Economics of Indie

I’m being persuaded that I should cut out or rewrite a couple of scenes in my screenplay.  On the one hand, I think the way I’ve written it is more visually interesting and tells the story better.  On the other hand, it will be logistically complicated and relatively expensive to film. My original intent was for the students to learn about the potential for buried treasure during a lecture in school.  That means finding a lecture hall I can use, hiring an actor to be the teacher and getting a dozen or more extras to give the illusion that the lecture hall is full of students.

On the other hand, if I reconceive the scene such that the students (and audience) get the same information from, say, going over the lecture notes in advance of class, then I can not only cut the expenses and challenges of filming it a lecture hall, but I can film it in the same locations I’m using for the other student interactions, which could significantly reduce setup time, shortening the length of time I would be filming, further reducing costs.

I’ve been thinking about the added value of the lecture scene.  If I didn’t have budget constraints, I feel sure the story would flow better with it in. However, budget is the absolute driver for this project, so my consideration becomes, is the incremental benefit to the story so high that it’s worth finding the funding (and location and extras) knowing that the cost has to come out of the rest of the project somehow.

Though I’ve been giving some serious thought to increasing the size of my budget, so I can pay my cast and crew (I’m not having much luck so far finding people to work for reel, beer and pizza), doing so adds a lot of complexity to the project.  I’ve been debating the value of the added complexity to my goal of learning if I want to be a director. If I can pay even a moderate amount (it seems that even $100 a day (generally 10 hours) is considered at the higher high end for low budget projects), I’ve been told I can attract a very different caliber of cast and crew.  Ones that have professional experience. And that are much more likely to show up for the entire production period.

I would very much like to be the only ‘virgin’ on the shoot, so the prospects of investing the time and energy to get a larger enough budget to pay cast and crew appeals very much to me.  If we’re all learning at the same time, there aren’t any experienced eyes watching to keep me from making naive mistakes.

The other direction I’ve been looking is toward shrinking the shooting days.  I’ve been using an estimate of 5 minutes of finished film (pages of script) each day.  With a goal of 80 pages/minutes, that translates to 16 days, or 8 weekends. I’ve been told, and have read, that projects which work to minimize the number of locations and sets can dramatically increase the number of pages shot each day, so much so that 10 minutes/pages appears feasible.  That cuts it down to 4 weekends, which could cut the required funds in half.

This feeds back into my decision making process regarding the lecture scene (actually, there are two in my first draft, though I’ve decided I’m OK with cutting the second entirely), since I get so much savings.

So it seems, whether I increase the budget or not, it makes a great deal of sense to replace my lecture hall scene with something much cheaper to film.  With that decision made, I now have to decide how else to convey the same information. Which I’ve been struggling with for a number of days (and one reason why this blog post is actually being made on Sunday, instead of later on in the week; I’m grasping for distractions).

Part of my goal with the screenplay was to put in some Civil War history specific to the Shenandoah Valley.  I contacted a subject matter expert and got all sorts of excellent information from her. I’ve only used a very tiny fraction of what she provided, but it was the fraction I felt was important to understanding the reasons why there might be treasure for my characters to find.  A teacher giving a lecture felt like a very natural and organic to get the information across. Now I have to find something less natural and less organic, or find a way to tell the story without the information at all.

Stripped of any extraneous staging information, the verbiage in the first draft is 345 words.  About two and a half pages worth of information in a formatted screenplay, or that many minutes.  I felt that long worked as the lecture, but I’m not sure if conveying it in other ways will work that long, unless I can create something visually interesting for the viewer as they get the information dump.  Then the problem becomes, if I create something too visually compelling for the viewer, then they focus on that instead of the information.

I have an idea I’m going to try.  I’m not sold on it, but I’ll ask my advisors what they think.  Maybe it can be made to work, and I can achieve the cost savings without compromising my story.

It’s interesting to me, how my learning process impacts my movie watching experience.  I was rewatching “Out of Sight” yesterday and kept thinking to myself, why did the writer choose to write this scene, then the director film it and finally the editor include it.  A number of them felt like they could be extraneous to the story, yet they wound up in the final cut. “Out of Sight” is one of my favorite movies, so I certainly don’t think the ‘extraneous’ scenes hurt the movie at all, but as I sit and agonize over my decisions, I wonder if I cut too much of my original intent I wind up cutting parts of what I felt made the story compelling in the first place.

