Saalon Muyo

The waiting is actually worse than rejection.  Rejection is something you can respond to. You get to be angry and depressed.  You get to hate your work and then come back around and love it more fiercely just to spite the people who turned it down just before you start hating it again.  And then you get to start the process all over again.  Rejection is active.

Waiting you just have to deal with.  There’s nothing you can do to speed it along.  Your query is out, waiting on someone’s desk, probably unopened.  The only action you can take – a follow-up letter – is something you have to wait for, too.  You send your query, and you wait. When the requisite amount of waiting is past, you send a follow-up letter and you wait some more.  And after the first follow-up letter?  That’s where protocol breaks down.  The general impression seems to be that you can move on, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t stories of responses well after the out date on your follow-up.

Trying to get published is like being told you can only apply for one job at a time.  You may have a dozen other places you’d be happy to work, but that’s irrelevant.  Applying for multiple jobs at once is bad manners.  Any employer must be given the opportunity to say no before you can move on and try again.

Sure, as a writer it’s the writing itself and not the person under restriction.  If I have three novels I can send them all to different places. But “write another novel” is tougher than it sounds when the first one has only gotten one response in the last year.  A nagging futility pursues you; why are you bothering to write a second novel when the first one’s gone nowhere? That writing a second novel, and a third, and a fourth will actually make it more likely that they could all go somewhere, someday is irrelevant.  Waiting is pernicious.

I’m having a hard time handling the waiting lately.  So I’m writing a second novel.  It’s the only thing I have to do.

If I’m lost in my story, or can’t feel a character, my grasp of sentence structure, word usage and attractive prose vanishes. Completely. I’m reading over the two paragraphs I just wrote and shuddering.

What a mess.

Delete and rewrite. Delete and rewrite.

I wanted to get this post up earlier, but I had to wait until the awards were posted on the 48 Hour Film Project site so I could link to it.  Or I thought I should, anyway, because in prior years Honorable Mentions were given for the awards and I was curious if we picked any of those up.  They didn’t give them out, so waiting was entirely unnecessary.  Anyway, preface complete, post begin.

Last Friday, August 21st, was the Best Of screening for the 48 Hour Film Project.  Our film, “co workers” was in the running.  That much we knew. We just didn’t know what award we’d gotten.  The awards for the 48 run from the specific (Best End Title Credits, Best Use Of Required Line Of Dialogue) to the more typical (Best Direction, Best Editing).  This was my first award competition I’d ever been party to, so I was understandably a mess.

Thirteen films made the list.  There were three from my screening group, including our film, but the rest I hadn’t seen.  The films were screened before the awards were given, so I spent the time when I was not insanely nervous trying to game which awards would be given to whom.  It passed the time.

We won one award: Best Use of Character, which you should read to mean “We took the character we had to use and used him really well.”  I spent a couple of days struggling with the award, trying to figure out how proud of it I should be.  As a filmmaker, you hope you win a more generic, more filmmakery award like editing or acting or direction, and not something that feels so specific to this one contest.  But on reflection, Best Use of Character could be read as a bit of a writing award and a bit of an acting award.  It means we did something right, I suppose.  And walking up on a stage to be handed a shiny paper certificate is an ego boost.

Congratulations to all of the winners, and to everyone else who managed to get a film together in 48 hours.  Special congratulations to Wrecking Crew Media for “A Christmas Miracle”, which was chosen as the best film in Pittsburgh.  They’ll be going on to the international competition.  Do us proud.

If you haven’t seen “co workers” yet, give it a watch.  We’re really proud of the work we did and we’ll be sending it out to film festivals to see if anyone thinks we did something worthwhile.

I’ve got some huge gaps in my film education. Movies I know I’d like that I haven’t seen, movies people tell me I’d like that I haven’t seen and movies that I probably won’t like but should see for educational purposes.  Every once and a while, this bothers me and I spend some time thinking about how important it is for me to correct it.  And every time it’s never quite that important, so I go on with my life, checking out movies when they come up but otherwise leaving said gaps, um, gaping.

