HOW MANY WRITERS IT TAKES TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

So how many writers does it take to change a light bulb? One writer. There’s no one else in the room when you are writing a story. Though, when a writer changes a light bulb, you are hoping for a really good twist that illuminates.
   And once the light bulb is in and switches on over the writer’s head, hell, that answers the question of where the writer gets all those ideas from.
   I could spend the rest of this blog post making jokes about writers and light bulbs, but I am recovering from the trauma of changing a light bulb. Don’t know what the fuck I was using for illumination before I performed essential maintenance.
   The dim bulb that flickered its last wasn’t really putting out any Lumens, Candles, or a hint of a Lux. Wattage could best be described as rumoured to exist at some point in the distant past – that faraway star snuffed it and died long ago, leaving only faint impressionistic memories of light.
   Typically, the inevitable death of a bulb happened after dark. Luckily, I have two lamps on this side of a Great Wall of Books. By the light of one, repair the other. I reached for a new bulb that isn’t new at all. It’s been lying in wait, ready to pounce at the right time.
   Well, the time came after sunset. And now, I can see. I think the replaced bulb was powered by a tiny candle hidden deep within the mechanism.
   Maintenance this month has been of the essential variety and attacked me from all sides. There was a lot of it. Had to be done. If I don’t blog now, I won’t blog at all. Yes, I could spend the whole blog doing a dog-ate-my-homework sketch.
   But instead, I’ll talk about a movie I watched. Fantasy movies still have a pretty bad rap in the film industry. Make them cheap, throw them out fast, see what sticks. Cut the budget for the sequels. Fade out.
   Occasionally, fantasy films are really good. They are few. We’ll go with the argument that STAR WARS is a fantasy movie about a wizard, a princess, a farmhand who doesn’t know he is a prince, and an evil knight with a magic sword.
   For Arthurian fantasy, there’s Excalibur. There’s a wizard…
   Okay, we can shuffle the elements around. We have a boy who doesn’t know he is a king. And there are plenty of lightsabres in Arthur’s story. For fire-breathing fantasy, there’s the Disney movie Dragonslayer. It’s enjoyable nonsense. I find Sir Ralph Richardson’s turn as a wizard quite appealing.
   When he’s miscast in a movie like Rollerball, you wonder who was on drugs during that computer scene of his: you, watching, or the casting director foaming at the mouth in a dark red corner somewhere.
   We’ll give old Ralph a pass in Rollerball. The computer scene itself looks like it wandered in from another movie and brought the actor along in its wake. My point is…Richardson’s standard level of whimsy works very well in Dragonslayer and also in Time Bandits.
   I could go on, listing this fantasy film or that one. Good. Excellent. Stellar. But that’s not the aim here. You don’t get far in the fantasy movie landscape before you fall off a cliff into a lake of acid.
   Of assorted Dungeons & Dragons movies, I will say only this: caution. I believe Jeremy Irons funded the purchase of a castle in Ireland off the back of his scenery-devouring performance as a misunderstood villain. No one could understand what he was in the movie for.
   For the money, clearly.
   Sooner or later…and I’ve come late to this one…you encounter a movie named Gor. I encountered it last week, in low resolution, at double speed, on the information super back road that is the internet. This is now the only acceptable way to watch Gor. You’ll save yourself a lot of time…
   By reading this and deciding not to watch the movie.
   We’re in familiar territory here if you know your Edgar Rice Burroughs. American man is transported from civilised world to barbaric planet and must learn epic combat skills or die trying. Yes, I have a review here…
   I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating…and it gets everywhere. (A. Skywalker.)
   Gor. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Our hero, if you can call him that, is Tarl Cabot – which sounds like the guy’s own porn name. Surely that’s a typo. I have the overwhelming rage in me to fix that and call him Carl Cabot.
   At least then he’d be in the company of characters like Lief Langdon from Dwellers in the Mirage by A. Merritt. Anyway, back to Gor. We’re dealing with a man out of his own time and place. He arrives in the most beige fucking fantasy world I’ve yet seen.
