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Night on Endor or Blood and Fur

5/9/2018

This story was inspired by the Ewok Hunt mode from Star Wars Battlefront II.

Night on Endor (or Blood and Fur)

by Harry L-B

It's dark. You have only your blaster, a flashlight that barely holds a charge, and your fellow survivors of the terrorist attack on Endor scattered throughout the forest. Out in the dark you hear a horn blow, and a man scream. The first of many men, good friends, good troopers, to die this night. You run through the dark, afraid to turn on your flashlight, knowing it would give away your position. Your heart nearly stops when you find another trooper. For a moment you're grateful to have found someone, anyone. But then that relief turns to horror as a thousand tiny lights erupt from the darkness and tear him apart in front of your eyes. You turn to run, but are frozen by the sight of two glimmering specks, a killer's gaze staring from the shadows. You would have remained there, paralyzed in fear, but another trooper is running so hard he almost knocks you over. He keeps running and so you follow. There's no reason to think he knows the way to safety better than you, but you don’t want to be alone again. The two of you keep running.

That awful horn sounds and you know more men will die soon. The fear is so intense, so oppressive you're almost ready to lie down on the ground and join them. You hear something pass through the air just behind your head and you know you just got lucky. You run harder than you’ve ever run before. You’re running so fast you almost trip over the trooper on the ground with the spear growing out of his chest. You turn on your flashlight.

Even with the aid of your quickly dimming flashlight, all you see are trees. Trees, trees, and more trees, and the burning wreckage still falling from the sky. But what's that up ahead? It's light! And another trooper waving for you to keep running. You and your new partner join him at the mouth of a cave. Your run in, praising the Force for the light and rock walls. You sit on a stone, hoping your legs will stop shaking. Then you see the spear leaning against the wall. And the helmets. And the skulls. Your best refuge is the home of the awful monsters outside.

Someone says a shuttle is on its way. Five minutes. Might as well be five days.

The horn blows in the woods again. You and your fellow troopers point your blasters to the mouth of the cave. Somewhere, a trooper screams.

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Alien: Covenant's Ending, Roller Coasters, and Why We Watch Horror

5/20/2017

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SPOILERS: Alien: Covenant, Life, Get Out

Roller Coasters

    Horror movies are like roller coasters. Earth shattering revelation, yes I know. Hear me out though, because there’s a key similarity film makers seem to be missing these days. Both have a mounting tension that lasts for about half the experience. Everything after the initial drop is a series of twists and turns that thrill and in some cases nauseate. Then at the end, the audience coasts in exactly where they left. They have returned to safe normalcy. The world is the same, but they are changed in knowing what they’ve been through, and can overcome.
    That last bit is what horror directors are screwing up, and yes I’m stating my opinion as if it’s fact. Fight me.
    There’s a reason that roller coasters don’t end with a guy in a clown wig shouting racist jokes. It would kill the buzz that comes from returning to normalcy after a trial, and that feeling is just as important as the ride itself. Yes, in real life, there often is a metaphorical racist clown at the end of a difficult journey, but that’s not why I go on roller coasters or watch horror movies. If I wanted to be reminded that sometimes the good guys lose and things turn out for the worst, I’d stay in reality thank you very much.

This rant comes just after seeing Alien: Covenant and way after seeing Life. Both felt compelled to throw a ‘twist’ in at the end, and neither are as smart as they think they are. As a point of comparison, I’m going to talk a little about a movie that is as smart as it thinks it is, Get Out. This argument hinges on one main idea, that ‘disappointment’ or ‘bummer’ is not a strong emotion to end your movie on.

Alien: Covenant

In the third act of Alien: Covenant, good android Walter is fighting comically evil android David. Walter is the better model and winning the fight. Just as Walter is about to land the crushing blow, we see David grab a knife lying on the ground. Then we cut away, leaving the audience to wonder who won the fight. Except we know who won the fight, because we aren’t stupid, and the movie is going to make us wait another twenty minutes to tell us what we already know. The movie ends with our heroin, Daniels, screaming at David, only realizing once she’s trapped in her hyper-sleep pod that the android she was paling around with is the evil one.
This didn’t add anything to the movie. In fact, it detracts from the final action scene as the audience spends the entire time wondering when the ‘reveal’ will happen. There was no clever ‘gotcha!’ because, we the audience, again, are not idiots. I’m not sure what the emotional payoff was supposed to be, but all we’re left with is a ‘Well fuck, we all saw that coming a mile away. Bummer.’

