{"id":13426,"date":"2011-03-14T10:19:42","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/?p=13426"},"modified":"2011-03-14T10:19:42","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:19:42","slug":"oh-the-secrets-we-keep-the-lies-we-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/2011\/03\/oh-the-secrets-we-keep-the-lies-we-tell\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh the Secrets We Keep, the Lies We Tell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>\n<\/p>

The animations of the Smith Family Chronicles<\/a><\/em> are severely stilted. Their voices are the robotic monotones of the fully automated. Their arm movements are limited and jerky. They never walk anywhere: the two characters (and for any \u201cmovie\u201d there can never be more than two) just stand<\/em> there, facing each other, on \u201csets\u201d that aren\u2019t exactly marvels of complexity.<\/p>\n

Such are the limitations that come with the online tools available at Xtranormal.com.<\/a> Yet I\u2019ve now used those tools to make three weekly episodes of The Smith Family Chronicles.<\/em> Each four-minute episode of the show has taken me about twenty-five hours to write and produce. <\/em><\/p>\n

Writing and producing SFC<\/em> is <\/em>pretty much all my wife and I have talked about for a month. Who are the characters in the show? What happens to them\u2014and how, and when? Who\u2019s sleeping with whom\u2014or has, or will? Who\u2019s lying\u2014and about what, and why? How long have people been keeping the lies they are? What has keeping those secrets done to their lives, and to the lives of those nearest them? What happens when those secrets get revealed? What damage is done; what alliances are torn; what strengths are born?<\/p>\n

Marital loyalty and infidelity. Sexuality run amok. Christians suddenly faced with adult non-aborted children raised Muslim. Pastors with secrets no one should have.<\/p>\n

Oh, it\u2019s all<\/em> here, baby. And sooooo much more.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so exciting!<\/em><\/p>\n

Or not. I have no idea if people generally will respond to FSC<\/em> as I (and, in truth, those nearest me) certainly have. The weirdness of the whole Xtranormal thing just \u2026 deeply appeals to me. The medium itself is defined by such dramatic limitations and stylistic idiosyncrasies that, fascinatingly, it must finally become inextricable from the message. You can\u2019t just plug normal language into these characters; they must speak in a way that works with how they look and move. Finding that way meant reformulating the language used by the SFC<\/em> characters; it meant creating an odd hybrid of unadulterated emotion and normal conversational convention that ultimately felt organic to them.<\/p>\n

And then you\u2019ve got to pace their words\u2014stretching out phrases, trimming or adding syllables\u2014in order to properly sync them to their movements. And that\u2019s<\/em> after you\u2019ve finally gotten them to correctly pronounce the words in the first place.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a very definite craft to this particular art: getting it just right is an insane amount of work. But I love it. I love it all. Because I love what it results in.<\/p>\n

Those results\u2014the individual episodes of the series\u2014are the one thing so few things ever are, which is utterly and completely new. I\u2019ve never seen anything like The Smith Family Chronicles. <\/em>That\u2019s an absolutely remarkable thing to be able to say. It\u2019s exhilarating. Truly new is the rarest thing in the world.<\/p>\n

Last week a Lutheran pastor friend of mine sat quietly watching the second episode of the series (\u201cIs It Really God\u2019s Will That I Live Alone?\u201d)<\/a>. When it was over he turned to me, and I saw that his eyes were filled with tears. \u201cAmazing,\u201d he said. \u201cJust amazing. It\u2019s so moving. It\u2019s so gripping. <\/em>And the weird thing is, it forces you to take it on its own terms. As I was watching it, I kept trying to categorize it: I wanted it to be a cartoon, or a movie, or anything<\/em> else I\u2019d ever seen. But finally I just gave up on that, and began purely experiencing<\/em> it. And then it just \u2026 had me. It\u2019s really extraordinary. It <\/em> creates its own rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bingo. Those are exactly my feelings about it. If in your head you try to make SFC<\/em> be like anything else you\u2019ve ever seen, it fails, because it\u2019s not<\/em> like anything else you\u2019ve ever seen. SFC <\/em>forms its own, unique, one-item-only category. It insists on its own paradigm. If you let it have that\u2014if you relinquish essentially trying to control it, and instead just let it be what it is\u2014then<\/em> it does the magical thing, the beautiful thing, the art thing. Then it becomes something beyond the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

If you take it for what it is, it turns out to be a lot.<\/p>\n

It does for me, anyway\u2014and for my wife, and for \u2026 well, at least the (as of this writing) 98 people, I would think, who\u2019ve joined The Smith Family Chronicles Facebook page<\/a>. (And also, I assume, for the editor of Huffington Post Religion, who every Friday on his page is featuring each new SFC <\/em>episode.) I love<\/em> this form of storytelling: I love its feel; its look; its strange blend of low and high tech. And I love how readily it would adapt to other forms of storytelling: SFC<\/em> is made<\/em> to be a novel (which I may write next), a cartoon series, a television show, a graphic novel. It\u2019s a root from which all kinds of flowers could grow. As someone who\u2019s spent their whole life trying to be as creative as possible, that\u2019s seriously exciting.<\/p>\n

One of the things I\u2019ve always tried to do on this blog is take my readers with me wherever I go. I\u2019ve very definitely gone to the writing and producing of The Smith Family Chronicles. <\/em>I\u2019d like to know to what degree, if any, you\u2019ve come along with me. Have you watched the show? Do you like it? Do you hate it? (If it\u2019s not at all your cup of tea, of course no worries; as much as I wish it could, I know such work can\u2019t be for everyone. From the beginning I\u2019ve also known it would take six to eight episodes for people to really sort of get<\/em> what SFC<\/em> is all about anyway.) As always, I\u2019d certainly appreciate hearing whatever thoughts you might care to share.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yours in the ever-new,<\/p>\n

John<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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