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pearwaldorf · 6 months

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I hate that you can't see a tweet thread anymore if you're not logged into Twitter (as a gesture of disrespect I refuse to call it by its rebranded name). Here is a copypasta of a thread from Dan Olson, a Canadian documentary filmmaker, expanding upon camera quality, the guilt trips Somerton used to goose his Patreon subscriptions, and how the best tools will never make up for lack of dedication or patience. I have added clarifications in [[double brackets]] where I feel it is necessary.

START OF THREAD

Okay, so, back in April I snapped at James in reply to a tweet that was linking to this video (which James has since delisted but not deleted) and I want to talk about the full context of that but I don't want to make a video, put your beatdown memes away. [[The video has since been deleted. I can see the title of the video is "Maybe the end (not an April Fool's Day thing".]]

The first bit of context is that I initially got keyed into James to fact-check his claims about indie filmmaking in Canada. As a filmmaker the entire Telos venture was immediately obvious as a juvenile fantasy dreamed up by someone with no idea how to make a movie.

Just wild claims about their plans that weren't worth debunking because they bordered Not Even Wrong. But in watching one of these pitch videos I noticed that he had a $4000 current-gen camera in the background as a prop, and that seemed both pretentious and weird.

You don't use your best camera as a prop, you use your second best camera as a prop. So being an obsessive weirdo I needed to know, and I watched his BTS stuff until I spotted his main rig, a $6000 camera with about $1000 in accessories.

Now, these in isolation are unremarkable because his Patreon at the time was bringing in ~$8000 per month, his channel was a full on Business business, and so investing in some professional equipment of that level is maybe a bit indulgent but justifiable.

What was weird is that he doesn't shoot multi-cam, doesn't shoot outdoors, doesn't shoot on location, and in a studio the two cameras kinda really step on each others' toes. Basically if you already have one and don't need a B cam there's no reason to get the other.

Again, on its own, this says nothing, it's just indicative of poor financial decisions, maybe impulsive purchasing, Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Biblical sins, but not crimes.

Paired with the constantly inflating fantasy scope of the Telos films it was clearly an expression of a very, very common bad filmmaker habit of "if I just get the right gear then my movie will basically make itself" Buying stuff because it feels like progress.

At the end of February he tweets "I want to start shooting anamorphic" and then three weeks later in March he posts the worst, out of focus, under-exposed "I just got a new lens!" video I've ever seen, showing off his trash-covered bedroom.

Based on what's available for his cameras and the lead time, that's enough time to get a Laowa Nanomorph or Sirui Saturn from B&H but not enough time to get a Great Joy from the UK or a Vazen from China. And with the flaring blah blah blah, $1300 lens.

Again, [gear acquisition syndrome] is not a crime and these lenses are budget options. Bit of a pointless impulse purchase since he only used it for the Showgirls video. But this is what he was doing just a few weeks before that above video came out: effortlessly impulse purchasing lenses.

James has (had?) a habit of regularly, aggressively driving viewers to Patreon by claiming that videos were getting demonetized. While tacky, it is something a lot of queer YouTubers have dealt with, so there's precedent there. But people were noticing he did it a lot.

Mid-March he humble brags about needing to work so hard to make 6 videos in April because he has over-booked sponsorships.

Then March 29th James posts this whole incel screed on Twitter about how sex work should be "subsidized as a mental health service."

[two image descriptions.

1. "For the majority of people sex (and human contact) can be imperative to a healthy state of mind. A kind and talented sex worker can make someone feel wanted for the first time in their life. I know sex workers who have pulled people back from suicide just by being there for them." 2. "Not only should (sex work) be legal, but it should be subsidized as a mental health service."]

He spends several days getting absolutely *roasted* for this, just dragged across the pavement and read for filth, and doubles down in the replies the whole way.

So this is the context immediately surrounding James waking up on Friday, and posts the above video and the below tweet.

[image description: "We just got the lowest Patreon payout we've gotten in well over a year. Like, a "maybe we need to rethink things" kind of amount... NOT an April Fools Day thing btw. But I don't know if we'll be making videos much longer."]

Now, this unfolds in kinda two directions. The first is that I'm convinced he was just lying about this income shock in the first place.

There's a million theoretical edge cases about what maybe happened and if maybe he just misunderstood the data or saw a glitch and panicked, maybe one of those happened, I don't believe it, I think he just lied because he was salty about getting dragged and felt owed a win.

A big tell to me is that he doesn't blame Patreon. He says he doesn't know what happened, but let's be real, Patreon screws up all the time, they're the first people anyone blames if anything confusing happens, just as a reflex action, even if it's completely not their fault.

The only reason to not blame Patreon is if you already know that it's not their fault and that any investigation on their part might reveal embarrassing details.

Instead he indirectly blames his viewers for not watching enough, not sharing enough, and not turning on auto-renew.

So regardless of the unknowable truth, this segues into the second, far more offensive direction of the messaging itself. "I don't know if we'll be making videos much longer." "Maybe the end" He explicitly framed this as an immediate existential threat to his channel.

In the video he is vague about everything, leaves a ton of hazy room for plausible deniability on how long the channel can keep going, but the messaging is "I need more patrons right this minute or my YouTube channel is over."

He repeatedly evokes all the "fun stuff" they had planned that would never see the light of day if this didn't turn around right away.

And his audience received this message loud and clear. Tons of people making far, far, far less than him left very heartfelt messages about digging a little deeper to subscribe or up their pledge or unsubscribe from other channels to move their pledge to his.

1200 new patrons in one day.

Since I simply don't believe the income shock was real in the first place that would put his post-"Maybe the end" Patreon income at around $10,000 per month. US. Add YouTube income, he's spent the last seven months making around $18,000 per month.

I have seen creators scale back their capabilities to the bone purely to keep making videos for the love of just, like, making stuff even as their funding evaporated and they needed to go back to a desk job to cover their bills.

You'd have to be so outstandingly reckless with your finances as a channel that a one month spook leads immediately to "channel over, sorry about all the fun stuff we won't get to do with you, our patrons, specifically because you, our patrons, aren't giving us enough money"

And not a spook where you then spend a couple weeks crunching numbers. Oh no. A shock so violent where less than two hours later you're weeping on camera about the channel being over.

Three weeks later he brought a brand new Sony FX6v for $8000 CAD to add to his pile of cinema cameras despite the fact that he was, but scant moments earlier, in such a precarious position that a single bad month would kill his channel.

He stole your money, and for that I'm profoundly sad and angry. That's why I snapped at him in April. I'm sorry I couldn't give you the full context then, and I'm sorry if that anger upset you.

END OF THREAD

#james somerton #dan olson #hbomberguy #jesus christ tumblr #it won't let me format things the way i want #because this website is sometimes a piece of shit

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dexaroth · 1 year

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it's kind of a fun move to make my very very personal blog also the one I post my drawings on

ive purposefully done it to not create that kind of environment where it's just an account posting art, a one-dimensional abstract thing that's so detached that if I were to post something like 'teehee I tried to off myself so I'm opening comms to pay the bills' it'd be met with utmost surprise bc it'd break the illusion yknow?

but sometimes I do want some drawings to not have context. to be as impersonal as a vintage figure whose sculptor has never been fully known or a golden locket with the picture of someone who you don't know anything about

I want both, to be honest. it's always been a struggle of the need of external validation but also to not want to taint everything with myself

I want to draw a pet portrait for someone and not have it be judged with all the ramblings and half-jokes about how everything sucks every now and then.

I want to draw a guy being mechanically separated for no reason and not have it show up besides someone's pet portrait and having to explain to the average person I don't even know why I like gore so much besides rendering it is fun

it's all like a cycle of making it clear who is behind the art for context but also sometimes wanting everything to speak for itself and wanting a sort of pure reaction to it

and it culminates into that overly familiar feeling.. of wanting to be consistent. to have a feel, a look that you can maybe hope someone will identify as yours.. and the question is always the same - for what? why? why does it matter?

if anything the first thing I'd ever say to someone who remotely showed interest in art and wanted to know my side of it is that nothing matters and everything is subjective and that there will always be people who see too much meaning where there isn't and people who miss the point entirely. and that diversity is just as good as quality and not a binary switch that you have to pick for the rest of your life. and that often by trying to achieve perfection you just end up dumping what gave your art a personal touch because it wasn't absolutely on par with the version of you that you so desperately want people to identify you with or the vibe you want to give off or whatever else

it's kind of a problem that also has different connotations depending on the way wherever you post works, too

on devart and I think insta too favorites and likes are the easiest way to show a kind of support that happens to streamline everything into images on a page instead of actually taking in most detail, the title or description or lack thereof, maybe even a message or line or music lyric intended to aid in the perception.. that ends up getting completely ignored because it takes extra effort to do. and it gets exponentially worse the more people you follow

then, well.. tumblr. because of the way the posts are organized and at least show captions it has a bit of a leg up, but then the sideblog stuff comes up. posts 95% of the time only give traction to the account that posted it, so a sideblog where you reblog your art is pretty much just a gallery for the convenience of whoever follows them. if you post on that sideblog however, then that facilitates no one visiting your main and just looking at the drawings, leading to the art-artist detachment as it is also plenty of extra steps and effort

then, independently, the path you choose is hard to undo. choose to be unknown and be bound to the façade you have to keep and not break your persona, or put all bits of yourself out to the public and there will forever be an image/ background version of you that will contextualize everything you do

try to turn around and choose to hide and it will put people off and affect how some will look at your new stuff now that you're less of a social butterfly because of the instinct of curiosity and wanting to know what happened , choose to show yourself and now you're too real and people don't want to associate with you because of the things you express or how it hits different knowing x and y or just not caring about you enough to be bothered to keep up with your life with sporadic drawings inbetween

it's all ironically about your own self-image and knowing others who know you

oh and it just hit me the financial side of things too. but that's too much for me rn and it's sort of a bonus to my point anyways

idk man. I feel like I'm having a stroke while an influencer tries to explain branding to me

