EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME

I seem to be writing here less and less, which runs somewhat counter to this interesting article on the ol' "Forum/chat room problem" and how it relates to Facebook vs Twitter vs Blogs. What's funny, is I want to be writing here more and more...partly out of inspiration by the quality of this blog.

Once thing that definitely has me wanting to get back on the blog-o-horse-o is that when I used this more regularly, it was pretty much all I used. For example, when I was in London and taking some neat pictures with my digital camera then I knew there were only really two possibilities for sharing - printing a copy for my photo albums and tossing it up on el bloggo for friends and family.

But of course I eventually got into Facebook and, a whiles after that, Handful has led to my reviving the Twitter account I originally put down as quickly as I picked it up and even a brief dabbling with the utterly forgettable Dailybooth. I don't much care for feeling redundant when I want to post a link-or-picture on Facebook for pals and then the same link-or-picture on Twitter for some other friends plus Handful fans and then OH YEAH DIDN'T I USED TO DO ALL THIS ON MY DANG BLOG, WHICH I LINK TO ON THE ABOUT PAGE FOR HANDFULOFMINUTES.COM?

Also? It kind of makes me feel young again to be using this sucker as if it's a brand new toy - so apparently my threshold for nostalgia is about three years. NOW. It's tempting to be all "anyways guys, get ready for the exciting retro-nipple-clamping future past of blogging to begin....soon". But that is The Shittiest Thing with blogs and so I am going to follow up this "Oh hey I like my blog again (and apparently I have made peace with that word)" stream of gobbledefuck with something akin to what I hope to be putting up here on a semi-regular basis again!

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE/WHAT IS GOING TO BE DONE

I am often struggling with the desire between what I know is sensible & rewarding (waiting until you have done something worth talking about, then talking about it) and what is very exciting & sugar-high gratifying but also potentially unwise (talking about what I'm gonna do). If I was a perfect man then I'd stick entirely to the former...but, surprisingly, it would seem that I am not a perfect man.

So here is what is going in with me in the former:

The sci-fi project for which many glamorous folk donated money to earlier in the year has had it's series outline finished, it's pilot filmed and the first cut of the editing on that pilot also finished. Wheels continue to turn and I hope to have more to report before year's end.

Handful proceeds apace and, I'm told by some, continues to improve. "Introducing Shawn MacLean" has been generally well received. I'm wondering if it'd not be a bit much to try and do something special for the fast approaching fiftieth episode, given that I already did something special for the one year anniversary episode AND I have something diabolical planned for a year end special. Better to let it pass with quiet dignity, I think...

The feature script I started in June during my writing sabbatical has been picked up again. With 36 pages of script and a 99% finished outline, I might make my goal of finishing the sucker before year's end. What's that? I didn't write about the sabbatical at the time? Well basically, my pal Joe and I were fortunate enough to be able to borrow a cottage where we could Get Away From It All to just focus on makin' things which we were having a hell of a time makin' during out regular routines in the city.

From this was birthed the slightly-less-than-halfway written feature script, spawned by almost two years of tossing notes in a bucket labelled "try to do a new take on post-apocalyptic-film"...and many, many improvised "Introducing Shawn MacLean" audio clips. It was grand and I'd love to do it again next year.

Organization of all the crap I'm juggling has gotten better since I nabbed a beautiful beast of a magnetic dry-wipe board and stuck it on my wall. I can't believe it took me this long since University to get another organizer, given that my last one repeatedly saved my bacon while I was earning my degree. This has led to my plotting out basically everything I'm doing for the rest of the year, which produced the alarming sensation that that time had already passed.

It's an annoying choice to have to make, but given that the time is going to pass anyways...I'd rather choose to feel a bit like I'm pressing the fast-forward button on my life and have accomplishments to look back on then to kind of drag my heels and stretch out my perception of time passing but then have a very disappointing life to look back on.

Now, the latter:

Going to Russia to Wade Through the Ruins of the Soviet Empire is an idea that has seized me by the sensitive bits rather firmly over the past year. I think I may even have gotten a pair of pals interested. This is something that will take a lot of prep and probably won't happen until I'm thirty, but dangit I want an adventure and I want to do more than look at crazy old ruins on the Internet. I'd like to think that if I lived twenty years after the fall of the Roman Empire that I'd want to go crawl through that, as well.

It's something I'd definitely want to film and document, but there'd be good reason to try and work out some contacts before arriving. I don't believe that Russia is filled with nothing but starving pseudo-serfs and fat, violent mobsters...but I am also hardly under the impression that I could just show up with a bunch of AV equipment, some cash and a smile.

The Handful End of the Year Special: I can't tell you anything except that the "Introducing Shawn MacLean" bits I've started tacking on the end of episodes are, in fact, building to this. Also, if all goes according to plan, it should go up on Sunday, December 27th.

