Beauty and the Armageddon: acting

Thursday, January 5, 2012

"Tangled" by Carolyn Mackler

Carolyn Mackler's Tangled is one of the most powerful books that I read in 2011. The book is broken into four sections, each narrated by a different teen.

Jena: She keeps and notebook full of inspiring quotes and has been known to read any note she comes across. While at a resort with her mother, her mother's best friend, and the best friend's daughter Skye (who she can't stand), Jena finds two things- a possible summer fling and a suicide note.

Dakota: Is learning how to live life after the death of his girlfriend and after learning something about her he never knew. Dakota gets sent to stay with his grandparents and discovers that there is more to his character than he'd ever realized.

Skye: Dreams of stardom and his well on her way between auditions and indie film roles but she is still not happy. Skye begins to question her past and seeks out to find out about the father she never had the opportunity to meet.

Owen: or The Loser with the Laptop, gets sent to a conference for teens that has difficulty interacting outside of the world of the internet. But it is a girl he's met online that has the real impact on his life.

The lives of the characters intertwine in unexpected ways (note the fact that the book is titled Tangled) and the actions of one character inadvertently can affect the lives of the others. The different sections flow well with each other though I usually wasn't ready for the transition from one to another (I would have been happy to spend a little more time with each character to find out where they ended up). The book ends very open ended so it is very much up to the reader to decide what happens to each character. However, I felt that this type of ending worked well for the book.

Visit Carolyn's Website, Blog, and Twitter!
And check out some of her other books: The Earth, My Butt, And Other Big Round Things and The Future of Us (with Jay Asher)

Happy Reading!
-Melly

Sunday, October 23, 2011

48 Hour Film Challenge with the Four Corners Film Makers

The past few months have been interesting. I have had the wonderful opportunity to be involved with several local film products (Calendar Company, Highlander: The Watcher, and I'm Waiting). It has only been behind the scenes stuff: photo taking, providing baked goodies and a little bit of reflector and boom mic operating. Since I have no aspirations to be an actress, this sort of thing is perfect for me. So how did I end up "acting" in my first short film? Four words: 48 Hour Film Challenge.

Frantically writing...or tweeting... #FilmChallenge

This weekend I worked with the Four Corners Film Makers to create a short film over the course of a weekend (as I am writing this, editing is taking place. As soon as the film is up on youtube, you can trust that I will be posting it here). It was a lot of hard work but also a lot of fun. The FCFM team was assigned:

Genre: Film de Feme or Coming of Age
Character: Francis Tucker

Occupation: Marathon Runner

Prop: A wine glass
Line: "Let's pretend this never happened"

My minimal note taking and third Mountain
Dew of the night

I don't want to give anything away (I'd rather you get to see it for yourself) but let's just say our film is AWESOME! We had an amazing cast! I can't believe how much talent there is in my town. The crew (many will be featured in the film) also rocked! It was great to see a rather large group of people come together and create something in such a short amount of time.

Our fearless leader (and director), George Thomas

So many people complain about my town, saying that there are no opportunities here. My guess is they don't look very far. Yes, it's unlikely that some major Hollywood exec or music producer will discover anyone in Farmington, but that's not to say that someone from Farmington can't be found. I am very excited that I have the chance to work with these amazing people and am very thankful that they've allowed me to help them produce such awesomeness!