Still not regularly posting, but....

Hey, you just have to keep on working on it, right? Let me see, what is new? I'm trying to get a group of people together to do the 48 hour film project in Buffalo, NY. My brother lives in Rochester, NY so we will base our shoot out of his house. The real question is getting a group of core people who want to be in it so I can justify the entry fee. There is a small part of me that says why not do it anyway and deal with what I can. Of course the other part of me is thinking that the just do it part has lost its mind. It brings up that the last challenge I did had one more day thrown in and I had a lot of people participating so the load I carried was a lot less. Of course conversely I did do most of the time consuming things and since I was director and producer (and writer of course) that it doesn’t leave me a lot to worry about overall with adding on other jobs. I just wish I would hear back from one or two more people who are interested, especially in the brainstorming session and the acting part of it. Hopefully my recruiting drive will work and we will be on.

On a side note I’m looking once again at my alterative time threads screenplay and trying to make sure there is enough conflict. I’m not sure there is since act two is mostly a “fish out of water” type stuff, then mixed in with a “how do I get back to my life” part. I’m not sure the conflict is foremost, and if it is, if it’s enough. I might have to do a pager one rewrite just to see if I can get it right this time. I’ll tell you more next month (since it is the 30th. J )

More random thoughts

I just brought home my first HDtv yesterday. First impressions were less than overwhelming. The colors were over saturated, the picture fuzzy, and well, it just looked bleh. Then I realized my media splitter box could have been the culprit. Becky and I took it out and low and behold now I see what all the fuss is about. Beautiful clean picture and this is before we get anything in HD. I think this is the same for a lot of things in life. We have our own splitter boxes, things that we filter all of our life experiences through. For me it’s sometimes being passive and just taking everything in. I talk about doing things, about trying to make differences in all things I do, but I know soon I’ll sink back into coasting mode. I could blame it on my young children, or the work I do, or whatever. In reality the fingers point to me and the habits I have. I need to get better at doing and less at watching or waiting. Writing is a classic example. It is easy to wait for the muse to whisper in my ear sweet nothings of goodness, but I know in reality that writing is a craft that sometimes you need to hit your head against the keyboard to loosen up some ideas that are stuck up there. Is that fun? Hell no, and sometimes I get the s key stuck to my forehead, but it’s truly the only way to get going anywhere.

When I was a kid I wanted to be the absolute best at something. I didn’t care what it was, but I wanted to find something I could be the best in. I just knew I was a natural something; I just needed to figure out what that something was. I searched around low and high and while I could find things I was good at, there was always someone better. That proved to be very frustrating. Where was my niche? What made me special? I know, I was the best me I could be, but that was bull crap, and I knew it. From sports, to school, to whatever I couldn’t find a way I was naturally the best. Here’s the silly part. I didn’t realize that it was the work that separated the best from the rest. Yes they might be naturally gifted in that area, but gifts are only going to get you so far. You still need to put in the time and energy to get better at it. You also need to have the drive to improve since the better you get the less the improvement with the same amount of time and effort (at least in my experience). I am trying to get myself there. I don’t mean I still need to be the best at what I do, but I do want to be more active, always improving so I can honestly say I tried to maximize myself, and that’s all you really can do, isn’t it?

Okay enough philosophy crap. Next time maybe we will start with a germ of an idea and develop it right on the website. We can see how far all of us can take it. (And since I’m the only one reading this…..)

I'm baaack!

Okay, so I haven’t been too good at updating the old blog in the past month. You might ask what has kept you so busy. My answer would be everything and nothing. Everyone has those times where work, family, social life, and community obligations just overwhelm us. Well, that was me for the past month. I think I’ve put my hands around it lately and have whittled away on my side projects down to a mere handful, but we will see how long that holds up.

