IN THE CAN (WHICH LOOKS A LOT LIKE A HARD DRIVE)

Principal photography on Mastermind has wrapped in a marathon session of location shooting, which by turns went smoothly and aggravatingly.

And a bench exploded.

Prior to yesterday, I'd only been able to make sporadic set visits (during which I actually wrote more stuff...like a scene for a revision of my Fringe spec and a scene for a new pilot (the writing never stops)), but for the last day of lensing, I offered my services as general bitch. Though, in this stripped down guerrilla production, my exact duties were as follows:

• Unload gear.
• Assist in blacking out windows.
• Unblacking out windows once we realized the skylight could not be blacked out.
• Stealing things from the location neighbors to complete set dressing.
• Craft services.
• Pushing buttons.
• Little bit of load out.

Thanks to local artist CJ Kang for the use of his loft in the role of Mastermind's lair and also to Swordplay whose space was converted to a variety of locals

Now, the other kinds of work must begin. The director will be cutting the short film version. A rough cut of the web mini-series version will come later. We'll be shooting promos and I'll be cutting those/ There will be a masterplan meeting or two where we map out elements of our web strategy and also target short film fests.

In the next couple of weeks, I'll likely be putting together the end credits sequence. I intend to have a little fun with that. Yeah, I've got fingers in different part of the production.

The biggest kudos go, however to director Susan, stars Brad and Beth, DP Carlos, sound dude George (the politest guy ev-ar), PAs Dave and Amanda, make-up Monica and any people I maybe didn't even know about.

Maybe some of this will keep my mind off the latest explosive development that has too long a fuse.

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JUS' CALL ME STUMPY

Oh, yes. I like the funny books. And one of my favorite writers has a new series out, Stumptown. And it kicks some mighty ass. As it should, as it's written by one of my favorite comics writers, Greg Rucka.

You know that movie Whiteout? The one you didn't see? It's adapted (questionably) from his mini-series. The comic is so much better. It is.

He's also written a lot of Batman. I mean a lot. And very well. Right now, he's writing Batwoman in Detective Comics. The first time since 1938 that Batman has not been the star of said flagship comics of DC Comics. The DC...? Yeah, stands for that.

It goes a little something like this:

Dex is the proprietor of Stumptown Investigations, and a fairly talented P.I. Unfortunately, she's less adept at throwing dice than solving cases. Her recent streak has left her beyond broke—she's into the Confederated Tribes of the Wind Coast for 18 large. But maybe Dex's luck is about to change. Sue-Lynne, head of the Wind Coast's casino operation, will clear Dex' debt if she can locate Sue-Lynne's missing granddaughter. But is this job Dex's way out of the hole or a shove down one much much deeper?

Sound like maybe a low budget crime flick? Not to me. Not after reading the first issue. It's totally got a TV show vibe. It's firmly planted in the comic world. it's not trying to be a different form of media and that is wise. A comic book is not a TV, nor should it be. But I do believe that Mister Rucka watched a lot of The Rockford Files. Yes, I do.

He paints Dex (I'll save what that's short for) fully as a character in a short space while still leaving something's to be revealed. It's not even until the last page that you learn her name and it was only at that point that I realized I didn't know it.

I like that Rucka, as a comics writer, seems to carry a large TV influence. His comics and novel series, Queen & Country (one of the best and most realistic presentations of modern espionage you'll find) is, aside from brilliant, essentially an unofficial sequel, twenty years on, of the British TV series, The Sandbaggers.

One of the best things about Stumptown, aside from it's new take on hard-boiled, is the setting. ONe does not immediately think of Portland, OR...at all. Though I find it a fascinating city. And in Stumptown (as Portland is known) it is a character and it is presented in painstaking accuracy. If Dex hits a bar, it's a real Portland bar. Her house really exists. I think after about fifteen or twenty issues of this series, I gonna want to take the Stumptown tour of Stumptown.

Go to your local comics store forthwith and make purchase of it. If they don't have it because it doesn't feature superheroes or zombies or zombie superheroes, then beat them about the head with the replcia lightsaber that I assure you is somewhere in the building.

Have I steered you wrong?

I haven't. Don't lie.

Now enough of this. It's been a busy day. I hit the Mastermind set this morning, and while there I wrote a scene of a TV spec. I've worked on a secret form from a secret thing and I'm supposed to write a 2000+ word short story before today becomes tomorrow. I'm pushing the definition of tomorrow a little.

