• I just read Ed the Happy Clown and the edition that I had contained a running commentary on its creation. Cartoonist Chester Brown mentions that the comic was mostly improvised and that he used the structure of writing/drawing a panel a day without a full script to rely on.

    The result is an exciting and out-there story with constant twists and turn. As the story progressed and neared some sort of conclusion, Brown does mention steering the story in a certain direction and have a plan of sorts to lead towards, but for the most part he uses the improv technique.

  • For a while in college I would spend my weekends scratch building a robot. I had a large bin of recyclables and broken toys that were great material for this. I’d usually start on Thursday night and then would spend all of Friday-Sunday finishing it. They were great weekend projects and a ton of fun to figure out.

    But a specific routine would occur whenever I set out to work on one. The first thing that I’d do on Thursday night, the deciding factor on whether or not I’d be putting together a robot or finding something else to do, would be rooting through my materials and seeing if I could find a capable headpiece for the bot.

    By capable I mean one that spoke to me. If I couldn’t find a good piece, then I knew I wouldn’t be able to put together a robot. It just wasn’t going to work.

    I might spend a few hours on Thursday night looking, and when I found the right one I always knew it and the rest of the robot would fall into place. It was like that one piece set up all the others that followed it. All I had to do was find that leading piece.

    There were a few occasions where I’d try to bullhead my way through without finding a good piece and the project would always fall to pieces. It wouldn’t work and I’d always shelve it as an unfinished.

    I like to relate other processes that have worked for me creatively in the past to different mediums, and I wanted to see if I could relate this to writing.

    In terms of a story, the headpiece is the climax. It’s what everything leads to and what the resolution relates to.

    It’s the bank heist. The kiss. Finally enacting vengeance. The confrontation with the super villain. The big moment.

    This might seem obvious to some, but to me it’s a bit of a revelation. My writing tends to get hung up, and realizing that I need to spend less time on the opening, or the catalyst, or the mood, or the genre… and that I should be spending time figuring out what things are leading towards is an eye-opener .

  • “Can’t say it often enough – change your hair, change your life.”

    ~ Inherent Vice – Thomas Pynchon

    I tend to go for longish periods of time between getting my haircut. Not terribly long, maybe 4 months or so, but long enough for it to become annoying. It’ll be just long enough that it sort of gets in the way or is just unruly enough to be irritating. This might happen at the 3-month mark, maybe a little before, but still I’ll wait.

    I’ll wait because I just don’t really like going to the barber. It’s not fun, it’s sort of pricey, I never know what to say, and a stranger will be touching my head for 20-30 minutes. An all around odd situation which is reason enough for me to put it off.

    The repercussions for putting it off are small, but they compound. Having to move your hair away from your face every few minutes has a way of getting under your skin without you ever knowing it.

    So eventually I’ll get it cut, bite the bullet, and sit through the awkwardness of small talk and hair cutting, and once it’s done I’ll feel like a million bucks. Like a switch has been flicked, everything will get turned right side up and with alarming clarity I’ll realize just how annoyed I’d been for the past month or so.

    This happens every time, like clockwork, an endless cycle in which the solution is so simple yet every time I avoid it.

    I see a few solutions ahead of me:

    1. Learn to cut my own hair and potentially be forced to rock a buzzcut for the rest of my life.
    2. Never cut my hair again and embrace the hippy lifestyle.
    3. Go regularly to the barber. Schedule the next appointment right after I’ve completed the current and just go when it’s time to.

    We’re human. We procrastinate doing the things that we don’t really like doing, even if they’ll benefit us greatly. Are these things that just have to be bullheaded through? Or are their other angles to these roadblocks that we just don’t see or can’t see because we’re so worked up? Is bravery the solution to fear or is there something else?

  • A new project means something new to learn. A new challenge to overcome. Something to really sink your teeth in to.

    A deliberate effort should be made in deciding what that new thing should be; be it a tool, a style, a medium, a topic, or even a person that you want to work with.

    This is the personal through line.

    The thing that keeps the project fresh and a challenge.

    When you don’t have something like this, something to keep you engaged and thinking, you can run into boredom.

    You’ll find yourself rehashing the same old things that you always do.

    And that’s never fun.

  • Before you begin, ask yourself:

    What do you need to do to finish?

    When is the project done?

    What are the core elements?

    At what point will it be good enough?

  • It’s amazing how your opinion on your work can change over just a little bit of time.

    I spent some time yesterday looking over some of my shorts on my Youtube channel, just a couple of weird animations and experiments really, but I found myself really being proud. I liked them. The question of whether or not they were any good didn’t really come to mind It didn’t matter. I was just happy to see some completed things.

    Is that the reward for hard work? The pride that you feel way down the line when you look back on what you’ve done?

    But then there’s the engagement that I felt when I worked on them. I can recall the time that I spent on each of them, the level of focus and the feeling of flow that I really had. Those were good feelings too.

    But then there’s the in between. When the project is “done” and you’ve separated yourself from it and you look at it with disgust. It just didn’t turn out right.

    That’s the worst part. That’s the curse. The unhappiness and uselessness that you feel upon finding yourself at the end. It didn’t reach your expectations, so you feel like a failure.

    So you have to wait a couple of years just to feel that sense of pride? To get to the next good part?

    How can you fill that gap? Especially at the beginning when the pattern of work and reflection hasn’t quite settled, when you don’t have enough behind you to look at with pride?

    What do you do in the meantime?

  • Industrial Craftsmanship

    The story that article relays, the one about the ceramics teacher, that story is put into just about every self-help, productivity, development book on the planet. It is always referenced, though sometimes it’s a photography instructor instead, but it’s all the same.

    The thing that might need to be looked into is the mediums that the reference is using in order to explore it’s topic.

    In the case of the photography example, it’s incredibly simple to take a bajillion photos. With modern tech anybody can do that. The big thing is getting your butt in gear, working on your eye, and then doing it. Quantity is an achievable thing through photography. I’ve done events that have lasted only a couple of hours and I’ll take hundreds of photos in that span.

    On the other hand ceramics might be a bit tougher. Physical materials are needed, which can get expensive, and time is needed to put together each piece. I’ve never done ceramics so I can’t assume how long each project might take, but you probably can’t get dozens done in a day. Maybe one a day. I really have no clue.

    So the rate of production for separate mediums is different. You can get more done in shorter amounts of time doing one thing but not another.

    What about writing? I’m trying to do a blog post a day for the next month. I’ve stuck with it for the past 5 days, but some of them are brief… very brief. Blips of ideas.

    But fiction? I mean a draft of a SHORT story, less than 10 pages, would probably take me a week. And that’d just be a first draft.

    And that’s another thing, there’s no first drafts for photos. Not really. Sure you could go back and take it again, but how often does that happen? Unless it was staged, how often does the moment present itself again?

    And in ceramics are you really going to remake the same piece? That feels like a waste of materials, because once the clay has set I don’t think you can unset it.

    I feel like there is an important lesson here.

  • That project that you’re tinkering away at in your free time? The one that’s fun? That maybe you only get a few minutes to work on everyday, but that you still get a little of work on?

    Keep it that way.

    Don’t force it. Don’t make it your “main” project. Don’t block out hours of your day to work on it. Don’t rush it.

    That’s how you kill it.

    Keep it light. Keep it fun. Take your time with it.

    It won’t get lost.

  • What are the themes and ideas of the things you like? The stories, writers, films…?

    Do they line up? Do certain things overlap and connect? Is their common ground?

    If so, you’ve probably found your through line.

  • I’ve been rereading Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love collection. His fiction meant a lot to me in college, but I really only read his stories once. I’ve read Cathedral a few times, I’ve listened to it too, but for the most part it’s been one and done. I notice that it makes an impact on me, I note it, but what are you supposed to do with that?

    I’m rereading the collection now. The stories are so short that I’ve been reading them a few times over. Two or three times in a row. Trying to figure out both why I like them and what they “mean.”

    Meaning is supplied by the reader. I firmly believe that. I believe that the writer has something, sure, but that’s not so much meaning but intent. They’ve got a feeling that brings them to the end, which may be a transformation of what their intent was, and then the reader takes that and translates it to their own experiences.