I am trying to develop a new short movie. I’m not going to put artificial time limits on it, but I do know it won’t be feature length. I have a really interesting set of characters, and one of them has a pseudo supernatural quirk that makes her kind of cool. I know a lot about her social life. I know her upbringing. I know about her boyfriend. I know her friend at work. The problem is I don’t know where she works yet. To me I need that to wrap all my ideas around. My female lead needs to deal with quirk both as a personal thing, but I think it would have a lot of potential at work. I just don’t want to run off and make her something the quirk would immediately fit into since she develops it during the first act of the screenplay. Maybe you would get a gift that makes your job easier, but to me that would be too, I don’t know, contrite? Contrite might not be the right word, but the feeling is correct. It would be cool if the work was unrelated, but then she can start seeing the pluses and minuses of what she can do. So I am at an impasse. Oh, and did I mention I want to shoot this one so I need to have the work function be something I can do in my small rural northern New York community? Yeah, that makes things harder.

Melancholy

I’m in a melancholy mood today. I don’t know why, but I just am. Sometimes when I get in these types of moods I either look for changes I need to make to my life to get me out of the mood, or else I start waxing philosophical. Today it is more of the philosophical. What defines life and consciousness? I’m not going to claim to answer that here in my post, but I had some observations and they seem quite puzzling to me.

The human body is made up of cells. This in and of itself isn’t that surprising, but each of those cells can have a life outside my body. They can harvest cells and grow them if the conditions are right and they are perfectly happy not being a part of me. This makes me ponder existence. Think about this. You are made of millions of living organisms. They all have formed a society inside which they act. This society, you, has a separate consciousness from all the parts, i..e. cells. Why is that? What part of you is different than the living parts that make up you? It’s almost enough to really freak you out when you think it through. It sort of goes back to the whole abortion debate, which I am not going there. So you that is you has a different life then the cells that make up you. How did they decide one day to make multi-celled organisms in the first place? Now if you follow the evolutionary route basically one cell decided to split into two, or two cells got together to cohabit, and they found it worked better and the beat goes on. If you take the religious note then God had a hand in getting the guys together, whether in the initial creation, or along an evolutionary path that God started up. Once again, when did the grouping of cells take on characteristics where the sum of the whole developed a different level on consciousness then the parts? If you want to give this part of us that is us a name, and I will call it spirit for the lack of something better, does that mean dogs and cats, fish and birds, that they all have sprit of one sort or another? That thought troubles me, but of course the same can be asked of plants. Just because they can not let their feelings be known they have a complexity that could have this nebulous spirit attached. It makes one wonder about your place in the whole stream of things.

I ask these questions as I look back at my daughter’s life. She died a few years ago, but the pain can still be quite strong. Her cells were screwed up. The brain cells that are supposed to migrate to her head didn’t all make it. In fact very few did, and yet she was a vibrant loving caring child for her three years she was with us. So I ask again, what makes us us, and where do we go from here?

Pithy

It’s once again time for the obscure word of the month. (Okay, it may happen more often, but work with me here.) The American Heritage Dictionary gives pithy the following definition:

Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief

Since we are in an election cycle (when are we ever not in one anymore) this is a word that should be in its prime. Of course it is not, since the sound bite is anything but pithy. We would rather capture something that sounds good then something concise that has meaning, and that really is a shame.

Musing about Walking the Infinite

First off I was wondering what people think of this:

In WALKING THE INFINITE, Tom’s life’s devotion and dream was to finally get that promotion, the corner office, and all the perks. One night he was offered a chance to try it out, and it was everything he wanted and more. That more included a wife who wants a divorce, a boss with whom he’s having an affair, and the animosity of his coworkers. Tom now just wants to wake up from his dream turned nightmare.

Does this peak your interest? Is it too much, too little, or just right? Do you want a concluding question wondering how Tom gets back to his old life? These are just some of the things I’m working on to see if I let this go into the real world. The screenplay is ready for another try, I think, except for maybe the opening scene. I’m still not sold on it completely, so I am going to go back and make sure it really does serve not only it’s purpose, but also does it have the correct feel for the rest of the screenplay. I think visually it will hammer the point home, but I’m worried my discussion of it is a bit week. Here’s what I have (Please excuse the caps and formatting. I took it out of word and the copy lost all of it.):

FADE IN:

EXT. FIVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE A BUSY CHICAGO STREET - NOON

People move along the sidewalks in a constant ebb and flow, like threads woven in a large tapestry.

