I've spent the better part of the past week putting together some video for a job interview that I had this morning. About six years ago, I left the video production company where I'd worked for about ten years. I'd been what can best be described as a creative strategic partner, meaning I didn't lay out any money other than the sweat and blood I put into the work that made the company its good reputation in our market. Eventually my creativity was undervalued and my strategies were rejected, the boss deciding he wanted to form a merger of sorts with two other videographers so they could go after the lower-end segment of the market. I didn't agree with the merger, didn't think the new partners had anything to offer that would benefit the company and wasn't shy about expressing that belief. It wasn't surprising to the boss when I left.
Right after I left, I shot a cross-country bicycle race for OLN (now Vs.) and landed a freelance corporate job when I returned from the race, then started working part-time in retail in the job I left last year, getting further and further away from working in a creative capacity. The past year I've been working for a company that lends tech support to advertising and PR agencies, and although the people I assist aren't doing what I'd been doing for the most part, I still observe people performing creative tasks for a living and it makes me recall the feeling I'd get when something I'd worked on was completed, that sense of accomplishment. It's the same feeling I get when I finish a good scene or burn through a stack of pages, although I've been doing less and less of that lately.
I stumbled upon the position I interviewed for today and applied as quickly as I could. They requested a demo a few days later and then some raw footage I'd shot afterward to get an idea of my camera sense. The interview went very well, the facility is putting out some good work and since the job is with a major university, I'd be able to complete my degree as well.
Now that all the prep work is done and the interview is over, I can get back to working on some story ideas I've got rolling. The children's movie treatment is getting longer as I work through possible story angles (it's always the second act that derails me with each script, so I'm working cautiously now) and I've unearthed some notes on plotlines I'd thought of months ago that look good on second reading, so I'll work on those next. I just want to get that feeling back.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Hello Goodbye
In and out fast to tell you the cruise was great and since we got back I've been working on making a change in my professional life, so I'll be updating you at the end of the week. Stay cool.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Out To Sea
I'll be away until Monday with the family on a Disney cruise of the Bahamas. See you here next week!
If Love Is A Mixtape, Make Sure You Include Some Prefab Sprout (Stuff I Like)
My latest read was handed to me by my wife as I was close to finishing Then We Came To The End. "You're reading this next," she said. Not a suggestion.
The next morning I opened the book without studying the cover very closely and started reading. Here's Rob Sheffield, a music journalist I know I've seen a couple of times on one of those VH1 "Best Hottest Mostest F****ingest Greatest" clip shows that we're all secretly addicted to, the sirensong of Def Leppard causing us all to crash on the rocks on a lazy Saturday afternoon. The conceit of the book is Rob reviewing his mixtape collection and recalling for the reader the events in his life when he made each tape. The first chapter reads like he's just broken up with his wife Renee, and I was grooving on Rob's style, he's clever without being smarmy, a great mix of the raw emotion he's recalling and the sense of humor that time's perspective has given him. I kept grooving until I hit the end of the chapter: Renee didn't break up with him. Renee died, dropped to the floor in midtask with a pulmonary embolism. I looked at the cover more closely and read the subtitle: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time.
Damn, I just got over The Road, could I take another downer?
Luckily for me I pressed on. This isn't an epic love story, these aren't lovers trapped behind enemy lines during a blizzard running from Nazi pitbull cyborgs. This is the story of two people who fall for each other, fall hard like we can when we're too damn lucky to know we're that lucky. Their initial common touchpoint is the music they both love and that grows into the music they each love and introduce to the other and the music they discover together, and Rob lays it out for us tape by tape, a mental soundtrack that carries their story along. They're one of those great couples you think will go on together forever. And then they don't. It's both heart-breaking and life-affirming, but Sheffield doesn't make the argument that her death and his loss made him stronger. In fact, he finds great identification with a quote from Emerson: "I grieve that grief can teach me nothing[...]."
Rob and Renee were DJs at their local radio station. Some of the happier times of my life were when I was a DJ on my college station. It was the late 80's and our station thumbed its nose at the top 40 sound the local pro station was running into the ground (I think they took 'top 40' literally, they never seemed to have more than 40 songs in rotation). Instead, we played music from the growing college radio scene, bands like Hüsker Dü, R.E.M., 10000 Maniacs, The Clash, Fishbone, The Smiths. Some of the bands we played I can't find record of anywhere, even as I can still hear their songs in my head. For a guy raised on Billy Joel and Chicago, being a DJ there opened my ears to a whole new part of my personality.