Architectural Vision

In a discussion with someone who I hope will become an avid collaborator in the future, I characterized how I hope to work with cast and crew thus…

I view my role as the writer/director as an architect with a vision. While an architect is expected to have some notion of how the real world works, he hires experts to manage things like engineering loads, designing the electrical and plumbing needs and as well as an interior designer.

I have a vision that I illustrate with the script. It’s an impressionistic idea of what’s floating around in my head. The purpose of the script isn’t to set anything in stone, it’s to produce a shared vision for the final product. I expect there to be deviations as the rest of the team joins. While I try to make sure the building is strong enough to hold itself up (engineering), has space for electric and plumbing and have ideas for the interior look, my expectation is to find a group of people with the individual expertise who can ensure those things.

While certain people will fill certain roles, such as the DP being the structural engineer and the cast being the interior designers, this is not to imply that if you’re running wires, and find a better way, that you should keep it to yourself. That being said, the time to speak up is before the walls have been plastered!

I intend to use tools like scripts, posters, and even trailers, if I get far enough, as a way to entice cast and crew into my architectural vision. My vision can’t be realised without the right team, a balanced group of people with the necessary variety of trades. The script, posters, etc. serve as my architectural sketches, to help locate a cast and crew that support the goal of the vision.

Reel, Beer and Pizza

So I have my first draft done for Treasure Hunt and struggling with building up my ego to start trying to find a Director of Photography, an Editor and a Sound Guy. I’ve read in a number of locations that Craigslist is a place to find people, but when I look at the DC area List, I’m not seeing anything that leads me to think it’s a regular place to connect. Since I’m a regular Reddit lurker (one post, I believe), I decided to risk the snark and ask for help there:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/8ggmsd/where_to_find_help_when_payment_is_reel_beer_and/

The responses weren’t entirely useless, though the information content utility was pretty close to zero. That being said, the post did result in a direct contact by one John Rizzo, who used to be active on Reddit, but switched to becoming a lurker, largely due to snark. He’s written and directed a number of shorts and recently a feature. This is his IMDB page:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9022933/?ref_=fn_al_nm_2

This is the page for his feature:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6942578/?ref_=nm_knf_i1

And this is the trailer for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l_n_IESGqI

When I watched the trailer I felt the silent black spaces were distracting, each time thinking the trailer had finished. After some consideration, I felt that if the background ambient sound was run over the black spaces it would create the continuity to stitch things together better. The very end of the trailer has some beautiful writing and acting, at least to me. When I commented on how much I liked that scene, John said he was so stunned with the acting that he forgot to say ‘cut’ and the actress got self-conscious until he told her about the gold that was just captured.

Anyway, John was intrigued by my goals and agreed to meet last Sunday (he only lives about 45 minutes away) to talk about things with the idea of seeing if there was enough common ground to consider working together. I sent him my first draft of the Treasure Hunt screenplay, so when he arrived we immediately started about locations, setting up, what’s hard to do vs easy (for instance, I have a number of scenes that are supposed to be at night, but would rather shoot during the day), etc.

I showed him around our place and agreed with his assessment that we were insane to take on such projects. At least I think he understands I’m undaunted by the insanity of thinking I can film a feature without any experience.

Later, he went over all the comments he made on my script. That was an interesting experience. While I get excellent feedback from the ladies I use for script editing, I think it adds a lot to have the immediate back-and-forthing. A number of the scenes he initially thought were problematic, when I explained my intent, he reversed himself. It’s sometimes hard to adequately explain a scene on paper when there’s a bias against verbosity. The ideal is to have one page of screenplay translate to one minute of finished film, so excess description can distort the ratio. Balancing the right amount of description is something I’m still working on.

While we have very different ideas, I believe there’s enough overlap that we can effectively work together. He seems to be one of those rare individuals who is happy to give suggestions/advice, yet have most or all of that ignored. So many people get offended if their advice is ignored, and no matter how useful it is, if they refuse to give it their input is worthless. His suggestions had a lot of overlap with the feedback I got from my first editor, and discussing options on how to strengthen various scenes helped a lot for me to focus. He’d do the same story completely differently, but is nonetheless OK with working toward my vision.