I’ve hit that point in the cycle again.  Now, I don’t want to suggest that I’ve gone through life not watching any important or classic films.  My mental film library is just spotty.  I’ve seen Gone With the Wind and Vertigo but not Citizen Kane.  I love 8 1/2 deeply, but didn’t see a second Fellini until this spring when I finally saw La Dolce Vida. I’ve seen a lot of classic Japanese cinema, but have only seen one French New Wave film: Breathless.  Like I said. Gaps.

Until the end of this year, I’m going to do whatever I can to fill in some of those holes.  Without really meaning to, I started this week.  The only “classic” 80’s teen comedy I’d ever seen was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That was it. No, I’m not kidding.  So yesterday I watched Say Anything.  And you know what? It was pretty good.  Good enough that I might feel safe braving a John Hughes film with Molly what’s her name.  I kept it going today with Full Metal Jacket, a Stanley Kubrick film I’ve had on my shelf for at least two years without ever putting it into a DVD player.  Though I can’t feel too proud of myself; I’ve still never seen Strangelove.

If you’ve got films that you think are important for someone to watch, drop me a line. Put a comment.  Send an e-mail. Whatever. They don’t have to be classic. They can be some 70’s exploitation flick you dig, or some depressing Italian neorealist piece you saw in film school. I’d prefer to stick to things at least 10 years old.  Nothing against new movies, that’s just not the point.

Here are some areas I know I need to beef up on, so if you have good suggestions along these lines, you get a bonus star point or something.

• French New Wave
• Non-science fiction 80’s films
• American 70’s cinema
• Ingmar Bergman
• Most anything from China
• Noir
• German Expressionism
• Classic horror
• Australian films
• Films from developing nations (like Iran, or any African countries)

And if you’ve got nothing to suggest? No worries. I know I’ve got a pile of things I’ve been meaning to watch for a while to keep me busy.  Like Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Rules of the Game and Where Eagles Dare.  But I’d love to hear what counts as required cinema for you.

It’s been a hell of a week.  It really has.

Last Friday I was waking up to test my equipment and get psyched up for the 48. Thinking about that is kind of surreal. This time last week, nothing that’s on my mind today had even happened yet. No pulling Musical or Western and freaking out.  No writing and smoking Rocky Patel Jr.’s and drinking sake.  Not getting a new cast and crew together or struggling with an echoing room or shooting a 4 minute dinner scene in a couple of hours.  I hadn’t freaked out over last minute output problems, or freaked out over whether the movie files I turned in would play for the 48, or freaked out over whether the screening audience would like my film.

By the end of a week like that, part of me wants to sleep and play video games for a month, and part of me that’s so buzzed from the feeling of getting something done that I want to do it again right frakking now.

I won’t. I’ll do something closer to the former. I’ve got writing to do, and I’ll chip away at that, but it’ll be longer than I expect before I shoot something else. Truth is, it’s a lot of work and easy to screw up, so rushing into another project would be very dumb.  Better to think it out.

And buy a video game.  And sleep.

Last night, at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh, my short film screened before a sizable audience.  At least, it was sizable my standards. That my standards involve numbers I can count on my fingers should be taken into account.

Cranking out a film in two days leaves little time for the emotional roller-coaster I put myself through on creative projects.  I usually hit a nice, bumpy stretch of doubt and self-loathing early into a project.  I doubt the idea, or I wish I had done something more serious, or funnier, or action packed, or I worry that I’m not up to the task of turning the script into a film.  The reasons barely matter. I just freak.  This time, there was no room for self doubt.  So I plowed through the project on determination alone.

Which meant the early part of this week was when I could become a basket case.  The lead up to the screening was one of those long, clicky rises to the top of the hill, where you have plenty of time to see just how far you’re going to drop and think of how many ways things could go wrong.

The worst part was just prior to the screening, when they showed what felt like 45 minutes of the same commercial. I just needed my film to get up on that screen, hear the reaction and deal with whether it was good or bad.  It was a good thing my film was screened third.  I don’t know if I could have taken sitting through an hour of films with my stomach clenched tight enough to turn my dinner into coal.

