Noah Henry Morriss

Visual Common Place Book

October 31, 2024

This past Spring I started to put together a sort of visual common place book.

If you are unfamiliar with what a common place book is, it’s a notebook that traditionally houses quotes/writing that a person feels a particularly strong sense of connection to.

By keeping track of the ideas, passages, verses… that really punch you in the gut, you are better able to understand what you like, think, and believe.

It’s also handy for if you tend to use quotes a lot and need to easily find said quotes.

My visual common place book is just a file on my computer that houses stills that I dig.

If I’m watching a movie and see an image that I really like, I’ll take a photo with my phone and transport that image to the respective folder at a later date.

Since I’m taking an image of a monitor or TV with my phone the image is never great, but that’s not the point. I’m more trying to keep track of the blocking, framing, colors, and art direction. The photo is just a reference.

I don’t take a photo for every film I watch, even if that film has excellent photography.

The real purpose behind this collection is to be able to reference the stills for my own projects.The stills that I take are usually taken because I want to replicate them in the future, and by having them at the ready in these organized folders I am setting myself up to do just that.

Also, it’s just plain nifty to see the kinds of things I keep. It really shows the macro view of what I like, which is sometimes hard to figure out.

I think this might be something I do forever, it just seems useful.

And fun.

Like collecting stamps or butterflies.
The Game of Writing

October 28, 2024

This past week I’ve been experimenting with a new story, one that is more of a game to write than something… I don’t know, serious.

I’m a huge TTRPG fan and love to read up on theory of play. One of the most common and popular pieces of advice is that when you are prepping scenarios for players you should prepare situations and not stories. Meaning come up with a problem for players to solve, rather than a plot for them to follow through.

The most exciting way to play is to throw players head first into a problem and to let them squirm and wriggle their way out of it. What you don’t want to do is have solutions already in mind, because if you attempt to steer people in the direction of your solution you tend to kill the thrill.

It’s the problem solving, stakes, and consequences that arise that make the game fun.

Thinking on this type of improvisational problem solving made me think of a passage in Stephen King’s On Writing where he touches on the differences in writing a plotted novel and a situational novel.

He explains that stories like Misery, Cujo, and Gerald’s Game are stories that automatically incite plot based on their basic premises.

“A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a what-if question.”

Stephen King On Writing

“And none of the story’s details and incidents proceeded from plot; they were organic, each arising naturally from the initial situation, each an uncovered part of the fossil.”

Stephen King on writing Misery

By making the problem the heart of the story you are creating the playground that makes writing fun.

When you work to find solutions for the characters to escape, it’s almost like you yourself are doing the escaping.

It’s kind of like day dreaming what you’d do if you were stuck on an island. How would you survive? How would you escape? What about food? Shelter?

By putting yourself into the situation, you sort of engage yourself in a different way when writing. It just seems a touch more interactive and a little less passive.

Maybe writing is supposed to be a game like that, at least in terms of genre fiction.

How would you enact a heist?

How would you deal with an alien on your spaceship?

How would you deal with zombies surrounding your house?

How would you deal with witnessing a murder?

Pick a problem and see how your characters get out of it.

Nothing revolutionary here, I know, but still something potentially big for me. Certainly makes writing stories more about something.

Like an escape room.
Simplicity

September 30, 2024

You want to make simple things, but complications get in the way. You want a simple story, with simple writing, with simple elements. Simple?

It seems that the act of making something “seem” simple is actually a very complicated process. That it actually takes years and years of work and understanding to reach the point where you can steer work into “simple” territory.

You have to learn through the complications in order to cut them off.

It is hard work to make simple things.
More like a house

September 9, 2024

^{_{back cover of draft with inspirations}}

I’m moving along with a project that has been on-again, off-again for the past few years. It’s called Too Much and I really love it.

The above photo is the back cover of the legal pad that contains a finished rough draft. It has various inspirations written on it that make up the essence of the project.

The quote in the bottom right is a portion of an Alice Munro quote. The rest is as follows:

“A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

Alice Munro

I have left and come back to this project since I started it my Sophomore year of college where it began life as a poem.

The story has changed each time that I’ve returned. But I keep on coming back.

That must be a good sign, it must.

“And I grew up in rural coastal Cornwall, miles from anywhere, so I know the feeling of being in a small town that, as soon as you’re conscious of where you are, you want to get away from—even though you’ll always be drawn back to it.”

Mark Jenkins
The big and the little

September 2, 2024

I just read this blog post by Molly Fairhurst on collage and it got me thinking about spontaneity and longevity.

I can’t say that I’ve “completed” any big-picture projects at this point in my life, but I can look back and point at a sprinkling of day and weekend projects that do make up my past.

Just yesterday I did a small, day-long photo project. I took a walk, snapped a number of photos, edited them to my liking, and posted them on my Twitter. All within a few hours.

They aren’t spectacular, but I dig them, and more importantly I can chalk that project up as a happy success.

The issue, or perhaps challenge, being that longer projects (i.e. a feature screenplay) cannot be completed in such a fierce and intense period of time. It would be too much for that type of project.

So, I find that working on a larger project sometimes stalls. That an element of jumpy spontaneity is lacking and it can become more tiring than it’s worth.

But this is not to say that shorter projects are the answer either. While I love and appreciate diving into the pool, sometimes I find myself out of the water before I’ve gotten a chance to really enjoy myself.

The idea I’m receiving from this is that you really need both, and they’ve got to overlap.

Have a larger project in the running, simmering away in the pan, but don’t forget to follow your nose and see where it leads.

