Finnegan Begin Again, Part I
Tonight we had preliminary cast and crew meetup, and spirits were as high as last year's. Resident genius David Koon again showed up with his home-rolled woodshop gear: this year a fig rig (low-tech, of course) and a handheld steadycam rig made of PVC pipe and wheelbarrow bearings. Man's an artist.
We had a houseful of sweaty, vaguely stanky people (the heat down here is already bordering on unbearable, and it's not even officially summer yet), all eager and full of hope. You could tell those who had participated last year from the newbies, though: they were the ones visibly bracing themselves for the effort. Making a seven-minute film in forty-eight hours is exhilarating and fun, but you will be exhausted beyond belief when it's over.
We're much better equipped this year, as well. Robert Kirkpatrick, our director, got access to some very nice shooting and editing gear — not the big money pro stuff, but much better than he can afford. On the other hand, the competition is a lot stiffer as well: we've learned that an even bigger, better funded, more experienced professional team has gotten in on the biz this year. So we'll have to work extra hard if we want to kick ass. That means that the writing staff is going to have to come up with a solid gold idea, and David and I, the ones who will actually sweat into my ergonomic keyboard, will have to pull cinematic gems straight out of our undoubtedly clenched asses.
Like that last line. You just can't buy that kind of talent.
We're praying for an easier genre than we got last year. Superhero was fun to do, was in fact right up my alley (the one where Batman's parents got killed, of course), and I'd do it again in a second, but it presented challenges that cakewalks like Mockumentary don't have. Limitations do have their advantages in the creative process, and tougher genres certainly separate the wheat from the chaff, but we'd like a little breathing room for this go-round.
Part of me worries about our love of mockumentaries, though: I've discovered that it's very easy to sink into a certain way of thinking once you start dreaming them up. You stop thinking about story arcs and conflict and start thinking about premises. Premises are good for mockumentaries and sketch comedy, but are utterly useless elsewhere and are somewhat masturbatory, creatively speaking. The brain is a damned lazy organ that must be either tricked or whipped into working, like a teenager confronted with a list of chores, and the premise approach to moviemaking is the riding, rear-bagging lawnmower of the creative process. All you have to do is sit there, steer it and drink your beer, and you can kid yourself that you got some work done. Not good. So I'm hoping that we bring some stories and characters with us, not just schtick. But I'm confident in our writing team, with biggest ups going to David, a truly fantastic (and published!) author with whom I would have been writing stuff during the past year, had it not been for school.
I'd love to list some of our ideas and strategies here for your perusal and enjoyment, but if last year's readership (and my referrer logs) give the slightest indication, some of you people from other teams (you know, the ones that BLOW) are here reading along. To you, I say, good luck. Try not to cry when we publicly humiliate you in front of your respective families. We may or may not make off with your women as well.
The delivery of a really ugly T-shirt to my cubicle today after lunch reminded me that I had signed up to participate in the Relay for Life tomorrow, but, you know, fuck it. There's a movie to be made. Like my walking a mile is going to cure cancer, anyway. Besides, they got my money, and I get to wear jeans to work tomorrow, which is the most important part. The world needs my bons mots.
As of the writing of this sentence, the writers will gather in twenty hours and thirty-five minutes to begin spitballing ideas. That'll give us an hour to get warmed up and jotting stuff down before Robert calls us with the genre. Then we're officially off. I'm hoping we get the story hammered out by nine and the script in place by midnight (please Lord Cthulhu, may the Great Old Ones be with us, Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!).
Meantime, I'm doing what I can to keep my mind light and limber so it can leap from premise to story arc like a drunken hobo from a moving boxcar to a cushiony pile of cow manure. I hope heat does the same thing for your creative muscle that it does for your pitching arm. So now I'm off to rehydrate and get some sleep and pray that God really does love us more (Ia!). Cross your fingers, and pray for naked zombies.