V FOR VERACITY

Here's what some tool on the SyFy website wrote about V's motherships.

By the way, regarding V...liked the pilot, on the fence about the rest. Three showrunners before one episode airs...I dunno...

The trouble is, aside from providing an excuse for awesome "reveal" shots where the giant ship blots out the sun, it's actually a completely nonsensical way for extraterrestrials to make an entrance.

Shut the fuck up. This is that guy. You know that guy. The one who picks apart everything. He's the fat fuck at the comic store who says he knows who will win in a fight between the Thing and the Hulk and pulls out a cruddy little mold-encrusted notebook where he's worked out the reasons, not based on comics continuity, but on physics. Because he apparently has full understanding involved with the physics of a man made of fucking orange rock....that can bend at the joints.

This is directed at you, you scraggily haired freak that didn't have a problem with the feasibility of video and sound amplification in addressing entire cities from the underside of a flying saucer.

FOUR THREE REASONS V'S MOTHERSHIPS DON'T MAKE PERFECT SENSE.

1. We'd totally see them coming

In V, 29 massive ships suddenly appear in our airspace with nothing but a few minutes of ominous rumbling noises to tip everybody off. What, was everyone at NASA asleep for the last six months? Their Near Earth Object Program has a whole mess of telescopes dedicated to tracking space objects that might be headed for earth.

I don't recall the show specifying that they didn't use something like a hyperspace or FTL jump system or that they didn't move at the speed of light. Because, at C, there's no reason to expect that the information would disseminate from NASA in the few minutes before they hit the atmosphere. Have the facts, yo.

2. They'd wreak havoc in our atmosphere just by showing up

A couple of dozen mile-wide spacecraft entering the Earth's atmosphere all at once would be enough to cause "mesoscale" weather effects, says Jeff Weber, a meteorologist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Okay. I'll give you this one, you non-suspending of disbelief fucker.

3. They'd cost too much to keep aloft

Ah, anti-gravity: the sci-fi scriptwriter's best friend. As characters in V handily point out, the Visitors use some sort of magical control over gravitation to keep their monstrous ships aloft. Fine. But in the real world, that kind of feat requires thrust, and thrust requires energy — lots of it. I did some back-of-the-envelope estimates using Wolfram Alpha and some standard high-school physics equations, and discovered that it would take about 368 quadrillion joules of energy to propel a 3km-wide, 500m-tall steel ellipsoid 1000 meters into the air. (And that doesn't include keeping it up there.)

See, you got it right in the first sentence and then went and got it wrong. It's the assumption that all we know now is all we'll ever know. Thrust is what we know and thrust is what it must be. I'm perfectly willing to accept that if an alien species has the ability to travel massive distances it takes to get here from wherever, translate all our languages perfectly, and be able to grow human flesh over their lizard scales in perfect undetectable disguises, then it's not a stretch to figure that they're advanced enough they perhaps they have found a means to manipulate or negate gravity by directly acting on that force of nature, not by trying to counter it through sheer force. And if they can do that, they can probably generate massive energy with little effort...if gravity negation even needs that much energy. And don't think you can estimate that, you're a cro-magnon trying to figure out a DVD player.

4. If we bring one down, it's game over for the planet (or, at least that continent)

This is more our problem than theirs, but still: An uncontrolled impact from an object that big would be like "hundreds of nukes," says Alexander Pavlov of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. And that's just if it hits from a few miles up, where jets fly.

Again, you had it and you lost it. No, "but still." In fact, it's practically a defense feature. The humans below don't have the option of bringing a mothership down because of the disaterous impact. Defense by design. That would...wait for it...MAKE FUCKING SENSE.

BUSY. VERY BUSY. HERE... WATCH THIS.

EVIL IS AFOOT

Principal photography has gotten underway. Logo is designed. Theme(s) being composed. Other stuff...has not been done yet. The virtual sets, for instance. Oh, yes. Weirdness is part and parcel of the plan. A plan that is sheer elegance in it's simpl-- Umm.

Anyway, reports from the set have things progressing very well. Loss of the light forced some rescheduling, but still, a lot was accomplished. And thanks to our expert crew of volunteers, including Dave. That was a nice surprise.

Still, certain other crew members are being sought for the latter part of the shoot. Particularly, anyone with experience in lighting with green screens. Contact me at the address in the right sidebar (or in the comments) and I'll put you through to our esteemed director.