Been thinking a lot about branding recently. It’s a topic that comes up a lot in indie filmmaking, because it’s important that all of your projects’ assets follow similar themes, colors, etc so that people can easily tell what accounts and posts are yours. It’s also something pretty integral to my ambitions in the media and entertainment world, because online, personal brand is everything. Continue reading “Fame, Branding, and Chubby Women” →

In an attempt to make the laziest possible February vlog due to the circumstances I laid out in my last blog, I asked Twitter for questions I could answer. Hopefully by the time THIS blog goes up, that video will already be live…. HERE. Continue reading “I don’t have hobbies” →

Once more, I’ve waited until the absolute last minute to post this month. In my defense, there were extenuating circumstances which include but are not limited to the fact that I’m moving in four days rather unexpectedly and the fact that this very website was down for almost a week with me.

The website being down was likely a result of my having a new blog window open for over a week which at some point stopped responding to the rest of the website because I was logged in and out and closed and opened my computer and browser so often, which then caused an internal error that spread as I failed to deal with the initial issue. Big props to my dad for fixing in fifteen minutes what plagued me and the 24 hour Hostgator support for over a week. Anyways- the site’s back up and that procrastination excuse is gone.

The moving rather unexpectedly is still a thing I’m contending with. I haven’t even been at my current apartment for a year but they informed us we wouldn’t be able to renew our lease because the building wants to renovate. So back on the moving grind, where thankfully we found a place within two blocks of where we are now after a few weeks of searching and panicking. Fortunately, it’s bigger and in theory a better place to live. Unfortunately, we have to move in the middle of a work week. So if anyone in the NYC area is free next Thursday…. I’ll buy you beer and pizza if you help! You only have to take boxes/minimal furniture DOWN stairs, as my new place is on the first floor.

In spite of my already having a creative project in the can in 2018, it’s been a frustrating start to my year. I had savings goals and creative goals and personal goals and all of them have basically been put on hold because of the move and will be put on hold for an indeterminate amount of time. I hate not planning for big changes like this, and I HATE moving in the city. Makes me wistful for the days of moving around in Oregon, where everyone had a car and a nearly guaranteed parking spot and elevators or at least less stories to houses and apartments.

I also tried to record a vlog two days ago, since I’m late on that as well, but it was out of focus and the audio randomly cut out halfway through so now I have to find time to do that AGAIN. How’s my 2018?? Frustrating.

This is enough writing for a blog for now. See you in a day or two for the next one because I’m running out of time and like hell am I conceding a NYR this early in the year.

Toodles!

This film is currently crowdfunding to pay everyone in this post for their incredible work! Throw us a few bucks (or more), get yourself some fun incentives, and support independent artists!

In November 2016, after a conversation I can’t fully recall, my friend Colin and I decided to write a horror short film together. He’d just finished a stint as Carl in season 2 of Brains and as Kevin in Ace and Anxious and we knew we enjoyed working together and that we were both writers. He was a big fan of horror and I’d been wanting to try my own hand at it, so it was decided: a short film in the horror genre with an idea of our production restrictions in mind as we developed the script. We knew we wanted to keep the cast small, the location singular, and the horror psychological, and within a month we’d written the first draft of what would become Buy In, following a charming young salesman and a strange, lonely traveler who find themselves locked in a struggle for control over their own destinies. Continue reading “Buy In: a reflection over a year in the making” →

The title may be uninspired, but so is this blog. And yet, I’ve decided to try blogging twice a month and posting a video once a month again and it’s already almost the end of the month, so. Here we are.

I’m posting this blog today and not at a more inspired time because it has been a mad dash of a month for me. Last year around this time I’d found a new therapist and had plans essentially every other night with friends and potential collaborators. This year I spent the month working at Stareable (where we’ve been slammed) and preparing for my next short film shoot, which will take place NEXT WEEKEND! Safe to say I’ve been keeping busy.

