Vidar Nilsen’s Blog

Exercise Screenplays

To keep the skills intact whilst not working on new ideas I have written screenplays to practice. These are screenplays based on characters and stories that have already been developed by others so naturally I won’t be able to pitch these and sell them to any studios. Instead they will be available in the store for you to read as soon as they have been polished and treated until I am pleased. These screenplays include my visions of Alien 5, Final Destination 4 and others. As soon as they are available in the store you’ll be able to purchase a printed version or an electronic version. 

Reality TV: Why it sucks!

I have since the beginning of the Reality TV era hated the whole concept. I am not talking about shows like Survivior, American Idol and UFC Ultimate Fighter. Those mentioned shows are shows where real people come in and compete using talent and their skills to win. I am talking about shows like Big Brother and those “Lets see who can shut up for the longest or lets argue over potato chips”-type reality TV shows. They are simply a robbery of Network resources. The most irritating thing is that these shows are being watched by people in bulk. People whose lives must be just as boring or even more boring if they actually think these shows are interesting. And those bulks are huuuge! It’s unbeleivable.

Not only are they a robbery of network resources, they are also robbing young talent of their jobs or potential future jobs. There are schools in the US with thousands of hopeful actors, directors, writers and others who wants to break into the movie and TV Industry. People who spend years in school(s) in order to break through. People with hopes for the future and with goals that used to be a whole lot easier to reach than they are now after the reality TV era grew and became such a huge magnet for couch potatoes. Instead of giving these hopefuls a chance, the networks roam the streets of cities to find the gastliest or prettiest people with no skills whatsoever to star in their shows. Billions are being spent every year by the studios to produce these deadbeat shows and personnel are being wasted doing them. These people could be used for something more creative. That is what I believe at least. If people want Reality shows, watch the news and keep updated about all the cruelty that goes on in the world. What is so bloody interesting about watching people argue over hair color and see who manages to smoke the most cigarettes within five hours? I just don’t get it.

It is about time that the Networks start going back to do what they should do, and that is making creative fictional shows that people can enjoy, laught at, be scared by, be inspired by or shows that can fill people with hope and tease their fantasy buds. 

But of course, that is just my opinion!

WWE, WHERE IS IT GOING?

Foru years ago I became a freelance writer for World Wrestling Entertainment after submitting a series of storyline ideas to the organization after having seen an ad on their website. As an avid fan of the show(s), I simply couldn’t resist applying for the opportunity. I have watched the WWE since the WWF through WCW and all the internal politics that have been going on through the years. I remember me and my brother jumping by excitement when Brutus Beefcake and Roddy Roddy piper entered the ring. Not to mention when Hulk Hogan slammed The Giant on Wrestlemania. As a result I receive a letter where they confirmed my freelance status as they seemingly liked some of my submitted ideas. However, I have yet to see any of them being used. Nor have I seen any of my new twists and turns being used so I a starting to think that they have a bunch of idiots sitting there by a table developing storylines that have simply grown boring and predictable. The only thing that they have going for themselves right now is Cyber Sunday where the public and the fans decide stipulations and what superstars that should face each other. But other than that, the WWE shows have grown, as mentioned, boring and very predictable.

I am looking first of all looking at today’s characters in the shows, and I am looking mainly at the two biggest shows RAW and Smackdown. When the WWE took over ECW, they tried to add some major stars to that show, but ECW seems to have become a show where they can dump the fringe “players”. Those who are on the fringe of making it to the “big times”. They really really reeeeeally need to buff that show up a whole lot if they are going to keep a two hour timeslot going over a long period. Or, they should just shut it down, plain and simply.

RAW and Smackdown are WEE’s main windows out to the world and where you will find characters that are actually fun to watch. But there are some rotten eggs there as well. Let’s first take a look at RAW and it’s tag teams. The RAW tag team champions, Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch are two totally boring characters that should not be in the show whatsoever. Then you have teams like The Highlanders, Rory and Robbie MacAllister. From the Scottish highlands supposedly. They have nothing going for them either. Boring! And you never go through a RAW show without having to see the just as boring tag team Brian Kendrick and Paul London. RAW’s tag team line needs some Major rebuffing. Right now they are simply just repeating themselves. And what is more boring than watching the same tag team matches every single week?

