Before looking at some screenplays for a few of my favorite movies, I took a look at a number of the machinima videos posted on the class website. The four videos that I watched in their entirety were Addiction, Code Monkey, Dangerous Games, and Anti-Citizens. First of all, I found Addiction extremely effective with it's use of voice overs because the person doing the voice overs for the main character really demonstrated the personality and attitude of that particular character. Secondly, both Code Monkey and Dangerous Games included a bit (or in the case of Code Monkey, a lot) of humor in their concepts. Code Monkey was definitely the most enjoyable video out of all of the ones I viewed because of how different it was from the standard machinima video. The idea of making a machinima music video was extremely inventive and the concept worked out perfectly because of the catchiness of the lyrics and the easy-to-follow storyline of the video. Thirdly, Anti-Citizens had amazing graphics and sound effects for being a machinima video. All of the videos included extremely effective camera angles and panning and did well with the types of shots they used (i.e. close ups, etc.). What was really inspiring was that the first three videos (Addiction, Code Monkey, and Dangerous Games) all incorporated extremely unique and effective concepts that made the videos interesting to watch the entire way through.

When I moved on to the screenplays, I first read the first link posted on the machinima resources page which was a link to a website that explained step by step the formatting of a screenplay. I found this website extremely helpful and will definitely keep it in mind for when I have to write my own screenplay. I then moved on to looking for a few screenplays to read online since the two links that were posted on the class website were not working. I managed to come across a website that listed a numerous amount of modern day movies and their scripts. I read parts of the scripts for both of the movies Mega Mind and Up. I was completely blown away by each of these screenplays. It takes so much effort and thoroughness to describe every single character's actions and facial expressions, every single scene and what the people whether important are not are doing in them, and every single camera angle. It was a bit intimidating to come to the realization that I would have to eventually produce the same type of screenplay with the same amount of accuracy, but I know that if I follow the correct formatting and establish a clear cut understanding of the topic of my screenplay way beforehand, it should make the writing of the screenplay much easier.

A few ideas for possible screenplays about Little Brother include following the character Masha's story immediately after the bombing of the Bay Bridge. When she gets reintroduced towards the very end of the book, you almost forget that she was even in the book in the first place. It would be interesting to see how the DHS got her to play for their team and how she helped the DHS infiltrate the XNet and track Marcus down. A second possible idea for a screenplay could be twisting the original storyline around so that Ange turns Marcus in after getting close enough to him to know all of his dirty secrets. As Kelly had mentioned in class one day, she was expecting Ange to turn Marcus in and totally betray him and honestly, so was I. I was waiting and waiting for that to happen in the story and thought for sure it was bound to happen, but then it never did. Therefore, I think it would be interesting to explore what happens when she does betray him and how she was led to committing that betrayal.