As for the film itself, I barely remember watching it.  Well, that’s not entirely true. I remember things during it, but it’s like it all happened at the same exact moment, all crunched together.  When you’ve got “surprise ending” as your genre, you can’t relax until you see how people react to the money shot.

And they did. They really did. It’s the best post-film reaction I’ve ever had.  I don’t know how we’ll ultimately stack up against the other films in the festival, but I can’t help but feel we succeeded.

If you haven’t had the chance to see it, now’s the time. It’s up on vimeo and, even better, you can watch it right here, right now, on this very blog.

co workers from Eric Sipple on Vimeo.

Seen on the office phone system today:

Somehow, I got talked into doing a film in 48 hours.  The conversation went like this:

Jennifer: Have you heard of the 48 Hour Film Project?

Eric: SOLD!

Ok, so there wasn’t much convincing involved. I’ve been looking for an excuse to make a film, and the insane constraints of the 48 Hour Film Project seemed like just the ticket.  No time to second guess, freak out, second guess again (is that third guessing?) and end up with no film at all.  I’d have a time limit and a few restrictions to work through.

For those who know me well, my waning energy for film is obvious.  It’s been difficult for me to put my finger on it, but getting the motivation and energy to go through with filming has become more and more difficult over the years.  At first I attributed it to a temporary desire to write mote prose, but as things went on it’s become clear that I was moving away from film, not toward anything else.

So I went for it.

And it was good.

This was my first project with Dave Lucci as a co-pilot. I don’t think anyone’s been riding me harder than him to get back into film, so when the 48 Hour project came up he seemed the natural choice to drag into deadline hell with me.

That, also, was good.

For those who’ve never heard of it, here’s how the 48 works:  On Friday night you pull a genre. It can be anything from the oh-so-generic “Drama” to the what-the-hell-are-you-kidding-me specificity of  “Western.”  And when I say pull I mean, literally, you pull a genre from a hat.  Then everyone shooting in your city gets the same three elements.  A character, a line of dialogue and a prop, which everyone has to use in their film.  If you pull a genre you hate, you can go for a second drawing of one of the wild card genres.

We showed up fearing only one genre choice: Musical or Western.  That’s on one card, so they’re aware that neither of them are possible to pull off in 48 hours unless you already have a composer or dress up like the Man with No Name in your off time.  Of all the genres, this was the only one we decided we’d drop for a wild card.

We pulled Musical or Western.

At that point we had to wait while the elements were given out, then after everyone was done we would be given our wild card.  The wild card genres were far, far sketchier. Things like silent film and family film and historical drama/period piece.  Half of the wild cards possible were crap, and after failing the 15:1 chance of success, we’d be getting the equivalent of a coin flip.  But first, the elements:

• Character: Alan Beaumont, a Phony
• Line of Dialogue: “That’s never happened before.”
• The Prop: “A present” (that did not have to be wrapped)

All pretty easy to work into any script, so no problems there.  By now half of the teams were leaving, secure in their genre choice while the suckers like me stood around hoping for something they could shoot.  As I waited for a wild card pull, I asked some of the others what they had.

“Drama,” one filmmaker said.

Another said, “Comedy.”

Are you kidding me? I pulled frakking musical or western and these guys are trading in gimmie genres like drama and comedy?  What were you hoping for, exactly?

They lined us up by which screening group were in, pulled out five envelops and got to work. If you were first in any of the lines, you got envelope 1.  That was me. I saw an “s” on the slip of paper and feared for a second that we had pulled silent film.

I was wrong.  We got surprise ending.  Now that I can do.

After everything is pulled, you’re on your own until the turn-in deadline of Sunday at 7:30.  We headed out the door, hoping we’d have an idea by the time we got home so we could get writing immediately.  We brainstormed through a few ideas before I got into my head a couple people at a dinner table and someone saying something that stops everything dead, and Dave took that and came up with the surprise.

And once you get the idea, it becomes like every other writing and filming process you’d go through, only with less resting in between steps.  You outline the idea, then you’re immediately writing dialogue, then you’re immediately sending it out and planning shots in your head.  I’ve been trying to decide if the 48 was more like a sprint or a marathon and I’ve decided it’s the worst of both. 48 hours is long enough to really wear you down, but you have no extra time on any individual step, so everything you do feels like a mini-sprint.

