Still Life with Life Still? (Poem and Photograph)

Still Life with Life Still?

Not for long. The blossoms
Soon will discover their blood

Miraculously has changed

Itself to tap water. And their roots

Have voted to remain
Behind with their own kind.

The fruit, fortunately,

Does not yet know how to scream.

Yet, if you listen very carefully,

You may hear it attempt

To sing.

                        -- Si Dunn



From the forthcoming book of poems and photographs by Si Dunn:
The One-Trillionth Picture of the Eiffel Tower
(Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.)

Now at the Louvre (Poem and Photograph)

Now at the Louvre

What does art see

When it stares back at us,

Sculpting its own blindness

With framed eyes?

Are we the vision

Or merely the stone?

The murderous paintbrush

Or the reticent chisel?

What does art see

When we blink? When

We think we understand

Yet never listen

To the endless shapes

We incessantly create?

               -- Si Dunn

From the forthcoming book of poems and photographs by Si Dunn:
The One-Trillionth Picture of the Eiffel Tower
(Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.)

Heading into Notre Dame (Poem and Photograph)

Heading into Notre Dame

Some days,

It's the best you can do.

Indeed, it's all you can do:

Grip your head

In your hands

And wonder

What the holy hell

Just happened?

                   -- Si Dunn

 
 

From the forthcoming book of poems and photographs by Si Dunn:

The One-Trillionth Picture of the Eiffel Tower

(Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.)

Mumble, Mumble, Mumble...Mumblecore!

"It's just Mark and me against ourselves and the universe."

That's how Jay Duplass (on right in photo) described the working process that he and his brother Mark Duplass (left) follow when creating a movie. They were the star presenters at a 2010 South by Southwest film festival panel titled "The Kids Are Alright."

Some of the Brothers Duplass's movies include the 2010 release, Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill and Catherine Keener, and a number of more specifically "mumblecore" features such as The Puffy Chair and Baghead.

"There is a lot of improvisation in our movies," Jay Duplass said. "We don't do a lot of planning." And even when a movie has comedic elements, "it's a drama first."

Yet, added Mark Duplass, "Jay and I have a rule: to write as funny and light as possible."

Despite all of the improvisation and creating movies more from outlines than from scripts, "Mark and I are obsessed with plot and story," Jay Duplass insisted. But they also remain "open to risk and chance."

They also follow a particular procedure while shooting their movies. "We shoot in story order," Jay Duplass said. And they aren't afraid to re-shoot scenes that have been improvised. "The rule of thumb is: If you're wondering if you got it or not, you definitely didn't get it."

-- Si Dunn

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Ready for Your Closeup? Filmmaker Networking at SXSW 2011

Memo for those who plan to attend SXSW 2011: If your goal is networking, go early to South by Southwest’s filmmaker panels and sit as close to the front as possible.

Panelists often arrive a few minutes before the start of their sessions, and it is sometimes possible to engage them in a little bit of conversation from the first couple of rows while they are getting settled. Don’t try to pitch them a project unless they ask what you are doing or what you have. But you may get an opportunity to exchange business cards and the chance to follow up with them after SXSW.

More opportunities for networking often occur right after the end of a panel. But be forewarned: The first few people who rush forward and get a panelist’s attention may eat up all of his or her available time.

Also, some of these “first responders” may be friends or acquaintances of the panelist. Indeed, they may expend all available time catching up on each other’s news or arranging to meet later for a drink.

Or, the panelist may not be in a mood to socialize and may have pre-arranged for a couple of friends to sit up front and serve as buffers when the session ends.

If you don't get to meet your hero, you will at least get some good information during his or her panel session. Indeed, some of the other panelists may share things that are more interesting and helpful than what you were hoping to learn from the panelist you can't talk to. And while everyone else surges forward, hoping to talk to the panel's "star," you may be able to connect with one or more of the other speakers.

--Si Dunn

Texas Production Incentives: Will They Be a 2011 Legislative Target?

Recent budget shortfalls in several states have caused legislators there to try to repeal the tax breaks that entice movie, television and game productions to temporarily set up shop inside their borders. Indeed, the supposedly nonpartisan Tax Foundation has issued a report arguing for the "immediate discontinuance" of all such tax-funded programs nationwide.