But for now: I gotta go do exciting things like laundry. I shall return (promptly)!

1234

Shucks howdy, I sure had me some fun joining my friends Victor, Paul and Ryan in The Board Meeting yesterday. I'll share some of the pictures when I can steal'em off Victor (man I can't wait to finally get a new battery charger for my own little beast in a couple of weeks).

So yes, I didn't really finish my thoughts in the last post.

The sabbatical was a success in many ways. I distinctly remember setting myself two goals.
1) Get paid for writing.
2) Make something, anything.

I achieved both and so I guess I'm pretty satisfied! I wish I'd been able to find someone else to do the editing on Handful. As much as I enjoyed challenging myself in quite possibly my weakest area, at the end of the day I'm not trying to become an editor/tech support guy...I'm trying to become a successful writer/director! So it is without any great dismay that I've begun looking for someone to take that over and, blessedly, I got a lead yesterday that might pay off.

I can also fairly say I made pretty good use of the summer weather, there was no languishing in a beige bin while gay children busied themselves under a shining sun. I wrote a fair deal while sitting under a tree in either Kensington or Trinity-Bellwood parks and so that was another little personal goal that was met.

But man I could have done without winding up in such dire money trubbles. I guess I could have escaped them if I'd been willing to go back to temporary office work to sustain myself, but I felt that after almost two years of the shit...well it's called temporary for a reason. Even though I've ended up back in retail to rebuild my coffers, it's at least at somewhere I can feel like an adult and maybe even a little classy at times. Plus I saw a rich woman punch her husband in the gut, then face...so I guess some of my friends predictions that this would provide good writing fodder were pretty apt. My coworkers are pretty A+ too, which is always key.

But I think that the next step is to focus more on writing, get the second season of Handful made and ready to upload before the first episode is put up and to start applying for writing grants like crazy. Money from the gubbermint to live on while I scriptwrite? YES PLEASE.

Grants are a side of the industry I haven't thought about since just after I got my degree and I might have gone longer still if my pal Mark hadn't started applying for some himself. Most government grants aren't open to folk who're less than a year out of school, so that mixed with my feelings that I didn't have enough "chops" to have a chance of getting anything and led to my ignoring grants for long enough to plum forget about'em.

But it's been a couple of years and now I've got film and show ideas bursting from a fat binder and several notebooks. I've got a little bit to show, between my trailer and Handful (and that short film I've gotten paid to write, once it's made). I'd also like to think my writing has improved!

You know what, I will.

I will think that.

I've slapped together a three to four month plan and as long as I don't eventually get up to a five-year plan I think life won't feel too fleeting.

Wimmin and Werk

We men sure like to draw them! It's part of how we try to own them, own them with OUR MAGIC OWNERSHIP EYES. Neither of these are done, but both were started this weekend and I'm finally returning to the reg'lar workforce this Thursday so I don't know when I'll be finishing them.
Which I guess means my unintentionally extended writing sabbatical is over, having run about three months and three weeks. I am pretty okay with what happened, though I wish I'd done more but isn't that always the way.

WOOOOOOOO *FLOP* WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO *FLOP* WOOOPWOPWOPWOPPO *FLOP*

So it occurred to me the other day that I need to get a part-time job again. Something about money? But there is also the forced structure, I think.

This is when you work.
This is when you do not work.
Do not fuck with this or we will be forced to make your limbs bend in ways they ain't supposed to and also, maybe, tell your momma convincing lies about what you do in the evening.

A useful moment of clarity hit me last night. I realized that I'd been working (on my behalf) basically 10+ hour days for eleven days straight. The show. Scripts. Job hunting all over towne. I had basically been waking up, usually after a fitful nights rest that was made so by waking up and having trouble getting back to sleep due to having Too Many Things racing around my head, and then alternating between running around at 100kph or collapsing in a heap until I was recharged enough to go back to the former.

At the start of this writing sabbatical the thing to do was make sure I didn't just laze around, write three sentences and consider it a full day. Now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. This is not apocalyptic, but I figured it's been a hundred years since I wrote a "Bloggy Bloggerton" style post and oh what a treat.

Meanwhile, both the show and that script I've been developing for a fellow have passed over their respective humps. I can now start looking at What To Do Next and it is pretty exciting! I just hope I can get a nice lil' job at a nice lil' bookstore so I can get out of the house more, interact with more strangers and basically get a little more balance going on.

ALSO
This is a pretty good read with a pretty good point.
1 2 3 4

WIPED

So for the first time in a while I did a little sketching, from this photo. It's as if I've been shoving all my time and energy into something, lately.

