Dinosaurs, Trees, and What You Can Control
This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blog/newsletter/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?
Last week, I committed to completing some work for the feature film I’m trying to make this year. Specifically, to send ten producer emails and finish the rough assembly of the 6 minute promotional teaser film.
And…I mostly did it! I did complete the rough assembly of the teaser film. All the shots are edited with one insert I need to re-shoot. Next up, I need to edit some of the dialogue, add music and sound effects, and do another pass on color correction. So practically done! Except those dozen or so hours of work left. But just getting it all compiled to make sure it works was the goal and I’m really happy with how it’s turning out.
I love the editing work and it’s frankly ALL I want to be doing. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about a new edit to try.
But as I quote often in this blog, it’s show business. You have to take care of the show and the business. The creative work this week, the show, was editing the teaser. The business work was producer work to try to make the film happen. Lots of emails about budget, fundraising, and hiring more production staff.
I will be very honest. I forgot I set the specific goal of 10 emails. I believe I sent eight emails and a Facebook message. This is a great lesson for me to learn and relearn: Goals are only helpful if you remember you set them.
Big picture, I did fulfill the goal of balancing the show and the business which I need to do even more of this week so I will pay better attention to my emails sent target!
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
One of the great things about writing a weekly blog is it makes you actually pay attention to how much can transpire in a week.
This was a bonkers-busy week and I’m exhausted in a (mostly) good way. Throughout the week, moments kept popping up that reminded me to embrace that there is much we can’t control which only makes the things we can control more important to focus on.
I’m a lifelong fan of Star Wars and my part-time day job is the ForceCenter podcast/YouTube channel I co-host with my friends, Jennifer Landa and Ken Napzok. This was a very busy week in Star Wars land as it saw the finale of the fantastic animated show, The Bad Batch, and a slew of events and releases to celebrate May the 4th aka Star Wars Day. For both my personal enjoyment and my professional coverage, I wish some of the fun was a bit more spread out because it’s just a lot at once. But I do not control that so I embraced enjoying it.
I was thrilled to see The Phantom Menace on the big screen again after 25 years and my friend Doug did not even have to stand in line for three days like he did for the midnight screening I saw in 1999.
After the screening, which was full of applause, cheers, and good-natured laughs I went to sleep dreaming of podracing. Then I woke up three hours later, watched and took notes on Tales of the Empire, a 90 minute collection of animated shorts, and got on a plane to Seattle.
There I attended Crypticon Seattle, a great horror convention full of clowns, dinosaurs, and flatbread pizzas from the hotel bar. The convention’s film festival was screening our short horror film, The Nightmare Adorable.
I had a great time enjoying films, panels, drinks, and hanging out with friends new and old. The screening of The Nightmare Adorable was on late Saturday night and it went well. Big applause at the end, good laughs, and one vocal audience member shouting “NO!!!” during a scary moment of the film.
After the screening, the attending filmmakers were invited to say a few words about their films. And to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure if that was going to happen. Every film festival is different. Another filmmaker grabbed the spotlight and discussed his film. Which was great because it gave me a moment.
Here’s the thing: I was deeply, deeply, down to the bone, exhausted. Mostly because of things outside of my control: Star Wars Day overlapping with this convention, my film being programmed later in the evening, etc.
And I had one of those nice moments of clarity. It’s great to see your film at a festival, but on a real practical level (the business, not the show) the point of being at a festival is to make a connection with audience members and other festival programmers and make new fans. A Q&A turns your film from just another film to a personal connection with a filmmaker people might want to follow.
As the other filmmaker was talking, I was feeling glum that I was so exhausted because of the pile up of events. I couldn’t control that I was tired, but I could control whether or not I did a good job with the Q&A. I remembered about 24 hours earlier sitting in a dark theater in a different city listening to Qui-Gon Jinn tell young Anakin, “your focus determines your reality.”
So I called on my history of being a performer. I remembered doing children’s theater at 9 am in the morning and my ability to go from bleary and sighing behind the curtain to FULL ENERGY the second I stepped on to stage.
Now to be clear, I did not jump up and start doing a monologue and pratfalls from Johnny Appleseed the Musical, but it did help me get excited, talk with enthusiasm and humor about the film, make eye contact with the audience and really try to connect. There were a couple of good questions, an audience member gave me a hand-crafted necklace of a Lovecraftian beast, and several people followed me on social media. I did my best with what I could control.
Then on Sunday I was rewarded with a calmer day of panels, vendor’s room browsing, and good social time. Finally, I experienced another moment of strange zen. The view from my hotel room was looking into a parking lot but very beautifully surrounded by old trees—including one directly outside my window. When I got back to my room on Sunday evening, the tree had just…fallen over.
I then spent about two and a half hours watching workers slowly disassemble the tree. It was like a live action ASMR video. This is life. Trees are there. Then they are not. The views from our windows change. We get to decide how many photos to take. I decided to take about 47. So it goes.
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
Similar to last week’s but faster and more intense. This week I’m going to entirely finish editing the teaser short film, send 10 more producer emails, and remember that I set a goal of 10.
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? Is it creative? What are the challenges? What are the joys? Did you relax this weekend? How can I help you finish your monsters?
LIGHT PLUGS--
More screenings of our film, The Nightmare Adorable, coming up! This weekend, it’s playing at the prestigious Crimson Screen festival!
Here's the poster for the latest short film! Submissions to film festivals add up extremely quickly. They average is about $25 per festival and the more I submit to, the better odds at getting exposure for the film. All proceeds from sales of my comedy albums on Bandcamp go to film submissions!
A LITTLE SKETCH--
This week's sketch is probably what I will dream about tonight. A scary clown with a lightsaber. The lightsaber’s hilt is a rubber chicken. I’m very sorry for this image, it’s just what my fever brain produced. I hope everyone reading this finds some time to be creative and some time to relax this week. See you in the future time of NEXT TUESDAY.
