Neither Gone nor Forgotten

Ahh, it's good to be back! The only thing I can say is any life changing event can and will slow your productivity to a crawl. So weigh them carefully!

In the works: "No Whip 2: Whip Harder" is going to be filmed on Father's day weekend. Check out "No Whip" on Tom's MySpace page. I began filming a music video for a friend. It was a spur of the moment thing so I'm having the artist(s) re-cut the song to have a clean audio track to sync to the video. I've yet to hear from him, so we'll see how much further I get on that. Creative Screenwriting Magazine has a screenwriting contest every year. The current one deadline's on July 15, so polish up your scripts and get them in. I entered my feature "Outlaw" last year with less than positive results. I am in the process of editing it and (might) enter it again. My new project is a Sci-Fi script about a female "tracker" staged in the future. I'm pretty excited about it. I've worked out a few action scenes and developed some of the story.

A note on that. I haven't had any good ideas for a story in a while. I haven't even had any good ideas for stories already in progress. Out of the blue, this new one hit me. But I want to make a point about keeping a new story idea alive.

I've found that I'll immerse myself in what I call the "nuts and bolts" of flic making. I love to learn things. From how to write a script, to how to light a scene, to visual effects in After FX. I can't get enough of that stuff. I can listen to Rodriguez's El Mariachi commentary over and over and over... But guess, what - it's not productive. You gotta learn it, yeah. But you gotta put it into action. (I'm going off on a tangent) My point to all this is give yourself a break from that stuff. Listen to some music; actually WATCH a movie; play a sport. That will be when your mind opens up, puts all that stuff you've been "studying" to good use, and you come up with your story idea! I usually can hear the soundtrack, too. So, to keep it alive (back on track,now), I put that music on and start visualizing the scenes of my future movie, and start writing.

I know that was a bit scattered but read it more than once to fully absorb the message(s) ;-)