Our local cinema centers are finally going completely digital. The work to convert every single one of the theaters in Trondheim starts in March, and about half of them will be fitted for 3D projection as well.

I’m thrilled! Let’s keep the cinema clubs for celluloid, nostalgia and the old indie vibe. Let’s leap into the digital age with our commercial cinemas. With Avatar pointing to the ideal future of cinema technology, the digital projection (2D and 3D) is what people will be happy to pay for.

I saw The Road the other day. The film itself left much to be desired, and the celluloid print was a joke. Patchy and uneven colours, a less than satisfying sound reproduction (although that might be down to the terrible score…), in a theater perfectly capable of flawless digital projections.

A decade ago people ridiculed George Lucas for filming Star Wars on digital cameras. I liked his reply: When people ask me if the time is right for this, I say we should have been doing it 20 years ago.

Amen. Let’s go!

You have all seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s a sequence where Indiana Jones has lowered himself into the Map Room in the desert, and he has placed the staff of Ra in the right position. He’s waiting for the sun to align itself with the medallion at the staff’s head and show him the location of the Well of Souls, resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Harrison Ford’s face displays intense excitement and emotion as the sunbeam edges closer to the mark, and finally ignites the secret location. How did Steven Spielberg direct Ford in the scene? By music.

Spielberg often used a boom blaster to direct scenes in this movie. In the case of the Map Room he had selected a piece of classical music that composer John Williams would later mimic in his original score. The piece articulated the emotional experience Spielberg wanted the character and the audience to have at that point, so he simply told Ford to react to the music and not think about it.

Other directors are known to use music on set. Peter Weir certainly comes to mind. It can help the performances, and lessen the need for rationalizing characters and action. But it can also be a useful tool in writing. Personally, I rarely write without music. The challenge is to find background music that fits the story, the characters, and maybe in particular the emotional experience you hope to create for the reader/viewer.

When Pål and I worked on the latest draft of Nidarholm (Norwegian pdf available in the downloads section), I found help in Elliot Goldenthal’s score for Alien3. On our current project I am still trying to figure out what might spur me on, although I often return to John Williams and Vangelis.

The quest continues.

Challenges are always fun. And writing under pressure can really feed your creativity. So how about trying to write a 100-page screenplay in one month?

This is the challenge extended by the people behind Script Frenzy. There are no prizes or awards other than feeling good, and getting a lot of writing done. The fun of it is in registering on the site, keeping track of your page count and participating on the Script Frenzy forums.

The whole idea is of course just having fun. The odds of any of the participants coming up with the script for the next Oscar-winner or Spielberg´s next blockbuster are slim to none. But that doesn´t matter. Writing lots of material in a short burst is a great way to kick up your productivity – you´ll learn and grow as a writer.

The challenge starts April 1st, and all the details plus a nice library of writer´s resources can be found on the Script Frenzy site. Am I participating? Sadly, no. I´ll be polishing my short documentary opening on April 15th. But I´m seriously considering going into a writing frenzy on my own come May or June.

And if you don´t have a story to write, no worries, just check out Script Frenzy´s own Plot Machine. My randomly generated plot came out like this:

After waiting in line for a Wii

the cast of Riverdance

tries to break into pro Sumo wrestling

Me and Pål are currently working on the first draft of a new project. We’re excited about the concept, the story and the characters, and thus the writing becomes very pleasant. We’re also getting ready to start a treatment or first draft for a second project. You see, we don’t want to stop writing…

In my experience, it is very easy to stumble into the trap: Whether you write on your own or with a partner, life throws you any number of curveballs, and it’s easy to get sidetracked. When a project looses momentum, months and months may go by without any work being done. We think that we have come up with a potential safeguard:

Always have 2 projects going!

That doesn’t mean you’re writing 2 scripts at the exact same time. But it does mean that you can spend two or three months doing a first draft on project A, and then put it in a drawer. The next couple of months you spend on project B, doing a draft. When that’s done, you place it in the drawer and take out the first project for a second draft.

Advantages: 1) Getting your distance to a draft before reworking it, without spending two months picking lint out of your belly button. You’re constantly working. 2) You stand a much better chance of actually doing two screenplays a year. 3) You have that good feeling inside, a sense of intellectual and artistic surplus, because there is always another project you’re excited about getting to, and it’s waiting for you in the drawer.

Just when we had all chipped in on the best movies of the past decade, someone thought it would be fun to dwell a little on the worst movies EVER. Empire Magazine got their readers to vote. What do you think?