#myswf2016

I'll put together a more comprehensive review set to adorn my sadly neglected little blogger but for now, this micro-update and Studio collage, complete with dorky touristy stickers, will do.

Such a brilliant few days thanks to 14 sessions, 28 panellists/speakers (alongside some excellent facilitators) and 1 incredibly talented performer who somehow created a seamless solo hour of Austen oftentimes without the apparent need for oxygen. I look to you, Miss Vaughan's Miss Bates. Do you not breathe?

Got in a good mix of the journalistic, the political, the philosophical and the literary this year, happy crumbs of the untaken arts undergrad and the masters that will never see completion. Particular favourites? The Danger of Ideas, The Risky Business of Breaking News and Murder in the Making were all outstanding panel discussions with amazing moderators and Emma Sky, Emily Maguire (saw her in 2 panels) and Rebecca Vaughan all particularly blew me away in sessions that, funnily enough, fantastically bookended my time at the festival. Nothing to do with primacy or recency however, they three are simply that impressive.

Anyhow, cheers to SWF for one of my favourite times of year and onward till SWF2017 a.k.a. my next run on Gleebooks. In other news, I now officially live amongst piles of paperbacks threatening to topple and bury me alive at any moment. #theymaytumble #imaydie #sweetphonicdeath #iregretnothing #canyoutellthiscamefrominsta? #myswf2016

Google Doodles: Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 141st Birthday

Olivia Huynh's awesome Google Doodle

I could not love this more. When I got onto Google this morning, I sort of did a double take as I watched the little redhead trying to eat the cake and thought, 'No way, is that Anne Shirley?'. Love the first one, but the second two are just excellent. The cake scene is perfectly done... and the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters? LOVE IT. Beautiful, beautiful job Olivia Huynh. A really lovely tribute to one of my absolute favourite childhood authors.

Rewind: I received my all-time favourite present when I was 13 (crazily enough, just getting to 20 years ago now) - my brother had me for Kris Kringle at Christmas that year and turned out, he had trawled all over different bookstores trying to find all 8 books in the Anne series (and an added bonus in Akin to Anne) for me. I very nearly cried when he presented it to me on Christmas Eve and I immediately guessed just by holding it. Seriously, greatest present of all time (cheers, bro!) and of course, I still have them and have read and re-read them all.

Happy 141st Birthday, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and thank you for teaching my very young and impressionable self the importance of a broad, deep and active imagination. You cemented my already growing love of writing and of stories with your vivid prose, your lovable characters and your whimsical stories and I'll never, ever forget it. 

All The Light We Cannot See

Done. Found it by chance, started it on Friday morning on the train, now mired in that familiar regret that comes with literally closing the book on the worlds created. Pure story, sheer skill, insanely lyrically beautiful and totally worth however late I wake up tomorrow. I've no idea who you are, Dave Eggers, but I couldn't agree more. #readit #rereadit #books #doerr

Camus Can Do

A recent article I wrote for SO Magazine Australia

The Uses of Wonder - a talk by Bobette Buster at the Sydney Writers Festival 2014

In a world where we often prefer entertainment fast-tracked or easily digested in a 6-second vine or readily ‘lol’d at in a meme, we all still love a good story.

That we as humans are all hardwired to respond to a good story well told was the very essence of Bobette Buster’s presentation at the Sydney Writers Festival – The Uses of Wonder.

A highly respected Hollywood story consultant and lecturer for such studios as Disney, Pixar and Sony and a professor at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Bobette spoke about the uses of enchantment in cinema and animation and her charisma, passion and insight proceeded to enchant the audience who had come to see her, myself included.

We were treated to an eye opening peek into the layers of cinematic storytelling behind such films as Finding Nemo, Toy Story 2, E.T. and Babe. Bobette also revealed the lesser known driving themes behind them, truths like the message of kindness and the ordinary becoming extraordinary in E.T. or the ultimate transformation of Rex the Dog in Babe as he humbles himself and gives away the much coveted spotlight to let Babe shine. Probably most piercing is the message of Toy Story 2 which shows us that people we love may very well ‘grow up’, leave us and forget about us, but, just like the toys left behind, we can still choose to love them anyway.

Insights like these are part of the staying power that is story-telling and cinema. As Bobette pointed out, though cinema is still a young story-telling medium, the use of story has long been an integral part of the human psyche.

Advancing from oral tradition, mythology and fables have maintained power over the centuries because they speak about the fundamental journey of being human. They appeal to our innate senses of courage, justice, forgiveness and hope and can even help prepare us and for whatever hardships the world may send our way.

Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, while a Dachau inmate, observed that the children raised on Grimm’s Tales were better able to keep hoping despite their dire circumstances. One imagines that this hope of a better life was what Anne Frank harboured inside her, aided by a poster of film idol Sonja Henie on her wall, as she wrote in a diary that would end up inspiring millions.

Cinema is therefore an artform of transformation, a chance to go places we would never go, take emotional journeys with characters we’ve never met and see the world around us with clearer eyes. As Bobette stated, ‘truly great films show us how difficult it is to find those profound truths and they do so with dimensionality’ staying with us long after the last credits roll and allowing us to pass on a ‘baton of understanding’ from each generation in order to inspire and strengthen the next.

SO…

While movies and animation allow us to visit new worlds, learn about our world and about strength, courage and hope, it’s then up to us to open our eyes, take a good look at the world around us and see the extraordinary in the ordinary. We are surrounded by stories – those of our families, our friends, our community and most importantly, inside each of us. We are all creating our own story and it’s up to us to make it one that stands up and has an impact. And if you want to tell it, then do it. Don’t be frozen by fear – speak, write and be heard.

Give yourself a chance to be an inspiration.

- Jelynn Millare

WWdN Love and RE-Post #1 of People I Boundlessly Admire Online

So I finally read Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton and it was one hell of a great read. The guy is warm, witty, honest and insightful and quite frankly what more could you want from an autobiographical account of one’s journey through post-childstardom? The man has done well for himself and it’s genuinely been a pleasure going along for the latter part of the ride as I’ve followed his blog, Wil Wheaton Dot Net, for the last 10 or 11 years. I couldn’t be happier that he not only discovered his calling to the Writerhood but was able to so wonderfully re-establish himself and his life in a way that has clearly made him a happy and fulfilled guy, particularly after everything he went through.

Seriously, read it and grab a copy of Dancing Barefoot as well. That collection of blog entry derived memoirs also makes for some very entertaining reading.

Meanwhile, I wrote what’s below almost 3 years ago now. Why the repost? Well admittedly, if you’re able to suppress the tl;dr urge inside you and get to the end, you’ll see that I was next planning to write about Wil Wheaton. Having touched upon that a little above, I actually found myself wanting to share about another onliner who has only continued to impress me over the years and having already articulated my admiration, I decided 27-year-old me could take the reins on that one.

So voila!

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Posted by MJ at 1:00 AM - Tuesday, July 27, 2010

So I’ve been doing the online thing for nearly 12 years now (which is, funnily enough, also how long I’ve been honing my writing skills… skills that will likely not make an appearance in this entry) and along the way - what with its ever widening reaches and its providing wonderfully artistic people with more tools than ever before - I’ve encountered some amazingly talented people during my billions of hours floating through cyberspace.

Whittling the list down so that this entry doesn’t end up ridiculously long won’t really be that easy, but I’ll do what I can. Some of them will certainly be familiar, while others will only have been known to select pockets of people with certain common interests (however dorky those interests may be. Or are). In order to simplify the process for myself, I’m going to approach this chronologically.

On second thought… I’ve decided I’ll make this a series of entries. I know I should reign in my inner rambler, but I just can’t and there’s so much to say.

#1 Nicky aka Silversun

Back in 2001, while attempting to find more info on a TV show that I had recently become rather obsessed with and that had been cancelled, I came across a place called Fanforum. The show was Young Americans and my friend, Mel, had introduced it to me and, despite the show’s complete lack of substance, talent or good writing (seriously!), we both kind of fell in TV love. It was genuinely pathetic (and only she and I will ever know just how far into the depths that pathetic plunged), however, in stumbling quite by accident upon the YA forum on Fanforum, I not only got to catch up on what Aussie TV had not bothered to air, but I also came across an amazing bunch of people and this marked the beginning of some of the most important friendships in my life.

As all this also marked my most thorough attempt at fanfic to date, an area left completely open due to a single season cancellation, I became acquainted with some extremely talented writers who had done incredible jobs of continuing a show that we hadn’t wanted to end. Nicky was one of those people.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t her alternate second season that made her catch my eye. In fact, it was a crossover fic she had written, combining YA with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Pretty left field combination, huh? But it was so well done. Never mind how well this girl knew how to visualise scenes that sprang to life in my mind, but her representations of the BtVS characters were so on point, I could hear the dialogue so clearly in my head - Buffy, Xander, Willow… seriously, I couldn’t get over it. So, I told her so.

After that, we were in touch pretty often, reading each others work and sort of beta-ing them as well. She was one of the first people to read my then developing YA fic and her encouragement was one of the few things that got me to the 100 and something pages that I eventually punched out. I couldn’t have been more grateful, especially considering how delicate my life’s relationship with writing was at the time. In fact, she was one of the first people in my life to really encourage me to keep writing, and she did this all the way from where she lives in NZ.