   I’m with Mr Skywalker here. Don’t like bland sand. This fucking movie. It’s cheap and filmed nastily on a dry golf course at the arse-end of the back of fucking beyond. At least, that’s how it feels.
   Our hero is a professor spurned by blondie. He drives off in the rain and his wayward vehicle hits a tree. And he dies. The rest of the story about being transported to another world is just a hallucination of the people behind this production.
   Anyway, Tarl – should be Carl – has a magic ring that sends him to the world of sand. He can be a loser there instead of back home. Meanwhile, Oliver Reed shows up to film his scenes on the weekend: in short takes between trips to assorted pubs.
   Or that’s how it all appeared to me. Ollie is up against it in this production. His whispered menace competes against an energetic soundtrack that has been hijacked from another movie. The composer is using notes in Morse Code to transmit SEND HELP.
   Action in the film just doesn’t live up to the adventure promised by the score. Maybe that’s a good thing. I can’t see the cast living up to any real action on offer if real action stumbled in out of the darkness.
   No, I’m not saying the leading lady was hired for her ability to emote with her tits. However…I am saying that. But we mustn’t lose sight of the plot, such as it is. Our hero, Porn Name Guy. Incidentally, that reminds me of Flash Gordon.
   Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You’ll truly understand the pacing of Flash Gordon if you realise, in that movie, you are never more than ten minutes away from an Italian porno.
   Oliver Reed shows up as a budget Oliver Reed playing a toned-down Brian Blessed from Flash Gordon, minus the wings. And flecks of foam in the beard. Ollie wants this big glowing rock for reasons unknown.
   He might have explained those reasons during a whispered monologue, but, frankly, with characters like these it was hard to care.
   Ollie’s instant son is instantly killed by our instant hero in an instant accident. And then our hero flees. He gradually joins a low-rent Dungeons & Dragons party that’s too cheap to have an elf in it.
   There’s the first third of the movie for you. Our man wears native costume, and crosses the desert after a spot of training. Travel concentrates on viewing everyone from behind, to show off the hero’s arse-cheeks. It’s not all about the bikini-clad women in this non-epic.
   As far as the director is concerned, I’m starting to think Tuff Turf was the highlight of his career. We get into a spot of mischief at a settlement. This is the sort of crossroads you’d expect in four or five fantasy movies of variable quality.
   There’s no variable quality here. It’s consistently awful. The movie felt like one of those films you saw after midnight on a weekday that felt like a hallucination the next morning, whether alcohol featured or not. Particularly if not. Tiredness robbed you of half the plot, and that was no bad thing.
   Know what the movie needs? A heavy. Surely this guy’s the heavy from Crimewave…yes, yes, he is. We have a low-rent Brian Blessed in the form of Oliver Reed. To this festering stew of a film we must add a knock-off Bud Spencer look-alike in the shape of Paul L. Smith.
   This leads to a catfight. Our heroes win something or other. The right to continue into the depths of the dry golf course. Our D&D party is built up to include the hero and heroine, a wise older character, another dude who is too cheap to put on elf ears, and a little person hired for comedy relief purposes.
   They trek a few hundred yards into an elaborate built-up super-bunker on the golf course, and then must deal with…a hole. A hole opens up. And it pads out the movie. It could be the hole in the plot formed from all the tiny holes in the plot so far.
   Maybe the shoddy nature of the golf course has infected the production, and they’ve thrown a mad ad-lib into the mix. The mix of shit and gravel that is this film. What the fuck is this film? When fans of the Gor books write in to complain about the adaptation…
   Yikes.
   Our heroes attract the attention of a guard and dispose of him. The cunning disguise of putting on a helmet and pretending to be the guard…would work in a game of D&D. Not so convincing in this movie.
   Eventually, after much sand…
   I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating…and it gets everywhere. (Oliver Reed, coming back from the pub.)
