Chris Dee
- Gender: Female
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- Chris Dee on Cat-Tales Graphic Novel? Well, the beginning...
- Chris Dee on M&M Battles
- Chris Dee on Female Superheroes
- Chris Dee on Cat-Tales 58: Demon's in the Details
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- Chris Dee on Biased, Stupid, Opportunists or Lazy? This one we can fix.
- Chris Dee on Buds
- Chris Dee on Light Cats
- Chris Dee on Election Day
- Chris Dee on Cat-Tales 56: Armchair Detective
- Chris Dee on Why I don't hate Mondays
- Chris Dee on Joe Straczynski's "Faith Manages"
- Chris Dee on It's got a great beat but...
- Chris Dee on I don't want to jinx this, but...
- Chris Dee on Investment Strategy
- Chris Dee on We're all still a bit mad here
- Chris Dee on Blinders
- Chris Dee on The DEE...but then again
- Chris Dee on 10,000 Times
- Chris Dee on Lighting
- Chris Dee on New Chapter Day
- Chris Dee on Superman Trivia Question
- Chris Dee on The Men in Black
- Chris Dee on Holes
- Chris Dee on Disneyland
Latest in Chris Dees Blog
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Writing with feathers
I think it was L. B. Mayer who responded to the glut of big budget costume epics with the phrase "let us have no more movies where they write with feathers." Which brings us to tonight's word: Period.
Writing period is a hard needle to thread. There is a misconception even among some professionals that if we're in the past, everyone speaks with great formality. Some of the early adaptations of the Brother Cadfael novels are downright painful that way:
Monk: I am Brother Petronis, cook to this house. It is from me you will come each day to collect your master's daily fare.
Servant: I know my duties. Today my mistress has a dinner prepared. She begs only a little sage and basil to season her dish.
The same mistake was made for a different reason in HBO's John Adams series. Pretty much all of John and Abigail's dialogue is taken from their letters. The letters are a very famous and illuminating look at an extraordinary... -
Tricks of the trade
All media have their own language. I remember a two designers fighting an uphill battle to explain a cue to a novice technician. At the end of an act, a man is at home with an angry mob outside his front door. The mob is a sound effect, naturally. The man goes out on the porch to confront them… fade to black.
Now, if the lights and the sound fade together, we the audience are leaving the scene. The moment is frozen in time and we have no indication what might be happening until we return from intermission. If the sound fades first, then the mob is leaving. If the lights fade first, and we hear the mob sound continue in the darkness, then it is an ominous indicator that the mob is tearing he guy apart.
If you're new to a medium, you want to understand its particular language.
Now it gets interesting, because different genres have their own conventions, which are completely different from the language of the medium. I think we all know by now that the...
