According to WordPress, It’s been a year, a month, and two days since my last post. In between that time, I got hired at a call center, abandoned the inital project of this blog completely, and tried to start a new blog. For the last several months, I’ve been working on a movie based on the experiences I had with this job. I was laid off by a call center in February, only to be called back to work for a month, starting in March and spanning to last Monday (4/18). Hopefully, I’ll write more about that job as I go along. In the meantime, I’m working on finding a new job, contemplating taking advantage of the Trade Act Assistance Program, and working on this movie as well.
The problem is, I was hoping to shoot the movie this summer. It’s almost the end of April, I’ve been working on the script since October, and I haven’t even finished the script yet. So embarrassing. Due to the huge backlash last year against overpromoting your movie online*, as well as not wanting to overexpose myself. But the internet has played a huge role in pushing my career forward, and it’s not like I live in a place where I have easy access to certain resources. I’m willing to do anything (well, almost anything) that will allow me to push this project forward.
Last December, I went down to NYC, where I attended a special screening of You Wont Miss Me at Cinema Village (I interviewed Ry Russo-Young back in 2009), and used the opportunity to get the ball rolling. In March, I attended SXSW, my third time attending the festival. There, I met and/or reconnected with a number of people, some of them I hope to have come up here and work on this project: Chad Hartigan, Benjamin Kasulke, Joe and Kris Swanberg, Alicia Van Couvering, Michael Tully, Sophia Takal, Andrew Bujalski, Bryan Poyser, Dustin Guy Defa, Daniel Laabs, and Alex Karpovsky. I had a fun mentoring session with Nathan Zellner. I also attended a few panels that were very helpful, some of which I documented for The Film Panel Notetaker. I also saw some great movies: Takal’s Green, The Catechism Cataclysm, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Surrogate Valentine, Silver Bullets (which I hope to write about at length at some point), and David Lowery’s short, Pioneer. Tomorrow, I’ll be attending the 360 | 365 Festival in Rochester, where I’ll be doing a little more networking…hopefully. I’m also hoping to make one more trip to New York to meet with more people soon.
My main goal in keeping this blog is to keep myself motivated to finish the script and forge ahead. I need to distract myself from other things, and posting on this blog is the best way I know how. In the meantime, I’m going to leave you a link to “Hustle”, a song I’ve been listening to as I’ve been working on this:
*Brian Geldin, who runs The Film Panel Notetaker, the blog I contribute to, wrote a nice counter-argument that even Michael Tully liked.
Questions? Comments? Concerns??? 