Nothing too new to report from Wales/Portland/Boston/London/any of the other dozen places I've been hopping around! I guess that's what happens with the ol' PhD work... eventually you have to buckle down to the actual PhD writing, huh? Silly expectations... you'd think PhDs were hard to get or something.... riiiight :) (note the heavy, heavy sarcasm).
Anywho, first of all I just heard that Howard Shore is scoring Eclipse- wow. It is exciting when heavily credible artists start signing up to work with these projects. It's not surprising, everyone from Shakira to Justin Guarini are trying to hitch their wagons t Twilight's success, but it's great that these well-respected, established artists like Howard Shore, Thom Yorke, and hell, half of the contributors to the New Moon soundtrack, are joining the party. It broadens the scope of Twilight, and I think it may bring additional credibility and validity to the saga as something more than a teenage-obsessed romance; that's certainly the main audience, but it's also a bit of a detriment to the series that it is it's key description; I think the series would benefit from a wider scope of talent and something other than screaming teenagers being it's main claim to fame. I also think it ups the game of the filmmakers. It's not just a one-off that they're making for a lot of money; a lot more is going into these films, so hopefully everyone's game is raised.
I'll be interested to analyze the script development from the first film through Eclipse and Breaking Dawn (whenever that one gets rolling), and see if it shows the growth that seems to have happened organically with the other aspects of the films like the soundtrack, score, and production processes.
So... moving on from that... I'm mainly just writing up this semester as I need to start producing huge chunks of my thesis (the final focus for the thesis is the adaptation of event films and how their processes utilize the fan culture of the source material- FUN). I am working both Vampire Baseball, events, however as their photographer/handler again, and of course the film festival/film making cruise event. So excited about that. Book your place if you haven't yet; it's going to be uber fun, you'll come out of it with a film short, and tour the Caribbean....nothing wrong there!
I'm also beginning a bit of production work with a small production house in London (more news of that soon; their new site is about to launch), and we've just made the final decisions for accepted essays for the anthology of Twilight criticism that I'm co-editing. So busy like woah, writing, editing, producing, and three or four trips back to the US in the next six months, but that's how I like it! Busy, productive, and above all fun :)
And lastly, I'm putting together a post about my program, education, the PhD, the course... whatever you want to call it. I've had a lot of emails asking about it and I feel wretched that I haven't answered them yet! So I will answer them, but hopefully this post will cover a lot of ground since a lot of the questions are the same. It's coming!
Until next time...
