#The portfolio of films attached to the names here this should really have been a whole lot worse. Plus the evil witch.. Actress... Whatever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

violetsystems · 4 years

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#personal

It is usually my favorite time of the year. Although, I do remember a Halloween years ago when I sat in a corner at a party on my phone alone scrolling through tumblr. My mom loves this time of year. Her birthday is Monday and we usually walk in the day of the dead parade in my neighborhood. Her costume this year is a gypsy witch which if anybody didn’t know by now is part of my heritage. My Croatian grandfather dropped out in the sixth grade after his mother died. He would tell me stories of the church refusing to bury her and how he had to take care of his siblings learning six languages in the process. He and his brother were in the army and Navy respectively. He married into a Bohemian German family where he had two daughters. My mother lives in the house she grew up in. I used to sit at the table on Sundays watching Shaw Brothers films while my grandfather taught me Serbian curse words. My favorite movie back then was Chinese Superninjas and my grandmother was always asleep in a chair listening to a Cubs game. Anytime anyone got decapitated I would look to my grandfather and he would be lost in an article about electronics. The basement was filled with wires and circuit boards. He was a licensed union electrician who fell into disability. Before that he was an army mechanic in the war. Magic and technology was what filled most of my adolescence. My father’s side of the family was all Swedish, a son of a poor Lutheran minister and also in the military. Back then, families were a little more nuclear. My mom’s cousin and my dad’s sister met around the same time my dad and my mom. Subsequently, I have twin cousins who are eerily double related. I also have a cousin on that side of the family who lives in Hong Kong as is adopted. I learned the hard way sitting at a dinner table at a school called Li Po Chun where she lived and taught. I spoke about music and art at that school to survivors of the Iraq war who openly hated Americans like myself. I remember my cousin telling me how important it was how I cut through that hate and fear talking about music with them. That night the oldest living relative was at the table. It was the first time I ever set foot in China let alone Hong Kong. Her daughter who was half Kenyan and her son who was half Chinese sat at that table along with her husband from Beijing. Louise sat at the head of the table attended by a live in nurse. She was in her nineties at that point. Her husband had passed but was a Swedish missionary who travelled the world helping people depending on your political views. I said out loud how it was good to meet someone who I was blood related to halfway across the world. She gave a hushed and sad smile. “Your dad never told you did he?” My cousin was adopted. Later after dinner I sat with her son and drew. It was his favorite activity to share. He taught me Chinese characters and I taught him the Korean characters I knew. We never talked about blood ever again.

Being an only child, these experiences of connection to family can be intense. There really isn’t much of a legacy for me back here in the states. My parents are divorced. My dad remarried into a family that is very different from what I am used to. His wife is nice but religious. Some of the family are police. My dad told me once her brother had fallen into a culture of online forums for gun rights. I spoke to my dad over the phone just the other day. We gently brushed politics over Pelosi and Mnuchin. My dad is an accountant. It’s easy to shift the conversation to something like stocks. But truthfully, I know he and his wife support things like the supreme court nomination. That frightens me in more ways than anyone can know. But those kind of politics have done nothing for me in this situation I have found myself in over the last four or five months. The only piece of government action that affects me favorably at all has been the CARES act. More specifically, the fact that the bulk of my pension is affected by the tax legislation. It literally saved my life. That expires at the end of the year and who knows when the next round of layoffs will happen. And yet politicians are sitting in offices they were bought into arguing concepts about when life begins. Which is funny because politicians don’t really care about life. They care about money, power and how to control the bulk of it. The tones of an election year are deafening over ideological talking points. I hear people like Ken Griffin talking about how he’d rather not pay fair taxes. I also hear Ken Griffin donates heavily to the campaigns of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. He has his prize Basquiat hanging in the Art Institute along with his history of supporting the Christian right. I never made the connection as to why abortion protesters were always allowed to protest outside of that school. They used to stand there for hours with signs in front of my building. Years later, there’s a chick fil a right next door. It seems odd until you realize the money is all connected, ideologically and otherwise. In America these days, freedom is only attached to religious expression and the money attached to it. A woman’s right to choose factors nowhere into this. However you feel about abortion or religion in general in America should fall down to a basic function. Is it government’s job to dictate what you do with your life on an ideological level? Or is it their job to use your tax dollars to maintain infrastructure? In an era where the Senate in America is only concerned about loading the courts with yes men and women, it’s pretty obvious. The stimulus to keep the economy going is nowhere in sight. People like Ken Griffin talk loudly about how the answer is getting people back to work and not incentivising people to hurt the GDP. Liam Gallagher and Johnny Marr are among a host of musicians who have hit back at London Chancellor’s Rishi Sunak’s suggestion that people should “adapt” their jobs during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They would much rather get you back in the machine in any number of startups their sons created. Ken Griffin got rich of his daddy’s connections in times like these. Just like the health care industry gets rich putting you at risk. I put my money in the markets too with no help or advice. For the record, I’m doing quite well these days in my portfolio without any handouts other than my pension.

All the while, I’m trying to apply for jobs in the most insensitive, impersonal and isolated time of my life. I’m alone in ways I cannot explain or even comprehend. And I’m stuck in the middle with people I love like ghosts on the net trying to find a voice. These people in power say they care. Say they have divine insight from God about how you should live your life. Have all the time in the world to type their feelings and beliefs on twitter but do absolutely nothing to help the country heal. And I sit in financial webinars with banks and investors who all say the same thing. The country needs help from the government to recover from these dangerous times. A time where health care is so important and so expensive. Who profits from all this death? The doctors and lawyers that move to Saipan and other tax havens to escape their fair share of the blame? The country is number one at dying these days from a disease that’s easily mitigated by keeping to yourself and wearing a mask. Sounds poetic. And yet everyone can’t keep their distance from me when I walk out the door to restock my fridge. They can’t help sabotaging every attempt to keep my mental state in tact when I face crippling social exclusion. I do still have friends. Mostly in the neighborhood. And yet there’s enemies too. It seems living in this town for years has only one advantage. Everyone thinks they know everything about me. They think I’m a Chinese spy. They think I’m a Satanist. They think I’m in league with a secret organization hell bent on destroying American freedom. And they act out on it every day in my public space without my consent because they think they know me. But they never ask my name. They never look me in the eye. They gossip and plot behind my back. And sooner or later, I just get bored and adapt. I apply for more jobs overseas. All the jobs in China. A few in New York. But New York is more of the same. Startups for daddy’s little business school graduate. A bunch of cock sure closet misogynists who have learned the slick talk corporate snake oil about freedom. These people care so much about your uterus they voted for a guy who literally said in the most vulgar terms to impregnate women forcefully. You think those people care about human life at any stage of conception? They care about votes. They care about people to brainwash. Cheap labor. I literally had to listen to a Bloomberg pundit talk about how a baby boom in the COVID era would be great for shareholders. Trillion dollar companies that pass the savings onto investors instead of the consumer. I hear nothing but people banging the war drum to increase the cost of things. Inflation is a good thing when the wealth disparity is so wildly out of balance. These times seem dark. Almost comedic. But when you shine the light for years from this lighthouse you know one thing. These people are nothing but husks on a balance sheet. They have no culture and no history other than burying and exiling the truth until it drowns in the river like a mob hit. And America is drowning in this cesspool day after day. I’m an only child. There’s a chance my legacy will die and never be retold. But then again, there are things out there more precious than blood. And the streets run red with it everyday without a care in the world. What price do you put on a life when you value none of it? Ask Ken Griffin. I’m sure he could buy your silence. Or maybe he has enough money to throw away to silence you for good. It’s the Chicago way after all. I should know. <3 Tim

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theghostofelliotcameron · 7 years

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burn out blues

close my eyes, forget about the day. open wide, and float away... a self para.

the past two weeks had been two of the happiest in elliot’s life in quite some time. he’d been surrounded by friends, had started hooking up with multiple girls he’d been interested in, and was able to add nearly a hundred photos from their hawaii trip to his portfolio. he hadn’t felt this way in over a year, first starting college and learning new things about film he never would’ve thought of had he not gone away to the new york film academy. as life started to get better for him then, he’d been hit with a ton of bricks at the death of his father. it only made sense that after a couple weeks of paradise (literally), his life would begin to crumble once again.

he’d been in the kitchen, that saturday afternoon, having a cup of coffee since he’d slept in extremely late (up late the night before at tie the knot with lennon). he’d just topped off his cup, warming up what had started to cool down, when the front door shut and jagger entered, holding a box in his hands.

“eli, there’s a package here for you.” jagger says, joining elliot in the kitchen, elliot grabbing an extra coffee mug from the cupboard for his friend.

“i didn’t order anything.” elliot replies, chewing on his bottom lip. “that’s kind of weird, right? getting a package only a week after changing my address again.” he’d still been slightly annoyed at jagger for making the two of them pack up and move to indi’s extremely large home, but elliot was never one to vocalize his complaints. his eyes glance over the package set down on the counter in front of him, trying to find a return address to see who could’ve possibly sent him a package -- his heart fell deep into his stomach once he’d realized it was his old address. “this is from concord.” he says quietly, turning around hastily to find a pair of scissors or a knife to open up the package. he grabs a knife out from the knife block, using it to carefully glide along the tape around the sides so elliot could open it up and see what could be hiding inside, ready to ruin the good moods he’d been experiencing over the past couple weeks. once all sides are easily accessible, he pauses, wondering if this is something he should really be doing -- more importantly, should he be doing it in front of his closest friend, jagger. whatever lied inside the box was probably going to rock him to the core, and he didn’t know if he was ready for jag to see that side of him or not. he figured it probably wasn’t good to go at it alone, elliot looking from the box to his friend, needing a bit of encouragement to continue.