   We reach the pointless infiltration of the villain’s lair. Some of the costumes may have been recycled from Flash Gordon, but I can’t be arsed checking the accuracy of any of that. Our villain, the wri…the dir…the produ…Oliver Reed…decides to invite our hero to join his merry gang.
   For, y’know, reasons ’n’ shit.
   Throughout the movie we see women in bikinis and men thinking about calling their theatrical agents and asking soul-searching questions about careers thus-far.
   Oliver Reed finishes his last remaining speeches. In his head, he’s playing Falstaff in Stratford, down by the banks of the Avon in some open-air performance. Pretending to be drunk.
   We’re about an hour in and there’s a dance number. Of course there is. And we have a character moment. This allows us to care about Tarl Cabot. It doesn’t. I lied. A woman is presented for branding. Our hero flexes his mighty thews and enemy guards fall before him like ripe grain before the reaper’s scythe.
   No. I lied again. He just watches. Maybe he likes to watch. Then, when it is the leading lady’s turn, our hero must mark her with the branding iron. He rebels, and starts a change of government right there. Cool.
   Except. Why didn’t he save the first woman? Dick. We move to the open revolt and getting the hell out of Dodge. But first, remember to grab the big glowing stone. It is really important. For…reasons. I mean…someone paid money for the prop, so fucking use it.
   It’s not enough to free the oppressed and reclaim the stone. No. It’s important to get captured and face Oliver Reed one more time. He has to pay…for luring us into this cinematic diarrhoea.
   Things I neglected to mention.
   One. An ineffectual flaming portcullis trap. Straight from the mind of Gary Gygax. Roll well enough on the dice, and our heroes easily survive Cabot’s Sphere of Conflagration.
   Two. The less said about trying to pick a lock with a sword…the better.
   Three. Oliver Reed would bounce back from this mess and deliver lines about queer giraffes in Gladiator. There, in his sober head, he’s still playing Shakespeare at Stratford, by the riverbank, in the pissing rain.
   But let’s deal this movie the final blow. I have to say, this is some feeble shit I had to sit through. It’s been more than a heartbeat since I sat through something this bad. The Acolyte still takes that crown, though.
   Wookiee Jedi? And he’s going to fight the bad guy? (Dies off-screen in his fucking chair. Still hurts. Dies in an office chair, staring at his accounts. Harsh.)
   Our hero has equipped himself with a bow. More importantly, he’s found ammo as well. Earlier in the movie he watched while a woman was branded. Here’s the same woman again. She’s threatened with fiery death…and he just watches.
   Did he really not like the look of her? Was she not using enough hairspray? The leading lady consumed the hairspray budget, it is true. Well, this ritual sacrifice goes as expected. Twice in the film our leading man has the chance to step in and save this woman. He fails spectacularly.
   What’s left? Save everyone else. Fire an arrow through Oliver Reed’s neck. No, seriously. Then he can fall to his fiery death – just to confirm that he’s still alive as he hits the flames, and then there is no way back for him in a possible sequel.
   Sequel?
   To this warm garbage? It isn’t good enough to be hot garbage. This reheated garbage. A sequel? You are fucking kidding me. But wait a bit. Here’s Jack Palance…who has form in the cheap fantasy section of cinema…
   He turns up to introduce himself. O………kay. Meanwhile, our hero returns home. Where he punches out the dude who annoyed him and stole his gal. There’s a moral in here somewhere. The moral is…YouTube should allow me to watch shit films at Warp Factor 10, Mr Sulu.
   The scenes in our world, at the beginning and end of the movie, should have been cut out of the movie – along with all the other scenes. But we return to sequel territory. The tale ends with Jack Palance, this time in a mad fucking hat. There’s a wild declaration about ol’ Jack’s drive for power, here.
   And the only man who can stop him is the guy who just fucked off back to his own planet. Right. Gotcha. No chance of making a sequel to this nonsense, right. Who is behind the production?
