Don’t even get me started on Christmas or Super Bowl Sunday.

But out of all of them, Valentine’s Day is probably the worst because fully half of the population loves it, and the other half hates it, and everyone dreads it.

Anyway, enough ranting, let’s see some videos in no particular order.

Wedding Singer – Airplane Serenade
This first scene is from a movie that I embarrassed to say that I liked. But I am in good company since it is a guilty favorite of many. It was even turned into a full on musical, but I haven’t seen that. I can’t imagine it works since the movie relied heavily on music as a mood establisher and to add additional music on top of that just seems like overkill. However, I love this scene and thought that it was played just about perfectly.

L.A Story – Roadside Proclamation
Unlike most of the people from my generation, I am not a big fan of the Stand-up comedy of Steve Martin, but I love his movies. It just seems when he made the leap from the mic to the screen he became a completely different artist. One that understood art. And I love L. A. Story for that specifically. Here was a performer walking the line between commerce and art, and delivering an intensely personal story with those closest to him in life (at the time).

Stanger Than Fiction – Whole Wide World
I really loved this movie, but honestly, I was only just liking the movie in general somewhat until this scene came on. All my character compatibility issues disappeared in this one tender scene. I mean, I know that life doesn’t work that way, right. I know that. But, I also always hope that it does just a little bit. That one signal can go out and find a return signal on the same wavelength and all those other concerns are managed. Plus Will Ferrell is a god.

The Fisher King – Chinese Restaurant Double Date
Set aside for a moment that Robin Williams is congenitally unable to deliver subtlety in anything he does, he nails this scene with Amanda Plummer. And the intimacy that slowly grows between Jeff Bridges and Mercedes Ruehl as they watch these two crazy people fall in love right in front of them is perfect. Seriously, though, Jeff Bridges should have an academy award for Best Actor for his performance in this film.

She’s Having A Baby – This Woman’s Work
This is probably my favorite movie of all time, and it is really hard to explain why other than mumble something about where I was in my life when I first saw it and how the characters’ dreams and goals resonated with mine at the time. But the whole movie leads up to this one scene where the main character, played by Kevin Bacon, finally realizes what he has in Elizabeth McGovern and has remained unsaid the entire movie. I think it is a tragedy that John Hughes quit directing films just when he was getting interesting as an artist – between this and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, I would have loved to see where he would have taken us.

Happy Valentine’s everyone, may you get from this day what you hope it can give you.

Jan 11

My trip to #CES is off to a fantastic start – overslept and just now starting the drive to Vegas…

On way to Vegas to present this prototype to some potential investors. Thought I saw someone following me. LOL need more sleep. #fakeCES

Excellent, the meeting is on. Yes!! Weirdly they want me to call the main money guy The Carpathian. WTF?! Ha!! #fakeCES

Crapcrapcrapcrap. Carpathian bad. Very very bad. Dangdangdangdang. #fakeCES

Shook the Carpathian’s guys. Hiding out in the North Hall. I swear one said Carpathian Diem which I think means Destroy the Day. #fakeCES

Apparently it means Carpathe the Day. I am on the run again. #fakeCES

A guy who says he is a friend has attached himself to me. He says he works for BioDigiGeneTech. Maybe they will invest. #fakeCES

BioDigiGeneTech are in cahoots with the Carpathian and are a subsidiary of the TSA. I am on the run again. #fakeCES

Have connected with a guy from TechnoDigiBioGen which is co-owned by the CIA and Showtime. He is going to get me free cable. #fakeCES

I am in the desert. No water. No sure how I got here. Wallace, the CIA/Showtime guy slipped me something in a drink. I need water. #fakeCES

I found an old abandoned house (more like a shack). But it has a well in the back. #fakeCES

There is a big glowing stone at the bottom of the well and a dude wearing rough hand made wool clothing. #fakeCES

Not sure what happened but I am on an island and it looks like it is circa 1972. I lost my prototype somewhere, too. #fakeCES

Wait. Sorry. It’s not an island. I’m at the Mirage Hotel and Casino. That well water was spiked. #fakeCES

Jan 12

The Carpathian has extended an olive branch and wants to meet again. He wants me to bring the prototype to the roof of the Wynn. #fakeCES

Crap crap crap crap crap. Bad idea. Crap crap crap. On the run again. Crap… Oooooh, is that a Cinnabon? #fakeCES

Sitting in the Las Vegas Hilton waiting for the Man w/ One Red Shoe to confirm my appt w/ Dr Namatsu (the furniture king of Tokyo). #fakeCES

Dr Namatsu has actual honest to goodness Samurai bodyguards with the full armor and swords and everything!! Awesome!! #fakeCES

Weirdest thing – I was surrounded by Samurai when an old grizzled Japanese man pushing a bamboo cart with a child in it rescued me. #fakeCES

I think his “baby cart” is being manufactured for release by Toshiba and is on display in the South Hall. #fakeCES

I am calling the Baby Cart Samurai Venture Capitalist Yoshimi because I can’t pronounce his real name, plus @theflaminglips rule. #fakeCES

He had my prototype, that is how he found me. He is taking me to meet with his business partner. They are interested in funding me. #fakeCES

The LG 3D exhibit is mind blowingly awesome. #CES #fakeCES

Yoshimi introduced me to his Biz Partner, a very much alive Marilyn Monroe. An alive Joe DiMaggio saw me with her. I am on the run. #fakeCES

I sat down with Ms Monroe, Mr DiMaggio and Yoshimi and made my presentation of my prototype. They were all very enthusiastic. #fakeCES

They all purchased distributorships to my prototype & are reaching out to all of their friends/family. Riches are coming. #MLM #fakeCES

End

(This is a short story that I wrote for a Flash Fiction group that I participate in on Facebook. The theme was Rhododendrons.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” Pete said as he stared back at Mike for a beat longer than was probably absolutely necessary. “Seriously.”