EXT. TWO HUNDRED FEET ABOVE OUTDOOR FOOD CART - NOON

The lunch vender cart forms a dam in the tide of people flowing along the sidewalk, allowing those waiting in line not to be jostled by the steady stream.

EXT. OUTDOOR FOOD CART - NOON

TOM BRADLEY is getting a hotdog topped off with chili. He looks around at the crowd forcing their way past the cart and shakes his head. He plunges into the crowd and gets swept away in the wave of humanity.

EXT. BUSY STREET - NOON

Tom walks slowly, trying not to wear the chili as people hurriedly spill around him.

Time slows as Tom looks up and sees an image of himself, OTHER TOM, checking out an attractive woman passing by. Other Tom is wearing a severe suit with a blazing yellow tie. Tom looks to his right and sees another SELF IMAGE wearing a cowboy hat and carrying a guitar who waves at him.

A WOMAN comes through the crowd from behind Tom and bumps him, causing Tom to fumble his hotdog.

Time speeds back up and Other Tom and Self Image fade away as Tom spills the chili all down his front.

TOM
What the hell?

WOMAN
Watch where you’re going!

VISION TOM steps up out of thin air gets in the woman’s face.

VISION TOM
No, you watch where you’re going, you dumb…

The Vision Tom fades away. The Woman is still staring at Tom.

TOM
Sorry, I was daydreaming there.

The Woman shakes her head and walks away as Tom tries to clean up the mess with a small napkin.

Tom finishes and is about to cross the street when a BOOMING VOICE stops him.

BOOMING VOICE
You there. Have you ever walked the infinite?

What do you think? I’m thinking of getting rid of at least one other Tom to make it simpler to read, even though I would love to have a bunch of other Toms in the opening scene, just to show that something is different here. If someone wants to read it just let me know and I’ll send it to you. Also, if anyone has a good idea on how to shoot multiple Toms with stuff I have at my house (green screen (can get one), software (which one to use), Hi def camera) then maybe I would try shooting it here, but change it to a small town instead of Chicago (though I do like the idea of this being in Chicago).

Another crazy idea

I worry about me sometimes. I really do try to come up with normal stories, stories about everyday people, but for some reason my mind wanders into the bizarre department and shows me things that most people would just shake their heads at in disbelief. Me? I quickly write down the idea and try to figure out how to blow it up real big. My idea this time, without giving too much away since I don’t have it all down yet, is someone getting multiple personalities, but those personalities being positive and not trying to destroy the character’s life. How the character gets these personalities is a bit insane, but I was originally trying to come up with a good comedy, and nothing yells comedy like a buddy film, even if your buddies are all internal to the main character. Now before someone gets upset this isn’t going to be a classic psychosis, and I’m not going to belittle people who go through that form of hell. At least I hope that’s what it doesn’t come across as. I’ll see when I hand it out for people to read, if it gets that far. Right now I’m trying to figure out how many personalities I should allow him to acquire (yes I said acquire), and what does he have to do with them. The more I look at this and I tell myself this just is too silly, but I am sure Robert Klane thought the same thing about spending a weekend with a dead guy, and Weekend at Bernie’s was quite fun. (Don’t bring up the sequel.)

What to update the blog with today?

I wanted to update today since I figure if anyone is looking at this blog they would like to see something new. I originally was going to do a rant about the sanctity of human life, but that got to be too depressing, so I decided to put it off for now. (I was getting too depressed just writing it.) I was then going to talk about Secretaries Day (I’m sorry, Adminstrative Professionals Day), but that also fell through. I even thought about doing a top ten list of why sleep deprivation was good for you. Of course I fell asleep at number ten, so that didn’t work out too well either. I tried to figure out if I was lame enough to write in my blog about trying to come with something to write in my blog. As you can see the answer is yes. I usually come up with a general idea on my way into work. I have a half hour commute, so I have enough time to generate an idea. I then let it stew for a bit as I get the morning going. Soon I hit a problem that either is tough to solve or that I don’t want to solve for work and that lets me jump over to blog writing. I usually bang it out in a few minutes (bet you already figured that one out from the quality of writing) and then return to work feeling I’ve at least done some writing today, even if it wasn’t towards one of my writing projects. So far it’s been fun to talk to myself. I figure someday I might see a couple of visitors, but in the meantime I can talk to myself and not have people think I’m crazy or have a blue tooth headset embedded into my skull.