Since he has practical experience as a director, discussing ‘simple’ things like motivating the cast to stick through the shooting schedule (he’s worked on weekends just like I plan to) has given me the pause to reconsider my focus on finding DC area cast and crew. I may see if I can find the team I need from the Harrisonburg, VA area (about a half hour south of where I intend to shoot) through the James Madison University. There are enough potential benefits to working closely with the University that I decided I’d be willing to put off filming until early next year if I can get the assistance I need.

As we wound up (my wife said we talked for around three hours; it certainly didn’t feel that long), John indicated his willingness to be the sound guy (for reel, beer and pizza). He feels that’s a commitment he can make easily, while acting as DP or editor (he has done both for his own work (as well as sound)) is a larger commitment. He thinks it will be a challenge to find a good DP and feels I should do at least some of the editing, but I’ll still look to see if I can find someone who has experience, or at least passion for the topics.

As we talked about editing, I got the strong impression that it’s probably a strength for him. He seems to have the clarity of thought that allows for the decision making to cut scenes that aren’t adding to the original vision. The more I learn about editing, much like cinematography, the more I accept, deep in my bones, that finding someone who is passionate about those topics is well worth any delay in getting started. Of course, my research also indicates that closer-in deadlines get better responses than further-away deadlines (people typically not having any idea what they’re going to be doing in a year’s time), so there is that balancing act.

Thank you John, for your excellent insights and I very much look forward to working with you!

Conflict regarding conflict

So I’m going over the feedback I got from my first screenplay editor (the second is scheduled for the end of this month) for TreasHu and she talks several places about increasing the conflict.  I’ve read in a number of web pages about conflict being the core of any screenplay (indeed, any novel), but some of her suggestions felt inorganic for the story I intend to tell (note that easily 80% of her suggestions all made instant sense and several had me slapping myself upside the head for failure to do it myself (and another 10%, upon consideration, have persuaded me)).  That caused me to do some research on conflict, and I came across this:

The Most Common Reasons Why Scripts Are Rejected
http://coreymandell.net/the-most-common-reasons-why-scripts-are-rejected/

In it, the author quotes Michelle Tanner:

“Do whatever you can to learn how to write in professional-level compelling conflict. Because without that, you have no shot at making it. Without writing in compelling conflict, you are simply wasting your time.”

That threw me into some deep navel gazing, as I’ve also been struggling with building my ego up enough to advertise for a cinematographer, editor and sound person, all willing to work for free, not to mention perennially putting off working on storyboards and floor plans. Maybe the core of my problem is lack of compelling conflict and my desire to write exactly that is what’s the problem.

Thinking back to responses I got from the other editor I like to work with on previous scripts, I realized she was also strongly urging me to increase conflict.  While some of her suggestions immediately felt organic to the story I wanted to tell, there were cases that I felt went her suggestions went directly contrary to my goals for the stories.

It’s not like there aren’t tons of experimental indie films out there that deliberately break the three-act, tension-filled mold, but if you look at all the movies that make money (meaning, the ones people actually watch), they all follow the same trajectory. While I have no interest in working on a big budget blockbuster with everything riding on a number of long chase scenes or green screen extravaganzas, that doesn’t mean I want to make movies that no one watches. Though I don’t expect anyone to watch TreasHu, that’s because of total lack of promotion, not that it’s boring and no one caring about the characters and story.

I could probably shoe horn myself into the mold of the expected, and possibly even write something I’d be happy with, but if I wind up telling “someone else’s story” instead of mine, perhaps I’ll wind up feeling cheated and unhappy, even if otherwise successful.

That being said, perhaps I’m going against my own advice:

Get those stakes in there, we need to know why the character is in the story. Then put in the obstacles. If it’s effortless for the character to achieve their goals, then you pretty much don’t have any story. How long does it take for someone to describe their idyllic vacation, where all the food was great, no mosquitoes, their significant others got along, etc.? About twenty seconds, right? But those nightmare vacations, those are the ones people want to hear about. The worst to experience have the best stories, right? If your character’s experiences were like the idyllic vacation, you might not have a novel anyone will want to read.

I’m beginning to think that I may not be suited to creating movies/books that people will want to watch/read. I’ve had a number of people complain about my DoaCK novels not having enough conflict, but they’re exactly the stories I wanted to tell. On good days, I just figure I need to find the right audience and I’ll be off to the races.

