Tuesday, December 28, 2004

The Second Post or I Wanna Be In Pictures

Hey all!

Another day another post. Let's see if my activities over the last 24 hours are interesting enough to warrant your time and energy, yeah?

As part of my whole, 'get back on the writing wagon' exercise, I've started work on a couple of screenplays that have been sitting, unfinished, on my hard drive. The first script, a story tentatively called Smitten, is a work in progress that sort of lost its steam a few months back. It's one of those things where you have the beginning and you have the end, but you still have to go in and beef the second act up and tie the first and last acts magically together. It's been pretty slow going, but it seems to be coming together. I'm on the third draft of the thing right now and I think there will likely be a polish or two after this one is complete before I'm ready to unleash it on the world.

While on the subject of film, this year I was also part of something called NextFest - a local film festival in which I was entered in the Digital Guerilla category. We entered a short film titled Dead End - a name which is still up for debate among myself and my co-writer - and I have to say that, while the experience was a valuable one, we made a really shitty movie. We had no money, no equipment, and our cast and crew were ill-prepared for the shoot (that includes me). It was originally supposed to be set in a house but when we failed to secure a location, we had to stage the whole thing in the car which was only meant for about 2 minutes of the picture.

Much of the best work on the project happened during the writing process, I think. My co-writer and I had fun whipping drafts of the script back and forth, trying to beat the deadline imposed by the festival. All things considered, it was a decent script, but the time and resources available to us just sunk us.

Here are some stills from the film to give you a glimpse into the horror that was Dead End...


Dark and Brooding


"Are we there yet?"


"What did you do!?!"


Just walk away...


Looking at them this way the movie appears better than I remember it.:) Maybe I'll go back and watch it again with a fresh eye, see if there was anything I may have missed being too close to the project.

I don't think I want to give up completely on the film industry just yet (in fact, I'm planning another small production as I write this) but it can be a terribly frustrating thing to subject yourself to. Not sure if it's something I want to pursue as more than a hobby. Time will tell.

Until next time...

mike

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