One album all the DJs played until you could see through the grooves was Prefab Sprout's Two Wheels Good, known outside the U.S. as Steve McQueen.
I'd first heard another DJ closing his shows with "Moving The River" each week, then began picking tracks blindly during my own shows. One day I was thinking of playing "Goodbye Lucille #1" since I hadn't played it yet, and another DJ passing in the hall rapped on the studio window, shouting behind the glass, "'Goodbye Lucille'!" Sounded like divine intervention to me, so on it went. Divine indeed, the song hooked me and the album became the very first CD I ever purchased. It was pop, perfect pop, baby, yet it was hip enough for the cool crowd. It burned up the UK charts for seven or eight months.
The next morning I opened the book without studying the cover very closely and started reading. Here's Rob Sheffield, a music journalist I know I've seen a couple of times on one of those VH1 "Best Hottest Mostest F****ingest Greatest" clip shows that we're all secretly addicted to, the sirensong of Def Leppard causing us all to crash on the rocks on a lazy Saturday afternoon. The conceit of the book is Rob reviewing his mixtape collection and recalling for the reader the events in his life when he made each tape. The first chapter reads like he's just broken up with his wife Renee, and I was grooving on Rob's style, he's clever without being smarmy, a great mix of the raw emotion he's recalling and the sense of humor that time's perspective has given him. I kept grooving until I hit the end of the chapter: Renee didn't break up with him. Renee died, dropped to the floor in midtask with a pulmonary embolism. I looked at the cover more closely and read the subtitle: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time.
Damn, I just got over The Road, could I take another downer?
Luckily for me I pressed on. This isn't an epic love story, these aren't lovers trapped behind enemy lines during a blizzard running from Nazi pitbull cyborgs. This is the story of two people who fall for each other, fall hard like we can when we're too damn lucky to know we're that lucky. Their initial common touchpoint is the music they both love and that grows into the music they each love and introduce to the other and the music they discover together, and Rob lays it out for us tape by tape, a mental soundtrack that carries their story along. They're one of those great couples you think will go on together forever. And then they don't. It's both heart-breaking and life-affirming, but Sheffield doesn't make the argument that her death and his loss made him stronger. In fact, he finds great identification with a quote from Emerson: "I grieve that grief can teach me nothing[...]."
Rob and Renee were DJs at their local radio station. Some of the happier times of my life were when I was a DJ on my college station. It was the late 80's and our station thumbed its nose at the top 40 sound the local pro station was running into the ground (I think they took 'top 40' literally, they never seemed to have more than 40 songs in rotation). Instead, we played music from the growing college radio scene, bands like Hüsker Dü, R.E.M., 10000 Maniacs, The Clash, Fishbone, The Smiths. Some of the bands we played I can't find record of anywhere, even as I can still hear their songs in my head. For a guy raised on Billy Joel and Chicago, being a DJ there opened my ears to a whole new part of my personality.
One album all the DJs played until you could see through the grooves was Prefab Sprout's Two Wheels Good, known outside the U.S. as Steve McQueen.
I'd first heard another DJ closing his shows with "Moving The River" each week, then began picking tracks blindly during my own shows. One day I was thinking of playing "Goodbye Lucille #1" since I hadn't played it yet, and another DJ passing in the hall rapped on the studio window, shouting behind the glass, "'Goodbye Lucille'!" Sounded like divine intervention to me, so on it went. Divine indeed, the song hooked me and the album became the very first CD I ever purchased. It was pop, perfect pop, baby, yet it was hip enough for the cool crowd. It burned up the UK charts for seven or eight months.Sunday, April 6, 2008
Thanks and God Bless, Chuck
My mother is the oldest of three, with a brother in the middle and her sister Maureen bringing up the rear. They're all in their mid 60's to early 70's now, and the memories of going to their old apartment on the Lower East Side are receding deeper into my vault. My uncle once came home and discovered myself, my older brother and two older sisters piled on his bed watching his postage-stamp black-and-white TV and stormed back out. We were watching Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (as spoilerish a title as you'll ever find, second only to a purported foreign title for Psycho in a land where that word wasn't in the language, The Boy Who Was His Own Mother). My family lived on Long Island then, and going into the city was a big deal, so we didn't do it often. New York was so close, but a world away from our little town.