But thankfully one other project is over it's biggest hump, a short script I've been putting together for a fellow who rather kindly paid me for the first draft. That certainly felt nice.

*Puff* *wheeze*

I just went jogging and, trust me, this comes back to scriptwriting.

When I was much younger and had made up my mind that I would spend my life writing, my Dad took notice. He came up to me and pointed at his then-rotund (and still hairy) midsection and said "Oliver, if that's what you want to do then take heed boy, take heed of what I hath wrought in my years at the bench".

I may be paraphrasing here.

But yes, like some corpulent ghost of Christmas future, dad's gut was giving me a message - those who sit down for a living are particularly susceptible to becoming grossly unfit. A few years later Dad would start going to a gym and minding his diet better, at this point in his late fifties. I'd like to think the new generation can learn from the previous one, so at twenty-six I am trying to take dad's gut's message in a little earlier. I've been able to slip by on my absurd metabolism for years but, about two years ago, I noticed a small yet perceptible slowdown - like a cheetah that notices it is still outrunning the lion but by just a little bit less each year.

Being around the home and writing or editing as much as I have these past few weeks, I began to notice another little slowdown. Add this to my meeting someone fit enough to make me do a spit-take when I saw her snare-drum of a stomach and this ends up with me pushing my little legs around the neighborhood this morning. It felt good and I stopped after the point at which it would have been embarrassing to do so. A man can't ask for much more on his first day at it (said the bishop to the actress).

Anyways, enough of that - I'd rather not be the type to exercise for one frigging morning and then spent hours waxing on about how the visceral ballet of the battle of the bulge made them feel more in tune with sister Nike. Keep an eye on this spot for some of the shit I learned while getting the show up in order.

The days...

Jesus jumped up Christ I cannot believe I'm already on the last week of this six week sabbatical. I'm reminded of a cynical bit (as if Shannon Wheeler can write any other kind) from the old Too Much Coffee Man comics. Basically TMCM get's wound up about the progression of time and how it races by when he's engaged in projects (satisfying or otherwise) but that the only way to stretch it out is to waste it by doing nothing (or at least nothing personally satisfying).

I'd like to provide a rejoinder but I don't have one at the moment. Perhaps there's one in here.

That's how you know!

Man, I've spent almost the entire day editing (and look to be continuing doing so until bed). About mid-afternoon I had a real "Oh good God what am I doing oh man oh lord oh geez. I should just get a simple life that I can manage, maybe where I sell half-used batteries in a store inside an incomplete strip mall located at the corner of some suburb where the children die young and their parents just can't stop fiddling with themselves in public"...moment.

That's how you know you're learning new things and pushing out against the boundaries of your abilities folks!

CLUE: The following picture is part of what I'm slap, slap, slapping together.

Not having millions of dollars...

...with which to purchase the rights to images and clips, I've been looking through the Internet Archive, everystockphoto and PicFindr a fair bit. Just thought I'd toss them handy links out to anyone else who wants to include clips without getting lawyers calling them - it can happen even when you think you're playing it safe, such as the recent trip up of Red in Tooth & Claw accidentally getting some David Attenborough clips mixed in with their show...then having to re-cut EVERYTHING THEY'D DONE. Good times.

Good times I would like to avoid.

Meanwhile, here's my first mess around with introduction credits for the show!

I...live

So!

The shooting got pushed back to Friday (yesterday) from Saturday (....today). I think things went okay, once I got back into the swing of things after not having been in front of a camera since late December.

As I've mentioned, I'll be doing the editing for these episodes (the latter batch being shot at the end of this month) and after uploading the footage to my computer something painfully obvious finally hit me: I am going to be spending hours and hours listening to my own voice while staring at my own loverly features.

Oh.

Oh god.

I mean, pretty much everyone has at least some degree of an adversarial relationship with recordings of themselves and I am no exception. I wonder if this process will nullify or intensify that?

Onward and upward

So, much to my joy I earned the good faith of of my web collaborator to help shoot and produce a show I've been working on - a show with yours truly hosting. We're looking to shoot five episodes a week today and the remaining five of the first season (so a total of ten) two weeks after that. I've got a right laundry list of things to do in order for this to all work out and I couldn't be happier. A third of the way through this sabbatical and I feel well vindicated in my decision.

More news later, when I'm not constantly checking to see if my arse has fallen off thanks to my having been up for something like 26 hours yesterday/today and then not being able to sleep in thanks to the blind flute guy who likes to play outside my bedroom sometimes. As my pal Ryan, who had to deal with this before he moved out and I moved in, put it "How many times do I have to cure cancer before I can dump a bucket of water on a blind guy?".

Workin' in the park...