Then I read something like this:

The Problem with Good People
http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2018/04/30/redux-the-problem-with-good-people/

So now I’m struggling with the very idea of working toward becoming a writer/director.  Some days I feel like I have potential as a writer, then I read about things like conflict and my problems with that. I’m happy focusing on indie films, but I want people to watch them. If I can’t envision a path to create movies that have the potential to be watched nation and world-wide, I don’t know that I want to continue. There are other projects I could spend my time on. Though also long shots, ‘long’ is always relative, and I believe several have the potential to have better statistical payoffs.

I know not to make snap decisions, particularly when I’m feeling down (the wife and I went over our retirement plans this past weekend and I’m reluctantly being persuaded to add another two years (to make it 6) before we call it quits), so I’ll most likely continue pursuing this quixotic dream, possibly even to filming TreasHu as intended, but right now I’m struggling putting my heart into it.

Hopefully, I’ll have my ego patched up again soon and can wipe all this doubt away…

Too meta for me

I wasn’t feeling well last week and took off work early to go home and sleep.  I wound up sleeping probably 14 hours or so. I did a lot of dreaming, and things got weird.

I dreamt that I tried to explain to my wife that I dreamed about making notes about a dream I had that I felt would make a great movie or TV show. How deep is that? When she came to bed, I think I told her about that, but who knows, maybe I dreamt that also (maybe I’m dreaming this ;-).

Sadly, very little of the original dream is left. The title: “She, Detective.” The MC: Emily, a lesbian who suffers horribly emotionally at all the tragic stuff she sees, but does all her crying at home, alone, and is a stoic hardass at work. I was thinking she was the only detective in a smallish town, so it wouldn’t always be about dead people. Her sidekick was a cub reporter (wtf is a cub reporter anyway?) named Charlie, who was so intent on getting his great story he was always getting into trouble.

There was a lot more, but it’s all gone now. I wonder if it is because we were rewatching an episode of “The Closer” that had Stana Katic, who was Becket in “Castle.”

Convention, and why it is important

This is an adaptation from a response to a beta read I just sent.  It’s about convention, and why it’s important if you want people to read, and enjoy, your story…

It’s very challenging to shed your author’s blinders when you read your own work (why it’s _imperative_ you get someone else to edit your work; while some beta readers may note some issues, you can’t rely on them; it’s not their job). You know exactly who’s thinking what, when each character speaks, when they react, etc. But your reader isn’t inside your head, and only has the words on the page to go by.

Point of view (POV) is important to set at the very start of your novel. We, as readers, need to know who is ‘doing the talking’ in the narration. My first was in first-person, which puts one kind of straight jacket on, meaning your character/narrator can only know what they know, they can never know what other people are thinking/feeling/etc. unless those others voice their thoughts. And, of course, the other can be lying. Third person has many levels. There’s close-in third-person, where it’s slightly removed from first-person, but enables the narrator to remark upon such things as other people’s expressions that might have been missed by the main character. You still can’t know other’s emotions, though. Your third-person can back off to objective, meaning you describe what’s visible, but can’t get into the emotional aspects of the characters. Then there’s third-person, omniscient.

Omniscient POV is a very common one for beginning authors, as it allows the author to convey the thoughts and emotions of every character. Some authors do this very well. I was rereading one of my favorites after I’d been learning lots of craft issues and realized he was ‘hopping heads’ (rapidly switching POVs) all the time. He did it so smoothly, though, that I never had any issues knowing where the narrative focus was. That’s the critical difference that’s so hard to clearly define for beginners. ANYTHING that confuses the reader is a ‘bad thing’ (unless you’re deliberately trying to confuse, such as in a murder mystery with red herrings or with an unreliable narrator). The reader should never have to go back and reread to figure out which character is the focus. Every time your reader has to stop and figure out where the focus is, you risk them putting the book down, never to pick it up again.

Each POV has it’s own restrictions and conventions. Third-person objective is like watching a movie, the reader can only observe. First person, as I said, means you can never know what other characters are thinking. Omniscient is fraught with issues for a debut author (if you assume that anyone will immediately think ‘hopping heads’ (which is a ‘bad thing’) you’re probably safe). Generally, the ‘safest’ POV is third-person, close in. This allows you, as the author, to explore the thoughts and emotions of the MC, as if in first-person, but allow your attention to wander around and see things that are visible to your MC, but not their focus.

