Monday, February 28, 2011

Screenplay

Yes. I haven't officially made a statement for this (Amazing how much of a celebrity I'm feeling like right now) but I'm attempting to write a screenplay.


Actually... I'm attempting to write three.


With five Highers... It's not happening.


I just add little bits and pieces to the scripts when I feel like it, or at least, when I can add something to them.


Rundown of the scripts:


Everything's going to be okay


Can never describe this one...


Basically, it's a social commentary on the hardships of teenage life. The major issues affecting our generation being teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, depression and self harm. It's a "Valentine's Day", "Love Actually" type direction, but with the genre being drama instead of rom-com. It revolves around (for the most part) three students and their Guidance teacher, who attempts to help them overcome their problems and enable them to do whatever it is they want to do with their lives.


Let's just say, there's a twist, and lots of people won't like it.


Anna


For the lack of a better name... Still haven't really titled it.


This is the script I'm focusing on most at the moment, based on the work I did for my blog post on pro-suicide websites, but this time focusing on pro-ana (Pro-Anorexia) vlogs (video blogs).


I've written a few scenes for it. Or rather... A few soliloquies for Anna's character. I'm pretty proud of them. It's going to be written around anorexia and it's roots, what triggers it? What is the day to day life like for an anorexic person? It's also going to be about depression and self harm.


Not going to lie, Pink's video for "F*ckin perfect" influenced me.


Blood stained snow


My "treat with caution" piece. Too nervous to write it incase I go wrong with it.


Going to take a different view point on the "standard" school shooting movie. Instead of having a homicidal, gothic maniac terrorising fellow students for, from what the viewer can tell from the movie anyways, no reason, my screenplay would try to create a sympathetic villian out of this character, which creates a conflict of morals in the viewers mind. 


See why I'm nervous about writing that one? I don't want to mess it up and end up offending people who have lost their Sons, Daughters, Brothers, Sisters, Friends, Boyfriends, Girlfriends, Fiances or Partners in school shootings. I swear that's not what I'm trying to do.


Ooh. Four if you count the new idea I've got... a comedy about evil henchmen, where the henchmen are the protagonists and "Agent Blonde" is the antagonist.... with cheesy lines when he crashes into the lair.


What up.


Just had to share that with you all.


Oh! And Happy March.


Lauren xxx

Oscar Winners

For a movie geek, Oscar night marks the final exam. Only the best of the best can survive... or well... win I suppose.

To win an oscar is every actors dream, but let me tell you, it's every film-makers dream too.

What I wouldn't do to get an oscar... my own oscar. Not one stolen from "The King's Speech".

Although, I doubt they'd miss ONE award...


By the way, the opening Montage with James Franco and Anne Hathaway was FANTASTIC!


Miss it? You missed out!


Here's a handy little at a glance guide. Check out what you're favourite movie won! 

King's Speech

Best picture

Actor in a leading role (Colin Firth)

Directing (Tom Hooper)

Writing (Original Screenplay)

The Fighter

Actor in a supporting role (Christian Bale)

Actress in a supporting role (Melissa Leo)

Black Swan

Actress in a leading role (Natalie Portman)

The Social Network

Film Editing

Music (Original Score)

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)


Inception

Cinematography

Sound Editing

Sound Mixing

Visual Effects

Alice in Wonderland
Art Direction

Costume Design

Toy Story 3
Animated Feature Film

Music (Original Song) for "We Belong together"

Inside Job

Documentary feature

Strangers No More

Documentary short subject

In a better world

Foreign Language film

The Wolfman

Makeup

The Lost Thing

Short film (Animated)

God of Love

Short Film (Live Action)

Meh. The Academy did a pretty good job this year... just one or two issues.

My major issue is with Nolan.

Where is his nomination for best director?! He has been one of the most consistent directors of the past decade. Have you not seen "The Prestige"? "Batman Begins"? "The Dark Knight"?! What about "Inception"? Because I would really like you to point out the flaws of that movie to me. How can a film be up for "Best Picture" without great directing? How can a movie be in IMDB's top ten without great directing?!

But no. Tom Hooper won.

*rolls eyes*

At least give it to Aronofsky.

Acting wins were spot on. Firth was pure perfection as the stuttering King, and Portman was unrecognisable from other roles in "Black Swan". Bale in "The Fighter"? WOW.

The writing awards was the ones I had most problem with... "King's speech" was based on a true story, so why should it win Bes original screenplay? Black Swan should have been nominated, for the ending if nothing else. Inception should have won though, that was a work of art, pure creativity and dedication in a script. 

Overall, those are the only two things I have problems with, directing and screenplay. But that's just my opinion. What do I know? I'm just a movie geek.

What did you all think?

Lauren xxx

... Ms Fulton say what now?

Oh pleasant surprises, how I love you.


