I had a relaxing time over the holiday and I wasn't productive at all. Right before I left though I did a new draft of Happenstances, I love it.
I leave LA again for the holidays in three weeks, there's a lot to do before then.
My blog's birthday is on December 17th, it will be three years old. I started it twenty two days before I left Maryland to move to Los Angeles for my semester long film program at the LAFSC. For my blog's birthday I'm going to send a lucky someone a copy of Pastor Jones: Preachin' to the Choir aka Pastor Jones: Heavenly Voices. All you have to do is comment here as to why you deserve it the most. I expect a raging competition.
If you want I can also write you a note on it or you can ask me to keep it in the condition that it's in when I buy it used off of Amazon, ha!
You might be wondering, Pete, you wrote a Christmas movie, Johnson Family Christmas Dinner, and it's Christmas time, why not give away a copy of that too? 1) Don't be so greedy, 2) There is an improvised joke that was not in the script I wrote that irks me so much that I don't really talk about that movie too much anymore, I explain the situation in an old blog post here. So Pastor Jones it is.
Also, a new episode of The End. is up, find it on the sidebar to the right or catch up on every episode here.
This is the Thanksgiving Episode of The End. I wrote and directed this episode. This is the first one that I wrote entirely, I've directed all of them that have been released so far.
Just for fun, here is the script! This site Scribd hosts documents and I've wanted to use it for a while and this seems like a fun one to share since it's produced and the formula for The End. is no secret (and now that we've established that formula we're going to start playing with it in future episodes). The End. of Giving Thanks
Ash and I are heading down to San Diego for Thanksgiving. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I have some important meetings, a lot of writing, and another shoot day for The End., all of which I'm thankful for.
You can catch up on all the episodes of The End. here and follow The End.'s blog here.
I recently guest blogged on a cool, more popular blog than mine here at Amanda the Aspiring Writer's blog. I wrote about my journey so far, in general, and more specifically writing Direct-to-DVD movies. Check it out and follow that blog, it's interesting and she gets a lot of insights from different people in different aspects of screenwriting as well as her personal journey.
This is a great episode of The End. I'm really looking forward to our Thanksgiving episode though. We had a great shoot day for The End. over the weekend. Remember to check for a new episode every Sunday.
We have another shoot day of The End. coming up soon. We plan on doing about 20 episodes and seeing where we're at by the end of them, if we've found an audience, if there's more we want to do with it, etc. So far it's been a good experience and it's both ignited and rekindled some connections.
I directed four out of four episodes so far, in the next shoot other crew members are going to take turns directing with me. I've written some upcoming episodes that are going to be great.
Writing quick, short episodes of The End. is a great break from feature writing. They're only a few pages long, they have easy structure, and they can be really weird without effecting the story/ mythology. I should write shorts to take a break from features way more often. I have a bunch of short story premises banging around too.
I'm in the middle of the first draft of the second script I've attempted to write with a writing partner. Both partnerships have been very different.
The first script I wrote with a partner was the baseball script with Phil. In that partnership we would meet often, we talked, he would give me ideas to add to the story we we creating (the original story was based on his idea), then I would do the writing, give him a hard copy (Phil doesn't do computers), he would give notes, then I would make corrections using the notes I agreed with and debate with him on the points I did not agree with. Another tough thing about that partnership, besides Phil's aversion to technology, was that his memory isn't the best so I would have to debate him on the same point several times. A cool thing about the whole ordeal was, because Phil's hearing wasn't great and he didn't want to meet at the usual coffee shop (he doesn't drink the stuff), we met at a baseball field, which was cool because of the content of the script, but also after a couple meetings Phil told me to look up at the name on the backstop and it turns out we were meeting at Pote Field, Phil's last name is Pote, we met at the baseball field named after the guy I was meeting with.
And it's not like he did it to show off or anything, he's a really humble guy and was kind of embarrassed almost to tell me, he just loved to meet there and it was convenient for both of us. Plus it was quiet so he could hear me and the weather was always nice.
My current writing partner is a guy I'm working on The End. with, a roommate of mine from the LAFSC. In this case we both write new pages, he's probably written more fresh pages than I have so far, and we send them back and forth then I tweak and polish them just because I have more experience. He wrote the outline that we're working off of but we've talked about everything every step of the way.
They've both been really positive experiences, I also would like to work with a partner who has more writing experience than me. It would be like training with a better athlete, it would elevate my game more than me having the final say like I have had in these past two partnerships.
Happenstances is looking very promising. I'm not going to get my hopes up but in a perfect world where everything works out ideally it would be shot in 2011. I don't expect that but I am really optimistic.
My goal (it's important to me to set goals and deadlines) is to finish up these two projects I'm currently writing, at least a first draft of the one and a possibly final draft of the other (no draft is a final draft until the movie is locked in editing, but a "final" draft that my Producer can attach to the business plan). I would love to write a new spec starting at the beginning of the year so I would have a bunch of things in my pocket to just give to my manager, enter in contests, etc, etc when my baby is born so I don't have to necessarily be thinking of new ideas and writing, just promoting all the things I've already written.
aka Pastor Jones: Heavenly Voices
, and it's Christmas time, why not give away a copy of that too? 1) Don't be so greedy, 2) There is an improvised joke that was not in the script I wrote that irks me so much that I don't really talk about that movie too much anymore, I explain the situation in an old blog post here. So Pastor Jones it is.
