmering on the back burners of my brain. I review books for a ForeWord Magazine, a periodical and online periodical that specializes in reviewing books from independent publishers, POD, subsidy and vanity press. Some of the books I have received for review are awful, downright hideous, but there is a minority of books, and their numbers are increasing that are excellent. I'm not one to preach praises of vanity presses, but with POD, things appear to be flowing along smoothly. My short play Grounded is available for purchase as POD in a literary mag call The Red Herring Literary Journal
Anyway Here is the article
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The Return of Legendary Scifi Publisher Warren Lapine


Once the publisher of seminal magazines Weird Tales and Fantastic Stories, Warren Lapine suffered some financial setbacks two years ago. But now he's come back with some bright ideas about futuristic publishing.

Lapine tells SFScope's Ian Randal Strock that he's paid off nearly all the debts related to his previous publishing company, DNA Publications, which handled Fantastic Stories, Absolute Magnitude and Dreams of Decadence, among other classic titles. After two years of financial recovery, he's back with Tir Na Nog Press, which will bring back Fantastic Stories as a quarterly magazine starting this fall. He's already got Harlan Ellison signed up to pen a story for it.

But here's what's really cool. One of Lapine's most successful publishing ventures has been his small print-on-demand company, Wilder Publications, which he says sold 50,000 books last year. He's now going to expand Wilder to encompass classic scifi titles under an imprint called Fantastic Books. Writes Strock:

Fantastic Books is interested in out-of-print back lists, new novels, and perhaps some single-author collections, paying a royalty of 10% of cover price. Queries (not manuscripts) may be sent to him at warrenlapine at yahoo dot com. While the company is currently 100% print on demand, Lapine expects to move into traditional publishing in the future. He notes that Wilder sold more than 50,000 copies of its books in 2008, and he anticipates 30-50% growth this year.

Given where the publishing industry is headed, I think it would be wise for Lapine to stick with a print-on-demand model. Make the books available online as e-books, and available as print-on-demand to those of us who still fetishize print.

But regardless of what happens in the future with Fantastic Books, it's exciting to see scifi publishers experimenting with new publication models. More books and magazines for us!

Warren Lapine Returns [via SFScope]

Warren Lapine [via LiveJournal]

Saturday, January 17, 2009

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I have a new review up at ForeWord Magazine online http://www.forewordmagazine.com/clarion/viewreviews.aspx?reviewID=728

this link is dead because ForeWord Reviews are restructuring. stay tuned for new link

The Prisoner Yesterday and the Future

Patrick Macgoohan has passed and we have lost a television series icon. AMC is running the entirety of the Prisoner online and they are ready to launch a remake of the series. I'll have to watch the show first before I can judge it. I am skeptical. Remember the Pretender? The Prisoner series worked so well due to the reflection of the time period...Don't know if that sense of "innocence lost" can be repeated. We have become a very jaded demographic of viewers where nothing surprises or shocks us anymore. Ah, early morning ramblings. Anyway, besides being an actor in the series, Macgoohan created it and wrote and directed many episodes. Here is a link to AMC's online episodes http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner-1960s-series/

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Friday, January 16, 2009

I'm at the YMCA for my daughter's swim team. It is so cold my face is frozen in a grimace that is scaring little children.
Received b-day card from my dad and a little extra flow

MONETAREY COMPENSATION

Just received a much needed check from ForeWord Magazine. Thank you very much ForeWord Magazine.
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Writers in the age of distraction

I plan on putting some of these ideas into practice as soon as I can breathe again.
I was speaking to a friend the other day and we both agreed that if the we had the same technology 20 years ago that we have today, we would have never and I mean never have left our bedrooms. Now, as an adult,there are so many distractions, so much stimulus. My oldest daughter can text, talk on the phone, watch a dvd, listen to music, surf on her laptop, IM, e-mail and hang with her friends all at the same time. Me, I can barely push a cart in the grocery store and talk to my wife on my cell because I forgot something on the damn shopping list. I remember as a kid how stupid I thought my parents were when they couldn't program a VCR or make copies on a cassette recorder. Am I becoming my parents, being left behind by technology? When it comes to the wonders of innovation, and the instant gratification of information at the push of a button, I feel like a rubbernecking tourist in the big city, in awe of it all. Sometimes the research is more fun than the actual work.

But in response to Mr. Doctorow's maxims,I'll just keep on writing, and take 20 minutes out of the day to apply to my novel... Yeah, I can do that. But then I need to find out how to apply a different 20 minutes to writing plays, reviews, short stories (my other novels) and comic scripts. But right now, I'm gonna go play some goofy game with my four year old daughter who has just watched Mamma Mia for the zillionth time
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Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction

from Locus Magazine, January 2009

"We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, one alt-tab away from your word-processor.