Mike laughed and said, “Man, that is so completely lame.”

“Really lame, “ agreed James.

“Why?” Pete asked as his dander started to build.

“Your character is a Berserker, man. Why would a Berserker name his winged, flying battle steed after a little flower? Totally out of character.”  Mike was on the point of guffawing and then switched tactics and smirked at James instead.

“Completely out of character,” agreed James.

Pete gritted his teeth and said, “First off, I don’t think it is unreasonable that a Berserker would have a poetic side at all. And secondly, he is half Berserker/half Druid! So, it makes perfect sense that he would name his flying horse after a flower.”

“Pete, if he is half druid, wouldn’t Birch or Evergreen be a better name?” James said, providing less help than usual as he tried to assert a stronger opinion into the conversation.

“Shut up, James!” Pete and Mike said in unison.

Mike took pole position and continued on, “And who has a character that is half Berserker and half Druid? That is so completely stupid. Who has a half Druid character at all? Ever?”

“Shows you how much you know,” Pete began his well rehearsed rebuttal that he had practiced endless times in the mirror at home while his parents were in bed asleep. “For your information, having my character be half berserker and half druid creates the perfect….”

“Ppppfffftttt!” Mike said in what he must have felt was an admirable economy of words. “You can’t be all lovey-dovey, nature, granola eating one moment and axe chopping Kobolds and Succubae the next without experiencing some kind of internal emotional or psychological damage. You should have to make a saving roll every time you heal someone or kill someone.”

“What!”

“Pete, your character is on the verge of a psychotic break at any given moment.”

“Psychotic break,” agreed James.

“That is ridiculous.”

Mike shook his head sadly, “I don’t think so. And as the DM, I think I have an obligation to uphold the integrity of the game here.”

“What!”

“Integrity of the game here, “ agreed James.

“Shut up James! Mike, that is completely unfair! I have been playing this character for 6 months now.”

“I don’t know what to say, Pete,” Mike tried to sound reassuring, but only barely.

“But the Druid part is almost 12th level and the Berserker just became 15th level. I would have to start all over with a brand new character,” Pete said almost quietly as he dropped his face onto his character sheets laid out in front of him on the game table.

“I’m sorry, man, but it seems the conflicting sides of his nature have weakened him over time and battles to where he isn’t thinking straight any more. That would explain why he wants to name his airborne mount after a flower.”

“Come on!” Pete slammed his sweaty open palms down on the table, making the figurines, papers and dice jump up several inches. “Not remotely fair! Just because you don’t like the name of his horse.”

“Pegasus,” said James.

“Shut up, James,” Mike and Pete said in unison.

Mike turned to Pete and pinned him with his DM face, “Roll.”

“Oh, man…”

“Sorry, it’s not me. It’s the game. You know it’s the right thing.”

Pete reached reluctantly for 3 six-sided die and held them tightly to his chest while his left hand cupped his right hand as if in prayer. He then shook the die and threw them on the table. “Wait!! What am I rolling for?”

“Oh!! That’s gotta sting. Your half-berserker/half-druid has had a momentary psychotic break and has attacked his mighty winged steed with his battle axe and decapitated it in one fell swoop.”

Pete pushed himself back from the table in resignation and frustration, and shook his head sadly. “Totally not fair.”

“I’m sorry, man, but you know it’s not me, right?” said Mike.

“Yeah, I know. It is what it is,” said Pete. “We’re cool.”

“Cool,” Mike looked relieved and then turned to James, a growing grin on his face. “Okay James, now you. You have found this baby fire dragon and it has bonded with you. What are you going to call him? And prepare to roll…”

All of that does not mean that I no longer have any Geek tendencies, though. My former massive nerdishness still resonates strongly with my more nostalgic side and I keep my gauntleted hand in the water just to stay connected to that past part of me. That is why I thought it might be interesting to put together the following list of the current Top Five Nerdiest things in my life.

1)      My Action Comics #1 T-Shirt – which I bought at a Target in Springhill, Florida. It features the cover of the original Action Comics #1 on the front. I wear it way more than I should ever admit, generally with jeans and an old sport coat that I bought in a department store in Princeton, New Jersey back when I lived there and ran a satellite VAR sales office out of my then employer’s Parent company’s NJ offices. I especially like wearing it to client meetings (because I am an agency guy now and it is the law) and when I do Stand-Up Comedy locally (again, because it is the law).  It is much cooler than my friend Brad’s Avengers T-Shirt that he bought at a Walmart in Centerville, Utah.

2)      Comic Book Saturday – this owes more to nostalgia than anything else on this list. Several years ago my (previously mentioned) friend, Brad and I found ourselves back in Utah simultaneously. We have been friends since High School, and at the time had a small business (actually, more like a club) that we called Magic Ink. Part of that business (club) was that we rented a small office space (which acted more as a club house, than a working office) in the old business section of Clearfield, Utah and stored our comics there. We also kept our best vinyl there, and Brad and Karl set-up their drawing boards to do “work”, while Scott and I pretended to write comics and comedy sketches (while not so secretly dreaming of finishing High School and running off to NYC to become writers on SNL).