“well, are you going to open it or are we just going to watch it to see if something happens?” jagger jokes, not really getting a response from elliot who had his eyes locked on the box again. he’d been guessing, trying to see if he could figure out what he must’ve left behind.

hesitantly, elliot starts pulling back the pieces of cardboard, feeling uneasy as he began to recognize some of the contents. there was a letter written and sitting on top of another small box, which had his parents names engraved into it. the letter doesn’t have his first name written on the folded up piece of paper, but the name mr. cameron, which immediately gives elliot chills down his spine.

mr. cameron -- we found these items in the attic. they appeared to be quite personal and we felt it would be best if we returned it to it’s rightful owner. sincerely, mr. & mrs. prince

he scans over the quickly written letter, tossing it to the side on the counter, eager to dig into the box and see what haunting memories could flow back into his brain. he first picks up a small photo album, flipping through the pictures rapidly so he could get to the rest of the contents of the box. there was a small stuffed animal he’d recognized had been beatie’s, which he gently set to the side. he also came across one of the journals he’d thought the’d left behind (it kind of felt like a relief to get it back now). the last item inside the box was the one that would wreck him the most, the box with his parents names and initials engraved in delicate cursive writing. it looked almost like an oversized cigar box, and when elliot looked closer, he noticed a date and a phrase engraved along with his parents names.

8/26/92 -- may your marriage be filled with everlasting love and hopeful dreams for the future.

his heart felt suddenly empty, his mouth going entirely dry. “jag,” elliot says quietly, holding the box tightly in his hands. “what’s today’s date?”

elliot is pretty sure he’s heard jagger say august twenty-sixth, dude... but he really isn’t paying attention, flipping open the box to see what could’ve been hiding inside. it’s like everything just keeps getting worse as he finds two, large cigars, and a bottle of his father’s favorite whiskey, crown royal. cautiously taking the bottle from the box, elliot set the box with the cigars down on the counter, looking intently at the bottle in front of him. he wonders if jagger can sense what he’s thinking -- probably not, jag is almost always in a go-lucky type of mood, while elliot is constantly thinking of different ways to torture himself.

it seems almost like a weird, diabolical sign -- like something that was supposed to take elliot from the high he’d been feeling after getting with the girl he’d been interested in, and the good feelings he’d gotten after going on a group vacation with everyone in town. he’d been making new friends, working efficiently at his newest job, but it’s like this was sent to purposely set him back ten steps. he doesn’t even look to jagger, using all of his strength to open the seal of the crown royal bottle, bringing the bottle up to his lips and taking long, long gulps of the stuff. he’s only stopped by jagger grabbing the bottle from him, pulling it out of his grasp.

“what are you doing?” jag asks, his eyes searching over the counter the cap that elliot had hiding in his palm.

“i’m drinking for them.” elliot answers casually, reaching back to him and snatching the bottle back from his hands. he doesn’t reattach the cap, ready to go back in for more after he finishes explaining himself to jagger. “today’s their twenty fifth anniversary. i can’t just not drink this for them.” he reasons, bringing the bottle back up to his lips, only to have jagger take it from him again after a couple gulps. the look on jagger’s face when he sees how much elliot has managed to drink in such a short amount of time appears to be worried, but elliot is sure that jag just doesn’t understand -- or maybe it’s the liquor starting to get to him. “if you’re not going to let me celebrate their anniversary in the way i want, i’m just going to leave.” jagger looks like he’s hesitating, but he eventually passes the bottle back to elliot.

“i mean, they were saving it -- maybe you should save it too.” jag tries to reason, earning a snort from his best friend.

“there’s no point to save it now. not like they’ll ever be able to drink it.” elliot says, going in again for another gulp. he’s made it about halfway through the medium sized bottle before he feels completely out of his ordinary state. it’s different than drinking on the cruise, it’s different than the long island iced teas he’d shared with lennon a few nights before -- this drinking is destructive, and done without any real consideration. he wants to keep drinking, to finish the bottle in honor of his family he’d been forgetting about while he was off having fun with his newest friends. now, they were the only thing on his mind, and elliot wasn’t about to let their anniversary go un-celebrated. “i think i’m going to call lennon.” he says indifferently, finally taking the cap and attaching it back onto the bottle. he figured he would save it for later that night when he started to sober up. he stumbles around the kitchen counter, attempting to head back to his bedroom, leaving the contents of the package he’d received spread all out on the counter, the only thing he’d brought with him, the crown royal tucked underneath his arm. “maybe she’ll come over and drink the rest of this with me. actually, this is just for me -- she can have something else.” he says out loud as he’s walking back to his room, not really talking to anyone in particular.

#self para #tw: alcoholism/death #{elliot & jagger}

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fmservers · 6 years

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How Disney Built Star Wars, in real life

From the moment that Disney announced its acquisition of Lucasfilm, the question on every fan’s mind was “when will they build Star Wars in real life?”

While most assumed that they would do it eventually, they probably weren’t aware that in 2013 even as work began on the first movie of the ‘final’ trilogy, work also commenced on the early planning of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. That initial team fo a handful of people would eventually grow to over 4,000.

Over the course of the past 5 years, Walt Disney Imagineering has been hard at work making the world of Star Wars a reality on Earth. In two locations, California and Florida, Black Spire outpost on the planet of Batuu is now under construction. It’s an enormous several-billion-dollar bet that people will want to visit a place very similar to the ones that they’ve seen on the screen for decades.

In some ways, this project seems like the safest bet ever. The confluence of rabid fans of Star Wars and disciples of Disney’s particular flavor of amusement park alone feels like it could fuel the demand for the two park additions for years. But the ambitions of Walt Disney Imagineering staff and Parks management are stratospherically high for what is the largest single land expansion ever in a US Disney park. And the financial results required from these additions will require Disney to draw not just the loyalist crowd, but to convince a wide and deep array of park visitors to spend the day in a hyper-faithful reconstruction of a fictional far away galaxy.

To do this, Disney’s Imagineers have spent over five years planning and two years building the outposts that will open this year in its two US parks.

Last week, I got to spend three days talking to those Imagineers, partners from Lucasfilm and management about the inspiration, planning, tools, design and construction efforts. I also visited the construction site of Star Wars Land in Disneyland, California to take in the size, scale and environment of Batuu and its two major attractions.

“We’re really being very ambitious with what we do with Star Wars,” says Disney Portfolio Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, Scott Trowbridge. “This location is over 14 acres. It is basically a small city in our parks. All the amazing architecture…the ships, the aliens, the droids, the creatures, everything that makes Star Wars Star Wars, all coming together so that our guests can have an opportunity to live that dream of living their Star Wars story.”

At risk of being too susceptible to marketing speak, I’d have to agree with this particular statement. What is being built here has little parallel in terms of immersion and ambition in an amusement park or out. And it’s going to blow Star Wars fans, casual and involved, away.

The nuts and bolts

If you’re familiar with what Disney has said about its “Star Wars lands” so far, then some of the following might be a refresher, but I think that some context about what they’re trying to build is important before we talk about the how.

Covering 14 acres individually at both Disneyland, Anaheim and Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida, the lands are pieces of the planet Batuu, and they host Black Spire Outpost, a village with shops, eateries, villagers and a First Order advance post. Outside of the village, you can also find the Resistance encampment with its ad-hoc infrastructure, rag-tag starfighters and equipment. The lands house two major attractions — Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run.

The entire land has been designed from the ground up to be immersive. The Disney cast members that inhabit Batuu will dress in authentic costumes and can pick and choose their own garments and accessories from a selection. They will be encouraged to have an understanding of the village, the various factions at play from the resistance to the First Order to the underbelly of smugglers operating there. The food is completely new, and it all has backstory as well. You won’t have pork ribs, you’ll have Kaadu ribs — the non-famous creature famously ridden by famously hated Jar Jar Binks. You’ll drink blue (and green) milk and cocktails at the seedy cantina (yes, with alcohol). The signage is all in-universe as much as possible, the products for sale have been created from scratch just for Batuu and will be sold nowhere else — and they all have a ‘found’ or ‘crafted’ vibe with minimal packaging.

The name of the game is transportive.

Transportation to Batuu

One of the over-arching themes throughout the discussions over the course of several days was the concept of transportation. How do you convey the feeling of being transported from the worlds of Disneyland and Earth to the world of Star Wars.

That begins with the decision to make the location for the lands a new planet.

“Why not make a place that is very familiar from the classic Star Wars films, a Tatooine, a Hoth, or one of those places? The answer really is we know those places, we know those stories that happen there, and we know that we’re not in them,” said Trowbridge. “This place, Black Spire Outpost, is an opportunity. It’s designed from the very get‑go to be a place that invites exploration and discovery, a place that invites us to become a character in the world of Star Wars, and, to the extent that we want to, to participate in the stories of Star Wars.”

A multi-purpose transport shuttle docked on top of a large hangar (left) will beckon guests into Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo

One of the primary drivers for the decision was also to create some sense of equanimity between hardcore fans and casual attendees.

“I want to talk into this land and be in the same level as everyone else, from the really hardcore Star Wars fan to someone who knows nothing about Star Wars,” Managing Story Editor at WDI Margaret Kerrison recalls saying in the first pitch meeting she attended for Star Wars land. “I want to have that urgency to explore, to discover, to run around every corner, and to meet every single droid and alien in this land. I want to not feel like I’m at a disadvantage because I don’t know all the nitty‑gritty details as a hardcore Star Wars fan would know.”

Walking through one of the entrances to Batuu, guests should feel a bit of compression and then decompression, says Executive Creative Director, WDI Chris Beatty. Coming in from Frontierland, Critter Country or just outside Fantasyland, you’re presented with ‘laser cut’ rock tunnel that creates a blank slate that then opens up into a cinematically framed vista that varies depending on your entrance. For the middle tunnel, you get a peek at some of the architecture, for instance and then boom, you’re presented with ships in the foreground, buildings, tall ancient spires, ships perched atop the buildings, canopies sawing in the wind. Shot established, you’re in Black Spire Outpost.

