48 Hour Go Green Boston Results

The results for the 48 Hour Film Project Boston Go Green event are in, and the Malarkey entry How Mobile Apps Saved the World did pretty well, although we didn't get the big prize.  The film won "Best Director" and "Best Ensemble Acting", which were both ironic since the directing consisted of one camera shot and most of the actors were non-actors who were interviewed in the Errol Morris style. 

Of the 15 Boston entries, ours was named the Runner Up for Best Film which was a heck of a showing for something that was even more of an ad hoc production than is usually the case for a 48 Hour Film Project production.  We basically showed up on Saturday with a few pages of notes, a homemade "Interrotron" and the hopes that we could get normal people to make up stuff that we could fit together into a coherent piece. It just goes to show how well the normal people brave enough to go on camera did when asked to riff on stuff, and how good the editing was.

The Silent Treatment

At the end of the nineties I had a silent comedy phase.  I went back and rented every Chaplin and Keaton movie I could find and read both of their autobiographies.  I read every bit of commentary I could about that era, and even took clowning classes to get a sense of how you someone can tell stories without words.

During this time, I wrote two full length biographical pieces, a screenplay called Buster Keaton's American Life and a play called Chaplin and Keaton on the Set of Limelight.  I like them both, but I might never be able to do anything with them due to the legal difficulties of using real historical figures. I may post them here at some point.

Two Short Plays: My Boston Theatre Marathon entries

My playwriting discussion group has a guy who hates the 10 minute play.  Actually, to be fair, he hates that the predominance of the 10 minute play tempts playwrights to try and cram 15-20 minutes worth of story into 10 minutes for the sake of getting them entered into contests.

I'm someone who loves the form of the 10 minute play.  I tend to write towards constructing moments rather than resolving plots or exploring all aspects of an idea, and 10 minutes seems to be a good length in which to build the machinery that will unveil the perfect moment.  That's not to say that I don't write longer pieces (I'll get to those eventually on this blog), but the short play has been in many ways some of the most rewarding things I've written.

Writing Under Pressure - The 48 Hour FIlm Project Go Green

This past weekend, I just took part in Malarkey Films entry in the 48 Hour Film Project's Go Green Challenge.  If you're not familiar with the 48 Hour Film Project, it's a challenge in which teams are given 48 hours to write, film, edit, and produce a short film.  In each case you're given a set of criteria that you have to include in your film, usually a genre, a line of dialogue, a prop and a character.  In the Go Green iteration of the challenge, the genre is up to the teams to choose but the films have to have an environmental theme.

It's the sixth time I've been involved with a 48 Hour team, the third time with Malarkey.  Before I had latched onto teams, I had wanted to get involved in the project for a while but hadn't been able to find a team to join.  Eventually I discovered some co-workers of mine were involved in a team and joined up with them for a few events.  When that team lost steam, I was referred to a team run by a friend to the Malarkey Films team, where I discovered that people I knew were in the group.

Lilith at the Wedding

Link: LilithAtTheWedding.pdf
Type: Short Screenplay
Status: Unproduced

My regular writing group has a yearly tradition around holiday times.  Each year we decide on a new writing challenge, and we give ourselves the period over the holidays to work on it.  Sometimes we give ourselves inspirations, such as music or photos.  Other times we have to hit certain plot points at certain times.  Sometimes we give ourselves requirements that we have to use.

What this blog will be

So, I suppose that the thing to do is to introduce myself and what this blog will be about.

My name is Greg Lam, and I write a lot.  Mostly I write plays and screenplays, though I also have written prose stories and a sci-fi novel that needs a major round of editing.  I'm fairly confident that I'm pretty good at writing.  I've gotten plays into the Boston Theatre Marathon five times, and those have resulted in a couple of publications.  I wrote a screenplay for the National Film Challenge that was one of the finalists for 2010.