The Big “L” – 1/12

I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more distraught during the writing of a post. I don’t know that I’ve ever sat down and written feeling so helplessly frustrated.

Yesterday was a failure. An enormous failure. A huge, whopping, capital “L”.

The day began great, with big plans and lofty ambitions. Everything was set and ready, the props were in order, and I even purchased a knock-off “selfie-stick” to help with coverage(Just Leasing was to be filmed on my phone camera, you see).

A few hours into filming, I locked my phone into place on a cheap tripod that is built for such a purpose. The mount simultaneously pressed and held 3 buttons on the side of my phone that led to a full system reset. Not only did I lose all my contacts and settings, but the footage was immediately washed.

It gets worse.

We came close to shooting the scenes over, but doubt entered the minds of the actors, perhaps with good reason – there was an arguably noticeable error in logic for a crucial scene, and tinkering with it affects the rest of the episode.

A long enough discussion led to an inevitable decision to postpone filming until a later date. We broke for lunch at a local taco shop. I brought in my laptop to show Jordan and Catrina, who are also involved in Cheaters Prosper, some of the scenes.

I store the footage on an external, 3 terabyte hard drive that attaches to my computer by a USB chord. When I finally found a particular scene I wanted to show, the external hard drive fell off the table and smacked a metal piece beside my seat, breaking it instantly. I am no longer able to access the hard drive, and it makes a clicking sound when I plug it in.

I can’t tell you how upset I am. I can’t even pinpoint what I am most upset about. The good news is, even if the data from my brand new $139 hard drive is irretrievable, we will only have lost about 5 pages of film, as my brother and friend still have saved copies of the remaining footage.

I don’t believe in blind persistence. I don’t believe in trying to make something work that cannot, nor do I believe in trying to do something you are incapable of doing. I do not like to waste time. I do not like to lose.

But when I deem a pursuit worthy of fighting for, I fucking fight.

So what is the lesson learned today? What is the meaning of all this?

The lesson is simple. Today was a shitty day. Bad things happened. For Spiritual reasons? For failing to be more conscious of sensitive equipment? For no reason?

You will never learn by focusing the factors that led to failure. If you want to be a critic, a hater, or another captain hindsight, go ahead and focus on the aspects of things that influence demise. But in order to find success, you must keep your eyes the actions that breed it.

Verizon saves texts message conversations in cloud storage, and I was able to retrieve the phone numbers of every person I’ve conversed with over the last 90 days. That is sufficient to store the numbers of every person whom I consider an essential part of my life.

There are specialists who have the technology to retrieve data from damaged hard drives. For an external one such as my own, the customer must pay a pretty penny ($500 is a good estimate). Perhaps the company that manufactured my hard drive may be able to help me for a nominal fee.

Or, we could always re-shoot. The actors have their lines down pat, and the only difficulty would be getting the actors to do the 4-5 hour shoot all over again. It would move faster than before thanks to having gone through it once already.

I guess my point is this – you can’t just fold once things go wrong. You can’t allow harsh critiques of your work to convince you’re not cut out for writing. When things go wrong, you must seek out ways to fix them. Errors happen, and they’re part of any game.

I’m afraid to take my next step forward, but in the walk of life the only other option is to retreat. I’m not going to retreat, and I’m not going to stop. I’m going to run until I reach that Goddamn finish line, and if I have to crawl by the time I get there, so be it.

• Thomas M. Watt

Just Leasing (And C.P.) – 1/11

I miss that cheeseburger. That’s my brother behind me.

Today will be the first day for filming Just Leasing. This is a secondary project that I do not consider nearly as important as Cheaters Prosper. In other words, I would like to knock out the 22 pages in a relatively short time frame.

The biggest issue we’re going to face today will have to do with filming it. Two camera persons are dedicating a ton of time to Cheaters Prosper without pay, and I do not feel right about exploiting their generosity for another project.

Subsequently, I’m left with 4 actors and no camera person. I’m currently leaning toward filming the footage on my camera phone. My friend has a tripod that I believe I can strap my phone to and get wide coverage with.

For the close shots, I honestly think I may buy a selfie-stick. I saw one at the local liquor store the other day, opened my lips to begin a joke about the kind of morons who waste money on that type of thing. I shut my lips when I realized it might be essential to filming Just Leasing.

This is going to be a rough week for Cheaters Prosper. My friend, whose home we need for a location, hasn’t been getting back to me. The people who I’ve contacted on Craigslist in order to possibly purchase their poker tables haven’t responded to me, either. On top of all that, I feel I have a responsibility to myself to attend drill night this Thursday night. I missed it last week, and am certain that devoting an hour and a half of my time to the local fire station is imperative for my future as a firefighter.

I will be posting some behind the scenes footage from Just Leasing tomorrow. Until then, enjoy some goofing around from last week’s shoot for Cheaters Prosper.

• Thomas M. Watt

 

Cheaters Prosper – 1/8

Just wrapped up the third day in a row of heavy duty filming. I’m exhausted, but happy. I’ll get to today’s filming in Saturday’s post. Today I’ll discuss yesterday’s shoot.

El Nino struck Southern California for 2 straight days. The first day didn’t affect us much. Wednesday was much more trying.

Not only were we freezing our asses off, but the downpour came sporadically. The scenes we shot were all outside, and on several occasions we had to cut the scene early to protect the equipment. The rain fell so hard we actually added a line to the script – “It’s raining, let’s go play inside.”

Thankfully, conditions improved so that line can be omitted.

The biggest difference in writing for film versus writing for books is that you have to consider your budget in each and every scene. I can’t afford to have any car accidents, expensive props, or high-octane action sequences. I wrote this script knowing full well the dramatic twists would have to come from relationships. Good stories move us emotionally, so this isn’t as limiting as one might think.

Dan filmed for the second day in a row, and got more footage and takes than I could have possibly requested. One reason I think this Independent film will be great is the devotion of all the individuals involved.

It’s incredible to see so many individuals come together and put forth so much effort into making this project the best it can be. I’m not paying anyone, and therefore they’re not obligated to put in the amount of time they are dedicating to this.

Dan filmed until we ran out of daylight and shot every scene I hoped to complete. I’m really happy he did, because everything we filmed takes place during the same day in the script. I was terrified of having to re-shoot, because shooting exterior scenes with rainfall in Southern California is a surefire way to get some major continuity errors.

I tried to upload a video of the footage to youtube. For some bizarre reason, the audio plays fine while the video only shows up when it is paused(on my computer at least). Going to take a crack at fixing it tomorrow, but thought I’d attach the link to this post anyway, in case it is fixed automatically.

The video below features behind the scenes difficulties and a rough, rough edit of one of the scenes we filmed. There is no color grading, audio syncing, or any kind of real editing. All I did was trim shot and put together bits and pieces from the four different angles we had. Unfortunately, one of the takes was recorded with an ambulance passing in the background, so that one’s worthless.

I’m looking forward to telling you all about Thursday’s shoot, with my brother back at the camera, tomorrow.

• Thomas M. Watt