Sorry for the dust around here.
Finally, I feel the urge to actually write to the Internet about my life, which actually just never happens with me anymore; yes, the concept of blogging itself now disgusts me to the point of personal offense towards the very core of my being.
All jokes aside, the beautiful four month summers of post-secondary life is mercifully coming to an end, and my God am I grateful because I cannot stand another fucking five seconds of it. It's become this desire to just go out and get shit done because if I don't I'll probably just atrophy and remain stuck in an existential limbo for an undisclosed amount of millennia. I'm not much for melodrama but it seems like the only solution to give this blog any sense of interesting-ness anymore.
Should I invoke a poll system? Because I'd run out of ideas pretty quickly.
What has happened in the four months that I haven't been in media production school is actually not totally banal -- I participated in my first forty-hour work week experience that completely drained me mentally and emotionally. And thanks to my friend who I did not realize was the other intern they just hired until the day before, who gave me much needed laughter and comradarie that I would not have gotten if it was just some random dude or woman who I would be awkward working with for six weeks.
So, I got my first taste of what kind of stuff we actually do as 'content creators' -- I learned very intimately the ins and outs of self-distributing an independent film on a national scale. It is not easy. I like to think that us two being the only main sources of information regarding film distribution, theatre relations, and promotional campaigning, we managed to not suck as much as other people would have. And that is enough to keep me sleeping at night (for like two weeks afterwards, and then everything went back to normal). But it was incredibly eye-opening, I met some damn cool people who let me handle their taxes and budgets, which freaked me the fuck out, and I got a taste of what real people do in this industry. They carry around G-Drives everywhere, and my boss had the biggest wall of geek shit I had ever seen. Also, Studio District in Toronto? Pretty tight. 10 years, tops (if moving Stateside upgrades from Pipe Dream to God is Now Shitting On You).
But I get to put on my LinkedIn, "I was a shipping and receiving department". Because I was. FedEx was like a shitty little cousin who wouldn't go away and do as it was told.
That was MAY. And a bit of June. What of the rest of my life from that point onwards?
I played some video games I had always wanted to. That lasted me about twelve seconds of entertainment, as is the case with video games. Somewhere along the line I had the crazy notion of actually doing something worth my time of being a man-child. Thus, I was writing again.
The reason I've ditched this blog is purely because I'm bad at prioritizing and that I'm still completely in the dark about who reads this shit, since commenting on personal blogs is more taboo than screwing a family member, for the Net Generation. The writing has upped in frequency, to the point of the aforementioned not-sleeping-a-lot. Because I'm just thinking of stories and shit. That's what writers do right?
In the three other months I've had, I bought a bunch of screenwriting books, actually read them, and absorbed information as best I could. Next step was to actually put some words on something -- mind you, my pilot script is still in a second-draft phase. But having a pilot script of anything I like to think makes you at least better than someone. Everyone's better than someone. Glass half full, okay?
My television pilot has turned into an budding project to make it into an actual storyline, with seasons, a plot arc, and multiple characters that keep popping up from my subconscious. The goal is to prepare myself as much as possible for Winter 2013, 5th Semester, when the writing courses actually start. If there is one thing I've learned from my first two years of Radio & Television Arts (now RTA School of Media, because we're not old people anymore), it's that preparation is not some dorky thing only nerds do.
If you write something, shoot something, edit something, or compose something without a plan, you are royally fucked from the start -- unless you are an autistic savant or some particular Asians in our program. This summer has been:
- Learning how to develop character fully -- flesh out inner motivations through establishing backstory, including psychological, physiological and sociological explanations
- The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier is a great tool for learning about any aspects of screenwriting. But this exercise is exhausting and very fun. You are literally making a person out of nothing.
- Practicing screenwriting format, form, and convention -- the technical aspects of writing a teleplay or screenplay. What I've found from reading a bunch of pilots as well as feature specs is, everyone breaks convention. It will be an eternal struggle for me to understand when it's okay to, and when it isn't. But that only comes when you keep writing shit.
- Keep writing shit -- the best thing to come out of this summer is keeping the ball rolling; I constantly have ideas for my fictional universe that I created about a year ago. More spaces are being filled very often. That just leads to more ideas for other things. Balls are rolling.
- My notebook has about fifty pages left, hopefully I start a new one by the time school rolls around. My mind has become something that thinks in scenes, and the only thing to do from there is to write those scenes down. They're know little aside stories to my main plotlines and characters, and serve as backstory research to refer to in the future.
- Pre-visualize everything - that's what season outlines and backstory research is all about. Building the story world is more of a challenge than anything else in writing for screen, big or small. Building the blocks gets you into building your world. But it's painstaking and it takes months, and probably years. I'm on my second. I have a ways to go.
- I have an endgame set up for Hotel Six that will lead into a season finale, and as it stands, a second season that will continue the grand story-line -- which means more world-building and character development. Making people is not easy either.
- Get a writing buddy - call a friend, classmate, distant relative, stranger who you have seen, or luckily know, has the same short-term goals as you: primarily, writing. Be their bud. Have somebody to talk shop with, discuss favorite anything; ice-cream or scenes from Princess Bride. Send each other process work - scene snippets, character tables, lists of ideas. Just talk. Learn from one another. Be around people who give you a sense that you are not wasting your time and your life has meaning. Quite essential. Everyone should have one. Even if you don't write anything.
I wanted to write something I feel strongly about, something I can materially relate to. The problem was, 50/50's writer had cancer, and he beat it with the help of his friends and family -- there's a good story already written for him. I don't have the luxury of an interesting past. Or an interesting present. So the only solution is a near potential, possibly parallel future. It's about a writer. And it's about imagination, storytelling, our current generation of content creators, and the problems we face when trying to make nothing into something. Don't know where it'll go. But it'll be something. Bet on it.
This is my life. I'm still technically jobless since I was born, in terms of steady income and working the hours per week that everyone else is, and therefore by default, envious that I am not. And therefore, they tell me to suffer the same amount they do, because if I don't do what they do it means something is wrong with the way I'm conducting myself. They're probably right.
So yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing in life. And I'm not happy or sad. I'm not content -- I'll never be content, that's not what writers are. Am I a writer? Fuck if I know. It's a placeholder at the moment. Everybody I know has placeholders, whether they like it or not. It's a perpetual unpaid internship for being a fucking adult. Which sucks. But it's what we have.
As long as nobody else knows what the hell they're doing, we can all be unpaid interns together.
That's three months of words I've caught up on. Now, please give a fuck. Because I finally think I do.
