I decided to enter a script I wrote a while back. The Writer sure has seen some revisions! It was originally written for BetrayalFest but I was unable to cast for it. Then I tried once more for MonsterFest and again I was unable to cast for it. But now that I’m living in Florida, I had no problem casting for it and I think it will happen this time. When It does, I’ll be sure to share it!

The film has a great cast:
Stephanie Ryan: The Writer
Trish Chaney: Andi
Kimberly McVicar: Nina
Natasha Dwyer: Nyla
Howard Washington: Jay
Ja-Rell McArthur: Extra

Check out the official film thread at: The Writer – ThrillFest 2010

This 6 minute film will be my first real attempt at making a fictional film and I will be shooting it with my Panasonic DVX100B and a Canon 514XL-S Super 8mm film camera.

Sure, I’d read many articles and books about shooting too much of “nothing” or not having a coherent story as being common mistakes made by documentary filmmakers. The problem is I simply didn’t see it. I planned my story prior to shooting. I thought it was a good solid story. However I did shoot more content than what would support my story and the reason why I did that was because I really didn’t know what my story was in the first place. What I thought was a good story was too immense. It was like trying to take an entire season or two or three of a reality show and making it into one feature length documentary. A lot of what I shot wouldn’t even support the story of a multi-volume academic release.

This past week I decided I was going to finish this documentary once and for all. I want to get it done and I want to do it well. So I went back over the footage again. As if a light came on in my head, I wrote out an outline that had a much narrower focus and picked out the footage I’d already shot which supported this story. I’m still in the process of doing this. Whatever is missing, I will arrange another shooting event with the twins.

I found what made this story so difficult was that I started to think I had two stories and my brain was unable to see the interconnectedness of two very connected concepts. My mind kept thinking, “well this movie is about twins.” and yet I had all of this footage about their family. Then it occurred to me that no, this film isn’t about twins. It is about two women with an awesome relationship and the film’s goal is to discover what makes their type of relationship possible. It turns out that their twin-ship, i.e. having shared a life and entered all the normal stages of growing up together has helped but the biggest contributor to their happiness and awesome relationship is their family, how they were raised, their family values and the continued efforts of their family to remain a cohesive unit. It became clear that the footage I have about their family supports the story of what makes these two women happy and why they have such a fantastic relationship with each other. It was equally important to point out their effect on their family as they represent a pivotal and vital component of their family’s lives.

Now let’s see if I can carry this all the way through to the final cut. My next hurdle is editing. I have concerns about my ability to edit this in a creative fashion as to resemble that of a professional documentary. I will certainly try. It’s very important that I produce the best film that I can.

Part of the reason is when looking at the film I’ve already shot, so much has changed in the twins lives. They are now both single, living together and the kids are 2 years older. So I felt that was a good reason to shoot more footage. I also noticed they were far more comfortable and expressive during the last interview. I think they would be even more so because they are more familiar with the process.

I also heard the most useful bit of information about documentary film editing I’ve ever heard that can and should be applied to the production phase of the film. Part of my problem is I have a lot of footage that simply doesn’t support a fluid story. I thought I had my story together before filming but I didn’t. I was out Googling for information on the best ways to edit documentary films when I stumbled across a short video clip where a guy talked about how he categorizes his footage like chapters in a book. It was quite a Eureka moment for me. Being that I’m a writer, it instantly made sense. I am telling a story! Yes, it is on video/film but it’s still a story. Organizing a documentary like one would the chapters of a book works and it works well! As soon as that sunk in, I began a documentary “Table of Contents” so to speak. It helped me plan a better story for my film and now I know what I need to shoot to support that story. It also helps me remove all footage that doesn’t support my story.

I also think this new process will help me film more documentaries and complete them quickly with high quality storytelling results. I’m already in the planning stages of my fourth documentary.

It’s not that I didn’t know that before but every time I’d thought of traveling to make a film it’s always been this big ordeal; months of planning, etc. This was different. I asked myself, “Why not?”. I mean I had four days off, Massachusetts wasn’t that far away, I could come back home the same day and not have to pay for a hotel if I wanted, etc. So I packed up my grab-n-go filmmaking bag (just the basics) and I got up at 6am and made the 4 hour drive to Plymouth.

I love to drive long distances. It gives me nothing but “me” time to think about life and what I’m doing. So this drive game me time to think about what I need to do with my film and how much filmmaking I need to do (i.e. find a balance between filmmaking, music, writing and my personal life). Making the trip also helped me take part in something where all the variables were not known. I’d never been to Plymouth and I didn’t really know what to expect from the gathering. It turned out to be a very energy-less event, however I’m glad to have done it. I did do some filming but I didn’t stay for the entire event. There were a lot of other filmmakers there and a few folks from the press. There was also this sort of weird vibe where on one end you had this national day of mourning event and just a little ways down, out door church with a preacher talking about heathens, savages, and there being only one valid god. I got a little of both on camera. I may do something with it, I may not.

Yesterday, I filmed a friends band perform live, however the footage will be used in a new short film I’m working on for dvxuser.com’s BetrayalFest. It was also very freeing to just grab my tripod and camera and go film my friend’s band at a tattoo convention. I was also lucky in that there was no on near the stage when they were performing so I was able to put my camera anywhere I wanted. You usually don’t have those kind of circumstances at a concert!

