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 goals for last week were to send 5 business related emails about our horror film Dead Media and to write the first 5 pages of the new feature film script.

Goal met on both!

The 5 emails goal was very easy. I’ve got lots of business stuff to do for Dead Media. Some of it is “hurry up and wait” stuff but setting the email goal helped to keep the ball rolling on my end. More news soon on the future of 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!)

The second goal, writing the first 5 pages of a new feature script, went fantastic! Because of setting the goal on this very blogletter, I set aside some time on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

I’ve got a rough outline of the film so I had really stable scripting ground to start on. The opening scene is almost all visuals. So it was fairly quick to get into script form.

It was also a ton of fun to script a visual scene having more experience actually making films. Scripts can be many things—they can be sales tools to get people to buy the film or invest in it. They can be literary works onto themselves. Eventually, they become guides for the production team. But at this stage, I can really write it for myself, thinking about how I might want to cast it, film it, edit it, score it. It’s a very empowering way to script!

After that, I moved on to the first dialogue scenes. I got on a great role on Friday morning finding the voices of the characters. Some of the unresolved questions I’d spent a lot of time brainstorming about it just answered themselves in the scripting process—one of the reasons I think it’s good to not wait until everything is perfect in the outline to start scripting.

I ended up writing eight pages and I only stopped because I had to take a stupid shower and clean my stupid body before a livestream for ForceCenter that afternoon.

I left the script feeling positive and excited. Not everything is perfect, but that’s fine because it’s a first, rough draft. A monster with gangly limbs and too many eyeballs piled on top of eyeballs. Easily addressed in future drafts.

But it left me very excited to get back to scripting. I’m juggling a few things right now so I haven’t been able to get back to it. But finishing that many pages left me in a great place to DREAM about the script.

It was a great reminder of the writing process.

I think there are two ESSENTIAL parts of writing. There’s dream time and typing time. Mind time and body time. Fantasy time and reality time.

I need time for my mind to float around in the world of the script, to just let ideas flow. That’s the dream time. Thinking about the idea while you’re walking or showering or standing in line at the grocery store.

But I also need time to physically sit at a computer and type, type, type. The dreams became real, concrete, tangible. Problems that seem unsolvable suddenly become obvious when the characters are talking to each other.

And after I have some typing/body/reality time, it spurs me back to dream/mind/fantasy time. Based on what I physically tangibly wrote down, what do I need to dream about next?

Both times are essential. But I’ve had lots of dream time and I can’t wait to get back to typing time.

LIGHT PLUGS

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. You can check out my YouTube page here!

A NICE THING THAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK

A very busy week with many nice things in it! I’m blessed to have lots of creative projects I’m excited to work on. But it’s also left me growly and frustrated to not have enough time to work on them.

It’s an awful feeling to have an idea and be in such a rush that you can’t take 30 seconds to write it down.

All of which is to say—I needed something calming in my week.

Luckily, I was able to turn to an old friend—Sesame Street.

I grew up watching this show about friendship, learning, community, diversity. It’s an entirely possible that my true first exposure to gothic horror and the reason I’m making horror movies now is because I saw The Count when I was three years old.

But I had never seen the Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird.

Through friends, I’ve been lucky to meet the director of the film, Ken Kwapis, who kindly sent me a copy of his book, But What I really Want to Do Is Direct. I read it shortly before filming Dead Media and there were many gems of wisdom in the book that greatly helped me.

So when I saw the Academy Museum was hosting a screening of Follow That Bird with a Q&A from Ken, I made it a priority to go.

The film was great—very funny, very kind, very life affirming. And the Q&A was charming and insightful. It was a delight to see it with a big laughing, applauding audience.

But the best thing about it was just the reconnection to core values. As Ken pointed out in his Q&A, the film was made over 40 years ago and it was a DEI film. It is a diverse film with a pro-diversity message. It celebrates a community that is better, stronger, kinder, happier because it is made up of people (and muppets) of all kinds.

There are plenty of people opposed to the values of Sesame Street, but I truly believe they will not win in the end.

It was very nice and very needed to spend some quality time on Sesame Street.

MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

Another week where I need to balance the show and the business. But for my goals, I think I’m just going to concentrate on the creative. I want to keep pushing forward on the new feature script. So my goal for this week is to write up to page 15 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 man in shadows dreaming of having more time. Ironically, I spent more time than I should have on this sketch. It was cathartic to put the stress down on paper and maybe it will help me take a few deep breaths this week. Hope your weeks include some creative time, some nice times, calm times, and some completed monsters.