A very slow start.

You sure know that any good idea worth your time is simple and brilliant. Which is to say, it boosts your spirit and entices you with the possibilities. But the fact is an idea is just that – an idea. To execute it, to see it through, is an exercise that demands as much will power, determination and endurance as intelligence.

Which is why it’s a slow start. :(

I know what TZZZT! needs to be. But to take it there I need to first master the tools. Flash, After Effects, Premiere, Audacity, etc. Which is not unlike learning a new language. So I have tutorials and ebooks and I read them and I get the logic… sure I do all of that. But I can’t help but feel impatient with my progress. It’s like teaching a man who wants to score a century in the World Cup finals how to recognise a Yorker or worse, how to hold the bat the right way.

Chal yaar, bat de, chakka laga!

This blog will have to see inaction for awhile. I need to educate myself first.

The Genesis of an Idea. (Or the Idea of a Genesis.)

As you can see in the masterful illustration alongside, the idea for TZZZT! (we’ll come around to what TZZZT! is shortly, till then please bear) was born from this simple thought: some ideas are so powerful that the moment they pop up in our head, we get electrified.

Not too far in the past, Archimedes, a homeboy of mine, once ran the streets of Syracuse so electrified by an idea that he failed to notice he was naked. Now if it could happen to a fine, sensible lad like Archie, who was to say I too wouldn’t too encounter such a fate. And sure enough, last Sunday I was in the shower and Adam-like when the idea for TZZZT! chose to manifest itself in a relaxed neuron of my brain. So with infinite restraint I grabbed a towel, stepped out the bathroom, grabbed a pencil and drew out the stick figure in my ever-open notebook.

(The stick figure could be you, could be me.)

TZZZT! is the sound electricity makes when it passes a junction. I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but when you stick your finger in the socket and turn the switch on, TZZZT! is exactly what you feel. Every second inside your brain a neurotransmitter jumps from neuron to neuron, carrying an idea in a small electrical signal. tzzzt! is the sound I am sure it makes.

But where am I going with all this? You’ll see. One more paragraph to babble, please.

You see, I have been writing for the screen for quite a while now. Nothing I’ve written has hit the screens near you (yet) but I’ve scripted my fair share of AVs and corporate films. The audio visual medium is what I find the most fulfilling. It is a medium I enjoy the most. I can reach both: the ear and the eyes. I can cause an effect that is more than just a sum of the effects on these two sensory organs. It is through this medium that I can electrify the most.

But all of these thoughts were unravelling rather subconsciously under the shower at around 18:30 on a very lazy Sunday. My mind was elsewhere. I was in the process of filching my sister’s new hair conditioner when it happened. A charged neuron inside my brain made its presence felt. Above the million other connections happening all around it, above the dim hiss of the shower, indignantly shushing the universe with its brilliance. The neuron addressed the rest of my brain- “Oi! You enjoy films!? Videos!? Arrey, then why not do more than just write scripts? Why not execute them into electrifying videos, too?”

The Rest Of My Brain went numb. But only for a second or two. Before it began buzzing.  

TZZZT! TZZZT! TZZZT!

I swear this is exactly how it happened.