There are several of these ‘reveal’ moments throughout the land. The first time you see the resistance encampment, your first glimpse of the Millennium Falcon. Photographic moments, but also establishing moments, grounding you in the place you’re in.

Having stood in that vantage, even with construction going on all around, I can tell you it’s incredibly effective. There is no hint or trace of the rest of the park here. The vegetation, the meticulous weathering and rockscapes and the eerily familiar yet newly remixed shapes of Star Wars buildings and accessories make you feel like this is another place that you know.

The land is constructed using a blend of familiar techniques and newly minted ones. In some ways, Disney’s Pandora – The World of Avatar at Walt Disney World and its in-theme dining, open spaces and rides feels like a test run for how far it could push themed worlds. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge feels like an additive result of learnings from a land that has ‘native’ merchandise and foods and tries to keep as much as possible ‘in story’.

Before they could begin to build, though, Imagineers had to build the tools to do so.

Building Star Wars

Headquartered in the compound of low beige and salmon colored buildings making up Grand Central Business Park in Glendale, California, Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) is a wonderland of mad tinkers, costumers, roboticists, simulations engineers and historians. The only Disney design and development organization founded by Walt Disney himself as WED Enterprises (and later sold to the Disney company in a somewhat controversial move for the time). Since then, it has proven to be so influential around the world through its application of theming and robotics that the term Imagineering is synonymous with the basic concept of world building.

Dok-Ondar’s Den of Antiquities in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will feature rare items from across the galaxy for sale

One of the things that you have to understand about the way that Imagineering works is that they waste as little effort as possible. The imagination is always a hundred times more creative, complex and ambitious than the reality, and to even get a tiny chunk of that in front of guests Imagineers have to constantly find ways to work within constraints of time, space, money and, yes, the laws of physics.

In order to get the job done, they often build their own tools or cobble together solutions for problems out of a combination of off-the-shelf hardware and custom built components. It feels a bit odd to describe it this way, because there is certainly pride involved, but building for Imagineering is remarkably ego free. It’s not ‘our way or no way’ it’s ‘whatever works’. This commitment to making the illusion complete for the viewer no matter what the source of the solution is has led to some really fascinating advances from Disney R&D and Imagineering.

You only have to look at the procession from a couple of metal slugs attached to a servo through to full on humanoid stunt doubles to see what the kind of teasing out of technical applications to storytelling problems happen inside Imagineering.

For the Galaxy’s Edge project, one of the first problems to be solved was how to manage such a complex undertaking inside WDI and in partnership with Lucasfilm.

This was largely due to the major difference between this project and any that Disney has undertaken in the past: the intimate involvement of all departments from the beginning. People from props, set dressing, construction, merchandising, food, ride systems and technical departments all worked together from ideation onwards. On a normal production, they are typically brought in at various phases — but for Batuu, everyone had to be on the same page from the very beginning.

If Disney wanted this to be a truly immersive experience it had to feel organically integrated and the conversation had to be lengthy and continuous so that set design served vending and vending served story and story served ride systems and engineering. They all had to be in lock step.

One of the major tools Imagineering used to keep everyone on the same project page is their BIM (building information modeling) tool. The tool takes a combination of 2D plans, 3D models, infrastructure and set dressing information and combines them into one massive interlocking source of truth for all departments to pull from. Teams were able to drill down from an overview of the land in 3D to the design plans for a specific doorway control panel.

Basically, it’s foundational geometry from across the project that’s then fed into the Unreal engine and presented in 3D. Like a 3D world from a game, but it’s a real place with real plumbing, architecture and technology underneath.

“When we saw the level of complexity that we were faced with when we started this project, we understood that we would need to use all the tools at our disposal. What the plan was is that we would essentially build a digital replica of the entire project. We built the planet before we actually built the planet,” said Sanne Worthing, Manager of BIM & VDC Technology, WDI. “It allows the creative designers to make decisions. It allows our contractors and the guys actually out in the field to make decisions before they actually have to go through and do these things. It gives you a lot of planning time. It helps avoid some of the more complicated and costly problems out in the field.”

BIM allowed the teams to do everything from testing how things would interlock in 3D to seeing where cranes could be placed during construction. The BIM reconstruction also fed into a system that WDI built in virtual reality to simulate the park.

“Using Unreal, we were able to take from all different parts of our attraction and put the moving pieces together. That means putting in our media that we would get from ILM, our partners there, getting our animation for our animated figures. Every piece of our puzzle to create our attraction, we put into a virtual reality simulation,” says April Warren, Show Programmer for WDI. “We’re able to look at it and make quick iterations with our creative team to be able to find things that we wouldn’t find normally until we were in the field and solve those problems early, or to be able to find out something just wasn’t working for us creatively and we wanted to change that.”

WDI has been using its own VR simulation system for a while, I first saw it a couple of years ago when it was being fleshed out. It feels very similar to flying around inside a simulator. It allows the Imagineers to look at the land from all sides, swooping through projects and highlighting elements of various types from infrastructure to set dressing. More importantly, it allows them to get as clear a picture as possible of what it will look like to a guest on the ground. This includes sight lines that play to maximum effect, with forced perspective and seamless presentation while hiding things like heating and cooling units, conduits and ducts and regular Earth buildings.

Theme Park design is is wild — with modeling/VR they know exactly where to place scenic elements to accomplish line-of-sight effects, but as a result from up above the lands kinda look like you fell through the ground in a video game

(pic by @bioreconstruct) pic.twitter.com/61KkufMQ3j

— Cabel (@cabel) February 24, 2019

“We do do a lot of work with sight lines, making sure that when you’re out in the land, where guests are moving through, that the experience is what we intend it to be. That we’re not looking at some ugly AC unit,” says Worthing. “Immersion, and making sure that people feel like they are immersed in this world is super important. BIM is one of the ways that we are able to do that.”

“There’s things from the BIM that have been super [helpful],” says Warren. “We’ve had some back and forth I would say trying to run a vehicle through an area and I go, “oh, there’s a piece of conduit there that I didn’t realize what going to be there, because I got from…BIM.” I can say, “Hey, can we remove that piece of conduit?”

“If we were in the field and we had planned this without that step, we could have been in trouble because we might have hit it.”

A saying that the Imagineers have, says Bei Yang, Technology Studio Exec, WDI, is that it’s “easier to move bits than it is to move Atoms.”

There is a daily review of packages added to BIM, which allows the ride and animatronics team to ‘walk’ inside the attraction regularly before it’s built.

“While we’re only building one building, I promise there are a hundred designs of that building that nobody will ever see,” says Jacqueline King, Producer on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run. “We get to go into them, and be able to make the best decisions, so that when we start putting rebar into the ground, you’re putting it in the right place. They talk about discovering those walls once you get out in the field later, but for the most part, we’re able to work out a lot of those early on, and completely change layouts to get the best results.”

In addition to using VR simulations driven by BIM, WDI has also begun using it for simulation of the actual rides, but more on that a bit later.

Once the construction pipeline was in place, it was time to start fleshing out the physical world of Batuu, including the architecture, set dressing, props, merchandise, food and inhabitants.

Anima-lectric

As you’d imagine with any high profile Disney Parks property, Batuu will be home to a variety of animated robots, Animatronics, in Imagineering parlance. From droids to shop proprietors to ride pre-show characters, there are a lot of animated figures in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

Since the 80’s, the hydraulics-based animatronics in Disney parks were based on the A-100 chassis. A sort of basic humanoid template. The animatronics on Batuu are all based on a new A-1000 series chassis, which can be configured in a variety of ways at a variety of sizes — with one major difference: electric motors.

Electric motors were pioneered in 2009 with the head of Mr. Lincoln. They’ve since been used in Enchanted Tales with Belle, Frozen Ever After and the Na’ve River Journey attractions. Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: Breakout is also an electric figure.

At Savi’s Workshop Ð Handbuilt Lightsabers, guests will have the opportunity to customize and craft their own lightsabers.

Unlike hydraulics, electric motors enable far more precise movements. They can start and stop nearly instantly, have less wind up and wind down times and make for more fluid transitions between directional movements. Plus, you cut the amount of cabling going to the figure in half by eliminating hydraulic lines. This cuts down on figure installation size and control cabinet size, allowing for more interesting placements in scenes that don’t have to allow for covering all of that stuff up and for easier maintenance.

The new figures are smooth, capable and really fun to watch in action.

Here are some of the major AA characters that will inhabit Star Wars land:

Hondo Ohnaka — A Weequay pirate introduced in Clone Wars, Hondo is now the proprietor of Ohnaka Transport Solutions and has been loaned the Millennium Falcon by Chewie for some “deliveries”. The animatronic figure itself is around 7 feet tall and uses the latest in electric motors instead of hydraulics. Hondo’s figure includes around 50 functions (movement points) total and is the second most complicated animatronic in Disney parks. The most complicated, for the record, is the Na’vi Shaman, mentioned above, which has 40 functions in its face alone, not to mention the rest of the body. We had the Shaman at our robotics event a couple of years ago, it’s incredible to watch. Hondo isn’t far behind, with fluid movements, smooth facial contortions and believable interactions between himself and his R5 droid.

DJ R-3X — You know him previously classified as RX-24, or Captain Rex, the pilot over at Star Tours. Now, he’s a DJ at Oga’s Cantina on Batuu. He plays music composed by the Imagineering team and a variety of artists from around the world. All of it is poppy and synth-ey and a bit 80’s, with some classic mixes of Cantina tunes gone by. His torso and arms move to work the controls and dance and he has a three hour cycle of music and dialog to keep patrons entertained. Fun fact, Lucasfilm Creative Executive Matt Martin says he has many, many pages of backstory about how Rex ended up on Batuu.