Now, for the single characters. At RAW there are several characters that are interesting and really MAKE RAW what it is. These characters are Triple H, John Cena, Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold (although he hasn’t been involved in matches for the last year or so),  Jeff Hardy, Hardcore Holly and Bobby Lashley. These are characters that have something worth watching no matter if they are on the good side or the bad side. Carlito and Mr. Kennedy are characters that can become great with some character development. And the Divas of course, who would not like to see that except jealous girlfriends of WWE fans?

Then there are two of the World Champions, including the current champion Randy Orton (who became champion after John Cena was seriously hurt and will be out for up to a whole year). What more boring Champion can you have but Randy Orton? The character is lame and totally uninteresting and should be in ECW rather than at RAW. There is however a character that is just as boring and that is today’s King Booker. When King Booker was Booker T he had a character that people loved and thought was interesting and exciting. The new KING Booker along with his Queen Sharmell is so boring I simply fast forward through his matches on my DVR. Personally I’d love to see Booker T again like he used to be rather than this super lame KING Booker.

But RAW has it’s problems as well. Extremely boring characters that will go nowhere like, Cody Rhodes, Charlie Haas, Val Venis, Umaga, Santino Marella, Super Crazy and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Duggan should just retire and wait for his induction into the Hall of Fame.  If I have forgotten someone, it’s because they ain’t worth mentioning.

Smackdown’s big players are Baptista, The Undertaker, Edge, Kane, Matt Hardy, Rey Mysterio and Ric Flair. They are who the people come to see and want to watch on Tv  when the show is on. Other than that, the show is loaded with semi-boring newcomers and boring characters that should be dumped completely. And I am of course not talking about the Smackdown divas. They should be there and I would like to see the Smackdown Diva’s get tougher and see some more matches with them involved. They could probably need more Divas as well as they only have seven that are involved in matches.

Smackdown’s mentionable characters that should find something else to do would be Dave Taylor,  Funaki, Gregory Helms, Kenny Dykstra, Tne Great Khali and Hornswoggle. The rest of the superstars in Smackdown are players that should be dumped down to ECW to, if possible, make ECW just a tad more interesting.

The storylines in all of the shows have become very boring lately, and people can easily tell who will win the matches before the match has even begun. Some serious storyline changes are needed and i think that WWE should look for new blood and dump the needless trash, which it is a lot of. Give us what we had back in the WWF days, when most matches was interesting. We need characters with… well, character.

It is to bad that you are looking forward to see what happens out in the back halls of the stadiums they are performing that what is actually happening in the ring. I think the decline of WWE’s storylines has a lot to do with the fact that they have too many superstars and they simply cannot keep track of their character development. The more characters, the more story writers you need. It is actually pretty simple. So who is writing today’s storylines. It sure as hell, or should I say THANKFULLY, it ain’t me. When they have a total of 102 superstars they cannot just write story development for just twenty of them and use the rest as easy bait. they all need some sort of story development and character development in order to make the shows interesting throughout.

I am afraid the WWE have grown too big for it’s own good. Either dump half your superstars or hire a shitload of new writers that can provide some fresh storylines and take your characters to newer heights.

But hey, that’s just my opinion.

THAT LAST POST

As you can see there’s something seriously wrong with the last post. That is because it is a copy and paste version of the last installation of this blog. As I lost the password and didn’t remember what e-mail I had used to sign up for the last installation I had to reinstall everything. It should be okay from now on so keep the faith.

Hello world!