Saturday was shooting day at Dave’s apartment, the most echo prone location I’ve ever filmed in. Concrete walls plus wood floors equals microphone hell.  The boom mic was next to useless.  Luckily, I purchased 2 wireless lapel microphones last year.  I hadn’t used them yet, but now seemed to be the time.  The problem filming with untested sound equipment, though, is that you spend the entire shoot hoping you didn’t just bomb the film by screwing something up or using your equipment wrong.  I recorded the whole thing with the boom just in case; if nothing else, I’d have a film.

Shooting was, hands down, the best experience I’ve had filming in years. It was a giant remind of everything that I’d loved about the process and somehow lost.  The energy was great, I had an amazing cast and crew, and things came together in ways I hadn’t expected.

It was a joy to shoot.  The only downside is you start worrying that if you screwed it up, it’s going to be hard to look everyone from the set in the face and tell them that all their hard work was for naught.  On a crappy set, you come away not caring anymore.  On a good set, you don’t want to disappoint anyone.

So Sunday was editing day, and there is little I can say about that but this: this was one of the easiest times editing I’ve ever had.  The footage was great, I ended up with a bunch of little unscripted moments that fleshed out the feel of the scene and the sound from the lapel mics was better than I had hoped.  It was, at least from a purely film technique point of view, the best film I had ever shot.  Other than that, just imagine one long tea-fueled run through Final Cut Pro, ending in a lot of swearing and freaking out at the inevitable last minute video-output problems.

But, we did it.  The film got turned in and will screen at 7:00 PM at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty.  And, for the first time in a long time – maybe ever – I am totally satisfied with one of my films.  It may not be for everyone.  Hell, I can’t promise the audience will like it at all.

Me? I couldn’t be happier.

Read into this what you will.

There’s a thing about scheduling that anyone who’s ever programmed, or written or designed for a job knows that people who haven’t have trouble understanding.  Meetings don’t just keep you from working while you’re at them. They screw you up when you know it’s coming up and they screw you up for an hour or two after they’re done.  Paul Graham talks about this discrepancy between “makers” and “managers.”

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.

I recently finished up a huge project at work.  We moved basically every system but one in the company to a new system, and we did it in less than six months.  This meant that every single department in the company had a significant piece of their job being moved from a familiar system to some new thing that no one fully understood.  That meant someone had to talk to the departments so that we, the development team, could build out the new system properly.

That someone turned to be the development team itself.

The bulk of our work was done over a three month period, during which we had to find out what department heads wanted, find out if what we had done met what they wanted and then make sure what they wanted didn’t clash with what other department heads wanted.  This meant a lot of meetings. A. Lot. Of. Meetings.

There were weeks where I had meetings every other hour.  Those were the weeks I got nothing done.  There was no way for me to get out of a meeting, sort out what we had just talked through and prepare for the next meeting in the hour I had free.  So that also meant I got no design and no programming done either.  Those four hours of meetings might as well have been eight.  At a certain point, your day is segmented that you never get any momentum.

When I’m getting ready to write or program, I spend some time doing what looks like nothing. I skip between websites, send off a brief, no-thought e-mail or two, drop a few pointless notes on twitter.  Stuff like that.  I know when my wife looks at me flitting between websites, she thinks I’m not working and thinks she can talk to me without interrupting anything.  I can’t blame her, but what I’m doing is part of working.  I’m clearing my head, getting into a place where I can do what I have to do.  Things like phone calls from co-workers and my wife showing me funny things on her computer screw that process up.  And meetings?  They absolutely demolish it.

In the creative world this is less of a problem.  Writers work from home, so at the least they don’t have to worry about management meetings and status calls.  Programmers are forced to deal with a half dozen people who think that an hour meeting really only steals an hour out of their day.  In fact, suggesting otherwise is met by a mixture of puzzlement and outright hostility.

But hey, who wants your people to get stuff done when they can have a meeting about the things that could be working on if they weren’t actually in the meeting?