The year 2013 so far: From January to October

JANUARY - SEPTEMBER 2013 QUICKEE REVIEW

Oy. Well, mainly I'll go over the creative stuff. The regular life stuff is usually a snooze, so I'm not gonna go into that here.

JANUARY- MARCH

Decided to take a one-night-a-week basic film class as a refresher-

low-res REALLY compressed version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsF-E0TKjs&feature=youtu.be

Great course- it was like stepping into a time machine and seeing how people felt when they made their first film- and it was great fun being in the middle of that again.

As the class went on, though... the 'innocence' of the first assignment went mostly away from many, and the class generally split into a mixed camp of high ambition, competition, and frustration. Many in the class were there for professional reasons, but I was there because I was so unhappy over how things had turned out (in no small part due to budget and poor management of my own creative ambition) for Black Canary.'

Anyhow- I don't know how it was for the others, but I had a blast (and made sure to... classes are what you make of them, for the most part, or what you can push out of them), and recruited as many members of the class as I could for a fun zany 'Rodzilla' trailer (think of a coke-snorting Tony Montana meets Godzilla, and there's Rodzilla) and a concentrated 7-minute short about a fight over a quarter.

Oddly- it was fun- but not in the way I expected. The shooting and racing against the clock because of people's time was not fun, even though the people were great. Editing was fun, seeing how it came together and how things could be saved/improved. Not having the camera behave they way you wanted it to was not fun. Having to truncate the ending was not fun. Being 'in the zone' for filming on location was fun. The concept had to change greatly for what I thought was going to be a very simple short, and there was frustration- but the extremely funny and perverse thing was seeing again how just getting a couple of people together for a film (well, without pay, anyhow) isn't as easy as you would assume. There were a lot of ambitions and great plans with big casts talked about in class, from people who had great confidence and no confidence.... but only half of the projects ended up getting completed, to my surprise.

I started off in the class feeling as if I had been out of it too long- but the lessons learned from my other shoots had helped. It wasn't outdated.

I was very glad to have had the fortune of having two folks from class and my cousin to be a second camera to do the film- and it turned out much nicer because of their time... although I was in 'pit bull' mode and know I would have pulled people off the street (I actually did do that for a couple of extras) to get my short film done.

So, anyhow- that class was January-March. Two shooting days... and two ten minute class breaks for the Rodzilla trailer.

APRIL- MAY

Must have been asleep. I'll have to get back to this. I don't remember anything particularly significant happening then.

JUNE-JULY

Was asked to teach/create a class in comics to kids- and that was a giant joy for the summer. When I grew up, finding anyone else remotely interested in comics was extremely rare around me, and I often lost interest due to the environment I was living in. To have a classroom full of little ones who were genuinely passionate about creating something with their bare hands and willing to put the concentration and time in was fantastic. It's said that roles reverse: at times, the teacher teaches the students, other times, the students teach the teacher--- and I got a lot from them. I was heartened to see especially the kids who, on their own, were part of creative groups writing and drawing comics, and learning from the web and libraries about the best way to write/draw. In many many ways, they definitely have the environment to have the talent to get that cartooning career that I dreamed of, but never really had the right circumstances to ever get. Anyhow, I hope that they got as much from me as I learned from them.

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER

Invested in comic paper, giant scanner, and other sorts of tech material, and signed up for a one-night-a-week screenwriting course. The previous two screenwriting courses well.....weren't all that, but a little production is better than none, if one doesn't produce enough. On the flip side, was thrilled to find out that a friend of mine not only self-published two versions of his own comic book (color and painted, no less), but that he got many of the local comic shops to pick up copies and he's almost out of them. Given that he's not a 'name' and has no ties to DC/MARVEL, it's very inspiring.

OCTOBER

Anyhow, a lot of suckiness this year, but some great things, too that I enjoyed on a personal level. Going to do my best with this class and wrapping things up this year (Faith pencils are done, but I need to upload), but I really hope 2014 is better than 2013. Will see....