Tense is another issue. I wrote my first in present-tense, because I wanted to create a sense of immediacy. Also, I have the conceit of the diary and wanted everything to feel like it was happening in real time. However, after rereading some favorite books, I realized, as a reader, it was all happening in ‘present time’ in my head, so it was largely irrelevant. That being said, if you’re writing in present-tense, you can’t foreshadow anything, unless you want to break that ‘contract’ with the reader.

But, you exclaim (assuming you’ve read this far), I have an artistic vision and want to keep with it! You have a decision to make: write purely for yourself, or write for others to read and enjoy. If the former, then do as you wish. If the latter, then you have to accommodate conventions. Conventions exist so that people well removed from each other, geographically and temporally, can communicate concepts and ideas smoothly and efficiently. If I make up a language each time I write something, how many readers should I expect to be willing to decode it just to see what I’m writing about? Naturally this is the logical extreme, but walk back and you can see that unless you stick with accepted convention you’re forcing your reader to decode your meaning. Sometimes that’s the point of your story, but you need to understand that translates to fewer readers willing to invest the energy. I’ve had readers complain about a handful of ‘archaic’ words scattered in a 80K manuscript and state that they’d put the book down if they didn’t feel obligated as a beta reader.

The first step is to determine what your artistic vision is. Are you trying to tell a story that other people will enjoy, or are you trying to be clever with your prose and impress literary people bored with convention? If the former (I’m assuming, for the purposes of this email), then you need to minimize any characteristics about your prose that will pop the reader out of the story, so they can focus and enjoy it. How to do this? Stick with convention as much as possible. Violate it only in specific ways and the minimum number of times.

Conventions can feel like a straight jacket if you let it. If, on the other hand, you look upon your writing as a challenge to yourself, to select words to formulate sentences such that you can have your readers so focused on the story that the very words vanish into a movie projected in their mind, then the conventions become something to embrace. I admit that I left in most of the archaic words mentioned above. I learned my vocabulary by reading and internalized meaning through context. The words were few and far between and were small accents to my character’s speech mannerisms and I felt would diminish that impact if watered down. That does mean I’ll be turning off the readers that refuse to learn new words, either via Googling (not an option when I started reading!) or through context.

Does this mean you must subsume your voice? Voice, you ask? That difficult to define, but immediately noticeable, characteristic that each author develops as they write. Regular readers can often tell who an author is simply by word choice, phrases, dialog layout, etc. (computer programs easily detect this and are used for finding instances of plagiarism). You might think adhering to convention would dilute/subsume your voice, but it will always show through. What you want to do is to develop your voice while also mastering the conventions. Conventions can be broken and still entrance the reader, but the more you do so, the more you risk restricting your readership. Fewer potential readers means less opportunity for commercial success. If you don’t care about commercial success, then you don’t have to give a damn about convention. But if you want others to read and enjoy your work, stick with convention unless you have a very valid reason for breaking it, and break only the minimum your story requires, and be absolutely consistent when doing so.

Spectre

I just finished (re)watching the James Bond movie Spectre. Bond movies have gone back to forgettable, sadly. I absolutely loved Casino Royale, the first Craig Bond. It was fresh, it was serious, Bond didn’t joke around and drop silly-assed one-liners all the time. I was excited to see a Bond movie again.

For me, Quantum of Solace was an awesome follow-up, literally starting moments (in universe) after the end of Casino Royale. Though the ultimate bad guy felt a little weak to me, and the final burning building escape silly, I also loved the story. Particularly at the end, when M told Bond to come back, and he said he never left.

Skyfall was a little complicated, but for the most part I enjoyed it. The Bond babe was also just the sort of thing I like (really into dark-skinned brunettes) and the villain, while a bit over the top, had reasonable (to me) in-universe reasons for dragging everything out.

