Deadlines... OF DEATH!

In the last couple of months I have come up with a few ideas for movies I would like to make, and I even started on them.  Robo-Butler, God Hates Polycots, Just a Burrito.  But the thing they all have in common is that they don't have a deadline.  They are being made for me and whenever I get around to doing them is when I get around to doing them.  Sure, there are practical reasons why they are delayed, holiday seasons, it is really cold out and I can't ask my actors to wear t-shirts in this weather, etc.  But ultimately it is because I have no one to answer to.

This week I got struck with sudden deadlinitis.  A film festival I have entered before (see earlier posts about Films for the Forest) moved their deadline forward unexpectedly, by a number of months.  Now instead of having time to prepare and schedule to work on it for three weeks, I must scramble and do it in only two with no pre-planning.  For many people that would mean they simply do not participate, and those people are reasonable and sane.  However, I have taken it as a challenge and have begin to furiously put together a production that will force me to edit, direct, and write in ways that I never have before.

The most important thing is that I am doing it.  I am scheduling time and making it happen.  Rather than waiting for people to maybe be available I am pushing forward, even if not a single actor is available and not a single crew person can come, I am going to make this movie.  Under these time constrains my usual producing skills are of limited help.  Most films I prepare with people for months in advance, scheduling my shoot dates far in advance.  With this I have to do it right now and do not have time to wait on schedules.  The shoot date is the shoot date.

This should suck.  But what it really does is remind me how important film making is for me.  Even when no one else is there and I am alone setting up a green screen in my basement right next to the washer and dryer, I am making a movie, not excuses.  Taking this approach is critical to being successful.  Once you let yourself make excuses that 'this is too hard' or 'my crew is not available' you are dooming yourself.  When you see those as obstacles to be overcome instead of barriers that you cannot traverse you are doing it right.  It is a lot like exercise.  Say you decide to run two miles every morning.  Then one morning it starts raining.  You have two options, exercise anyway, or take that as a reason to take a break that day.  The person who puts on their raincoat and goes for their run in the pouring rain is going to get into shape, the person who decides hot cocoa and a blanket are an acceptable alternative that day is going to falter and eventually give up entirely.

Set your goals.  Set your deadlines.  When no one comes to help you, keep going.  The ability to make a project happen even without support and under harsh conditions is a key to real success.  Find your solutions as they come.  My largely solo productions have been the most enlightening of my career.  They force me to come up with new solutions to old problems, and I take those answers with me when I work on a bigger production.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have a deadline to meet.  And these 11 puppets are not going to green screen themselves into the scene.

Intellectual Property and Piracy and Congress Oh My!

So the hot topic for right now is of course SOPA and PIPA.  I have a lot of beef with these, and I think most everyone who reads my blog already knows a lot of the reasons why.  The legislation is to fighting piracy what using a flamethrower is to lighting a candle.  It will do the job, and hurt a lot of other people in the process.

But what I really want to talk about is the effect of piracy.  Lots of the Anti-SOPA/PIPAers have started to become pro-pirates.  Lets be clear here, being Anti-Bad Legislation is being Pro-Intellectual Property Theft are not the same thing.  Intellectual property is a hugely important topic in our world.  We exist in a time when information is more valuable than physical objects in many cases.  This is true of books, music, movies, software, websites all sorts of things.  When you buy an album the CD and package are a tiny fraction of the cost, you are paying for the content.

So why am I upset about piracy?  I don't sell my films, I provide them for free on the internet and anyone can watch them whenever they like.  So pirates are not stealing profits from me right?  What they are doing is taking away my audience.  I do hope to one day make films for profit, and have my ideas for short films or feature films become the predominant way I pay my bills.  This can never happen unless I am able to build up an audience of people who like and share my work.  Currently, everything I make, I make so that it can be shared.  You like one of my videos?  Pass it along to someone else.  I don't even mind if you download it off YouTube and burn it to a DVD and watch it or pass it around to people.  (I would like it if you watched on YouTube because then I can follow the analytics though)  Share it through bit-torrents, package it with your favorite other shorts and give it to your friends for their birthday.  By all means, if I provide you content for free, spread it around like a four year old fingerpainting when no one is watching.

