I have always had a fondness for writing and planning things. I like to imitate reality in almost everything I do. Particular in one thing, writing.

I have written short stories and synopsis for as long as I can remember. The first real story i wrote were for a movie about a plane that crashes in the Rocky mountains and the only survivors are two meteorologists. Both of the characters hate each others guts but has to work together to stay alive. Does it sound familiar? I don’t remember it quite that much but It could have something to do with that I actually saw Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin in “The Edge” a few days earlier and well, you do the math.

I was somewhere between eleven and twelve when that occured. Since then many of the things I have written is far moore original than my first attempt in “The Plane”. Did I forget to mention that the imaginary movie won for best screenplay and best cinematography in my imaginary Academy Awards ceremony?

Lately, to be more precise; The most recent years, my ability to spawn and spread in the writingarea has grown. I watch everything from documentaries on Discovery Channel to feature films with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffmann (Pappilion is a wonderful movie!) and somewhere between comes more modern classics like “Star Wars” and “The Matrix” with more… Watching so many movies broads my horizon a lot and the inspirations comes flowing like a river in Venice.

I have just purchased a black file to store my ideas in. Most of them are stories that I haven’t developed to fully blown stories but some of them has got the intention to become real someday. One of the most recent ideas I have written and developed is a documentary about the economy crisis last year in Europe and foremost USA. I have named the project “Echo-Nomics” and along with it I have also created a poster for it, what the details really are about and what the story tells is still something I like to keep for myself, as I know such information could be… Well, let’s just say I want it for myself.

I often start with an idea by testing it on myself, would I go and see it? And if that question comes with an “yes” than let’s go… If I have doubts, the idea becomes nothing more than just an idea in my head and all though I might forget what it was about I could easily hide it and make it come back, but in a different version. Most of the stories varies in genres but I have learned that the easiest genre to actually create and idea is the standard drama, being that it’s so huge and wide you could fit anything and if you have a biopic (short for “biography picture”) in mind, than you got to develop it with the source in mind. The hardest genre is probably comedy, because comedy is like that shirt you wear; YOU might think it’s cool but others may have other opinions.

Humour as a whole is somewhat, very difficult to write, I envy them who actually succeed. Kudos for you!

Does my personal life affects what I write? Of course it does! That’s what I like about writing, you can take in everything from your own life and make it personal. That’s what makes an original story so fascinating, if you have a personal quirk or maybe somewhere you like to go… Then you can easily implement it in the story and continue to write it until the imagination stops. That’s what makes writing so powerful, sky is really the limit and your imagination is really something that does not sink or dissapear.

Cherish it, if you have any fantasy at all!

It all started with a movie called “The Dark Knight”, about a year ago… You take something from the movie (a company for example) and makes it real by creating a website for it. And then you take other things like characters (Harvey Dent for example) or places in the movie and create even another site. And then you announce this in steps, you announce the first web page and then a couple of weeks later you announce the next web page… You see where I am going here?

All though “The Dark Knight” wasn’t the first product to be marketed with a viral campaign a year before it was released, it certainly was the first one that actually turned viral campaign into daily food for Hollywood. The first time I saw a viral site was for the video game “Grand Theft Auto III” back in 2001 and 2002. So the concept is not new per say but has gained alot of fame for it’s effective way of keep the interest alive… Even though you’re not actually doing anything. And making viral websites is much more cheaper than producing trailers after trailers after trailers. So why has it not gained popularity among low budget movies? It should be a hit!

Anyway, as the headline implies… Viral sites is very funny to make. And I have just got home after a busy work day creating one for an event for a company a little longer further down the road. It’s still very secret, so I can’t really tell you what it is about or where it’s located… What I can tell you is that I have created a fake chat and a fony financial newspaper for this event, the point is to make people more curios about the problem they are about to face during this event and so forth… On September 29th this event will take place somewhere in Stockholm, Sweden and after that I will be more than happy to share every detail I have on these websites… But until then, watch this classic viral sites that has spawned many laughs and “ooohaa!” from my face during this year, cheers!

WhySoSerious.com
IBelieveInHarveydent.com
TheGothamTimes.com

Okay, I got to be honest here. I have a habit… A habit of collecting interests. During my lifetime I’ve had more interests and hobbies than I can count on my fingers. Once upon a time I was a huge sports jock… And I mean HUGE… Call me nerd, I don’t care but it was borderline crazy for me, sports was my everything. Soccer, Basketball, Handball, Ice Hockey and I even tried Football and Baseball, the American-sports-fan I am. I actually watches the Super Bowl every year… Not many Europeans can brag about that…

And then in my life came the music. I have played drums since I was six. Not on real drums but I drummed, on everything from garbage cans, buckets, kitchen fixins and anything rounded and hollow. I have also played bass (The only instrument I actually have taken lesson in by the way) and now it’s on to the guitar. I bought my first guitar a couple of years ago. First I bought an electric but soon figured out that to get the best out of the instrument you should also go acoustic, witch I did and bought an acoustic guitar. For a whole summer vacation I spend (this is no joke) like five hours a day practicing on that guitar until either the strings were full of dirt or my fingertips started to grow mountains and valleys. Out of this and together with my incredible sense of creativity I got through it and consider myself pretty descent in playing and I have started to mix with my own creations such as improvisations, solos (which basically is improv too) and riffs.