Anyway, Brad and I found ourselves back in Utah in close proximity again after many years and found it difficult to connect on a regular basis due to the combination of his work schedule and family responsibilities and my complete lack of non-work related responsibility. The only time that worked for us to hang out was on occasional Saturday afternoons. Shortly thereafter Comic Book Saturday, or CBS as we like to refer to it now, was born.

It is pretty much exactly what you might envision and hasn’t changed much since we were teens. Brad swings by my place, we drive to the Comic Book Shop (Night Flight Comics at Library Square in downtown SLC, Utah) and then we grab lunch some place and read each others’ purchases for the day.

Brad is much more careful with his haul than I am with mine. My place is littered with comics that I have neglected to put back in their plastic protective coverings, while his are kept safely in labeled boxes in an upright position. So again, not much has changed since we were in High School sitting on the floor of Magic Ink listening to Pink Floyd and Genesis and Rick Springfield (blame Brad) and Sheena Easton (that is my fault).

3)      The Large Hadron Collider Jokes Page on Facebook – about a year and a half ago I started producing a weekly Stand-up Comedy Showcase and Open Mic (Comedy Roadkill) at the Complex (a local multi-stage entertainment venue just off of downtown SLC) and for the first six months while we were trying to get it off of the ground I acted as the defacto host – so, basically, every week I had to fill about 30 minutes of time with something that could be loosely described as Comedy. I always tried really hard to keep my time on stage as relatively fresh as possible and not just do the same jokes and bits over and over again. This met with less than overwhelming success. But it did lead to a bit that kind of caught on amongst some of the other comics. I would explain that I was on a quest to write the perfect joke about the Large Hadron Collider that didn’t resort to vulgar, easy, cheap sexual innuendo and then I would unveil a new joke that would be a spectacular failure at reaching that goal.

I, of course, quickly grew tired of the kind of serial nature of the bit, especially since most of the Stand-up Comics and audience frequenting the show at that time had no idea what the LHC was, so I moved the whole premise to a Facebook Fan page and recruited some friends to help admin it. A couple of times a month we all write new LHC jokes and post them there. Right now, without any marketing or planned fan recruitment we have about 100 “Likes” on the page. Mostly, it would seem based on a quick non-rigorous check of profiles, by European-based Rocket Scientists.

4)      N.A.G.A. (or more correctly: Nerds And Geeks Anonymous) – this is pretty much the highlight of my Facebook experience. It started mainly because the Social Web is endlessly interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an online Guru or anything like that, but we do have a pretty sizeable amount of our agency work involved in web and software design and strategy, so I try to be as up to date and smart on new things as I possibly can. This involves a lot of reading and a lot of playing around with new functionality and new services.

When Facebook revised their Group functionality to make it more accessible to the primary user’s newsfeed I figured I should dig in and get conversational about it. I moved my Flash Fiction group over from the old Group Format first, then I created a new communication group for the local Stand-up Comics that I work with on Comedy Roadkill (see #3 above), and finally I created a secret group with no real goals to which I added all of my most favorite and engaging friends on Facebook, and then since it was a secret group I named it Nerds and Geeks Anonymous on a whim.

Right now the group has about 91 members with about 35% of them being active participants, and of that 35%, approximately 70% of them are female. Which, you know… Win!!

The group is mostly a haven for shared links of a nerdy nature and ongoing geeky repartee.  And it is my most favorite thing about Facebook.

(It is a secret group, so I can’t link you to it. Sorry.)

5)      SLC Nerd – our elevator pitch for this is basically: “All of the fun of a Comic Book Convention, with none of the expense, travel or boring talk-y bits”. SLC Nerd is the culmination of my entire nerdish and reformed geekist existence. It was inspired by all of the things I have listed so far (especially N.A.G.A.) and the dream of getting my co-workers old band that I never got to see perform live back together for one show. It includes my ongoing affection for Comic Books, my envy of those that dive head first into CosPlay, and my nostalgia for Table Top Role Playing Games like D&D.

Shameless Self Promotion Alert - It is going to be one big day of nerdy fun featuring the music of Rotten Musicians, Baby Ghosts, Rev Mayhem and Funktoast (Craig and Larry’s original awesome band from the 90s). Local Improv Impresario Bob Bedore is going to put together a Utah All-Star Improv troupe and they are going to present a completely original improv Sci-Fi musical. The Utah Rocket Club is going to be there with a display of some of their most coolest high powered model rockets. We are going to have CosPlay contests, an afternoon of Open Table-Top Gaming, and Night Flight Comics (one of our Primary Sponsors, along with mediaRif, and The Complex), are putting together some awesome gifts and prizes as well as organizing a Silent Auction to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The Hello, Sweetie! Podcast will be there following the action live, while the local Real Life Superhero Team the Black Monday Society will be posing for photos with the audience. We have also reached out to local LARP communities and the local SCA Kingdom to invite them to join us. And we are going to have local comedian/singer Jon Clark as our most awesome of hosts.

The whole thing is being produced by Gangrene Productions, which is the “viral” arm of mediaRif (the digital creative agency to which Blogmaster 2000 belongs) and focuses on humorous and original video, animation, music and live events production & promotion. Gangrene is also the home of our annual Agency Creative event, the Gangrene Comedy Film Festival.

The show is Saturday, March 24^th in the Grand at the Complex. It is an all ages show. Admission is only $10. Doors open at 2pm for Table Top Gaming, CosPlay judging starts at 4pm, and the entertainment kicks in at 6pm. Come out and join us for the Nerd Celebration of the Year.

