So after the failure that was this semester I've gone into over time with trying to build Blueroof Productions. I have half a dozen project I'm working on every day trying to get us moving in the right direction and I think that possibly Ashley was right. I'm taking on too much, by the end of the day I feel exhausted. Writing has a way of taking a mental toll on you that drains you more than you would ever believe. Now try writing four different projects a day, it will kill you! But no pain no gain. If you want to make it in this world you have to work your ass off. No one will do it for you.
When it comes to writing I find the hardest part is the first few lines. It has to be good, it has to draw people in and nothing in this world is as scary as a blank page. Something about starting a project makes it seem that much harder, it is almost like your brain does everything it can to keep you from starting. Now I just need to figure out a way to combat this. I feel so worn out and all I've done today is write, it's a nice problem to have. Hopefully I can finish these scripts soon and we can start production on the radio plays. On a side note, more and more I notice that people in my life hate religion and people who believe in God. Now I'm Catholic, that being said I've never been one for religion. I think it is largely flawed and a means to control people. That being said I believe in God 100%. There is no doubt in my mind that he exists and looks over us, doesn't do anything for us, he makes us do things for ourselves, how else would we learn? After all life is nothing more than a learning experience and failure is the best way to learn. Why does God let bad things happen in the world? Because we make the bad things happen, because how do we learn if not through hardship? Life is hard, that isn't proof that there is no God. People who believe that God doesn't exist because life is hard are lazy people who want a magical being to take them by the hand and solve all their problems for them. That isn't God's job. He gave us life, he gave us the chance to make something of ourselves on this world, why should he do everything else for us as well? I live my life with the simple thought, God helps those who help themselves. I don't normally talk about God or my faith because it is something very personal. Besides there is nothing I hate more than people who try to convert other people to their faith. So I don't do it. If someone wants to talk about it I'm open to discussion but it has to be a discussion. A respectful intellectual conversation. I'm done talking to religious bigots who feel the need to convince me that my faith is wrong, that I need to think like them. I don't try to convert you so stop trying to convert me. If you are so sure in your beliefs than why do you feel such a strong need to convince me? Maybe that is something you should look into. I think the most fanatical zealots by in large are born agains and atheist. They can't seem to accept that people believe something other than what they think and they feel the need to attack people none stop. Even people who are friends of mine feel this need. This has been bothering me since a friend came into my home and told me that the world needed to burn my church to the ground. That my people are the source of all the problems in the world. If you ask me that's a great friend. I would never tell him something like that, but he felt he had the right to come into my home and say it. Welcome to America.
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So I've been talking about the radio plays that we are going to be starting soon, mainly Crusaders and the WarZone universe. Those will be coming early next year, but I've been thinking about other scripts that would be better as radio plays than films or shorts. I have one called the Fall that I wrote for a class and even tried to sell to Amazon, don't ask. I don't have the budget to make that right now but I could do a radio play off of it and maybe after that I could do some fan films. The first thing I ever wrote, around the same time as the original short story about Crusaders was a film about the whirlwind from the Buffyverse. The next thing was an X-Men movie, and even as a novice writer it made more sense than those Fox movies.
I was thinking that maybe a radio play podcast along the line of the black list where we read scripts for series that we would like to write for. Along the line of specs that TV writers use to write back in the day. Before the norm became pilots. Maybe even do some pilots. Right now it's just an idea but one that I really like. As always I love to hear your thoughts Blueroof Nation. Thanks for reading. Watching the mid season final of the Flash shows me just how much emotional range a show can have. Now don't think this is a review, I just, I can't help but feel inspired when watching that show. When writing, even sci-fi, the heart of the story should always be characters. The plot is important but it should complement the characters not over ride them. Flash is a great reminder of that.