Dok-Ondar — An Ithorian trader, Don is renowned for his Jedi and Sith artifact collection. I was able to see Dok fully active in the Imagineering animation building and he looks incredible. The figure towers several feet above guests heads as he sits behind his counter and interacts with shop employees. The detail is lovely here, with a rich, smooth set of animations for hands and neck, his whole body rising up and down. The lips along his two mouths ripple as he speaks in a resonant stereophonic voice.

Nien Nunb — A Sullustun pilot famous for copiloting the Millennium Falcon on its mission to destroy the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. On Batuu he will pilot the transport ship that you board during the Rise of the Resistance attraction.

One of the more minor but no less intriguing characters includes a Dianoga beast which will cameo inside of a water fountain, popping up out of the very murky looking (for show) water intermittently to surprise guests. You’ll also see a ton of animated creatures inside the Creature Stall including fan favorites like the Loth-cat and a Worrt. The Droid Shop is also set to be full of animated droids of all kinds, and its exterior will have droids interacting with guests via the PLAY Disney app and getting a refreshing lubricant bath.

Interestingly, I’m aware of some droid projects that Disney is working on that have not yet appeared in any official reveals. There is a lot more to come in the interactive figure department and Imagineering already has plans to expand Batuu with new experiences. I was also unable to get them to tell me whether the Loth-cat and other small creatures that will be featured here are part of the interactive semi-autonomous Tiny Life project I’ve written about previously.

Black Spire Outpost

The process of animating the figures has also been updated along with the chassis.

“One of the things that went so well on this project is that some of our software partners have developed tools that allow us to import and export data from design software into modeling and animation software,” says Associate Show Mechanical Engineer Victoria Thomas. “We’re able to give them a 3D representation of exactly what the figure is, exactly where the pivots are. They’re able to take that and animate in exactly how fast they want those joints to move. We’re able to get a lot of great feedback like, “Oh, well the shoulder pivot’s kind of off. Is it possible for you to adjust that?”

“Getting that feedback early in the process allows us to change, improvise and adapt and overcome anything that’s going on with the figures.”

The animations, like all of the other data that makes up the land, are hosted inside of BIM. That pre-visualization work saves a lot of heartache and physical fudging on the back end.

“Doing things early allows us to solve problems before they become serious problems. With the Hondo figure specifically, we were able to determine, “Oh, based on his show set and where he is, there’s not enough room for audio in his scene. He needs an onboard speaker,” says Thomas.

“In another scene, we were able to determine, “Oh, there’s large speakers in the scene where we expected a maintenance person to be able to access the figures. If those speakers are there, then you can’t maintenance the base frame.”

Because of BIM and pre‑visualization, we were allowed to do a lot of that. One of the other cool things is that we were able to get motion‑capture data on these figures initially as a way to prove out, how would a human move? How would this look natural? How can we make this look as organic as possible in order to improve the guest experience?”

The resulting figures are some of the best looking creations Disney can currently make, and they’re at the forefront of this pre-visualization work with electric-driven figures. It’s as absolutely close to a real-life Star Wars alien as you’re ever likely to meet.

But the denizens, though cool, aren’t the biggest attraction in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. That would be, well, the attractions.

The Rides

There are two attractions inside the land. Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run (Falcon from here on out) and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance (Rise). The Falcon is a simulator type ride that reads like a very, very advanced version of Star Tours that you can actually control in real time with a crew of 6 people. Rise is much harder to explain, and consists of multiple stages of ‘ride’ that, taken together, are best described as an “experiential” attraction.

Developing those rides involves some wild new technology, some known tech applied in new ways, and some really sky high difficulty levels to pull off correctly.

Rise and Simulate

For a while now, Disney has been using VR and augmented reality in various ways to help it design and test rides. At Imagineering in Glendale it has a big simulator room called The Dish to paraphrase myself from my earlier visits, This is a curved chamber that houses multiple high resolution projectors that functions, most simply, as a holodeck. Disney uses it to “see” rides and attractions as a group to make decisions about look and feel.

Millennium Falcon pictured under development

Users wear a ‘Bowler Hat’ that tracks their movements and walk around inside a space that changes and shifts to match perspectives. We flew through and around Batuu, getting to see, virtually, the vistas we would see the next day when we were at the land physically.

But Disney has also been using VR in more radical ways to simulate their rides. Specifically, they’ve built a full ride-on vehicle that sits inside a warehouse on the Imagineering lot. It’s surrounded in a wide 100 foot long ring by traffic dividers and operates just like the trackless vehicles in Rise.

“We were able to test all of our vehicle motion early using VR,” says April Warren. “Imagine you’re on a vehicle, you’ve got your VR headset, and you are able to see what this attraction is going to look like in the future. We could do that all in real‑time. It was very exciting. I don’t think we could’ve made this attraction without this workflow. We broke the attraction to pieces and could ride it in the facility to really prove out that what we thought we were getting with our vehicle is what we were going to get in the attraction.”

“The great thing was when we got to the actual building things were all installed. We hadn’t been down there before, at least I hadn’t. To walk through that building knowing what we’d seen in VR and go, “Oh, my gosh. I know exactly where I am. I know how to get around this place because I have seen all of this before, and it looks exactly like what I thought it would look like.” It’s been super exciting.”

The rig itself is pretty wild. It’s built out to match the seat layout of the Rise of the Resistance vehicle itself. On board it has enough compute power to push out the visuals to headsets of everyone on board and a motor to run the vehicle around the floor perfectly in sync with those visuals. This gives you the illusion of the ride mixed with the real physicality of moving through space and feeling the pull — a process the imagineers who show us the rig call “Visceralization”. It’s the most bad ass VR sim rig ever.

Disney is clear to note throughout our visit to the sim center that they are not using it to develop VR rides. Rather they are developing physical rides using VR. An important distinction these days with VR becoming more prevalent in the parks.

The Rise of the Resistance ‘experience’ itself is much harder to categorize. On our site tour we got to go through what we are later told is about 1/3 of the total ride (a figure which boggled me). You approach through the Resistance area of Batuu, outside of the village gates. There are star fighters (an X-Wing, an A-Wing, both perfectly replicated from the films) which will be being actively worked on and primed at intervals throughout the day by Resistance members. you enter the queue and walk through chambers which advance from scrubland with railings made out of the ubiquitous Star Wars cabling through to ancient ruins that have been co-opted by the scrappy rebels.

Disney guests will traverse the corridors of a Star Destroyer

The rooms advance to sections that are ‘laser cut’ through rock as they would be by an army trying to make due in natural and unnatural caverns. Rooms are piled high with equipment of medical, utilitarian and military origin. There is an armory with blasters and pilots uniforms in cages. A room merges the Fast Pass and Standby lines in a communications hub. The entire effect is wildly effective, giving you the feel of walking the cramped halls of a base from the movies.

This queue, by the way, features a low stone bench cut into a big section of the middle of it, allowing a place for families and kids to rest. A personal victory, Executive Creative Director John Larena jokes, as a dad with kids who knows what it’s like to wait in long lines.

From there, we’re led into a briefing room that will feature an animatronic BB-8 on a high cabinet that interacts with a video element of Poe Dameron, your escort on the mission. Other appearances will be made by a hologram of Rey and a message from Finn.

From there, you make your way across a landing pad as Poe’s X-Wing warms up to your right. You walk towards and board a U-Wing transport ship with a group of fellow passengers. A simulated takeoff and flight, facilitated by your Nien Nunb and Poe, commence with everyone standing troop transport style. You are quickly captured and pulled aboard a Star Destroyer.

Then, through some ride magic I won’t disclose here, your door opens to what is one of the most stunning ride reveals I can ever remember: a full size Star Destroyer hangar bay, complete with expansive black floor, Tie Fighters on loading racks and, yes, an absolutely enormous window opening up onto space outside with (eventually) a view of the First Order fleet.

Disney guests will traverse the corridors of a Star Destroyer

After your moment of awe, you are split up into groups by First Order officers — played by real cast members in uniform by the way — and led down perfectly rendered corridors to a holding cell the spitting image of the one Poe Dameron was held in. At this point, you have an encounter with a nearby Kylo Ren and your adventure continues.

This is where we left off on our tour, and we hadn’t even made it to the vehicle portion yet, which features encounters with more First Order troops, AT-ATs and more that they have yet to reveal.

It’s an enormous attraction, with a sense of scale that goes beyond anything I’ve seen Disney do. And it’s only one of the two major attractions.

Flying the Falcon

The other, of course, is the Falcon ride. There have been tons of questions about this one, so I’ll try to sate some appetites.

Approaching the Falcon from one of the entrances to Batuu for the first time is a surreal experience. This is a full-size 110-foot version of the ship as you’ve seen it in the movies. It’s meticulously detailed and acts as a center-piece for the area. The ship will periodically vent out gas and Hondo’s tinkerers are constantly working on its engines. It’s a living thing inside the land, a character.

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run

As you enter the maintenance bay, you pass into the queue inside Ohnaka’s Transport Solutions. Climbing gantries through a working shipping and machine shop, getting views of the Falcon from every angle. Until, finally, you burst out into the oh-so-familiar weathered ‘chiclet’ corridors of the Falcon herself. The holding area is the very well known common area of the ship with the chess board (not currently holographically active) and communications console. Everything in this space is meticulously accurate down to the bolts. Break out your magnifying glasses and soak it in, you’re on the Millennium Falcon.

From here, you’re handed boarding cards in groups of six and wait to be ushered down the corridor to your waiting cockpit.

The famous chess room

The Falcon, as previously mentioned, is a simulator ride that puts you in the cockpit of the most famous starship in the galaxy. The cockpits (there are multiple that can be loaded at a time, but they won’t say how many) fit six people. Two pilots, two gunners and two engineers. You’re all responsible for how smoothly the Falcon completes its mission, but it always completes, one way or another.

