Just a Matter of Time

Stealing from Star Trek, Spider-Man, and the Awesomeness of Video Essays about Film

Sep 09, 2024

Hi,

Hope you are well and that you had a great summer. I am realizing that it has now been close to a year since I posted a page of my SpaceCat comic. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, but time continues to fly.

I know that most of you are subscribed because you found SpaceCat, either at a comic-con or festival. I hope to post more comics soon, so please stick with me.

I’d love to hear what parts of my newsletter bring you some joy. Hopefully you don’t mind me sharing things that have inspired me in recent weeks.

Here we go…

𝗔 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘

I have had an interest in science fiction and fantasy short stories lately. I will often hunt for used copies of obscure sci-fi paperback books at the local thrift store and used bookstore. I’m often looking for things that I may not find at the library. I’m looking for those forgotten stories.

One of the books I picked up was a collection of stories by Arthur C. Clarke called “Reach for Tomorrow”. In it there is a story titled “Time’s Arrow”. I have not read the story yet, but the title reminded me of the 7th grade.

We had a creative writing assignment, and I wrote something about time travel. I don’t remember what my story was about, but what I do remember was that I had named my story “A Matter of Time”. I had borrowed that title from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I had recently scene on TV.

Doux Reviews: Star Trek The Next Generation: A Matter of Time — ‘A Matter of Time’ - Star Trek the Next Generation - S05 E06

When I got the writing assignment back, the highest praise I got from the teacher was a hand written note about how creative and clever the title was. I felt a bit awful, because I knew I had taken that title from the Start Trek episode I had just seen. I was getting praise for the one thing I didn’t come up with myself.

I still think of that occasionally. The funny thing about all of this was that this particular episode of Star Trek: TNG was about a con man that stole a time machine and was traveling to the future to steal the inventions of others, and claim them as his own. Obviously the theme of the episode did not resonate with my 7th grade conscious at the time.

All of this brings me back to Arthur C. Clarke’s story, “Time’s Arrow” written in 1950. The title hit me when i saw it, because “Time’s Arrow” was also the title of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Now, I have no idea if the Star Trek writers borrowed the title from Mr. Clarke, or even if Arthur C. Clarke was inspired by someone before him when he came up with it, but I felt more at ease about my own transgressions. Was this title a bit of an Easter Egg, or homage to a giant of sci-fi like Clarke, I don’t know. But, knowing that Star Trek can borrow from Clarke, makes me feel a bit better about borrowing from Star Trek.

I do still wish I had been honest and acknowledged the source of my inspiration on that 7th grade paper. As a dig into these short stories, I am reminded that all creative people are inspired by, and build off of, what came before in some way. Finding ‘Time’s Arrow’ was a fun way to remind myself of the path of creativity’s arrow.

So, what do you all think? Have you seen those episodes of Star Trek:TNG? Any fans of Arthur C. Clarke out there?

𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜𝗦 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗬𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗚

If you love story and and power of editing in storytelling, you will want to check out this deep dive conversation with the editor of ‘Across the Spider-verse’ on Hillier Smith’s Editing Podcast. You can listen on a podcast app, but I recommend watching the YouTube version because there are tons of visuals.

We hear about key moments of the film and how the editing evolved from storyboards to final edit, sometimes at the last minute before release.

One thing is clear, everyone involved wanted to make the best film they could.

And speaking of Spider-Man, Sony Imageworks, the visual effects and animation studio that made the film, has posted a talk that was given at Siggraph earlier this year. If you are interested in how the imagery and animation for this film was made, then check this out.

During my time at Imageworks I was lucky to work with Mike Lasker, Nicolle, Bret, and Allen on a handful of earlier Sony animated films like Angry Birds, and the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies. They are great folks and I’m happy for all their success at Imageworks.

𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗬 𝗙𝗥𝗔𝗠𝗘 𝗔 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗶𝘀 𝗕𝗔𝗖𝗞

I love video essays about filmmaking, and.‘Every Frame a Painting’ was one of the best, which was written & edited by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou. About seven years ago, they called it quits. One of the creators of the channel wrote an informative post pronouncing that “Every Frame a Painting is officially Dead.”

In 2021, they produced a film essay series for Netflix called ‘Voir’, which was also excellent.