And there you go…

I reserve the right to adjust this list as circumstances dictate.

But probably won’t – I have too many comics to read, and YouTube fan vids to share, and Hobbit production stills to obsess over.

(This is the first of a planned series of interviews of people in creative industries that we admire and of whom we think highly. This inaugural interview is with Ben Kent, a British Filmmaker and Academy Award winner that we first met and became friends with when he submitted his short film “Punch Drunk” to our annual agency event, The Gangrene Comedy Film Festival.) 

BLOGMASTER 2000: Mr. Ben Kent – filmmaker, programmer, funny person, and genuinely good guy. How are you doing and thanks for being my inaugural interview here on Blogmaster2000.

My main hope with this series of interviews, as we discussed briefly when I reached out to you about participating, is to connect with people I genuinely admire and try to dig in a little bit to get a better idea of what drives them (you) and how you got here from there. So, if you are ready, here we go…

What was your dream job as a kid? How is this different from where you are now?

BEN KENT: It’s weird, I can’t remember having a consistent dream job as a kid. Tragically, I’ve always struggled to separate real life from films, at least on a subconscious level, so I tended to change what I wanted to do depending on the latest blockbuster. For example, post Top Gun, I wanted to be a fighter pilot – and not in the RAF, but in the USAF!

BLOGMASTER 2000: I totally get where you are coming from, I was kinda that way too – but I was more influenced initially by D&D (I wanted to be a Ranger) and then MTV (I figured if I was Alan Hunter I could get Martha Quinn to fall in love with me). There has been a lot of discussion in the past down these lines, especially with regard to violence in video games – how do you think the internalization of pop culture and tastes has impacted the mass media generation as compared to the industrial generation?

BEN KENT: For one thing I think life expectations have been skewed by what we see in the media (and I’m including my own here!). People expect the perfect relationships they watch in romantic comedies, the lavish lifestyles in Hollywood dramas (why can’t I be Vincent Chase? (Okay, I would totally settle for Johnny Drama)), and good looking female system administrators like they have in 24. On top of that people are flooded with reality TV stars with little or no talent and just want to be famous.

It’s a tricky one, because it’s great to aspire, but is real life becoming more and more substandard? Would we all just be happier if we threw away our phones and became monks?

I don’t think the influence of violent video games is the epidemic some might like to portray – if you go out and kill someone after playing a game, you were probably fairly disturbed anyway. That said, I’m sure games do influence people – and not necessarily the violent ones – it’s probably much less of a leap for a normal sane person to take a corner too quickly after playing a lot of Gran Turismo (done it) than it is for them to go out and murder someone after playing Manhunt. If we see people trying to cast fireballs in the street after playing too much Skyrim, then we need to worry.

BLOGMASTER 2000: I would totally be a Monk, as long as I didn’t have to shave my head and walk around in a scratchy robe and sandals all the time not speaking.

Who were your idols as a kid? How are they different from who you admire now?

BEN KENT: Similarly, I’m not sure I had many real life idols as a kid. Maybe the odd soccer player, but generally they tended to be characters in films. I definitely wanted to be like Indiana Jones and John McClane. Hmm – this is like therapy – it’s explaining a lot.

As an adult, I have at least taken to admiring real people. Steven Spielberg and Larry David for the amazing work they’ve brought to us. On a different level, I also find the MMA fighter Randy Couture deeply inspiring for his amazing work ethic and will power to keep achieving and competing at an age where most have fallen by the wayside (not for his performance in The Expendables).

BLOGMASTER 2000: Couture is a beast, isn’t he!? Holy cow that guy doesn’t have any “quit “ in him. I find it interesting that you mentioned Spielberg and David together since I see them as such polar opposite types of opposites. Larry David, based on what I know of him, doesn’t seem to know what the word “compromise” means, while Spielberg, who I worshipped as teen, doesn’t seem to know how to end a movie without a bit of treacle to let the audience know that everything will be okay. What is a bit weird, now that you mention that, is that I see a bit of both of them in your work – you definitely have an eye for emotional and well paced imagery and composition with characters that are chasing their dreams, but you also have a certain self deprecating cynicism to your characters that wouldn’t be out of place in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Do you see that too, or am I reading something that isn’t there?

BEN KENT: I don’t know – if it is there, it’s subconscious. But I don’t think their styles are necessarily mutually exclusive – isn’t what you’re describing to some extent a difference dictated by the format? We don’t really expect our characters to go on an emotional journey in a half hour sitcom, whereas we might lack closure if there isn’t one in a two hour movie. Plus, if Larry (the character) ever learnt his lesson there’d be no more series of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and that would be tragic.

It may be trite, but in most genres I prefer the ‘Hollywood’ ending to films – I feel completely cheated watching a romantic comedy where the couple don’t get together at the end. Likewise, I don’t think we’d be more satisfied if ET got his brains blown out by an overzealous Fed before getting on his spaceship.

BLOGMASTER 2000: I prefer the couple to get together at the end of Romances too, except in Garden State. It’s as if Zach Braff’s character learned nothing! He just switched off one mind-numbing drug for another (the other being Natalie Portman…).

I really can’t disagree with you since film is only partially art, the majority of it is a product driven business, and if there is anything I have learned is that Business can only be about business – the soul comes through the people involved in the business. How do you approach this kind of contradiction inherent in the industry – the split between serving the art and serving the fiscal demands of the medium?