The short film is called “Buy In,” a psychological horror film co-written by me and my good pal Colin Hinckley, about a predatory traveling salesman and a lonely traveler. It’ll be our most cramped set yet, with three actors and three to four crew members crammed in a single tiny hotel room, and our most ambitious shoot, at 19 pages with tons of set ups. I feel good, though. We’ve all worked together before and we’ve planned, as always, within an inch of our lives.

I’ll be directing, something I’ve been wanting to do more of ever since I had such a blast on Ace and Anxious. Speaking of Ace and Anxious, I’ve gotten to attend two screenings for in the past two weeks. If you’re curious, you can peep a live Q&A I did after one of them here:

I feel… good-adjacent about this year. I’m set to wrap principal photography of a new short film before the end of the first month, with scripts for at least two more projects ready to go. Both shows I’m producing are solidly in pre-production, one of which has shoot dates planned already and one of which that’s currently finalizing casting. Work is busy but going well, and my latest web series airs its season finale in a week. I am dedicated to making this year my most creatively fulfilling one yet, and so far, I’m as on track as possible.

I’ll probably do one of my sappy thank you blogs about Buy In for my second blog of the year, so look out for that on like the 30th I guess.

This has been a waste of space blog, but it counts, and we’re all just gonna have to live with that.

2017 was a rough year and yet I still ended it with 8 completed resolutions and 2 partially completed ones, so I’m ready to take 2018 by storm.

Resolutions: 2018 Edition

1. Produce 2 new projects I write to completion. Last year, I only completed Sam and Pat Are Depressed, which was awesome, but not as much as I wanted to have to show for. Keeping this resolution the same because I do want at least 2 new projects for my portfolio by the end of THIS year.
2. Write a feature-length screenplay. Either by completing my partially completed one or writing a new one. Lots of writing opportunities require a feature-length script, so I need one.
3. Post a blog twice a month and a personal YouTube video once a month. This worked out SO well this year, forcing me to make smaller projects on a consistent basis. It also led me to write some really interesting things I might not have written otherwise, like this blog about my relationship with food.
   1. NEW VIDEO RULE: At least half of the videos from 2018 have to be filmed outside of my apartment, and ALL of them have to have a least one shot more cinematic than “tripod with me in the middle of frame.” If I’m serious about pursuing directing, I need to know more about composing shots.
4. Write 2 new TV scripts- one original pilot, one spec script. I always need new scripts to keep myself sharp for TV writing, and I have also only ever written one spec script which is WILDLY out of date, and spec scripts are a requirement for most fellowships, so if I ever decide to apply for one, this will be useful.
5. Close caption all previous (and new 2018) projects. Making my projects more accessible to people with hearing disabilities is an easy enough process, it’s just time-consuming. So making it a full year project seems appropriate.*
6. Save $1500. After losing my job at MTV, burning through my entire savings account during my four months of unemployment, and getting a new job that pays significantly less than MTV, my bank account looks like someone has been blackmailing me. So even without the income I used to have, saving money is really important, because I need a safety net and eventually I’m hoping to move to LA to be closer to traditional writing opportunities in film and TV. $1500 over the course of an entire year shouldn’t be too impossible.
7. Leave New York City at least twice. I gotta get out more. I love New York but if I don’t leave at least twice a year I start to get really claustrophobic.
8. Eat out less than three times a week and do something active every day. Tangible steps to better health. I learned my lesson last year: intangible resolutions do not work for me.
9. Take a photo every day. This just seems fun, and will be a nice way to force myself to do something every day. Depression has a way of isolating me from the world and from other people and maybe not wanting 40 pictures in a row of my apartment will motivate me more than saying “stop being depressed” over and over to myself did this year.
10. Talk less, listen more. Fine, fine, ONE intangible goal. I’ve realized the past few years that I tend to empathize via telling my own related story, but then I kinda end up taking over the conversation. Sometimes this is ok, but sometimes, I just need to shut up and listen. Not every story I have needs to be told.

Obligatory comment question: Do YOU have any new years resolutions? What are they? Let’s keep each other on track!