#the public vs hidden thing is also like trying to balance the evils #do you want to enable being made fun of by quirky neurotypicals and edgelords bc of ur 'archetype'#or do you want to enable everyone to put any meaning to your art including dogshit ones and treat it like a commodity #public enough to have your name or style used pejoratively to describe other people #or hidden enough to blend in and represent nothing and say nothing. just like a blank piece of paper #these two sort of types are everywhere and there just doesnt seem to be a grey area. its just.... awkward.#ah yes look at my painting and tell me what you think of it! dont take me into consideration at all though. pretend this came out of thin>#>air bc thats how i want it to be perceived. bc of course we all know thats a thing that can be controlled by sheer will right? lol #i want to draw whatever. i want to stop giving a shit. not care of what people think its all about. but i want to be seen as well. ..#and its frustrating bc i find it immeasurably valuable to find meaning in the mundane #to find the whimsy and care on someone's 'bad' stickman cat doodle even tough sketches dont mean barely anything to the artist #and then i get sad when someone below my skill level finds My sketches good despite me posting them as a 'look at how bad this looks lol'#just. being desperate for wanting everything to go your way #like a filmmaker who swears the theater is an integral part of their movie when in reality a guy watching at home cherishes it just as much #i think id turn inside out of disgust if i ever truly legitimally considered all the 'wrong' ways people can experience my art #compressed to hell or they just didnt bother to zoom in and didnt notice the brushstrokes and effects #which is totally normal and common and i myself do it! but my ego says nuh uh. go feel bad bc other ppl have agency lol #i can definitely pretend i dont care anymore and even try to believe it so much i unconsciously start assimilating it #but the Moment someone comments something that contradicts what i thought and wished was happening i just. break .#im truly trying to stave off negative thoughts and teaching myself that what others think of me doesnt define me #and one day im overhearing something i wasnt meant to know and its that someone thinks im a child #and ends up treating me like one. like im too stupid to do anything #and then i look back at my eyestrain/cartoonish stuff thats in fact considered childish by people who try to use age as>#a token of 'i dont enjoy X because X is for kids because/therefore im an AdulT! respect me!'#and i just have to face the reality that thats the image of me my art gives off by itself and what society chose it to symbolize as well #which it all leads to wanting so deeply a way to control how others view you because of how age gate-keeping for example is so stupid #and it bleeds into every other feeling and paranoia and self doubt #either you act cool and lie about who you are or let others label you what they see fit especially what they consider to be deserving of>#>ridicule #dextxt

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noneorother · 2 months

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As a film person, this is the most f*cked up thing that happened in all of Good Omens

Forget about the final 15. If there's anything that should convince you that there's something really wack going on in season 2 of Good Omens it should be this cut. I literally gasped when I saw it for the first time. It's SO BAD from a technical perspective. Because you've probably been watching TV and movies your whole life, you might instinctively feel there's something weird happening with this cut, but not be able to put your finger on what it is.

I am here to tell you: they sacrificed continuity of action to *change the main character of the shot in the middle of the scene*. I won't do a full theory course on filmmaking here, but basically, when you want a fluid-feeling sequence of shots, especially when there's quite a lot of movement on screen, you have to conserve the direction and intention of that action to feel like it's all one take, and time is moving forward like we're used to in real life. Here, Crowley, Maggie and Nina all leave the Bookshop together, with Crowley and Maggie flanking Nina, who is centred in the shot. They are moving towards the camera as the camera is walking backwards, but at a slight curve camera-left. Crowley even turns his head and swings his arm left, making us feel like the camera will keep Nina center, and pan left or even cut wider to see more of the left of the street to watch them cross.

Well SURPRISE, idiots!

Forget everything you learned in film school because we're cutting immediately to a second medium length shot of the 3 characters from a slightly more camera-right perspective for no reason whatsoever, in the *opposite* direction of where the action is going, WHILE THAT ACTOR IS SPEAKING A LINE. This is so counterintuitive to the blocking of the scene that Maggie literally gets shoved out of frame while we're supposed to be reading her reaction to Crowley's dialogue. I can't stress enough how weird it is on a fundamental level. When a camera is moving and a character is talking, conserving continuity of action is THE ONE thing you don't sacrifice. It pulls people out of the moment, and makes it extra obvious that multiple takes have been stitched together. Which leads me to think that this is intentional, and sets up what I hinted to at the beginning of this whole "The More You Know" moment : Nina is the main character of the scene we're watching, until, suddenly, Crowley is. If you separated those two moments before and after the cut and watch them as two different scenes, you can see the camera following Nina and keeping her center before, but directly following Crowley and keeping him center *after* the cut. We've switched narrators in this moment. And to top it all off, they're making it pretty obvious that, while Nina is listening and reacting to both Crowley and Maggie, Crowley does not give a rat's ass about the two humans (not either not really in frame, or cut off behind him).

#good omens 2 #good omens meta #art director talks good omens #go season 2 #go meta #good omens season 2 #good omens season two #good omens #go2 #good omens prime #crowley #anthony j crowley

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sayruq · 29 days

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NAHLA AL-ARIAN HAS been living a nightmare for the past seven months, watching from afar as Israel carries out its scorched-earth war against her ancestral homeland in the Gaza Strip. Like many Palestinian Americans, the 63-year-old retired fourth-grade teacher from Tampa Bay, Florida, has endured seven months of a steady trickle of WhatsApp messages about the deaths of her relatives. “You see, my father’s family is originally from Gaza, so they are a big family. And they are not only in Gaza City, but also in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, other parts,” Al-Arian told me. Recently, the trickle of horrors became a flood: “It started with like 27, and then we lost count until I received this message from my relative who said at least 200 had died.” The catastrophe was the backdrop for Al-Arian’s visit last week to Columbia University in New York City. Al-Arian has five children, four of whom are journalists or filmmakers. On April 25, two of her daughters, Laila and Lama, both award-winning TV journalists, visited the encampment established by Columbia students to oppose the war in Gaza. Laila, an executive producer at Al Jazeera English with Emmys and a George Polk Award to her name, is a graduate of Columbia’s journalism school. Lama was the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Alfred I. duPont–Columbia Award for her reporting for Vice News on the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut. The two sisters traveled to Columbia as journalists to see the campus, and Nahla joined them. “Of course, I tagged along. You know, why would I sit at the hotel by myself? And I wanted to really see those kids. I felt so down,” she said. “I was crying every day for Gaza, for the children being killed, for the women, the destruction of my father’s city, so I wanted to feel better, you know, to see those kids. I heard a lot about them, how smart they are, how organized, you know? So I said, let’s go along with you. So I went.” Nahla Al-Arian was on the campus for less than an hour. She sat and listened to part of a teach-in, and shared some hummus with her daughters and some students. Then she left, feeling a glimmer of hope that people — at least these students — actually cared about the suffering and deaths being inflicted on her family in Gaza. “I didn’t teach them anything. They are the ones who taught me. They are the ones who gave me hope,” she recalled. “I felt much better when I went there because I felt those kids are really very well informed, very well educated. They are the conscience of America. They care about the Palestinian people who they never saw or got to meet.” Her husband posted a picture of Nahla, sitting on the lawn at the tent city erected by the student protesters, on his Twitter feed. “My wife Nahla in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students,” he wrote. Nahla left New York, inspired by her visit to Columbia, and returned to Virginia to spend time with her grandchildren. A few days later, that one tweet by her husband would thrust Nahla Al-Arian into the center of a spurious narrative promoted by the mayor of New York City and major media outlets. She became the exemplar of the dangerous “outside agitator” who was training the students at Columbia. It was Nahla’s presence, according to Mayor Eric Adams, that was the “tipping point” in his decision to authorize the military-style raids on the campus.