And then there is Spectre. I was looking for DVDs to watch as I relaxed this afternoon, and saw this one. I didn’t remember watching it, so popped it in. As seemingly iconic as the opening scene was, I didn’t realize I’d already watched it until the over-the-top helicopter battle. I kept trying to recall what would come next, but struggled. Now, I freely admit a crappy memory for detail (made getting through college hell, let me tell you), but so much of the movie was reminiscent of the old-style, what I call Silly Bond, with the absurd one-liners, the unbelievable action sequences (really, the plane disintegrates as he goes down the mountain, yet he still manages to catch the bad guys, then can’t be spared a bullet to be sure the baddie bad guy is dead? Man budgets are tight at MI6!). I understood more why I failed to remember, toward the end, when the head bad guy, instead of simply blowing Bond’s brains out, has to toy with him until Bond gets free.  Oh, let us not forget the entire absurd sequence blowing the building up.

I wonder if the next one, “Bond 25,” will be as forgettable. I even forgot the opening credits music, and I loved the one from Skyfall. It’s sad to see what once had so much promise now falling back to the old boring Silly Bond style.

First draft done

Over our vacation in Orlando (lows in the 60’s, highs in the 80’s; such a nice change from the dreary weather at home), I wrapped up all the scenes I originally envisioned when I wrote the synopsis for Treasure Hunt. However, the script turned out to be much shorter than I intended (that seems to be a chronic problem for me). My goal was 100 pages, once formated (I use Fountain). That, I felt, would give me some cushion from the movie being too short, while making it unlikely I’d wind up too long (the sweet spot is 90-120 minutes; there being approximately 1 minute per page of formated screenplay). When I said all I intended to say, though, I wound up with 68 formatted pages (a bit more than 14.5K words; it’s heavy on dialog).

The minimum length to be considered a feature is 80 minutes (this is very important when it comes to festivals), thus I’m running 12 pages shy of the minimum length (again, assuming filming and editing result in 1 minute per page). In researching the minimum length, I discovered that, to my surprise, beginning and end credits are counted in determining the official length of the movie. I already have plans for putting a critical poem to music for running over the end credits, so that adds a couple of minutes, and I have a (PG-13) love scene that’s described in three sentences, which will surely run at least a minute or two, but that still leaves me well short of my goal.

I sent the draft off to one of my screenplay editors for her review (now I wait two long weeks). I have confidence she’ll have suggestions for scenes I can enhance and likely new scenes I haven’t thought of (or did think of, but felt would slow the pacing down; I have notes scattered through the screenplay just for her). I work with her because I know she can provide invaluable insight for just such things. The other editor I like to work with doesn’t have an opening until the end of May, but hopefully I’ll have less to make up before she gets to it. I’m confident she’ll also have suggestions for making it longer (as, I’m sure, both will for making it better; why I trust them with my ideas in the first place).

My next job is to focus on creating storyboards and floor plans (the former being sketches of what I want the viewer to see, the latter being camera placements relative to actors and props). Naturally, my brain spends endless effort on anything NOT related to TreasHu and I instead wrote the ‘inciting incident’ for my follow-on to RedDom this morning, as well as mentally fleshing out scenes for a couple of other movie ideas I’ve been making notes for (for example).

I decided to take each scene from the TreasHu script and turn it into an individual web page, so I can put the created images right next to the relevant script elements. I began doing that manually, and after a half dozen scenes realized I could automate it with a program, so slipped into that rabbit hole for a few hours (spread over two days). Once again, I’m running out of excuses, so here I am, blogging instead. I believe I’ve decided, since I suck at drawing, I’d first start writing down what I have in mind. Initially as a way to try and develop momentum, but also as a way to try and at least have some record of what I have in mind (I deliberately try and avoid ‘directing to the script,’ so it’s easier to read). I also have mentally struggled with a way to keep the screenplay as it evolves in sync with the images I produce (I also need to take pictures of the various locations; all this is to have as raw material when I start to talk with DP candidates, ideally starting no later than May (and we’re already in April!)). So I focus on those issues rather than actually doing the drawing. I suspect it won’t be so bad when I get started, but, as I believe I’ve said before, I don’t have much control over my brain and have to sort of cajole it into performing for me.

I do feel good about the draft, though. I earlier sent it to two women who have been helping me as subject matter experts (SMEs) on the Civil War. They both felt the elements I mentioned were accurate, though one of them clearly envisioned something more ‘period’ when I first approached her, and it took her a while to get used to the modern take (period pieces are expensive, and I need to avoid expense at all costs). As is often the case, the SMEs gave me 100x more information than I could ever use, but it was an interesting learning experience. Just this morning my wife and I were watching a segment of “Aerial America” that focused on Virginia. When they were talking about Stonewall Jackson, I was telling her about some of the things I’d learned, only to have the narrator repeat them. Just like learning about how Dominatrix‘ work for my murder mystery, I got to learn a whole lot about the Civil War. Fun stuff. Now I’m really looking forward to researching my other scripts.

