I really don’t know what to write and I don’t want to write anymore because when I write I start thinking and when I start thinking I don’t have any good thoughts.
I’ve realized the filmmaking process is one that consists of having many different decisions and then either mulling over them for years and waiting for someone to tell you they’re good enough or immediately acting on them.
One of these options makes me uncomfortable, but the other one makes me want to crawl into a hole and die, which is how I felt when writing the script for my short film The Animals.
If you’ve read my previous post, you know I was having trouble translating the world of my mind and the world around me into the abstract metaphorical world of the camera. I was thinking about it… and thinking about it… and thinking about it…
Can I give you guys some advice? Sometimes, when someone is having a really hard time being their own worst critic, the solution is not to remind them how much they fucked up with their time management and how they need to be filming right away, or they might fail their media class. Sometimes, the solution is not even to give that person advice about how they can plan for filming or fix their story. Sometimes, the solution is just to listen.
No matter how much it seems like I want advice, I think I really just want somebody to listen. And, like, tell me every idea I have is amazing and that I should go for it because I’m Andrei Tarkovsky reincarnated.. duh.
This might sound unrealistic. If you ask someone for an opinion on your script, they might, and this is a little crazy, say what they actually think about it – instead of knighting you as an experimental genius. And, you can’t depend on that. At a certain point you have to trust that you are an experimental genius, not a 16 year old high schooler like these losers want you to think.
To be clear, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take feedback. I’m saying that there’s a fine line between wanting feedback and wanting motivation that often gets blurred in my own mind.
And then I couldn’t think anymore so I did transcendental meditation and talked to my therapist who told me to kung fu chop my way into a new reality and that new reality would be one where I filmed even though I had no storyboards…or a script….or actors…. or possibly even, without a camera!
And guess what? I did it! The other day I was in a thinking spiral of no thoughts (centered around my film) and so I said fuck it i’m filming. I am not, however, ‘making a film’ if you know what I mean. So, I filmed something and it was certainly something.
Showed my original intent for the script? No.
Better then nothing? Yes.
Communicates an overwhelming sense of loneliness and insecurity that comes from living in a world that expects you to place yourself in a defined social category? No.
Has dancing pigeons? Yes.
It’s a thing and I’m so happy it’s a thing, but right now it is not the complete thing I think it has the potential to be. How do I make it become that? Probably with drawing storyboards… or i don’t know.. Maybe finding an actor?
I hate this. I hate thinking. I’m going to turn in this post now and it will be super ok and maybe awesome and then i’ll film something else and that will be okay and my whole film will be okay and maybe I’ll make somebody feel seen and maybe I won’t and it will all be okay and if it’s not, that’s okay too!