    But reading the stories a few times over, they start to change. They start to talk to each other. Themes and ideas are repeated and a structure is formed. The collection takes on a cohesive, lined form. It is not disparate. It is not wandering. They all feel like they come from the same tree.

  • To get things done there must be a mix of challenge and uncertainty. If there isn’t, then boredom sets in and then nothing gets done at all.

    Being bored and finding something to do is one thing. A positive thing. But being bored while doing the thing is entirely another.

    Implementing challenges to creative or non-physical tasks can be confusing.

    If you’re lifting weights, you could just add more weight. If you’re running, you could add another mile.

    But what about writing? You could increase your output, I guess. But that doesn’t sound all that exciting.

    If you were a painter I suppose you could try a different medium, some different kind of tools. Or if you were a musician you could try different instruments or styles.

    But writing? There is genre. There is structure. There is style.

    Challenges must be specific. They are restrictions, confines, weights. They are things that are difficult to reach, solve, accomplish.

    I’m reading Italo Calvino’s Mr. Palomar at the moment. It’s a novel of sorts. Experimental. Its chapters follows a pattern of 3x3x3 for a total of 27 chapters. Things are broken down into sections but everything mirrors each other and talks with one another. It’s almost mathematical.

    I’m also thinking of this article by Jane Allison which describes the shapes of fiction. Spirals, fractals, waves… different ways of experimenting.

    Challenges are ways of experimenting. Ways of going past the familiar. Going into new territory. Going head on with a problem and finding a way to solve it.

  • The question of when to leave something has been on my mind recently. When does a project end? When does a day’s work end? When have you done enough to feel proud of yourself?

    I’m figuring out that you cannot decide these finalities once you’ve begun, especially in terms of a day’s work.

    If I begin my day’s work without deciding when a good place to stop will be I’ve set myself up for intense feelings of disillusionment and unfulfillment. If I don’t decide what to aim for, I’ll be aimless all day and the day’s work will feel useless even if I did some good stuff.

    Once I sit down I need to tell myself where I’m headed, otherwise it just doesn’t feel right.

    I’m in a revision process for a project right now. It always feels like I’m in a revision process, but I definitely am right now. Moving freely and exploring is great for ideation, it’s great for being in the pioneer phase, but not for the edit.

    In the editing phase I know where I am going. The characters and their situations are familiar to me.

    The key to a day’s work is specificity. When is your day going to end? It could be 5:00. It could be at exactly five pages. It could be at a certain, specific point in the story.

    Whatever works for you. But when you sit down in the morning, your first decision should be when are you going to stop.

  • Here’s a quick lesson in drama that’s been prevalent in my current project: Don’t Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.

    What’s this mean? It means, when two characters have a conflict occurring between them, don’t let either of them take the easy out. There should be no taking the high ground, at least not without immediate consequences.

    During an argument in the real world it is the socially conscience thing to try and diffuse the argument as quickly as possible. To let bygones be bygones, or to at least let out a grumpy “fine.”

    People recognize, or at least I recognize, that things escalate really fast and that it’s smart to stop things before it’s too late.

    If you do this in fiction, you’re in trouble.

    Always let things escalate, that’s where the fun is, that’s where the story is. Recently in my writing I’ve noticed a habit of letting one character give up just as things are getting interesting. I’m trying to quell that habit, and it’s a first step to recognize that it’s there.

    So, all this to say, let things go too far. Keep the argument running, keep feeding the flames. You aren’t your characters, so enjoy pushing them farther and farther and farther. Right over the edge.

    Let ’em get angry for once.

  • Inspired by people I admire, here are some of the awesome things I found out about this year.

    Everything is only in the order of when I found it during the year. There is no ranking.

    Movies

    Viewings that were particularly meaningful.

    Some were for the first time, some were rewatches, all were impressive and inspiring.

    Books

    I thought I’d read a lot more this year. Apparently not.

    There’s always next year, I guess.

    Podcasts

    I don’t do a ton of podcasts, so this was really it.

    The Director’s Commentary is one of the greatest things on the planet. Check it out.

    Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend is also not listed, though I mainly watched that via Youtube.

    Youtube

    It’s so easy to find great stuff on Youtube. And it’s so easy to get lost in all the crap. Here’s some good stuff:

    Sesame Street- Don Music, Conan’s Family Wasn’t Cut Out for the Country Club, Young Stephen King Talking to a College, Limping Lotta, Nosy Bear Making Of

    My Stuff

    I’ve had a fairly productive year.

    My pal Zach Trent and I began our own production company to create are own projects and produced a few shorts this year including DiscBros.

    I created a few short animations at the beginning of the year, No Light and Seems, which were a ton of fun to make.

    I’ve been blogging a lot more and have a handful of scripts in various stages which I am very proud of.

    Reflection

    It was a great year. I learned a lot about writing, the biz, and general adult things. I drove across the country, held my first full time job, and moved out of my parents’ house.

    2025 is just around the corner and I can’t wait to see what’s in store. I’m hoping to blog more, finish more projects, and share more with cool people.

    Anyways… happy holidays, happy new year, and happy everything in between.

  • On the left is the inspiration. On the right is what I came up with.

    Inspiration is an odd thing, I don’t know if I’ve ever fully understood what to do with it. Obviously it’s usually the thing that spurs me to begin, but how does it shape and mold what I do?

    I needed to create a one-page for a story that I was planning on pitching, and I wasn’t too sure on how I wanted it to look.

    Scrolling through some of my old twitter likes, I came across this post which contained the above image. I liked it and decided to get to work.

    The original design for my one-page was much more in line with the inspiration, but as I am not that same designer nor is the project the same as the example, my design evolved into something different.

    To look at the two images, there is a clear correlation between them. They share a number of the same building blocks, but at the same time they are different. The flair and decoration is different, although the structure and foundation twin each other.

    I think this is how you use inspiration.

    It’s sort of about recreating what you like. Not creating something identical, that would be plagiarism, but trying to remodel it in your own way.

  • I read this post by the TTRPG creator Luke Gearing the other day and it got me thinking about the phases of a project, which is a dangerous, anti-productive thing to do, but in this case I think it was actually helpful.

    Gearing explains that his newest project was broken up into three phases.

    1. A barebones spreadsheet that detailed each element minimally.
    2. A handwritten ideation/barf draft phase.
    3. The final typed writing phase.

    Each phase was kept separate, and Gearing only allowed himself to move on to the next phase once that last one was completed.

    Reading this made me think of this video I’d seen perhaps a year ago on planning video game development

    The video explains the prototyping phase and the production phase, and how the two are kept separate. It also talks about how you cannot have one without the other and how the two bounce off of each other bringing projects to new heights.

    In other words, you have to switch from one to the other in order for the project to progress. Each phase solves the problems that the other phases confront.

    On my current project I’ve found that I’ve absently been following a similar path.

    I was using the things that I’d learned from the last script I’d worked on, and think I’m starting to develop a good system for myself.

    This is not to say that it is foolproof. Challenges will always arise, issues will need to be confronted, no puzzle is ever identical in how it can be solved.

    But I do believe that processes are a good thing, and that they do help me think.

    I’ve begun the project with a strong ideation phase. I didn’t really know what the story would be. I had an idea for the problem, but not on who the characters were, what they would talk about, how they’d go about solving problems.

    In a fresh notebook I just started writing scenes. They wound up being semi-sequential, but not completely. If I found myself getting stumped somewhere, I’d jump to another point and start from there. Then I’d jump back again.

    The characters started to develop, voices started to emerge, motifs presented themselves.

    But the story still wasn’t quite there.

    What I had was a mixed bag of puzzle pieces that if read through from start to finish would not make any sense, and that’s okay.

    The fun of this first phase, and having fun is the most important part, is not understanding the story. It’s not understanding the themes, characters, or plot.

    The fun is the spontaneity. The discovery. The “flow” state that you find yourself getting into when writing a new scene because you aren’t quite sure how it’ll end.

    If you think the fun part of this phase is the understanding of the story, you’re in trouble. Don’t mix up where the fun is.

    The next phase, the one I am currently on, is the organization phase.