Northern ExposureFebruary 5, 2007 on 6:36 pm | In Travel | 2 Comments Being a Norwegian I can say I am used to nature and it’s beauty, but fishing in Alaska was an experience I most likely will never forget. I am actually writing an own page for this trip and as soon as that is up and running I will let you know. That page will include a heap of pictures from the Kenai River area. Here I’ll just give you a taste of what you will be seeing there.We went to Alaska to rest and fish. The Kenai river is a fishing paradise and it is loaded with Salmon who is spawning for a couple of months every year. So we rented a cottage and headed for fun. But Salmon was not the only thing we went for.  Fishing for Halibut is no game. In fact it’s pretty darn hard work. But it is FUN work. Especially when there’s some size to them. It is fair to say that those you see me pose with in the picture above is actually quite small. Some lucky bastard will pull up one that is five times bigger than the biggest one in the picture.Alaska looks alot like Norway, but there was something with Alaska that was special. The serenity is simply something else. We would drive along on the road and a bear would run over the road just a few yards ahead. Then the next minute a couple of mooses will be walking around, not even the slightest worried about the traffic. But that is just life in Alaska, we got used to it after a while.  Like you see here in this picture, everything was so quiet and beautiful. It was an amazing trip.Keep coming back for more on the Alaska trip. I took some amazing pictures there, and some of them will be available to buy in the shop in different sizes. The money made from those pictures will go to Penny Lane. Project-SI artist JANUARY Alex PopescuFebruary 5, 2007 on 5:59 pm | In Projects | No Comments Alex Popescu is just one of several artists that will be lending their skills to Project-Si and the Unicom Network fictional website. I will right here in this blog present them and some of their work.Alex Popescu lives in Bucharest in the land of Dracula, Romania. He is in his early 20s and he specializes in matte paintings and illustration. Most of his work depicts fantastic worlds and futuristic cityscapes. The image above is just one of his images that will depict a city within the Project-SI universe.WebsitesFebruary 5, 2007 on 4:54 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments Promotional websites for my projects can be found at the following addresses.For Project-SI www.project-si.com and the Project-SI Unicom Networks website at www.unicomnetworks.comFor Ragnarok www.ragnarokmovie.comFor The Dix Chronicles http://dix.vindepict.comWebsites for Valiant, AfterWorld and other projects will be up some time during the next few weeks.The VinDepict Entertainment website can be found at http://www.vindepict.com/ And if you want to follow the soccer team I play for on Sundays, feel free to enter the teams website www.nortonsoccer.com  Manchester United rolling on!December 30, 2006 on 2:41 pm | In Soccer (Football) | No Comments Well, it’s no secret that I am a Manchester United supporter. And what a weekend for us, eh? Chelsea and Arsenal dropping points whilst our lads get the three points against reading. There’s like nothing better and now United go into the new year six points up at the top of the league. This smells like gold to me. Now, what about Ole? here’s a guy that’s been out of the game for close to two years due to injuries. Now he is once again a vital part of the team and will possibly prove to make the difference for them this year. Another fantastic goal today and not only that but he also takes part in another. Huge weekend for the boys.Now, if you would like to follow the team I play for, you can go to our website www.nortonsoccer.com where you can read about my expoilts out on the soccerfield. We won 2nd division’s Fall season last year with eight wins one tie and one loss. It is important to mention that I was on vacation in Alaska the two games we didn’t win. Then we won eight straight after I came back. What’s up with that? A Day of joy?December 30, 2006 on 2:22 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments OK,Saddam is dead, now what? We watch some Iraqi dancing in jubilation in the streets of Baghdad, but folks, there are some people that will not be too happy with his execution. I fear that we will see a string of violent episodes that will leave what we have seen so far in 2006 in the dust. It all prompted me to once again visit rotten.com and watch some videos of what Saddam actually did whilst he was president. You know, that was one cruel son of a bitch. And his followers are just as bad. And it is his followers that keep kindnapping and beheading innocent people. And the beheadings are not done in a Samurai type fashion. It is done with a small kitchen knife and it takes about a minute and a half to get it done. Their tactics surely works when it comes to terrifying people. I have been watching several of these violent videos, not because I have a fetish or anything like that for this kind of stuff, but to get some kind of feeling of justification for this cruel man’s execution. And strangely enough, it actually helped watching these sick cowards do their stuff. It made me think that this execution was as just as it could come. The only problem is, Saddam Hussein will still kill people even after his death through his mentally disturbed followers. It is simply something we will just have to live with.Now, watching CNN today they said that they would not be showing the dead body of the former dictator. But in the same sequence they show the dead bodies of hundreds of Kurds that had been gassed to death by the very same mans hand. Men, women, kids and even babies was laying scattered in Halabja’s streets in 1988 after Saddam had ordered a nerve gas agent amd Mustard gas attack on his own people. 