A Wall of its Own

It’s not perfect but it doesn’t have to be. It must simply be.

Yesterday, in a semi-crazed rush of creative urgency, I dismantled the office space to my immediate right. The wall that once proudly displayed my giant logo, housed library-like, my third collection of books, video equipment, compact discs, DVDs and other ornamental paraphernalia, was cleared just short of down to the studs. A feng-shui cleansing of old clutter in preparation for something new.

However symbolic this change, the space now holds minimalistic shelving, a hybrid of styles ranging from traditional early American to recycled solid core door below, the initial main feature of the story board time line in the center and (I just couldn’t help myself) the final addition to the space screaming for memorabilia, a cool poster of the first night game at Wrigley Field on 8.8.88 and a Louisville Slugger once used professionally by my old buddy Rob Picciolo, above. In this retrospective design analysis, we have storage space for reference material and access to tools below, the main creative working space centered and a tribute to friendship, history and hope above. However humble, there it is.

The space I refer to as ‘center’ is intended to house the time line of the screenplay. Moving from left to right along the critical years of inspection, December 7, 1941, September 9, 1942 and August 6 & 9, 1945 and September 2, 1945. This four year span represents the chronology of the story. Transposing time and space to the actual occurrences, we see (as the story board will soon show) the unfolding of what I - and everyone I have told the tale to so far - a most interesting sequence of events. We see:

Pearl Harbor > Japanese bombings of Brookings, OR > Hiroshima and Nagasaki > End of WWII.

That story line will come to life on my wall. What it will produce is an outline, structure for the narrative to move from the date that remains alive in infamy to the story of Nobuo Fujita, the pilot of the Japanese Yokosuka E14Y ‘Glen’, armed with a pair of 170lb incendiary bombs launched from a submarine on the mission to start a West Coast forest fire. Fujita would, after the war, return to Brookings and offer his 400 year-old samurai sword as a solemn token of forgiveness and hope, asking to the citizens of Japan and the United States to ’unite instead of fight.’

After this historical review perhaps you see the same need for visual structure as I. In my previous attempts I used 3x5 index cards, each containing information, character backgrounds, and detailed notes that in turn, flip the action from one card to the next. I found it easier to create the story in traditional sequence when looking at the cards like chess pieces in live animation moving towards eventual conflict (and its resolution).

We’ll see how this evolves. I continue to feel as if this is a saga that has all the elements necessary for a good story.

It now has a wall of its own.