On February 20, 2003, Nahla’s husband, Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was arrested and indicted on 53 counts of supporting the armed resistance group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PIJ had been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, and the charges against Al-Arian could have put him in prison for multiple life sentences, plus 225 years. It was a centerpiece case of the George W. Bush administration’s domestic “war on terror.” When John Ashcroft, Bush’s notorious attorney general, announced the indictment, he described the Florida-based scholar as “the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian.” Among the charges against him was conspiracy to kill or maim persons abroad, specifically in Israel, yet the prosecutors openly admitted Al-Arian had no connection to any violence. He was a well-known and deeply respected figure in the Tampa community, where he and Nahla raised their family. He was also, like many fellow Palestinians, a tenacious critic of U.S. support for Israel and of the burgeoning “global war on terror.” His arrest came just days before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a war Al-Arian was publicly opposed to. The Al-Arian case was, at its core, a political attack waged by Bush’s Justice Department as part of a wider assault on the rights of Muslims in the U.S. The government launched a campaign, echoed in media outlets, to portray Al-Arian as a terror leader at a time when the Bush administration was ratcheting up its so-called global war on terror abroad, and when Muslims in the U.S. were being subjected to harassment, surveillance, and abuse. The legal case against Al-Arian was flimsy, and prosecutors largely sought to portray his protected First Amendment speech and charitable activities as terrorism. The trial against Al-Arian, a legal permanent resident in the U.S., did not go well for federal prosecutors. In December 2005, following a six-month trial, a jury acquitted him on eight of the most serious counts and deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the other nine. The judge made clear he was not pleased with this outcome, and the prosecutors were intent on relitigating the case. Al-Arian had spent two years in jail already without any conviction and was staring down the prospect of years more. In the face of this reality and the toll the trial against him had taken on his family, Al-Arian agreed to take a plea deal. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to one count of providing nonviolent support to people the government alleged were affiliated with the PIJ. As part of the deal, Al-Arian would serve a short sentence and, with his residency revoked, get an expedited deportation. At no point during the government’s trial against Al-Arian did the prosecution provide evidence he was connected to any acts of violence. For the next eight years following his release from prison in 2008, Al-Arian was kept under house arrest and effectively subjected to prosecutorial harassment as the government sought to place him in what his lawyers characterized as a judicial trap by compelling him to testify in a separate case. His defense lawyers alleged the federal prosecutor in the case, who had a penchant for pursuing high-profile, political cases, held an anti-Palestinian bias. Amnesty International raised concerns that Al-Arian had been abused in prison and he faced the prospect of yet another lengthy, costly court battle. The saga would stretch on for several more years before prosecutors ended the case and Al-Arian was deported from the United States.

“This case remains one of the most troubling chapters in this nation’s crackdown after 9-11,” Al-Arian’s lawyer, Jonathan Turley, wrote in 2014 when the case was officially dropped. “Despite the jury verdict and the agreement reached to allow Dr. Al-Arian to leave the country, the Justice Department continued to fight for his incarceration and for a trial in this case. It will remain one of the most disturbing cases of my career in terms of the actions taken by our government.” That federal prosecutors approved Al-Arian’s plea deal gave a clear indication that the U.S. government knew Al-Arian was not an actual terrorist, terrorist facilitator, or any kind of threat; the Bush administration, after all, was not in the habit of letting suspected terrorists walk. Al-Arian and his family have always maintained his innocence and say that he was being targeted for his political beliefs and activism on behalf of Palestinians. He resisted the deal, Nahla Al-Arian said. “He didn’t even want to accept it. He wanted to move on with another trial,” Nahla said. “But because of our pressure on him, let’s just get done with it [because] in the end, we’re going leave anyway. So that’s why.” Sami and Nahla Al-Arian now live in Turkey. Sami is not allowed to visit his children and grandchildren stateside, but Nahla visits often.

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creatingblackcharacters · 1 month

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“The Same Place as the Music” Lighting & Color

“Where is the light coming from?” “The same place as the music.” Andrew Lesnie, Cinematographer of LOTR

How & Why It's A Problem

If I had to summarize the frustration I have with this topic in one image, I'd use JeCorey Holder's (queer Black creative!) meme:

Now here's the thing. I'm not saying you have to be a master at lighting. I'm surely not. Hell, I still play around with lighting in my art in ways that aren’t the ‘most realistic’. You can’t ask me the technical explanations behind ‘color theory’ or 'contrast' without me doing some more reading. However… I don’t think anyone needs an art degree to understand this point:

We should be able to SEE your brown skinned Black characters!

I brought this up in my lessons about skin tones and blushing, and it applies with lighting as well. If all of your other characters have focused light and shadows, so should your Black characters.

However, this does NOT mean making them lighter-skinned!!!!

It's not funny nor logical at all to suggest that they somehow can't be seen like your other characters when you’re the one creating the piece. It's like a classic fifth-grade racist joke, “You blend in at night”. Har-de-har.

I was once rudely told to my face (well in the DMs) that a Black character that was completely Europeanized looked like that “because of the [sepia] lighting”. So I'm going to give you all, gracious readers, an example to show that that's not true.

This is Ana Flávia, Afro-Brazilian model! Gaze upon her beauty! Notice how in both of these filters, Ana did not, in fact, turn into a white woman! Because, my friends, that is not how that works! At all!

Here are some other examples of Black people in non-color lighting:

None of these people vanished from the frame just because there was no color. They didn't have to paint on lighter makeup to be captured by the camera. What do they all have in common (in this example)?

Lighting!

Now let’s discuss different ways to think about and potentially try instead!

What I want you all to keep in mind, is that the art you’re painting:

And I know that's silly right, like yeah no shit Ice, we knew that. BUT my point here is don’t be afraid to study photography, theatre, and staging for ideas. They actively work with light! It’s why I share so many images of models; it’s purposeful, focused staging of light with many of these compositions!

Brown-skinned Black people- brown-skinned people in general- GLOW in the light! Our skin reflects environmental light! There’s so much opportunity to play with that, and you can see different examples in those mediums.

Here are a couple articles of lighting in film focused on Black actors.

When lighting a person with dark complexion, the answer is not LIGHTENING THE SKIN, it’s understanding how light reflects off of dark skin.” -Nilah Magruder

Nilah Magruder (Black creator!) has an ENTIRE, thorough and wonderful essay on the topic, far better than I could give! She incorporates the use of cameras, lighting, painting, and more- so rather than be redundant here, I'm going to spotlight (ha see what I did there. It's okay, I know I'm funny) her and her explanation.

Incorporating Blackness in Color/Colorful Lighting

@dsm7 has an excellent and short visual explanation of how picking certain colors will lead to washing out or whitewashing Black characters, and how certain lighting and backgrounds (think the black and white photos on brighter backgrounds) will change the way their skin tone looks.

@nicosbighead has one of my favorite images on here, that shows how many different colors can still be used to convey the image of Blackness. Notice how all those pinks still worked?

@gaksdesigns has a beautiful picture here that I feel utilizes the light in a very minimal yet effective way to show highlights even on a palette that's fully brown.

This article approaches from a lighting perspective via filmmaking, but essentially Sade Ndya suggests instead of increasing the amount of light, change the color/lens of the light based on your character’s skin, as well as for the circumstances of the scene. They'll remain vibrant that way, and you’ll still capture what you need.

I know one way I do this on CSP (I think I’ve mentioned this but I can’t remember) is to use the Add Glow tool with the same or a similar shade of the character’s brown skin tone as a highlight under natural light, or maybe use different colors or filters depending on the sort of light on their skin at the time.

Here’s a reddit about it too, just because I know y’all value Reddit on here, and someone else discussed the topic that both Nilah and Sade discussed.

Is It Intentional?

There are going to be times where you intend for the light to be minimal. Maybe it’s a style choice. That should still show purposeful composition. Here’s an interview with famed Black director Ava Duvernay discussing the intentional darkness on Black actors in the prison scene in the movie Selma. To show that they're both trapped in prison AND that Martin is temporarily low on resolve- it's a part of the story that's being told.

I'm always talking about this: there is a difference between intention (and following through), and neglecting to think about it at all. And neglect isn't what we want, because often we can tell visually when it is- when an artist simply did not think to do it for one versus the rest.

Sidenote, on Youtube in the suggestions after Ava's interview, are also plenty of videos discussing lighting for dark-skin as well- why not take the chance to look?

Conclusion

We do not lack for light! We aren’t flat and lightless when you see us in life. It's actually a pretty awesome part of being brown-skinned. If you’re giving proper, flattering lighting to everyone else, give it to us as well. Study and experiment with ways to highlight brown skin.

You already know what I’m going to say. It’s going to take practice, same as anything else, because it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

#creatingblackcharacters #character design #black characters #black art #black character design #black artists

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flanaganfilm · 11 months

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Do you have any “don’t meet your heroes” stories from working in Hollywood?

Absolutely. Hollywood really is a place like no other. If you grow up loving cinema, certain people can take on mythic status in your imagination. Actors, filmmakers; they are larger than life. They become idols in the truest sense - an image that is actually worshipped. But Hollywood is actually full of very weird human beings who have been lucky enough to make their living in a world of make-believe. A huge percentage of the people who work in this industry are strange birds, unsuited for working anywhere else.

Some of our biggest stars wouldn't last ten minutes working a real job; some of our most exalted filmmakers collapse inward if they're in a crowded room. They can have unusual talents, or beauty, or unique perspectives and abilities that have propelled them to various levels of success, or even stardom, but they're just normal, neurotic people.

And success, fame, and money can really twist people. It can be like radiation. They can go full Gollum from it.

But most people who work in Hollywood are not stars at all. The vast majority of people who work here are not rich, not famous. Most are hardworking craftsmen and craftswomen who are fighting every day to make a living, scraping by the best they can in an industry that is brutal, impersonal, and impenetrable. But every single person in this business - whether they are superstars or not - are just ordinary people. They're insecure, anxious, and prone to all of the failings we mortals are prone to. Some of them are awesome; some of them are assholes. But most of the people here (even the superstars) quietly feel like they don't belong, or that they don't deserve it, or that their sheer ordinariness will be discovered any minute. In fact, it's the people who seem to feel the opposite - those rare people who feel that they DO belong here, and deserve the lifestyle this industry can afford, who are inevitably the least likable ones I've met.