Today was probably the best Monday of the year so far.


For a few reasons:


1. It was sunny. AGAIN. Did Mother Nature get Aberdeen mixed up with the Bahamas?!


2. I was in a good mood. I like being in a good mood.


3. I was actually on time to get to the bus stop. That's nothing short of a miracle.


Thanks Jesus!

Got on the bus today, put my money in for an all day ticket, the bus driver punched the ticket machine several times and said that he'd try to get me my ticket.

Get on bus, have a little chat, yaddah yaddah yaddah, what happens when I get off?

He gives me a bit of paper with "Child First Day" written on it.

Yeah. Because that doesn't make it look like a fake at all.

DOUBLE ENGLISH

Let the pleasant surprises commence!

We got our marks back from the prelim. 

*drum roll*

I got an A.

That's what I was like Whoopi.

God knows how that happened.

Told you, the pikachu shaped milk on the night before the Prelim was a sign from God!

Jesus can keep his wine!

Even more amazing?

Part of my essay was actually used as an example.
"Yet, the woman's forgiveness is conditional. She does not want these cruelties, these acts of pure evil and inhumanity, to be forgotten. She reminds us "Only a matter of days separate this from acts of torture now". And it's true. Without the painful reminder of the death and destruction that previous generations once felt, we would not learn from our mistakes and history would repeat itself. That's why Duffy has written this poem in such a memorable blunt manner. To ensure that the ignorant minds of today do not forget the pain and suffering once felt by previous generations and to carve the awful images of rape, torture and murder into the reader's brain, so the same mistakes do not occur again."
Shiz. I'm pretty sure that's an entire paragraph....


Ms Fulton just spent the double period going over the questions, cause so many of us chose the wrong question for the task, or didn't answer it properly.


She told us about the worst essay she'd ever had to mark, it failed on the first sentence alone...
MS FULTON: "Macbeath" by Shak-es-pair was a play... Macbeath was hair to the throne of England.
One: MacBeth you numptie! Not Macbeath!
Two: Shak-es-pair?! Try Shakespeare on for size.
Three: Hair. HAIR? Heir.
Four: He wasn't heir to the throne of England. 
Five: Even if he was heir to the throne of a country (he wasn't), it would be Scotland.


Wow.


DOUBLE HUMAN BIOLOGY

Got the results back for that too.


56%. Which is a C. Not going to lie, I'm disappointed with that.


I'm glad I passed, but I was aiming for an A. Not like I need an A, I just want one.


I know I can do better, hopefully this will just drive me to work harder...


*Looks at clock. Sees it's 21.04. Looks at computer. Sees she's watching new "Born This Way" video.*


Doesn't look like that's happening.


Just had a laugh about some of my answers with Abie, Claire and Linzie, I made up an enzyme...


Mylase. Completely made up.


Went home after that, to get ready to go into town and do a photo shoot.


Went to a little sweet shop called Wowzies. It's amazing, it's the closest you can get to Willy Wonka's without making it up and travelling there yourself (which, let's face it, would be quite a hassle).


Got some Skittles, Crazy cores.


Pretty fine! And they have BLUE skittles in that packet. All I'm saying, is how can you say "Taste the rainbow" when you don't have blue?!


Thought we wouldn't notice eh, Skittle company?


WELL I DID.


Legs are thoroughly dead now, went walking all over the town.


Photography is a good hobby to have if you want to get active.


Sorry, keep zoning out. Cause I bought Jessie J's new album "Who You Are" in town too.


Haha, just realised that I'm promoting quite a lot in this post...


It's really good though. And love the photograph on the inside of the cover!


Gah. Can't find it online.



It made me have a warm fuzzy feeling that I usually only get when eating chocolate. Yes Jessie, you are better than chocolate.


Can't decide which pictures to put up from my little shoot today...


Eenie meanie miny mo.


(Just note that I almost died many a times today getting these pics. Who knew roads were so dangerous at rush hour?)

















If tomorrow is as good a day as today, I may just die with happiness.

Hope you're all having a good start to the week!

Lauren xxx

Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D



I finally broke down and bought a 3D Blu-ray movie just to see how well my TV could actually handle 3D, apparently I chose the wrong movie, the Resident Evil films have never been great movies but while it looked great in High Definition I thought this movie was a little weaker than the previous films in the series when it comes to plot and I was pretty disappointed by the 3D work in this movie, I don't know, I was just expecting it to be better, a couple of sequences looked nice but most of it seemed pretty half-assed.

Of course now that I've spend money on a 3D movie Panasonic finally deliver my 3D copy of Avatar but I just can't be bothered sitting there for three hours with silly glasses on to watch a movie I only thought was decent the first time around, maybe I'll watch a few action scenes sometime just to check out the 3D.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Sly photography.

