Overdue for an Update

It’s going to be brief, but better than nothing!

1) Worked on a scene from a pilot today. Two characters with goals. How do they go about achieving their goals truthfully under the circumstances? I first learned about the intersection of goals, truth, and circumstances in a community college drama class. In my screenwriting courses, I remember talking about things like emotional needs and stakes and conflicts, but never about behaving truthfully under a particular set of circumstances, which is such a core component of character behavior, and writing as a whole. I would like the audience to believe how my characters act so that they can identify with and empathize with them, and not be taken out of the journey of the film.

2) I’m trying to make a short film of my trip to New York in January. I shot footage of my arrival at the airport airport because I thought it would be a good ending. I was so convinced that I was going to put a different, fresh take on my trip at the time of shooting the footage, and it would be seen in the video. Well, I went over the footage I had shot at the airport yesterday, and realized that it didn’t fit with the rest of what I had shot in New York, like, at all. It was like experiencing some weird, alien appendage I was planning on attaching to this other thing with pieces that so organically fit together — so I deleted everything I shot at the airport. All of it. Didn’t look back. It was just funny how I thought that at the time that what I was shooting would give the film new dimension, and then this material couldn’t even be used after going through all of my clips. Whatever; that’s just sometimes the way it works.

3) I’m reading the pilot for the first season of True Detective and it’s just unbelievably good.