I needed a whiteboard upon which to scrawl my brilliant ideas. But, before purchasing a new one, I trawled the local thrift stores and Behold! $1.98 at the Quality Thrift Store. Before it became the pristine blank canvas you see in the picture (also: my adorable daughter, desperately reaching for the markers), it was covered in near-permanent marks that had embedded themselves into the surface. The thing hadn’t been cleaned in years.
After pouring copious amounts of rubbing alcohol and coca-cola on the board in an attempt to get rid of the previous owner’s scribblings, we finally discovered that nail polish remover did the trick. Helpful hint: combining rubbing alcohol, coke, and nail polish remover together in a small, unventilated room, is seriously unwise.
The board now sits behind my desk, ready for my scatterbrained thoughts.
That’s what I’ve decided to use as an operating title for my film. Now, I can refer to it as “Project Echo” instead of the more generic and abstract “My Screenplay” or “My Film” or “My Movie Thing I’m Making.” And, as with many ideas, the inspiration came from somebody else.
One of the friends I made during my stint as a film critic (which I still do from time to time) was Daniel Getahun, a talented and prolific writer who holds court at Getafilm. Back in September of last year, he started a new series of articles called “Reel Life,” in which he collected links to real life stories that he thought would make good films. One of his links was to an article about a woman who can’t forget - literally. Her brain is flooded with decades of memories, and if you ask her what she did on August 1st, 1977, she’ll be able to tell you in fine detail. She’s also written a book, appropriately titled “The Woman Who Can’t Forget.”
Reading that article planted a seed in my brain that has continued to grow over the past 7 months. While my current vision for the film bears no resemblance whatsoever to this particular woman or her story, the concept of a person who is perpetually plagued by their past memories remains the core of Project Echo (which refers to how the main character experiences the flood of his past memories).
So Daniel, if you’re reading this, I’m totally giving you an Executive Producer credit or something, seeing as you gave me the idea for it in the first place.
As if I hadn’t loaded my plate down with enough already, I’m currently editing a short film that my good friend, NYC alum Mike Koehler, co-directed this past April. Entitled “The Sheol Express,” it’s a hyper-stylized look at one man’s journey into the unknown aboard a fantastical railway car. Think Agatha Christie’s “The Orient Express” meets Hayao Miyazai’s “Spirited Away.” Mike and his co-director, Ryan Patch, along with their dedicated crew, did a bang-up job of bringing this world to life.
Shot on the new RED camera, “Sheol” looks fantastic. I’m currently in the deep dark pit of logging all of the footage (there are 267 individual clips that need to be labeled and categorized), wishing I had an assistant editor I could saddle the task with, but soon enough I’ll get to the actual business of editing, which is the fun stuff.
And how am I fitting this in? Well, in the mornings I’m working on my screenplay (I need to give this project an operating name), and in the evenings I’m working on “Sheol.” I also try to play videogames from time to time (nothing beats a good zombie vs. human match in Left 4 Dead). And spend time with my family. They like that.
In order to stay on schedule and have a film in production by the time I’m 30 (April 15th, 2010), I’ll need to begin pre-production about 4 months out. In order to begin pre-production, I’ll need a finished script. And in order to have a finished script, I’ll need a first draft (that college degree sure comes in handy sometimes).
I have (hopefully) a clever concept for a story, as well as a bankable star in mind with whom I have a very good relationship. More on all of that later.
I’ll be generous with myself at this stage: I’ll plan to have the first draft written by August 1st. Given a standard length of 120 pages, I’ll need to write a page and a half a day, every day, from now until August. They don’t necessarily have to be good pages; the most important thing is to get the story down on paper.
Claiming I’ll have a feature film in production in a year’s time is audacious. I realize that. But goals and tight deadlines are important for me (it’s the only way this will ever happen). And I’d like to think I have the necessary skills/talents to actually pull it off. That assumption is also audacious, but I won’t know if it’s false until I actually try.
As proof that I can create something at least moderately entertaining, here’s a short film called “The Box” that I wrote and directed a few years ago. I actually made it for that reality show ratings disaster “On the Lot” that Fox effed up in 2007. I’d love to know your (honest) opinions on it. If you follow the link to Vimeo, you can actually watch it in HD.
Objectively speaking, 29 is not very old. I know that. But I’m a year away from 30, and that fact brings with it some sobering thoughts: what have I done with my life? What have I accomplished? What happened to all the big dreams I had when I was 22 and the world was, to put it in the most cliched of terms, my oyster?
On a personal level, I’m very fulfilled. I have a beautiful wife who I love more and more everyday and two of the most gorgeous children you’ve ever laid eyes on (ages 2.5 and 1). I am beyond blessed when it comes to my family.
But on a professional level, I feel lacking. Ever since I was 19 I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker. In the ensuing years I’ve made short films, worked on the set of a major motion picture, filmed a television series in Ecuador, become a somewhat proficient editor (which is what I currently do for a small production company in Oklahoma), and written a fairly prolific amount of film criticism. Depending on how you look at it, it’s not a bad resume. But in terms of accomplishing the dream I had when I was 19, of becoming an actual filmmaker, I’ve done depressingly little.
That’s going to change by the time I’m 30. This blog will chronicle my attempt, over the next year, to get an honest-to-goodness feature film off the ground. In the past I’ve engaged in a pathetic amount of procrastination as well as an unhealthy bit of fear-of-failure. Well, if I fail this time, it will be in front of my friends, family, and all you nice people from the internets who happen to stumble over here.
A few minutes ago, as I was writing my post, I told my wife that this was really scary. “Why?” she asked. “Because I might fail,” I responded.
As if I hadn’t loaded my plate down with enough already, I’m currently editing a short film that my good friend, NYC alum Mike Koehler, co-directed this past April. Entitled 