While listening to Scriptnotes Podcast they were talking about world building. This is something that I've been working on for some time with Crusaders and WarZone. They were talking about the differences between building from the top down vs building from the bottom up. Now I've always tried to write character first but when it comes to my worlds I've always built top down. Before I put pen to paper I try to have everything figured out from the dawn of time to the far future. In scriptnotes they were talking about how the best way to go about things is to build from the bottom upwards. It got me thinking, if you build a universe using the characters as the bases than that would mean building bottom up. I don't know how my building top down can jell with that. It's going to be interesting as I continue to grow both worlds to see how writing through characters works inside of a world built top down. It's going to be an interesting journey. http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-batman-in-the-high-castle So I was checking out the Hide Over There podcast, in particular episode 41 The Dr. is in. It was really funny, if you guys don't listen to it, well get off your ass and listen to it already. As I said it was really funny. Dr. Sean was on it and even gave Clean Jeans a shout out. How cool is that? Called us racist which is a whole other topic but everything else he said about us was very cool. I can't tell you how awesome it is to be just sitting there listening to a podcast and hear your name come up, hear your best friends name come up or better yet hear the name of your show come up. It was a new exciting experience. So do me a favor and check them out! http://hideoverthere.com/
The death of a laptop is a very stressful time. Even more so when it drags it out. Little by little it starts to go. First it starts to shut it self off randomly when not plugged in. Then it won't stay on at all if it isn't plugged in. Then the bloody charger stops working all together. Lucky I had an old laptop charger that saved the day but it won't charge it at all. Now if it isn't plugged in even for a second it will die. Die!!!!
Now if all of that wasn't bad enough it now won't play video files without freezing every few minutes. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? The internet and my Audio recording app keeps crashing and the whole bloody laptop has critical errors every few hours. It is a very slow death but a death none the less. It is beyond painful. I'm finally closing in on the end of the Christmas pod. I think this might just be the most complicated podcast I've ever worked on. To be fair the 3 parter of Clean Jeans that we just recorded with The Uncanny Fans is most likely a close second.
Blueroof Productions podcast division is starting to grow by leaps and bounds. I can't wait to show the world all the cool stuff we have coming up. Paranormal Investigations should be returning shortly along with new episodes of , Astonishing Flashbacks but the podcast I'm looking forward to the most is Sunnydale Live. There is one episode that is in editing that is along the lines of the first 6 but the new episodes after that are going to be completely different and I think you guys are going to love it. My baby Crusaders is well into the writing stage and should start recording soon which will be but the first of many radio plays Blueroof Productions is working on. This is such an exciting time for us and I can't wait to share it all with you guys. So last night we made a special episode of Clean Jeans. It was 3 and a half hour podcast. It was beyond fun! More than likely we will split it into 3 episodes. I hope you guys enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it.
In other news Yesterday we had the last video club meeting and no one came other than the officers. It was a rude awakening for me. I've been trying so hard to turn it into something that the club members said they wanted. Till they had to do something about. It was a rude awakening. But not the end. I have one more semester and I plan on doing everything I set out to do. I think this club can still become something special. You can only hold things in for so long before you lose control and blow up. It is a simple fact of life. At school I have been spending the past month keeping a project together more or less by myself. I pushed for a group project because that is what film is. It's a team effort. My problem has always been that I like to work fast and I need everything to be perfect. So if my team isn't moving at a speed that I need them to or doing the job to my satisfaction I tend to step in and do it for them. This has lead to people assuming that I will do everything for them.
This project has had more than it's share of problems from the start but I have tried and tried to keep it on track. To fix everything as we have gone along. It hasn't gone well. I could have done more. I knew going in that I was going to have to step in for the director a great deal of the time, but I thought it would mostly to pick up her slack. Instead she pretty much told me day one that she couldn't do it. I was doing my job and hers and she wouldn't do anything without other people telling her that what she was doing was correct. It was pushing my stress to an all time high to the point where I haven't slept. I've been physically ill but I pushed through. I believe that you should always finish what you start. That brings us to what is now yesterday, when I didn't finish. North Lake College, in the last week before finals decides to change the police on TA's. We can no longer have the TA's help us after hours or we will have to pay them. Out of our pockets. The reason is, from what the TA's tell me, that the school works them 40 hours a week but only pays them for 14. They have started to complain, as they should. So the teachers take it out on the students. Gotta love that. Now our actor could only film after 7 yesterday and today and thanks to the new policy we can't film past 8. Do you see the problem? I spoke with the director to try and figure out what we can do, she knocked over a plant on accident and I cracked a joke. She snapped at me and I lost it. I told her as calmly as I could not to speak to me like that and she called me an asshole. I walked away and checked with another of our teammates. I decided to tell the teacher about the director putting all of the work on me while she did