Blog

Save the Forest - 15 years later

This summer marks the fifteen year anniversary of the production for Save the Forest. I remember much of that shoot, good and bad. Honestly, they're was not much bad, if any. The summer was hot. We were sweating even while shooting at night. And some of those nights were long ones. Save the Forest tells the story of a group of movie theater employees trying to stop their small-town theater from being sold and turned into a multiplex. Insert a romantic love story with two of o

I'm Out Of Excuses

There's a new movie coming out in March from Steven Soderbergh called Unsane. It stars Claire Foy (who is great in The Crown), Juno Temple and Amy Irving. Watch the trailer before reading on. Please. Pretty interesting, right? The entire movie is shot on an iPhone camera. All of it. Let that sink in. They used the devices that 98% of use every day and shot a movie with that camera that's attached. That's not only insane, it's unsane! (Sorry. I couldn't resist) But seriously,

BEWARE: Users

Everywhere I look on LinkedIN, I find messages about scams trying to get money from writers and filmmakers. I learned a long time ago to not trust any "producer" with big ideas about my projects if I just shell out a few dollars here and there. I always knew they were full of it. If I'm going to spend my money, I'm going to make sure I'm in charge of it. But there is another kind of user that is just as destructive. These are people who use up your time and energy. They want

Sixth-Grade Procrastinator

Editor's Note: I wrote this last week for my Project Planning class, for which I'm taking as I earn a Master's Degree in Interactive Media. Thought I'd share. I've always been a procrastinator. This goes way back to elementary school. I specifically remember my very first time. For sixth grade, I had Mr. Maguire. He was a big, burly man who wore a big mustache and loved jokes. He was an army veteran who fought in The Korean Conflict and when he spoke about how he left the arm

Screw the Old Way of Thinking

The rules are changing. Technology is breaking down how it used to be and leaving an empty space which very few people are willing to fill. Make a movie and get it into film festivals. That was the goal in 1991. But that game was rigged and it's even worse now. The best part is that you don't need it. You can find an audience on-line. You can connect with fans over social media. You can build your community of followers without the guise of dropping $1000 in festival submissi

Wishful Thinking Content

Would it be fair to say that the indie film world or maybe this whole industry is based upon hope? Potential? Wishful thinking? Is the major commodity that's being traded amongst storytellers the idea of what project they could possibly be working on? I get it. This is how the business works. When we realize we want to tell stories, we naively go into it thinking: Just give me a chance and someone will see the talent. We all know the end of that story. Even the most talented

So Alone

Writing is a lonely business. You can talk about story with your friends over lunch. You can watch movies with your significant other and fall in love with the dialogue. You can exchange emails with a script reader about your latest draft. You can retweet other writers on Twitter. You can like Facebook posts about how hard it is to write and commiserate with your Facebook friend. But at the end of the day, it's just you and the computer. (Or typewriter, you masochists) All yo

A Better Way

Write the $cript. $hoot the movie. $ubmit movie to festivals. Attend festival$. Network at partie$. Sell the movie. Repeat. While the above is a formula to getting your story seen by others, the percentage of storytellers that have found success with that idea is significantly less now than it was 30 years ago. If you persist with that formula above, you'll be broke or your parents will be broke. The hard truth is that the indie filmmaker world is made for those with money. T

Community

I don't know if I believe in fate, but I know I don't believe in coincidences. I started my next semester for my graduate degree in Interactive Media and one of my classes is about Community Management. I'm also having multiple conversations about living and working on-line, working in a community-based ideal with certain projects and yes, I'm being vague for a good reason about thee conversations. My other class is more a production class, but the project I just worked on an

Indie Film Support - Quality Problems

There's a double edged sword to being ambitious within the indie film world (any industry for that matter). We develop a mindset of "Get my shit done" and you really need to in order to in fact, get your shit done. No one cares about your story unless you tell them how much you care about it. So we constantly talk about ourselves and our work, even if its our least favorite topic. (That's my tragic flaw) The other side of that ambition is that you rarely succeed in championin

Trans-Candidate

2 years ago we shot a short film called The Trans-Candidate. And it was cold. I seem to have a habit of picking most of my shoot dates in the colder months. We shot in Connecticut, as usual, in the cities of Milford, Wet Haven and Bridgeport. It was a 2 day shoot, but really 1 1/2 days. I wrote it a while back after the Anthony Weiner (first) sexting scandal happened in 2011. It was originally a play, but I adapted it for a short film by changing the locations of some of the

Make Mistakes

For my final project in my graduate class of Advanced Multimedia Tech, I had to do a video with had an advanced 3D element. This class is designed to incorporate the use of effects from After Effects in helping to propel your story along. Around this same time, my two daughters have been begging me to do a video with them. So I killed two birds with one stone and we did a music video. It was fun. Editing was not as much fun, but it was not a terrible experience. The girls san

What Process?

