Can a live chamber orchestra perform computations? Orchestras and Non-musical Processes This article presents a composition in which an orchestra carries out a non-musical process, specifically a form of computation. Most orchestral projects involving non-musical processes are musification (i.e. using more traditional elements of sound such as melody, harmony, and…

Five reasons we feel an uneasiness deep down about new A.I., but which we don’t often like to put into words. WE WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH OUR A.I.s Our brains are evolutionarily designed to respond to certain cues, no matter whether they’re real or artificial. It’s not just kids…

I trained a Neural Network for a screenwriting service that compares the style features of a screenplay to the style features found on a number of scripts on the Hollywood Black List published every year. The service is becoming more and more popular and the screenwriting service receives many questions about the neural network. So I’m writing this article to explain to clients, but also to anyone that’s interested!

I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason movie screenwriters are largely excluded from the entire filmmaking process, is that there is so much of the filmmaking process that is not to do with screenwriting. Obviously hugely powerful writers and writer-directors are not included in this statement. A simple way…

The 2022 Black List came out a few weeks ago. I did a statistical analysis of the combined screenplays from the Black List 2022, 2021, 2020 and 2019. In particular I looked at the top 20 scripts each year and examined what textual features led to them ranking higher in…

I would like to take this opportunity to publish a tribute to my mother Margaret Kirke, who died after a short illness in 2000. Margaret was many different things to many people: a wife, a friend, a companion, a mentor. To me she was a mother, as loving and adoring…

My brother died a couple of years ago in his early 40s, and I thought the time had come to pay tribute in a more lasting way. Nick was born 5 years after me in 1975, and though he was always my little brother, he had the larger personality. Early…

Your problem’s not your third act… — Perhaps it’s not that your characters aren’t compelling enough or that your dialogue doesn’t zing, or that your story is not addictive or deep. Perhaps the main reason you are failing at your screenwriting career is that you are substituting porn for true creative writing. Screenwriting — at the level…

Renowned writer Martha Polo discusses her experiences of screenwriting Twitter. [Note from Alexis: I allow Martha Polo to occasionally use my Medium account. That does not mean I condone her opinions.] An infamous method of torture death invented by the Persians was “Scaphism”. You were undressed and tied in a…