The simulation is run on the Unreal engine and the mechanics are a much upgraded version of what powers Star Tours. Each cockpit has its own real‑time rendering system for a multi‑projection feedback hub across five screens that completely surround the cockpit seamlessly. Any decision you make as a member of the crew has to result in an action on screen, and it’s all real-time, so none of the major stuff is pre-rendered. While Disney itself was fairly cagey about what powers the ‘magic’ behind this system, Nvidia talked a bit about it last year.

Black Spire Outpost is the name of the village

“Walt Disney Imagineering teamed with NVIDIA and Epic Games to develop new technology to drive its attraction. When it launches, riders will enter a cockpit powered with a single BOXX chassis packed with eight high-end NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs, connected via Quadro SLI.

Quadro Sync synchronizes five projectors for the creation of dazzling ultra-high resolution, perfectly timed displays to fully immerse the riders in the world of planet Batuu.

Working with NVIDIA and Epic Games, the Imagineering team created a custom multi-GPU implementation for Unreal Engine. This new code was returned to the Epic Games team and will help influence how multi-GPUs function for their engine.

“We worked with NVIDIA engineers to use Quadro-specific features like Mosaic and cross-GPU reads to develop a renderer that had performance characteristics we needed,” says Bei Yang, technology studio executive at Disney Imagineering. “Using the eight connected GPUs allowed us to achieve performance unlike anything before.””

The effect in person is wild, though we only saw a static-ish scene of the hangar bay.

Entering the cockpit was an out-of-body situation for me, I’m not ashamed to admit it. It’s wild how right it feels. The six seats all feature belts and the familiar weathered look. More importantly, each of them has a wide array of buttons either to the side or in front of them if you’re one of the pilots. Every square or rectangular button has a light up ring around it which will indicate which of them you need to press for the best result during your moments to act during the ride. The toggles have small LED indicators built into one end that do the same indicating job. I am happy to report that the large, satisfyingly chunky toggle switches and satisfyingly clicks buttons have been very well chosen and require enough force to push without stress but with satisfaction. They’re the right switches.

And yes, one of the right-hand pilot’s jobs is to pull back the lever to jump to hyperspace, and that pull is very satisfying.

This is how you will ‘control’ the falcon. Left and right or throttles for the pilots, depending on seats, and buttons to push to shoot down Tie Fighters or put out fires if those Tie Fighters get missed.

Though every flight will have its own permutations, you cannot ‘fail’ a flight on the Falcon. You just come through either pristine or more battered, depending on your efficiency. And the people of Black Spire Outpost will react to your team’s performance flying the Falcon — either you all do well or you all don’t.

“If our guests so choose, and they opt in, we will be able to have some level of persistent interaction with them, not only throughout their day as they accumulate experiences, but on the attractions or as they meet certain characters,” says Bob Chapek, Chairman of Parks, Experiences and Products. “Not only will we be able to remember that and then interact with the guest accordingly, but over the course of several visits, we’ll remember what they did the previous visit. As a result, we’ll have much more of a close, tight interaction.”

One big question mark that still remains undisclosed despite my inquiries, is how, exactly the proprietors or characters will remember this. They seemed to indicate that it was not the PLAY Disney app that would do this, so more yet to be revealed. Perhaps a system like the Magic Bands out in the Florida parks that has yet to be discussed.

The land is a ride

The way that Imagineering thinks of Galaxy’s Edge is that there are three main attractions. The 2 rides and the land itself. In addition to the 5 restaurants and 5 shops, there are two distinct biomes and the land is embedded with activities that are accessed through the PLAY Disney app. When you enter the land, it switches over to a Star Wars mode, allowing you access to several tools including Scan, Translate, Tune and Jobs. Through these, and dozens of bluetooth beacons located throughout Batuu, you can activate droids, download schematics from hacking ships, download secret messages from door panels and listen to transmissions from three factions inclined the First Order, the Resistance and the Smugglers. You can also translate some of the alien languages that are spoken or written throughout the land.

You can choose to complete jobs for these factions, and there is an over-arching meta game that allows you to use scannable to try to tilt the balance from the Resistance to the First Order throughout your visit — rewarding you with digital collectibles. There are even missions to complete in the app during ride queues. 1 in Smuggler’s Run and 2 in the Rise queue for both sides of the conflict.

The vision is that if you become aligned, for instance, with the Smuggler’s faction, you could even be called out by name by Hondo while in the queue for the ride. “Hey, is Matthew there?”

This is an absolutely enormous undertaking. And walking through the village of Black Spire or the outskirts showed us construction still very much underway. Disney is pushing hard day and night to finish what is going to be a massively big risk for it on the storytelling and immersion front. While the world of Star Wars seems like a gimme from a fan point of view, that attention also means that Disney has to get everything so right from the beginning. It’s telling that even on our tour, workers continued to cut, paint and plaster. Summer isn’t very far away and there’s a long way to go to Batuu.

Via Matthew Panzarino https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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toomanysinks · 6 years

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How Disney Built Star Wars, in real life

From the moment that Disney announced its acquisition of LucasFilm, the question on every fan’s mind was “when will they build Star Wars in real life?”

To do this, Disney’s Imagineers have spent over five years planning and two years building the outposts that will open this year in its two US parks.

At risk of being too agreeable to marketing speak, I’d have to agree with this particular statement. What is being built here has little parallel in terms of immersion and ambition in an amusement park or out. And it’s going to blow Star Wars fans, casual and involved, away.

The nuts and bolts

The name of the game is transportive.

Transportation to Batuu

That begins with the decision to make the location for the lands a new planet.

A multi-purpose transport shuttle docked on top of a large hangar (left) will beckon guests into Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo

One of the primary drivers for the decision was also to create some sense of equanimity between hardcore fans and casual attendees.

Before they could begin to build, though, Imagineers had to build the tools to do so.

Building Star Wars

Dok-OndarÕs Den of Antiquities in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will feature rare items from across the galaxy for sale, all part of Dok-Ondar’s collection.

For the Galaxy’s Edge project, one of the first problems to be solved was how to manage such a complex undertaking inside WDI and in partnership with LucasFilm.

(pic by @bioreconstruct) pic.twitter.com/61KkufMQ3j

— Cabel (@cabel) February 24, 2019

“If we were in the field and we had planned this without that step, we could have been in trouble because we might have hit it.”

A saying that the Imagineers have, says Bei Yang, Technology Studio Exec, WDI, is that it’s “easier to move bits than it is to move Atoms.”

There is a daily review of packages added to BIM, which allows the ride and animatronics team to ‘walk’ inside the attraction regularly before it’s built.

In addition to using VR simulations driven by BIM, WDI has also begun using it for simulation of the actual rides, but more on that a bit later.

Once the construction pipeline was in place, it was time to start fleshing out the physical world of Batuu, including the architecture, set dressing, props, merchandise, food and inhabitants.

Anima-lectric

At Savi’s Workshop Ð Handbuilt Lightsabers, guests will have the opportunity to customize and craft their own lightsabers.

The new figures are smooth, capable and really fun to watch in action.

Here are some of the major AA characters that will inhabit Star Wars land:

Black Spire Outpost

The process of animating the figures has also been updated along with the chassis.

“Getting that feedback early in the process allows us to change, improvise and adapt and overcome anything that’s going on with the figures.”

The animations, like all of the other data that makes up the land, are hosted inside of BIM. That pre-visualization work saves a lot of heartache and physical fudging on the back end.

But the denizens, though cool, aren’t the biggest attraction in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. That would be, well, the attractions.

The Rides

Developing those rides involves some wild new technology, some known tech applied in new ways, and some really sky high difficulty levels to pull off correctly.

Rise and Simulate

Millennium Falcon pictured under development

Disney guests will traverse the corridors of a Star Destroyer

This is where we left off on our tour, and we hadn’t even made it to the vehicle portion yet, which features encounters with more First Order troops, AT-ATs and more that they have yet to reveal.

It’s an enormous attraction, with a sense of scale that goes beyond anything I’ve seen Disney do. And it’s only one of the two major attractions.

Flying the Falcon

The other, of course, is the Falcon ride. There have been tons of questions about this one, so I’ll try to sate some appetites.

Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run

From here, you’re handed boarding cards in groups of six and wait to be ushered down the corridor to your waiting cockpit.

The famous chess room

Black Spire Outpost is the name of the village

Quadro Sync synchronizes five projectors for the creation of dazzling ultra-high resolution, perfectly timed displays to fully immerse the riders in the world of planet Batuu.

The effect in person is wild, though we only saw a static-ish scene of the hangar bay.

And yes, one of the right-hand pilot’s jobs is to pull back the lever to jump to hyperspace, and that pull is very satisfying.

The land is a ride

The vision is that if you become aligned, for instance, with the Smuggler’s faction, you could even be called out by name by Hondo while in the queue for the ride. “Hey, is Matthew there?”

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/27/how-disney-built-star-wars-in-real-life/

0 notes

taharai · 6 years

Text

Steps to Film Financing Movie Deal Come To Fruition

Every independent filmmaker I have ever met has started out with a script, that is, after the idea, the book, or short story has been running through their heads for months, sometimes years. But after premiering the movie and it’s short-lived film fest tour, the indie movie is usually shelved. That’s what everybody thinks happened to my movie, Spyderwoman now Hybrid, the series and what has happened to most Indies. But in my case, my movie is not finished, I’m adding a scene in the far future and making it into a series. Transformation is part of the beauty of writing. However, I don’t want to repeat the same mistake. Next time, I’m just going to do it the right way.

What makes a film get a movie deal?