One riff I recorded just the other day is something I made out of three simple chords… An “F#m”, a “D” and an “A”. I call it my “Riffin’-D”. At some point when I jam for myself I often think: “Why can’t I be more creative with these things?” and suddenly out of the blue comes that sweet spot.

Whenever my “Riffin’-D” will become somebody’s song or mine, I don’t know. What I can tell you is that, when I jam or making up stuff like this I do take huge inspirations in things I hear during the ordinary days in life. If you listen carefully you can actually hear that “Riffin’-D” sound similar to “Plain White T’s” “Hey Delilah”… Which is no coincidence, it’s the same chords but in an other progression… And with a Distortion pedal (more of that last in this post) and an Electric guitar instead of an acoustic.

My technics varies a lot. But in this riff I use the “Crab-Grab”-technique… Much the same as Mark Knopfler uses when he does his swinging guitar playing, the man does not use picks… Good for him! What the Crab-Grab does is that I use my index finger and thumb and grabs the particular string I’m playing on and when I move up one string instead of using my index finger and thumb I’ll use my middle finger and index finger which means I don’t have to move my hand so much… It’s a marvelous technique to learn, I love to play like this!

The setup I use in this simple riff is my Arctic White Fender Mexican Stratocaster (I have named her “Bonita”, which means beautiful in Spanish and since she’s Mexican and all you can figure out why), through my Zoom G2.1u pedal and again through my Boss Blues Driver Pedal and there you have it…

What settings I used is something I rather keep for myself, I don’t want to spoil to much.

G’Night!

Oh, and by the way… The humming in the background is my pick-ups which is taking up everything else electric like my computer that I’m connected to… This teaches you that standing in a studio would be a better option to record something, But this just for testing so it doesn’t matter that much.

Listen to the riff: (requires QuickTime)

When I first registered for this website I was hoping for an address like ReverseVertigo.com. Unfortunately, that domain was already taken by some cheap punk band or whatever they published on their homepage… I was very sad when I realize I had to put a “-” between Reverse and Vertigo… But not many hours ago I learned that the domain of ReverseVertigo.com now was sold and open for business. I grabbed it as fast as I could and for only 59 SEK ( approx. 6€ or 9$) I now own the rights to the domain… Well I don’t own it per say but I leases it for 59 SEK a year, so that’s pretty much the same thing.

Of course, reverse-vertigo.com still works just as well because it’s the base of my server that I also leases, so no change there but as I said yesterday, technically I have OCD in these things and that “-” has bugged me from day 1.

The question if I will use “Reverse-Vertigo.com” again or not, I don’t know. I don’t like it so probably not… no…

Sitting at work this very casual Thursday, working with Adobe Flash CS3, got me thinking about the amazing capabilities you can do with this program. As you already have seen (hopefully) my intro for this blog is made in Flash. It’s pretty simple but I like the idea that it actually looks like a movie trailer, If you have any imagination at all that is.

In my line of work, the media business. You get in contact with different platforms all the time, every single day. Most of them are from Adobe. Since Adobe bought Macromedia (the original developer of flash) it has become somewhat of a blessing to mix with Photoshop and Illustrator. So where is the unholiness in this you say? The fact that Flash is time consuming and a bit frustrating to take control over, does make it a bit of pain in the a** to handle sometimes. Setting up a certain deadline for a project is almost impossible if you don’t plan everything accordingly and straight fortward. If any thing goes wrong, It goes terribly wrong. And the time you spent on fixing the problem overlaps the amount of time the whole project was suppose to take.

I sat with a banner for a Swedish bingo site in over seven hours (that’s a full workday without my lunch included) just because two buttons wouldn’t work properly. Luckily, Flash is not that demanding in the systemdepartment like Premiere and After Effects is so it does not crash that often. But then again, both Premiere and After Effects has an auto save function and Flash does not so when it do crashes, you’re completely “f**ked”.

I remember when I first learned using Flash. It was in 8th grade and I was invited by a friend to participate in an experiment with this new program that demanded (back then, not now) that you could draw. Well, my friend is a killer drawer and does marvelous things with both Illustrator, Flash and Photoshop. Me? I’m more of the “layouter”. I like to orginize things to make them seem logic, and I do have an in official form of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) if have to say so myself, so that job suits me very well. Anyway, we sat in his room and tried this program, he knew it very good, I didn’t. When I got home that day though, I knew everything I wanted to know about it.

During the years, I have been developing a serious “hate crush” on Flash. It’s fun and all but as much as I like sitting and design cool looking things, it’s also very frustrating at times with all the programming and the endless use of movie clips and whatnot. It’s a mixed fascination I still to this day uses Flash… And I still planning to do my home for Reverse Vertigo, 100% flash-crafted… *sigh*