   Cannon. A hit-and-miss company with many a cinematic stinker under the brand. Some gems, it’s true. Cannon’s financial history is of greater interest than the film output. Of course Cannon would go after the sequel. I’m not sure I have the mental strength to see me through another one of these efforts. Not even at double speed, and skipping the credits.

SCRIPTING A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS™ VIDEO: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

(This is the full version of the blog post. When recording for video, I had to get used to noise suppression all over again. The software cut a few opening syllables from several sentences. I went in and edited the audio rather than doing a second take.)

Usually, when it comes to making YouTube videos on roleplaying games and boardgames…
   Wait a bit. You can’t hashtag board games. That’s where the one-word spelling comes in, and I am stuck with its utility now…
   When planning videos, I’ll have an idea for a Dungeons & Dragons™ explanation or something along those lines. This needs props. I film those, with one eye on the general idea. Okay, I’ll talk about this game, that publisher, and those hobby accessories.
   If I have those hobby accessories, I’d damn-well better film them. And if I don’t have the items to hand, I’ll film around them. This is how JAWS came to be a much better movie than originally envisioned. If you can’t film the broken rubber shark, film around it. Show the shark’s viewpoint, not the malfunctioning shark prop’s flippery-floppery. Rely on John Williams. He’ll see you through.
   Repeat as needed.
   For assorted copyright reasons, I won’t be relying on the score from JAWS in my video. Spielberg maintained Robert Shaw’s sobriety throughout the production by running the actor through a game of Dungeons & Dragons™. Shaw insisted on playing a cleric called Mr Blue.
   John Milius dropped in as Bear “The Bear” Bear. He and Shaw dangled Wizardy Chappie over the cliff until he revealed the secret password.
   Wizardy Chappie was played by Richard Dreyfuss, who then lied about the password anyway. This is why JAWS was a nightmare to film. And that…is a roleplaying fact.
   Lights, camera, action. Place a prop. Film it. Replace it. Film the next one. Switch camera angles. Leave a camera in shot for the sheer hell of it. Film the next thing. Usually I’ll be listening to someone else’s roleplaying video in the background as I film mine. How many shots will I manage in an hour? Enough.
   I drop those snippets into the editing software and strip out the random audio. Yes, I may move the order of shots around quite a lot. And I might have to ditch footage. Shoot things again. Or shoot a new item that I should have included in the first place.
   With the order of shots arranged around an idea, I write up a script. Shots lend themselves to talking-points. That’s why I film them in the first place. The script is done. I record the audio. That audio is edited. I throw the audio track onto the video compilation.
   That’s when the real editing begins. I extend the length of a clip or shorten it, in keeping with the narrative pace. After that, I look at the visual gaps I’ve left behind. Those must be filled. I’ll use clips from previous videos. Or I’ll film more new stuff. Maybe I’ll repeat a clip several times for effect. Gradually, I fill those pesky gaps.
   I might cut more audio out. You realise you’ve made a point that is…bullshit. It’s a technical term. There’s a statement based on shifting sands at high tide. You misread a source. Or you contradict yourself with wild abandon. The primal audio flies in the face of the civilised video evidence, and you retreat to higher ground.
   Usually, not always, I make time to throw in a roleplaying fact. These roleplaying facts are utterly fake. You’ll know this by the phrasing. And that…is a roleplaying fact.
   Or a boardgaming fact, depending on the topic. Rarely, I find that I don’t use the phrasing at all. It’s a thing on the channel, but it doesn’t define the channel. Dry understated caustic humour? That’s just the default setting in Scotland.
   For this entry, I decided to script a blog post and make it the audio for a YouTube video as well. Some people use the term DungeonTube. I asked Doctor Google about this and encountered requests for directions to The London Dungeon by means of underground rail.
   There was also pornography.
   DungeonTubers, apparently, cover topics in dungeons: specifically, that’s Dungeons & Dragons™. Generally, there is also pornography.