Signing off now, to try and get motivated to storyboard, but have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to wind up in front of the TV once again…

Director’s Statement

My goal with Treasure Hunt is twofold: first: to learn, by doing, how to assemble and manage a team to produce a feature-length film that’s engaging and entertaining. Second, but no less important, to evaluate if making movies is as intellectually challenging and entertaining as I envision it to be. If both of these are satisfied, then, for me, the project will be a success.

Though this will be done with a micro budget, where cast and crew are compensated with reel, beer and pizza, I intend to carry out operations as if it were a well budgeted film working under professional conditions. Even though it will be a non-union operation, I intend to act as if under those constraints. Thus, a well-fed crew operating no more than 10 hour days as often as possible.

I intend to hire cast and crew that’s talented, but also caught in the Catch-22 situation of needing experience to get jobs that require experience. My goal is to create a rising tide that lifts all boats, and want to foster a close and supportive working environment where we can look forward to working together again in the future, with a full budget and production staff.

As such, I’ll be looking for teammates that can work collaboratively together and understand that small budgeted indie movies need people willing to pick up the slack sometimes when everyone else is busy doing their job.

When writing Treasure Hunt, I made my decisions based around the idea of a small ensemble cast, few locations and as many of those as possible on our property in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. There isn’t a budget for more than a few unconventional shots, though I hope to find a DP who has the imagination necessary to make the best out of the limited resources.

The filming will all need to be done over weekends. However, it may be possible to rehearse during the week (I live in Silver Spring, MD) as I expect to pull most, if not all, the cast and crew from the DC metro area. To keep the budget under control, I’ll be offering cast and crew accommodations at our house in Virginia. As a hook to entice collaborators, we have an indoor pool and I intend to supply dinners as well as breakfasts and lunches.

Post production, I intend to search for and apply for local film festivals, as well as any that have interest in the Civil War. I believe it will be possible to make back some of the budget by four-walling the film in select locations. I hope I can count on cast and crew to help create demand for the film. I expect the film to wind up in IMDB and will have a website where information about the film is available, along with stills, trailers, cast and crew bios and/or interviews. I will most likely make the film available on a streaming service as well.

I expect this film, and the experience making it, to establish us all as professionals. And that we will all go on to long and successful careers in the making of motion pictures.

Whaza Critique Partner?

A critique partner (CP) is sort of like being alpha/beta reader to each other. Good ones are hard to find. I’ve only got one after trying a dozen or more times. There are a number of authors I regularly beta read for, and expect to do so as long as they continue writing, but their feedback on my work hasn’t been useful. Alternatively, some people will provide a little feedback, then nothing. While it isn’t required to be friends with a CP, I believe it’s beneficial, as you become each other’s cheerleader. But the most important thing is you need to be honest and open and be willing to say the things you feel are important. Both need to be someone who will look at ideas, snippets, revisions, etc. with a critical eye of an author, but who also understands what each are trying to do with their writing. Mine is really good at providing ideas for making my stories stronger, without necessarily trying to put her stamp on it. Another woman I read for, who writes lovely stories I hope get published sometime (and has some great steamy romance as well), is terrible at only being able to see her concept of what I’m talking about. Because we’ve become friendly, I have to actively remind myself not to ask for her opinions. They’re a waste of both our time.

CPs are two-way streets, which is why finding the right one is rare. You have to be interested enough in each other’s writing styles and goals that you’re willing and eager to read and reread, have enough ego that you take the feedback that inspires you and leave the rest, yet also be able to accept your advice being ignored. Some people just don’t have the personality to be CPs. Others are too sensitive to criticism to remain friendly after they’ve heard something they didn’t like. And some just don’t have the energy to stick with it. If it becomes a chore to communicate, clearly there’s no ‘partnership’ in it.

It’s great if you find one, but don’t feel it’s a requirement. You should still work with beta readers even if you have a great CP, as you need independent eyes to go over it (just like you need independent eyes of editors). Just remember, you don’t have to take your CP’s advice.