We had a houseful of sweaty, vaguely stanky people (the heat down here is already bordering on unbearable, and it's not even officially summer yet), all eager and full of hope. You could tell those who had participated last year from the newbies, though: they were the ones visibly bracing themselves for the effort. Making a seven-minute film in forty-eight hours is exhilarating and fun, but you will be exhausted beyond belief when it's over.
We're much better equipped this year, as well. Robert Kirkpatrick, our director, got access to some very nice shooting and editing gear — not the big money pro stuff, but much better than he can afford. On the other hand, the competition is a lot stiffer as well: we've learned that an even bigger, better funded, more experienced professional team has gotten in on the biz this year. So we'll have to work extra hard if we want to kick ass. That means that the writing staff is going to have to come up with a solid gold idea, and David and I, the ones who will actually sweat into my ergonomic keyboard, will have to pull cinematic gems straight out of our undoubtedly clenched asses.
Like that last line. You just can't buy that kind of talent.
We're praying for an easier genre than we got last year. Superhero was fun to do, was in fact right up my alley (the one where Batman's parents got killed, of course), and I'd do it again in a second, but it presented challenges that cakewalks like Mockumentary don't have. Limitations do have their advantages in the creative process, and tougher genres certainly separate the wheat from the chaff, but we'd like a little breathing room for this go-round.
Part of me worries about our love of mockumentaries, though: I've discovered that it's very easy to sink into a certain way of thinking once you start dreaming them up. You stop thinking about story arcs and conflict and start thinking about premises. Premises are good for mockumentaries and sketch comedy, but are utterly useless elsewhere and are somewhat masturbatory, creatively speaking. The brain is a damned lazy organ that must be either tricked or whipped into working, like a teenager confronted with a list of chores, and the premise approach to moviemaking is the riding, rear-bagging lawnmower of the creative process. All you have to do is sit there, steer it and drink your beer, and you can kid yourself that you got some work done. Not good. So I'm hoping that we bring some stories and characters with us, not just schtick. But I'm confident in our writing team, with biggest ups going to David, a truly fantastic (and published!) author with whom I would have been writing stuff during the past year, had it not been for school.
I'd love to list some of our ideas and strategies here for your perusal and enjoyment, but if last year's readership (and my referrer logs) give the slightest indication, some of you people from other teams (you know, the ones that BLOW) are here reading along. To you, I say, good luck. Try not to cry when we publicly humiliate you in front of your respective families. We may or may not make off with your women as well.
The delivery of a really ugly T-shirt to my cubicle today after lunch reminded me that I had signed up to participate in the Relay for Life tomorrow, but, you know, fuck it. There's a movie to be made. Like my walking a mile is going to cure cancer, anyway. Besides, they got my money, and I get to wear jeans to work tomorrow, which is the most important part. The world needs my bons mots.
As of the writing of this sentence, the writers will gather in twenty hours and thirty-five minutes to begin spitballing ideas. That'll give us an hour to get warmed up and jotting stuff down before Robert calls us with the genre. Then we're officially off. I'm hoping we get the story hammered out by nine and the script in place by midnight (please Lord Cthulhu, may the Great Old Ones be with us, Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!).
Meantime, I'm doing what I can to keep my mind light and limber so it can leap from premise to story arc like a drunken hobo from a moving boxcar to a cushiony pile of cow manure. I hope heat does the same thing for your creative muscle that it does for your pitching arm. So now I'm off to rehydrate and get some sleep and pray that God really does love us more (Ia!). Cross your fingers, and pray for naked zombies.
posted by middleclasstool at 9:43 PM
1 Comments:
I meant to add: Last year you may recall my provocative costume. I have kept the "Euro-Briefs" from that costume and dubbed them Les Drawers (that's Lay Drawlz in local patois) for use as good-luck underwear.
They have worked so far without exception, up to and including getting me my current job. So I'm wearing 'em tomorrow, and if need be, through the whole weekend. Pray for my wife's olfactory system. Them things don't breathe at ALL.
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