The Look Machine is a rock band from the Philly area that draws on everything from acoustic finger-style to melodic rock to create their own original sound.
May 09, 2008
Another Day at the Internship
I'm starting to think that one of the most valuable parts of my schooling here will be taking advantages of the internships. It's just such a great education to be in a production office, hearing how they view the business, getting comfortable with the scene.
Today I was fortunate enough to be able to share notes with the assistant there. It was a great conversation, and I think he enjoyed it as much as I did. Many of my suggestions were very well received. One of the head execs there overheard much of our discussion and stepped in to tell us he thought what we were talking about was great.
Anyway, the most intriguing part of the day came when I was asked to read a magazine article that they have optioned. Yes, that's right, a magazine article. This company paid a large sum of money to the author of a two page magazine article for the right to use her article (which has no story and no characters, but just a general opinion... and yes that opinion is interesting and thought-provoking) as the basis for a feature length film. I love this town. I really do.
Continue reading "Another Day at the Internship"
Posted by jason at 04:16 AM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2008
Incredible News
I can't get into a ton of details... but the upshot is that an exec at a major movie studio called me to tell me he read A Well Adjusted Boy and absolutely loved it. He said the characters were so deep, the dialogue so perfect, and the story was endearing and touching. He asked if I had representation and if it would be ok if he started showing the story to some of his agent friends and other studio execs because he could really see it on the screen.
I said yes!
Not sure this is BIG break, but it certainly seems like a break of some kind.
Posted by jason at 02:26 AM | Comments (5)
May 05, 2008
Awesome moment
Movies are made of awesome moments. Of course a compelling story, and characters that you care for, and overall structure are an absolute baseline that you need... but if you have a number of moments and scenes in your film that people remember the next day, the next week, and even years later... then you know you have pure gold.
Think about the movies you love. I'm sure that immediately, moments come to mind. Indiana Jones - the big ball rolling after him. The light shining through the staff and showing the location of the ark. "Snakes, why does it always have to be snakes." I'd bet that every movie you love has a number of these scenes that made an impact on you.
When I'm writing, these moments keep me going. Sometimes I'll have a great moment, one that I want to see on the screen, and it just gives me this energy to make the story and everything else awesome. It's when I've stumbled across enough of these moments that the story really comes alive for me.
All this to say, I wrote an awesome moment in Tovenray's Curse today. Lyric has just entered this mysterious world. She's been swooped up by a flying Kitty, riden by a boy named Torin. As they fly towards the woods, they are followed by a Spidersus - a flying spider. It's a WW2 dogfight in the air between a flying kitty and a flying spider... who wouldn't want to see that on the screen? It's crazy awesome. The spider is dropping webs on the kitty, constricting the kitty's wings, sending it into a nosedive. Torin is frantically cutting the webs with his sword while Lyric tries to ready a bow and arrow to shoot...
I want to see it on the screen!
Posted by jason at 06:30 PM | Comments (1)
May 02, 2008
My Holiness
I have a class about presenting and controlling a room. Our instructor was talking about each one of us having a "tell," something that we carried with us that was uniquely ours and that could be good or could be bad, but that we needed to be aware of so we could use effectively.
After class I asked him what my tell was, in his opinion.
He said... "It's hard to explain exactly, but there is just this... holiness to you."
What in the world?
He continued. "Like you're a preacher delivering a sermon."
You can take the son away from the pastors, but I guess you can't take the pastors away of the boy....
He finished saying that it's not a bad thing at all, and there's definitely an energy and a conviction, but that I should be sure to calibrate because sometimes that energy is appropriate and sometimes it isn't.
Posted by jason at 03:02 PM | Comments (6)
May 01, 2008
My spec episode for the Office - the full outline
OK, so this was the latest step in writing this episode. I have to say, after writing this, I feel like I've just about written the whole episode... it's just not quite in the right format and some more dialogue as to be filled in. Read it if you want. It's long. but I'm including it just in case people are curious about the creative process for this... from short story pitch, to beat sheet, to this.
Continue reading "My spec episode for the Office - the full outline"
Posted by jason at 03:50 AM | Comments (6)
April 29, 2008
Hanging out on the beach with my daughter.
One of the very best things about living where we do is we are literally one minute away from the beach. So yesterday, after I picked Lyric up from school, she said, "Let's go to the beach." That's exactly what we did.
It was so nice, one of those unexpected things that you didn't even know to look forward to but was the best thing that happened in a while. We just walked through the surf, got too wet, laughed and talked. For some reason there was an apple, two oranges, and a cantaloupe rolling through the waves. We tried to keep track of each of them each time the waves crashed and receded. It's hard to explain exactly how much (or even why) fun this was.
Anyway, I was thinking that these things that you don't plan but that end up being very memorable need a simple name. Any ideas? Have you had any of these moments lately?
Posted by jason at 12:49 PM | Comments (3)
Pushing through.
One lesson I'm learning here is how to face despair, or lack of inspiration, or just general laziness (or the potent combination of all three.) Yesterday and today, I forced myself to just write the Tovenray story. I'm becoming a real believer in the advice to "finish it badly." That's infinitely better than not finishing it at all. Once you have that initial lump of clay at least somewhat formed into something, it's much easier to refine.
If you don't write the pages, you have nothing.
I've found that there is no "quality" correlation between pages that are hard to write and pages that are easy to write. Sometimes the easy stuff is brilliant, sometimes it needs to be completely re-worked. Same with the difficult stuff.
"Finish it badly" is really just taking the pressure off so that you finish it at all. In reality the chances that it's actually bad are the same as any other time.
It's a discipline. A very difficult discipline to develop, because there are so many aspects of creativity that it's always tempting - especially for me, who loves the thrill of inspiration - to just wait for God to walk into the room and let those magical moments do all the work for you. But those bursts of inspiration are pretty rare. To be a consistent storyteller (or songwriter, or anything creative) you have to develop muscles that force God into the room, even when you don't believe there is a God. Even when you don't believe there is a room.
Yesterday and today, I rewrote the 19 pages I had already written (cutting them down to 14) and then wrote 8 shiny brand new pages, too. Not bad. I'm back into the story. Another crisis averted. These times are actually monumental for me, because as an inspiration junkie in the past... it might have been another six months before I started writing again.
Posted by jason at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2008
Procrastinating
I have to admit, I'm in a funk for Tovenray's Curse, my latest screenplay. I have to break out of it today and tomorrow, but where my normal routine is to write pages every day, I haven't written anything since last Wednesday's class.
Fortunately, I'm learning to procrastinate while doing other things that I actually really have to do. So I put together most everything bureaucratic for the season of Screenwriting Competitions, which took a tremendous amount of time, while rewriting my screenplays. I worked a lot on my comedy spec for the Office. I read more screenplays and made notes for my internship at Maguire.
And now it's just me and the blank page and I have to move on.
On thing that was quite helpful was that I went on a hike with Lyric and Ollie yesterday and they wanted me to tell them the whole story from start to finish. To see the way they responded to it and liked it encouraged me on the strength of the story. In fact, I told Lyric that my instructor wasn't like it so much so far and she looked at me amazed. "Why, doesn't he like good stories? Who wouldn't like it?"
So that's the audience I need to write for.
Posted by jason at 01:39 PM | Comments (9)
