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 set the goal to spend 3 hours working on the script for the next film I’m going to make. And I did accomplish it! In about four sittings. I used the timer on my phone to make sure I hit the benchmark. I made the letter of the goal, but I don’t know if the time metric helped me reach the spirit of the goal.

I did some outlining but I mostly worked on finding the right names for the main characters. There’s a lot I can ignore when trying to write a fast first draft, but I get distracted if I can’t gel with the characters and a huge part of that is their names feeling right.

An added wrinkle: I recently filled out some legal paperwork for Dead Media and it was a reminder that it’s probably best if your lead characters don’t have super common names. (And the characters in Dead Media don’t!) Unique names are also better for people searching for your film and characters online.

So I was both trying to commune with the essence of the characters and searching the internet to make sure there wasn’t a celebrity golfer with the same name.

This probably split my focus between the creative and the practical a bit too much so I’m going to adjust my goal for next week. Take that, celebrity golfers with interesting names.

LIFE ADVENTURES

I’m juggling lots of work for Dead Media right now.

Doing lots of promotion for the upcoming screenings (Oct 17th in LA, Oct 20th in New Jersey, Oct 23rd in LA), working on some of the bonus features for the Blu-ray/DVD release, and prepping for the upcoming streaming release. (More info on that next week!)

It’s all stuff I’m lucky and happy to be doing, but there are challenges! The promo work means lots of recording videos in my apartment which makes me feel like I’m always in extrovert mode, even at home. The weather in Los Angeles actually became cool and autumnal—the kind of weather that makes me want to spend quality time with my introvert self. Just disappear into my cozy couch and watch horror movies while eating too many fun-sized candy bars.

I’ve compromised with myself by doing lots of extrovert work while also eating too many fun-sized candy bars.

Strangely, one of the most fun things I did this week was go to FedEx Office (aka Undead Kinko’s.) I went there to make posters and cards to promote the LA screenings of Dead Media. It was nice to spend time on something physical and tangible.

And I remembered a lesson I learned when I worked at the Downtown Kinko’s in Minneapolis many years ago.

Early on, I would not estimate the right amount of time to complete a big project. Because I would just do the math of how long it took to make the actual copies. Because that’s what we do here. We make copies. But these were huge business orders. Things like two thousand copies of a two-hundred page spiral bound report.

Turns out, it takes a long time to put them in boxes. And that’s part of the job, too.

The film, Dead Media, is complete. But the boxing is just getting started.

Thanks for the reminder, past me, Assistant Manager Kinko’s IDS, 1998 - 2001.

LIGHT PLUGS—

Upcoming Dead Media screenings!

Oct 20 - Cinema Underground - Rutherford, NJ (I’ll be doing a virtual Q&A after this one!)

And two screenings in LA:

Oct 17 - 4 pm at Whammy Analog! (Whammy is an old-school VHS video store with a micro-cinema and this screening is happening on International Video Store Day. A great day for a film about a haunted DVD. Q&A will be moderated by Ken Napzok!)

Oct 23rd - 7:30 pm at Eastwood Performing Arts Center! (The events of the film happen on this date, Oct 23rd, so I’m very excited for our first annual “the night it happened” screening. Cast & crew Q&A moderated by Laser Webber!)

MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

I still want to get some forward movement on the script for the next horror movie. So this week, I’m going to try this goal: I want to finish writing the first scene of the film.

YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--

I would LOVE to hear what you're working on 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 skull recording a “hey guys” video on their phone. Just a little real talk from beyond the veil for Halloween.