...is great when I just need to look at one or two pages at a time, but terrible otherwise (for getting work done). You just don't have the desk space! Sure there's the ground but it is not always the most friendly place for a piece of paper and there's generally a breeze or three that'll snatch it away from you.I've often wanted to just bust out a desk like John Cleese doing a "And now for something completely different" bit, even wearing an old suit to complete the image, and just set down to work like that in the middle of all the greenery and sunshine.

Maybe a breakfast-in-bed tray kind of thing? Any suggestions? These pictures are from Trinity-Bellwood Park, by the by.

How hot can a 'dang' get?

Well hot dang the noir treatment is done. Now to wait for a response - which might be bothersome if I didn't have ten other projects to occupy myself with! Yesterday I got a nice start on the web show work I need to have done for next week, so I reckon that's the thing to work on through the weekend. But not tonight - tonight I'm going to try and finish a painting I started, if for no other reason than that painting seems to use almost none of the same cuts of my brain as writing does and thus it makes a great way to recharge while still doing something.

I wish I'd done more in this first week, but I've done some comparisons with other things I've worked on since moving to Toronto and I still got shit done quicker and far MORE shit done in a shorter period of time - so I'm not really complaining. Plus I've needed

Meanwhile, for those who are amused by such things, here is the short playlist I listened to over and over to maintain the right mood for working on the noir treatment.

"Fly" by Luscious Jackson
"About Her" by Malcom McLaren
"Diabolus" by The Cinematic Orchestra
"Thread", "Theme to Kill a Dead Man", "Hunter", "Nylon Smile" and "The Rip" all by Portishead

Writing Sabbatical: Day Three

Holy cow and a jumped up Jesus and beans I am having a real live Learning Experience folks. That is to say, my enthusiasm for getting things done has blinded me to something I already should have known and now I'm just clearing the mist from my eyes.

Basically, without the day job to force my mind off the noir treatment I have allowed it to rattle around in my head almost every minute of every day since Friday. I have pages of notes (satisfying) and nine tenths of the story plotted out (very satisfying) but keep finding myself staring holes in my notebook when trying to figure out that last tenth (agonizing). I set myself a deadline for "Some Time Tuesday", feeling it was realistic given the amount of time I had. Setting myself deadlines I know I can meet is something I felt I had a decent handle on. But what I didn't consider is the danger of burnout (frightening - okay I'll stop this) since I haven't had this much time to work non-stop on something since my last semester at Carleton.

So I've popped off what I have to my Mandy.com collaborator and decided to try a few things to rejuvenate.

• Talk through what I have so far with my friend who's coming over for dinner.
• Catch a film noir movie at the Bloor tonight.
• Wake up tomorrow and work on the web show or at least not the treatment for the first half of the day.
  

In the remaining time of this sabbatical I think I'm going to make a point never to spend a full day on something if my deadlines allow. Burn out is burn out, regardless of the precise route you take there.

Addendum: Oh man this kind of thing is scary if you think about it for even a nano-second.

Writing Sabbatical: Day Two

So here we are, day two of my Self Employed Screenwriter Simulation. So far it is okay! I like the commute but my boss is a jerk haw haw haw. Discipline has not been perfect but then hell I just started. Really, the only trouble has been rule #4 on account of social commitments I made before I knew precisely when this thing would be starting.
Yesterday was mainly research and writing. The current treatment I'm working on, for a producer/director I met through Mandy.com, is looking to be a modern film noir with heavy involvement in the resurgent burlesque scene. This made me feel less of a shit for going out to this last night, since - and I'm only half joking here - it qualified as additional research. Honestly, if I'd not gone I might have forgotten that burlesque is not just dancing and jokes but also singing...which may or not play into the treatment as I finish it up today.

So okay Mr. BigBalls why are you writing a post here if it's within your working hours? Well sir, partially this can be blamed on my spending some time learning CSS and thus my mind being put in the realm of blags. The other is to help find focus on the day's work by discussing it with you lot. My parents are self-employed and have been as long as I can remember. All through the years I've been reminded by them that one of the biggest troubles with working for yourself is discipline and focus - since you don't have a boss to enforce both. They weren't kidding! I've gone into this sabbatical with eleven writing projects at various stages, as well as the challenge of learning enough about Adobe Premiere and CSS to facilitate one of those eleven. It is tempting as hell at times to try and work on most or all of these projects at once!

Luckily, for more than one reason, I am getting paid for the project I'm working on today and that has pushed it right up the priority list. The second on the list is the final manifestation of the monologue style web show - now that I've finally found a decent hook for it - if only because I have someone willing to produce and promote the bloody thing. But the editing and web design are in my modestly capable hands and so we have me learning how to write an entirely different kind of script altogether.

Anyways, when I come out the other side of writing the treatment then a new Scriptin' Fancy-Like post can be expected. I'd like to do more of those in the coming weeks.