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?

My goal for last week was to write up to page 15 of the new feature film script.

And I really thought I wasn’t going to make it. The week got long and difficult in many ways.

But I managed to set aside a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon when the world is a little calmer.

I started on page 8 and not only did I get to page 15, I got up to page 17!

Here are a few things that helped me make that goal:

-Outline! This section of the film is pretty well outlined, so I know the WHAT and I can mostly have fun with the HOW

-Writing fast! Because my time to work on it is compressed, I’m doing a better job than I have in the past of letting the first draft be a little messy. (I’ve already got some ideas for tweaks I’d like to make, but I wouldn’t have thought of the tweaks if I hadn’t just tried something for the first draft.)

-Writing while distracted! In an ideal world, I love to clear my schedule for a couple days and really disappear into the world of a script. But I just can’t get that right now. In years past, this has meant just putting off larger projects for months at a time. So I’m really forcing myself to find 2 - 4 hour chunks and focus on page count. In the past, this has been a real struggle but so far it’s working on this project.

-Goals! Setting the goals in this blogletter is also helping a ton. No one who reads this has ever yelled at me or made fun of me for not meeting a goal, but it is a helpful motivation to imagine readers as friendly emotional cheerleaders that I do not want to disappoint. So thank you, readers!

This week, I also knocked out a first draft for the next short film I want to do. I didn’t set it as a goal, but I needed to get the first draft done to make sure the idea worked so I can start pre-production. That one was also very well outlined in my head and it can’t be longer than 6 minutes so I was able to knock out the 4 page script in one hour.

I was very happy with meeting both of those writing goals. But in other ways, it’s been a very rough week. So it was a good reminder that one of the things that I can do to cope with the hard stuff is MAKE THINGS. Creating things with my own mind, my own hands, reminds me that no matter what else is going on, I do have some agency. I made something exist that did not exist before.

LIGHT PLUGS

DEAD MEDIA: More news coming soon on the future of our horror film, Dead Media! (For now, if you’ve seen the film at the Minneapolis premiere or one of the film festival screenings, we’d love a nice review on Letterboxd!)

SHORT FILMS ON YOUTUBE: Over the last few weeks, I released three short films on my YouTube page. The Narrator, starring Phil LaMarr. A cosmic horror/comedy tale depending on your point of view. The Demon’s Commentary. A commentary track for a 1970s horror movie goes horribly wrong. Deep Into Norway. A travelogue horror about a man finding himself in Norway. All in all, about 24 minutes of film. An old sitcom runtime worth of horror! I would love to get more views, comments, likes, etc. And a new short, Victim Seven, is coming next week. You can check out my YouTube page here.

A NICE THING THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK

I have a constantly growing list of films I’d like to watch. Some I’ve never seen. Some I want to revisit. And some get recommended.

I was vaguely aware of a cult horror film called Carnival of Souls, but I didn’t really know anything about it.

I’m sure some people reading this are screaming, “You haven’t seen Carnival of Souls????” While other people may be screaming, “Carnival of Souls? What is that? An album by House of Pain from 1992?” While still others are screaming, “Actually, it’s the title of a Kiss album from 1997!” The important thing is that we’re all screaming.

Here’s my journey with the 1962 film, Carnival of Souls.

After one of the screenings of Dead Media at the Nevermore Film Festival, an audience member said our film reminded them of Carnival of Souls. They asked if I was inspired by it and I said, “Sadly, no, because I’ve never seen it, but I’m going to move it up on my must-watch list.”

This week, I finally watched it. I was able to get an affordable copy on disc from the Criterion Collection with all sorts of great and informative bonus materials.

Sometimes when I watch a new-to-me film, it’s purely for entertainment. Sometimes, these days, it’s for research. Sometimes, I appreciate a film or understand its importance in film canon, but I don’t connect with it myself.

And then there are films that feel like you’re meeting an old friend for the first time.

That was my experience with Carnival of Souls. A very indie, very inventive, very strange and haunting film. Full of gorgeous, creepy shots and a deeply emotional organ score.

The film’s strange history adds to its lore. Made by two industrial filmmakers as an attempt to break into narrative filmmaking, it mostly flopped on release, then had a huge resurgence and re-release in the late 1980s, about 27 years after its initial release.

Without spoilers, the film is not subtle in its depiction of loss of connection, meditations on the nature of death, and a woman being repeatedly failed by men and the institutions they control—business, religion, therapy, dating rituals, and more.

In archival interviews, the director and the writer (both men) are clear on their inspiration for the film. They saw a spooky abandoned carnival and thought, “Let’s make a horror movie here.”

When pressed in 1989 on why they crafted the deeper themes of the film, the writer said something along the lines of “I don’t really know and I don’t really remember. But it’s nice that people find all that stuff in there. I just wrote it!”

And I’m very glad they did create it, because I found a lot of stuff in there. I enjoyed the film as entertainment. I enjoyed it as art. I did feel tonal connection and some similar monster vibes to our film, Dead Media. But it was also a great reminder that almost all creative work is meaningful. Some artists work very hard to listen to their subconscious instincts and act on them without question or analysis. Some artists are very precise, tracking themes with notecards. Regardless of how it gets into the art, the important thing is that the creators dig deep and leave something of themselves on the screen. Something internal and real. Something that can travel through time and speak to someone new in the far flung future.

Thanks for speaking to me, Carnival of Souls.

MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

This week, I need to push forward with some promotion work for Dead Media and work on pre-production for the new short film. But for my blogletter goal, I’m going to stay focused on the new feature. So my goal for this week is to write up to page 25 of the new feature script.

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--

This week’s sketch is a person typing away while energy comes at them and out of them. Definitely a catharsis sketch! Hope your weeks include some reasonably calm creative time and some completed monsters.