My writing process is all over the place. I wish I did the notecard thing and had all the scenes laid out in front of me. I tried that a couple of times, but then I got bored with it and started writing. I outline at times. Sometimes, the outline gets to completion. And when I write the story, I kinda-sorta follow the outline. But usually when I outline, I get bored with it and I start writing. I bought a new program called Scrivener and it's meant to give me the tools to out

It Takes More Than The Script

The Life Ends @ 30 team had a bit of good news this week. The short we made, Escape the Room, was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement in New Media Short Form - Original. Pretty cool stuff. It takes everyone involved with the production to make that happen. Any award or nomination is a credit to the talent involved both on-screen and behind it. Yes, I may write the words. But actors must do their thing and make those words come to life. Directors l

To Sacrifice or Not To Sacrifice

Nothing! Sacrifice nothing for your story. In a perfect world, that sentiment works. But if you work within the independent film world then you already know that you are faced daily with a choice of what to sacrifice. Whether it's a scene or a line of dialogue. Maybe it's an extra round of coverage. Something inevitably crops up threatening your plans and you must make a compromise. For me, there are certain items I will not sacrifice. Sound. With the exception of bad acting

One Up Again

Further proof that a writer never stops writing, nor do they forget their characters. When I posted about my experience with one of my earlier short films, One Up, called Revisiting One Up, I was reminded of the sequel I wrote. On Facebook, I made mention of the sequel in the comments section of an initial post about that article and well, I figured it was my duty to share. So here it is. One Up Again If you haven't watched the original One Up, you might want to check it out.

Revisiting Running in Place

Think you need to see a therapist? Nah. Make a short film. I remember showing this short to some people and I'd always preface it by saying. "This is loosely based on my personal experiences", but after rewatching this short I can definitely say that I was absolutely fooling myself back then. Dear Lord, this was about me all the way. Watch then read below. I purposely made Alex's dream nebulous. I didn't want it to be something specific, because everyone's dreams are not my o

Short Film Showcase - Echo Torch

My last post was about short films and how much I like making them. How much I think of them and what they could offer. Why not show you a pretty remarkable one from filmmaker Chris Preksta? This is called Echo Torch and it's pretty good. Quick Synopsis: An inventor creates an electrical torch that reveals a hidden world layered upon our own - filled with beautiful spirits, strange creatures, and dangerous phantoms. Watch it. Be inspired. Make a short film. #shortfilm #indie

The Short Film

I like short films. I know they're out of style for some. When the age of relatively low-cost digital tech arrived and the general ease it is now to shoot, edit and post on-line content, the advent of the web series was a great draw for many, including me. Obviously. Just check out my stuff. The chance for episodic storytelling was huge, but at the expense of the short film. (Technically, they're not films, but the name stuck and calling them "short movies" or "shorts" doesn'

Revisiting One Up

The story of two lost souls and a fruit pie. That was the tagline for the short movie, "One Up", which we shot in November 2004. This was after we had finished our feature film, "Save the Forest", a year earlier. That movie drained all who were involved. Making a movie is tough. It takes a lot of moving parts to get a movie done and sometimes it becomes a slog to the finish line. After we made "Save the Forest", I hadn't shot anything for a full year and I was getting antsy.

2 3

BLOG

Save the Forest - 15 years later

I'm Out Of Excuses

BEWARE: Users

Sixth-Grade Procrastinator

Screw the Old Way of Thinking

Wishful Thinking Content

So Alone

A Better Way

Community

Indie Film Support - Quality Problems

Trans-Candidate

Make Mistakes

What Process?

It Takes More Than The Script

To Sacrifice or Not To Sacrifice

One Up Again

Revisiting Running in Place

Short Film Showcase - Echo Torch

The Short Film

Revisiting One Up

Recent Posts

Independently Published

Paradoxed

The Corn Maze

85,600 words

Delete Nothing. Save Everything.

Follow Me