The Film Fiasco

I’ve been on hiatus.

There have been pressing life matters to tend to. Nothing emergency, nothing horrible, just life. Life is what we tell stories about. Sometimes it presents challenges. Typically, those challenges bring opportunities. I am in the middle of one of those challenge/opportunity periods. It’s exciting.

So the short film has been on the back burner. But never far from my mind. And today I am intentional about getting this ship back in the water.

Why today? Today, because three years ago today I had the happy ending to all of my break-up stories. Her name is Bethany, and she is the love of my life. The lessons learned through many joys and heartaches brought me to her, and I am eternally grateful.

And so I am making a movie about breaking up and moving on. The working title is “12 Steps”. I plan on wrapping up the script very soon, and I am proceeding with the pre-production process.

As a part of that process, I have convinced a friend of mine to start tweeting about relationships and break-ups. His name is Joe Crandall, and he is the inspiration for one of my film’s main characters. He is an expert on breaking up, because he has been dumped quite a few times. Please follow his tweets, and retweet if you find something he has to say to be interesting, funny, and/or insightful.

Follow the Break-Up Expert

That’s all for now. I promise to keep updating this thing more regularly. Stay tuned!

Draft two is done. I am now in that dead space between “finished” and “need some more feedback to proceed”. The fact of the matter is, the last week and a half I have not had the time or energy to focus on the script. Being a married, working, member of a community often takes precedence over dreams.

The story is never far from my mind though. I have trouble getting ahead of myself … imagining shots and edits for scenes that may or may not make it to the shooting script. I remember that good, super-charged feeling after a successful shoot, and it’s hard not to want to get to that place right away. It’s hard not to want to take shortcuts.

My grandfather always said, “A job worth doing is a job worth doing right”. I am focused on that. I may not meet these deadlines in my head, but I care too much about this story to sell her short. If this story is worth being told, it is worth being told right.

And so I labor on, realizing that this down time that seems to go on forever — this stalled out truck on the side of the road — will have an end. One way or another, the story is going to be told.

But it’s not fun being stalled out on the side of the road, waiting for someone to pull over and lend a hand.

No one talks about perseverance when you’re coasting downhill. It’s halfway up the mountain, when you’re legs are on fire and you feel like your heart is about to erupt out of your chest that you learn the definition of perseverance.

So, right now, at this very moment, I am taking care of some stuff in my life that needs to be taken care of. The story finds a place in my thoughts every day. That’s part of the process. Never forget. Do what you have to do to stay on top of things, to provide for your family, and make ends meet. And keep telling the story in your heart and mind.

They say the average feature film takes 7 years from script to screening. You can spend three or four years just trying to come up with enough money to get on set. It should take less time for a short, I know, but if it’s worth telling, it’s worth the time it takes.

Re-write number one is done.

As hard as it was to kill babies, what has come out of it is a better script, I think. We read through it at a screenwriter’s meetup I attend, and it got a great response. What makes me happy is that the heart of the script was still there. I didn’t sacrifice the key moments that really reveal what’s going on in the script, and I didn’t lose any of the key payoffs, either.

Now to show it to a few more people, and to prepare for rewrite number two. I know it will take a bit more work. Why? Because it’s just now getting to the point that the characters have their own voices. In other words, I’m starting to get a better grasp on these characters.

I didn’t think it would take so long to get this story right, but now I am glad I am taking my time. I had hopes to shoot this thing sooner rather than later, but considering I am trying to do this on volunteer time with no budget, it’s best to let all the pieces land where they fall, and that will require patience.

But not too much patience. There’s a difference between waiting for the right time and waiting for perfection. The latter never comes.

And now a tid-bit for you … There’s a Morrisey reference in the movie. Yes. Morrisey.

This weekend I worked on a film for the 48 Hour Film Festival. If you’re not familiar with it, basically teams of filmmakers have 48 hours to write, film, and edit a short film. You’re given a character, a line of dialogue, an object, and a genre, and 48 hours later you’re expected to have a finished product.

Read more about it here.

