A sweet old lady is living alone in her farm, waiting for the arrival of death to meet her beloved husband again. One night, while sleeping, her life fades away and she is invited to cross death’s door. But just as she is about to do so, the old lady wakes up inside a hospital ward; an arrogant doctor has brought her back to life and he will fight hard against death to keep the old lady alive at any cost.
Director: Javier Recio Gracia
Genre: Animation
Country: Spain
Language: English
Cabinet Magazine has a fascinating and mysterious article on William F. Friedman, perhaps the greatest code-breaker in modern history, who became a hero of World War II by breaking Japan’s PURPLE code and inventing the Army’s best cipher machine. His achievements stemmed from the ‘biliteral cipher’, a simple but powerful encoding technique developed in the sixteenth century, which allows for hidden messages to be conveyed by anything from flower petals to musical notes to faces in a photograph.
Moving on to the next level of Under Angels, here’s a look at “The Board” as of 04.17.2011, based on Blake Snyder’s story crafting system. After creating index cards for 32 scenes and each of the 15 story beats, I picked up a cork board and sectioned it off into four logical rows separated by blue tape. I then applied cards to the board. The rows are broken down as follows:
First Row: Act I; ends with the ‘Break into Two’ beat at Page 25. Second Row: Act II first half; ends with the ‘Midpoint’ beat at Page 55. Third Row: Act II second half; ends with the ‘Break into Three’ beat at Page 85. Fourth Row: Act III.
I’m a big fan of Save the Cat; it’s the best system I’ve ever seen for building solid story structure. The basic idea is that every great story contains 15 beats; in the rigid form of a screenplay, these beats fall on specific pages (minutes).
A blank version of Blake Snyder’s legendary beat sheet — now known as the “BS2” — is as follows:
1. Opening Image (1):
2. Theme Stated (5):
3. Set-Up (1-10):
4. Catalyst (12):
5. Debate (12-25):
6. Break into Two (25)
7. B Story (30):
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
9. Midpoint (55):
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
11. All Is Lost (75):
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
13. Break into Three (85):
14. Finale (85-110):
15. Final Image (110):
Jace D’s Worldwide Website is a completely mental product. It is made from pure lateral thought processes, distilled ideas, and 100% whole natural bits: past, present, and future.
