Dice decided short film is...

The first dice decided film

Well, it's nearly 11pm on Friday night and it's been decided that a week from now there will be the first dice decided film. It means, basically, writing options for various elements of the film, and rolling the dice to decide which gets used. For example, when it comes to the title, there will be six options: however the dice rolls will decide which option we run with.

Same for the genre: will it be a comedy, an action film, a romantic thing, a horror film, something avant-garde, etc...

The nice thing about dice decisions is that they open the mind up to chance, and they take the awful responsibility away that so very often leads to stagnation and fear.

And yet they still incorporate elements of groundedness, reason and sensibility.

So this time next week the film will be made, and it will be posted online: no matter what. If I'm the only person in it, and I have to shoot it myself, the damn thing WILL BE MADE.

Dice willing, of course...

Dice decision on next film I make

Yes, there's a great app for my new iPhone. It's a great dice rolling app where you can roll up to six dice, change the look and function of each dice, the number of sides, and the table that they roll on!

Check out the video: I'll be making more dice decisions soon - and some will be on the iphone.

Great thing about the iPhone, too, is that I can upload video directly to YouTube, Facebook, my website etc.

By the way, the dice decision on the job went really well - the film was fun, good, and was a pleasure to work on.

Watch out for PLAYLAND soon, at The Doorpost Film Project Playland will be online from August 22nd.

My first major dice decision since the blog

OK.

I have a dice decision. I have the opportunity to accept something that doesn't meet the criteria I'd set. This thing isn't something I can publicly mention here, so let's just say that there are consequences if I don't accept the offer.

If I get it my way I got more of that thing we all know and love: money. I know I'm worth it, but there's that risk, of course, that if I don't accept this thing then I'll lose it, and lose the possible connections it would likely lead to.

But of course one can't make decisions based on fear, can one?




And this is one of the key elements to making dice decisions. The moment one opens oneself up to living outside one's comfort zone, and making those riskier decisions, then one is alive. The beauty of dice decisions is they "factor in" an element of risk, but still include the possibility of making a safe decision. If anything, they're a kind of halfway house between living dangerously and living safely.

But as I've said already, I do believe that the consequences of decisions are illusory. One can make a decision that has the most excellent short term consequences, and most abysmal long term ones. So who can really say that there is such a thing as a "good" or "bad" decision?

But tomorrow, I will film my dice decision and post it here.

"God doesn't play dice"

Albert Einstein once said that "God doesn't play dice". An interesting comment from a man who didn't believe in God anyway, but as far as Einstein was concerned, what he was saying was that there are a certain set of universal rules in place throughout the cosmos that are fixed. The universe, according to Einstein, isn't chaotic at all, but a well ordered system, governed by immutable laws.

Personally, I don't agree with Einstein. Not that I'm any kind of physicist, of course, and I don't believe in any kind of sentient, conscious god, but if there were a god I say that god would be chance itself.

All that what we see around us is a product of chance. What we are ourselves - human beings - are a product of chance. I can see no other way. I can't possibly accept any kind of traditional "creationist" nonsense any more than I could accept Santa Claus: the universe is fifteen billion years old, our planet is four and a half billion years old, and that's an awful, awful long time for chance to play its game - and considering it has a universe so vast we can barely grasp the numbers of stars, solar systems and galaxies within it, I'd say that the outer reaches of chance is perhaps what life is all about.

To me, DNA is an inevitable product of randomness. It's most likely rare in the universe, yes - baring in mind that any matter at all is rare in the universe, let alone organic matter - but it exists because the universe has been around so long, the chances of matter eventually arranging itself into DNA is only a matter of time. An awful long time, yes. But a finite time.

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It's strange the fascination so many people have for gambling It's a fascination that's been around so long. People have gambled with cards, dice, the flip of a coin, on horse races, cock fighting, which boxer, wrestler, or gladiator will win the fight. People have gambled on the outcome of events and many have invested everything they've held dear to them in the pursuit of more, or of something they want. And what progress would there have ever been throughout history without The Risky Endeavour? And it's been when those endeavours have had the odds stacked most against them that some people have made the greatest achievements in life.

Cities like Las Vegas have thrived on chance: certainly on the common man's ignorance of probability, anyway. Economies have grown and fallen as a result of it. Wars have been won and lost because of it. The gamble Eisenhower made on the morning of June 6th 1944 could have lost the allied the war had the weather not decided to change in their favour that day. Would we be living under Nazi rule today had a few millibars moved on the barometer that morning, or a few neurons fired a little differently in his brain that morning? Who knows? Did something or someone make him feel confident enough that morning to make that decision? Was a nice, relaxing cup of early morning tea responsible for the halting of the nazi war machine?

I'm a huge fan of The Butterfly Effect, as you might see...

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One thing that strikes me odd about us humans, though, is we crave uncertainty. We might think we want it, but certainty is, to many people, a kind of death. It's almost non-life. After all, we all know what boredom is. Isn't it just a type of certainty? People will live lives of apparent luxury, and yet be bored to death.

I can't help thinking that's odd.

Now on Twitter...

I'm now on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dicemanjack

Website, in development, is www.dicemanjack.com