Life

In the final minutes of Life, our heroes make their daring escape from the International Space Station. One character makes a fitting sacrifice to take the evil alien with him into the depths of space in an escape pod, while the other escapes to the surface of Earth. The plan seems to have worked! We watch the pods go their separate ways, one into blackness, the other crashing into the ocean. Except, what’s this? The camera is taking a really long time to reveal who’s in the safe pod. Surprise, it’s the guy who made a willing sacrifice to save all of humankind, and he’s brought the alien down with him! And here’s a shot of the other one, screaming in terror as she goes to die alone in the void.
This was less treating the audience like idiots and more like bullying. The filmmakers gave us a really nice ice cream cone, then immediately took it away to watch us pout. Again, not a profound emotion. We’re just left with a feeling of ‘Well that’s a bummer. I really would have liked that ice cream’.

Get Out

    Get Out ends with our hero killing a bunch of psycho racists on his way to freedom. The last racist to die is the ex-girlfriend who lured him to her family home to get his body snatched (it’s a trippy movie). To paint the picture here, in a movie about racism, a black man strangles a white woman to death in the middle of the street, and then blue and red flashing lights appear as a cop car rolls up. We all live in the world. We know how this looks. After all he’s survived, our hero is going to jail.
    Bummer. The audience feels a downer ending coming up.
   Except it’s not a cop that steps out of the car. It’s our hero’s friend, the comic relief, there to rescue him! The director takes our expectation of a downer ending, and turns it on its head to give the audience an even more satisfying emotional high, because here’s the thing: That’s what we wanted all along.

    Audiences aren’t stupid. We see the downer ending coming. Once we know it’s on its way, we’ll spend the entire time up until the end credits waiting for the filmmakers to prove us wrong. If your story doesn’t capitalize on that, you’ll just have a bunch of wasted potential emotional energy.

Final Thoughts

    This is all reflective of my personal view on the horror genre. I love good horror, and I was really enjoying Alien: Covenant and Life up until the racist clown popped up in their endings. Good horror isn’t about torturing your protagonists, or racking up the highest body count. First, it’s about using storytelling techniques to take your audience on an emotional roller coaster. Second, and I think more importantly, horror movies are about hope, and rewarding that hope.
    Horror movies do what standard adventure movies do, only better. In action adventure movies, our heroes face overwhelming odds and trials, fight monsters, save the day, and come out on the other side having learned something about themselves or the world. Horror movies do the same thing, except our hero isn’t a space wizard or gun toting archaeologist. They’re usually a lot like us except in space, or in the woods. On top of that, the monsters they face are far darker and more disturbing than a dragon or transforming robot. To fight those monsters, they’re never granted a magic ring or superpowers, they have to make do with what they’ve got.
    And then they survive.
    That’s what people really want out of a horror movie. Proof that even untrained, ill equipped, and against the worst horrors we could imagine, humankind can still come out alive on the other side. To trade the emotional high that comes with affirming that for a ‘gotcha’ moment that will always land with a disappointed shrug, just seems like a waste to me.

    Or maybe you just wanna watch a bunch of teenagers take a machete to the face, in which case, to each their own.

See you next time,
Harry L-B

Disagree? See a typo? Trapped in a basement and the kidnapper left the internet on and this is the only website available? Leave a comment!

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12 New Year’s Resolutions: My year long quest to be less lame

2/1/2017

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Look! I added an image! Isn't this entry more interesting now?

