Our Messy Friend, Reality
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?
Last week, I committed to the goal of editing the first scene of the horror film we shot, DEAD MEDIA.
And I completed that task but, uh, not completely.
I edited the first half of the first scene then took a couple days off. Then I re-edited the first half of the first scene, then edited the next quarter of the first scene, and finally pulled footage for the last quarter. So my fingers have grazed all parts of scene one.
In my defense, it’s the holidays and since the last blog, I was visited by THREE SPIRITS:
-The Spirit of Quality Holiday Time With My Wife. We rarely have two days off in a row so it was nice to lounge about together in pajama pants, watching It’s A Wonderful Life and waiting to cheer for Uncle Billy’s squirrel.
-The Spirit of A Head Cold. After a couple of days of relaxing, my body had that sudden epiphany that it had time to collapse a bit and so it did.
-The Spirit of Writing The Third Time. Old filmmaking wisdom is that you write the story three times: Once on paper, once when you film, once when you edit.
All is going well with my first baby steps of editing, but there’s an anxiety that comes with the “final” writing of the film. Of course, it isn’t remotely final. This is only the first draft of the edit, there’s music, and color grading, etc.
But the film is taking a big step from being an idea to being a reality. And there is almost always fear that comes with that.
I think it’s that specific fear that holds a lot of us back from doing creative work. I think it’s the fear that causes random dudes to tell you about their AMAZING MILLION DOLLAR SCREENPLAY IDEA that they are never in a million years going to sit down and write.
When it’s an idea, it’s still malleable. It’s the first chapter of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book. It could turn out any number of ways. But when you finish something, it stops being this unnaturally perfect, flawless, forever malleable concept and it becomes something concrete, flawed, organic, human.
I’ve put a lot of time, work, money, trust, sacrifice, daydreaming, hope, literal physical heavy lifting, etc into this film. After all that, I think it’s natural to wrestle with some fear as the film starts to lock into place as a real, concrete thing.
But as I’ve said before on the blog, I think the antidote to artistic fear is fun. So as we get into the new year, I’m going to be tapping that sign and finding the fun as I disappear into my editing suite aka the living room with the lights turned off.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I got excited about an editing idea while typing that last sentence and almost ran out of time to finish the blog. (Fun is a good way to fight back against fear but also OBSESSION.)
ADVENTURES OF THE LAST WEEK/YEAR--
This week, I worked at the editing and recorded several episodes of ForceCenter. (I’m very lucky that my part time day job is talking about Star Wars. I’m enjoying the new show, Skeleton Crew, very much.)
The rest of my adventures this week were pairing different cheeses with different holiday movies. Smoked Gouda with Die Hard. Melted Cheddar with Holiday Affair. In between Scotch Rarebit and The Thin Man, I spent some time looking ahead to goals for 2025. The last several years I haven’t made “resolutions.” I’ve made concrete, yes or no GOALS.
In 2024, I’m both proud and exhausted to say I completed all of the tasks I wrote down on January 1st, 2024.
As I type, my wife and I are getting ready to head out of town for a mini-vacation. Tomorrow, January 1st, 2025 I’ll be sitting in a hotel room with that same notebook and staring down the challenge of setting my goals for 2025. I look forward to figuring them out and sharing them with you all next week.
Final adventure to share is about just making it work. I started this week’s blog by wrestling with the fear of the ideal vs the real.
Our reality this holiday season is that we were both swamped. The film took over everything. We did not have time or space to put up a Christmas Tree.
On Christmas Eve, I realized how much I missed the lights. To me, that is the ancient sacred heart of the December festivities. The light in the darkness. The calm, resolved truth that even in the dead of (emotional or literal) winter, the (emotional or literal) warmth will come again.
So we improvised. I would love to have the whole tree up, but what I really needed was the lights. So a new tradition was born: The Christmas Book Cart.
Sometimes, the messy, organic, imperfect reality is just the right thing.
LIGHT PLUGS—
COMEDY WORDS: I’m on my friend and podcast partner Ken Napzok’s comedy show on Friday, January 10th. I’m not performing as often so grab tickets if you’re interested and let us know you’ll be there!
SUPPORT 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--
At the risk of goal-ception, I think my goal for this week will be getting my feet under me with my goals for 2025. So my goal for next week is to figure out all my goals for 2025. Wish me luck!
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? Does it involve a book cart? How can I help you literally finish your monsters?
A LITTLE SKETCH--
This week’s sketch is a celebration of one of my favorite holidays—New Year’s Eve! I hope you all enjoy wearing a weird hat and yelling at time.