Banging against Hollywood’s door

I am a complete outsider, at least with respect to Hollywood. This is a huge problem since I enjoy writing screenplays. Now there is a ton of advice about getting in, but that is problematic at best since a lot of it is either contrary or I am unable to pursue that course of action. Now this could be a call to give up, to just fold up my tent and try something else, but I don’t want to do that. I was allowing Becky to read Walking the Infinite for the about fortieth time and something amazing happened. She laughed a lot more. This story isn’t a comedy, but I wanted to inject humor into it to give the characters depth and it seems to have worked. So now I ask myself this as I finish my rewrite; how do I approach that beast that is Hollywood to see if they will even take a sniff at it. I’m going to place it in the appropriate festivals, but that’s just a surrogate, something to try to get external validation that my writing is sufficient. I don’t have any answers yet, but that’s what I am thinking as I get done with this rewrite, more confident that this script might be finally ready to move along.

Memorable words

Ever wonder about certain phrases? I personally wonder about the “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Was this popular at some time? Did someone wake up one day and start bragging to their friends, “Hey you want to know something? There must be six or seven ways to skin a cat.” They must have been impressed and repeated it to their friends. Pretty soon someone shortened it since they couldn’t remember the exact number of ways, so they threw in the many and TaDa, a catch phrase was born. I love cats, so I don’t use that particular one, but can you imagine how cool it would be to like invent one that everybody uses, that will outlive you, and probably mean something totally different in the future? Shakespeare made up a ton of words, many of them in use today. He made up cool words like discontent, circumstantial, eyeball, and varied just to name a few. He was doing this in a time where it was quite common to try to create a word when the perfect word didn’t seem to be available. Today with our spell checkers and grammar police I bet this practice would have been frowned upon, or at the very least considered to be flawed (another made up Shakespeare word). I want to do this someday. I figure a new word might have much more staying power, but I think I could be happy with a phrase. Either way I want to be able to say I created that. Just as long as it doesn’t get used too much.

Whimsy

There are a lot of words that aren’t used a lot in the dictionary, and today I want to focus on one in particular, whimsy. The American Heritage Dictionary gives two definitions.

1) An odd, or fanciful idea. A whim.
2) A quaint and fanciful quality.

There are other definitions in other dictionaries that art not as flattering. I’ve always liked the word whimsy. (That won’t surprise any of my friends.) I think in the day of twenty-four slash seven coverage of everything that we are too focused on the facts. (I could dispute whether those are really facts at all, but that’s another post.) A little more whimsy in our lives would be a good stress relief from this constant coverage. So please, take whimsy back out and use it. Take it around the block. Show others its good qualities, and maybe we can get some of that magic back in our everyday lives.

I don’t understand

My PhD adviser told me something when I first started out, which he kept repeating for all my doctoral work, “It’s only simple because you don’t understand it.” He was using it in the context of some research idea we grad students would come up with, thinking it was a slam dunk. In reality the idea would turn out to be either much more difficult because of the details, or just so outrageously wrong that it would have been a very wild, long, and costly goose chase. I think this applies to most things out there. I have an arrogance that I think I could learn anything, given some time and someone to teach me. To be honest I believe this is true for everybody, just that you might need more or less time depending on your particular gifts. Nice idea, right? Is it accurate? It depends on your definition.

Right now I’m not feeling too smart today. I want to begin writing my musical, but two things are stopping me. The first is time. Family and personal life right now is insane. I’ve also got competing interests between the unnamed musical, Walking the Infinite (which I need to get ready for the Nichols), and trying to find the people to shoot a short I wrote. That’s not counting the programming I need to get done for my project with a friend of mine in Germany. Okay, so the time thing could definitely get in the way, but you know what is getting more in the way? Fear. What’s weird is it’s not the normal fear of starting a new story, but the fear that this is a totally new medium. I don’t understand the structure on the page of a screenplay. I hate not knowing. I don’t understand the amount of work that, even when I get this together, it will take to show someone else the material. I don’t know if I really am ready to take all this on. I love my concept. It has a satisfying (at least so far to me) main character arc. Most of my characters have needs that are easily identifiable. (I say most since two of my characters are mostly comedy relief, but even they have needs, just that they will never be met.) It’s got good drama elements. The other fear is that it might be a bit campy, but then again sometimes that’s what gives musicals their charm.

