This past week has been my busiest week since D1s. I swear. It still wasn't quite as busy as D1s, and definitely not as labor intensive, but I did so much writing this week!
I've been trying to finish my new feature, as well as outline my feature I'm revising and making my revision plan. It's been busy, but incredibly fun and helpful.
Today, I finished my newest feature! It's 149 pages, so I have to cut around 30, but it's great to have everything down on the page. Finally. I wrote 22 pages today to finish it up. It was marvelous.
I really don't think there's a better feeling than finishing the first draft of a screenplay. It's so great.
But anyway, my semester has finally kicked up and I'm busy nearly every day. It's really, really great because I finally feel like I'm in school again!
I have my first Director's Prep for D1s on Thursday, and then I'll do the final rewrite for that script with our professors' notes, and they'll be filming Sunday. I'm so excited!
We also had all of our students turn in their papers, so that grading party is coming up quick.
Anyway, I'm super busy, but I love every minute of it.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Revisions and D1s!
It's funny to think that all of my posts from a year ago center around making D1s, and here I am, writing about writing them. I'm totally on the opposite side of the spectrum, and it's crazy!
I went to Crew Drills today to watch one of my directors practice his scenes. He's doing my horror script, and he had the lighting set up wonderfully. The light was super contrast-y and his actors did an awesome job. The blocking he chose to have them do was really, really cool.
I stood in the back, watching, having all of my friends ask if I wrote the script and I could say, "Yes!" And I was really proud. Proud of my director for making an awesome movie and proud of myself for making it here. I know the director is really excited, and I think he's going to do an awesome job.
It was really cool to watch them film the words that I wrote. I've had a play produced before, but this was different. This was really someone else's take entirely on something that I wrote, and it was really interesting to see what he did with it.
I'm going to pop in on Crew Drills the rest of the week, too, because I can't help myself.
Director's Prep starts next week. And once again, I'm on the other side of the table! And now, instead of talking about what I'm going to do to shoot it or presenting storyboards, I'm sitting at the table, defending my work and talking about what it all means! And the honest truth is, I might have to think about the answers to some of those things. It's only a 3 page story! Give me a break!
But it should be fun. And really, really cool. I'm excited.
Oh, and I haven't mentioned! All 5 of my scripts are being made! No one's doing repeats. I'm stoked. It's going to be so awesome to see all of my stories up there. And frightening. But I know my directors will make awesome movies.
And that ends that egotistical part of the post.
Yesterday we had our first Revisions class, and our teacher is awesome. She's very cool and very, very knowledgeable.
We're taking one of our old scripts and revising it in this class, perfecting it so it'll be ready to sell to the highest bidder (ahem, Steven Spielberg).
I'm doing my screenplay from the summer, so I printed it out last night and was looking over it, and I still really love it! I'm so excited to get back to those characters and their magical, crazy world. And that's a really good feeling to know that I can spend all summer with a story, put it away for a couple months, and come back to it, and I still really love it. That's how I know I've done something from my heart.
So, our professor is having us work on all of the subplots in our story first. And I have a million characters, so I have 5 subplots. Yikes. That means 5 sub-stories, plus a main story that I have to make sure are all perfect. And if I can pull it off, it'll be legendary. But some subplots need a little work.
But our professor is having us go through the script, write all of the scenes down on index cards, then color code each subplot as it comes up. So, 5 different colors for 5 different subplots. Then, we'll lay the subplot index cards out horizontally by color and see if we can find the arcs and climaxes in each of the subplots. I'm really, really excited to do this.
I've done all of the plotting (haha) and color-coding; now I just have to lay them out and see which parts need work and where the massive missing gaps are.
This is a really cool way to revise, because it's so visual. So I have 50 index cards, and just by looking at it and noticing each separate color, I can sort of tell what subplots need work.
Then, after that's all done, I'll put my story into chapters. Each chapter will be about 8-10 pages of the script, and will end with the character making a choice or a realization that catapults the story into the next chapter.
I know, it all sounds a little confusing, but it's really cool and really fun and I think I'm going to do this process for all of my other scripts, too.
And finally, teaching! It's still fantastic. It's almost mid-term and our students are still great and energetic. We have the mid-term exam next week, and by making it, I've realized how hard it is to come up with wrong multiple choice answers! It takes so much more work! I never thought about that before.
But Brandon and I are making the test, and it's been a lot of fun, actually. We also have two short papers due from each student on Monday, so that's roughly 400 papers Brandon and I have to read...so wish us luck! We're going to go to a Tex-Mex restaurant and have a paper-grading fiesta over lunch. And then probably go back to the house and have the same fiesta over dinner. And after dinner. And all night long until we fall asleep. And again in the morning...
But it should be fun. They're reflective papers, so we get to see what the students are thinking about. And they're about movies, which, as you all know, are my favorite things. So it won't be too bad. Not at all.
So there's that.
And then I just got some notes from one of my note takers, and once again, I'm incredibly thrilled and humbled by the fact that they're learning stuff from me. It's just the absolute, craziest feeling. Still. I just can't get over it. It makes me so, so happy knowing that I can share some of my passion with them. Cheesy, I know. But it's true.
So that's that. The semester is finally heating up and getting busier.
Oh yeah, and our feature class! I almost forgot! I'm about 2/3 of the way through my newest feature, and Steph (my sister) thinks this is going to be the one that makes me famous. So I hope she's right.
Also, I've realized that when I finish this script, it will be the 10th feature I've written! They're not all polished yet, of course, but they will be some day. But that number is a pretty great achievement. And once I perfect them all, I'll have 10 screenplays to show people.