As I've been lucky enough to keep working in this business, I've met a lot of the people who I idolized along the way. Filmmakers and actors who I admire so much, whose work has shaped the trajectory of my life without them knowing it. I've been starstruck every time, and I am still am - I stammer, I freeze, and I kick myself for what I say, or don't say, or how I said it. I'm not good at it. I have acute social anxiety, and when you throw me at someone I admire, I turn into a blubbering idiot. They say "don't meet your heroes" because you may (likely will) be disappointed by just how ordinary they truly are. Or worse, they may even turn out to be people you wouldn't want to interact with in normal circumstances - your heroes might be people you wouldn't want to invite to coffee. The persona you have admired is a product in itself, something you bought, something you have taken home and displayed proudly in your imagination... but the human being behind that persona is full of all the ordinary failings. That can be really hard to reconcile. So yeah, a long-winded way of saying that I've had the experience of meeting people I admired a great deal only to be disappointed, or worse. I've got some nightmare stories in there where the actual person violently shattered the idol I'd built in my imagination. I won't share those stories, there's little point in that, but instead I'll talk about the rare exceptions - the few heroes I've met who were every bit as awesome as I'd hoped they'd be. They may say "never meet your heroes," but they haven't met Mark Hamill. I worked with Mark on The Fall of the House of Usher, and he is one of my favorite people. Kind, generous, humble, and so, so funny. I was nervous and excited to meet Mark for the obvious reasons, because of the hero he was in my imagination - but I got to meet Mark the actor, the father, the husband, the humanitarian, and the friend. Guillermo Del Toro - one of my biggest heroes, his work has meant so much to me. And I was terrified to meet him. But he is one of the most joyful, honest, sweet-natured people I've met in the business, and his love for movies is infectious. For me, the man himself exceeded the myth.

I've been lucky to meet other exceptions to this rule, heroes of mine who exceeded my expectations - Ewan McGregor, Mick Garris, Brian Henson, Heather Langenkamp, Henry Thomas - and yeah, I've had the other experience too. But I try to focus on the exceptions. It can be unhealthy to idolize people - unhealthy for you, and unhealthy for them. But it's truly awesome when someone is even more amazing than you imagined.

#never meet your heroes most of the time #except Mark Hamill

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jeon-ify · 3 months

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thoughts - choi san ft. mingi (part 2)

a/n: idk girl… i kinda want mingi to fuck her with tied up san and make him watch 😩

warnings: mean!dom mingi, sub!tied up san, swearing, pussy slapping, fingering, squirting, mingi fucks reader in front of san, spit play, face slapping, degradation, titty slapping, etc. if i missed anything lmk !

enjoy! not proofread :)

—————————————————————————————

the 2 weeks went by extremely fast, considering how you’ve spent it with san the entire time— in and out of his dorm. you felt guilty, but he was filling that void for you.

the drive to the airport felt like a dread. you wanted mingi to come back, honestly. but you didn’t want to go back to the vanilla sex that you’d been having with your boyfriend from this point on. you pull into the lane with doubt, maybe he’s upped his sex game, maybe he doesn’t want sex anymore. you think about ways to bring up the topic, but it just doesn’t flow.

you swerve into the lane to wait for mingi. after 20 minutes, you get out of the car and wait in the airport lobby for him. he arrives shortly, running to hug you and seeming so tired after working so hard. he wanted to surprise you with his project, but the last thing that was on your mind throughout those two weeks were what he was doing in japan.

“my baby, i missed you so much! how was japan?” you exclaim. he hugs you tightly, kissing you all over your face. your heart ached before him, not knowing how to handle the guilt.

how could you?

“it was so great, but i missed you so much, y/n.” he relaxes his head on your shoulder through the hug, your body warmth making him sleepy.

you carry his backpack and take his duffles to the car as he follows you out. he sits beside you, turning up the radio and listening to your playlist. “what’d you do while i was gone? we barely spoke.”

his head turns to face you as he questions you. it feels like you’re being convicted of a felony, your heart falls to your ass as you try to come up with a lie. he watches your breathing change and your face flush with red.

“honestly i was super bored. i…” you pause, taking in a deep breath and chuckling before continuing your bullshit, “don’t know how i managed. how was your filmmaking? was it exciting?”

he stays quiet, his face straight, plastered with suspicion.

“it was exciting, thanks. what’d you do the day i left? yeosang said you stopped by. what was that about?” you literally cannot come up with anything else, so you decide to ‘tell the truth’.

“i was bored so i hung out with wooyoung and jongho for a little bit but then i went home, why?” you reach a red light as mingi grabs your thigh, squeezing tightly. he squeezes almost too tight that it begins to hurt.

“mm, but they weren’t at the house, y/n. what were you doing there?” he looks out the window, trying to think of what he’ll do when you confess and make it easier so he’s not worried about if you’re cheating or not— he’d just know. he hopes he’s wrong, though.

“n-no. mingi, you’re hurting me.” he squeezes your inner thigh as the car swerves just a little bit out of the lane. you feel like he’s gonna rip a chunk of your thigh off of you, tears welling up in your eyes.

“yeah? it didn’t hurt me when i heard you on the phone fucking san? do you think i’m stupid, y/n? i told you not to go near san, didn’t i?” you fall silent as your ears begin to ring.

he knew.

but san didn’t say anything?

but he heard your voice.

“fucking answer me,” he brings his hand up to your throat to cut off your airways as a threat to make you speak.

“y-yes,” you gasp. you literally feel like your body gave up on you as your limbs all fall numb into mingi’s touch.

“why are you fucking my friends? the one friend i told you to fucking stay away from. he’s married, hm? you’re home-wrecking, darling. are you a whore? are you san’s whore?”

“n-no, mingi, please,” you moan. he lets you go as you pull into the driveway of your home, seeing a familiar car parked in the front.

leaving all his luggage in the trunk, he slams the door closed as he goes to open your door. he pulls you out by your wrist, slamming the door shut behind you and dragging you into the house. you stop in your tracks when you see a familiar pair of shoes on the doormat.

“keep walking.” he demands. your legs shake in fear and somehow, arousal. mingi has never been this rough with you, and somehow it sends a shock down to your core.

you slowly walk over to your shared bedroom, opening the door and seeing what you thought you’d never see— san on your bed.

you stop and stare at the man on mingi’s side of the bed. he’s sat up straight with his hands tied behind his back, his feet tied together, and a black piece of duct tape on his mouth. a layer of sweat envelopes his toned torso, his black hair slowly moves with every breath he takes. the silver chain he wears is now covered in beads of sweat as the veins in his neck become more prominent. you would be lying if you said that you didn’t want to bounce on his dick at that given moment.

you feel mingi’s chest press against your back as his hand moves to wrap itself around your throat. he feels your heartbeat through your neck, gulping in fear.

“what’s wrong, baby? cat got your tongue?” his deep voice grumbles in your ear. his teeth graze against your ear, sending chills down your body.

“m-mingi, what’s going on?” you shake and try to break away from mingi’s grasp, not breaking eye contact with the man tied up on your boyfriend’s side of the bed.

“you thought i wouldn’t know if you were whoring around with my friends? i’m many things, but i’m not stupid.” he lets go of you, shoving you further into the room and closer to san.

you hear san whimper, his head thrown back in irritation from how he can’t fuck you into oblivion in front of your boyfriend.

san loved so many things about you— but what he loved the most was how turned on he gets whenever you get helpless. you’re like a brainless whore he wants to fuck over and over— just for him to use.

it’s almost like a continuous battle between the two— and hopefully, your boyfriend would win. you’re rooting for him.

san groans something that you make out to say “take this off,” but he’s enjoying every minute of it. he feels like he’s gonna cum in his pants from the way mingi is undressing you.

mingi takes your sweats off first, then proceeds to taking off your tanktop. you gasp and try to cover your chest as he takes your bra off with only one hand. when he sees your hands fly up to cover yourself, he pins your wrist between his large hands.

“let’s not act all modest now, y/n.”

he proceeds to sliding your soaked panties off, a string of arousal connected to your pussy makes mingi groan, and san’s eyes roll.

mingi pulls you by your hair and bends you over the dresser in front of san. he stands beside your bare body, staring at san through the reflection of the mirror. both of their breaths pick up at the sight, mingi glaring at san and watching him stare at his naked girlfriend.

“i’m gonna ask you once, y/n. is he better?” mingi challenges you in answering the question you fear your life to answer. of course san was better at sex, but you’d never admit to your boyfriend.

“fuck! no, please—“ you feel your legs weaken as mingi plunges two fingers into your sopping cunt, not giving you the chance to answer his question. he lands a sharp slap onto your cunt, making your body shiver.

“no?” his fingers move quickly, feeling the way you’re about to cum all over his fingers. he feels you sucking him in and clenching around his long fingers, so he pulls out before you could release.

“i’m sorry! i’m sorry, mingi.” your breath hitches as you cry out in desperation for a release— and a hint of guilt. you literally feel like karma is biting you in the ass, no matter how pleasured you are.

with your juices all over his middle fingers, mingi’s tall and lean figure walks over to san and rips the tape off of his face. san winces in pain, a smirk plastered all over his face. a soft red tint blankets his skin as he takes in a deep breath and licks his puffy lips.