So it comes down to setting priorities and working them out. Not an easy task, but once I’ve overcome my fear I should be able to take baby steps forward and see with wonder what’s on the other side.

Damn bugs!

I’ve been officially bitten by that musical bug again. A quick bit of background first. I was dropping my wife off at work while I was in grad school and was listening to NPR’s Morning Addition on the way home. My wife, at the time, had a 45 minute commute to work (and remember I live in a rural area, so that’s quite a distance, not the three blocks if you live in LA). So while I was driving home I heard a story about the lack of new musicals being created. There was a lot about how the cost was prohibitive, that it was almost impossible to break into the business, etc., but what stuck with me was here was an opportunity. I love to sing, I enjoy writing, so it seemed a natural. All I needed was an idea. By the time I got back to school (I was working on PhD in physics at the time.) I had come up with my idea. I would place my whole musical inside a company at the middle management level. Why, you may ask, would you ever want to do that? The answer is simple; everyone can relate in some manner or form with dealing with management. It is a universal “evil” that I could lampoon. So, without giving too much away yet (though I might publish chunks of it here for feedback) my main character gets promoted to middle management and thinks he’s made it. This gives me my fish out of water and allows the other characters to play off of him. I was excited. I wrote a few of the songs and got to writing my outline. I love my outlines. They really get me focused and ready to go. I finished my outline in a couple of weeks and then my hard drive died. I was devastated. Luckily the songs were in a different notebook, but all the work on the book (the story and play portion of a musical) was gone. I couldn’t get up the energy to start it back up, that and my thesis needed to be written, so I put the whole idea away and said maybe some day. Occasionally I would take it out, dust it off, look sadly at it, and then file it back under ideas. Now it’s back out and I think it will have a better chance at surviving, and I can thank going to “Once Upon a Mattress” for giving me that bug.

By the way, if someone has a good idea for a name of a musical about middle management please let me know. If I use it I can name a character after you, so how’s that for motivation. Of course that means people need to be reading this. Oh well, you never know. I’ll leave you with a bit of lyrics from one of the numbers (and this is copywrited, so I’m not worried publishing it.) The tune is very marchy (think 76 trombones marchy)

Don’t be a yes man,
But never say no!
Push away the paperwork
As far as it will go,
And put off doing work,
For as long as you can,
And you will be a great middle man (or woman)!

Everyone has their own life

This has come as quite a shock to. Everyone has their own life. They are not there just to serve my purposes. I know, I realize in real life this is totally true, but I never thought about it in my writing. I went to see a musical this weekend, “Once Upon a Mattress”. The high school theater troupe did an awesome job with it, including the set design. I am always amazed what can be done with a shoestring budget and some talented people. There will always be a place for live theater, no matter how life like movies get. There is something ethereal about the amount of energy and actor or actress can project into their audience that can not be duplicated on the silver screen. Attending made me want to do two things. The first was of course relive my memories of being in a musical and find a community group that is putting one together and join. That won’t happen anytime soon with a two year old and another child at six months. I couldn’t put my wife through me not being there for work and play rehearsals. Nope, that one goes on the back burner for now. The second one is clearing off my dusty idea of a musical I had started to write about eight years ago. I was telling a friend of mine about it before the show about it and he still had some chuckles, so it may have potential. If not, I want to write something that can be done on a typical high school or college auditorium. I don’t care about the money making potential, though I wouldn’t turn it away either. I just think having musicals that scale to that environment well because they are designed for that size would be cool. Also, I am of the opinion that upscaling a production is probably easier than cutting down on stage presence. If that’s the case Broadway can still come calling and I wouldn’t miss a beat.