BEN KENT: It’s funny, I’ve had a bit of a Seinfeld marathon the last few days and just watched the episode where George storms out of their pitch meeting citing ‘artistic integrity’. At which point Jerry points out that he’s not artistic and has no integrity. And I think that sums me up.

Joking aside, I’m lucky that the sort of movies I most enjoy and want to make tend to be fairly commercial. Truth be told I’d rather have made There’s Something About Mary than The Tree Of Life. Of course there’s still a need for artistic integrity within that arena and it still irks me that terrible scripts get produced because the studios know they’ll still make money, or that directors with a dependable record of making bad films still get the job because they’re a known entity (or a quantifiable risk). But I guess there’s no point wasting time grumbling – I could be out there making my first bad feature to get on that gravy train! (It’s going to be good, I promise).

BLOGMASTER 2000: What has been your favorite most rewarding personal project (this can go back as far as you want) and why?

BEN KENT: As far as films, I feel we’ve been improving as we go, so objectively each new one is to some level my favourite. However I do have a soft spot for Legend’s Dawn as it was done with such a short turnaround (I think two or three weeks from conception to completion).

BLOGMASTER 2000: Man, I love Legend’s Dawn – when you suggested that to us for inclusion in the Gangrene Film Festival, I was ecstatic. And it went over wonderfully at the show, too. What some people don’t realize, I think, is that those really short shorts are sometimes the hardest to pull off. I notice, quite often, that a lot of short comedy filmmakers don’t know where their joke is and they take too much time setting up, don’t understand pacing and then just spend too much time explaining the premise, which, to me, is like death in a short film. But Legend’s Dawn had a perfectly timed set-up, it delivered its punch and then got out quick. It was perfect. How much time did you spend on figuring all of that out or did you just go with your instinct?

BEN KENT: To be honest, that one was mostly instinct. It was conceived for a competition run by Orange (one of our cell phone providers) and the only rules were it had to be 60 seconds and have the theme of ‘unity’. Once the concept of a play on the ‘Braveheart’ rousing speech popped in to my head, the rest came fairly quickly. I think I spent the most time making the fabric tunics and the egg sandwiches!

BLOGMASTER 2000: What has been your favorite most rewarding professional project (something you worked on for someone else and not originated by you or your immediate circle of collaborators) and why?

BEN KENT: Well, I guess it’d have to be working on Furnace for The Foundry, for which I received a 2007 Academy Award for science And technology.

BLOGMASTER 2000: Yeah, I can see why that would stand out. So, and I apologize if this makes you uncomfortable, but could you take a few moments and kind of bullet point out the highlights of your career up through your stint at the Foundry and to today?

BEN KENT: So…

I studied engineering at Cambridge. I had a lot of fun, but I have to admit to not making best use of the time there. For example, my next door neighbour in my first year was John Oliver (now a regular on The Daily Show). He followed the great comedy tradition of joining the Footlights group (a path trodden by John Cleese, Hugh Laurie and many notable others). I went out partying. Oops.

After a brief stint working for Motorola I joined The Foundry. I knew I wanted to do something in movies, and it was the obvious half way house with my engineering background. Back then there were ten of us in a burgeoning VFX software company; as I left we were up to around 150 and the leading provider of 2D compositing software to the high end film industry. So I feel I can take some pride in that! Nowadays our software is used on pretty much all Hollywood features.

We started off doing chintzy type effects called Tinder. My first ones were a lightning and an old film effect (both of which are actually in Punch Drunk). I guess highlight number one at The Foundry was the first time I saw one of those on TV.

We then moved on to a product called Furnace, which we won the Academy award for. It was a set of tools to fix up film work, including wire removal (i.e. a quick way to remove the wires that actors may be hanging off), retiming (AKA ‘bullet time’ in The Matrix). That was when things really started to take off for us. It tended to be harder to pick out when each effect was actually used in a film, as if it was working, you shouldn’t see anything, however we knew it was used on major features like Lord Of The Rings.

Then the company really blew up – we acquired Nuke, which as I mentioned is the premier 2D compositing software now used in the VFX industry.

Meanwhile…

My friend Joel Wilenius and I started to write sitcom. Our first sitcom was well received by one of the best independent comedy production companies in the UK, and although they didn’t end up making it, it gave us the impetus to carry on.

We wrote a short film with the aim of giving it to a guy Joel knew to make. However, once written, Joel pointed out that it was too rude for his friend’s taste. At which point I just thought ‘I’ll make it, how hard can it be?’. Turns out it was quite hard.

At that point we wrote a new script and along with producer Russell Dobkin, we submitted it to the local council for funding… and lo and behold… we got funding, first time! Not a huge amount, but it was the start we needed – I’m truly thankful to them for that opportunity. So we made our first film, Best Laid Plans.

Next up was Legend’s Dawn, which made the London finals for the Orange 60 Second Film Competition (and being as most of the entries were from London, that was quite an achievement). As such it was one of five films screened on the BBC.

Then came Punch Drunk, which I’m still really proud of. This film provided a lot of highlights – including an awesome trip to the Gangrene Film Festival! It also got me in the door for most of the UK’s top comedy production companies, which inspired me to write my first feature, romantic comedy Breaking Down Is Hard To Do (which definitely ends with some treacle).

Most recently we made horror comedy short Love Bug, which premiered at Fright Fest – the UK’s largest horror festival. And that’s when I decided to make the plunge and give this filmmaking thing a go full time.