Make sure the story is attractive, that you have an attached actor with at least a B rate attached to the movie, you’ve checked the SAG Producer’s agreement for your budget, and you have a letter of intent from a distributor. Don’t forget to create a business and marketing plan, that includes business reports, analytics reports, budget, and promotion strategy. All of it is part of a good pitch. That one summary and logline that just kills it.

Spend some time sharpening your presentation skills and start looking for venture capitalists, angel investors, film funding venture capitalists advisors, and strategize your capital raising campaign. If your efforts fail, make improvements on your package and try again. Make a different package.

Step 1. The film screenplay, or script, is the intellectual property where it all begins. Make sure it shines.

Indie scripts usually are not well formatted by industry standards even using Final Draft software; it may lack strict visualization in the action lines, too much irrelevant description, not enough succinctness, telling instead of showing, passive voice, longer than 4 lines of dialogue in some cases, and what is worse, it may lack a good setup. That’s to be expected of indies who haven’t got the practice or the CW/FILM MFA. We indies realize Hollywood doesn’t always follow the guidelines. But with superb editing and special effects, “do it in post” is becoming the norm. So why should indies have to follow the rules?

Hollywood may produce movies with two pages of monologue, plot holes, sexist ethnic stereotyping, (all kinds of stereotyping), rehash the same storyline a million different ways (Cinderella) and still manga to sell millions of tickets at the Box Office.

The Indies World is Revolutionizing

The time has come for Indies. The world is paying attention to new and exciting topics of interest. People can relate to different ways of looking at things, people, and places can appreciate less stereotyping, and more inclusiveness in “film.” Enough of us can appreciate different cultures to make a difference in the lives of indie filmmakers.

Recently, we’ve seen how new age and more diverse movies have made it to the top as in the case of Moonlight, the film that caused an uproar at the Academy Awards when it garnered the Oscar for best feature of the year in 2017. Here’s my advice when it comes to polishing a script and making it into a tool for attracting funding from venture capitalists:

Follow screenplay writing guidelines and rules unless there is a compelling reason not to.

If audiences paid attention to every big budget or Blockbuster movie plot instead of being hypnotized by the sound and images, they would often see all the above-mentioned sins of scriptwriting as taught by Screenwriting schools in the US. I’ve only attended two and have a total screenplay writing MFA for film, but that has only made me open my eyes to “Story.”

Even when Hollywood does put out bad movie plots, oversimplistic, or senseless. I bet at least four out of ten times, the story plot will be good enough, and sometimes even superb and subtle. There’s talent too in high places, not just after effects, tech skills and lots of marketing $$$.

What makes a good film?

“Story” is what really defines a good film, at least in my opinion. I can’t stand vapid shootings, fist fights, explosions, or car chases that lack real gumption. However, the face of a highly paid actor like Robert Deniro in one such scene will make us look twice and give some credibility to the splurge of high-level special effects spent to attract the action/adventure male audience between 25 and 45.

If we look into the plot, we’ll realize it’s just another mafia movie that stereotypes everyone. But people are hypnotized by it and don’t care to make any sense of it.

On the other hand, a poorly formatted script can be polished to become a phenomenal script when the story has grit. Not that indies shouldn’t have to learn the skill of standard formatting, but if the story is sound, the script can be polished to have a perfect setup, an inciting incident, and follow a plot arc along with the key characters’ arc that will take the viewer straight to the summit after three turning points before closing with a golden brooch. “Story” makes the difference. Whether it’s a comedy, romance, sci-fi, or all three at once.

An Indie Destiny

What is sad to watch is that after making a tremendous sacrifice of time, money and even family, after the premiere we start wondering who is going to purchase the film and where it can be shown. We start searching for ways to get a return on our investment (ROI), create a buzz, or raise the money to promote.

For many filmmakers, the end of the movie comes right after the film festival is over, even if you got first prize. Unless it’s Sundance, (my favorite because Paul Newman is my childhood favorite actor) or the Berlin Film Festival, to name just a few of the top ten film fests in the world, your film won’t land a movie deal. Why? It’s not because it’s no good. It’s because you didn’t follow the right steps.

Step 2. THE FILM BUSINESS PLAN

The Breakdown of a Script

Every indie learns to “breakdown” a film screenplay on their own. Breaking down a script is all about organizing like things, a skill learned in kindergarten. Of course, if you get fancy and use highlighters it’s even better. You can assign categories for each one of the scripts elements and when you think about what to do with it a bit you will figure out that getting things done by location saves time and effort and money.

Of course, there are expensive software programs like Entertainment Partner’s Movie Magic Budgeting & Scheduling. If you learn to use these tools, your presentation will look much better.

The guerilla filmmaking way is to start calling all your friends and have them donate some of the things you need. Get your team together and come up with locations that won’t cost you any money. Call the locations, vendors, equipment rental places, go shopping for wardrobe, invest in makeup and applicators. Get a first aid kit, tons of cases of water, and make sure you label everything with your production company’s name.

Figure the number of days and hours shot at each location, the cost per location and voilà, you have a budget. If you want to take advantage of tax incentives keep all your receipts and present them to the State to get your rebate.

The budget shown to venture capital investors, angel investors, banks, and philanthropists needs to be based on comparisons between similar films.

The Film Marketing Plan

Target a specific audience on social media, TV, Radio, send out press releases, run ad campaigns, use Search Engine Marketing to keep the film in the public’s eye tied to keywords, actors, and storyline.

What’s the distribution plan? VOD? Theatrical? National and international marketing and distribution.

How will you maximize exposure and sell more movie tickets? Include marketing film merchandise such as action figure toys, video games, fashion lines, artwork, and soundtracks.

What organizations, national and international will your film be aligned with, environmentalist, religious, new age, liberal, LGBT community, or conservative, or liberal?

Step 3. SHOW YOUR TEAMWORK SKILLS

Who are your team members?

Include bios, pictures, reels, trailers, portfolios, and interviews.

Include actors and public figures that support the movie.

STEP 4. The EXECUTIVE SUMMARY – Frist Impressions Count

A film’s executive summary is an overview of all the film’s creative and business endeavors. It’s actually the first document presented to investors. If they don’t like it, if you are not convincing enough, if the overall plan doesn’t make business sense, if it doesn’t prove its return on investment capabilities, and is not persuasive, no one will read the rest of the plan.

Pitching includes the logline, plot summary, and the business overview. Especially crafted, the front page says it all in a nutshell. Use your words carefully, be enthusiastic, give value, solve a problem.

Success is not the work of chance alone, it’s being prepared when chance calls and turning the light green. Don’t just shoot blanks out in the dark. Target your capital investor by type and history. Have a plan, start following these steps and let’s talk about distribution next time. Stay tuned. BTW, I’m looking for a cinematographer, director and editor to come onboard. Students and hobbyists are welcome. To apply, just join my email list or message me on social media. I’m Angela Terga pretty much everywhere.

Thanks for reading.

Take the Mystery Out of the Film Financing Landscape Steps to Film Financing Movie Deal Come To Fruition Every independent filmmaker I have ever met has started out with a script, that is, after the idea, the book, or short story has been running through their heads for months, sometimes years.

#angel funding #film budgeting & scheduling #film finance advisors #film financing #Learn the steps to film financing.#screenplays that sell #venture capitalist #what makes a good script

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laurenguestgraphics · 7 years

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Networking/Week 2

As I said in my previous blog post, I wanted to begin networking externally. I created a instagram account for my work, where I posted some of the work I have already done over the last two years. I wanted to use instagram as a way to begin networking as nearly everyone who I know uses social media, more so over websites. I felt that by creating an instagram I am allowing millions of people to potentially see my work in the ‘explore’ or ‘hashtag’ area of the app. It is easily accessible to everyone. Personally I use instagram to look for inspiration or for other designers whom interest me.

I feel like currently I don’t have a lot of connections, professionally. I felt like it was time to change this and reached out to email a few different designers so I could ask them about their work, networking and make a connection with them.

Kieran Harrod -

The first person who I emailed is Kieran Harrod, who is a local designer who works in creative branding and logo design. I chose to contact Kieran as not only is he local, but also works in branding which is an area of design I have a interest in.

In my email I asked him what he felt his ‘personal identity’ as a designer is and his preferred area of work. (Screenshot of his answer below).

Secondly, I asked him how he began to work professionally, I felt this was an important question as it would allow me to get ideas/advice on what I should do in the future to begin my career.

Finally, I asked him which skills he felt you would need, in terms of networking, to professionally work in graphic design.

Overall, I felt like Kieran was helpful to what I should put in a portfolio and his experience in networking.

Teresa Greenan -

Teresa was the second designer which I emailed.

I asked her the same questions as Kieran. This is her reply.

Hi Lauren,

I will try to help you as best I can, I do designs for packaging.

I’ll start at the beginning.

I was studying at college doing fine arts and design and I heard of a job at a local printing and bag manufacture who had their own studio.

I spoke to the college told them I was thinking of leaving and my fine arts teacher said I would be lucky to pass and I couldn’t get hold of the graphics teacher as he was probably sleeping off a session somewhere. Needless to say I took the job.

I consider myself lucky that I am old enough to have worked in a studio pre computer yet young enough to be one of the first to go digital and embrace it. We were called ‘paste up artists’ then and still had darkrooms and used letterset. Everything took so long to produce that it was really important to know the next stage your work was going because if you made a mistake it could be days getting it corrected. I think that this ethic is lost today. I see so many designs which look brilliant but cannot be printed. Back in the day I made it my mission to learn everything. I started by understanding packaging; the way a bag or box would fold, as you design artwork flat. I spent time with the printers on the press understanding problems they may have. This was flexible printing onto film, we mainly worked on bread bags for Hovis amongst others. I spent time with them each processes. In reverse this is bag maker, printer, platemaking, reprographics, paste-up artist, graphic designer. This is just the way my brain works if I know the end product I can design with consideration for each stage, I’m not good at being told something I need to see the problems.