“open— there you go. taste my girlfriend’s cum all over my fingers.” mingi groans— impossibly but somehow possibly— growing harder at the action of his friend sucking your precum off his fingers.

“she tastes phenomenal, mingi. you’ve missed out.” san breathes out deeply after mingi releases his fingers with a pop. you watch the entire scene happen before you, your thighs clenching with need. you’re taken aback when mingi grips the back of san’s head, forcing him to stand up straight.

“y/n, come here.” you follow his command weakly. you immediately fall to your knees before the two men, legs shaking as mingi moves the strand of hair that delicately falls on your forehead. he makes you seem so innocent, but he knows, and so do you and san know, that that is far from what you are.

san watches as you drool before your boyfriend. “open your mouth, pretty girl,” san speaks up as he lands a wad of spit onto your tongue. you swallow with pride, watching mingi glare at the encounter before him.

“you just open your mouth to anyone, mm?” mingi is upset, but san is so fucking turned on, he literally feels like he’s gonna explode.

you (un)intentionally unzip mingi’s pants, looking san in the eyes. you pull the band of his boxers down, revealing his aching cock, just for you to claim into your throat. you lick a long stripe up the length, not breaking eye contact with san as you so whore-ishly suck on your boyfriend’s cock.

“thinking of me, butterfly? remember me when you fuck him, ‘kay?” the man says as you take mingi’s entire length into your mouth, the aching tip touching the back of your throat making your eyes water.

as his hand starts forming a makeshift ponytail and pushing your head down, san wishing he can break free from the restrains on his hands. he so badly wants to pull out his painful cock and start stroking himself before the both of you.

“mingi, you’re so big. how’s she gonna take you?” san questions, his breath hitching and deepening.

“she’s been stretched out enough. i’m sure you’re loose now from all the dick you’ve been taking while i was gone, yeah?” he pulls you off of his length to throw you onto the bed like a ragdoll.

you gasp at the action, san’s head turning to face you as he whines.

“please, untie me. wanna cum so bad.”

mingi ignores his friend’s cries, moving down to spit on your abused cunt. he slides his tank top off, throwing it somewhere in the room as he leans down to plant a kiss on your forehead. a sign of care slightly shows in mingi’s eyes, but the way he plunges his cock so hard into you immediately blocks out the kind gesture he gave you. your legs jolt at the powerful and radical thrusts that mingi gives you, crying out for mercy.

“fuck, mingi sl-slow down! it hurts,” you’re not sure if you want him to stop, but it hurts so good.

he lands a painfully sharp slap onto your right tit, making you wince out in pain and pleasure.

“yeah? but you can fuck san for days and not say anything? who’s hurt, darling? which one of us is really hurt?” you feel so fucking guilty. your eyes well up in tears as you try to apologize, because mingi’s given you nothing but love, respect, support, and most of all, he understood you the way no one else could.

how could you do something so terrible to him?

“i’m sorry! i’m so fucking sorry-“ you’re reaching your orgasm, cumming on the base of mingi’s cock. he feels you clenching around him as his thrusts come to a slow. his hand rubs on the red area on your chest, leaving a kiss on the irritated spot.

“yeah? how sorry? use your words,” his deep voice is so beautiful, it almost makes you cum again from the way he’s talking in your ear.

“f-for fucking your friends, i— fuck, please—“ you cry out.

while san watches, a spot on his pants becomes a darker shade, indicating that he literally came in his pants. he’s been moaning and whining and whimpering, all while mingi fucks you senseless.

“listen to me, hyung. if you ever get near my girl again, i’ll fucking kill you, you hear me?” mingi doesn’t face san, nor does he blink. he doesn’t break eye contact with you as he pounds into you deeply, hitting your cervix over and over, making you squirt around him and staining his sheets. his hand caresses your cheek as his warm minty breath fans into your face. his eyes roll to the back of his head, listening to your cries.

san doesn’t answer. instead, he groans and tries to wriggle his hands out of the restraints. he watches his friend fuck you hard, wishing it were him. he’s fucked you all 14 days, he just can’t get enough.

neither can mingi— as he licks up the tears that flow onto your cheeks.

“why are you crying, hm? do you feel sorry for being a slut behind my back?” mingi’s faux concern masks his lust, making you clench around him for the fourth time tonight.

“you’re clenching me so tight, oh my goddd, ‘m not going anywhere,” he pulls out before you can cum around him, standing up to untie san.

“fuck, thank you, mingi.” san hurries to take his pants off and stand before you, stroking his painfully hard cock. mingi watches as san gets off on his own girlfriend, not understanding how he hasn’t killed him yet for looking at you.

“you can fuck her, and don’t hold back. she likes it hard.” mingi speaks up, making your heart drop to your ass as you’re about to cheat on your boyfriend again, in front of him.

“m-mings—“ you’re silenced by san’s hand around your mouth as he immediately plunges his long and familiar cock into your wet, stretched out pussy. he pounds into you almost in an animalistic manner, making your vision cloud and your stomach clench from the painful orgasm.

“don’t call out for him, i’m the one fucking you, look at me.” he groans out as he grabs your chin, forcing you to watch him fuck you again.

mingi sits where san was, jerking off his long and hard length from how hot it was that you were so helpless and ‘innocent’ from fucking someone else.

“slap her.”

san lands a sharp slap on the left side of your face, grabbing your jaw and moving you back into place just to slap you again.

he repeats the action one more time as you slap him back. his thrusts stop. feeling disrespected and taken aback, san thrusts into you harder as your body jolts and shakes. you squirt again, all over san as mingi whimpers and groans from beside you.

“shit! i’m cumming, fucking cumming, mingi. where—“ you whine out again, mingi standing up and reaching his orgasm as well.

“me too, fuck— cum on her tits, all over her.”

“cum all over me, please—“ you whine out with a dry throat while both men release their load all over your chest, even on your chin.

“so much cum, just for my bitch, yeah?” mingi groans breathily as you nod for him in response.

san walks away to clean up and put his clothes on in the bathroom, leaving the two of you alone.

“go near that fucker again, i’ll kill the both of you in a heartbeat. am i clear?” he says with a doe eyed smile as if he was a puppy, planting a kiss on your plump lips.

“y-yes.”

————

i—

my god.

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xplore-the-unknwn · 4 days

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The Core of the Planet of the Apes Franchise ft. Wes Ball (Director)

"Can Ape and Human live together? and I think what its really saying is Can two people who are different live together?"

Sci Fi’s purpose is always to question, test and challenge what we understand. And Planet of the Apes has always been a satire to the ego of humanity and their hunger for dominance. In a fictional world where Apes became the 'humans'/sentient intelligent species and men are likened to beasts. What kind of world will that look like? What kind of dynamic or relationships can that bring? and the Franchise has always been about asking that question.

Now enter our new main characters. Wes said the focus of the new movies will center around Noa and Mae’s very unique dynamic. A girl and a sentient ape both different but both similar in doing what they can to protect their loved ones.

and there’s nothing wrong if you get curious with how their relationship will develop. Is that something heinous? to root for a dynamic that can greatly influence the fictional world they live in?

tbh thats what the film WANTS- Make you curious. ASK THE QUESTIONS IT WANTS ASKED.

Peak storytelling. All I see is a Director smartly pinning the tension between these two main characters to further hook us to seeing more of the next films they’re making. A masterclass in creative writing too. With that we can ask the questions- If apes were sentient like humans how will we treat them? Who do we root for knowing human nature tends to be destructive? IF we understand each other’s differences can we learn from each other and live side by side? Circling back to the question-

Can Ape and Human live together?

And those questions will be answered through THEM- Noa and Mae.

Theres a-lot of importance in their dynamic and the future that they’ll bring with it. Will it be tragic or hopeful?

See, it intriguesss.

and thats Sci Fi’s purpose. That’s the Planet of The Ape’s message.

Also with the fandom ship or not ship yall just ENJOY this franchise and let its underlying messages speak to you. Thats what the filmmakers and actors behind this film would want too (I feel for them sm and see the passion to get this done and I just want to VOICE out that this beautiful movie and the characters they worked hard on are greatly appreciated)

#I love their dynamic theres alot of good writing between them #If those questions dont shake you to your very core then you better start reading more Sci Fi and get your minds blown more often #Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes #planet of the apes #pota #kotpota #noa #mae #pota noa #pota mae #wes ball #nomae #noamae #noa x mae #owen teague #freya allan #sci fi #franchise #analysis

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artist-issues · 6 months

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I Saw Wish

And it was the worst animated Disney movie I’ve ever seen. I have to watch it again before I can get into the nitty gritty details. But I don’t need details to sum it up, because my dad actually said it perfectly as we left the theater:

“It was like someone who didn’t really understand Disney movies tried to make a Disney movie.”

Both the form (the technical arts of filmmaking) and the content (the morals, values, and themes of the movie) were totally horrible.

I don’t know who’s fault it was. Jeremy Spears was in the storyboard room and Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg did some 2D animation. But they must have gotten outvoted, or they must not care anymore.

Because holy cow. Here’s some stuff that’s just off the top of my head.

SPOILERS. Not that it matters, because nothing interesting happens in this movie.

