A Lesson In Mist
This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blogletter about the creative process. I'm sharing adventures in art and life as well as setting CLIFFHANGER goals for myself, so--
DID I MAKE MY GOAL?
Big picture, I’m working away on the post-production of our horror film, Dead Media. I’m editing the film in chronological order. For the last two weeks, I committed to the goal of editing up to minute 60 of the film.
This week I surpassed my goal, making it to minute 63 of the film!
Partially, this was accomplished by hitting some dialogue heavy scenes which can be a little faster to edit than action/horror/set-pieces.
But also I had some obsessive moments. Late at night, when I should have been wrapping up, I reviewed the footage for an action/horror scene and was concerned about having all the shots I needed to make it work. I knew if I tried to go to sleep, I’d just dream about it. So I stayed up until 3:30 am editing a violent attack. And I was thrilled! The scene worked out great.
The next day I was very tired and felt a little off. I kept wondering why. After all, I was thrilled about this scene turning out so well! Then I remembered it was a VIOLENT ATTACK that I had watched and rewatched frame-by-frame until near dawn then slept for three hours.
So the next time you interact with someone who seems a little grumpy and off—maybe they were just editing a horror movie until 3:30 am.
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
The blog is late this week because I was busy celebrating my wife’s birthday.
Sara and I have a favorite spot by the ocean on the California coast. So we went and stayed for a few days’ relaxation.
We had a wonderful time. We are ridiculously lucky to be able to take a break in such a beautiful place.
That said, I encountered some challenges that made me think about being creative in this moment.
This get away spot has always been a place of relaxation. A chance to let my heart rate slow down to match the lulling song of the ocean waves as I drift off to sleep.
But between the stress of the film and political horrors, I could not fully relax. It was like I was being shown flash cards of nice things and I could identify them. Yes, that’s BEAUTY. Yes, that’s RELAXATION. Yes, that’s the SUBLIME CONNECTION BETWEEN HUMANS AND THE COSMOS ITSELF. But I couldn’t entirely feel their calming effect.
We took a walk on the beach. And it was like nature was in the same conflicted mood I was. It was sunny and gorgeous, light dancing down the waves just as they crested. But mist kept coming in and plunging the beach into a dirty, off-white haze.
During a break in the mist, I walked out to my favorite breaker. I look forward to standing there because it’s my desktop photo but without all the folders and chaos.
Here’s my desktop image. A picture I took on a previous trip.
Every time I visit, I stand on the breaker waiting for a wave to hit just right to dynamically explode over the edge like in my desktop photo. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. The ocean does not take direction.
I felt frustrated with myself and the ocean, standing there hoping a wave would hit before the mist came back. Annoyed with myself for not being able to calm down and enjoy the beauty.
Then I decided to do something very, very simple: Just take a picture of the breaker from a different angle.
The waves weren’t hitting the front, but they were hitting the sides. And there was a bird chilling on the front of the breaker that I couldn’t capture from a front view. So I scrambled down and performed my role as paparazzi for the birds.
It’s not the most dynamic photo in the world, but it was something different.
It’s something I’ve encountered in my creative career many times. You do something and it works really well—a specific kind of joke, a specific kind of composition on a canvas, a camera angle, etc. So you become attached to it. And it becomes repetitive. It loses the spark of the first few times you did it.
Or that particular perspective JUST DOESN’T WORK IN THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT.
I’ve been experiencing this while editing the film. Sometimes there’s a shot I absolutely love and I try to edit the whole scene around it. But the scene does not want that angle. And if you (literally) change the angle, the scene suddenly works.
I decided that this was just a different kind of trip. I wasn’t going to be entirely calm and that’s fine. I was not going to be lulled by the ocean’s waves, I was going to roil right along with the angry sea.
I enjoyed the hell out of the mist. It was mysterious and forlorn. We turned on the little fake fireplace in our room, made hot chocolate, and read mystery books. We went to some bookstores and restaurants that were new to us. We sat on the balcony and watched the sunset through the thick dark clouds to see if we could actually tell when the sun disappeared. We let this trip be different and enjoyed it for its difference.
And on our last morning there, I took one more picture of my favorite breaker and got a completely different wave crash.
For me, the creative lesson is this: Sometimes intuition means something feels PERFECT, so you go toward that. Sometimes intuition leads you AWAY from where you normally go and you want to tell your intuition to fuck off. But intuition often knows when you need to try it from a new angle.
LIGHT PLUGS—
The Nightmare Adorable! I wrote and directed this explicitly political short horror film back in 2023. It’s on YouTube now and getting more views will help with the eventual promotion of Dead Media. You can watch here!
Speaking of Dead Media, We’ve got a fiscal sponsorship with the great Minnesota organization Film North. They can accept one-time donations that will go directly toward finishing the film: SCORE, VFX, COLOR GRADING, etc. It’s like a Kickstarter where the rewards are A) a tax deduction and B) helping us make the film.
For full info, please check out the page for the upcoming horror film, DEAD MEDIA!
Or if you have any questions about supporting the film, feel free to reach out to me personally!
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
I’m setting this goal later in the week then normal, but I’ve got some catching up to do. I need to keep moving on editing Dead Media because I’m hoping to move into more sound work on the film by the end of April. So my goal for next week is to edit up to minute 70 of the film.
YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you're working on this week in the comments below. What's your goal? How can I help you literally finish your monsters?
A LITTLE SKETCH--
At our hotel, birds often land on the balcony and stare inside, waiting I guess to be fed. But they stay there for quite a while. I’ve got some images in Dead Media that are going to be fake storyboards. So I decided to sketch a little storyboard of me trying to read while the bird stares. I hope everyone has a good week whether a bird is staring at them or not.