Everything started to go digital and many of these processes got slowly replaced as it could all be done in one place, there was a big learning curve to get the software to do what was needed of it. Knowing all the stages really helped and I was a pioneer, I was even featured on the front cover of the packaging news.

I spent 15 years with this company, where I was then head hunted, because I had a good reputation and was logistically in the right place at the right time, by a Scottish design and reprographics company who had a customer in Mansfield who wanted an in house design/reprographics so that they could offer their customer a faster turn around and give them the edge. I have been working here now for 18 years. The company I look after have moved to the Czech Republic but I still work for them, based at home. My official title is ‘Graphic Production Consultant’. I specialise in the reprographics more than the design but when requested I do create for scratch. I don’t consider myself to be the most creative of designers but I know the market and what they want. This is the most important aspect. Know your market. I design razor packaging for all over Europe, (it’s hard always designing for the same product) I know that while Northern Europe like bold colours and simple lines Southern Europe like busy in your face as many colours as they can with glitter if you could print it.

The main reason people come to me is because I am fast and reliable. I often get other people designs and rework across a range packs because they know I can do it faster and correct. For example, yesterday and today I am working on some work for the new Tesco Xprt range. I was sent a basic digital mock-up of one pack and I have developed it for a refill and handle pack. I would love to be able to send this to you but it’s not out yet so I can’t.

I also often do designs to sell the product and then the company will redesign for their shop, so not all my work gets on the shelf.

Attached are a design I have done ‘Techedge Mustang’. Here we have developed the logo and design to sell to supermarkets.

· Techedge Rightfit Mustang Mens Refill x1_v5HR.pdf – Is the flat artwork

· Asda Mustang Mens Refill x1_mockup.png – This is a digital mock-up of the pack with product and the customer name. The team presents the product to them in this case Asda then Asda have developed their own design which I then had to repro to get to the final print.

· Asda Mustang refill x1_front.png – This is the final instore design Asda created.

Also attached is the same design for the handle pack.

In answer to your question about persona identity, I would say I don’t have one really. I’m just known within my small niche; so joining a company with a good reputation is a start or just learn as much as you can from a smaller company.

The industry is so much more than just drawing something you consider perfect. I design what other people want, sometime I personal think I’ve created a pile of crap, but the customer loves it. Other time it’s the best work I have done and they hate it. Don’t take it personally.

Be prepared to side step a little from the design into reprographics it’s much more specialised and I find it more interesting too.

I specialise in making artwork out of spot colours and not just CMYK. Doing this in Photoshop is a real talent not many can do. I often get CMYK work from top agencies with instructions of what colours they want to use. That’s not strictly design so I won’t go into it.

If you want to know more about the reprographics side let me know.

I hope my waffle has helped you in some way and if you need anything else I’m more than happy to help.

Kind Regards

Trease

I felt like her response was helpful and also showed insight to someone who works for a bigger company.

Overall this last week I feel like I have made progress in creating a ‘social presence’ for my design and have begun to make some professional contacts.

Over the next week I want to post more and create more contacts on social media who I can then create a social network of designers with. I am going to create a personal logo which people can identity me with.

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kuwttrpg-blog · 7 years

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MS. COURTNEY HARPER, it is with great pleasure that we are writing to inform you of your acceptance to University of Southern California. As a graduate of WMHS, you are automatically granted access to your high school’s official KUWTT website, instructions pertaining to which can be found by clicking here. Andie, please submit Courtney’s account within 24 hours, along with the provided form. We’re excited to write with you!

» BEHIND THE CHARACTER!

NAME/ALIAS: Andie PRONOUNS: She/her AGE: 26 TIMEZONE: EST ACTIVITY LEVEL: 6/10 ANYTHING ELSE?: RFP!

» SHAPING THE CHARACTER!

FAMILY: Harper - Half FACECLAIM: Yvette Monreal BIRTH ORDER: Second TYPE: Solo GENDER IDENTITY: Female PRONOUNS: She/her SEXUAL PREFERENCE: heterosexual ROMANTIC PREFERENCE: heteroromantic

» COLLEGE APPLICATION!

FULL NAME: Courtney Joanna Harper TITLE: Ms AGE: 20 BIRTHDAY: May 18th. COLLEGE: USC GRADE: Junior MAJOR: Film. MINOR: Film Editing.

» BIOGRAPHY!

[DEATH TW, ABUSE TW, ALCOHOLISM TW, RELIGION TW, RAPE TW,]

Gloria Fuentes was barely out of her teens when she met Jack Harper, a married man who apparently had some kind of charm, because an affair began and in less than a year Gloria found herself 21 and pregnant. She didn’t know the first thing about being a mother, but hoped that she’d have Jack to rely on. That hope was false, however, when he told her that he wouldn’t be leaving his wife, and wanted nothing to do with “it” Despite her efforts in trying to get Jack involved, he refused.

Nine months later and Courtney was born. Jack who had refused the whole time, already having a child from a previous relationship that lived with the mother, finally showed up in the hospital when he got the call that Gloria was in labor. Unfortunately, things turned back quickly. There were complications, and Courtney was in the wrong position, causing Gloria to be rushed to surgery. Courtney was born perfectly healthy, but sadly Gloria wasn’t so lucky, and would never even get to hold her baby girl. Jack, who hadn’t wanted the child to start with was now left with a baby girl, who he had to take home and inform his wife of.

Cristina Harper was a religious woman, who did not believe in divorce so when her husband arrived home that day with a child, she was forced to put her hurt away and stay with her man. And now raise his child. Gloria had picked out the name Courtney before passing, and had told many nurses of the name she planned to use, luckily they told Jack, who decided it was as good a name as any as he signed her birth certificate. However, Cristina being a religious woman insisted on giving her a religious middle name, she gave her the name of Joanna and has refused to ever address the girl as anything but Joanna. They tried to make the best of it at first. It was not long after that Cristina decided that she wanted children of her old, as payment for having to raise Jack’s child. About six months after Courtney had come home, Cristina was pregnant, with twins.

Growing up in the Harper household was not easy, Cristina had never been entirely stable but the additions to the family, and maybe even some added in postpartum depression and Cristina’s mental health was on a steady decline. Despite her anger over the affair, and her motivation for having children of her own, Cristina tried her best to be a good mother, though her methods were questionable. She was brought up religious and expected the same of her girls, though her methods were extreme, in her mind they were based in love.

Jack Harper was a different story, while sober he was a pretty good dad, taking an interest in his children, and always having fun with them. But when he was drunk, which was most of the time, he was a different man. He took to cruel jokes and pranks, bringing his children to tears for his own entertainment, by telling them he had days to live, or that that family was going to pack up and move away but there wasn’t room for everyone, and it was up to the kids to decide which of them wasn’t allowed to come. It was always something new, but always just as scary and just traumatizing to the children. This made their actual move from Texas to Ohio even scarier for the girls, but of course no one had been left behind.

This paired well with Cristina’s declining stability, which eventually lead to what could only be described as abuse, created a volatile household. Her religious views were so extreme that she felt to save her children from sin, she needed to take matters into her own hands. Whether it be spending hours making them read the bible in a special closet that had just enough room for one person to kneel in, or having them scrub their skin until it was practically raw to make sure their sins were “washed away”.

Cristina was hard on them and demanded excellence, meaning Courtney always got the best grades she possibly could, working hard to get all A’s. It was something that gave her a little relief from Cristina, because when report cards came in and Courtney’s grades were high, Cristina didn’t accuse her of spending too much time sinning to study.

Luckily the kids had each other to rely on, and rely on each other they did. They always spent time together, and the older they got that never seemed to change. Growing up in church, Courtney certainly had a strong sense of religion, and while she never took it to Cristina’s levels, she did care a lot about her faith. It was also in church that her and her sister began to sing, and while Courtney certainly didn’t have the voice her sister did, she still loved every second of it.

As she got older, her grades lead her to some interesting opportunities, and one of them was that she was invited to an event where someone was giving a speech about something. She couldn’t tell you who, or what they had to say, but she could tell you that it changed everything for her. She was asked by her teacher to be in charge of recording the event, using the school’s video equipment, and as she got behind the camera, it was like Courtney realized she was where she was meant to be. She began asking for the chance to use the equipment again, and even began to learn how to edit the film.

It was an instant passion and she was happy for it. She was glad to have found something that she could get lost in, that she could be create and be proud of. Soon she found herself saving up for her own camera, and when she got it, though it was cheap, she had it permanently attached to her hand, recording every moment she could. She began making home videos, and editing them together, then forcing her sister to watch them with her. Forcing her teacher to critique her videography and editing. Her teacher was happy to help. Quite possibly a bit too happy. She’d begun to trust him, and as she didn’t have anyone at home who was an adult, who she could talk to, it was comforting to have that.

Again Courtney was invited to another event out of town and asked to film again. This time the school trip was overnight, and while Cristina was hesitant at first, her teacher stepped into convince her mother that it would be supervised and that Courtney could even have a private hotel room, so as not to be around anyone that Cristina didn’t like. Both Courtney and Cristina thought it was a great idea, and Courtney was off.

The event itself had been fun, and at the end of the night, Courtney was surprised to hear a knock at the door of her private hotel room. She opened it to find her teacher, and a bottle of wine. She was only 17, and a virgin, something that her mother had made sure of, and certainly had never had a sip of wine, other than the blood of christ at church, so when her head became so heavy that she couldn’t even sit up after just a glass of wine, she didn’t know if that was normal. But when her teacher found his way into her pyjama shorts she was sure she should have been able to speak to tell him he was making her uncomfortable, and then that he was hurting her, and that she wanted him to stop. She woke up the next morning, naked on top of her blankets, trying to remember what exactly had happened. It took a while for the memory to come back fully, but when it did, it shook her. She couldn’t even look her teacher in the eye anymore, and she never told a soul about what had happened. Luckily, it was her senior year, and as she turned 18, she knew that graduation was right around the corner, and she’d not have to see him again.