5.000 was killed. This was one of 40 similar attacks ordered by Saddam in the years 1987 and 1988. So, I am not sure of CNN’s reasoning behind their choice not to show a dead Saddam. I think it would do some good actually.No matter what, this is a big day for everyone, and it is cause for concern for some and celebration for others. Where do you stand? Unicom NetworksDecember 28, 2006 on 6:22 pm | In Projects | No Comments I have received plenty of e-mails asking me about what the heck Unicom Networks is. I can understand that… really.As a part of boosting interest around Project-SI, we have (Jeffrey Willerth and I) come up with a couple of concepts that will do exactly that. One includes short animated webisodes and Unicom Networks. UN is a 100% fictional website set in the Project-SI universe. The websiteæs mission is to work as a sort of a prequel to the series itself. That way the fans can get into the storyline BEFORE the live action series actually premieres. It will be as if it has been going on forever:-)The site will be FREE for all readers to follow. At least at first. Then we will have to see how popular it gets and if there are possibilities for sponsors to come in, which I beleive will happen. That way the website would remain free. But this is all a bridge we have to cross when we get there. Everything on this site will be fictional. Characters, stories, ads and all that you’ll see… will not be real. Just so you know. I don’t want people running around screaming in panic that Earth is attacked by alien forces. That would just be cruel:-)There are several people involved with UN and hopefully we will be able to premiere the site this winter. Keep reading for more and current information about this. RagnarokDecember 27, 2006 on 9:26 pm | In Projects | 5 Comments Most of 2006 have been used to finish the screenplay Ragnarok which I have written with fellow writer Steven Gilman. Steven is originally a veterenarian but he’s dumped that career in order to be able to write and create fantastic stories. He is in his latter 30’s and totally addicted to World of Warcraft (the online PC game). Steve is now an active Member of VinDepict Entertainment.Ragnarok is based on Norse mythology and pretty much depicts what the myhology tells us, but there are a few things that we have tweaked a little bit in order to make it believable and commercial enough for Hollywood to get the entire concept.The screenplay is finished and we are now just awaiting producer and actor feedback and ideas for possible further tweaking (rewrites).  Then the pitching process will start and that is the hard part of the entire process of moviemaking. You can have the best screenplay in the world, but if it is not pitched right and to the right people, the greatness of that screenplay doesn’t count for anything. So we will have to be careful picking our targets.So here’s to a new finished screenplay… CHEERS! Looking for an artistDecember 27, 2006 on 1:39 pm | In Uncategorized | 1 Comment While I am here I can holler out to the world as I am seeking concept artists for projects I am working on alone or with my writing partner Steve. I will need artists with specialities in the following categories, character, planetscapes, cityscapes, exobiology and spacetechnology. The work will be unpaid, but it will be presented along with the project to producers, directors, actors and other company executives at various studios and networks’ art departments. Not promising anything but it could lead to more work and possibly something even bigger. Just look at my lead designer for Project-SI. He started off small with me and now he is an EMMY award winner.So, if you are interested, e-mail me and send along some examples of your work and we can talk about it. New Site, New BlogDecember 27, 2006 on 1:28 pm | In Uncategorized, Day To Day | 4 Comments In an attempt to better my computerskills I have decided to do my website myself. This will make it more personal and intimate for me and for you. I have received mail upon mail asking me what’s going on with the website so there’s your answer. I, me… Vidar himself is doing the site? Things take time:-)I just finished setting this blog thingy up on the site. It tok me a few hours although Wordpress say it will take only five minutes. Either I am pretty stupid or they are lying. Heck, I don’t know.The new site will be more userfriendly and the blog will be open for you as well. Meaning you will be able to comment on any of my posts. I think that will be pretty cool. Note that I will not use the blog as a diary, but I will post when I think I have some informations worth mentioning to you. You however can come for a vist every day if you want:-)So, enjoy my life.