    This is the spreadsheet, notecard, stationary explosion phase.

    This is where you take the macro-view of what you’ve written and do some detective work. I’m spending this time finding the motifs, figuring out the sequence of events, defining the characters, and laying out the story.

    For someone who does need some order and sense of organization in his life, this is much needed.

    The fun here is connecting the dots. Finding meaning. Constructing the story.

    I’m still in the midst of this phase, and it’s a breath of fresh air. It forces you to look at what you’ve written differently and that is always much needed.

    The final phase will be putting together the typed out script.

    I’m going to find the gaps in this phase, and those will need to be filled in. But the real fun of this phase will be getting to share what you’ve worked on with someone else.

    The feedback phase will either be a nightmare or a lot of fun. If it’s a game you’re working on, it’s letting other people play it. If it’s a script, the fun could be getting some people together to read it out loud.

    You’ll notice things that need to be tweaked, but it’s sure to be fun.

    I’m not here with the project yet, so I may make another post later on my thoughts on it but for now that’s what I’ve got.

    1. Ideation phase: Spontaneous play. Writing by hand. Making a mess.
    2. Organization phase: Stationary. Spreadsheets. Order. Detective work. Research.
    3. Construction: Building. Adjusting. Decorating. Sharing.
  • This past Spring I started to put together a sort of visual common place book.

    If you are unfamiliar with what a common place book is, it’s a notebook that traditionally houses quotes/writing that a person feels a particularly strong sense of connection to.

    By keeping track of the ideas, passages, verses… that really punch you in the gut, you are better able to understand what you like, think, and believe.

    It’s also handy for if you tend to use quotes a lot and need to easily find said quotes.

    My visual common place book is just a file on my computer that houses stills that I dig.

    If I’m watching a movie and see an image that I really like, I’ll take a photo with my phone and transport that image to the respective folder at a later date.

    Since I’m taking an image of a monitor or TV with my phone the image is never great, but that’s not the point. I’m more trying to keep track of the blocking, framing, colors, and art direction. The photo is just a reference.

    I don’t take a photo for every film I watch, even if that film has excellent photography.

    The real purpose behind this collection is to be able to reference the stills for my own projects.The stills that I take are usually taken because I want to replicate them in the future, and by having them at the ready in these organized folders I am setting myself up to do just that.

    Also, it’s just plain nifty to see the kinds of things I keep. It really shows the macro view of what I like, which is sometimes hard to figure out.

    I think this might be something I do forever, it just seems useful.

    And fun.

    Like collecting stamps or butterflies.

  • This past week I’ve been experimenting with a new story, one that is more of a game to write than something… I don’t know, serious.

    I’m a huge TTRPG fan and love to read up on theory of play. One of the most common and popular pieces of advice is that when you are prepping scenarios for players you should prepare situations and not stories. Meaning come up with a problem for players to solve, rather than a plot for them to follow through.

    The most exciting way to play is to throw players head first into a problem and to let them squirm and wriggle their way out of it. What you don’t want to do is have solutions already in mind, because if you attempt to steer people in the direction of your solution you tend to kill the thrill.

    It’s the problem solving, stakes, and consequences that arise that make the game fun.

    Thinking on this type of improvisational problem solving made me think of a passage in Stephen King’s On Writing where he touches on the differences in writing a plotted novel and a situational novel.

    He explains that stories like Misery, Cujo, and Gerald’s Game are stories that automatically incite plot based on their basic premises.

    “A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot, which is fine with me. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a what-if question.”

    Stephen King On Writing

    “And none of the story’s details and incidents proceeded from plot; they were organic, each arising naturally from the initial situation, each an uncovered part of the fossil.”

    Stephen King on writing Misery

    By making the problem the heart of the story you are creating the playground that makes writing fun.

    When you work to find solutions for the characters to escape, it’s almost like you yourself are doing the escaping.

    It’s kind of like day dreaming what you’d do if you were stuck on an island. How would you survive? How would you escape? What about food? Shelter?

    By putting yourself into the situation, you sort of engage yourself in a different way when writing. It just seems a touch more interactive and a little less passive.

    Maybe writing is supposed to be a game like that, at least in terms of genre fiction.

    How would you enact a heist?

    How would you deal with an alien on your spaceship?

    How would you deal with zombies surrounding your house?

    How would you deal with witnessing a murder?

    Pick a problem and see how your characters get out of it.

    Nothing revolutionary here, I know, but still something potentially big for me. Certainly makes writing stories more about something.

    Like an escape room.

  • You want to make simple things, but complications get in the way. You want a simple story, with simple writing, with simple elements. Simple?

    It seems that the act of making something “seem” simple is actually a very complicated process. That it actually takes years and years of work and understanding to reach the point where you can steer work into “simple” territory.

    You have to learn through the complications in order to cut them off.

    It is hard work to make simple things.

  • back cover of draft with inspirations

    I’m moving along with a project that has been on-again, off-again for the past few years. It’s called Too Much and I really love it.

    The above photo is the back cover of the legal pad that contains a finished rough draft. It has various inspirations written on it that make up the essence of the project.

    The quote in the bottom right is a portion of an Alice Munro quote. The rest is as follows:

    “A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

    Alice Munro

    I have left and come back to this project since I started it my Sophomore year of college where it began life as a poem.

    The story has changed each time that I’ve returned. But I keep on coming back.

    That must be a good sign, it must.

    “And I grew up in rural coastal Cornwall, miles from anywhere, so I know the feeling of being in a small town that, as soon as you’re conscious of where you are, you want to get away from—even though you’ll always be drawn back to it.”

    Mark Jenkins

  • I just read this blog post by Molly Fairhurst on collage and it got me thinking about spontaneity and longevity.

    I can’t say that I’ve “completed” any big-picture projects at this point in my life, but I can look back and point at a sprinkling of day and weekend projects that do make up my past.

    Just yesterday I did a small, day-long photo project. I took a walk, snapped a number of photos, edited them to my liking, and posted them on my Twitter. All within a few hours.

    They aren’t spectacular, but I dig them, and more importantly I can chalk that project up as a happy success.

    The issue, or perhaps challenge, being that longer projects (i.e. a feature screenplay) cannot be completed in such a fierce and intense period of time. It would be too much for that type of project.

    So, I find that working on a larger project sometimes stalls. That an element of jumpy spontaneity is lacking and it can become more tiring than it’s worth.

    But this is not to say that shorter projects are the answer either. While I love and appreciate diving into the pool, sometimes I find myself out of the water before I’ve gotten a chance to really enjoy myself.

    The idea I’m receiving from this is that you really need both, and they’ve got to overlap.

    Have a larger project in the running, simmering away in the pan, but don’t forget to follow your nose and see where it leads.

    a short animation I made last year over a weekend.

    Having lots of hobbies is likely the answer. Have things that can be done quick; like taking a few photos, or doing a collage, or scratch-building a robot… Do these things to refresh yourself, and do them often.

    I have a feeling those longer projects will thank you for it.

  • Last weekend I was involved in a double short film shoot. Two shorts filmed in a period of three days. Seventeen page total.

    It was a lot of work, but everything was filmed and the post-production phase has begun.

    I headed one of the scripts as director, while my writing buddy headed the other. 

    I’d like to share my thoughts on where I made mistakes on my script and where I could improve. 

    My short was the shorter one which we allotted five-hours on the first day of filming to complete. I was determined to get it done quickly, and so imposed director, sound, and camera all on myself. It was just me and the two actors. 

    For more experienced filmmakers this may have been a cinch. The script wasn’t too complicated in terms of scale, more of a conversation piece, and there was no intense camera work—at least, not in my storyboard. 

    The shots were planned to be minimal and lengthy in order to highlight the actor’s performances. 

    Immediately into the first shot I knew that my planning was not going to work. 

    I had too much on my plate in terms of crew work, and I was struggling to communicate with the actors the specifics of what I was looking for. 

    My first note to the actors was an attempt at bringing an element of surrealism into the piece, which was not at all needed and only resulted in confusion all around. 

    Here’s my first tip: when in the moment of actually doing the work, don’t make things needlessly complicated. Be plainspoken in your communication and don’t change the theme of the piece moment by moment and expect others to follow without confusion.

