10 January 2014

Podcast - A Podcast Worth A Thousand Words

Although none of those words are spoken by Ian, sadly absent from this week's cast but fondly remembered by Leo and Justin who get down to business talking about films with that particular visual flair.

Never ones to steer clear of the clashing rocks of cliche we steer full steam ahead into asking an artist what it is he likes in the cinema generally. We talk Burton, we talk Gilliam and while we're at it we talk Kubrick, Hitchcock passes through on the way somewhere else. As the visual medium is dissected we necessarily revisit the topic of CGI versus practical and the increasing difficulty of telling them apart.

Finally we visit the new breed of CGI-fest film a la, and specifically, Sin City and 300 which are not designed to mask their CG roots, but rather revel in being a highly stylised visual feast, is this a great thing or a menace?


Direct Link: http://eightieskids.podomatic.com/entry/2014-01-09T11_42_37-08_00

9 January 2014

Safe Prediction For 2014

It's not really safe, not at all, but that's the nature of predictions. All I have to offer beyond the fact that to me this one seems kind of obvious is that all the other things I've deemed kind of obvious in the past have come to fruition. The only problem is that I never made a big thing out of my predictions, and sometimes they have odd wrinkles. For example, in 2005 I was banging on about the inevitability of Self-Publishing becoming a "thing", I just didn't see the Kindle Event Horizon where everyone started reading e-books on their devices.

Anyway this is my prediction for this year:

Wattpad will go supernova. It's already pretty big within itself and a few people outside the Wattpad-osphere have noticed the phenomenon. By the end of 2015 to "Wattpad it" as in "to put a work onto Wattpad" will be a verb and Wattpad will be a name with the same status as Facebook and Google.

You read it here first.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: I have yet to find a single readable thing on Wattpad but the kids seem to dig it. I live in hope of finding something I like on there but it's pretty difficult at this stage to know where to start.

People who talk about Wattpad seem to all be on Wattpad and talk about it on Wattpad. Therefore there are no meta-Wattpad watchers or commentators as yet. This is the only part of the mega-phenom recipe that is missing at present.

The basis for my conclusion is that if all a phenomenon is missing is a meta-discourse then, well, it's right at the tipping point of becoming some kind of cultural staple, surely.

You read it here, well, not quite first, but more specific second.

4 January 2014

New Year New Stuff

Last year, as regular followers will have noticed (if such exist), was filled with Bridgetown Tales and podcasts. They kind of took over after a while as I was trying to build up enough of a "buffer" with Bridgetown to have November free to Nano (a plan that worked). As a result though everything else got sidetracked.

This year I'm looking to learn the lesson of last year, that is don't promise to write circa 180,000 words of extraneous 'other stuff' on a whim, because, in the end, that will be all you write.

Not that I'm complaining the 180,000 words of Bridgetown and the 50,000 of a new SF novel for Nano were jolly good and I even managed to clock in 10,000 more of Taliesin in the end which puts my word count for the year at about 250,000.

But this year I'm looking to make a move into more controlled projects. Nothing weekly. I loved doing the serial though so I've already decided to switch venue for that to Wattpad. Basically things are in the pipeline.

I am, however, in the process of moving house so... we shall have to see how that interferes.

Oh, yes, and I'm planning more regular blogging time in 2014 as well. I think I shall try to maintain that as a priority, it's sad to see so much stuff issue forth on a weekly basis but with no time to actually talk about it or comment upon it. It makes it look, digitally, as if I'm a crazy word-slinging recluse who does nothing but churn out fantasy and sci-fi. Maybe I am, but commentary is good too.