 

*if anyone wants to help me CC Brains or Ace and Anxious, let me know!

1. Produce 2 new projects to completion.- Partial Completion

Sam And Pat Are Depressed:

I wrote a bunch of new scripts, helped with other people’s productions that WERE completed, and we’ve got a shoot date in late January 2018 for the next short film, but, well, technically, this resolution was not complete. I definitely meant “produce to projects OF MY OWN WRITING to completion.” But hey, new web series!

2. Finish writing Brains- Complete!

Someday I’ll do SOMETHING with all these scripts, because I love them. But we’ll see.

3. Post a blog twice a month and a personal YouTube video once a month.- Complete!

This is my final blog of the year! And below is my final YouTube video of the year! Losing my laptop for a week put me a bit behind but I finished this JUST under my self-appointed deadline!

4. Write 2 new original pilots- one drama, one comedy- Complete!

Comedy: Dead on Arrival. A misanthropic filmmaker moves across the country to live alone for the first time in her life, only to discover that her new apartment is haunted by the cheerful ghost of the murdered former tenant.

Drama- Fourth Wave. A 25-year-old woman struggles to maintain both her faith and her recently uncovered asexuality in the wake of her divorce with the help of her bisexual atheist best friend, who vows to guide her through her feminist awakening. (tbh I’m probably not gonna do anything with this one, especially because some of the themes I wanted to explore ended up getting explored wayyyy better in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but still)

5. Edit The Toast, my screenplay. [alternate: write a new screenplay] – Complete!

I did edit The Toast! Still needs some work, but it’s definitely in better shape than before. I also started a new screenplay called Best Supporting Females

6. Work on a set or production that I didn’t write- Complete!

I worked on like a billion sets and productions I didn’t write! I spent more time on other people’s projects than my own, which while disappointing on one hand was a really good experience for me on the other.

7. Leave New York City at least twice.– Complete!

First- Hoboken for a production.

Second- Colorado for Christmas.

8. Make better choices when it comes to diet and exercise.- Partial Completion

Um. So depression and being broke kinda derailed this resolution, but since living on my own I have been cooking more often (and thus making better culinary decisions due to this) and for a little bit I was working out in the morning, but yeah, depression and having an inconsistent work schedule really shot me in the foot here. Technically, I did in fact make better choices than last year, but they weren’t, er, better enough, so I’m not going to make a pity “complete” since I don’t feel I made as much progress as I ought to.

9. Be less impatient with other people.- Complete!

This was a bad resolution and I don’t know why I made it, but I think I deserve a completed tag. I may not have made myself a less impatient PERSON, but I got better at designing situations and expectations where I wasn’t set up to be impatient. I removed the possibility of impatience from the equation and was honestly happier and more productive for it. This resolution also forced me to think “be less impatient” every time I rode the subway and someone was blocking the door or in my way, which I think made me a slightly better person.

10. Go to therapy- Complete!

For five wonderful weeks, I had a therapist this year! Then it turned out she wasn’t covered by my insurance after a certain period of time so I stopped going, and all the people she recommended to me WITHIN my insurance coverage were either not accepting new patients or weren’t available at times I could manage. I’ll be 26 next month, officially out of my mom’s insurance bubble, and so it’ll probably be a while before I’m able to do this again, but I’m glad I did it, even for a little while.

 

FINAL TALLY: 9/10! (Technically I had two partial completions, but together they made a full resolution, so there!) I actually didn’t do as badly as I thought I would. I came into this blog thinking I’d failed this year, but looking back, I actually accomplished a lot, especially given my circumstances (being broke, being depressed, losing my job, moving to a new apartment, being depressed, etc), which makes me feel pretty darn good.

Check back tomorrow for my 2018 resolutions, and tell me, did you make resolutions this year? How did YOU do?

As some of you have probably seen from my incessant emailing and social media outreach, I have a new web series! It’s called Sam and Pat Are Depressed, it’s being distributed exclusively by SeekaTV through the end of its first season (meaning it’ll drop on YouTube and Facebook in early February), and I thought it might be a useful case study to those worried about how expensive and time-consuming making a web series can be.

