Saturday, March 24, 2007

In Recovery

I'm done. Since Wednesday night. I'm in a daze. Recovery.

Working on set/in production forces your brain into a certain mindset, if you are to survive with your sanity. After awhile, that brain-set takes a physical form in your body. You realize your shoulders are always tense. Your jaw clenched for no good reason.

With experience I've learned that the best thing I can do during the recovery period is a whole lot of nothing, or stupid meaningless silly things. Hey, I might get productive, and that would be a bonus. And I'm thankful for those moments, however fleeting.

But for a few more days I'm tackling small projects. Doing house cleaning. Organizing my iTunes library and adding all the ID3 information to my ancient mp3's. Planning my office overhaul. Doing that stuff that I kept ignoring, piled up stuff patiently waiting for my attention for months.

I'm writing a bit, more and more every day. As my brain and body remember Who I Am, again.

Sorry for the whack-o last post. I know I was being vague. Recovery. But I think I'm figuring out my problem. One thing that helped was watching "Little Miss Sunshine" the other night. I think what I'm striving for character-structure-wise is a bit like what they've done: a large, very involved supporting cast but with a classic main character (in LMS, Greg Kinnear). I'd love to read the script. Anybody got it/have knowledge/able to share?

Oh, also, more info about The Artist's Way. Here's an amazon.com link to the book. There's a short wiki about the author, but it looks like the official Artist's Way website is down right now.

Allrightythen. My iTunes library is calling. I have 294 songs that I need to hunt down the album info for. And if I feel really anal, another 300 or so that need track numbers.

Wait -- Hmmm....do I need to catch up on any scanning?

Sometimes brainless tasks are just what the doctor ordered.

3 comments:

savinoboy said...

perhaps here?

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/LITTLE_MISS_SUNSHINE.pdf

Rudy Martinez said...

I’m not sure if this is your cup of tea, but perhaps you’d find Kurosawa’s 1960 film The Hidden Fortress a bit helpful in dealing with your re-write.
Here’s the premise from Imdb:
Lured by gold, two greedy peasants escort a man and woman across enemy lines. However, they do not realize that their companions are actually a princess and her general.

The peasants get a lot of attention and seem to have more screen time, but they’re not the protagonists, in my opinion. I say this because although they play a very vital role in the story, they’re not the ones driving the main story. We, the audience, tend to be drawn more towards the characters causing the story to unfold in a significant way, regardless of screen time. I think that maximizes the character’s potential for dramatic moments, as they make the most difficult choices. Kurosawa and the writers created a very interesting story here. Even if it’s not the best example of this, it’s a good one to study.
I hope that helps.

Rudy Martinez said...

Those peasants inspired the C-3PO and R2-D2 characters, BTW.

Also, The Sixth Sense might be helpful to look at.