^{_{a short animation I made last year over a weekend.}}

Having lots of hobbies is likely the answer. Have things that can be done quick; like taking a few photos, or doing a collage, or scratch-building a robot… Do these things to refresh yourself, and do them often.

I have a feeling those longer projects will thank you for it.
A Quick Reflection On An Attempt at Directing

June 2, 2024
Last weekend I was involved in a double short film shoot. Two shorts filmed in a period of three days. Seventeen page total.

It was a lot of work, but everything was filmed and the post-production phase has begun.

I headed one of the scripts as director, while my writing buddy headed the other.

I’d like to share my thoughts on where I made mistakes on my script and where I could improve.

My short was the shorter one which we allotted five-hours on the first day of filming to complete. I was determined to get it done quickly, and so imposed director, sound, and camera all on myself. It was just me and the two actors.

For more experienced filmmakers this may have been a cinch. The script wasn’t too complicated in terms of scale, more of a conversation piece, and there was no intense camera work—at least, not in my storyboard.

The shots were planned to be minimal and lengthy in order to highlight the actor’s performances.

Immediately into the first shot I knew that my planning was not going to work.

I had too much on my plate in terms of crew work, and I was struggling to communicate with the actors the specifics of what I was looking for.

My first note to the actors was an attempt at bringing an element of surrealism into the piece, which was not at all needed and only resulted in confusion all around.

Here’s my first tip: when in the moment of actually doing the work, don’t make things needlessly complicated. Be plainspoken in your communication and don’t change the theme of the piece moment by moment and expect others to follow without confusion.

After forcing a few shots that just felt wrong, I had to look the actors in the eye and tell them that it wasn’t working. That the things I had planned were not going to cut it.

To their credit, both actors were incredibly kind and willing to continue. They suggested a different approach and we took it. It was difficult to admit to them that I didn’t know what I was doing and that I was completely lost, but they handled it well. Perhaps that’s how most people handle someone admitting that they need some help.

Going forward, I shot handheld while they went through the scene in completion a number of times. I noticed my camera captured close ups better than wide shots so I stuck with that, and the actors performances got deeper and deeper with each take.

It felt a little more experimental, and in a much better way than my pho-surrealism take. It was fast, exciting, and everyone was very focused. It felt like something Cassettes or Mike Leigh might have done, but maybe I’m just dreaming a little.

We finished filming around the three-hour mark, so early. We could have played around with the scene more, but we were all tired and content with what we’d gotten.

I’m editing the project now, which is coming with its own challenges that may be discussed in a post at some point, and I’m enjoying the footage that we gathered.

The style is recognizable—that fast, telephoto, Peeping-Tom style—and I can see where I could have done better with it, but that’s nothing I can do anything about.

Anyways, here are my major takeaways:
1. Always meet with who you’re going to be working with prior to the day-of. Preferably far in advance. Plainly tell them what you’re looking for and listen to what they have to say. Don’t expect people to get you without explanation and to understand how to follow your lead blindly.
2. Running both sound and camera by yourself is not for the faint of heart. If you must do it, understand that quality will suffer on both ends. It will always be better to have someone else help with it, it’ll only add to the piece.
3. Don’t add “weird for the sake of weird” in the moment of production. Following your gut is a great thing, but it must be communicable to others. It takes time to communicate and you don’t have time when you’re in the midst of production.
4. Don’t be afraid of saying “This isn’t going to work,” but also don’t relent to chickening out on your ideas. If you do move on to another plan you must be wary of finding a path that you can stick with. If your plans keep changing moment to moment, you’ll never get anything done.
5. Confidence is just deciding that things need to be done in a specific way right now.
There is of course more that I just haven’t had the time to ponder on yet, but these are my thoughts a week after the fact.

It was an intense learning experience, and certainly a humbling one.

Thankfully it hasn’t killed the dream, it just has made me want to try again.
When Do You Film

May 19, 2024

I’ve been thinking about scheduling, and how as an independent filmmaker who can’t pay people very much, if at all, scheduling can be one of those mountains that can seem unclimbable.

It’s pretty unreasonable to ask people to take two weeks off of work in order to make a movie that might not go anywhere. That’s not something that most people can really do, so another solution must be decided upon.

Christopher Nolan’s first feature Following was filmed over a number of weekends in small increments. This would work great if everyone is located in the same area, everyone has jobs in which their weekends are the same days, and the actors and locations agree to maintain their “looks” for a prolonged period of time.

A more extreme version of this structure would be David Lynch’s Eraserhead, filmed over a period of five-years. Jack Nance had to maintain his unique hairdo for the entire period of time. They filmed when they had the money, and halted production when they didn’t.

Slightly different would be Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. The film was shot over a twelve-year period, but rather than being told in a condensed period of time the story takes place over the twelve-year period. This makes the changes in the actors and locations okay.

The filmmaker Noam Kroll shot a film in 2023 in a number of small increments throughout the year. It was something like: three-days in March, three-days in June, four-days in September, and three-days in December. I think this is intresting on a number of levels.

One, you get to play with all four seasons. If you write a story that specifically takes place in different sections of the year, shooting in these little increments can work really well.

Two, it’s basically four separate three-day weekends. If you space them out enough, I think asking for time off from work in this fashion is fairly reasonable and much more doable — and perhaps far less exhausting — than one mega-production week.

Of course, by spacing out production so much you do run the risk of losing interest. In my experience, if a project takes too much of a lull its chances of continuing are significantly diminished.

So there are risks to prolonged production, but filmmaking is a risky business anyway.

I do find these unique production structures interesting, so I’ll be on the lookout for more. It could be fun to implement them as rules for your writing, as ways to influence stories.