My plot in "Stealing Thunder"  - Communist Chinese agression in naval areas in the South China Sea - continues to unfold and will grow even greater in the coming years, creating a shift of Power in the future in the Pacific Rim.  This shift is critical and will impact our solid allies like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and more.

The commander of US forces in the Pacific has warned that China’s military is more aggressively asserting its territorial claims in regional waters.

Admiral Robert Willard told the Financial Times: “There has been an assertiveness that has been growing over time, particularly in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea.”

He said China’s extensive claims to islands and waters in the region were “generating increasing concern broadly across the region and require address”.

The admiral’s remarks follow complaints by Japan in recent weeks about aggressive behaviour from a Chinese coastguard vessel in contested waters and a Chinese military helicopter in international waters.

CineSync

This software package is useful for long distance communication for editorial, VFX artists and any distance work. Used on a license fee basis, it's not cheaper but then free access might overwhelm their pipeline.

From their site, About:

cineSync is a remote review and approval tool based on Apple ® QuickTime technology. By synchronising the timeline and playback of movies, you can quickly and efficiently view your work at the same time with anyone anywhere in the world.

Build a playlist of movies, scrub to a point in a movie, playback a movie, draw on the screen with your mouse, write, circle and point to areas using the drawing tools – all synchronised in real time with everyone else in your review. You can also navigate through your playlist using Text Markers ('Bookmarks'), transfer your movies using a built-in FTP client, import and export Final Cut Pro XML data and save your session and your drawings for future reference.

cineSync offers an unparalleled user experience, making it possible for your clients to participate in a review session without needing their own account. All they need to do is download a small self-contained package, and login using a key that is unique per-review session. Movies are never transferred through the cineSync servers, ensuring that your reviews are secure, and your media never leaves the privacy of your own file servers.

What does it cost?

• Purchasing a cineSync account will allow you to initiate cineSync review sessions.
• cineSync is free to use for anyone that joins your review sessions.
• Accounts are available as monthly, 6 monthly, or 12 month subscriptions.
• You can assign multiple logins to a single cineSync account.
• Account Upgrades are available at any time, and will be effective for the remainder of your subscription period.

cineSync account packages:

This is the book and TV business, chasing people with a following because they can't develop anything good on their own.   This guy returns from San Diego to Los Angeles, lives with his profane dad and puts stuff up on Twitter.  Quotes every three four days.  Gets 1.2 million people following him.

Justin Halpern
shitmydadsays.tumblr.com
Move back in with your parents, commit your 74-year-old father’s obscenity-strewn wisdoms to text, post them on Twitter and, if you’re Justin Halpern, end up with 1,288,000 followers, a book deal and a show on CBS. Halpern started after he moved home from LA to San Diego last year. “You look just like Stephen Hawking… Relax, I meant like a non-paralysed version of him. Feel better? Fine. Forget I said it.”

Apple has done much to change the film industry with its Final Cut Pro software including the editing software, DVD production software, Motion and its other technology.

Check out this chart to see where they get the Revenue - and where the technology is going.

Writers have been hidden in the film process for many years.  Their names may be known among industry professionals at the studios and Lit agencies, but not among the public.  They too felt the keen intrusion of technology earlier than most film industry professionals.  When personal computers were invented in the early 1980's, their craft was opened up to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people.   These aspiring writers simply thought, "I type, therefore I can write."

Incorrect.

The operation of a mechanical-electronic device - a computer - does not necessarily make one a writer.   A writer studies and practices the form and the practice of writing.   Screenwriting is the most susceptible to this technology creep of familiarity.  There's lots of empty space in a film script that one doesn't have to worry about and, besides, everybody who has seen a movie can write a movie, right? The WGA noted that there are 80,000 submissions a year to their writing registration service.   Almost 7,000 finished scripts a month.  That's a lot of competition.

Everybody who has listened to music, can play play a musical instrument, right?

Everybody who has driven a vehicle, can drive a NASCAR race car, right?

Not quite the same.  Screenwriting is changing permanently.

Screenwriters dancing the one-step

Producers, studios get a pass on script rewrite fees

Rewrite gigs are a gold mine for the top tier of scribes, but for many other writers, a twist on an old motto rings true: Will work for free.

For writers who have sold a script or landed an assignment, studios have gone from making deals that included a traditional first draft, two sets of revisions and a polish to what are called "one-step" deals. It's essentially payment for that first draft, with fees for additional work left to be determined.

This video is an interesting reference on the various elements of stock footage, animation and interviews.  I'm going to use it for "In Harm's Way".