Reflections

At some point next week, I’m going to have to do a recap of all the amazing short films I saw while on the festival circuit this year, and thanks to some moderation gigs I got volunteering for an Academy-Award qualifying festival. Films like Charlie Schmidlin’s Gossamer, and Shanrica Evans’ Clarissa, and Tomer Shushan’s White Eye. On the comedy side, How to Fire Someone (with Jules and Jonas) by Mike Lars White is a stroke of brilliance, and Chris Elena’s Audio Guide is a perfect mix of the charming and surreal. It was a privilege to come upon such a high quality of shorts over the past year. Hopefully by the time someone else stumbles upon this blog, all of these shorts will be widely available online.

Right now, my current screenplay is getting excoriated in my writer’s group, which is a bummer because it’s a highly personal screenplay. It doesn’t have an active enough protagonist, it’s not “happy” enough, the character motivations are unclear — but I feel like there’s some meaning in it, something of value, and I’m going to continue to write it anyway.

Despite my chosen career path, I’m still filled with enormous fear at my prospects. It’s anxiety-inducing. My experience with my writer’s group has me rethinking my entire career, but even with this feedback, I still want to get up and write, and research projects, and study movies, and make films. Even without support, I’d still be doing these actions anyway. So it’s like, now I have to put myself in a position — financially, socially, emotionally — to be able to do these actions, so I can feel fulfilled. If I couldn’t write consistently, if I was too tired or busy or whatever, I don’t know what I’d do, and a lack of reception isn’t going to stop me from doing so.