BLOGMASTER 2000: You submitted Punch Drunk to Gangrene and we all instantly liked it. On my part I really appreciated your commitment to the premise. Most people would try to show that they were above the joke, but the best comedy to me is when the creators are all in. What was your inspiration for that?

BEN KENT: Punch And Judy shows held a very prominent position in children’s entertainment over here when I was growing up. I guess at some point as an adult I just took an objective look at the show and thought ‘hold on, what exactly were we watching?’ Now I’m not jumping on some politically correct bandwagon as I think the shows are so tongue in cheek that nobody’s really using them as a moral compass, but I can definitely see the irony in a children’s show where the hero is a law-evading wife beater. So I just wondered what would happen if you put Mr. Punch in real life situations. From there it pretty much wrote itself.

I definitely took inspiration from The Muppets too (another large part of my childhood – I can’t wait to see the new film). I love the way the human cast interact with the puppets as if it’s utterly normal.

BLOGMASTER 2000: Love Bug was great as well, and again, you went all in. Zombie(ish) comedy, I think, is hard to pull off, because again, the filmmakers sometimes feel like they have to show that they are in on the joke. Shaun of the Dead was so great because it was a real movie first, and a Zombie comedy second. As you write and create do you think through these kinds of things or, as you said earlier, are you more instinctual?

BEN KENT: I guess that was largely instinctual as well – although the final film probably came out different to what was on paper (or in my head). During the casting process we pretty much switched which of the two male leads was the out and out comedic one. I don’t know if that means that my instinct was wrong on paper or just that we found the perfect cast to play it the other way round. Either way, those developments and/or revelations are the bits of the collaborative process I really love.

BLOGMASTER 2000: So, good and bad, how was your experience as our first overseas guest Filmmaker at our Annual Short Comedy Film Festival – The Gangrene Film Festival?

BEN KENT: Honestly, I loved it. For one, you guys treated us brilliantly (climbing was a highlight), and unfortunately, not all film festivals do. On top of that, you guys put on a hell of a show! I only wish I got to see Mini Kiss the year after.

BLOGMASTER 2000: The Mini Kiss guys were so cool, it was definitely fun hanging with them. Last year we had a Sasquatch Band that put on an 80’s Arena Rock type of show to kick it off. It was pretty wonderful. We definitely missed you and hope you can come out again sometime. Once you come out to Gangrene we think of you as family.

BEN KENT: Thanks to all the Gangrene crew – I hope I’ll be back sooner rather than later!

BLOGMASTER 2000: What really gets that creative engine pumping  (music, film, game)?

BEN KENT: Sometimes I’m listening to a song and just can’t help but come up with a scene to play alongside it.

BLOGMASTER 2000: Wes Anderson apparently creates his soundtrack as he writes and I would argue that as good as his movies are, they would not be nearly as good without the patented Anderson tonal qualities that come with the music that he uses. Does writing to a particular sound or track really influence your work tonally? Do you mind sharing an example?

BEN KENT: So many great directors (and I’m not counting myself amongst them!) seem to have an amazing ear for music. Be it Scorsese, Kubrick or Wes Anderson. It’s part of the package.

It tends to be difficult (or even dangerous) to let yourself be too influenced by particular tracks when you’re working at a low budget, as if you intend to play be the copyright rules, chances are you can’t actually afford to use them. One example where I think it came out pretty well was the prison montage in Punch Drunk. I did the whole thing as a pre-viz beforehand and cut it to an Ice Cube track. Luckily we managed to find a fantastic royalty free track to use in its place.

BLOGMASTER 2000: Without creating too much of a sense of whiplash in our readers by this next segue, isn’t the sudden proliferation of royalty free, decent quality stock photos, video and music pretty wonderful? On the Agency side of our business in which we do a lot of corporate videos, we constantly deal with companies just don’t know what things cost or understand the effort that is involved in putting together a good production. But even when we have a very limited budget, we try our hardest to deliver a high quality professional looking end product and stock assets have been huge in helping us there. But there is some concern that royalty free (much like Crowd Sourcing) endangers our lively hood while simultaneously keeping us competitive. What are your thoughts on this?

BEN KENT: I’m not sure this applies to royalty free music, but I definitely think the democratization of high end equipment is a double edged sword. It’s great that people can produce a high quality product using a DSLR for a fraction of the cost it would have cost a decade ago. I’m sure many great filmmakers, crew and actors will get a break that may never have had the opportunity otherwise. The downside is the more flooded the marketplace, the harder it is to stand out from the crowd.

Perhaps of more concern is that large corporations seem to have cottoned on to this as an opportunity to get adverts made without paying people properly. There are sites around that aggregate ‘advert competitions’ for a number of global brands – basically, filmmakers submit their self funded adverts for a chance to win a prize that’s a fraction of the cost of a having the advert made professionally. Maybe I’m being overly cynical – most likely the winning filmmaker will be someone who would never normally have been given the opportunity to make an advert and can then go on to make a career of it. But then there’s someone already established who won’t get work because the corporations have found a risk free way to get someone to do their work for cheap. Hmm…

BLOGMASTER 2000: What do you see as the single most formative moment that has created the you that exists today?

BEN KENT: It’s far from my favourite moment, however when I was nineteen I had my first panic attack after a big night out and a dalliance with some illicit substances. If only someone had mentioned that drugs weren’t good for you…  As is often the case, the first panic attack was followed by many more and for a while became quite a big bane in my life. It was a huge turn around as beforehand I was one of those people immune to nerves – I was that irritating person who could give presentations off the cuff, go to interviews without thinking twice – however all of a sudden the world had taken on a new, and not so pretty dimension. In some ways it’s merely an added layer to who I am – the person underneath is still roughly the same as beforehand – but as single moments go, it was a big one.