The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the Internet because it would only waste my time and wouldn't help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally, artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from. Every now and again, when I see a new website, game, or service, I sense the tug of an attention black hole: a time-sink that is just waiting to fill my every discretionary moment with distraction. As a co-parenting new father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog posts a day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches, I know just how short time can be and how dangerous distraction is.

But the Internet has been very good to me. It's informed my creativity and aesthetics, it's benefited me professionally and personally, and for every moment it steals, it gives back a hundred delights. I'd no sooner give it up than I'd give up fiction or any other pleasurable vice.

I think I've managed to balance things out through a few simple techniques that I've been refining for years. I still sometimes feel frazzled and info-whelmed, but that's rare. Most of the time, I'm on top of my workload and my muse. Here's how I do it:

* Short, regular work schedule

When I'm working on a story or novel, I set a modest daily goal — usually a page or two — and then I meet it every day, doing nothing else while I'm working on it. It's not plausible or desirable to try to get the world to go away for hours at a time, but it's entirely possible to make it all shut up for 20 minutes. Writing a page every day gets me more than a novel per year — do the math — and there's always 20 minutes to be found in a day, no matter what else is going on. Twenty minutes is a short enough interval that it can be claimed from a sleep or meal-break (though this shouldn't become a habit). The secret is to do it every day, weekends included, to keep the momentum going, and to allow your thoughts to wander to your next day's page between sessions. Try to find one or two vivid sensory details to work into the next page, or a bon mot, so that you've already got some material when you sit down at the keyboard.
* Leave yourself a rough edge

When you hit your daily word-goal, stop. Stop even if you're in the middle of a sentence. Especially if you're in the middle of a sentence. That way, when you sit down at the keyboard the next day, your first five or ten words are already ordained, so that you get a little push before you begin your work. Knitters leave a bit of yarn sticking out of the day's knitting so they know where to pick up the next day — they call it the "hint." Potters leave a rough edge on the wet clay before they wrap it in plastic for the night — it's hard to build on a smooth edge.
* Don't research

Researching isn't writing and vice-versa. When you come to a factual matter that you could google in a matter of seconds, don't. Don't give in and look up the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, the population of Rhode Island, or the distance to the Sun. That way lies distraction — an endless click-trance that will turn your 20 minutes of composing into a half-day's idyll through the web. Instead, do what journalists do: type "TK" where your fact should go, as in "The Brooklyn bridge, all TK feet of it, sailed into the air like a kite." "TK" appears in very few English words (the one I get tripped up on is "Atkins") so a quick search through your document for "TK" will tell you whether you have any fact-checking to do afterwards. And your editor and copyeditor will recognize it if you miss it and bring it to your attention.
* Don't be ceremonious

Forget advice about finding the right atmosphere to coax your muse into the room. Forget candles, music, silence, a good chair, a cigarette, or putting the kids to sleep. It's nice to have all your physical needs met before you write, but if you convince yourself that you can only write in a perfect world, you compound the problem of finding 20 free minutes with the problem of finding the right environment at the same time. When the time is available, just put fingers to keyboard and write. You can put up with noise/silence/kids/discomfort/hunger for 20 minutes.
* Kill your word-processor

Word, Google Office and OpenOffice all come with a bewildering array of typesetting and automation settings that you can play with forever. Forget it. All that stuff is distraction, and the last thing you want is your tool second-guessing you, "correcting" your spelling, criticizing your sentence structure, and so on. The programmers who wrote your word processor type all day long, every day, and they have the power to buy or acquire any tool they can imagine for entering text into a computer. They don't write their software with Word. They use a text-editor, like vi, Emacs, TextPad, BBEdit, Gedit, or any of a host of editors. These are some of the most venerable, reliable, powerful tools in the history of software (since they're at the core of all other software) and they have almost no distracting features — but they do have powerful search-and-replace functions. Best of all, the humble .txt file can be read by practically every application on your computer, can be pasted directly into an email, and can't transmit a virus.
* Realtime communications tools are deadly

The biggest impediment to concentration is your computer's ecosystem of interruption technologies: IM, email alerts, RSS alerts, Skype rings, etc. Anything that requires you to wait for a response, even subconsciously, occupies your attention. Anything that leaps up on your screen to announce something new, occupies your attention. The more you can train your friends and family to use email, message boards, and similar technologies that allow you to save up your conversation for planned sessions instead of demanding your attention right now helps you carve out your 20 minutes. By all means, schedule a chat — voice, text, or video — when it's needed, but leaving your IM running is like sitting down to work after hanging a giant "DISTRACT ME" sign over your desk, one that shines brightly enough to be seen by the entire world.

I don't claim to have invented these techniques, but they're the ones that have made the 21st century a good one for me."

Cory Doctorow's website is Craphound.com, and he is co-editor of Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things. Cory Doctorow is one of a dozen Locus columnists and reviewers. Every issue, we review dozens of books and magazines, most before they appear in print. A subscription will get you all those as well as the rest of the magazine -- news, People & Publishing, commentary, reports on events, and a list of all books and magazines published that month.
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