I’ve been sitting on this bit of news for two months until everything was finished and definite. Now I can finally share our excitement.

Two scenes from Rock Paper Scissors will be featured on a DVD of companion exercises for a Humanities textbook, published by the mammoth “McGraw-Hill Publishing”:http://www.mhhe.com this year. The DVD comes free with the textbook “Landmarks in Humanities”:http://catalogs.mhhe.com/mhhe/viewProductDetails.do?isbn=0073207268 (the reference to a CDROM on that site is incorrect — it’s actually a DVD). The book will have an initial circulation of half a million. Here’s McGraw-Hill’s description:

bq. ??LANDMARKS in Humanities is a single-volume survey of global culture designed for students of humanities, cultural history, and history of the arts. In chronological sequence, LANDMARKS highlights the most notable monuments of the human imagination–those works of art and architecture, literature, philosophy, and music that have been foremost in shaping the world’s cultures.??

The “companion DVD”:http://www.uwgb.edu/univcomm/news/inthenews/inthenews2004/education6-04.htm was produced by Creative Mindz, a multimedia production company in Ohio. There’s nothing close to the sheer scope of this on the market right now. It contains interactive activities for each chapter in the text, which include audio and video exercises highlighting art throughout the globe.

One scene from Rock Paper Scissors will be used as an interactive lesson in how different layers of audio affect the experience of a film. Students can watch the clip and toggle on/off the dialogue, sound effects, and music tracks. Another scene will illustrate an actor’s performance, accompanied by behind-the-scenes photos of the preparation process.

The final master of the DVD was sent out to the publishers on Monday. We’re very excited and grateful to the folks at Creative Myndz — especially Gregory Cornelius and Bonnie Mitchell — for this opportunity. We’re looking forward to the release of the textbook later this summer.

*** By the way, the subscribers to our free newsletter got this news last week. If you want to stay informed and be the first to know in the future, sign up now using the box at the top of the page (the free newsletter section). We’re jealous of our supporters and wouldn’t dream of sharing your address with anyone else!

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I love DVDs that provide lots of bang for the buck. I mean a good movie, loaded with extra features, commentary tracks, outtakes, and behind the scenes footage. Look no further than “The Incredibles”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317705/combined DVD coming out March 15th.

My sister works for Blockbuster, so I often get to check out DVDs like this before they hit the street. After spending nearly four hours with it last night, I can assure you this one is *packed* with extras. And high-quality extras — not just filler. One of my pet peeves is behind-the-scenes featurettes that are sprinkled with so many clips of the movie you might as well be watching it instead. Thankfully, this DVD has an insightful 27 minute-long featurette. By the time you finish watching it, you feel like you really know director “Brad Bird”:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083348/ and his compadres. Along with the featurettes on Pixar’s other movies, you have to admire the creative process that goes on behind the closed doors in that company. It seems like it would be a killer place to work.

Then there is, of course, “Boundin’”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395479/combined — the short with the sheep and the jackalope that opened the movie in theaters, along with a cute featurette about the creator of that movie (long-time Pixar animator “Bud Luckey”:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0524726/ ). There are some hilarious extra cartoons on there — including a look at the babysitter’s trials with the baby and a terrific sendup of the more awful superhero TV cartoons of the 60′s.

The deleted scenes section shows animated storyboards of scenes that were cut out from the movie, along with explanation from the director why they were ultimately cut. Again, these are a big “cut” above many other tiresome/boring deleted scenes included with movies these days, and run for almost a full half-hour total.

Trust me — if you loved the movie that won Best Animated Feature this year, then these are the “DVDs”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005JN4W/qid=1110182473/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-6138331-2834537?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846 to own.

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A month has passed since our experiment in long-distance writing. You know, writing is a very personal thing. Usually, it’s a solitary activity. So it can be difficult to write alongside somebody else, as we are finding out.

Dakota likes to “cook” his writing. He’ll write out a page or a paragraph, then go back over it again and again — basically, revise as he goes along. He’s pretty comfortable with the process and generally gets things done quickly.

For me, I need to get it right down there on the page first, in whatever form it spills out. It’s usually crap, but who cares — that’s what rewrites are for. The most difficult thing for me is to condition myself to actually *start* writing. While staring at a blank page (or screen), I can think of 10+ different things I could (or should) be doing instead. Suddenly the house gets cleaned, the dishes get washed, the laundry is folded — sometimes, even dessert for dinner that night gets made.

Once I get going, it’s usually a marathon session of a few hours. But getting started is the tough part. The revising is what really gets me going. There’s nothing I like better than sitting in a chair with a fresh printout of something I’ve written, pen in hand, ready to tear it all apart and put it back together again. I love the touchups. The initial construction, however, is a chore.

So we’ve been trying to resolve these conflicts in style. It’s tiring for Dakota to sit down regularly, at a presecribed time, and pound out something less-than-stellar in a couple hours while I’m watching. For me, I probably wouldn’t get much done without that sort of pressure. It may be the broadcast journalist in me.

Our Week 4 Compromise is: Hold a live writing session for two hours on Monday morning. Then, pick away at the script on our own throughout the week, emailing it back and forth whenever the mood strikes. Hopefully, this system will work out better for both of us.

At any rate, we are near to completing our 5th revision on “Amelia’s Ring,” our tentatively titled horror short for an anthology project with our friend, Matt Eppright. His own script is finished for his part and he’ll be shooting in the spring. We’ll be lucky to have something going by fall.

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