    After forcing a few shots that just felt wrong, I had to look the actors in the eye and tell them that it wasn’t working. That the things I had planned were not going to cut it.

    To their credit, both actors were incredibly kind and willing to continue. They suggested a different approach and we took it. It was difficult to admit to them that I didn’t know what I was doing and that I was completely lost, but they handled it well. Perhaps that’s how most people handle someone admitting that they need some help.

    Going forward, I shot handheld while they went through the scene in completion a number of times. I noticed my camera captured close ups better than wide shots so I stuck with that, and the actors performances got deeper and deeper with each take. 

    It felt a little more experimental, and in a much better way than my pho-surrealism take. It was fast, exciting, and everyone was very focused. It felt like something Cassettes or Mike Leigh might have done, but maybe I’m just dreaming a little. 

    We finished filming around the three-hour mark, so early. We could have played around with the scene more, but we were all tired and content with what we’d gotten. 

    I’m editing the project now, which is coming with its own challenges that may be discussed in a post at some point, and I’m enjoying the footage that we gathered. 

    The style is recognizable—that fast, telephoto, Peeping-Tom style—and I can see where I could have done better with it, but that’s nothing I can do anything about. 

    Anyways, here are my major takeaways:

    1. Always meet with who you’re going to be working with prior to the day-of. Preferably far in advance. Plainly tell them what you’re looking for and listen to what they have to say. Don’t expect people to get you without explanation and to understand how to follow your lead blindly. 
    2. Running both sound and camera by yourself is not for the faint of heart. If you must do it, understand that quality will suffer on both ends. It will always be better to have someone else help with it, it’ll only add to the piece.
    3. Don’t add “weird for the sake of weird” in the moment of production. Following your gut is a great thing, but it must be communicable to others. It takes time to communicate and you don’t have time when you’re in the midst of production.
    4. Don’t be afraid of saying “This isn’t going to work,” but also don’t relent to chickening out on your ideas. If you do move on to another plan you must be wary of finding a path that you can stick with. If your plans keep changing moment to moment, you’ll never get anything done. 
    5. Confidence is just deciding that things need to be done in a specific way right now. 

    There is of course more that I just haven’t had the time to ponder on yet, but these are my thoughts a week after the fact.

    It was an intense learning experience, and certainly a humbling one.

    Thankfully it hasn’t killed the dream, it just has made me want to try again.

  • I’ve been thinking about scheduling, and how as an independent filmmaker who can’t pay people very much, if at all, scheduling can be one of those mountains that can seem unclimbable.

    It’s pretty unreasonable to ask people to take two weeks off of work in order to make a movie that might not go anywhere. That’s not something that most people can really do, so another solution must be decided upon.

    Christopher Nolan’s first feature Following was filmed over a number of weekends in small increments. This would work great if everyone is located in the same area, everyone has jobs in which their weekends are the same days, and the actors and locations agree to maintain their “looks” for a prolonged period of time.

    A more extreme version of this structure would be David Lynch’s Eraserhead, filmed over a period of five-years. Jack Nance had to maintain his unique hairdo for the entire period of time. They filmed when they had the money, and halted production when they didn’t.

    Slightly different would be Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. The film was shot over a twelve-year period, but rather than being told in a condensed period of time the story takes place over the twelve-year period. This makes the changes in the actors and locations okay.

    The filmmaker Noam Kroll shot a film in 2023 in a number of small increments throughout the year. It was something like: three-days in March, three-days in June, four-days in September, and three-days in December. I think this is intresting on a number of levels.

    One, you get to play with all four seasons. If you write a story that specifically takes place in different sections of the year, shooting in these little increments can work really well.

    Two, it’s basically four separate three-day weekends. If you space them out enough, I think asking for time off from work in this fashion is fairly reasonable and much more doable — and perhaps far less exhausting — than one mega-production week.

    Of course, by spacing out production so much you do run the risk of losing interest. In my experience, if a project takes too much of a lull its chances of continuing are significantly diminished.

    So there are risks to prolonged production, but filmmaking is a risky business anyway.

    I do find these unique production structures interesting, so I’ll be on the lookout for more. It could be fun to implement them as rules for your writing, as ways to influence stories.

  • Recently I’ve only been looking at my Youtube Subscription feed for stuff to watch rather than browsing through their main page. It helps remove all the dreck from the feed, and then I can choose if I care about any of the things that my subscriptions have posted. It’s been saving me a lot of time.

    But really, the best thing about Youtube is the liked folder (Spotify’s also works very well, I also use IMDB’s watchlist for a similar purpose).

    I don’t “like” every video that I find enjoyable, I only like the stuff that really punches me in the gut.

    So, after ‘X’ amount of years, my liked folder has turned into this wonderful suppository of things that are meaningful to me, and I can scroll through it and sort out the history of my thinking. It’s pretty cool.

    Anyway, I was scrolling through this past week and came across a number of videos from The Royal Ocean Film Society’s channel and remembered how great they are.

    He hasn’t been posting as much recently, but the catalog is worth it. Many are video essays, which I am typically wary of, but these are really well done. The graphic design and editing are very impressive in each episode. Well worth checking out.

  • There are a number of repeat discussions that I have with myself whenever I go for a walk or sit down to do some thinking. Every few weeks they’ll pop up and I’ll rehash the same information, the same discussion points, and the same insights over and over and over. 

    It’s very cyclical.

    So, I figure the best way to expunge these conversations from my brain is to put them on paper. That way I can free up some space to develop some new internal discussions that I can also eventually get sick of and also write down. 

    Makes sense to me.

    So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on what we have the time to do with ourselves.

    I believe I first came across Warren Buffett’s 5/20 Rule through Cal Newport’s Deep Work, but the experiment has come up in a number of books on productivity, ugh, that I’ve gone through in the past couple of years. 

    The experiment completed in 3 steps.

    1. Take some time and write down the 20 most important things that you’d like to do with your life. These should be big things; like having a family, starting a business, or writing a book. Those ginormous dream goals that everyone supposedly has. 
    2. Then, take even more time to circle the most important 5 out of that list of 20. Really think of what the top points are for you.
    3. Finally, cross out the 15 non-circled points and spend the rest of your life actively avoiding them. 

    The point is, if you spend your life trying to complete all 20 of these goals, by the time you die you will likely not have finished any of them. Each may only be 20-30% complete. 

    Whereas, if you only have 5 major goals, your chance of completion is much higher.

    Now, Warren Buffett is a very rich man, so… take that for what you will. But I do believe that this exercise has a lot of gold in it. 

    I want to make feature films, but there are many other mediums that I find very tantalizing, and it’s tough to not succumb to their songs. 

    Short stories, plays, animation, children’s books, novels, comics, tabletop role playing games… not a week goes by that I do not feel drawn to one of these mediums and feel that maybe I should give them a go. 

    Now there are filmmakers that have dabbled in separate mediums. Tarantino and Cronenberg have both written novels; Ethan Coen has published plays, short stories, and poetry; David Lynch has his artwork… and there are going to be other examples too, of course, but these are established filmmakers, they’re going to have the funds to reach out. 

    And, for the most part, these forays into other mediums only came well into their film careers. They weren’t juggling multiple crafts when they were starting out. 

    Whenever I’d go over this conversation in my head I’d always be very adamant about the idea that you only get one medium. That if you want to make movies, or write novels, or be an architect, or a fashion designer than you focus on that specific “want,” you don’t let other “wants” creep in. 

    I’m not so sure now. Does it all add up to whatever you are supposed to be? To whatever you are supposed to do?

    I just heard the phrase, “If I knew where I was going, I’d already be there,” and I think that’s all there is to it. 

    Follow your nose and hope for the best. 

  • I have a tendency when I’m playing a game to save my resources and never use them. To keep them in my inventory, tucked away, until I really “need” them.

    If you only have twenty-fire arrows in the whole game, you should only use them when you really need them, right? On the final boss, or on something that’s actually worth it, not some minion or mini-boss.

    There are two typical results from this type of mentality.

    1. I finish the game before I actually use the resources, thus making them completely useless.
    2. I give up on the game because it’s too challenging, even in if I realize that the game would be easier if I use those special resources.

