Outside History

Doing a historical fiction is fine, just let you're audience know that you're ignoring it. Many pictures are close, but altered for the audience, which is controversial, but overall okay. Many are severely altered but are presented as true, which tends to tank.

So a couple good examples of letting your audience know that you're not going by the book.

Shakespeare in love:

Well, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter is a good clue, then there's the coffee mug at 4 minutes and 45 seconds that assists, etc. Point is, we've established that it's not another Historical Drama, but something different.

Another example is:
A Knight's Tale:

It opens at 3 minutes and 9 seconds to "We Will Rock You" including the crowd singing it, we know that it isn't going to be entirely accurate, so we can forgive the couple hundred years of armor changes.

A minor Change would be
Braveheart:

Primas Nocte is a Victorian Invention, and the princess involved wasn't in England (not to mention being 7), and they're missing the river and bridge at the Battle, and that they invented pikes, They're wearing kilts centuries early, etc. Even though it pushed the limits of alterations, it had a strong enough story to carry it beyond the problem.Though the standard set of Hollywood armors is a bit annoying, they're near to the realm of feasibility.

And then there's
Beowulf

Where they decided digital effects were better than story *Sigh* Luckily I didn't spend money watching it.

Beowulf & Grendel:

A much better variation of the tale (on a smaller budget and with less digitization).

There's also plenty of errors in judgment in production. Bad costuming, peasants all in grey or brown. Armor from the wrong period or worse, from the usual Hollywood suppliers who use some really bad stuff because everyone else did.

Then there's things that i'll live with. Metal rimmed wheels before they were used. Incorrect carriage design,

Beating a Joke vs. Beating it to Death

Humor is a funny thing. The same joke can be told by two people, once it is funny, the other may fall flat. Assuming that the audience has not heard it before, why is it funny or not?

Timing, or beats, in humor is all about how the joke should play out. One must not issue it to quickly, nor in the wrong order, nor explain too far. If one rushes the joke, the humor is past before the people have time to fully appreciate it. If in the wrong order, it becomes muddled, and leave the audience confused. If explained too far, the audience fails to achieve their own humor.

Rushing it tends to be portrayed as cramming several jokes in at once. They can be orchestrated together, with skill, but are often just placed without reverence to escalating the component jokes into a crescendo of humor. Instead it will tend to fall flat. In the wrong order, it creates a discordance and it plays out poorly, leading to a disharmonious conclusion. Over explaining the joke instead interrupts the flow of the humor and leads to cacophonous resonance which echoes several beats beyond it's intrusion.

You may wonder why I've used musical terms to explain humor. The truth is they have a surprising number of similarities. Both have to be well composed. Both sound off when beats are missing or fall out of order. A single chord can throw off an entire symphonic recital, much as a single bad joke can ruin a well constructed piece of comedy.

The final problem to watch for is beating the joke to death. It's not that a joke may not be repeated or become the running joke; but it does require that they not be repeated so often as to lose their humor. Again, this is a matter of timing. Much like music or song, a chorus can be repeated, but if you repeat it too often, it strains the ear.

I'll use a personal example:

I was working on a romantic comedy, and was trying to show the protagonist in a non-harmonious relation with someone. It went well, but later in review, I found that I had stated, as part of the joke, that she was a bitch. The audience should deduce that she was being a bitch. That single line wasn't needed and it's inclusion blew the rhythm of the joke by going a beat too far.

It would or at least should get cut in editing, but never assume that the editor has a good sense of comedic timing. By removing this impediment, the scene flowed more seamlessly into the next. It also allows the audience to make their own moral judgements, which is dangerous, but a crafted risk. If you don't allow the audience to do this, you risk alienating them altogether.

Holloween

Since I won't be going out on Holloween. :(

I decided to post a Meme.
Top 10 Holloween Movie List.
List your top 10 selections and reasons for the selections.

Mine are:

1) Return of the Living Dead
Zombies, not scary at all, and funny as hell
2) Holloween III
Probably the best of the Holloween series, though it wasn't particularly related to the others.
3) It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
The original 1966 version, not the modern dialog version.
4) From Dusk Till Dawn
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino pair up to make a great movie.
5) The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Not that scary, but a good story line.
6) Dracula 2000
A nice take on the Dracula tale.
7) The Lost Boys
A good fun vampire flick.
8) An American Werewolf in London
Great Pre-CGI werewolf flick
9) Split Second
Monsters and Automatic Shotguns(the only movie I've ever seen them in) - What more could you ask for
10) The Ninth Gate
A book collector and Satanic Ritual

As you can see, more on the lines of Horror or Halloween story lines, but not slasher messy. Honestly slasher flicks don't do it for me, if I want that, I'll listen to the news. It also reminds me I have several horrors to do more on:
Very violent and offensive Werewolf script.
Vampires and zombies with christian overtones.
Vampire Science flick

I'm sure there's more ideas on the list, but those are some I have some work completed on.