Watch for an incentives-related battle in the Texas Legislature when it returns to session in January, 2011.

Thanks -- or no thanks -- to several factors, including Gov. Rick Perry's signature on a no-new-taxes pledge, legislators will have to deal with a shortfall of $11 billion to more than $15 billion in the state's 2012-2013 budget.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, "[b]udget cuts are already in the offing..." and "[s]tate leaders are expected to pull the trigger soon on about $1 billion in spending trims...." The cuts may mean layoffs of prison guards and smaller payments to Medicaid providers, including doctors and hospitals.

Meanwhile, some observers of the state budget's woes are predicting the Texas legislators will not be able to "cut their way out of the hole" starting next January, the American-Statesman reports.

Paranormal Inactivity on Taxes?

More revenues will have to be raised, which will be tough to do since Gov. Perry, a strong sympathizer with the Tea Party movement, has signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge that supposedly requires him to oppose "any and all tax increases."

Legislators will be left with few options except to increase some fees and look for any tax credits, tax exemptions and tax exclusions that can be reduced or eliminated. Also, they will face decisions on whether or not to allow more gambling choices in Texas.

In the face of the massive shortfall, Texas' production incentives could look like just one tiny plum ripe for picking out of the budget -- unless movie, television and game producers can convince the lawmakers that a lot more state revenue is generated than is spent on the program. Many legislators will be on the lookout for anything they can eliminate or shrink without raising taxes or fees.

The Incentives Hurt Locker?

The state production incentives progam -- if it survives the budget cutters next session -- will need to be given stronger funding. And many low-budget moviemakers say that it needs to be revised. At a time when non-studio movie budgets are trending lower and lower, often down to $100,000 or even less, Texas still wants moviemakers to spend at least $250,000 in the state before tax breaks will be granted. Many indie movie makers feel frozen out of the state's incentives program. The budget levels need to be made lower, and additional provisions need to be created to encourage the development of low-budget, "indigenous" Texas movie, television and game productions.

The state program also needs to be revised to get rid of its ridiculous "negative fashion" clause highlighted in the news last year. The Republican-ramrodded clause, enacted into law in 2007, forbids Texas state incentives to any kind of film, TV or game project that contains "inappropriate content or content that portrays Texas or Texans in a negative fashion, as determined by the [Texas Film Commission] office, in a moving image project." This clause puts the Film Commission in a censorship position and leaves the doors wide open for neighboring states such as Louisiana and New Mexico to keep getting "Texas" projects that can't get past the "negative fashion" restriction.

Gearing Up for the Fight

On the Texas Motion Picture Alliance (TXMPA) website, the organization's president, Don Stokes, recently posted both praise for the state's current incentive program and strong cautions that the program will need to be expanded and justified during the 2011 state legislative session.

Stated Stokes: "I am happy to report that our Moving Image Incentive Program is proving its effectiveness at bringing jobs and dollars to Texas. Since the enhanced incentives were signed into law in April 2009, applications which account for over $225 million in new in-state spending. These projects have created over 12,300 industry jobs equating to over 1,800 full time jobs. All of this has been achieved with a commitment of just over $24.8 million in grant funds. I am unaware of any other program which has delivered these levels of results with an equivalent cost. These projects come from across the State and cover all segments of the industry. This is tremendous news and will be a vital part of our message going into the 2011 Legislative Session."

He continued:

"We cannot afford to let this positive news make us complacent. Now is the time to remobilize and renew our efforts. We will have to battle for continued funding of the program in the upcoming Legislative Session. News reports from the Capitol inform us that all State agencies have been asked to reduce their budgets and cut current and future spending. We have been lucky since our friends in the Governor's office have trimmed in other areas in order to keep our current funding intact. They believe in the value our industry brings to Texas but we will have to make our case anew in 2011. To complicate matters further, we will not simply be asking to retain our current level of appropriation, we will be seeking an increase. At current application levels we will exhaust our funds for this fiscal year well before the next appropriation year begins in September 2010. Those funds will most likely also be exhausted before our next appropriation is in place. The positive side is that we have shown that if the incentive program is funded we can bring in the work. What we will have to prove is that the jobs we create benefit the State enough to justify the funding."