Her work, meanwhile, never ceased to amaze me. She wrote each episode in prose, but with some minor cinematic direction, providing teasers, voiceovers and location changes. Her use of language never failed to impress me and, as I said before, everything she wrote lived and breathed in my mind’s little TV set. Not to mention her handle on plot and continuity and her grasp of character, something so often lacking in other fic writers’ works. Admittedly, an 8-episode season only provided the most basic of introductions to character, but she took those introductions and developed them amazingly. Furthermore, she kept in style to the genre, only ‘failing’ in that her characters swore, unlike their real TV-world counterparts. Not only did she ‘resurrect’ the show for those of us who missed it, but she made it her own, breathing depth and life into it that hadn’t actually been achieved by the original creators. She gained a substantial audience and even created new fans for the show, also managing to pick up a stack of online awards in the process.

Inevitably, as time went on and studies and life demanded more attention, both our communication and our writing slowly began to wane and, although I kept up with her work, we lost touch. Yes, the sad thing about online relationships of any kind… more often than not, they end up petering out in this very way.

A couple of years passed and one day, I decided to look her up again. I found that she had continued the series and had gotten to Season 4 so every so often, I would check it out, still marvelling at her writing ability and enjoying the way the ‘show’ had evolved. Then, I noticed she had a ‘Progress Journal’ on her site so I checked it out. It brought me to her Livejournal which allowed me a little insight into what she was now up to, aside from the writing and the study, and it was here, that I found her work in vidding. Her vids revealed that her talent for creating such vivid tapestries in her writing, also spilled into the realm of visual media and I discovered a whole new level of admiration for her creativity and vision.

Now, although my memory is a little hazy on this, I am certain that by this time, I had already seen some fan vids on other fansites and on a site that, back in good ol’ 2005, was still slowly expanding (You-what?). Fan vids, at the time, were gradually developing as a form of fanart, which prior to that point had mostly consisted of Photoshop artworks and animations, and I had seen a few - albeit a poorly edited and clunky few, mostly consisting of some cheesy song playing to some chopped clips. Some had certainly stood out (one that comes to mind was a vid exploring the Harry/Hermione relationship after the release of the third Harry Potter movie. It was to Everytime by Britney Spears, which might sound kind of lame, but actually worked well with the vid), but for the most part, they weren’t much to talk about.

Nicky’s YA-Think Twice vid blew my mind. While it may be overdoing to say I thought it looked like a professional vid, it was not far from that at all. She had created a study of the Scout/Bella/Sean conflict to Eve 6’s Think Twice (an awesome song that I’m happy she introduced me to) and her manipulation of those clips to the music and lyrics was phenomenal. She was able to not only create faux-flashbacks, but her transitions were all on beat, well paced and matching the rapidity of the drums. One section that completely slayed me had an overlay of rapidly changing scenes on one scene, all perfectly in time with the song building up between the bridge and the next verse. It was unbelievable. I had never, ever seen a fan vid quite like it.

Having found one vid, I, of course, sought out more and her other clips were all just as amazing and even better. I’m sure it’s safe to say that Think Twice was an extremely well done amateur production, but it only meant that she developed her skill and created even more amazing vids after. She had also linked to some other talented vidders, notably Becky of Tired-Eyes.net, and my appreciation of the art only grew. Vidders (and I mean REAL vidders, not those people who just lump a bunch of clips and effects together with a song, but people who actually delve into character studies and even tell new stories) are a group of little known talents who are, thanks to the growth of the net, slowly getting their due (check out Vividcon 2010). Nicky herself appears to have gained an even bigger audience (hell, she’s actually had people create vids for her writing. Yourstreetserenade’s vids are particularly awesome) and a stack of accolades and I couldn’t be happier for her. She’s incredibly talented and she deserves it all.

Anyway, if you’re up for checking out her work, just have a peek at the link above. If you’re a fan of the vastly developing world of online art, I highly recommend it.

Although I still haven’t actually attempted to get back in touch with her personally (due to a dillemma along the lines of the ‘Do I say hi or not?’ persuasion), I’ve checked back in to her work every so often over the years and have only continued to be astounded by her visiotivity (thanks Barney). I remember back when we used to email, I once told her that I reckoned she could have shot and directed the YA episodes better than the original creators.

I guess I was onto something there.

Coming up next: he portrayed a few of my favourite characters - Gordie Lachance, Wesley Crusher and Joey Trotta - and was the reason I even thought of starting a blog back in 2003.