Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Stories and Worries

Ahoy hoy,

So it's been a long time since I've actually used this thing. Shoulda woulda coulda...

I digress, but it definitely has been too long. I created the blog at first to have something in which to openly discuss and post stories about, among other things, my life in production and my screenwriting.

Well, as of late, my production work has gone up immensely. We've had a lot of work here at Hiccup, and a lot of that means more responsibility on my end. Becoming more of a producer, as opposed to an assistant, has been tremendously rewarding, yet also incredibly stressful. That's how it goes when you're "green" as they say, but hey, I'm never going to learn how to swim until I dive in the deep end, right? It's been fun, and for the most part was really great. A few of the clients we worked with are: E-Trade (instructional videos on trading, in a green-screen studio), the AdCouncil (a series of PSA's on Mental Health Awareness for SAMHSA), and SonyRCA (cutting behind-the-scenes footage of new videos for Christina Aguilera, Jamie Foxx, Kelly Clarkson, etc.) As well as personally producing and shooting a music video directed by my friend Marc Cantone for the band Baby Teardrops (greenscreen again, animation is being done as we speak)

Also, my friend, colleague (as well as boss), Ramon Veras, created an animated show for MTV Tr3s called "Soy Mono", which bought a series of 30 second promos which were broadcast through the month of october. They were really cool, and all the work was done right here at Hiccup. The MTV link may be down (i'm not sure of it at the moment), but he's created a youtube channel: www.youtube.com/s0ym0n0 (the O's are Zero's btw). They tested really well and MTV was really happy, so we've all been working on a full pilot as well as a stop-motion short using the characters for Christmas-time. More on that soon.

So......this brings me on to the next topic. My writing... My oh my it's been forever since I've gotten down to that. Not to say that I haven't been brainstorming a lot, and I've got tons and tons of notes on different story ideas and plotlines to develop, but that's been it. Lots of notes, but no actual pages of script yet. I've had a few stories that I'm really interested in creating, and am starting to flesh out, but there's just been so much outside influence that has blocked it from coming to fruition. Although I have been really excited about one idea, and I think I've settled that this will be the next story...though I'll get into that another time.

Now now, I know what you can say..."You're the only one blocking it!" "How about, instead of taking bong rips, you get to writing?" "Quit staring at me like that, perv..." All valid points, yes. And I'm not going to deny that sometimes the biggest obstacle in life is yourself, but it's very tough to do so. Easy to tell people to break through, not so easy to do it oneself.

Anyway, this is the most writing I've done in a LONG time, and it's only a blog post. Perhaps it will spark a creative leap?

Oh yeah, can't have a post without an image, can we?

1 comments:

SleepyPinwheel said...

i have the same frustrations about writing, increasingly. i just haven't been able to find a balance between the desire, actually the NEED to write new pieces vs. the desire to share existing ones with the world and doing the necessary working towards making that a reality. the dilemma for me these days is whether there's really any point in writing more and adding more and more to the backlog that haven't been actualized.
it kind of sucks cause i got into this to write, heh.

sometimes i lose sight of the fact that part of what comes from writing a lot is developing ones craft, regardless whether every single piece ends up in a presentable form or not.

anyhow, i'm really excited to hear more about your new ideas and always eager to see more writing from you. you'll get it done. as a really good friend of mine often tells me 'don't be so hard on yourself' ;)