What's the difference between sly photography and candid photography?


The amount of letters used.




Ahh thank you.


Was a beautiful, BEAUTIFUL day in Aberdeen. You know what that means?


Photo shoot!


So, was picked up by Ross and me, him and Kristina went on a little shoot at the beach.


Good times. Not good photos though... In all honesty.














Meh. I've had better.

Exposure was being well dodgy too.

It was because it was so damn bright! God! I was at 1/4000th of a second at one point!

Seriously, someone tell my camera that we're in Aberdeen, not the surface of the sun!

Ahh well...

Reading MacBeth right now... this play... SHAKESPEARE.

I'm not a fan, let's put it that way.

Although I do like a good paradox with a balanced sentence structure.
"Fair is foul, and foul is fair"
Back to school tomorrow, after two weeks of 4am bedtimes and exams...


Eeek. English and Biology results tomorrow? Looks possible.


Art and Maths the day after? Looks very likely.


HELP ME.


Lauren xxx

Saturday, February 26, 2011

I'm such a talented artist, I can transform flowers into an Egyptian Thistle.

What's happening guys and gals?


Had a pretty awesome day! Will try to tell you all about it before I collapse with exhaustion and a splitting headache!


First up, my Godmother was on TV today.


No worries! No worries! She didn't do anything wrong!

Unless going to support my Local football team is deemed a crime...

...

Okay... It MIGHT be deemed a crime. But nothing heals relegation fears than a bit of local pride.

Looks much better quality if you click the image.
She's the one in the black coat.
That's my godmother. In a magic box!
So proud.

Went out for Lunch with my Mum and Dad, then we all went to Waterstone's to get my copy of MacBeth for English...

Came out with £52 worth of books...

Eeek.

One of them was "Teach yourself Film making", which is now my bedside material. Good book so far! Recommend it.

Went round to Megan's after that, which is good because I hardly get to see her now... Stupid timetables.

We were looking for some good munch, so she whapped out a mango and I took one look at it and said:
ME: What the **** is that?
MEGAN: A mango? 
CONFESSION OF A MOVIE GEEK:
I don't eat a lot of fruit.

Mango = Good.

Megan liked the mango TOO much and ended up having a little bit of a foodgasm.

A few hours later, Megan's Mum was eating some crisps and began to have a foodgasm too.

Must be a Stewart thing.

Also, we ate some Stewie Melon



Identical twins.

Haha, I swear, that girl tried to kill me today! We were up in her attic and I hit my head and almost fell down a ladder!

Might as well have been in one of the "Saw" films.

We were painting though... Ooft.

Megan's like, a pro artist. And she's just self taught.

In the space of a year or so, she's became so good, she's by passing Standard Grade, Int 1, Int 2 AND Higher Art and going straight onto a 2 year Advanced Higher.

What?!

I swear, I know some extremely talented people.

I hadn't a clue what I was going to paint... So Megan turned me towards the Bob Ross videos...

...

He's adorable. And an amazing artist.

Even if he had a severe addiction to trees.

Seriously, give the dude some methadone bark.

Tried drawing these...


And... SOMEHOW... ended up with this.


It looks like a thistle with a kilt and punk rocker hair crying in the woods...

Megan is going to hang it up in her room...

OR She's going to put it into Blue peter, saying her ten year old sister drew it and try winning us a badge.

Megan's painting hasn't got that far yet, but it's looking good.

Little Monet.

Megan's Mum is apparantly epic at drawing boobs. So if you want a pair drawn for you... You know who to ask.

Right. Should probably get to bed... MIGHT be going on a shoot tomorrow with Kristina!

Lauren out xxx

P.S. Just remembered, Maths prelim results are still looking shockingly bad... Some people scored ZERO. Eeek.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Beware of You.

I'm not going to lie... I've had the pictures and words prepared for this blog post for a few weeks now but I haven't had the guts to post them.
Beware of you
Any Paramore/Hayley Williams fan out there should be somewhat aware of this phrase. It's Hayley's motto for life.
"BOY means “Beware of You”… Be aware of your power. We have the choice to live positively or in our own destruction"
It's true. Of course it's true. We have power, and choice, freedom and liberty like no other generation before us has had. Compared to our Parents, and our Grandparents, and our great Grandparents, we have the biggest chance of happiness and survival than ever before. 


And yet, what's happening in this world?


We are choosing to live in our own destruction.


Turn on the news, and everyday, you can see genocide, wars, terrorist attacks, global warming, child labour, child cruelty, prostitution, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicide... so many things that we as individuals cannot control...


But think of this. We are not responsible for society's actions as a whole, but we are responsible for our own, and we are responsible for influencing the choices of others. You have the power to peer pressure someone into drugs. You have the power to influence someone into getting help. But you have to choose yourself whether you are going to use that power for good, or for evil.