When pirates give away movies for free, that cuts into the market of people I am trying to provide content for.  The people who don't want to pay.  If you have the option of paying nothing for one of my films, made on a budget of under a thousand dollars, with some rookie mistakes here and there, with actors you have never heard of, and special effects that don't really make your eyes bug out of your head.... or paying nothing for 'Hugo', with all the talent and amazing images that a multimillion dollar budget can buy.  Why on earth would you pick my work over that?  I understand the consumer who downloads the illegal copy, someone is offering you something of value for free.  But every time you decide to spend two hours watching a pirated movie instead of watching content provided for free (like mine or that of other young production companies) you are hurting the independent film makers and independent artists.

We depend on our low price point of free to help us compete with productions that have staggering budgets.  It is the one thing that we have up our sleeve to tip the balance towards independent production.  Pirates rob us of that.  I know that they think they are robbing people with huge fistfuls of money, so no big deal.  But they are robbing us, and they are robbing the artistic community as a whole.  I may not become the next great American director, but who is to say that they are not lurking on YouTube or Vimeo in obscurity because the people who would be their fans, are too busy watching stolen copies of Transformers 3?



After re-reading this post I realized my own hypocrisy.  Originally I had a really cute picture of a kid finger painting all over the floor and making a huge mess.  But then I realized, that is piracy too.  It is hard to avoid stealing other people's work sometimes in the attempt to create good quality content, especially for free.  But using that picture would be just as wrong as someone downloading Kanye West from Megaupload.  So instead, you get this picture that is in the public domain, which is close to right, but not quite.

Goals are Dreams with Deadlines

I get these questions a lot of the time:

What do you want to do?  Where do you see yourself in five years?  What are you?

My life is a confusing one and I don't follow just one route.  But no one seems to be curious about my day job, they only want to know what I am doing in my creative life.  Why?  Because the creative life is a scary and particularly enigmatic one to most people.  The perception is that to succeed in any form of art is to be very lucky and nothing else.  As though success fell on you and it had nothing to do with who or what you are.

The vast majority of creative people that normal people deal with are dreamers.  People who sit back and say "Oh I wish I were" or "Wouldn't it be great if I could..."  And dreaming is a core to creativity.  To be able to see something that is not there and to understand it in every detail and feeling.  But so many dreamers end up as baristas, or data processors, or the store manager of the local hardware store.  Not that there is anything wrong with those jobs, there isn't.  But they are not the dreams those people had.  We all know these stories of people who were wonderful actors in high school and college and everyone thought they were destined for greatness and to be famous, but when we find them again they are mundane.  It is saddening to see anyone give up on their dreams, or worse, forget them.  So when your friends and family find out that your dreams are to be a writer/film maker immediately they feel fear.  Most likely you are going to be a fallen dreamer.  So the questions begin.

For the longest time I have simply pushed away these questions with either silly and overblown answers or just smiling confidently and saying "I don't have the faintest idea".  Now, at the cusp of turning 28 I think I might be ready to actually start giving them answers.  I have been a dreamer for a long time, floating around and doing what felt good and enjoying it.  Dreamers fall.  I don't need dreams anymore.  I need goals.  And so do you.

I have been acting for over a decade, writing since I was a little kid, and making films for five years.  I have some to show for it but not much.  Not until I stood up and set a goal.  Last year I finally set a goal.  I thought it might be a little bit overwhelming but I wanted to do 10 video projects during the year.  Since in the previous 4 years I was averaging about 2 or 3 different projects this was a HUGE jump for me.  I was no longer dreaming, I was working.  I had to.  I needed to produce something almost once a month to meet that goal.  Now only did I blow away my goal and end up doing 20 different video projects, but the quality of those projects exceeded anything I had done in the previous four years.

Now I realize that one year of goals is not enough.  I am finally doing what all of the 'regular' people in my life have been doing since they were 16:  Attacking life with a game plan.  While a lot of great things came out of being a generalist and taking everything as it came my way, the best things I have done have been the result of dedication, hard work, and responsibility.  These are things we don't have in dreams, but we go have in goals.   So if you are looking for your New Year Resolution, make it a New Year Goal.  By the end of 2012 what will you have accomplished?



Here is mine, out in public and on record so in a year everyone can see if I succeeded or failed:

5 Short Films that I write, produce, and take to festival
70,000 words in my novel that I hope to adapt into my first feature film

Now, what are your goals?  Comment below and let me know.  I will hold you to it.