Every year for my New Year’s resolution I give myself a target, like publishing a new book. Those who know I wrote a book, Billy in Space, may be aware that the sequel is still not a thing. It’s been my target for the last (ugh) three years now. This comes from me taking months at a time off from working on it. Arguably I was working on a big animation project last year, HauntEd (go watch it!) but there were still hours of time in my day that could have been better spent.
Clearly, I’m going about self improvement wrong, so this year I’m doing something different. Instead of one big goal that I can put off, and put off, and put off, until it never happens or we’re all dead, this year I’m giving myself monthly challenges to help build new habits. Last month I was a vegetarian. I’ll be talking about that in probably the next blog post. Next month I’m going to try to spend less money on junk I don’t fricken need, by setting myself an allowance like I’m a five year old. This month I’m writing at least a thousand words a day. I want to be a writer, and I want to be a good one. One only gets better at a thing by doing it a lot. Right now I only write when I’m working on a project, and that’s not enough.
I’m gonna try writing stuff I don’t normally write, and a lot of that will end up here on the blog once or twice a week. You can all look forward to my stupid, poorly thought out opinions on politics, game design, nerd culture, scifi, horror, and sometimes, when I’m feeling really smart, how those things are all related. In the past, I’ve stayed away from writing prompts. This month I’m going to be trying them as well to stretch my narrative muscles.
This series of resolutions is all about trying things outside my comfort zone. I don’t know what all the challenges I’m going to try will be yet, but they’re all going to be about building better habits for self improvement. That’s my plan. Feel free to tell me it’s stupid, or tell me your New Year’s resolution, or leave me your bank account info an amazon password in the comments (yes this site does comments!)

(398/1000)
See you next time,
Harry L-B

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Wow it's been a while

2/3/2015

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So here's what's up

The last time I posted here, was way back in September last year. Wow I suck at blogs. Anyway, here's some updates on my current projects.

Two Lunatics is done! I edited it together and I don't hate it. There's some touch up type things left to do like color and maybe some background sound and a version where I cut off like two minutes. But I successfully made a short film (with the help of a bunch of really awesome people)! So once those touch up things are all taken care of I'll be submitting to festivals and we'll see where it goes from there. Yeay!

Billy 2 is slow going. I hated my first draft, which was done back at the end of November. I've written a bunch more stuff and I was finally able to bring myself to look over the draft again. Currently in the process of taking a clever to the thing and hacking out the stuff I hate. Hopeful I'll have something good in the next couple months.

Web series! I'm working on a web series. A couple actually. One or both or even three might happen, because I have time to write at my new day job. Those depend on whether or not I quit school.

I still haven't figured out something to post weekly. Something to bring people back on a regular basis. Create some buzz and whatnot. We'll see. Might perform a resurrection so to speak.

Also I wrote this while I was sitting in class because my teacher is talking about stuff I already know how to do.

- Harry L-B

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Where Things Are At

9/5/2014

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Project Updates

Firstly, here's a rundown of what's done. Two Lunatics has been filmed so next thing to do with that is edit. No clue what I'm doing, but I'm sure it will get done eventually. The next Billy in Space book is coming along slowly but steadily, and I've got another book in the works as well.

I've just started school again and I'm going to MATC to learn programming. Might be going into the game development program with a focus on coding. We'll see. You can follow those adventures here.

I honestly don't post in this blog nearly enough. I do however post on my facebook page fairly regularly. If you want to know what I'm up to with updates on how the books are coming you should go here. It's small stuff so it never feels worth posting on a blog.

Anyway. That's the state of things.

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News: Lie about Magnets Uncovered

2/4/2014

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News

It seems the concept of magnetism has been common knowledge to just about everyone (except for the Insane Clown Posse) since we could rub two shiny rocks together. A negatively charged object and a positively charged object are attracted to each other, due to electrons and tiny multicolored spheres and math and stuff. This little scientific fact is the basis of the commonly used phrase "opposites attract" in reference to couples that are so different they should totally end up together, like in every 80's movie ever.

Unfortunately it turns out we've all been had. Last week, researchers in Germany somewhere decided to actually test the "opposites attract" theory. Surprisingly, or rather not so surprisingly, materials with similar charges wanted to hang out instead of the other way around, which they all agree in hindsight, made no sense.

The reason for this deception by the scientific community dates back to the coining of the phrase "opposites attract". Scientists of the time wanted a pick up line they could use on the hot cheerleader types in a time before science was considered "cool". They went so far as making sure magnets were always painted in such a way to support their claims. Now that science and even dorkiness is cool, the phrase and its false scientific backing can be abandoned.

"We hope that the public can forgive us and we can all move past this. We came up with this theory in a rather lonely time for scientists, but we feel we've grown past the need for it now," said Danny Carlton, King of Science.

It remains to be seen what effect this will have on those cartoony U shaped magnets.

Project Updates

Hope you enjoyed today's lies about magnets. The world my never be the same. Here's some real stuff!