   Already, the wearisome term DungeonTuber has gained a pejorative aspect. Whether they’ve accepted corporate cash to shill out products or not, some roleplaying game hobbyist YouTubers…
   Damn it, I half-typed Hobbit YouTubers and I’ve lost the train of thought. It’s underground, and heading in the direction of a London-based dungeon. Hobbit YouTubers. I’m not here to disparage the height of certain or even uncertain YouTubers.
   My point, misplaced in the mists of typing, is that DungeonTuber is heading for a change in meaning. A YouTuber who makes videos about dungeons, dragons, dungeoneering, delving, and the organised looting of ancient temples…could be described as a DungeonTuber.
   Potatoes in The Temple of Elemental Evil are far too easy to describe as dungeon…tubers.
   Anyway. Point. The term is shifting to occupying the space of little more than an insult for house shills, real or imagined. YouTuber accepts money for plugging dungeon products. Oh, a DungeonTuber.
   I take in a whole load of YouTube videos on roleplaying games. There isn’t one channel presenter I can think of who uses the label. We’ll go out on a limb here. I think that’s unlikely to change.
   You always go out on stout limbs. And always fall from shaky ones.
   Speaking of presenters. Yes, we all have limited time on our hands…and around our elbows, I guess. So while recording videos, I listen to YouTube videos in the background. These are accidentally recorded onto my video clips. That’s why I strip out the audio.
   To save even more time, I listen to virtually all YouTube videos at double speed. If you start off with a fast high-pitched voice, I might listen to you at 1.5 speed – otherwise only bats can hear you.
   Why don’t I watch them? Many dungeoneering and dragon-ish YouTubers are talking heads. Low on visuals. I don’t need to see them to hear their points.
   This channel is the other way around. You see the props, miniatures, maps, and so on. My channel was based on watching a particular type of video. I won’t name the exact one. A quick check shows the one I’m thinking of has been taken down since.
   With one eye on making boardgame videos, I watched a video that was all about seeing players having fun. You couldn’t make out the board at all. The camera might as well have been in a field next to the venue.
   I went there to see the board. And, barely seeing the board, I decided I couldn’t make videos of that nature. If I want to illustrate a point in a discussion on this channel, I’ll throw in an illustration if I have to. Here’s the board. The bar is pretty low, but I still vaulted it.
   Now that I’m typing this up, I know I’ll fill in gaps in the video editing with previous shots of game boards. If I show you a game in a video, I could show the box, the game, the components, a few third-party accessories that make gameplay flow more smoothly…
   But at least I will show you the game, and not a distant shot of the house it was played in. From space.
   What else to say of making videos about boardgames and roleplaying games? I used to make videos weekly. Life got in the way. Now I make them when I feel like making them. Often, I feel like making them and life gets in the way.
   The one thing I haven’t been able to shake is cardboard damage. I open and close many a box here at this table when the cameras aren’t rolling. Preparation isn’t everything, but it’s where I start and so should you.
   As a result of all this cardboard activity, tiny particles drift across the black felt cloth. These bits and pieces build over the course of a few seconds into unacceptable levels of snowfall. I wave a magic wand and vacuum the hell out of the surface to make the gaming table semi-presentable.
   Another feature, and this may not be for you, is the unconnected background. I’ll populate the background with items from a different video. Either I use stuff I filmed last time or things I’ll put in videos next time around.
   This is a working game table. Often, I’ll leave the wooden organisers in the background with coins on prominent display. Those are signs of a Buffy game rumbling along. Buffy is a roleplaying game that uses drama points to generate twists in the plot or handy bouts of healing in the heat of battle.
   And I don’t like to disturb the display. Mustn’t knock the coins down into the abyssal depths at the back of the table. Players need drama. So the roleplaying display features in the background.
   No virtual tabletop for me. I run the table from here, in what Mary Shelley refers to as the deserts of Scotland. My players are scattered across the Cosmos. We may be in several countries, operating at different times, but we are united by different dice around the same table.
   And that really is a roleplaying fact. Here's the video.