The writing? Terrible. Ninety percent of it feels like the characters are filling time with quirky one-liners that are trying too hard to be appealing, then failing, then taking you out of the movie. The jokes aren’t funny. The characters just respond to each other in conversation to check a one-liner box. The other twenty percent is whole conversations repeating tell-don’t-show exposition that has already been covered, usually twice, in previous scenes. Like if in Tangled, every scene had included some variation of Rapunzel saying to friends and enemies alike, “I have to see the floating lights so I’m sneaking to the castle with this thief who wants a mysterious tiara I hid from him. Don’t tell my mother, she’s a bit overprotective!” Over. And over. And over.

The character motivations are way too broad. Asha? Her dream is just “that everybody around me gets to be happy.” That’s it, in a nutshell. No deeper exploration of that. Nobody asks, “why do you care so much?” Nobody tries to convince her she should look out for herself, and then she proves she was right all along. The King? We are told (not shown) that he doesn’t want anyone else’s dreams to be “destroyed.” But he in no believable way expresses that that motivation is still what’s driving him during the movie—what’s driving him is just a plain old lust for power, no nuance.

By the way, the whole premise of the movie? Undercooked. Half-baked concepts strung together with no definitive meaning. Therefore, it’s not believable. Example: The characters act like the wishes are beautiful—well, actually, no, this movie doesn’t know how to show, so there’s not a lot of meaningful acting—the characters just tell us that wishes are “the most beautiful part of someone,” and that’s why it’s worth going through this adventure to give their wishes back to them. But there’s no proof of that in the movie. In fact, it directly kicks it’s own legs out from under that idea, because it has every character who gives up their wish forget that part of themselves. Asha’s grandfather has forgotten his wish, but that doesn’t make him any less “beautiful.” She, and everyone, still treats him like he’s this wonderful old man who deserves the world, who everyone loves…but why is he so appealing? If he “gave up the most beautiful part of him?” The only character who is changed by their lack-of-wish is the Sleepy-analogue character…who is just sleepy, which is described as “boring.” But nobody else who’s given up their wish in the whole kingdom acts like that. It’s just him. Also, the King acts like it’s so important to protect the wishes from destruction. But what does destroying a wish look like? That actually happens to Asha’s mom. Her wish-bubble is broken, literally, and she just says she feels grief. But like. Why? She never remembered it in the first place; it had been missing from her life for years. Also, what the heck is a wish?! It seems to range from broad concepts like “inspire people” to “fly.” Just “fly,” like a bird. The desire to levitate off the ground is the most important, beautiful essence of one background character. Like, what?! But no character ever has the why behind their wish to make us care.

I could go on and on about that point. Like, think about Disney movies that wrote the book on how to make movies about characters with wishes. If Ariel were in Wish, her bubble would look like “dancing and learning and exploring on the Surface with someone who understands her.” But we believe that that is her real, genuine wish, and that it matters to her, because we are shown why being understood is so important to her. Because it’s missing from her life. There’s a scene where she explores a boat alone, and even her best friend doesn’t get excited about it with her. Her dad won’t listen to her point of view. Her siblings don’t ask her about her life even when they think she’s in love. She wants what she wants because of pieces of her life that we are shown.

We are never shown why Asha’s grandfather is obsessed with inspiring people, so we have no reason to believe it, or care whether he gets it or not. We can’t feel disappointed when his wish is said to “never come true,” like we did when Quasimodo was abused by the people he wished to join. We can’t feel elated when he finally “gets” his wish, like we did when Simba smiles on Pride Rock remembering the same way he used to as a cub and claims the crown with a roar. We don’t have anything to hang on to, nothing to relate to, nothing to grasp and feel with the characters. So we don’t feel, because they didn’t put the work in to help us feel. They just say, “the mom’s feeling grief. Feel grief.” And expect us to do the work ourselves. I have to stop harping on this point and move on.

But The main point of the movie is very broad because of that lazy premise, and it’s barely reinforced by any kind of appealing storytelling. If I had to guess, the point would be “Keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” But the story they told to communicate that meaning was so unimpactful. Asha doesn’t have a dream of her own that’s such hard work to accomplish! (Neither does her grandfather; his wish is “to inspire people.” And at the end, we’re supposed to see him strumming a guitar and believe it’s inspiring? We were never shown how he worked hard to learn how to play the instrument. Or that he carved it with his own hands, or anything like that. So there’s no meaningful demonstration of working hard for it or achieving your wish even if it’s far out of reach.) And nobody except the king is trying to take wishes away from anyone, and he just does it literally, after they voluntarily give them to him, so there’s not even any impactful demonstration of “don’t let anyone tell you your wishes are dumb or unachievable, or stop you from reaching them.” Even when he takes them away, it’s just because they…could, someday, be used to threaten his kingdom in a vague, really unlikely way. There are so many things you could do with “keep wishing for more even when it’s hard.” For instance; you could say the main character has always been afraid to dream (wish for more), because maybe when she was a kid something wonderful almost happened but ended in tragedy, so she keeps her head down and doesn’t want much because if you don’t dream you’ll never be disappointed. She takes no risks, and has to learn that sometimes trying and failing is worth more than slogging through life all self-protective. I mean, the pieces were right there. She has this line about her dad, and how she wished he would get better but then he died. She has lines about how nobody should have to live with grief?? Then that’s never addressed again! It’s just a throwaway emotion-moment with no buildup or follow-through to tie it to and support that main theme.

The compositions of too many shots were so terrible. Characters got cut off in weird places. One shot has Asha dead center, with her grandfather on the left side of the table and her mother on the right, having a family dinner with a super exposition-heavy conversation that is meant to be emotionally charged. But despite everything else being perfectly centered, half of her mother’s body is chopped off. The movie’s shot like someone’s mom who doesn’t understand technology tried to take a video with her phone.

The charm of the art “style” wears off basically immediately. I know what they were going for. I see the sketch lines and watercolor textures. This is maybe the first time Disney ever failed to accomplish a visual “look” that turned out good. Everything looks dull. Muted. De-saturated. Slightly out of focus, but not in a cool Spider-Verse way. The sets or backgrounds are lazy; at no point does the scenery look complete; big, empty, boring spaces that do not create any kind of “stage” for impactful moments. The rendering looks unfinished. When Asha’s hair moves during her belting of the “I Make This Wish” song, it’s bad. It’s unnatural. It flops in a way that doesn’t make sense for the weight of her hair. The most impactful visual moments come from the villain, and they’re moments when he looks way too unhinged for the kind of line he’s saying.

There is no interesting character development. Asha goes from believing everyone is basically good and their wishes deserve the chance to come true , to….that, again. That would be fine, she could be a static character, if she proved contrast-characters wrong, in a believable way. But she never does. Because no other characters argue with her except the King. And it goes no deeper than “everyone’s wishes are basically good and they deserve the chance to make them true” vs. “nuh-uh, because I get to decide what makes them deserving.” The King doesn’t have any kind of interesting development, either. They don’t expand on his tragic backstory—it consists of one drawing of him near a broken boat, and a few images of the corner burned off of his family taoestry. They never say “King Magnifico wished for _____ and it was taken away!” They literally never tell you what his wish or dreams were, or what motivated him to create the whole kingdom that the movie’s premise sits on. So there’s no convincing sense of progression, how he got this way, why he’ll keep going “so far.”

The pacing is weird. It undercuts every moment that could have any kind of emotion behind it. One minute Valentino is suavely bouncing around, then he’s given a two-second beat to blubber with badly-animated tears that he’ll miss Star—then he instantly gets to have another funny one-liner so we forget he might’ve been sad a second ago. We’re clearly supposed to believe that the King and his wife are devoted to each other, and his turning evil was such a big betrayal, but there’s no time and no impactful evidence for us to believe either of those things. And even if we did, the moment he’s defeated and trapped in a mirror, and begs to be let free, the Queen kind of shrugs it off, makes a forgettable one-liner, and tells them to throw him in the dungeon. And he doesn’t look remorseful. And we don’t even get to assume he’s embarrassed or emotionally devastated that he’s come to this—because the last thing he says is “nooo, the dungeon is so smellyyy!” Like this is a half-baked LEGO short that can’t get emotionally deeper than what an actual 3 year-old’s parents might be okay with.

And that’s the worst offense: The movie is not genuine. It works hard for nothing, and it has no vulnerability. It just uses old Disney standbys to pretend to be vulnerable. Have the music swell and the characters gasp and the songs drip emotion when characters are meant to be saying or doing something emotional.

But truthfully, think of all the Disney movies you’ve ever seen with the hardest emotional moments. The sheer joy of Genie when he realizes he’s free. The anguish when Elsa thinks Anna’s been frozen forever, or when Anna thinks she’s dead. The trauma when Simba loses Mufasa. The longing and dreaming of Ariel when she reaches up out of her grotto. The sense of foreboding when Mother Gothel says “fine, now I’m the bad guy” or the heartbreak in Rapunzel’s eyes when she thinks Flynn has abandoned her, or the shame on Aladdin’s face when Jafar reveals he’s a street-rat, or the horror of cruelty when the stepsisters rip up Cinderella’s dress, or Kala’s tears when Tarzan leaves her in the treehouse, or Sarabi’s tears when Simba comes back, or Mulan’s father tossing aside the sword and token of the Emperor to embrace Mulan, or heck, even just Lilo pushing Stitch in the woods and telling him “get out of here.” This movie has no moments like that. It has moments you can tell that the filmmakers wanted to hit like that—but they don’t.