"You don't like that one? Well, I've got 10 more."
And then next semester I'll be writing another. So I'll have 11 total! And hopefully I can get them all polished within a year after I graduate. That's my goal.
Anyway, 10 screenplays. That's somewhere around 1000-1200 pages. That's almost a novel.
And speaking of novels, I'm going to try to do Novel Writing Month next month! It's a just-for-fun thing where you challenge yourself to write a novel in a month. More on that when it happens.
So, things I've learned since last month when I posted?
Teaching is great.
And writing is still my most favorite thing ever (I know I said movies before, but I lied).
I went to Crew Drills today to watch one of my directors practice his scenes. He's doing my horror script, and he had the lighting set up wonderfully. The light was super contrast-y and his actors did an awesome job. The blocking he chose to have them do was really, really cool.
I stood in the back, watching, having all of my friends ask if I wrote the script and I could say, "Yes!" And I was really proud. Proud of my director for making an awesome movie and proud of myself for making it here. I know the director is really excited, and I think he's going to do an awesome job.
It was really cool to watch them film the words that I wrote. I've had a play produced before, but this was different. This was really someone else's take entirely on something that I wrote, and it was really interesting to see what he did with it.
I'm going to pop in on Crew Drills the rest of the week, too, because I can't help myself.
Director's Prep starts next week. And once again, I'm on the other side of the table! And now, instead of talking about what I'm going to do to shoot it or presenting storyboards, I'm sitting at the table, defending my work and talking about what it all means! And the honest truth is, I might have to think about the answers to some of those things. It's only a 3 page story! Give me a break!
But it should be fun. And really, really cool. I'm excited.
Oh, and I haven't mentioned! All 5 of my scripts are being made! No one's doing repeats. I'm stoked. It's going to be so awesome to see all of my stories up there. And frightening. But I know my directors will make awesome movies.
And that ends that egotistical part of the post.
Yesterday we had our first Revisions class, and our teacher is awesome. She's very cool and very, very knowledgeable.
We're taking one of our old scripts and revising it in this class, perfecting it so it'll be ready to sell to the highest bidder (ahem, Steven Spielberg).
I'm doing my screenplay from the summer, so I printed it out last night and was looking over it, and I still really love it! I'm so excited to get back to those characters and their magical, crazy world. And that's a really good feeling to know that I can spend all summer with a story, put it away for a couple months, and come back to it, and I still really love it. That's how I know I've done something from my heart.
So, our professor is having us work on all of the subplots in our story first. And I have a million characters, so I have 5 subplots. Yikes. That means 5 sub-stories, plus a main story that I have to make sure are all perfect. And if I can pull it off, it'll be legendary. But some subplots need a little work.
But our professor is having us go through the script, write all of the scenes down on index cards, then color code each subplot as it comes up. So, 5 different colors for 5 different subplots. Then, we'll lay the subplot index cards out horizontally by color and see if we can find the arcs and climaxes in each of the subplots. I'm really, really excited to do this.
I've done all of the plotting (haha) and color-coding; now I just have to lay them out and see which parts need work and where the massive missing gaps are.
This is a really cool way to revise, because it's so visual. So I have 50 index cards, and just by looking at it and noticing each separate color, I can sort of tell what subplots need work.
Then, after that's all done, I'll put my story into chapters. Each chapter will be about 8-10 pages of the script, and will end with the character making a choice or a realization that catapults the story into the next chapter.
I know, it all sounds a little confusing, but it's really cool and really fun and I think I'm going to do this process for all of my other scripts, too.
And finally, teaching! It's still fantastic. It's almost mid-term and our students are still great and energetic. We have the mid-term exam next week, and by making it, I've realized how hard it is to come up with wrong multiple choice answers! It takes so much more work! I never thought about that before.
But Brandon and I are making the test, and it's been a lot of fun, actually. We also have two short papers due from each student on Monday, so that's roughly 400 papers Brandon and I have to read...so wish us luck! We're going to go to a Tex-Mex restaurant and have a paper-grading fiesta over lunch. And then probably go back to the house and have the same fiesta over dinner. And after dinner. And all night long until we fall asleep. And again in the morning...
But it should be fun. They're reflective papers, so we get to see what the students are thinking about. And they're about movies, which, as you all know, are my favorite things. So it won't be too bad. Not at all.
So there's that.
And then I just got some notes from one of my note takers, and once again, I'm incredibly thrilled and humbled by the fact that they're learning stuff from me. It's just the absolute, craziest feeling. Still. I just can't get over it. It makes me so, so happy knowing that I can share some of my passion with them. Cheesy, I know. But it's true.
So that's that. The semester is finally heating up and getting busier.
Oh yeah, and our feature class! I almost forgot! I'm about 2/3 of the way through my newest feature, and Steph (my sister) thinks this is going to be the one that makes me famous. So I hope she's right.
Also, I've realized that when I finish this script, it will be the 10th feature I've written! They're not all polished yet, of course, but they will be some day. But that number is a pretty great achievement. And once I perfect them all, I'll have 10 screenplays to show people.
"You don't like that one? Well, I've got 10 more."
And then next semester I'll be writing another. So I'll have 11 total! And hopefully I can get them all polished within a year after I graduate. That's my goal.
Anyway, 10 screenplays. That's somewhere around 1000-1200 pages. That's almost a novel.
And speaking of novels, I'm going to try to do Novel Writing Month next month! It's a just-for-fun thing where you challenge yourself to write a novel in a month. More on that when it happens.
So, things I've learned since last month when I posted?
Teaching is great.
And writing is still my most favorite thing ever (I know I said movies before, but I lied).
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