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Don't take your eye off the pocketwatch
Apr. 23rd, 2010 02:37 pmWhen I got home from work yesterday, there was an envelope waiting from Des, carefully padded and tissued to preserve the (beautiful, unbroken) wax seal on the letter inside. Also included: three herbal teabags with a mixture of licorice root, cinnamon bark, chamomile, and various other potions (including St. John's Wort; I didn't check for Vervaine or Valerian). The result: I still woke up about four times (all Ciro-motivated), but I wasn't as upset about it. Three cheers for better living through chemistry (or witchcraft).
I am close enough to the end of the Hayseeds script that I have to actively stop myself from worrying about practical matters -- when would be the best time of year to shoot, what location, how big a crew, who I want to cast, how long the shoot is, and a projected budget. These questions are paralyzing and they depress me. It's a microbudget script, but it needs around $10,000 just to assemble all the people I need for the amount of time I need them; it's also something I don't want to get stuck producing and directing at the same time, thus focusing on neither. I could probably get at least half of the money together by August, but that would mean not putting that money toward student loans, and it's hard to calculate whether I come out ahead financially; too many variables. The knowledge that almost everyone I went to school with put more than that into their under-20-minute films doesn't make me feel better. In any case, I have to persuade myself not to think about "how" while I'm still finishing "what."
Wrote a letter to my only remaining grandparent -- my only remaining relative from that generation, aside from her cousins and brothers. The other wings of the family are firmly expired. I like her a good deal and have no trouble talking to her, but I am less similar to her than I am to my other forebears -- but she is outgoing and personable and doesn't mind this so much. When I write to her (which I do regularly), it's always particularly clear how similar I am to my dad and his dad, and letters end up being more about things they would like than things she would like. But I suppose she likes them anyway, since she liked her son and husband.
Nice e-mail from an educator at the DMA pointing out that one of the exercizes I did with elementary school students was the first time most of them had ever gotten to take photos -- to wield the camera instead of being in front of it, and to get to make decisions about what is in frame and how it was framed. This was very exciting to them and hadn't occurred to me when I was doing it.
I am close enough to the end of the Hayseeds script that I have to actively stop myself from worrying about practical matters -- when would be the best time of year to shoot, what location, how big a crew, who I want to cast, how long the shoot is, and a projected budget. These questions are paralyzing and they depress me. It's a microbudget script, but it needs around $10,000 just to assemble all the people I need for the amount of time I need them; it's also something I don't want to get stuck producing and directing at the same time, thus focusing on neither. I could probably get at least half of the money together by August, but that would mean not putting that money toward student loans, and it's hard to calculate whether I come out ahead financially; too many variables. The knowledge that almost everyone I went to school with put more than that into their under-20-minute films doesn't make me feel better. In any case, I have to persuade myself not to think about "how" while I'm still finishing "what."
Wrote a letter to my only remaining grandparent -- my only remaining relative from that generation, aside from her cousins and brothers. The other wings of the family are firmly expired. I like her a good deal and have no trouble talking to her, but I am less similar to her than I am to my other forebears -- but she is outgoing and personable and doesn't mind this so much. When I write to her (which I do regularly), it's always particularly clear how similar I am to my dad and his dad, and letters end up being more about things they would like than things she would like. But I suppose she likes them anyway, since she liked her son and husband.
Nice e-mail from an educator at the DMA pointing out that one of the exercizes I did with elementary school students was the first time most of them had ever gotten to take photos -- to wield the camera instead of being in front of it, and to get to make decisions about what is in frame and how it was framed. This was very exciting to them and hadn't occurred to me when I was doing it.