Because no work is put into building them up. You know how much Simba loves Mufasa, because you’ve been watching their chemistry more than any other character all the way up till he dies. You know how much Mulan wants to please her family because she spends all of Act I desperately attempting to do that. You know Quasimodo believes the world below is beautiful and wants them to accept him because he has interesting things like—talking to gargoyles, convincing us that he’s lonely; building a scale model of the townspeople, convincing us that he sees them in a beautiful way and wishes he were beautiful in more ways than one like them, too.

Right down to the facial expressions, none of them are as anguished, happy, sad, excited, silly, in any convincing way like all of Disney’s other movies. Asha’s “low moment” when she’s afraid her “wish” hurt everyone else (still vague on what that wish ever was) lasts two seconds, she’s not crying, she’s barely sitting with slumped shoulders, and her family barely spend two seconds comforting her. They basically just say, “aw, no, it’s not y fault, it’s the king’s.” And she’s like, “yeah okay” and that’s that. It’s like the animators we’re afraid to animate really intimate emotions on the characters’ faces. The voice actors, too.

And the whole movie is peppered with Easter eggs to past Disney movies. But all that does, if you really know Disney beyond the visuals, is make you think of how hollow this movie is in comparison. How much you wish you were watching Cinderella or The Little Mermaid or something with depth and vulnerability instead of Wish.

#I’ll talk more in an organized fashion later #wish #disney’s wish #wish Disney #wish 2023 #critique #spoilers

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fagtainsparklez · 8 months

Text

anyways this session has really solidified the reason quackity chose the people he did for me. because i remember connor getting an ask a while back complaining about how they wanted quackity to add people who would actually play instead of his friends (ie wilbur) who may not be active as often and. it rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons, but mainly because it's clear quackity didn't choose just his friends. sure, it was a bonus that he was close to them, but quackity's first priority has never been "who can minmax the server and stream every day?" it's been "who is a good storyteller/who can tell a good story?"

because that's the core of it. the qsmp isn't about streaming or playtime, not necessarily. it's about the story. during the first announcement, people were surprised to see dantdm and jaidenanimations on the cast, because dan isn't really in quackity's circle and jaiden is barely an mcyt even if you push it. but you know what they were? storytellers. dan was a part of so many people's childhoods with his mod showcases and miscellaneous videos, all of which had lore. jaiden creates entire stories from video games! games with pre-determined stories that she has to spin into something new, something of her own.

and then the brazilians were added. some of them still did minecraft content, sure, but not all of them. but they were still storytellers. cellbit has his entire rpg. pac and mike have multiple roleplay series. and when you get to the french, the pattern repeats. baghera, for example, with her gta roleplay. not all of them are minecrafters at their core, but they are storytellers, and for most of them, improvisational ones at that. the same, of course, goes for the newest batch. pol is a filmmaker. vshojo has insane, deeply complex lore for all their vtubers. bagi is adept at ttrpg. sure, people being able to log on often is a necessity, but what good would that be if it ended up sacrificing quality for quantity?

this session really nailed it for me because you could see their expertise shine through. i feel like, even still, a lot of mcrp is seen as "lesser" because of its medium, or because of how it can switch between roleplay and just creators hanging out. roleplay is only typically praised and called to attention when it's highly emotional, and the same goes for the storytelling, with a heavier focus on how well creators can utilize angst as opposed to other moments. but this was treated differently. the silliness of minecraft was gone. what was previously disregarded came into light, like how fucking smart foolish is when writing characters and how well quackity is able to play into the story while staying true to his character, among other things! i just think quackity's brilliance in selecting his server members isn't talked about enough, because holy shit has he done a fantastic job

#icarus speaks #idk. i love the meta of the storytellers #bc it's about them in the end. it's not about minecraft. they could do this in Any medium #to an extent #i just think they <3 do u get me #sorry i used up all my braincells in the main post orz #this is all i got

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mysteryshoptls · 1 month

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SSR Vil Schoenheit - Luxe Couture Vignette

"My orders are absolute"

[Fairest City – Queen's Palace]

Announcer: The curtain rises on this year's Fairest City's International Film Festival. And today... Please take a gander around me!

Announcer: Queen's Palace is completely flooded with the press and movie fans. Enthusiasm is in full force!

Announcer: With so many filmmakers and actors present, this is the event of the season. Let's chat with a few of them.

Announcer: Hello! Which production are you most excited to see during this film fest?

Movie Fan A: WELL, OF COURSE, THE LIVE-ACTION BEAUTIFUL QUEEN MOVIE!!

Movie Fan A: Ever since I was a kid, I've always loved the animated movie on the Fairest Queen and her spirit of tenacity.

Movie Fan A: I'm really looking forward to the live-action remake! Can't wait to see what other info they drop during the film fest.

Announcer: The anticipation is immense! Alright, next… Hey, you over there! And why have you come to Queen's Palace?

Movie Fan B: There's someone I really really need to see…! You know how there's going to be a screening for the Beautiful Queen?

Movie Fan B: I was hoping maybe, just maybe, my most beautiful bias would make a surprise appearance, so I came here!

Announcer: Oho, I see. And who is it you're such a fan of?

Movie Fans: LOOK, IT'S VIL SHOENHEIT!!

Movie Fan B: Yeah, my fave is Vil… HUH!?

Announcer: Everyone, please take a look! Vil Schoenheit has arrived here at Queen's Palace!!

Movie Fans: KYAAAAAAA, VIL-SAMAAAAA!!

Ace: Woah, this is crazy! There's so much screaming for Vil-senpai that I can feel it vibrating my whole body!!

Jamil: Don't lose focus. Our job here is to protect Vil-senpai from his enthused fans and the media.

Azul: Indeed. As recompense for these Luxe couture garments, we must put forth our labor as compensation.

Vil: That's right. [Yuu], Ace, Grim. I expect the three of you to properly carry out your roles as well.

[Yuu nods]

Ace: I mean, I've got on this Luxe couture fit on, so. I gotta make sure I keep lookin' cool, don't I?

Vil: Absolutely. I need you to look your best so you can be of the utmost use for me.

[click! snap!!]

Cameraman: It's Vil Schoenheit!! I gotta snap as many pictures as I can from all angles!

Vil: Hello, everyone, are you all enjoying this very special day?

Movie Fan B: KYAAAAAAA! VIL-SAMAAAA!! I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO MEET YOUUUUU!!!!!

[Vil waves hand with a sparkle]

Movie Fan B: Ooahh, he waved at me! Now I can… die without regrets…

[faints with a thud]

Movie Fan C: PLEASE SPARE ME A GLANCE TOO, VIL-SAMA!

[Vil looks over with a sparkle]

Movie Fan C: THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFEEEE!

[faints with a thud]

Azul: Amazing… Fans are dropping like flies just from meeting Vil-san's eyes…

Jamil: Even when we find erratic people in the crowd, they're instantly affected by Vil-senpai's beauty.

Ace: And this guy's just as stoic as ever even seeing the crowd act like this… Vil Schoenheit is way too incredible!

1. He's so enchanting… 2. I can't stop taking pictures…!

Vil: Don't be content just yet. We're just getting started.

Vil: We'll make sure that no one ever forgets my momentous walk down the tapis rouge.

Vil: Jamil, bring that to me.

Jamil: Of course, I have it right here.

Announcer: Vil Schoenheit has stopped on the tapis rouge and has been handed a box.

Announcer: What could possibly be in the box? …It's an apple! Vil Schoenheit is now holding an apple!

[green smoke starts to surround Vil]

Announcer: Oh? And now he's surrounded by smoke… I can't see Vil Schoenheit at all.

Announcer: What is happening…? Huh!?

Vil: NOW, EVERYONE KEEP YOUR EYES ON ME, THE FAIREST ONE OF ALL!

Fans: WOOOOOOOOOOAH! / KYAAAAA!!!!

Announcer: B-B-B-Beautiful!!! He's so beautiful… More beautiful than I could possibly imagine!!!

Grim: That guy with the mic can't say nothin' other than beautiful anymore.

Ace: Haha, he's even stolen the announcer's vocab away. I'd expect nothing less from Vil-senpai.

Cameraman: Look at his spectacular attire, and his flawless posing…! This is out best chance to snag all the photos!!

[click! snap, snap!!]

Vil: Heh. Just as I expected, the reception is fantastic.

Azul: Indeed. Your design was a grand success. This was a fantastically gorgeous idea fit for this stage.

Vil: It's much too early to be complacent. All of you, make sure you follow me closely.

Jamil/Azul/Grim/Ace: Yes, sir! / Got it!

[Yuu nods]

[Fairest City – Queen's Palace]

[Vil talking to others]

Ace: Hey, hey, [Yuu]! That person Vil-senpai is talking to right now…

1. They're definitely that one recently popular singer. 2. I feel like I've seen them on TV…

Ace: Right? Celebrities are chatting him up left and right… You can really feel just how much of a super celeb Vil-senpai really is.

Ace: Maybe we can slip into the convo at the right time! Think we could get an autograph!?