I did learn one other thing while watching the musical. All the parts, even some of the minor ones, had their own lives to live and conflicts to resolve. Due to the size of the production some of the conflicts were a bit shallow for the storyteller in me, but I can see why they had to be to keep the musical within an appropriate time frame. Still, you could see why everyone was doing what they were doing. What was funny was a lot of the dialog was “on the nose”, but I didn’t get taken out of the moment because these people were still being true to themselves, and the lives they were living. I’m going to have to go through Walking the Infinite and make sure my characters have lives, and try to bring that out a bit more. I don’t want to add a lot of length, but if I can make each character become more identifiable then I will have added a lot of depth.

Projects, projects, projects

Before I get into my projects I am looking for some advice. I want to try to get a pool of local talent to shoot short films. Something that one weekend a month we get together and just have some fun. I was thinking about going through the local arts council, but I was looking for suggestions from others who are from small areas that are not LA. The village I live in in upstate New York is really small. I do have the possibility for college students, but since summer is coming up in a couple short weeks I will lose that pool for a while. I can try to get high schoolers, but I am worried about the whole parents signing off thing. In my last production we had one such person and that worked really well, but then again I work with her father. Holding an open audition is another thing. Also this whole thing has to be volunteer. I have no funds to pay actors. Any ideas on agreements that can be written up such that if something we shoot makes any money (fat chance of that, but you have to dream) everyone shares? Is that even allowed? I know there is guild minimums for things, but we aren’t guild. Heck, we aren’t even formed yet. I’m probably getting way ahead of myself. Anyway, any advice would be welcome.

As for the writing front I’m trying to figure out how to tweak my main project, Walking the Infinite. Most of it works, but I’m worried about my main characters arc. Before the arc was strong, but the character wasn’t someone you could root for. It wasn’t that he was bad, but he was very very passive. The movie was basically for him to learn about how to be more in control of his own life. It just seemed flat. I changed it around some and now he’s more like an average person, so he’s easier to identify with, which is good. The bad is there is less of an incentive for him to change in the movie. This is important since the movie is Groundhog Day esque. I introduced a different motivation for change, something more subtle, but I’m worried people won’t be able to see it.

Other than that I need to either start something new or dust off a different project from the past and fix it. Maybe today I’ll look through my old stuff and see which may be closest to being ready and hit it hard. I’ll let you know what I did on Monday.

As the phrase turns

I have a file on my computer that I store witty pieces of dialog I either hear or say, hoping that I will use them some day in my writing. What’s funny is that while I keep adding to that sheet, I usually don’t pull what’s in there into my work. Why is that? I think there are two reasons. The first is that I forget that it’s there. It’s simple to remember when I hear something. I get excited and I can’t wait to add it to the list. When I am writing though I get so focused on the story at hand that I forget to look at the sheet till the story is done, and that’s where reason two hits. The phrase is really good, but only in the right context. What I wrote won’t fit, and that means modifying the story a lot just to get in that good piece of dialog. That is too much work for what could be little reward. I’ve decided before I write my next project I am going to read through my list, and then work on my outline (I love outlines, they are shorter than first drafts and hopefully save you just as much work). This will keep those gems fresh in my mind, allowing me to place them into my work to help it sparkle.

You might ask what brings this up. I was talking with my very good friend V (who should start posting on her blog again so I can link to it.) and we were talking about raising kids and the phrase came up, “Puberty conquers all”. Now I love this phrase. Maybe it’s one of those you had to be there, but I think even if it’s one of those I can create the scene such that you are there, then you can enjoy the phrase too. At least that’s if I can get off my duff and get writing again. Right now I’m rewriting and getting some scripts ready for the Nicholls and the Austin Film Festival, as well as trying to come up with another short I can shoot. Now if I can just fit in work and my wife and kids I’ll be all set.

By the way, the more phrases the better so if you have some/any please leave them in the comments. Who knows, maybe you’ll see/hear it someday.

When an idea turns bad.

