Oh gee, hey gee, you should see my IG

Work on Houses of the Muses continues apace. I hit the hundred-page block for a couple of weeks, but put my head down and bulled through instead of going back and starting the second draft.

But this isn't about that. This is about Empire Uncut, and the scene I have thirty days to film.

Star Wars: Uncut chopped Star Wars into about 800 fifteen-second chunks, then handed them out to amateur filmmakers to recreate. Which they did, using action figures, Lego minifigs, computer animation, traditional animation, pencil sketches, cats, dogs, ferrets, terrible costumes, excellent costumes, excellent terrible costumes, puppets, adorable children, greenscreening, machinima, rotoscoping, repurposed footage, shop vacs, stop motion, fast motion, slow motion, no motion, instant messaging, an Oscar statuette, a hamburger, and My Little Ponies. Then they stuck them all back together and added John Williams's soundtrack back in. I saw the final result at the Brattle Theater in June, and it was joyous and jubliant and ridiculous. (If you want to watch it, it's on the internets.)

I couldn't resist signing up for the sequel, which is why I have thirty twenty-seven days to film fifteen seconds of Empire Strikes Back. That sounds like a lot of time, but the chunk I selected has six shots, two locations, two F/X shots, four speaking parts, and a life-size IG-88. I'll be posting updates here — it's not exactly writing, but it is a creative endeavor slathered with fandom sauce, so here it is.

I've never filmed anything before, so I expect this to go extremely well. If you feel like signing up for a scene of your own, or watching the chunks as they're uploaded, go here: http://www.starwarsuncut.com/empire.

My first storyboards. Adorable!

Plans for IG-88.

IG-88's torso, the early stages