Grim: Oh hey, they're passin' out drinks over there! I'm gonna go get… Myah!?

[Vil grabs Grim]

Grim: Hey, don't grab me by the scruff!

Vil: Silence! Just because we made it safely inside the Queen's Palace does not mean you can do as you please.

Vil: You are to stay calm and refined, and carry yourself beautifully during the film festival as well. Or do you intend on humiliating me?

Azul: Quite right. The energy of these first years can be quite troublesome.

Vil: If you think so, I would rather you watch those little spudlings instead of passing out your business cards.

Vil: Especially while you tell them you're my schoolmate… Really, I give you an inch and you take a mile.

Jamil: I've confirmed our seating arrangements for the screening. The theater is just past here.

Vil: Wonderful. We should make our way there before the aisles get too crowded.

Grim: Movie's finally over. That was super long… Hey, why's everyone standin' up all a sudden?

[APPLAUSE]

Azul: Well, well… What a magnificent standing ovation.

Vil: The Fairest Queen's spirit of tenacity was fully explored throughout the whole Beautiful Queen movie.

Vil: She was never complacent with the status quo, and spent her entire life attempting to improve herself further…

Vil: It's only natural to be deeply moved by how she pursued her life goals, especially as a performer, myself.

Jamil: I agree. It was a fantastic film. We should join the rest of the audience in applause.

[APPLAUSE]

Vil: Ah… The entire venue has nothing but praise for this film. A spectacular sight to behold. I'm sure Dad is just as elated right now.

Ace: The live-action Beautiful Queen movie rocked. Based on that showing, it'll definitely be a huge hit!

Azul: Well, the film fest has concluded… Vil-san, what are our plans afterward?

Vil: Our plans? Well, that would be…

Vil: We head home.

Ace/Grim/Azul: HUH!?

1. That sucks… 2. No way…

Jamil: It'll get dark soon. If we want to make tomorrow's classes, we should probably head back to campus soon.

Vil: That's right. The main role of a student is to learn. That's why even I have put my career on hold.

Vil: When I received my admissions letter from Night Raven College, I have to admit I did hesitate.

Vil: Was there even any reason to place my acting career on hold just to attend a school…? Or so I thought.

Vil: However, I'm sure that the knowledge, studying and experience that comes from school life will undoubtedly be a boon.

Vil: Once I decided that, I chose to reduce my work commitments and instead devote myself to my studies.

Vil: By spending my days simply being Vil Schoenheit and a member of the Pomefiore Dormitory...

Vil: My understanding of the Fairest Queen's spirit of tenacity deepened, which in turn led to this successful promotion.

Vil: My daily life as a student has absolutely been a boon for my career, just as I expected it would be back before I enrolled… No, I suppose it would be correct to say even more than I had expected.

Vil: This little venture has proved to me that my decision had been the correct one.

Vil: And thus, I am also determined to spend the rest of the time I have left as a student to my fullest, with no regrets.

Ace: Vil-senpai…

Ace: Okay, you can say all that, but you do realize that this is probably the only time the rest of us get the chance to go to a film festival, right!?

Azul: Ace-san is completely correct. It would be an absolute pity to squander this opportunity to network with all these celebrities!

Vil: Oh, is that so. Then do as you please. That is, if you are willing to violate your contract.

Ace: Violate what contract? We played your lackeys already.

Azul: Actually… The conditions set by Vil-san were to "walk the red carpet"…

Azul: If he intends on walking the same path we took to get here, we must escort him during his return, as well…!

Vil: Correct. I see you fully understand the terms of your agreement.

Ace: Ehhhh～!? I thought we were only here for the grand entrance…

Vil: So I'll ask you one more time. I will be returning to campus, what will you do?

Ace/Azul: Return alongside you…

Jamil: Considering the role we were undertaking today, it's only natural.

Vil: Excellent. Then we should make haste to leave the venue.

[Fairest City – Queen's Palace]

[snap! snap snap snap!!]

Grim: Myah, the flashes are way too bright!!

Azul: I had anticipated the crowd would be more settled than when we had entered the venue...

Ace: Doesn't feel like they've petered out at all… And we even tried slipping out mid-fest.

Announcer: Vil Schoenheit-san! Please elaborate on your promotion work for this event!

Newspaper Reporter: WE WOULD BE HONORED TO HEAR YOUR COMMENTS ON THE LIVE-ACTION BEAUTIFUL QUEEN MOVIE!

Cameraman: Vil-SAN!! LOOK THIS WAY!!

Jamil: The press are coming at us in full force…! Ace, Azul, hold them back!!

Ace/Azul: RIGHT!!

Vil: Now, now, how frantic everyone is. There's no need to worry, I won't run from you.

Vil: I will gladly answer your questions, at least until I finish walking the tapis rouge.

Newspaper Reporter: Whew, that draped train flutters so beautifully… …Ack! I shouldn't be standing around enraptured.

Newspaper Reporter: Ahem. Then, I'll start. How did it come to be that you would do this promotion?

Vil: Eric Venue personally requested me. Must mean no one was better suited for the promotion than I.

Magazine Reporter: Your whole outfit coordination today is so stunning! Can you tell us some highlights about this look?

Vil: I call this "Black of Night" ―

Vil: It came about by utilizing the iconic Luxe brand color that originates in the Fairest Queen legends.

Vil: Instead of accessorizing with magnificent jewelry, I simply used myself as the adornment…

Vil: Which allowed my beauty to be accentuated even further.

Announcer: SPECTACULAR! YOU ARE TRULY BEAUTIFUL!!

Announcer: Speaking of which… Your companions here all look fabulous as well. Are you all models as well?

Ace: Ooh, is that how we look? I mean, we all look pretty rad, can't fault you for thinking so～

Azul: I'm grateful that you thought to cast your eyes on me as well. Thank you so much for you kind words.

Jamil: Guess it's not too terrible to be thought of as one of Vil-senpai's colleagues.

Grim: Myahaha! This guy knows what they're talkin' about!

1. Wow, I can't believe we were mistaken for models!

Vil: Calm down… Don't get all riled up. Obviously, it's because of the Luxe attire you're wearing.

2. I feel like I've never been noticed like this before…

Vil: Heh, you seem pretty composed. At least you can tell it's obviously because of the Luxe attire you're wearing.

Vil: Although, I suppose if you are basking in my glow, it wouldn't be surprising for others to notice you lot as well.

Vil: These fellows aren't models, but are merely my dutiful manservants. And they obey every order I give them.

Vil: Isn't that right?

Grim/Ace/Jamil/Azul: Yes, sir... Vil Schoenheit-sama.

Vil: …It seems the tapis rouge has come to an end. I'm sorry, but this is the end of the interview.

Vil: I do hope you all have a wonderful evening.

Announcer: Vil-san, please wait a moment!!

Newspaper Reporter: I still have another question for you…!

Vil: Here we go, boys. Get to work and secure a path!

Grim/Ace/Jamil/Azul: YESSIR!!

[Fairest City – Crystal Galleria]

Ace: Wheeew, we finally escaped. The press was pretty intense, but that was an ambush of fans!

Azul: Gasp, whew… Truly an ordeal…

Azul: With how Vil-san made such a grand appearance in front of the media like this despite recently taking a break from his acting work...

Azul: I can fully understand why anyone would want to take as many photos as possible in that scenario…

Vil: It's been sometime since I've had such an ardent reception. It's not something that I get to deal with while on Sage's Island.

Jamil: Good thing we were able to give them all the slip. It was a great plan to confirm possible back roads to escape to last night.

Ace: Is that what you were all doing!? I just thought you guys all snuck out of the hotel to have a bit of fun…

Vil: I don't think Azul or Jamil would let a single thing slip by them. You both have earned my praise just this once.

Vil: There were a few close calls, but… I would say you all just barely succeeded in the job I entrusted you with.

Azul: Your kind words fill me with joy. And once again… Thank you for allowing us to accompany you.

Vil: Of course. This was a fairly wonderful two days, was it not? Not only we were able to relax here in the Fairest City…

Vil: But we were also able to watch an early showing of the live-action Beautiful Queen.

Azul: Yes, indeed. The movie was utterly beautiful from start to finish… I could even feel the dedication in the tableware and cutlery chosen for the film.

Jamil: I understand the tenacious spirit of the Fairest Queen even better now. I feel like I need to put forth even more effort in my own life now.

Vil: Excellent thoughts.

Vil: Next. How about we hear the thoughts from the youngest spudlings here, who seem to be trying to avoid eye contact, hm?

Ace: It was super real-looking, and super fab, and the Fairest Queen was suuuper pretty… Basically, it was just super awesome all around!

1. I agree! 2. It was impressive!

Vil: Sigh, how appalling. How could you watch that masterpiece and only have such boring impressions?

Vil: It seems you still don't have a full understanding on the spirit of tenacity.

Vil: Once the movie is available to the public, you are to go watch it in theaters. Understand? My orders are absolute.

Vil: …And if the mood strikes, perhaps I'll join you.

Requested by @amourteddyst and @ordinaryanon.

#twisted wonderland #twst #vil schoenheit #ace trappola #azul ashengrotto #jamil viper #twst vil #twst ace #twst azul #twst jamil #twst grim #twst yuu #twst translation #twst tapis rouge #mention: eric

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