BLOGMASTER 2000: We have all heard the stories about Steve Jobs and Jack Nicholson, and etc and how they insisted that after experimenting they had risen to a new plane or whatever. I myself have never done drugs – I have smelled pot from a distance, but I can’t say for sure if it is a smell that I would recognize easily. Do you think the use of illicit substances was a positive or a negative? It sounds more like you consider it a negative that made everything a little more difficult.

BEN KENT: I would have to say definitely negative. There are good things, sure. I mean if it wasn’t fun, nobody would do it, right? But personally speaking the negatives far outweigh the positives.

BLOGMASTER 2000: What do you see was the turning point in your professional life that has gotten you to where you are now?

BEN KENT: About 5 years ago, my friend saw a BBC advert for new sitcoms so we decided we should write one. As soon as we started it was so obvious to me that telling stories was what I wanted to do – and what I always had wanted to do. It seems ridiculous in retrospect that it had never occurred to me!

BLOGMASTER 2000: So, just to clarify for my benefit – you saw an advertisement soliciting new sitcoms or promoting new sitcoms, and if the former, how cool is the U.K.? Did you do some pitches or decide to build up a reel first? And what was that first one that you wrote?

BEN KENT: I think it was an advert, although I can’t be sure. As the BBC is public funded it tends to be obliged to do things like that. I believe they have a mandate to read all work submitted – which is great. By the same token, your work is likely to be read by an intern with no guarantee of taste.

We just plunged in and wrote a whole sitcom episode, along with treatments for the rest of the series. It had various names over its lifetime – I think we settled on Same Old, Same Old. The setup was thoroughly unoriginal (hence the ironic title). This was actually a choice, as we came to the conclusion that most sitcoms with a heavily contrived theme tend to be limited to a very short lifespan. Many of the greats tended to essentially boil down to ‘a group of friends and the hilarious antics they get up to’ (e.g. Seinfeld, or… Friends). Turns out this was a bad choice and flawed thinking. First response we got boiled down to ‘this is great, but it doesn’t have a hook to sell it to the network, write us some more’! I suppose once you’re an established comedian, then you have the scope to just write what you want. Still, I quite like the writing in it.

BLOGMASTER 2000: Well, if you ever need someone to help brainstorm show ideas and pitch, I am just an Intercontinental Trans-Atlantic flight away. Just so you know…

Without purposely trying to stroke your ego too much, I really believe you have a bright future. You’re smart, talented, know how to make things happen, and you understand how business works. I firmly believe that that covers about 95% of the mix, the rest is luck, but luck can be created.

What’s on the docket next?

BEN KENT: We’re a couple of drafts into the script for a feature horror-comedy called Love Sick about a group of people struggling to survive when they get besieged at a speed dating event during the outbreak of a viral epidemic. It’s kind of a follow up to our last short Love Bug.

This video was recorded and animated, by Mike Terrell, at mediaRif studios.

Also, you can download this song for free for a limited time at the following link: http://gangreneproductions.bandcamp.com/track/ill-be-home-for-christmas-if-i-havent-blown-a-fuse.

(Note: This is the fourth in a series of Blogmaster 2000 posts about  four-armed Martians in which I don’t actually discuss anything that is truly useful with regard to Martians, or even mention them at all.)

Have you noticed on Facebook that not everyone or every page that you are following shows up in your newsfeed? This has become much more pronounced over the last couple of months as FB has pushed through several relatively big platform updates. It becomes especially noticeable if you simultaneously browse your newsfeed on the website and on an aggregator app like Seesmic, or on a mobile app like SocialScope for Blackberry.

None of the multiple methods will deliver the full perfect newsfeed, but the actual website is by far the worst in filtering out stories from the Facebook newsfeeds.

When it first started getting easily noticeable over the summer, I thought it was simply because of how the updates were being posted – I initially suspected that it was based on the updates connection to apps that had been hidden from the newsfeed. I either block or hide every game app that shows up in my feed or requests info from me – it is like second nature now, so it wouldn’t be surprising if I had accidentally blocked status updates delivered by Hootsuite or Twitter.

I pulled up my blocked and hidden apps lists and quickly confirmed that that wasn’t the reason.

I then suspected that it was Facebook itself hiding updates from third party apps, but determined that if that was indeed the case then it was inconsistent at doing this and therefore couldn’t be altogether purposeful.

This was all during the summer, and then the first big platform change hit with the addition of the news ticker and greater renewed emphasis on Top/Highlighted Stories. When this happened, the discrepancies between the newsfeeds in the social apps and the native website became much more pronounced. And I noticed this most specifically with Fan Pages. I posted on the help forums asking for directions on how to ensure that these pages would show up in my feed, and FB true to form did not bother to respond.

I then did web searches trying to determine why fan pages didn’t show up in news feeds with little success.

Finally, I took a different tact and started researching how to get a fan page update to appear as a highlighted story, since Facebook itself was pushing very hard to make highlighted stories a priority. And this is where I hit the mother lode.

Apparently, (and I say this dumbfoundedly because I actually knew this before but my brain, for whatever reason, saw it best not to make this connection earlier), Facebook has a homegrown algorithm called EdgeRank, of all things, that determines based on a series of criteria what it thinks will be important to you. These criteria are comprised mostly of whether or not you clicked on a particular status update or clicked through to an attached or associated link or story.