Fade Out?

A prediction from Dateline: Oblivion. Looking at the negative numbers surging into the $11 billion to $15 billion-plus range, Texas legislators will be primed to cut first and ask few questions later. State representatives and senators who don't understand the production business (and that will be just about all of them) will again demand to know why Texans should pay Hollywood anything to bring (or "brang") their "terrible" projects here. With angry constituents and Teabag Rick haranging them about taxes, they won't be receptive to listening to promises and predictions, nor reason.

The pro-incentive lobbyists need to be out in force already, reaching everyone they can possibly reach. The fiscally small but positive news from the Texas incentives program must be clearly heard and understood well before the budget-cuts drumbeat starts pounding everything -- and everyone -- into submission.

--Si Dunn

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How I Am Stunning the World (Not!) with a Self-Published Book!

By Si Dunn

Online sites such as Lulu, CreateSpace and Amazon’s Digital Text Platform for Kindle now make it easy to publish your own book at affordable prices.

What is not easy is figuring out how to sell what you self-publish, particularly if it is fiction, without paying hundreds of dollars—and up--to marketing services.

Case in point: my newest book, Jump, a 110-page novella set in the 1960s and 1970s. Brief summary: "Gage Roberts, ex-sailor, is a man having problems in every port of his life as he jumps from job to job, place to place and relationship to relationship. Can he find love and happiness?"

More specifically, Jump is about a job-hopping newspaper reporter who suffers from bad war flashbacks and is not having much luck at love. The book is set in Denton and Dallas, Texas, as well as Hattiesburg, Miss., Atlanta, Georgia, and the Tonkin Gulf and South China Sea during the Vietnam War. This is not a book that Oprah or Random House or the New York Review of Books likely would leap on.

Indeed, only a few dozen readers so far have jumped on Jump, even though it is now available as a downloadable e-book, a Kindle book and a print-on-demand (POD) paperback book, and I regularly promote it on Twitter and in emails. (Here are links to the various editions: Paperback: http://bit.ly/3cxln / e-book: http://bit.ly/wml2M / Kindle: http://bit.ly/iF8Wo . The paperback edition is $9.95. The e-book PDF version is $1.99, and the Kindle version is about as cheap as a Dunkin Donut: $0.99.)

Jump sprang up from a creative writing assignment that I completed for English E-175, a Southern literature class offered online in spring 2009 by Harvard University’s Extension School. After the course was completed, I spent about a month expanding the 7,500-word short story into a 20,000-word novella.

I then made a few online searches for publishers seeking novellas and got no encouraging responses to queries. So I decided to make Jump my first foray into the world of online self-publishing. Specifically, I wanted to have online books and a paperback edition, but I did not want to carry and keep track of an inventory.

With online books such as PDF files and Kindle editions, there are no physical copies (although copies can be printed.) With a print-on-demand (POD) paperback, there also is no physical book until someone orders a copy or several copies. Then the book is printed and shipped to the purchaser. POD books are very handy, because you can buy one copy to hold and show off and a few extras to give away to friends or potential reviewers.

With my previous books, publishers always have taken care of the editing and printing details, as well as the marketing efforts. So, with Jump, I had to start from scratch. First, I copyrighted my manuscript online for $35 at the U.S. Copyright Office and purchased a single International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for $125 at R.R. Bowker’s isbn.org website. Most bookstores and online sales sites such as Amazon require an ISBN before they will list a book for sale. Some online book-publication sites will issue a “free” ISBN if you do not have one, but I prefer to own the number so I can maintain maximum control over what happens to my book. Jump’s ISBN is 978-0-615-31261-3.

Online book-publishing sites now typically offer free tools for creating and selling a self-published work. They take a percentage of each online sale, and they are more than happy to sell you printing and book marketing services, as well. I used Lulu.com’s free U.S. trade book template (6 inches by 9 inches) to format Jump in Microsoft Word. Then I converted the formatted and (this is vital: carefully proof-read) file into a PDF. I picked a generic cover file available on Lulu and uploaded the materials. Immediately, Jump was available to the world as a $1.99 e-book readable on computers and other devices that can display PDF documents. Each time someone buys it, I earn part of the price and Lulu keeps part of it.

