I just finished producing a slideshow to play during a wedding next week. There are other things I’d rather be doing at 2 o’clock in the morning, but I am getting paid for it so I won’t complain. Something must have happened since I left the country. These photo montages of the bride and groom from babies through engagement seem to be the latest big thing to show at weddings. Usually, it’s during the reception. But in this case, they want it projected on the wall of the church, right above and next to the altar, during the ceremony itself. Right after the mothers light the unity candle. With an appropriately cheesy song to play along with it. Hey, whatever floats your boat — you only get one chance at your first wedding.

If you’ve seen enough PowerPoint presentations, you’ve probably experienced all the potentials for error. First of all, there’s that embarassing Windows desktop just before the show begins. Then there’s the “oops, I bumped the mouse” gambit where the pointer suddenly becomes visible and we all wait for an eternity for the little arrow to disappear again. And that’s if you don’t accidentally click a button while you do it, which usually brings up the pop-up menu and more fiddling. If you’re lucky enough to get far without any mishaps, then the screensaver kicks in and all goes black. The music stops.

I see this crap coming from miles away. That’s why I’m *not* doing a Powerpoint presentation for this wedding. Instead, I’m importing the photos into Final Cut Pro and editing it like a video. Once it’s burned to DVD, all we have to do is hook up the DVD player to the projector and have someone nearby with a remote. I’ve created a completely black menu screen, so we can turn everything on before the ceremony gets underway and you don’t see a thing on the wall. If that operator can manage to press the ENTER button and set the remote down, the whole slideshow will play and revert back to the black menu when it’s finished. Clean as a whistle.

You sacrifice a little bit of resolution doing it this way, but it’s not enough to make a noticeable difference. I’m already dealing with scanned photos and digital pics in many different sizes and resolutions. And if you use a progressive scan DVD player and use the component video (instead of RCA) outputs to hook up to the projector it makes a big difference.

So I’m grateful to my friends Charles and Debra, who gave me both an excuse to buy a digital projector *and* half the money to pay for it! When you have a spare moment today, say a prayer for their happy marriage and a long life together.

I finished the rough draft of one of my short scripts today. It’s called “Judgement Day,” about a priest who meddles in the lives of his confessors. This is one of the two scripts that I’m considering for our project with Matt. It’s 20 pages, which is about right. It’s common to figure about a minute a page, and after 2 or three rewrites I’ll be fleshing it out another 5 pages or so. Right now it’s mostly the bare-bones of the story. The characters need more development and the story overall needs a bit of refinement.

One thing that helps me when I write dialogue is to remember something I read in a book on novel writing. It was an author — I don’t know why I’m thinking it was Steven King, so maybe it was — who said that you should every line so that the reader wants to hear how the other character is going to respond. For example:

*Tom: “Hello.”*

*Bridget: “Hey. How are you?”*

*Tom: “Cool. Nice shirt you have on.”*

*Bridget: “Thanks. I bought it yesterday.”*

*Tom: “I went shopping yesterday too.”*

…is not very interesting dialogue. This might be better:

*Tom: “Bridget, I haven’t seen you since that embarassing incident last year.”*

*Bridget: “I’m surprised you remember, considering the state you were in.”*

*Tom: “I swear, I didn’t even know the cat was there. You wouldn’t believe where he ended up.”*

*Bridget: “Where was that?”*

*Tom: “I can’t say. I promised not to tell you.”*

*Bridget: “How about a trade? I have something I know you’ll want.”*

Well, that’s a _little_ better, anyway. The point is, there’s more tension in the second dialogue. There’s a kind of tug-of-war between the characters. With each line, we want to see how the next one will respond. The challenge is to craft this sort of dialogue into a natural, believable conversation that is true to the characters and the situation. Probably the worst thing you can do is include every little phrase that someone might say just because “it would happen in real life.” That’s where you get dialogue like that first one. Do you know how boring most real-life conversations would be if you had to read them word-for-word? With a script, you have to cut to the core, past all the extraneous dialogue.

I’m not pretending to be an expert scriptwriter. I just like to share these things I’m learning along the way that inspire me.

As we begin the new year, I’m reviewing what I have on my plate so far.

First, I need to finish up a video slideshow for a wedding I am shooting next weekend. I’ll need to test the DVD on my new portable DVD player to see how it works with the video projector. Then I’m going to

I’m meeting Donna next Tuesday to discuss the business plan for the Artists’ Essentials (working title) DVD series we are producing, so I need to finish fleshing that out. Luckily, Donna has been talking with people and has come up with some great ideas that have focused the project down to a manageable level. Lots of friends and family have volunteered their services to the project, so we should be able to build a crew soon.

I shot a student theater project (mime) for my old high school theater director last November. It’s sitting here on my Mac, shot and edited, but I have to add titles and a menu and burn it to DVDs for the students.

Later in February or March I’ll be setting up a meeting with a small consulting firm about producing a two-hour training video.

I’ve committed to a fall movie project with Matt Eppright. The plan is that we’ll each shoot a short thriller/horror story and combine them into a one-hour movie, ala George Romero/Dario Argento’s “Two Evil Eyes”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100827/combined — it should be Twilight Zone-ish in nature. I’m working on two scripts. Right now I’m not sure which one will make it into the project.

I’m also working on a feature script and reconstructing a treatment that got lost in the move from Japan. Dakota is working on a script titled “Orchid.” I read the first act, and it’s terrific so far. We’re batting a 10-minute short script between us, called “Twosies,” but neither of us are happy with it yet. When it’s done, we’d like to submit it to “triggerstreet”:http://www.triggerstreet.com in the short films category.

I also need to finish “this website”:http://www.richrental.com by February. I’d appreciate any comments on the design, and whether or not it displays correctly in your browser.

I’m finding it tough to balance the paid jobs with the creative ones. I really want to spend my time working on the scripts, but I have an obligation (both to the people who hired me and my wife) to get the paid jobs done first. Sometimes it seems that there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Returned Christmas cards are beginning to trickle in with undeliverable addresses. If you didn’t get a Christmas card from us and would like one, go to the “about us”:http://www.toddkuhns.com/index.php?=about page, click the link to email me and send me your address!