    Basically, rather than using this fun game mechanic that the designers intend for me to use, I would prefer to stubbornly/greedily hoard these things away.

    This is typically out of fear of wasting them.

    I think I’m stuck in this mindset with my work as well. I keep writing new scripts and stuffing them into a drawer or binder when I deem them “done.” Likely leaving them to rot away and be forgotten about.

    “I’m saving them for later,” I tell myself. “Saving them for the right time.” Saving them to be made after whatever I make next.

    This is a loop. If I keep writing these things and putting them away, waiting for the “right” time to make them, I’ll never make anything.

    It would be smarter, more sustainable, and more fun to just make these things that I’ve spent time on. I enjoy them, I just don’t want to see them fizzle out as finished pieces. But that’s exactly what they’re doing in the drawer.

    Finish your projects. Don’t have a drawer where you can hide things away.

    A drawer for your work is practically a coffin.

  • In my last post I quoted David Lynch speaking on his process and how he compares ideas to puzzle pieces that he receives individually from some other room

    He says he slowly collects these pieces one by one until he has them all, then he begins putting them together. 

    This is a pretty simple analogy for the process of making anything, but it’s been swirling in my brain recently and I’d like to find out why.

    I’m working on a bigger project at the moment, or at least trying to, and I’m still on this puzzle piece collecting stage, although I seem to be in denial of it. Most of the pieces are still in the box, but I’ve taken out a few handfuls and have already started to try to put them together. Needless to say, the odds that all of these choice pieces fitting together when they’ve been selected at random is very slim. 

    Sure, I’ve got a few that connect, but the majority don’t and I’m getting frustrated by this.

    It’s sort of a mountain fever type thing. Oliver Burkeman’s book, The Antidote, goes into some detail about this phenomenon. In short, it’s when mountain climbers push safety to the side when the peak of their mountain is just within sight. They’ll keep moving forward, even when everything – health issues, equipment malfunctions, poor weather… – starts yelling at them to turn back. This is where most casualties in mountain climbing come from.

    I think that prior to a rough draft—which is a cohesive, whole piece of writing, just without the flair and style of an edit—you must have a collection phase, and you must collect enough pieces before you can start to try and put the project together.

    Keep collecting pieces, keep those pieces organized, and only start to link them when you’ve for sure stockpiled enough.

  • The creator of the Mothership RPG, Sean McCoy, posted this blog entry last October. It references another blog by Ted Gioia, also called My Favorite Problems, which talks about the scientist Richard Feynman and how he had a dozen or so questions that guided his life’s work.

    Gioia created a list of his own questions, related to the music industry and education, as did McCoy, related to the tabletop roleplaying game industry.

    I’m not in the middle of anything at the moment, I’m still looking for the start line. These are the questions that I have as someone eager to begin:

    1. How do you know what you’re supposed to make?

    “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

    – W. Somerset Maugham

    It seems that you are not allowed to know this until you’ve already done it. The only way to figure out what you were supposed to make, is to have already made it so that you can look back on it.

    You can’t see what you haven’t yet done.

    2. What do you do with all the stuff that’s sitting in the drawer?

    “I get ideas in fragments…it’s as if in the other room, there’s a puzzle; all the pieces are together. But in my room, they just flip one piece at a time into me. The first piece that I get is a fragment of the whole puzzle, but I fall in love with this fragment…and it holds a promise for more. I keep it, I write it down. And then I say that having the fragment is more bait on the hook…it pulls in more, and the more that come in, the faster the rest come in.”

    – David Lynch

    Don’t forget it, because it’ll probably come in handy some day.

    I think big projects are really collages of smaller projects. Fragments that don’t make sense by themselves and must be paired with other fragments to make a whole.

    This article by Austin Kleon really goes into detail about filing your ideas for later. It’s important to be able to grab them at a moment’s notice.

    Right now I’m trying to use this method for a larger project. I might write about this more at a later date.

    3. How do you get things done?

    “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”

    – Isak Dinesen

    Somehow you have to work a little everyday. Somehow.

    This is where habits come in to play. A page day, a drawing a day, a workout a day. Small and manageable tasks, things that don’t have the potential to explode in a fiery mess.

    I’ve been doing a single sheet of loose-leaf paper, front-and-back, a day. If I feel like doing another, I grab another sheet, but I only have to do the one.

    4. How do you meet new people?

    “… At some point you’ve just got to make the decision, ‘well, no one’s gonna keep up with me. I’m going to a 12:00 show, then I’m gonna go to a 3:00 show, and a 5:00 show…’ You know, and so you just get used to buying that ticket alone, getting your seat wherever, you know, and it’s fun cause you tend to meet those other loners… I got friends with a guy who always sat over there… about six-months later you finally go, “hey man, who are you? I’ve seen you at about seventy-five movies by now.”

    Richard Linklater (on going to the movies alone)

    It seems that you’ve got to go where the people are. You’ve got to go up to them and say hello. You have to make the first step.

    This of course doesn’t answer WHERE you’re supposed to go. I don’t think I’ve figured that out, but I guess movie theaters would be a good place to start.

    5. When do you go for the big project? When do you go for the small?

    “The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don’t wait for her. Start alone.”

    – Roger Ebert

    The project chooses itself. When it’s “done” it is whatever length it is.

    The only thing that likely matters is that you pair your projects to your resources.

    What do you have?

    What can you do?

    I think about these problems everyday, and perhaps I shouldn’t. The answer to all of these is either patience or beginning.

    Make a line on the ground and call it your own starting line. Right where you stand.

  • It’s a great feeling when you’re struck with a very distinct vision for a project right from the get-go. When you can see all of the elements in one clean sweep, like the instructions have just been handed to you and all you have to do now is follow them.

    It can feel special when this happens, and the obsession to get the project made can be really overwhelming, can completely consume you as you put all your efforts into getting it done. It’s like some sort of blessing from the muse.

    The problem that usually arises, at least for me, is that I likely don’t have the abilities, skills, or tools that are going to be required to get some, or all, of the elements complete. And when I realize this, the whole thing can crumble.

    A few weeks ago I was rereading some of my old notebooks and I came across a poem that I’d written and just tossed to the side. Rereading it, I rather liked it, and wondered if I could perhaps do something with it.

    Later that day I was surfing through some old pictures I’d taken and I found a series of photos that I’d taken in an old fort. I thought they were very cool, and I once again wondered if I could do something with them.

    Bam! Eureka! Zing!

    The idea had sparked. I’d put the poem to the photos and create a sort of video collage. I liked it, and I thought of what I believed was a great way on how to incorporate the lyrics as subtitles.

    Rather than simply type the lyrics onto the images, I’d superimpose scraps of paper that had hand-written lyrics on them. This would enable a certain element of collage and texture that I thought was very important to the piece.

    I spent a good amount of time perfecting these little scraps. Making sure the lettering was how I wanted it, that the paper was of the right quality, and that the way each piece was torn would have the right amount of texture to it.

    This is where the problem presented itself.

    I had no idea how to transfer these pieces onto my computer while also keeping the texture and clarity that I had painstakingly worked on.

    I tried various types of scanning – my phone and printer – I tried using Adobe Illustrator to precisely crop out each scrap of paper, I tried simply taking a photo. Nothing looked as good as it did in real life, and I had no idea how to move forward.

    I’m sure there is a way to do this, to get it exactly how I wanted it, but I’m an amateur. I’m learning lots of things, and this evidently was not one of things I could learn to do just yet. I’m sure it’s easy, but my skills just aren’t there.

    I really almost threw away the whole project. It was very close. The vision was compromised, I was pissed off at my computer and at myself, and things just didn’t seem to be working the way I wanted them to.

    But I didn’t. I just made the lyrics regular subtitles and moved forward.

    After I finished the project and gave myself a pat on the back, I wrote “If you want something but it’s not working… move on” on a post-it note and stuck it above my desk.

    If you’d like to see the finished film, you can watch it here.

    Looking back, I can think of a lot of projects that I never finished because some detail, that was apparently critical to the vision, just wasn’t working.

    It seems that no detail is worth that much that an entire project should hinge on its inclusion.