nothing but first I wanted to give our other team member a heads up that the teacher might get mad at our group. The director followed me out to the hallway and I lost it. Before I knew what I was doing I was screaming all the things that have been building up in me since last semester when she threw me and my friend under the table for a mistake that she made. We talked it out and made peace and went to Andy to see what can be done. We told him what was going on and he said that it was too late for us to finish now. He was upset that we didn't already finish filming. The reason being our actress kept showing up late and changing her schedule on us last minute. When trying to get a lot of people together for anything the hardest thing in the world is someone changing their availability at the last second over and over again. Andy told us that I wasn't allowed to use my actors on this project. That real directors don't use the same actors over and over again. I was surprised to learn that Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez, Joss Whedon, Sylvester Stallone, Sam Raimi and countless others aren't real directors. That was a real eye opener for me. My actors who show up on time with their lines memorized and ready to work are not professionals but the actors he wants us to use who show up late, if at all and wait till on set to learn their lines are. The things we learn in college right? We tried to see what else we could do if we couldn't pass. I had planned an emergency project for this weekend but Andy said no. He said it had to be this project or he will fail us. He said it had to be perfect to the script or he will fail us. So no cutting scenes! He did everything in his power to tie our hands. Why? That is the million dollar question. He said we needed to be able to do professional level work. I pointed out the Four Points Film that I made with my people in a weekend but he said it doesn't count. It's better quality than anyone turned in the previous semester minus Davis's film, which should be released soon and is amazing! Be sure to check out Final Frame! Anyways, my film fit everything he asks for but he turned it down because it wasn't done over a long period of time. The man who puts his own public access TV show over his students education is telling me that I don't work hard enough. I spent a big part of this semester trying to get over my ego. I have never been the type of person who can go to an authority figure for help. That isn't me but this semester I have tried. I've gone to him time and again and all I get is well that sucks or a you will figure it out. He even told me don't try so hard. Do something easy. I took that advice told him what I had in mind for my easy project he said it sounded good and then in front of the whole class told me that it was bullshit and he was surprised he thought I could turn that in. Uh what? To be fair this is the same guy who sabotaged my project last semester by telling the TA's we can't use equipment on the only day we had our location because we didn't have a producer to talk to him about the project. A little back story he fired our producer a hour before and wouldn't let anyone else take the job. You see the problem? He also refused to answer our emails but emailed our DP about working on his public access show. But what else do you expect from a man who calls himself a teacher and yet uses an artistic kids last name as an insult to mean fuck up? That sounds like a good teacher right? I'm so tired of dealing with all this bullshit. I just want to be around like minded people and create something, is that so much to ask? I've spent this past semester as president of the video club and I've tried to turn it into what the students said they wanted but when I presented them with opportunities they all passed them by. It sometimes feels like no one there wants what I want. That these people believe that life will just give them everything they want if they wish for it hard enough. Where is the work ethic? Where is the passion? I'm sorry for this rant and if you guys read all the way through it than you have my thanks and love. You're continued support means the world to me and I'd be lost without all of you. Just remember that everything is nothing more than moments in time and the bad will pass along with the good. You just have to get through it and keep going. Time is the one thing in life you can't control. It keeps moving no matter how much you wish it would slow down. It has a way of tricking you. When you are young you feel like you have all the time in the world but as it starts to pass you by you start to notice that you don't have all the time in the world. You only have a short amount of time to get everything you want done, well done. So don't waste time. Even if you just work a little towards your goal everyday it's a start. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't fall into the trap I feel into, don't wait for your life to start because it will be over before you know it. All you have is the blink of an eye.
It's amazing how much we take the little things for granted in life. I always just assume people are like me. I love to be around people and have no problem speaking my mind and taking charge of situations. Last night I was working on a short film as a producer for a director who is unbelievably timid. To the point where I ended up directing it for her. I wasn't trying to, in fact I tried not to but when I didn't step in nothing got done. It was take over or waste the night.
On top of that our light guy didn't know how to readjust the lights on the fly. I would have to stop what I was doing and run over to fix them. My friend who was running camera pointed out to me how far we have come from our first semester where I didn't know how to do any of this stuff, now I'm a pro. It wasn't so much school that taught me as it was being on set and dealing with equipment. Getting your hands dirty is the only way to really learn something. Standardize testing where you have to memorize stuff using multiple choice and true and false doesn't teach you a thing but making people work with equipment and create something using the knowledge is the best way to educate them. I have learned so much from my limited time on sets and I can't wait to learn more. |
AuthorJonathan Gutheinz vents about everything under the sun. Archives
August 2022
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