These different criteria all have different weights of importance in the social graph, for instance “Likes” and “Comments” have more relative importance if they are associated with a status update that contains either a link or embedded content. This is all tracked and scored.

Then all of that personal data is combined with the same data from the friends that you interact with the most. At this point it then decides what will be the most important story to you. And then it decides what will be of normal interest to you. And finally it determines which updates it expects you not to miss.

At this point it sorts your entire newsfeed accordingly.

This process is also applied to Fan Pages, but apparently with a small twist. It seems, based on what I have been able to learn, that an additional weighted data point in this determination of what will or will not be important to you, is how popular the Fan Page is – or rather, how many Fans/Likes it has.

So, let’s put aside for a moment the fact that Facebook blindly ignores the importance of letting us control what appears in our own newsfeeds ourselves, however, the hubris of determining what is important to us based on what we click on when the majority of updates are text only requiring no click through is mind numbing.

I have been a reticent champion of Facebook in the past, especially during the first Google Buzz push and then the G+ push, because the FB lead in the market is much too big for what amounts to a challenge from a competitor that is only fielding an iterative combatant. And with the new Timeline profile pages Facebook will solidify a bit more its hold on its audience with what is almost (but not quite) a next gen roll out of functionality. But having said all of that, I really, really resent their dogged dependence and faith in this lame algorithm and their continued need to herd us as users to the experience that delivers for them the best chance to monetize our interactions.

Seriously, Facebook, let us determine how we want to interact and let us determine who to remove or hide from our newsfeeds. And then build a predictive algorithm based on our organic engagement and put some work into figuring out how to build a business model from there. Herding us is just going to drive us away. And we won’t be going to Google, or Twitter, or Tumblr.

We make a big deal as industry professionals and social cognoscenti about how FB and Google and Apple and MS all have our personal data and will sell it to any and all bidders and in the process paint big wet hard to miss targets on our foreheads and by extension have a claim on our souls. But the truth is, only current data is of any real value to these companies – they will be able to get a certain amount of leverage out of our historical data, but it is our immediate interactions that are the most valuable.

They are all, after everything is said and done, just websites and services, and once we move on – their ability to maintain their hold on us dries up very quickly. A social behemoth like Facebook can lose all of its relevance in the market without an exerted effort in less than 3 years – the average amount of time it would take a modern teenager to go through High School and decide they don’t want to be on the same social platform as their parents.

The average lifespan of smart devices (mobile phones, Tablets, PCs, etc – including iPhones and iPads) is probably a year – so most any communication platform is less than two years away from obsolescence. Especially once it is realized that the vast majority of new adopters (our teenage population) is terrifically fickle and ready to bolt the moment they feel like they are being lectured or herded in any way.

And the rest of us? Well, we will follow our kids to whatever option it is that pops up that lets them engage the way they want to and not the way you want them to.

Just like we did when we followed them to Facebook and left MySpace a ghost town without nary a glance back.

(For more info on Edgerank and how it works a good starting place, as with all things FB related, is All Facebook and from there you can spread out pretty easily.)

Good music, the kind that thumps along so hard that you can’t help but start dancing, whirls out from a core of rhythm and repetition. Once a good song gets under your skin, it doesn’t leave you. You sing along; you move your feet; you smile and settle in for the ride. Developing any skill, writing being no exception, is like letting a good groove get into your soul and dancing along.

Music of the funky variety—ah, my favorite kind–moves forward on a pulse, built on a foundation of icy kick and snare and driven by a cooking bass line. Everything else stacks on top, all parts locking into the picture to create symbiotic, musically speaking, unity. Songs have beginnings, middles, and ends, with choruses, bridges, and verses to amp up the intrigue and forward motion of the experience.

Writing, whether it’s a short story or a novel, should feel like slipping into a groove. Instead of drums, you lay down a killer beat sheet that offers a roadmap of where you intend to go. Instead of a bass line, you use an engaging, multi-dimensional protagonist to drive the funk. Multiple characters make up other parts of the music. Instead of a shredding guitar, you use a antagonist to block your protagonist at every juncture. Other, lighter weight characters pop in and out as needed, the tambourine, the guitar solo, the keyboard pad.

Once you have assembled all of the parts, you can buckle up for the ride and drive the beat forward by setting a writing schedule and applying a little elbow grease. At 1,000 words a day, with all musicians coming to the table, fully prepared with precision instruments and killer chops, you can knock out a novel 1st draft in just short of 90 days.

Think about it, if you prepare and bring everyone to the jam session ready to play all you have to do is dance. At the end of 3 months, you can stack all 360 pages of your new novel on your desk, snap your fingers and say, “Dude, that song rocked. Let’s get together and jam again, man.”

That’s right, you can play snake on any YouTube video.

Here’s how: Load a YouTube video – the longer the better, because your game ends when the video does. You’ll also want a video that is always changing. For instance, if you’re listening to a song that just has album art as the background and never changes, you might find yourself in trouble, because the dots your snake eats are white, so any unchanging white space can make it impossible to find.

I personally suggest the OMEGA extended version of Nyan Cat:

Once your video is loaded, you have to make sure the video player has the focus. This is as simple as hitting play. When the video starts hold down the left arrow key, and then hit the up arrow key, and you’ll be in a game of snake.  If you can survive all 3 1/2 hours of both listening to Nyan cat and not dying in snake, I’d like to shake your hand.

May we present to you Devil’s Children by the Rustmonster Pirate Band.