    If you want something but it’s not working… move on.

  • While I don’t play a ton of video games, I am really interested in the process in which they get made as it seems pretty similar to a film’s production.

    Obviously there is a significant computer science background for games, but a lot of the creative and business elements overlap and a lot can be learned from this.

    The Game Developer’s Conference Youtube channel frequently posts great talks from designers, business leaders, and devs that are just plum full of great info.

    I thought I’d link a few of my favorites here:

    There is a lot of great info about how to create a sustainable life out of a creative career without losing hope or your balance when you feel you need to be making giant projects.

    So, the question is, how can I make films that are feasible, sustainable, and creatively satiable?

  • In trying to figure out a way to practice filmmaking in an experimental, fearless, and quantity centric fashion—as in: making many films quickly in order to learn rather than to perfect—I’m building an actionable plan to make a large microfilm portfolio. 

    The thing that often stalls people with short films is that their ideas are usually a little too ambitious for the runtime of a short film. Often, at least for myself, ideas land in the ambiguous plane between the short film and the feature film, which is not what I’m looking for.

    I’m looking for bite-sized shorts that are “simple” and made for the purpose of learning, a sort of microfilm. 

    For a long time my comparison for features and short films has been novels and short stories. But thinking about it, novels are actually more akin to miniseries and short stories are more akin to features.

    You pick up and put down a novel like how you come to a series from episode to episode. Short stories, like feature films, are meant to be enjoyed in a single sitting.

    So where does the short film lie? What can we compare it to? 

    In literature there’s a genre subsidiary of the short story called microfiction, which, compared to a short story’s 5,000-10,000 word length, comprises usually of a 500-1,000 word length. Which is significantly shorter.

    With such a small format, microfiction is forced to focus on extremely specific details. It might be just remnants of a conversation or a single flash of a moment.

    Here’s a link to an example by Elliott Holt called Picnic, Lightning on the Tin House Publishing website. It’s 326 words, and a great little story. 

    Here’s My Microfilm Plan

    1. Spend 30-60 minutes free writing a 500ish word story on the first day.
    2. On the second day, spend an hour or so editing that story.
    3. After that second day, move on to the next story and begin again.

    By writing many microfiction pieces quickly, I’m beginning and finishing tiny projects that can each be used to make a microfilm.

    If you spend an hour or so one day writing a first draft and an hour or so the next day editing that story to completion, by the end of a year-long period you’ll have 182 microfiction pieces. 

    I guarantee you at least ten of those would probably make pretty good microfilms, if not more. 

    What’s important, though, is maintaining a sense of experimentation. Making sure that you don’t get hung up on a single story, and that at the end of the second day you say “That’s it” and move on to the next one, you’re building a sense of discipline. 

    This can be a great exercise that really doesn’t take up too much time. You could start your day with it, or end your day with it, or even do it during your lunch.

    By breaking free from the desire to solely make big things and by actually finishing small things you’re setting yourself up for success when you eventually work up to the bigger projects.

  • Movies can potentially be expensive to make, but they don’t always have to be. You don’t need a few million dollars to get your movie made. In fact, with some stories you hardly need any money at all. Enter the micro-budget film.

    This is a list of 5 fantastic micro-budget movies that absolutely play to their strengths. By understanding their limitations and working to enhance whatever the filmmakers actually have control over, the films reach a new height. 

    By developing strong dialogue, an intriguing mood, and a unique story with individual texture and aesthetics, these films are remembered as cult classics and are enjoyed by a wide audience. 

    If you put your efforts into making sure that things that you can control without spending any money are top-notch, then you’re on your way to making a great micro-budget movie.

    While not “technically” perfect in some regards, these 5 micro-budget movies represent what a little bit of money can produce with a lot of hard work.

    1. The American Astronaut – Dir. Corey McAbee (2001)

    Being a space western musical you might think that this film would have an extraordinary budget, but by cleverly masking visuals with black and white grain and a hefty amount of shadow, a simple bedroom can be made out to be a space ship.

    The American Astronaut uses techniques found in classic noir and German Expressionist films to create an entirely new mood and visual sense to the sci-fi genre. 

    McAbee, an accomplished musician, adds in his unique style of music in order to blend genres in a way that hasn’t been done before. By incorporating musical theater, another layer is added to film making it impossibly more fun.

    The script, which was developed in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab in 1996 and not produced until 2001, is pushed to the absolute limits. By focusing on dialogue, and making it as interesting as possible, audience interest is retained without having to rely on fancy sci-fi visual effect tropes.

    Its unique sense of humor gives it a touch of absurdity making it seem fresh and spontaneous. Its unpredictable nature grants it a timeless quality, thus earning it a cult status that has allowed it to not fall into obscurity more than 20 years after its original release. 

    Key takeaways for burgeoning micro-budget filmmakers are: Use visual limitations to your advantage; Spend as much time as needed to develop a unique and fresh script; Fusion of genres.

    Still from the micro-budget film It's Impossible to Learn to Plow By Reading Books by Richard Linklater.

    2. It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow By Reading Books – Dir. Richard Linklater (1988)

    Before Slacker, Richard Linklater developed the micro-budget film It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow By Reading Books over a 3-year period (1985-88) and used it to hone his skills as a filmmaker. 

    He worked completely on his own using only the tools that he had available to him, and used the film as a personal project rather than a marketable project. The story is purposefully vague and abstract, and an emphasis is put on framing and composition which could be done leisurely as the film was done in a guerrilla-style. 

    In the director’s commentary included in the Criterion Collection’s edition of Slacker, Linklater presses that fact that the film was made solely as an experiment to test what interested him as a filmmaker while making an actual film. By doing this with a low-risk project, his future projects, specifically the phenomenon that Slacker made, flourished and set him up for success down the line.

    Linklater also emphasizes patience as a filmmaker and how important it is to assess that you are ready to begin production before you actually begin.

    When working on a micro-budget scale, you might have the luxury of time. No production studio is on your back about a due-date, because your financing is done independently. With this in mind, it’s important to take your time and make sure everything is right before you choose to release your film. 

    You might have more leeway in regards to writing,reshooting, and editing, so make sure you use that time to its fullest.

    Takeaways: Be patient, use your time to make every element as good as it can be, Composition can be a wonderful tool especially if you have the time to make it just right. 

    Still from the micro-budget film The Caretaker by Clive Donner.

    3. The Caretaker – Dir. Clive Donner (1963)

    Sometimes referred to as The Guest, The Caretaker is adapted from a Harold Pinter play of the same name. 

    The film, originally turned down by all major studios, was eventually made when a number of interested patrons including Peter Sellers, Noël Coward, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and a handful of other generous artists, all invested 1,000 Pounds each, resulting in a 7,000 Pound total budget.

    The result is a micro-budget, psychological-drama masterpiece. Taking place almost entirely in a single room and made up of a cast of three talented actors, the story is dark, humorous, and filled with raw drama. 

    By keeping the setting simple and the cast small, caveats of many great theatrical pieces, the story is contained and loose ends are easily tucked in.

    The score, a series of sound effects, is another micro-budget masterclass. The dripping of water and the rattling of pipes being replaced with electronic synthesizer motifs is cost effective and creates a unique atmosphere. 

    When you have great actors such as Robert Shaw, Donald Pleasence, and Alan Bates, along with the writing of a master such as Harold Pinter, simplicity becomes infinitely interesting.

    Takeaways: Work to find actors who know their stuff and are willing to work, there are plenty other than your best friend’s cousin; Music can add a world of difference to atmosphere, and, like actors, plenty of talented composers exist and are willing to work on interesting projects, you just have to find them; and, of course, great deliberate writing will always enhance any story.

    Still from the micro-budget film Coherence by James Ward Byrkit.

    4. Coherence – Dir. James Ward Byrkit (2013)

    So, clearly, writing is important. But what if you have a great story concept for your micro-budget film, but don’t feel confident in your writing capabilities?

    Enter Coherence, a wonderful mind-bending surreal sci-fi film that relies heavily on actor improvisation. 

    The writers, James Ward Byrkit and Alex Manugian, had an idea and a general treatment for the story, but rather than executing a normal script, they decided to instead use improvisation. 