My aunt Maureen would come out to see us every so often, I loved when she'd sneak into my room just after I'd gone to bed to wish me a good night in French. A story from her own youth that my mother loved to recount with her on these visits was about how Maureen at the age of seven or eight would talk about her friend Chuck that she'd see out on the street as she sat by herself on the front step of their building. Chuck would come and talk to her, ask her how old she was now, tell her how pretty she was. As this went on for some time and as it became clear Chuck was an adult, a stranger adult, my grandparents began to grow concerned. Who the hell was this guy?
Eventually a stakeout was improvised and several days passed with no sighting of Chuck, and then one day mygrandmother* saw a man she thought she knew walking up the street. As he drew closer, she realized the man wasn't someone she knew, but someone she'd seen, an actor. His name came to her as he approached the front step of the building with a smile: Charlton Heston.
Maureen said, "Hi Chuck!"
Mr. Heston passed away Saturday in Beverly Hills, his wife of 64 years at his side. I recorded Planet of the Apes the other night and just got around to watching it tonight, not knowing he had died. Now I wish I had Major Dundee or The Omega Man or the Richard Lester Musketeer films ready to roll to pay tribute.
edit - I re-checked my source, my mother, and she cleared up my error, it was she that was there with Maureen that day.
My aunt Maureen would come out to see us every so often, I loved when she'd sneak into my room just after I'd gone to bed to wish me a good night in French. A story from her own youth that my mother loved to recount with her on these visits was about how Maureen at the age of seven or eight would talk about her friend Chuck that she'd see out on the street as she sat by herself on the front step of their building. Chuck would come and talk to her, ask her how old she was now, tell her how pretty she was. As this went on for some time and as it became clear Chuck was an adult, a stranger adult, my grandparents began to grow concerned. Who the hell was this guy?
Eventually a stakeout was improvised and several days passed with no sighting of Chuck, and then one day my
Maureen said, "Hi Chuck!"
Mr. Heston passed away Saturday in Beverly Hills, his wife of 64 years at his side. I recorded Planet of the Apes the other night and just got around to watching it tonight, not knowing he had died. Now I wish I had Major Dundee or The Omega Man or the Richard Lester Musketeer films ready to roll to pay tribute.
edit - I re-checked my source, my mother, and she cleared up my error, it was she that was there with Maureen that day.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Desperately Seeking Treatment
Hey, look, a rare post about screenwriting!
I've been writing notes on the story for my animated movie project and now I've begun writing up the treatment. As I've never been satisfied with my past efforts at writing treatments, I'm progressing carefully. My (bad?) habit of jumping into the first draft right from the start has resulted in a lower rate of completions than I'd like, so I figure I'll try this the 'right' way. My only problem is I haven't seen too many actual treatments and I'd love to see one from a movie I'm familiar with so I can get a clear idea of how the treatment lines up against the finished product. Anybody know of any I can pick up online?
I've been writing notes on the story for my animated movie project and now I've begun writing up the treatment. As I've never been satisfied with my past efforts at writing treatments, I'm progressing carefully. My (bad?) habit of jumping into the first draft right from the start has resulted in a lower rate of completions than I'd like, so I figure I'll try this the 'right' way. My only problem is I haven't seen too many actual treatments and I'd love to see one from a movie I'm familiar with so I can get a clear idea of how the treatment lines up against the finished product. Anybody know of any I can pick up online?
Stuff I Like This Week
About halfway through and it's damn funny. If you've ever worked in an office, you know these people. The book is about the gossipy, self-indulgent, procrastinating and deceiving creative crew at an ad agency just after the dotcom bubble burst. I'm currently at an ad agency in a technical capacity, and I can easily picture the people I see every day within the pages of this book. Plus, it's the first novel by a fellow named Joshua Ferris, and you've got to love it when a first-timer knocks one out like this.
Wilco's "Hate It Here" is on high rotation on my iPod, the rest of the album is climbing with a bullet.
Yes. count me in with the BSG fans eagerly awaiting the start of the fourth season this Friday. I'm a few episodes away from the end of the third season and I love the journey this series has taken. Yes, it's set on a spaceship. Get over it. This isn't your daddy's sci-fi, this is a rich character-driven ensemble drama, set on a spaceship.
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