Script Writing

Writing this narrative script is one of the most difficult things I've had to do for Abandoned Allies. Words that typically flow easily for me just are not coming.  The words that do make it to the page feel contrived and questionable.  Why has writing this script been so challenging?

Currently I'm taking a break from it because I've been at it alllllll day long, for two days now, (no, make that months, and probably a whole year that I've been working on it).  I'm ready to pull my hair out.

Writing for this blog is a welcomed relief from the script.  But I'm desperate for sleep tonight so I have to make this a short post.

The narration feels incredibly important.  Perhaps I'm putting too much weight on it, and that's stifling the flow of writing?  I rarely get writers block, and I know that it's impossible to prevent mistakes.  You're just bound to make them as a first time filmmaker.  So, what's my deal?  I'm so frustrated right now.

We have a recording session set for next Tuesday.  I'm scheduled to send the script to a few trusted folks to be sure it's an accurate representation.

Translation: beautiful deadlines are forcing me to quit nitpicking, and finish the thing.  I love deadlines.

Chaotic Space

Deadlines, deadlines. At my full time job, and in life in general, deadlines are not to be missed. It's a sign of keeping your word that you'll meet a deadline, a sign that you're worthy of trust, that you can be held accountable. That, when you give your word, it actually means something. You've made a promise, and it's up to you to keep it.

I keep giving myself hard deadlines so that I can finish a certain stage of the project. I need a date, a deadline, to work towards. My background is in graphic design, which is typically done for a client, which means there's usually a hard deadline. So, you learn to work backwards. If the design is due three months from now, you can set up deadlines for the process: first draft, review, revisions, etc. For the film, though, there is no client. So, these self-imposed deadlines help me keep things moving forward. It's all in my hands right now, and the work of my volunteers can't start until I finish this battle against myself to stop tweaking the screenplay.

Many people have asked why write a screenplay if it's a documentary. I've gotten a lot of questions about that. Well, it's the road map for me and my team. We have 30+ hours of interview footage, a mountain of original images, archived 8mm film, original audio, and eventually original animated graphics and original scores. We have a volunteer team of editors, writers, designers, musicians, managers, marketers, programmers and more that ask to help on a weekly basis. Simply put, the screenplay is a way to make order of the seemingly chaotic space we're in right now.

It's easier to tweak lines of text now, rather than wait until we're down the road. It's easier to battle myself, alone in my house, than drive my editors crazy by asking them to move footage around on the timeline. We are, after all, volunteering so I want to make it fun for everyone. If it starts to feel like work, then they might walk away. That's a very real, very scary thought for me. This group of volunteers is made up of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances. If they feel the need to walk away because it's no longer in their best interest or they have a major conflict in time committments, then that's one thing. But if they feel the need to walk away from the project because it's no longer fun, then that is altogether very different. I can't pay them, so it absolutely must be fun.

So, I want to protect them and give them an enivornment in which they can flourish and do their best work. Work they are proud of, and want to share with their network. Work that builds their portfolio so they can get paid jobs. Great, intelligent, talented people are hard to find. I want to make more films, and I only want the best people on my team. And, I want to take the lessons that I've picked up from my full time job and work in the most effiicent means possible. It's all been about processes for me at work in the past two years, and I've not forgotten those lessons while working on this film.

There comes a time and a place where you have to recognize that you've got it as good as you can get it right now, though. An artist is rarely ever finished with a piece of work. The time to stop tweaking is coming for me soon. I've been working on the screenplay since January, when I returned from my interview with John Plaster in Wisconsin. There is much more work to be done, and I'm holding up the process by tweaking too much.

So, my final deadline is the end of May. I boldy state that I will finish it this week, before my Memorial Day vacation. We shall see, we shall see. Wish me luck, folks. I'm in a battle, and it shall end soon! Man versus self. Who wins?

On the other hand, I must pat myself on the back for just a moment. I've been reviewing the footage and transcripts, and it's quite refreshing to see just how far I've come in the interviewing process.

Previously I mentioned that there are a lot of synergies between my full time job and this film. What I've learned at work, I have applied in my filmmaking. And now, what I have learned on my film, I can apply at work. Interviewing skills help save money, basically. The more talented the interviewer, the faster you get to clips you can use. The faster you get to clips you can use, the less time and money is spent filming and then hunting for those clips.

Think of it in the America's Next Top Model terms. Tyra's always congratulating her models when they get a lot of great photos, especially when they have the final pick in the first few frames. Back in the film days, you wanted a model who could strike a winning pose quickly because it means less money spent on film. Oh, man, I spent so much money on film! Today, even without film, the same rules apply because time is money. The faster you get to the winning end product, the more money you save. The more money a model saves a photographer or creative director, the more jobs she'll book and the more successful she can be. Similarly, the more skilled you are as an interviewer, the more money and time you'll save, allowing you to keep building your portfolio.

If only I had these skills at the beginning of the project. We must live and learn, though. We must learn to yeild to that which we do not know, so that we can grow in the chaotic space. We should surrender to where we are in life, and go into something new open minded and ready to learn. This project, as I previously mentioned, has helped me grow in so many ways. Ways that I will be thankful for the rest of my life. There's no doubt that my world is changing. It's one unbelievable dream come true.

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
--T.S. Elliot

"The ability to let something go, to yield and thence to empty, is essential to growing. New skin does not flourish until the old has been sloughed off."
--Nicola Phillips

Filmmaking: The Work of Art

This is the first screenplay I've ever written in completion.  It's quite an undertaking, and I will confess that I underestimated how much a writer must surely labor over every line and every transition in the story.

So, from time to time, I will look up from my screenplay and day dream to give my mind a moment to explore ideas beyond the story of the Montagnards, Special Forces and Vietnam War.  This can be viewed by some as time that's not productive--but to the artist, it is absolutely necessary because it allows the mind to wander, explore and create the unexpected.

During the past week or two, these moments of exploration continuously bring me to a slowly forming list.  Because of my obsessive reading over the years, I have been told that a person in Hollywood must have a list of favorite movies, because people in the business like to talk about the business of making movies.  While I'm in Raleigh, N.C., making my first documentary with my team of volunteers (a much smaller scale production that a Hollywood blockbuster film), I can completely understand the practice.  It's the same concept of social media: people talk about what interests them and are attracted to people that share what my mom calls common points of reference.  Simply put: it's something to talk about and that gives you a way to feel connected to other people.

Choosing favorites, for me, is really difficult.  I'm an artist.  I don't want to choose one favorite color because I want to use them all at some point.  Regardless, though, I find myself making my own list of favorite movies--for completely different reasons than those books about surviving / thriving in Hollywood told me were important.

Now I find myself reliving the movies I've loved for years, and adding them to my list, because I appreciate them for so much more than just a good movie.  They are true works of art.  Stories that have made me cry or weep uncontrollably, laugh out loud, change my behavior, share a personal joke with the friend that saw it with me, learn about something happening in our world today...the list goes on.

While I've been laboring over the screenplay, I look up from time to time and let my mind wander.  It continues to return to this list of favorite movies, and why I love them so much.  I now understand, from my own smaller scale experience, how much work went into creating them.  Labors of love that created the final work of art.  I only hope our final, finished product will be one that moves our audience as much as my favorites have moved me.

The story of the Montagnards is a beautiful, yet tragic one.  When I tell people what it's about, I usually say it's a story of brotherhood, family, love, sacrifice, war, death, promises, policy, glory and freedom.  It's about a group of people and how they've adapted to the changes around them.  I only hope, with the deepest genuine promise I can offer, that we do the story justice.  And I think that's an honest fear that all artists face, no matter their medium.