    During shooting, the actors were given slips of paper in secret with prompts detailing how their character should react to certain things. The actors would begin their scene, improvise, and all was captured with handheld cameras by a skeleton crew. 

    The frantic nature of both the shaky cam and the actor’s performances gives the film that psychological edge that makes it a great genre piece.

    If you have a great idea for a story, it might be worth trying an improvised approach. While the improvisations might not be clean enough for a finished product, the experiments are sure to elicit ideas for a conventional script.  

    This is not unlike how Mike Leigh operates, albeit on a much higher budget. 

    Takeaways: If you have an interesting story but are struggling with a script, try improvising with some actors to get some ideas; Handheld cameras have long been a staple of independent thrillers, and for good reason, it adds a certain edge to visuals.

    5. Last Night at the Alamo – Dir. Eagle Pennell (1983)

    Eagle Pennell’s filmography is the reason that Robert Redford began the Sundance Film Festival, as a means of distributing and showing independent film work that would otherwise get lost to time.

    Pennell’s films utilize many of the micro-budget techniques brought up so far, including; a single set, a talented ensemble of actors, harsh biting dialogue, and gritty black and white footage.

    Where Pennell stands out is that he knows what he wants to say. His vision is clear and envelopes the entirety of the film. The characters are blue-collar workers who feel that they are trapped and being pushed out by a new America, a very relatable subject. 

    By having a cohesive, well-thought out theme that is highly relatable to an audience you highlight engagement. The film doesn’t administer any fancy camerawork or editing, and it doesn’t need to.

    By working simply, Pennell creates a great, timeless film on a budget.

    Takeaways: Having a clean, cohesive vision makes your film seem polished; Relatable stories easily hook in an audience; Films don’t need complicated techniques in order to be complex, simplicity also works.

    Conclusion

    Micro-budget films are everywhere and each will reveal different tips and techniques on how to make impactful films without breaking the bank.

    By watching many, and familiarizing yourself with how it’s done, filmmaking can be a much more accessible medium. 

    All it takes is a little creativity.

  • While I do have a “complete” draft of the Ocular Migraine script that has been sitting in a folder on my desktop for the past few months, with this new web-series-esque way of producing it, the script needs some revision and cutting.

    For one, it’s cut into segments now that need to feel somewhat clearly defined, and contain their own beginning, middle, and end. This means I have to define the 12 most important scenes, squish them into 5-page intervals, and cut off any excess fat.

    I’m not afraid of running overtime, more film would be great, I’m just trying to be conscious about production time and how much animating I can possibly do in 5-week periods.

    But besides that, the writing process.

    I’m trying to figure out how I exactly like to work. I don’t think it’s black text on a white background, typing away on a computer.

    I remember a professor saying that linear editing for films, done with the big moviolas or Steenbeck machines, was very physical. You would stand at the machine, work it with your whole body—cut, splice, tape—all these little tools for all sort of jobs. He said it was kind of like a dance.

    I want writing to be like that.

    What kind of machine or setup do I need to create to make writing an almost sport-like process? Or, at least, more akin to working in a toolshed?

    Perhaps the most obvious method would be good old pen and paper, and I think that works to a certain extent. Add some other types of pens and markers, sticky notes, whiteout, glue, paper cut-outs, texture, paint… at this point is it still writing, right?

    Maybe not, I don’t think I’m looking to be a writer. I want to be a visual storyteller who can rely on mood and feeling to convey difficult, complex ideas.

    Simplicity masked with layers is what I’m after. Simple phrases stretched to their limit will do fine.

    But back to Ocular Migraine, how can I input this into what’s already turning out to be a large-scale experiment?

    I’m not sure yet. But I’ll try something and I’ll let you know how it goes.

    Additional inspiration that I’ve thought of, Closely Watched Trains. A wonderful coming-of-age story.

    A few images of notes on the project. I love to see people’s paperwork, hopefully mine gets more and more hectic as things go forward.

  • Made this really quickly a few days ago just to see how drawing on top of one of my photos would look like.

    The model is just a crude thing I could draw many times quickly, don’t expect the characters of the film to look like this—they may have an ounce more effort put into them.

    I really dig the look of the photo, and it may be the way to go just so that I have to draw a lot less and an audience won’t be forced to watch an entire screen of crappy, squiggly lines.

    Problem is, or, at least, a new challenge is, I don’t have photos like this for all the locations that I’d like to have in the film. Meaning, I’m going to have to take more photos.

    This isn’t really a problem, I like taking pictures, it’s just going to be more of a challenge to find places that fit within the picture.

    Just have to do a little bit of exploring, I guess.

    Also, in terms of film inspiration that I forgot to mention in the last post, Don Hertfeldt completely skipped my mind. I don’t know how, his films are pretty ingrained in how this picture will likely turn out.

    If you haven’t seen his films, go watch them. They’re fantastic.

    Although, if you’re into animation, you’re probably already very well acquainted with his work.

  • I’ve got a new “fun” project on the horizon, and I think I’d like to take the time to publicly document the process of its creation. So here’s the beginning of a film log, I guess.

    Earlier this year I was working on a screenplay that I had intended to produce with some people in my college town, but as I had only a few months before I was moving back home to Chicago, it sort of fizzled out. Drafts of the script were completed, and the story was practically all there, but production never got a chance to begin.

    Rather than let the story die, I’ve decided to try something perhaps a little ambitious but so tantalizing that I feel I just have to give it a try.

    Over a period of twelve months I plan to release chapters of the film to Youtube—unless I get a better idea—in five-minute increments.

    The film, however, won’t be live-action, it’s going to be animated.

    Truth be told, I do not have a background in animation. I didn’t go to school for it, I don’t really practice it, I have no training in drawing or 3d-work.

    I have, however, done some experimenting in the past few months. Here’s Fingernails and Wisdom, two shorts that were made over the period of a weekend each.

    The film—its working title being Ocular Migraine—will be done in a similar style. Very scratchy, fast, and wiggly (hehe).

    My intent is to draw from some of my favorite low-budget animations; examples being Jack Stauber’s Pop, David Lynch’s Dumbland, and John and Faith Hubley’s Moonbird.

    The story pays a lot of respects to Martin Scorsese’s Afterhours, a movie that I really adore, and is intended to be a dark oddball comedy.

    The subgenre called “The Yuppie Nightmare Cycle”, which wikipedia calls

    “…a subgenre of films which combine two genres in itself – screwball comedy and film noir.”

    is a major influence, although the story takes place in a small suburban town and its protagonist is a librarian, not a yuppie.

    Back to production aspects, I am going to begin storyboarding the first chapter as well as condensing the scripts down into a shooting script of sorts this week, and will begin to inquire to people I know about specific roles.

    I considered voicing all the characters myself as a means of keeping things simple, but that really goes against my intent to collaborate with all the great people I know. So, roles will need to be divided and audio recording will need to be researched. People are all over the country so I’ll need to find a way for them to be able to work from home. But that’s a future post.

    I can tell that this is going to be a great experiment. It’s very exciting. Animation is a new world, and I don’t really know any of the rules so at the moment it appears very freeing. The visuals might not be beautiful, but I’m prepared to put a lot of heart into this.

    See you next week.

    Cheers!

  • Here’s a big list of 100 movie moments that stick out to me. I was inspired by a list in Patton Oswalt’s book Silver Screen Fiend, and thought it’d be fun to give it a try.

    I set a timer for an hour and went at it without doing any research or being able to google anything. I did name check song titles afterwards for specificity.

    Spoilers ahead, read at your own risk.