Needless to say it is an exciting and exhausting experience. I was handling lighting for my team, and I only got about 4 hours of sleep Friday night (actually, Saturday morning). We were done filming by Saturday evening, but I imagine the editors and producers are still working frantically to finish the film.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish in 48 hours. What’s cool about this festival is it encourages creativity and ingenuity. You have to make something from what you have, not what you can acquire. Sometimes that means you make something from nothing. It really is a celebration of filmmakers, with the emphasis on what talented people can come up with given limited time and resources.

Personally, I am not sure if I would direct a 48 hour film. I really have to love a story to want to tell it. This project puts the emphasis on the “telling”. Yes, people come up with some great stories, and some of the winners were really great films. But for me, I would prefer to tell a story that I really believe in and to which I have a deep connection. Admittedly, I am an idealist, and you can print this blog post out and shove it in my face the day I make a practical film vs. a labor of love. I welcome it.

All that being said, it was an exhausting and rewarding experience. I met some amazingly talented people, and I look forward to working with that group again soon!

Thank you, dear friend.

A few blog entries ago, I wrote about how my script came to be after a chance encounter with an old hockey stick. You can read about it here.

Now it looks as if the scene that inspired me to write the movie is going to go to movie scene purgatory, the writer’s alternate universe. You can read about that here.

Rewriting is hard. How do I do it? How do I kill my beautiful babies? The key is to grab on to the emotional core of the script, and hang on tight. Some call it the theme, some call it the message, but I call it “the reason I want to make the movie.”

Over the last few years, I’ve become less and less concerned with identifying all the stuff writing teachers tell you to identify when writing. They tell you to come up with one brief sentence that summarizes what your film is about. I think that puts the cart before the horse. Literary critics come up with sentences to describe the point of a story. Writers tell stories.

Just tell a story. Give two characters a conflict, and if it’s good and honest, they’ll make discoveries about themselves and each other. Now fill out the story with other characters making the same discoveries or helping your two main characters along the way. That’s as good a place to start as any.

The audience will see themselves in the discoveries. And the literary critics will say something like, “Love conquers all”. That’s what critics do. But unless you have no idea where to start, it’s not what you, the writer, have to do. Instead of saying, “I want to tell the perfect love story”, say, “I want tell the story of my grandparents, who wrote each other a letter every day while my grandfather fought in WWII.” Boom. That’s a good story. It might be the perfect love story.

Which brings me back to the re-write, and cutting my hockey scene. The scene is not as important as the story I am telling. The beginning of my character’s journey is pretty clear, as is the end. The trick is to craft the journey so that he reaches that end. And that means I have to kill some babies.

I am thankful to me hockey stick for helping me find this story, and even though its scene is probably gone, it still means the world to me.

Thank you, Hockey Stick.

Killing babies. Or, as it is more commonly known, “re-writes”.

The first draft really is just that. Admittedly, the first draft is never really the actual first draft. When I write a screenplay, I tweak, change, add, remove and improve. I get the story to a point where I feel it makes sense, and the characters are beginning to come to life on the page. That’s the first draft.

Then I show it to some people whose opinion I trust, and I continue to ponder it myself. I try to start having imaginary conversations with my characters. It helps me find their voice, which needs to be unique to them in the story (in the same way that each of us has a unique voice). I get feedback — from myself, my muses, and trusted critics.

And that’s when the baby killing begins.

You see, I now know that my little screenplay has strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses seem obvious, but dealing with them is not always obvious. The easiest solution is to flesh out the weak parts, but then the story gets too long and the pace gets thrown off. Inevitably, there are going to be some moments that will be lost. Beautiful moments. Moments I love. I am going to have to backspace them off the page.

I have a couple of scenes in mind that are on the chopping block. I love these scenes. I remember the images as they came to me and found their way onto the page. But changes in the story have rendered them obsolete. Events changed earlier in the script will now take the story on a different path, so that these moments never come to be. These ideas, my creative offspring, have given their lives for the story. And I am the one who took their lives.

A scientist named Hugh Everett came up with this theory that has come to be known as the “many-worlds” theory. The basic idea is that there are many universes, and every decision we make creates a new universe, one for each side of the decision. In one universe, we decide to go ahead and jump. In the other, we take a step back. The two universes go on simultaneously, unaware of each other. Events that happen in one universe will never happen in the other, as they were predicated by decisions that were never made in the other universe.

