The new blog
So, I have a new blog.
You can go over there right now and look at it. It only has one entry, but it is kind of a big deal for me.
When an artist puts her work out for all to see, the feeling is equal parts bliss and equal parts terror. In the moment, it’s probably less bliss than terror. It’s like asking out “the girl”. I am talking about the girl who you have day-dreamed about for two years, the girl whose class schedule you try to copy, the girl for whom you rearrange your life so you can “run into” her outside of band practice … yes, that girl. For the record, very few guys who obsess over girls such as this ever actually ask them out. It’s that terrifying.
When your film is on the screen for the first time in front of a packed house, the audience becomes a living, breathing organism. You hear every cough, every breath, every snicker, every cry. Just like the boy pouring his heart out for the girl, the artist pouring his heart out for the audience is completely aware of every bat of an eye and every uncomfortable twitch.
The boy hopes the girl will accept his heart. The artist hopes the world will accept her heart. One is a relationship between two people. The other is a relationship between a work of art and an audience.
All that to say, I have decided to make a film. I am on page four of a screenplay. Over some period of time, the screenplay will be completed, money will be raised, the film will be made, completed, and somebody will watch it, and I will go from the nervous wreck exposing his life in a blog to a nervous wreck exposing his heart in a theater.
It would be very easy for me to start this venture quietly. It would be very easy for me to not tell anyone. It would also be very easy for me to quit at the first sign of adversity. But now I have to explain myself. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to tell everyone why. My hope is that maybe a couple of people will be interested in what I am doing, and maybe they’ll make it hard to quit.
So the new blog is going to chronicle my effort to make a movie, sink or swim. It’s called The Film Fiasco. Why that title? Because if it’s a success, it’s ironic. If it’s a failure, it’s appropriate. Either way, I am going to put it all out there. I plan on learning something, and if someone else can learn with me, great.
So check it out. Keep checking it out. Tell your friends.
June 10th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Congratulations on moving forward with your dream. I realize this post is a year old but it’s new to me. It is so true that when we put our work out there for people to see it can be a scary thing, but as artists we need to do that so that we can keep going and improve on our work. May God bless you in your endeavors.
Tom Swift