    1. All That Jazz: “Everything Old Is New Again” Dance
    2. Local Hero: Victor’s song
    3. True Stories: John Goodman’s rendition of “People like Us”
    4. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: “Hushabye Mountain”
    5. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:The dancing toys. When Dick Van Dyke looks in the mirror.
    6. Mary Poppins: David Tomlinson’s face during “A Man Has Dreams”
    7. The American Astronaut: Hertz Donut
    8. Amadeus: Intro scene to Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
    9. Five Easy Pieces: Chopin scene
    10. American Graffiti: “Here I sit, suckin’ on popsicles”
    11. Hellraiser: Frank’s rebirth
    12. Blood Simple: Bullet holes
    13. Watership Down: Intro scene done by John Hubley
    14. The Jerk: “He hates these cans!”
    15. It’s a Wonderful Life: “Auld Lang Syne” Ending
    16. Harold and Maude: Fourth wall break
    17. The Muppet Movie: “Life’s Like a Movie”
    18. The Muppet Movie: “I have a dream too, but it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy”
    19. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “You lost today kid, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it”
    20. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure: “Tequila” dance
    21. Night of the Hunter: “Once Upon a Time There Was a Pretty Fly”
    22. Bicycle Thieves: Walking away hand-in-hand ending
    23. Down By Law: Ice cream scene
    24. Blue Velvet: Dean Stockwell’s “In Dreams” rendition
    25. Dune (1983): Harkonnen introduction
    26. The Exorcist III: Dream Sequence
    27. The Illusionist: “Magic isn’t real”
    28. Brazil: Michael Palin’s death
    29. Blade Runner: “Tears in rain” speech
    30. The Truman Show: Truman’s escape
    31. Batman (1989): “You can call me, Joker”
    32. Nashville: “It Don’t Worry Me”
    33. Batman Forever: Jim Carrey’s scream as Batman approaches
    34. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas: Charles Durning
    35. Vertigo: Dream sequence
    36. Toy Story: “We’re flying!” “No, we’re falling with style”
    37. Singin’ in the Rain: “Make ’em Laugh”
    38. Kiki’s Delivery Service: Catching Tombo
    39. Raising Arizona: Diaper chase scene
    40. Back to the Future: Skateboard chase
    41. Back to the Future: George McFly punching Biff (and all of Crispin Glover’s performance, really)
    42. The Shining: Jack’s conversations with Lloyd
    43. Home Alone: Church scene
    44. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: Gene Wilder rolling
    45. Nightmare Before Christmas: “Jack’s Lament”
    46. Casablanca: Singing “La Marseillaise”
    47. A Clockwork Orange: Opening
    48. The Elephant Man: Escaping the circus
    49. The Graduate: Pool to bed transition
    50. Lost Highway: “We’ve met before”
    51. Young Frankenstein: “Puttin’ On the Ritz”
    52. The Darjeeling Limited: “Look at those assholes”
    53. The Fly: “I’m an insect who dreamed he was a man and loved it, but now the dream is over and the insect is awake”
    54. Repo Man: “Ordinary $&@#ing People”
    55. Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Dracula puppet show
    56. Hair: Berger’s death
    57. 2001: a Space Odyssey: Bone to spaceship transition
    58. Being There: Ending
    59. Better Off Dead: Hamburger dance
    60. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: “We’re going the wrong way”
    61. Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Paul Reuben’s death
    62. Dodgeball: “If you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a ball”
    63. Ghostbusters: Stay Puft Marshmallow Man
    64. Groundhog Day: Saving the day montage
    65. Rushmore: “Oh, I’m a little lonely”
    66. Amélie: Box of old treasures
    67. Oh Brother Where Art Thou: KKK meeting failure
    68. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Flamethrower
    69. Paper Moon: Madeline Kahn
    70. Poltergeist: Meat scene
    71. Breakfast Club: Shop class lamp
    72. Smokey & the Bandit: “Two Diablo sandwiches and a Dr. Pepper”
    73. The Abyss: Michael Biehn’s performance
    74. The Incredibles: Opening interviews
    75. My Neighbor Totoro: Tree growing dance scene
    76. Tommy Boy: Chris Farley talking to waitress
    77. The Third Man: Harry Lime introduction
    78. The Thing: Defibrillator scene
    79. The Secret of Nimh: Sword fight
    80. Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers: Train chase
    81. Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Holy hand grenade
    82. Toy Story 2: “But I don’t wanna use my head”
    83. Fantastic Mr. Fox: Rat fight
    84. Stand By Me: Lardass story
    85. Frankenhooker: Patty Mullen’s face
    86. Possession: Subway tantrum
    87. The Sandlot: “Forever”
    88. Saving Mr. Banks: “Let’s Go Fly a Kite”
    89. Saving Private Ryan: Tom Hanks’ end
    90. Invasion of the Body Snatchers: “They’re here!”
    91. Paris, Texas: Walking on opposite sides of the street
    92. Stromboli: Tuna scene
    93. Ed Wood: Martin Landau
    94. Aguirre: The Wrath of God: Left surrounded by monkeys
    95. Naked Lunch: “Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk?”
    96. Limelight: Chaplin and Keaton
    97. Nightmare Alley (1947): “Wait. I just happened to think of something. I might have a job you can take a crack at. Course it isn’t much and I’m not begging you to take it, but it’s a job”
    98. My Darling Clementine: Hamlet recitation
    99. Under the Skin: Deflation
    100. Giant: Old, drunk James Dean
  • I just finished reading Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing Up. I picked it up yesterday, read half of it, and and then read the other half this morning.

    It was a short book, just over 200 pages, so nothing to run home about in terms of length, but I think it still speaks to how it grabs you.

    I really only knew him from his films; The Jerk, The Three Amigos, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles… and not really from his standup. At the back of my mind I might have known that he had made a real impact with it, but I’d never sought out any of it.

    Watching some of it now it’s really amazing how confident he appears and how lively he moves around the stage in comparison to the dry humor and humble attitude that the book takes.

    As far as I know he hasn’t done any stand up since giving it up in the early 80s which strikes me as maybe not bizarre, but a bold choice. I’m not saying it was a poor choice, I love his film career and it’s clearly been lucrative for him, but to quit an art form cold turkey after honing your craft for more than a decade seems frightening.

    He mentions near the end of the book the idea that art is abandoned when it’s “finished”, if ever finished at all, and I guess this was his motivation for moving on.

    When you’ve mastered one skill, it’s time to begin learning another.

  • About a month ago I finished reading Patton Oswalt’s Silver Screen Fiend, his short memoir of his years being addicted to film. I recommend it both to the cinephiles of the world and to anybody who has a love for any sort of hobby or niche subject. I think it’s pretty universal in that regard. It doesn’t have to be movies, it can be any passion that has consumed you upon being introduced to it, for better or for worse.

    This post isn’t about the book, though, it’s more about where the book took me. In one of the appendices, Oswalt includes a list of his 100 favorite movie moments. Inspired by it, I decided to give it a go myself, and over a few days I came up with about 100 movie moments that I felt really moved me. Some were silly (M. Emmet Walsh shooting the oil cans in The Jerk with Steve Martin yelling “He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!” for example) and some serious (M. Emmet Walsh staring at built up condensation at the end of Blood Simple).

    But after completing the list, I think the most interesting connection would be just how many moments contain characters either singing or dancing.

    Now, to tell the truth, a lot of the examples are from musicals, so it’s expected that there be at least some song and dance, but a lot of the movies are not musicals. Local Hero, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Blue Velvet, Harold and Maude, Night of the Hunter, Casablanca, Young Frankenstein, Forgetting Sarah Marshall… these aren’t musicals, but certainly have moments that are.

    Here’s what I think: music is intoxicatingly charming. That’s not really a big whoop, people listen to music all the time.

    But it’s a big step to make your own music, especially when you don’t really know how, and especially when it’s in front of other people.

    Singing, at least in my experience, can be a pretty terrifying thing for a person to do. There’s no instrument to blame if things go wrong, it’s just you. It’s like the fear of public speaking but doubled.

    So when a character does it, especially when they don’t do it well, it is intoxicatingly charming. It really feels very freeing and it’s often impossible not to fall in love with the characters right then and there. They’ve opened their soul to you in a medium that all about voyeuristically invading people’s lives and so you fall in love.

    Same can be said for dance. It’s just you and your body, there are no tools really (maybe tap shoes), and when a person really goes at it (think Napoleon Dynamite) it’s impossible not to smile.

    So, really, I love moments when a character truly shows who they are. When they are carefree and they sing as loud as they can and dance like mad. I love these moments because all they are doing is proving that it’s ok to be you.

    To sing and dance even if you think you can’t, because you probably, very likely, most definitely can.