Working Hard, or Hardly Working?

Gather round boys and girls, we have a much-needed update.

We've been hard at work on the movie, taking time out of busy schedules to write for no money. So we can't really say it's been paying off, but we're enjoying ourselves. We have pretty much half of the movie written in treatment form, and we have a good idea of what happens in the rest of it. For those that don't know, a treatment is the movie written out in story form and is usually 3-4 pages for a feature-length script. So we have a long way to go for the 120 pages of a typical screenplay, but we're making steady progress. Once we figured out the major character Jason mentioned in his last post, the entire first act fell into place. That meant we had to reconsider most of the third act, but it's going to be a lot better than we originally planned.

One thing that became clear about the third act is that we want it to culminate at Jeff Mach's Wicked Winter Renaissance Faire. Wicked Faire has been described in many ways. Jessie likes to say that it is "teh awesome," and that it is a con at which people from many overlapping subcultures get together for fun and profit. At Wicked Faire one is likely to run into rennies, trekkies, Star Wars nerds, comic book geeks, cosplayers, goths, gamers, steampunkers, erotic hypnotists, zydrate addicts, and kinky people. It's a 16+ event and there's an 18+ room for various adults-only wares and performers. We're going to be at this year's Faire in Whippany, NJ from Feb. 20-22 doing "research" for the movie. We promise to work hard and not have any fun.

Also, there's going to be a shadowcasting of Repo! The Genetic Opera, and the co-creator/co-star/artist Terrance Zdunich will be there signing autographs, selling zydrate, and hopefully coming to our party! *Fangirl moment*

Anyway, back to the movie. One of the scenes we recently wrote for the second act provides an un-clumsy place to explain a lot about polyamory and how it works for real people (even though our characters are figments of our imaginations, they're still real to us!).

That's it for now, kids. Back to the salt mines. Maybe we'll see you at Wicked Faire!

Syncopation

Sometimes a character will surprise you.

We have been planning our characters out for about two months now. We had them pretty well figured out. All of a sudden, one of the characters didn't feel right. I didn't even realize it was happening until it had already happened. It hit me like a ton of brick-shaped character development. All of a sudden, things made sense, and I didn't even realize that they made no sense. Because this character suddenly changed, we've had to change our time line a bit. I think the changes worked in a big way, but time will be the true judge.

One of the best things about this minor overhaul to our script is how we (Jessie and I) were completely in sync. I realized that we needed a change about halfway through Saturday. I felt from the beginning that there was going to be an argument over this. I prepared myself for the argument, came up with every reason I could to justify changing something we had worked on for two months. Finally we were able to get together and talk about the script and I was prepared for a knock down drag out. After all of this, Jessie listened to what I had to say and agreed. She had been feeling that there was something off about that character as well. I've never felt like I was on such a similar wavelength with a writing partner. I'm looking forward to all the work that needs to be done.

Really, It's All About the Money

First of all, pardon my inconsistency with writing on a regular basis. I'm a student as well as a nursing assistant, and my schedule can be a little crazy. Jason and I have also decided that, although this blog is important, we won't have anything to write about if we spend our precious time on the blog instead of actually writing the movie.

I probably won't always write on the same topics as Jason, but I think writing about why we want to make movies, and this movie specifically, is a good topic for the beginning of a blog about a movie.

My desire isn't as straightforward as Jason's. Like I said in my last post, I've been writing and making up stories since I was a young child. I never really thought seriously about writing a screenplay; I always fancied myself as a novelist or a poetess. However, I've always been interested in the performance arts. I took dance classes from ages 4 to 18, I took piano lessons after school, and played cello and sang in school. As a little girl, I had a trunk full of costume pieces and my friends and I would make up a story, dress up in improvised costumes and put on a show. Theater has always appealed to me. I also frickin' love movies.

I used to be a literature major. The study of literature involves a lot of looking at the devices the author uses and what messages they convey. Not only do I find this really fun and interesting, I'm also pretty good at it. Film allows for even more interpretation. Not only does one get to look at the words, the plot, the characters and the themes, but one can also examine the cinematography, the blocking, the production design, the lighting, etc., etc.

This not only appeals to me as a watcher of movies, but also as a writer. Having that many more tools to work with potentially makes the process of depicting a story richer and perhaps even more meaningful. I say this with complete and total respect for novelists and poets; I love those forms of writing as well, of course. Verse and prose allow for layers of meaning in different forms (metaphor, imagery, even meter and rhyme), and film does as well.

Plus, you know, it's fun. Jason and I have gotten a lot of work done on our story, but it's enjoyable work, even when we disagree about something. I anticipate that the rest of the process will be just as fun (and probably more).

Not to mention the potential for fame and fortune.