I used a very similar PDF file of the book’s interior to set up a $9.95 paperback version of Jump at Amazon’s CreateSpace.com. Again, I picked a generic, free book cover from the choices online and uploaded my file. That same day, a proof copy of my book was available to order. I paid a small fee and postage and received the book a few days later. According to the return address, it had been printed in North Charleston, S.C.

While proofing the printed copy, I decided to make a few small changes, so I uploaded a new interior file and ordered another proof copy. A few days later, I received it, checked it and approved the book’s publication.

The presses did not immediately roll, of course. A print-on-demand book is only printed when someone orders one or more copies. I bought a few copies at an author’s discount off the cover price and received them a week later. Then I sent them out to some friends, bookstore owners, and possible reviewers.

Next, I used Amazon’s online self-publishing tools to try to generate a Kindle version of Jump. All I got, at first, was a discouraging jumble. Jump is not just straight text. It includes some poetry and a few abstract choices of typography. But things improved after I uploaded an HTML version of the Microsoft Word file. Then I spent a few hours downloading, proofing, correcting and uploading the Kindle file. I never got all of the formatting glitches cleaned up, but I finally decided it was good enough and approved the Kindle edition. It became immediately available.

Visions of a modest but steady trickle of sales quickly evaporated once my book was available at these three different different outlets. Indeed, nothing happened until I started sending out dozens of emails to friends and contacts letting them know how to find and buy my book. A few of them bought it—fewer than I thought.

Social media is supposed to be the hot new way to market books, but Twitter so far has been colder than a frozen mackerel as a marketing tool. Each new “tweet” about the book is like throwing an advertising flyer into a fast-moving river of data. It is quickly swept away and hardly seen by anyone. Meanwhile, post too many messages about your new book, and you will start getting complaints and losing some of your all-important “followers.” For example, someone in Australia recently chewed me out for posting information about Jump too many times, in her view. Then she “unfollowed” me.

Marketing via email also creates the risk of being branded as a spammer. When I have sent out updated emails about my book, I have gotten a few complaints and requests to be removed from email lists. Some of those complaining lately have been friends and professional contacts. Not good.

I have been told by many people that I should get my book information posted on Facebook. However, I do not want my face and details on Facebook. I recently got rid of MySpace and stopped using several other social media sites, because it is just too much work to try to keep up with them all and also keep updating and correcting my information. I would much rather spend the time writing and editing new materials.

Another bit of advice from web marketers is to create a video “trailer” for a new book and post it on YouTube. Allegedly, this is another hot way to sell books. It took a bit of work to slip together some of my old photographs and a few title cards in a manner that seems reasonably coherent. Then, using Windows Movie Maker, I created a movie file and posted it on YouTube. Here is the link. I have not recorded any spike in sales since posting it.

Finally, I keep seeing online messages and blog posts touting novellas as "the new novel” for busy readers. And I keep seeing book publishers setting up e-book divisions and posting e-book versions of hot sellers. At least one of my previous books, published by a conventional publisher, is now online as an e-book, and I do not get a penny from the sales.

About two months after self-publishing my book and entering this brave new, no-inventory world, I have not yet turned a profit on Jump. Numerous people have promised to purchase it, but the sales figures so far do not show much follow-through. A few friends quietly have admitted that the recession is still hurting them and causing them to watch every discretionary cent. That is one of the reasons I made the e-book version of Jump available for just $1.99 and priced the Kindle edition at only 99 cents.

(An amazing number of authors with online books apparently are so desperate to be read that they price their works at $0.00 – free. This, of course, makes it much harder for writers who need income from their works to set any kind of profitable, yet competitive, price. After Amazon’s commissions for the Kindle edition, for example, I would have to sell three million copies of Jump to hit the magic million-dollar mark. Dan Brown might be able to do it, but not Si Dunn.)

Short of hiring Lulu’s or Amazon’s book marketing services and going deeper in the hole, my only recourses are to start sending out news releases and review copies of the book and start buying advertising space, just like the old days of book publicity. Maybe I can even give myself some book-signing parties and offer free chips and dip.

Hey, anybody know Oprah?


Si Dunn is a book author, screenwriter, script doctor, book reviewer and editor.

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