As a writer, I take comfort that even though an idea may no longer exist in second draft, it lives on in the universe of the first draft. And even though only myself and a few others may be the only people who ever knew of its existence, it still lives there. So I haven’t necessarily completely killed the baby. It just doesn’t exist in this particular version of the story.

Of course, the great thing about being a writer is that one day I might find another story where the dead babies would be a perfect fit. The idea will live on, now in a completely different story. Universes will collide. Wow, that makes writing sound very dramatic.

So, now it’s time to kill some babies, if only for a little while, and only in this life.

For any artist trying to sell their work, whether it is a guitar player trying to start a band, a photographer trying to exhibit their work, or a filmmaker trying to get a movie made, you need to make connections. It’s the gospel truth when it comes to filmmaking. You won’t get your picture made unless you have people on board to make it. One person can’t do it on their own, and the fewer people you have to own your film, the more your film will suffer. YouTube has millions of examples of this.

What is a connection? Simply enough, it’s someone who helps you make your film. It’s someone you meet along the way who makes an investment, whether it’s time, money, effort, or all of the above.

Some connections will be weak … a kid will show up who you never met — he’s the cousin of a friend of the key grip — who wants to volunteer on set for his resume. This kid doesn’t know you and has never read the script. Late in the day, when you’re behind schedule, and everyone’s tired and frustrated, the assistant director tells the kid to pick up the pace. At that moment, he decides not to come back tomorrow. That’s a weak connection, and every movie is going to have those, especially low-budget movies.

A strong connection is the guy who came on board early. He bought into the story, the script, and the process, and as the director, you were smart enough to let him take ownership of his role. Sure, you guided him along the way, and it was clear that you had the final say in things, but he embraced the vision. You have shown him that you believe in him, and as such, he believes in you. He is on board until the end, just so he can have his name in the credits showing his association with your project.

Everybody on set is a connected to the project somewhere on a continuum between those two extremes. Obviously, the more people you have near the “strong” end of the continuum, the better. You also want to make sure the people at the top of your project in key positions are stronger connections. Here’s how to make that happen:

1. Network. Meet people. Meet as many people as possible. It’s the only way you are going to find the right people for your project.
2. Sell your vision. When you find a good fit, communicate your story. You want them to buy into your project.
3. Allow the right people to take ownership of your project. If you get to the point that you feel like your project might take off even if you were to sign off, then you’re getting to the right place.

The right people will enhance your vision, not distract from it. If you feel like someone is trying to hijack your project, then they are not the right person. Beware of people who think they could do it better than you. There’s a difference between advice to help you make your film better, and someone trying to make your film their way. Project hijackers have not bought into your vision. That’s a weak connection, and probably not someone you want near the top of the food chain on your movie.

One final thought … you have to pay much closer to “connection strength” on a low-budget/no-budget film. Obviously, $250 a day will make even the weakest connection a whole lot stronger!

Waiting for rain ... in a desert??

Sometimes it hits you like a lightning bolt to the cerebrum, and sometimes you have to go looking for it.

For a long time, I would wait for the stories to come to me. In the wrong season, it’s like waiting for rain in the desert. Sometimes you’re in the middle of the rain forest, surrounded by dripping trees, but usually that’s when you are surrounded by other creative minds. The ideas just bounce around off the walls. You try to catch what you can and get them down on paper as quick as possible. But out in the suburbs, surrounded by mini-malls and shallowness, the ideas don’t come to you. You have to find them.

A couple of months ago I was cleaning the garage, and I found my old hockey stick. I was never much of a hockey player. I always wanted to be. I found a few friends in college who wanted to play, and several times we got together on the weekend and skated around the concrete play area of elementary schools. A couple of games of three on three were the closest I ever got to hockey greatness. But I still have the skates and sticks. And a few memories.

One time, I turned to hockey when I got dumped. It was an epic dump. I loved this girl, and we had broken up before, only to find our way back to each other. This time, I had a feeling it was for keeps, so I went to other things to try and get my mind off of her. I decided I was going to practice roller hockey with my spare time. And so I would take my sticks, skates, and a recycling bin (for a goal) to abandoned parking lots. I would skate and practice shooting. Exercise makes you feel good. Practicing with purpose takes your mind off everything else.