Animation: I finished up the music video for the Happy Horse Band! The final version of it got okayed yesterday. They're super happy with it, as am I. Once they post it, I'll share it here on the website. I think you'll like the song and the video.

Film: May have run into a bit of a snag on Two Lunatics concerning crew, but I have hopes that it will all come together in the end. Did get some essential props put together so that's just about all set.

Comic: I thought I was all done making comics for a while, but my good buddy D.B. Rouse is putting out a new album in a couple months and he wants a comic to go with it. So I've started working on that. It'll be black and white and loosely follow characters in the album.

That's what I got.

- Harry out

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News: Scientists Invent Thinking Spider

1/27/2014

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Spiders have been around for a long time. They've been creeping out lifeforms since there have been other lifeforms to creep out. They have too many legs. They've got pointy teeth. Their eyes are just plain weird looking. Some are small enough to easily get lost in your bed sheets. Some are big enough to cover your face. Some are deadly poisonous, and some are waiting in that dark spot in your cupboard. They are as varied as they are unpleasant.

Luckily the little critters have always had two major weaknesses. For one, spider bodies are incredibly squishable, succumbing to as little as a wad of toilet paper. Secondly, being spiders, they have spider brains, which are fairly small. Their diminutive intellect has prevented them from realizing what their creepiness could help them accomplish.

Unfortunately we may soon need to bow down to a race of tiny, terrifying tyrants. A group of scientists down in Arizona have developed a method to increase the thinking power of any living thing, by increasing how densely packed their brain cells are. Instead of testing this out on a species of something harmless like butterflies or alligators, they chose to test out this new affront to nature on everyone's favorite nightmare.

All attempts to reach the lab for comment have failed. The lab is assumed lost and will be nuked from a safe distance.

- Harry out

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Project Update: Two Lunatics

1/22/2014

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The big project I really want to tell people about right now is Billy in Space (have I mentioned that I wrote a book called Billy in Space? It's coming out in a couple months. Get excited). However that's not the only big project I'm working on right now, and maybe, for some unknown reason, you're interested in one of those other projects. So here's info on a short film I wrote called Two Lunatics.

It's a short film about two guys in an insane asylum. There's more to it than that, but if I say much more it'll give away the whole story. It is short after all. I'm getting help producing it from Sam Kozel of Film Freed, a local indie film studio. This'll be my first time behind the camera on a film project, and Sam has been real helpful with all the stuff I'm totally oblivious on. So he deserves big thanks for that.

It's staring a couple of local Milwaukee theater guys. Jason Waszac of various things from around town, and Matt Kemple of the Milwaukee Comedy Festival and the Underground Collaborative. I just had meetings with both, and they're both going to do a great job. You should be looking forward to seeing it.

We'll actually be filming at the UC in not too long from now, so that's exciting.

So yeah. That's coming up real soon. Get excited.

- Harry out

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News: New Earth Discovered

1/18/2014

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For all of humanity's brief time on our planet, we thought Earth was special. It was the only one we had so we best take care of it. Turns out we can start dumping trash where ever we like, because a second earth has just been discovered.

A few months ago scientists launched a satellite that would travel the same orbit around the sun, but going the other way around. Yesterday, the satellite got its first glimpse of a previously unknown planet, which experts are already calling Earth 2. E2 has been following the exact same path as Earth, but we've never seen it, because it was always on the other side of the sun. Not only is the planet the same size as Earth, but it will likely be able to sustain life.

"Yeah it's got water, oxygen, all that good stuff. And to imagine, it's been behind the sun all this time. Who knew?" said a totally legit scientist.

There are already plans to send a group of attractive youths there, to star in a reality show.

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Attempts to Build Hype

1/13/2014

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Today I got a bunch of animation done. Done on what you ask? Two things. One is a music video for a an actual client, so those are always cool. It's for the Happy Horse Band, a group I've done work for before. You can see the first video I did for them on the animation page. They're a pretty cool group, and my friend D.B. Rouse is a member of the band. Check them out. The video's not done yet, but it's pretty far along.

The other thing I'm working on is a series of promo videos for Billy in Space. In addition to animating a commercial, I'm also doing a series of short videos staring the crew of the book's ship. I'll be doing three or four depending on how many good ideas I get, and I'm gonna release those a week at a time once I have a set release date on the book. Fingers crossed they go viral and that solves all my marketing issues. To get that started, here's a couple images from those.