Changes...

As a screenwriter, it's hard at times to think past the written document you're creating. But having gone through the directing, editing and now music/sound process with the movie, you realize there are so many layers of storytelling in a movie... As the writer, you are creating the structure of the story and developing the characters. The in terms of directing, you are rendering the world real--I think as a director, it is very important to be able to think in a completely visual way without totally worrying about story per say, or what is on the page. You want to manipulate the camera in a way that really and truly engages the narrative and makes it as interesting as possible. It is tough as a first-time director to take risks, but I think it's imperative... Our editing process has been a bit tough because the story changed in many ways... It's still the same movie, but we re-structured and re-arranged to make it all gel together better... Now with music and sound, we are really building upon that to fill out the emotional and subtextual layers... So much goes into making one movie, it's truly amazing...

Making It Your Own.

I have been catching up on some writing while working on RM over the past month or so. It had a while since I had worked on any of my scripts, but I've been meeting some new managers lately, and I wanted to polish up a couple of my pieces. When writing a script, there is always this question of when something is complete, will it ever be complete? When I wrote RM, I went through so many drafts. It was draft after draft. It was hard because in the beginning, I wasn't clear on my own personal goals and how I wanted to tell that story, so I let other people shape and then re-shape the vision. There was especially once writing teacher I had who is good, but he's very dogmatic about how he believes a story should be written. Anyway, I left that group, stopped with any/all writing workshops, stopped getting feedback, and started spending long hours on my script, deciding and defining it the way I wanted. It was hard, but as I began to listen to my own voice rather that that of others, it began to take a clear shape. This is the same process I recently went through with the rough cut for the film. I got so many notes, I feel completely overwhelmed, and at one point, unclear about what the movie was about. Then, I took a break and I came back to some clear conclusions about the final edits. It was kind of a grueling process, but it's important to always, always remember your own voice, intentions and goals with anything in life, really. I have a new screenplay I am finishing. It's taken me a long time to be clear about the story, but I finally feel like it's getting there. I definitely will still get notes, but I now know how to parse through them and clearly get the work to be what I want it to be.