1. Idea. All year I’ve been trying to write a script cheap enough to produce with minimal cast and a single room that would only take a weekend. Sam and Pat is based on conversations my friend Chris Cherry and I would have after therapy in our living room at our old apartment, and one day I was thinking about one of our funniest- where Chris worried he was depressing his therapist- and just started writing and there it was- the cheapest idea possible that was still a story worth telling.
   1. Takeaways: Having my limitations in mind all year didn’t always lead to the best writing but eventually things connected because I just kept going. You just need ONE good idea.
2. Writing. It took me three days to write the script, possibly less. Because I was keeping it simple, each episode was essentially a single scene, so 9 scenes total wasn’t a huge undertaking. Again- I knew my limitations. I knew I couldn’t afford more than a two day shoot and that I couldn’t ask my friends to work for free for longer than that either. Plus, for me, writing is the easy part.
3. Table Read/ Hiring. I don’t know that I’d call what we did a table read, exactly, but two days after I finished the script, Chris and I read it together. I’d already sent it to him and he loved it and we knew before we brought anyone else on board we needed to decide: would we be playing “ourselves” or did we need to start casting? After reading it aloud for the first time, we knew no one else could do it. It was us, it was ours, and now, we needed a crew. For as small a project as it was, we needed a director, a DP, a sound person, and an AD to keep us on schedule. We threw in a wardrobe person because that’s a job that could be done remotely and we wanted our good friend Rebecca McDonald to be involved because she’s lovely. I sent an email to our friends Andrew (director of Brains), Michele (producer of Brains s2, 2nd AD of Ace and Anxious), Brandon (DP of Brains s2 and Ace and Anxious), and Tai (sound for Ace and Anxious) to see if they’d be interested.
   1. Takeaways: Find your team and stick together. The ideal world has everyone getting paid for their work, but this isn’t the ideal world. A solid bartering system based on mutual respect and passion can work too, if you’re ok with keeping your shoots small and efficient.
4. Scheduling. When I reached out to our potential team, a group of people we’d worked with many times, I also sent a tentative weekend date, about a month away. I’ve found it’s easier to get people to concretely commit to things when you have a date in mind, and we figured for a simple as a script as it was, we wouldn’t need too much time in pre-production, so I felt confident in the tentative timeline. Tai was out because he’d already booked a gig during that time but everyone else immediately accepted and we were OFF. We’d worked without a sound person before, and though it was a pain, this was going to be a much easier shoot than literally anything else we’d ever done, so we accepted that loss and moved on. After everyone agreed to the shoot, I sent out an official calendar invite along with three others: one, for Chris and I to go art shopping at Goodwill for weird production design elements, two, for our first official rehearsal with Andrew, and three, our first official production meeting with Brandon.
   1. Takeaway: SCHEDULE IN ADVANCE, POSSIBLY EVEN BEFORE YOU TELL PEOPLE YOU’RE MAKING SOMETHING.
5. Pre-Production. Everyone has their own system, but when I’m producing a project, my pre-production is structured around a series of spaced-out meetings that always end in a set of actionable to do lists for every member of production. To guide these meetings I made a basic breakdown of the script (it was a very simple script so it was a very simple breakdown).

   1. 

      First meeting. At our first production meeting for Sam and Pat, it was myself, Chris, Andrew the director, and Brandon the DP. I made copies of the script and we basically went through episode by episode to talk about what equipment we needed, what complicated shots Andrew wanted to get (as opposed to the classic wide shots and over-the-shoulder shots), and how we were going to make staying in a single room seem interesting. We didn’t make any major decisions here- we just went through the whole script and took notes about what everyone was thinking.

