Mess of Me

People in film are notorious for being unable to keep up relationships, to hold families together-- to even date for extended periods of time. Ever thought about why?

Most [Christian] people would say it's because they don't know God, and that's why the relationship doesn't stick. Legit answer, that, I'll give you; but it's not entirely right.

It's the mindset rather than the method that's messed up here. Do any of you (quite honestly) know how many hours a filmmaker spends working on a production each day? Give me a guess. Eight? Ten? Twelve?

It's higher. The average is 15+ hours of work on the set.

That is insane. That barely allows time for SLEEP, much less family and relationships.

Filmmakers have deadlines, and they work like crazy before production, during, and after. Then they start a new production.

Their life is their work. Relationships require effort to work out, and they can't give them that.

Actors have it similarly, though not as bad. When working on a film, they're putting in long days too, and their contracts often require them to go in to re-film certain scenes after the movie is over, or to record voice-overs. It's a long process; really long.

This mindset of work as all important is a big mess. It's a misplacement of priorities and I'm out to change it. Lord, show us what MATTERS!

-Tina

Sweep you off your feet!

Remember how I love film? Life and I teamed up to throw me a curveball. Yes, that's right. I threw myself a curveball. It's CURVED, after all, right?

I'm creating a film from one of my screenplays, this very summer! It's the end of this month. I wrote it and have been drafting people to help me make it since...April or May, I think. So it's my fault if I'm busy, but not entirely, I think, because I didn't have any idea that things would get so much bigger so fast!

I'd been looking for awhile (halfheartedly) for actors to be in the film. It's only six minutes long, one day of shooting, two people to cast. I figured, who wouldn't want to do it? Good question, but I was too shy to ask so I never found out the answer...

...or wouldn't have if my director didn't keep bugging me (in a good way) in asking whether or not I'd found a cast yet.

So I emailed my local community theatre, asking if they'd pass on a casting call for the film from me to people they know that fit the roles.

The next day, I got seven emails and phonecalls.

Wow.

We set up auditions, which took place yesterday and this morning and I recorded them so that the director (who is far away from me, too far to come for auditions) could look the people over and do casting. We think we've made choices. Isn't that great?

I was so pleasantly surprised that so many people WANTED to be in the film that I wrote. It's a cool feeling to be sought after. Don't worry, though. I won't fall in love with it. I'll seek fulfillment in God-- but prayers that I do won't hurt.

Now I've got to find a computer of my own to bring to the shoot (and to college in September) and a boom microphone. Yikes! This should be interesting. Oh, life and me. You're so inventive.

-Tina

p.s.

And also. I figured writing two posts in a row would be pretty ridiculous. So I'd like to mention my bucket list right here, linking up with Polka Dot @ (life is too short not to) wear red shoes. She's having a marvelous, exciting giveaway which you can learn all about here.

Trying not to be one-dimensional here with only film things...

1. write a film and have it adapted to screen and retain the awesomeness of the writing
2. write a film and have steven spielberg direct it
3. visit owl city in owatonna; bring choco tacos, a portable piano, and Skylie.
4. live a year each in Ireland, England, and Wales, not necessarily all in a row
5. meet the pope
6. be brave enough to not start conversations with fluff talk
7. go mountain climbing as a regular hobby
8. learn how to fly a military plane
9. meet george lucas
10. wield a lightsaber as it is meant to be wielded

so. :)

I Am A Dreamer

I spoke to the manager of a Panera Bread about my application for a job there today. Relatively normal? Yes. Normal for me? No. I've never talked to a manager before or followed up a job opportunity seriously. It was kind of scary. Thinking of working there this summer is even more scary, but I want to do it.

The reason that I want to do it is because I want to embrace life and live it to the full. I am so bad at that from day to day. See, I've got these big dreams-- really huge dreams, actually, but I don't really do much with them. I do school, go on the computer, but I do not motivate myself to go above and beyond and seize the day. I want to be a screenwriter, but when do I write screenplays? Not so much.

This should change.

Seizing the day is not living in the normal. It's living for God and fulfilling your duties in life to the fullest, and appreciate everything you've got and every opportunity you've got when it's there by taking it. That's not to say to overwork yourself, but I'm more in danger of underworking myself, of not realizing my potential. Of not realizing my dreams.

There's another connection to my post title that I found this week, and I'd like to share it with you. It's a poem.

Dreamers
by Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

-------

It's a really sad poem. It is. It makes me cry. But it throws things in perspective. Soldiers dream of doing normal things, and you better believe that if they had the chance to be home instead of on the front lines in that horror, they would live their days to the full. I want to do that, to live like everything is precious.

I want to do more than just dream. I want to act.

-Tina

All things in moderation?

Temperance is a funny thing. I've been working at balance in my life, and I seem to suffer from having too much of one thing and not enough of others. For example, I spend a whole lotta time on a really great site called NarniaWeb. The site is amazing. The five hours I spend there instead of doing other things is not.

I do love to do useful things. I know that sounds incredibly boring, but bear with me. I love the feeling at the end of the day when you look back and see that you really helped your mom with the housework, or finished some bit of schoolwork, or got writing done (if you're a writer, like me). That feeling is just one of satisfaction. For me, I go: "I actually didn't waste my day today! I did stuff that mattered, that change the way I'll be living tomorrow and in the future!" I don't exactly think like that, but that's the feeling in words.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons that the feeling is special right now is because it doesn't happen all the time. One of my goals lately has been to live each day well. Not okay, not acceptable. Just really well. It's really hard. I do too much of stupid stuff and not enough of the important stuff. Sometimes I really fall flat on my face and then I think at night, before I go to bed, "What in the world was I thinking? I was an idiot!"

To go off on another tangent from the title, I wanted to talk about movie content. I want to be a screenwriter, like I've said before in other posts, and I've been thinking a lot about my mission in that and just movies in general.

I have kind of really high standards for movies. My sisters don't share many of my opinions. The sister just above me, in particular, asks me to watch movies a lot and I'll look up the movies online to see what the lowdown is, especially on pluggedin.com. Mostly, I'll decide against watching the movie because it looks like it has a lot of vulgarity in it. My sister makes the case that, if I want to be a screenwriter, I have to watch all kinds of movies, not just the ones I think I'll think.

This is a bit of an issue for me. I don't agree with her completely. I mean, I can see that watching movies and listening to scripts can help you understand how to write them, but what if this movie is very lewd? What if the mindset of the characters towards pre-marital sex is very casual?

I don't know about you guys, but I have a very difficult time with sexuality in movies. It's a very big occasion of sin for me, and I know it. So do I go in to watch the movie, knowing what's there and knowing that it could lead me into sin? My stance is NO. I may not have watched the movie before, but if I know there's crap scattered all through the movie, I'm not gonna see it.

What do you all think, I wonder?

-Tina