I've had to heavily adopt Hayley's motto over the past few weeks. As most of you already know, I suffer occasionally from severe depression. I don't think you realise how bad sometimes, that's mostly because I don't want you to know how bad I can get. I try to refrain myself from tweeting or blogging about it, after all, who wants to here about the depressed little emo child and all of her petty problems?


So, I feel quite isolated. All I have is my words, my imagination and my music. That's all you need sometimes. 


I've just pressed the shift key down, contemplating whether or not I can tell you all what's the deal with me right now. But I don't think I can.


I can tell you that "Beware of you" means a lot to me though, I know that I have the power to stop feeling this empty, I have the power to go and get help, or at least to help others and prevent them feeling the same way. 


I want to be a photographer, or a director... hey, I'd settle for doing something in writing or design. I want to have a bunch of really good, close friends and have some-place that I can call my own. The only thing that is stopping me... is me. And it's the same for you.


You want something? Go get it. Stop saying "It's too difficult" or "It's never going to happen". That just means that you don't want it bad enough. 


And please, don't blame your addictions or mental conditions on other people... You can get help, you have will-power, you can say no, I am stronger than that. 


There are seven billion people in this world. But you are the most important.


Yes. YOU.


Because if you died, that's it. Gone. One mind less, one world less.


We would lose an individual. Your talents, your achievements, your loves, your hates, your imagination, your words... everything. It would just be gone. And there might be a heaven. There might be an afterlife. That pain... that unbearable pain in your heart? That might go away. But should you really take the path to self destruction to discover whether or not you'll end up with eternal peace and tranquillity?


Beware of the voices in your head. 90% of the time... they are speaking a load of crap. Choose to be positive, or choose to get help. Just remember that we all love you, and that your view of the world is unique. Don't throw it all away.

Don't you just hate it when your waiter is high?

*groans* Just found out why gluttony is a sin.


It just feels as though I've been punched square in the stomach and heart.


Never again.


Today was pretty good! Finally had my long lie that I have been craving all week (honestly, going to bed at 2 or 3am in the morning when you have to get up at 6 is the stupidest thing you'll ever do. Unless you decide to become a nudist.)


HOWEVER...

The "long lie" turned into hibernation, and I woke up to the sounds of screaming children as it was 15.05...



Oops.


And it meant that I missed the glorious day of sunshine!


Boo.


Went out for a meal with Abie and Lewis at night though, I love those two!


Frankie And Bennie's for a late lunch... Waited 45 minutes for a seat! When we were waiting, we met this disabled woman, who started to rant to us all like we were her buds.
Woman:  They don't serve for disabled customers!
ABIE: I know...
WOMAN: Been waiting for ages!
ABIE: Yeah! You would have thought that they could have broken that table into parts...
WOMAN: Yes! And look at all this money! Just lying here... We'll split it! *reaches out to grab tenner*
Genuinely... she was going to steal that money!! 


Sat ourselves down, ordered our drinks, waited a reaaaaaally long time for our drinks...


Abie was away to have the waiter pinned down to the table and threaten him if he was a minute later!

Lucky for him, our drinks came.


Ordered Garlic Pizza bread to share, me and Lewis had Crispy chicken strips, Abie has stuffed potato wedges, Lewis had Salt and Pepper scampi, Abie had a chicken triple decker sandwich, and I had a Margherita pizza.


So, you can see why we were all pretty stuffed.


Our waiter... phewww... He was high.


He was really fidgety and was giving us thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs thrown across the room... You name things that he could do with his thumbs, he did them.


Had some good banter though, Lewis commented several times that he liked the Frankie and Benny's soundtrack, guess what you're getting for your Birthday Lewis?


Oooft... There was a girl with a REALLY short dress on outside, around 16/17, surrounded by a bunch of chavs.


And they were sexually abusing her, I swear to god.

She was tipsy... Okay, I lie, she was full on drunk.



And they were putting their hands up her skirt, feeling her up, pulling up her dress....


Lewis was giving us a running commentary of this... Abie was almost running across the road and punching them in the nuts. Ahhh dear. 


And this bloke standing beside us at the bus stop got offended when Abie started singing along to his song choice, Ke$ha "We R who we R"...


*shudders* Text lingo in a song title? Only Pink is allowed to get away with that for "U + Ur Hand"!!


Had a really good night, so thanks to them for keeping me smiling.


Hope you all have a great weekend!!

Lauren xxx


P.S. Follow my friend Emma, who has just got a blogger account!


P.P.S I just read her first blog, and it's beautifully written. She is one of the sweetest girls I have ever met and I wish I was in more of her classes/met her earlier in life because she's just amazing ^_^


P.P.P.S How many P.S's is an acceptable amount before it get's out of hand?


P.P.P.P.S I think it's five.