Backing up, it was just a bit before all this that in the midst of her discovering her love for film, her sister had discovered a talent of writing music, that with their love of singing, it wasn’t long before the two had begun to make a habit out of it. CeCe would write a new song, they’d sing it together, Courtney would film it and edit it. Their first video they decided, on a whim, to upload to youtube, and were shocked to see it gain some attention. Though they hid it from their parents, people began to enjoy their videos so much that they would make requests for what to sing.

It was these videos, and her impressive portfolio from school that gained her acceptance into USC, one of the top film schools in the country. Courtney jumped at the opportunity to go, wanting to be away from her parents, her teacher, her life. She was still reeling from what had happened to her, and sunny LA felt like the perfect place to start new. Her parents weren’t happy about it, her mother wanting her to go to a religious school, but as she was 18, and had been given full scholarships, they really didn’t have much to say about it.

Despite everything Courtney remained a positive person, she was quiet sure, but she was always kind, and she made friends easily enough. She wasn’t popular by any means, but she could usually strike up a conversation about most anything, which lead her to gain some really great friends growing up. Though she didn’t have any experience in the boyfriend department when she left home, her new start lead to new experiences, and she fell in love for the first time her freshman year of college. It didn’t last long, but it was something that she’d never regret, as it taught her a lot about herself and life in general.

Courtney much preferred to be behind the camera, and some days it showed, with her ripped jeans and casual t shirts, and other days she looked like she was made to be photographed, with her hair and makeup looking movie ready. Truthfully, Courtney liked to change it up. When she went to school she experimented with some different hair colors, bright red, to greyish purple, whatever she felt in the moment. It was fun to try new things out that she had never been able to do growing up. Her style changes with her moods, and her closet reflects it.

#accepted #courtney harper #kuwttcourtney

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rebeccahpedersen · 7 years

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How Does Your Street Name Affect Home Values?

TorontoRealtyBlog

We’ve touched on this topic a few times over the years, and often had fun with some silly street names.

But there’s one street name, right here in Ontario, that’s not so funny.

Residents in rural Puslinch, Ontario are fighting to change the name of a particular “offensive” street name in their township right now, and meeting a little resistance along the way.

Let’s discuss, and then perhaps look at some of the more bizarre street names here in Toronto…

I sold a house last week on Runnymede Road in Bloor West Village, and the name of the street actually helped my clients secure the property.

Runnmede Road, as you probably know, is a busy street.

Busy streets, as you also know, affect the value of a home.

Apples to apples, nobody would choose to live on a busy street! And thus an identical house on a busy street, compared to a quiet street, would undoubtedly sell for less on the open market.

Runnymede Road is a busy street, but moreso north of Bloor Street.

The property my clients purchased is located just south of Bloor, and as Runnymede only begins one block south at Morningside Avenue, there is far, far less traffic on the street than on the section of Runnymede located north of Bloor.

I figured there were likely a lot of buyers, and perhaps buyer agents, who didn’t stop to check whether this house was south of Bloor, and simply assumed it was on the “really busy” stretch of road that takes you up to Dundas Street.

In the end, we figure the negative conotation of “Runnymede Road” may have saves us a bit of money, and probably saved us competing for the house.

I have all kinds of stories about street names in Toronto, some good, some bad.

You may have heard this one before – but years and years ago, I had a client who refused to look at a house on Gooch.

My clients were looking in Bloor West Village, and the proverbial “perfect home” came onto the market, and I sent them the listing.

The guy was all jazzed about the house, already asking about closing dates, and potential selling prices.

The girl, on the other hand, put her foot down.

“There’s absolutely no way in hell I’m living on a street called Gooch.”

I didn’t think she was serious at first; I figured it was that sort of “no way in hell” where maybe you’re just expressing your first impression, and then eventually you’ll warm to the idea.

But she explained, “The word ‘Gooch’ sounds like a combination of crotch, hooch, and one other I can’t even say out loud.”

She added that she feared what her grandmother might say when she told her the address.

So there’s a story about a bad street name, that you kind of have to laugh at.

If you read the papers over the weekend (raise your hand if you still get home delivery?), you probably read the story about the residents of a street in Puslinch, Ontario, who have petitioned the city to get the street name changed.

The street name in question?

Swastika Trail

The street was named back in the 1920’s, when the swastika was still a religious symbol, synonymous with good luck and prosperity.

As we all know, the Nazi Party in Germany eventually adopted the swastika as their dominant symbol, and the rest is history.

Swastika Trail has been in existence in this rural part of Ontario for nearly 100 years, but only now are residents trying to get the name changed.

There have been a half-dozen articles on this over the last few days, but the CBC article was the most complete. Check it out HERE.

I read that B’Nai Brith Canada was involved, and petitioning the Township of Puslinch to change the name, but it wasn’t until I read the CBC article that I became aware it was the residents themselves who reached out to B’Nai Brith Canada, and not the other way around.

Interestingly enough, there are residents who are against the name-change!

Who’d have thought?

Now is this the same thing as people being against the idea of changing the name, “Washington Redskins?”

Different? Same? Not the right topic for a real estate blog? Right.

Some interesting tid-bits from the CBC article include one resident on the street who encountered a seller on Ebay who wouldn’t honour her purchase, because the seller was Jewish and thought the resident was a white supremacist.

Another resident claims that a real estate agents have claimed people “didn’t have to use the street name Swastika Trail, they could substitute the rural route address.”

This proved to be false, of course. Imagine that – real estate agents being dishonest…

So I suppose the bigger question here is, “Should the street name be changed because it’s offensive?”

But as I said, then we get into a 2-part debate about whether the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, Edmonton Eskimos, Florida State Seminoles, and a host of other teams need to change their names, as well as (and this is the more contentious part of the debate), which names and/or logos are offensive, and which aren’t.

The Cleveland Indians baseball team were established in 1901, and it was around 1932 that the team started using a characature of an indian as their primary logo.

The most well-known version of “Chief Wahoo,” which is a giant, smiling, red-faced indian cartoon, has appeared on the baseball team’s apparel since 1951, and is still in use today.

In recent years, there have been calls from all kinds of people, from all kinds of places, to cease using the “offensive” Chief Wahoo logo. The Washington Redskins took their battle to federal court. The Edmonton Eskimos are having their day in the court of public opinion as we speak.

So what do you make of the residents of Puslinch, Ontario, who don’t want the name “Swastika Trail” to be changed?

A pessmist would say, “They’re racist, or at the very least, insensitive.”

An optimist would say, “The swastika was made into an awful symbol, from what was formerly a great symbol. We want to make it great again; make it the symbol of prosperity and good fortune that it used to be.”

Some believe that the street name was established before the swastika logo was hijacked by evil. Now how does that compare with the idea that the Cleveland Indians logo or Washington Redskins’ name were created “in a different time,” that somehow shouldn’t be relevant today?

Are these situations the same? Different?

So that’s the part of the debate that we can’t solve, and forgive me for straying way off topic on what is (primarily…) a blog about real estate, but some context is necessary.

As for whether a street name can affect the value of homes in the area, well, I think that should be quite obvious at this point.

For the life of me, I don’t know who would buy a house on Swastika Trail. Even if the buyer doesn’t care about the name, they surely have to consider the implication it would have on resale value.

If I can tell the story of a buyer who wouldn’t buy on “Gooch Avenue,” then surely you can imaine the impact that “Swastika Trail” could have.

I wrote a blog back in 2015 where I talked about things other than the street name, such as the “half” street numbers, ie. 112 1/2 Main Street, the letters, ie. 97A Main Street and 97B Main Street, and the numbers of cultural significance, ie. the positive reaction to “8” and the negative reaction to “4.”

You can read that blog HERE if you’re curious.

And then there’s my 2013 video on funny street names in Toronto.

Have a look, and maybe even question why I decided to film this in the alleyway at my office, rather than just about any other place in the city that would have looked better…

youtube

Whether it’s the street name or the street number, they both can have a positive or negative affect on the valuation of the property.

I’ve seen home-owners who live on a corner lot go out of their way to change the address from one street to the other. “Sutherland” vs. “Bessborough,” for example. I recall a neighbour in Leaside undertaking to change the address of his/her house over a decade ago, and I honestly think it had a significant affect, maybe as much as 10%.

I often mock the idea of “luxury goods,” since I would derive zero added marginal utility from owning a Louis Vuitton bag, compared to one I bought at Sporting Life. But that’s me, and maybe I don’t represent the masses. If a majority of consumers do recognize an added utility and added value from a brand-name consumer good, then I can’t argue the value is real.

I’m no expert in consumer goods.

But I am an expert in real estate. So trust me when I say that the “brand name” of a particular street is a real thing.

Forget about Swastika Trail, or many of the ridiculous names you’ll find by Googling “funny street names” (most are related to male/female anatomy), but rather think about something more realistic in terms of your property search. Would you pay more, or less, for a different street name?

There are “brand name” streets in every neighbourhood.

Heward Avenue is often referred to as a “prime street” in Leslieville, so much so, in fact, that I believe there’s a premium placed on houses on that street, compared to, say, Winnifred Avenue, two streets over.

I mentioned “Bessborough Drive” above. That’s another great example of a real, identifiable premium for a street name.

So who, ultimately, creates that premium? Who decides on how much it is?

Buyers, of course.

So if you’re a buyer, the decision is yours.

Would you pay more, or less, for a given street name?

I’d love to hear about some real-life examples from the readers.

Oh – and weigh in on the Swastika Trail issue too, if you’re up for it…

The post How Does Your Street Name Affect Home Values? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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