   2. Second meeting. After that first meeting, the Thursday before Labor Day, we agreed to meet up as a group again on Labor Day at my apartment, our shooting location, to do an on-location rehearsal with Brandon standing by with his camera to test different shots we’d talked about. The goal of this second meeting was to see the scenes in the space and start a shot list based on them. After my directorial debut on Ace and Anxious, the first “traditionally filmed” project we’d completed as a group, I never wanted to be on set without a concrete shot list again. This also served as a blocking rehearsal for Chris and I, who previously only ran lines together.
   3. Third meeting. Our third and final meeting, the Tuesday before our shoot (Friday evening- Sunday evening), was just me, Andrew, and Brandon, where we took what we’d talked about in the first two meetings and actually made our concrete, in order shot list. What episodes were we most concerned about? Should they be shot first or last? Which shot within each episode should be shot first or third? In the end, the first day and a bit looked like this:

6. 

   Shooting. We had exactly two and a half days to film 26 pages of script, which, ordinarily, is insane. It’s “typical” for productions to average about five pages per 8 hour day, perhaps one or two more for a 12 hour day (which we were looking at). We didn’t have time for that, and we also had a much more scaled down plan than most traditional productions, so it was going to be tight but possible.

   1. Friday: Since we were filming at my apartment, we used Friday, our unofficial day, to load in all our equipment (borrowed from Brandon and Andrew), dress the set, set up all the lights, and film all our MOS shots. MOS is “motor only sync,” meaning that there’s only camera, no audio. They’re much easier to shoot because the director can be directing out loud while the camera rolls and we don’t have to worry about syncing audio. Why not shoot those first as they’d take the least amount of time and free up the rest of our weekend? It worked like a dream, and that night I edited this teaser from our “M POV Cereal” footage because it was so damn funny.
   2. Saturday: Our long day, allegedly. We were shooting 5 of the total 9 episodes this day (so we would have an easier Sunday) and it went pretty good, all things considered. The shot list definitely helped, in addition to our two separate rehearsals (one with just lines, one with blocking), and because it was such a small group (5 people total, cast AND crew) we managed to keep things moving at a brisk pace. We’d included “stretch goals” in the shot list in case we had time to try them out, but more often than not, we realized we didn’t need them at all because the main coverage was fine.
   3. Sunday: Our shorter but more complicated day, because we were doing the more ambitious episodes with more prop work and set up and because our friend Masha was guest starring. Her scene was another MOS one and wouldn’t take more than an hour total, but adding a person to the schedule who isn’t already on set is always complicated. In the end, it was actually perfect- we’d shot all but the final shot of the show just as she arrived, so shooting with her was a fun break for everyone before the end of the day. We wrapped and had pizza as I organized the footage, realized we’d forgotten an insert shot and set up a single light and my dinky tripod to get it, everyone went home, then I set about editing.
7. Editing. I did it, after splitting our crew into two groups: “red” and “blue.” I’ve found it’s easier to edit if you’re not showing cuts to the same people over and over again. They start looking for things they’ve seen in the past and it’s not as streamlined of a process, plus sometimes people start to get numb to the things they’ve watched already which isn’t helpful for quality control. So blue team was me, Andrew, and Michele, then I did a round of editing just with Andrew, then red team got a bit muddled because it was the holidays and everyone was traveling so I just had Chris over early for Thanksgiving and we watched through it and he made some tweaks and then I sent out the final files to Seeka the next week after Andrew, Chris, and I looked them over one last time (all remotely because travel and work).
   1. Takeaways: I hate editing and would like nothing more than to find a friend who will edit quickly and for free. Or to make enough money to hire an editor. But alas…
8. SeekaTV. After Brains, my first web series, was chosen as an official selection at the Minnesota Webfest this year, I was extended an offer to distribute that show with SeekaTV, an indie streaming service that shared a founder with that webfest. I said yes, of course, and the experience was so lovely it got me thinking: what if I didn’t release Sam and Pat on YouTube at first, and instead offered it to Seeka for exclusive distribution through the end of the first season. I did this because it makes us look way more legit, it added klout that the series had distribution before being released, and I knew SeekaTV would help us promote which was a big help given that we had so few people working on the show that our social media outreach would be limited. After sending along the rough cut of the pilot, Seeka was interested, and after sending them rough cuts of the rest of the season, they were on board completely. We worked out an uploading schedule, I sent them the final files for the videos and thumbnails, and less than a week later, we were officially premiered!
9. Closed captioning. For the past two years, I have been… continually insistently messaged on social media by the person who runs Captioned Web TV, a blog for deaf/hard-of-hearing web series fans that catalogs every series with closed-captioning. They’ve been wanting me to close caption Brains for ages, promising a boost in views after they include us on the site, and in fairness, it’s something I should have prioritized earlier. The problem is that the easiest way I’ve found to CC a show (for free) is to use YouTube’s auto captions and just edit them until they’re more accurate, and with Brains that gets complicated since half the time characters are talking while not on camera and the auto captioner doesn’t always catch that. Plus, Brains uses a lot of made-up words and slang which always gets garbled, and those episodes are longer than you think. So. I’ve been putting it off. With Sam and Pat, however, the episodes were a quarter of the length and there were far fewer, so with the help of Andrew, we’ve been working to make sure every episode released on Seeka (every Monday morning!) has closed captioning. It’s a pain, but it’s worth it to make the show more available and inclusive to anyone who might be interested in watching.
10. Release. Originally, our plan was to release Sam and Pat every Monday and Thursday, because the episodes were so short, and although Seeka was fine with that option, they suggested we just do weekly like normal shows so we could spread out our promotion. I had no strong feelings one way or the other so we agreed to do every Monday for nine weeks and then it was out of my hands. I cannot tell you how nice it is to have a distributor deal with uploading and releasing episodes. On YouTube, for Brains, every Monday we released I’d have to either upload a video or make public a private episode, add annotations to the previous episode and FOR the previous episode, make sure all the tags were correct, then add that link to four-five separate social media accounts/platforms. With Seeka, the link for each episode is the same (the Sam and Pat Seeka page) so I could schedule all my social media in advance and then sit back and relax. For closed captioning purposes all the episodes are already on YouTube, private, and since the episodes will have been released on Seeka, I plan to make the entire season public at once, meaning that I can already have all my annotations/end screens in place (instead of adding them every week so no one can see the next episode before it’s release date). This is the dream, guys. Short of getting paid to make these things, I guess.