Looking back, it seems pretty ridiculous. Who was this guy skating around by himself in a parking lot? In Florida? What did I think was going to happen? Would this adult hockey league suddenly appear where I could be a star? I don’t know what I was thinking. But I know what I wasn’t thinking about when I was on those skates.

And so a few months back as I was cleaning the garage, I had a memory. It wasn’t a stroke of lightning or a slap in the face from a muse. It was just a memory I had every so often. But looking for a story, I wondered if maybe I could go to that place — that time in my life — to find one. After all, playing roller hockey by yourself is pretty absurd. It might a good comedy.

In the final script, there is roller hockey, but it’s only mentioned briefly. Logisitically, it might be hard to pull off in our shooting schedule. But it’s where I found my story. It’s where it all started. My script didn’t fall out of the sky, or tackle me. I had to take a strange memory and reverse engineer it.

So now I look for stories. I try to find them. I search for ideas and images that will make this film special. How can you find something if you don’t go looking? I could sit around and wait for it to happen, but I might sitting around for a very long time.

Go out and look.

This weekend I helped a few friends who are a part of a budding community of independent filmmakers here in Houston make a short film. I got to record sound, which can be tiring when you are not used to holding a pole over your head all day. It makes it even more tiring when you are also helping with lighting, camera, and whatever else is needed, but such is life on a low-budget, independent film. It keeps you busy and happy!

It really is a blast to be on set. It is exciting to get in the groove and move at that clip, all while solving problems as you try to come up with the best way to get the best image and sound possible. It’s one challenge after another, and it’s always rewarding. I love jobs where I feel exhausted at the end of the day. I’m talking about full-body exhaustion, not the exhaustion you experience after a cubicle drains you of your life all day. Your is worn out, but you feel good at the end of the day. After a day in the cubicle, you just feel bad.

Thanks to Chuck Norfolk and his wonderful short action script — which is now some action footage — for giving us the opportunity to flex our film muscles (along with most of our body muscles). It’s great to have a community of filmmakers here in Houston who are trying to live the dream. And thank you to my wife for making me a delicious chicken salad sandwich, which gave me the energy boost I needed to finish the day yesterday!

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of “discipline” is the Green Chair. The Green Chair was an old, beat up recliner my parents kept in their bedroom. It was dirty lime green, straight out of the seventies. It couldn’t have been comfortable or inviting even if it wanted to be, because it was where my sister and I were sent when we had finally crossed the line far enough to warrant the most severe form of discipline, the kind where you don’t so much sit in the Green Chair as you lean over it.

I now understand that discipline means a lot more than just the Green Chair and a leather belt. Mr. Webster gives us several different definitions for “discipline“, but my favorite is 5:

a : control gained by enforcing obedience or order b : orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior c : self-control

That kind of sums it all up. It’s about self-control, which is important both morally and in how we go about achieving our goals.

Every art is basically a craft, and every craft requires discipline. The only way to master the skills and techniques necessary to master a craft is to have discipline. You have to have “orderly or prescribed” ways to practice and perfect your craft. This means you have to set aside time to practice your craft, you have to figure out ways to get better, and you have to consistently execute your plan. No one ever becomes a better writer by thinking about writing. Discipline is taking “you know, I would be a lot better [writer, filmmaker, artist, musician, etc.] if I did [action]“, and doing it consistently. Not just trying it once, but finding a way to happen on a consistent, regular basis that breeds results.

I confess that for many years, I have lived an undisciplined life. I procrastinate, I say “you know …” all the time, but rarely do anything about it. And then I complain when I am not moving forward. The trick is learning discipline, which is hard for everyone, esepcially right-brained dreamers such as myself who tend to laugh at schedules.

What’s the trick? Start with something. Start with your health. That might be the most important place to get going, because it is going to help you in every area of your life.

I recently started a diet. It was something I had needed to do for a long time, but just lacked the discipline to do it. The result? I have more energy, far less stomach problems, I’ve lost several belt sizes, and I know I am getting in shape. I have also realized that a) being disciplined is possible for me, and b) it yields great results. If you are interested in the diet/healthy eating lifestyle I have adopted, it’s called Sugar Busters!, and I really like it’s approach (and the weight I am losing.)

So, go to the Green Chair!