My friends always cringe a bit when I fire out I have an idea. I’m the kind of person who wants his ideas to roam free, test evolution, see if they thrive in my friendly confines, or else get hunted down and killed for their weaknesses. The problem with what I do is sometimes I put them out there too soon, before the ideas can really walk on their own. They are then sitting ducks for doubt and misunderstanding. They might have been fine if I let them mature a bit more in my imagination before releasing them into the wild.

I was worried that’s what happened to an idea I had for a series of shorts that I want to shoot someday. I wanted to look how someone’s position could be changed by just making them a little bit different than anyone else. That change would seem cool on the surface, but underneath there is a major downside to it. I then wanted to see how that person copes with it in a daily life. You could say this is a lot like Spiderman in that respect, but the person wouldn’t have nearly that much power. Anyhow, people I threw the idea at liked it a lot and I went to put it down in an outline. I outlined roughly three episodes and then showed that around and guess what, it flopped, same character, same idea, but total blah. Even when I read it I thought it was all wrong. I put it away and chalked up to another death in the real world.

I pulled it back out yesterday, and while it still flops, the idea of the main character still excites me. It was something that made others happy as well. I think I know what happened. The situation the character was put in utterly failed. It was too cute, too perfect. I think my character needs to live in a less perfect world, something more realistic. Maybe that’s part of what’s wrong with some stories/movies. They live in too perfect of places. Yes there is plot, but our main character is perfectly suited for the plot, they just don’t know it yet. Maybe someone should write a plot where the hero is suited at all for it, but manages to just get it done. That would be someone I could identify with. Of course, maybe that’s why I like the movie Hero (Dustin Hoffman) so much.

Why can't it be the actor's fault?

I’m currently trying to generate interest in shooting another movie. A group of friends and I participated in the National Film Challenge last October. This is a contest where you write, shoot, and edit a five to seven minute movie in basically a weekend. This sounds easy, because come on, it’s only seven minutes max. How difficult can that be? In reality it’s pretty demanding. For my part I put in over forty hours in three days working on it, we still almost didn’t meet the deadline. It was a blast to see our finished product. When I finally get my butt in gear I’ll get it posted on Youtube and then link it here.

I now want to shoot a short or two before the next challenge so we can work on our skills. We’ve brainstormed a couple of ideas, but as usual no one wants to get in front of the camera. I’ve been thinking about this. Why is that? Most people say they are worried about embarrassing themselves, but I wonder if it isn’t because it ruins the illusion we create of ourselves. You’re you all the time. You know yourself better than anybody else, but the you you know, isn’t quite right either. You know your emotional and mental landscape. You were the one who planted the trees, put in the koi fish pond, and created that rose garden of emotions and trivia locked up in your mind. What we don’t have a grasp on is what we are outside, how the rest of the world sees us. That’s what sends us running away from a camera.

In the challenge everyone was in the film since I promised them they didn’t need to watch the finished product if they didn’t want to. What was amazing is that it worked. We had 100% participation in front of the camera. What was even more amazing is that everyone wanted to see it afterward. Now this should bring up a question. Why can’t you find people to act now? It’s probably my script. Ah back to the drawing board.

Introduction

Hello everyone! I want to welcome you to my attempt at a blog. I wanted a place where I could brainstorm with my friends and people I don’t know about ideas big and small. I love to think “outside the box”. Okay, my friends would say I burnt the box down and moved next door to a Ziploc bag, but that’s beside the point. This thing might morph into something totally different, but we will all see when it gets there.

I want to start this off with some sort of introduction. I am in my late thirties, a father of three, a husband of one (no thanks to my wife), and small godlike being to three cats. I assume I am godlike since I am the giver of food and the remover of crap. Maybe that makes me their personal servant, but to me I would like to think the former. I have my PhD in physics (my specialty is electrochemistry) and I currently work as an engineer at a Fortune 1000 company. What I really want to do is get paid to be creative. To that end I am pursuing a few different ideas/interests to see if I can get there before I retire. The three are:

1) Open my own design firm.
2) Create an MMO (for those that are not geeks that is a massively multiplayer online game)
3) Become a screenwriter or even better screenwriter/director

Come on back and see how I try to accomplish all this. Learn from my mistakes, and then when you make it big you can hire me. (You always need a backup plan.)