We’ve still got about five weeks left of Sam and Pat releases, which, again, you can see new episodes every Monday at this link. After that, I’ll be uploading the full show to both YouTube and Facebook for extra opportunities to get seen, as well as submitting to festivals so I can add the “award-winning” prefix to it and sending around press releases to get some buzz. Will there be a season 2? Hopefully! It’s a very fun show to make that speaks directly to my sensibilities and my current mental state, so we’ll see. I’ve already got the first two episodes written, and you know me… I’ll probably have eight seasons mapped out before the season 1 finale goes live.

Can someone please just give me money? It would make this process a lot easier on everyone.

If you have any questions about low-low-low-budget producing, hit me up in the comments or on Twitter. I’m always happy to chat and help out!

Boy, this year is trying me, but this is a day of thanks, regardless of origin. Plus it’s a super easy blog prompt to fulfill my second blog of the month.

1. Quinn, for being supportive throughout my awful year and for being patient when teaching me video games that I refuse to pay attention to on my own
2. The Good Place, for being such a good show
3. The web series community, for embracing me and teaching me about craft and career
4. Twitter, for introducing me to such rad people
5. SeekaTV, REVRY, and Brooklyn OnDemand for distributing my indie film projects and making me seem more legit than I am
6. The absence of roommates, because living alone with just Quinn is THE BEST
7. The McElroys, for bringing fun and humor to my commutes and my dark days
8. Tumblr, for being so supportive of Ace and Anxious
9. My family, for being unconditionally supportive and for believing in me
10. My friends, who in many ways are my family, for keeping me sane and buying me beer when I was broke.

You know the drill, friends- what are YOU thankful for?