I also haven’t announced I’m moving back to Florida within the next 6 months. I feel it’s the only way I can do more films and music. I have such a tough time finding talent where I live now, I’d all but given up on trying to do films here. I look forward to getting out of here and making more films.

Cheers!

The last time I posted something to this blog, I was heading back to Tampa to shoot more of “Our Side of Joy”. I’m very glad I did because it wasn’t until I went to shoot some more of the twins that I was able to really capture what I wanted to capture about their relationship. I will write a separate post about this second shoot because it made such a huge difference for my film.

Although I’d returned to my hometown of Tampa, Florida almost every year since I moved away, I never truly enjoyed being there. But these past 3-4 times I’ve been back have really been quite amazing. I still have a somewhat love/hate relationship with Tampa but what I do know is that I have a wonderful nephew there who I wish I could see more of and all of my real friends are there. Don’t get my wrong I’ve made good friends everywhere I’ve moved, however they have not been lasting friends. At first I thought it was because it appeared we tend to keep friends we knew while we were children longer than ones made as adults. But I think what is more accurate is you will keep friends who strive for and enjoy friendships that are more than superficial and/or surface level friendships and unfortunately there are many people who only offer surface level friendships and this behavior can also be a part of the entire culture of a place (as I am witnessing here in upstate, NY). So I have decided to move back to Tampa as soon as possible for a maximum of 2 years.

Besides being closer to my nephew and wonderful friends, I have also changed a great deal since I’ve lived in Tampa and even since many of my visits thereafter. So what I’ve been finding is my own desire to “live” in Tampa because I hadn’t “Lived” when I was there. Especially compared to where I am, at this point in my life Tampa has a lot to offer me. From awesome food (OMG I never thought about this until I moved here. The food here is awful.) to many many creative outlets I can enjoy. Tampa does have an active film community which is a huge reason why I’d like to move back. I also feel like I can make many new friends in addition to the ones I already have. I can also accomplish some of my ideas for things like fundraising puzzle hunt races, murder mystery dinners, and my plans to start my own video series.

Over the years since I’ve moved away, I’ve also gotten used to traveling and driving long distances and just exploring areas further away from where I lived. I never did this in Tampa. So when I move back I plan to drive anywhere I want to go all over Florida and beyond as well. I plan to “LIVE”. I’m also planning to start traveling outside of the country more as well. For a while there, I was traveling to other countries every year and then the recession put an end to all of that. Now i’m back to a point where I want and can travel more and I’m really hoping to do that when I move back and after two years I will feel comfortable enough to make the big move out of the country. But also let me say this, being where I am now has been a serious learning experience. One, I’ll never waste my time in a place that doesn’t support who I am ever again. This has been almost 9 years of my life I can never get back. Two, I’m going to do all that I can to live life to the fullest anywhere I move and if in doing so, I am unable to create the social and personal connections that every human being needs, then I need to move. Being here has certainly taught me that having a good job is just not enough to make a person happy (at least not me).

I have so much to talk about, I’m going to have to break right here and create new posts for the other things I have going on. Just to share a little bit, I’ve started doing wedding videos to help fund some of my film projects and I’ve been thinking of new, fun ways to help fund my films. Also I’m really pushing towards finding a few editors to work with because editing is truly ruining my desire to make films and to enjoy the films I’m making. My publishing and writing has been suffering a little bit as well because of where I am right now but I have plans to get that back on track as well. So I’ll blog a little more about these things later.

Cheers!

The best thing is that the workshop was so excellent I was able to get my 2 hours and 30 minutes documentary down to one hour and 22 minutes easy. Having this new understanding of story structure, I could clearly see where my story was going or not going and easily remove elements that did not enhance or move the story.

I’m very appreciative that Marlene and Michelle, who have been so patient waiting for me to finish the film, were more than willing to have me return to Tampa to do more shooting. In the end, I think it’s also for the best because I definitely feel closer to them now than I did before the film and I feel this will make the new footage come across as more personal.

So I’m working through all of the footage and I think I should be done with categorizing this week. I can then work on importing and categorizing the B-roll and hopefully work on my story flow by the end of January. I’m hoping to have a final version of this film done by July.

I’ve been watching more documentaries and it’s still tough to get a feel for how I want to present this story since all the docs I’ve seen are hours of bad road (i.e. negative). But it did make me feel like a positive documentary is even more important right now. Its not a good thing to live in a society where art takes you to the abyss and never brings you back.

Since Our Side of Joy turned out to offer much more story than I anticipated, I’m having to go through the 6 hours of interviews and not only do some cutting but also write down every concept covered so I can see where my story needs to go, what needs to be left out, and what relationship the concepts have to each other to tell a coherent story. There is a lot of work to be done here.

I also spoke with a professional documentary story consultant about this film and while it was very interesting, not entirely what I was looking for. I’m always amazed at what people can get paid for. Anyway, I’m back to being on my own with this but would like to huddle up with a few people who can give honest feedback on the way this project is going.  On one hand it’s cool working alone because you can do whatever you want without having to wait on anyone but your subjects, but on the other hand, not cool because you do need the feedback of other people and help as well so you don’t feel so burnt out before the film is even done.

Well.. back to work. :)