Days and days of off-nights
photo via fortphoto
Yeah, that title is a bit odd, but it fits.
I've been in a strange place as of late. A combination of working my part time job, getting more web projects to work on, personal issues with some things, and just not sleeping too well has put me into a weird funk. I've been sleeping enough (~7-8 hours) but not well and I can't pinpoint what is causing that to happen. I could name off some stressful things in life, but this doesn't seem to be related to stress... I don't know. I hope it clears up by the time school starts.
Even with that, I feel like a reset button has been pressed on me. I'm no longer just about computers and logic and reasoning. I have this mix of creative understanding and mathematical reasoning built into me now that's half confusing and half liberating. Though, this can sometimes really screw with my head as to how I should approach situations and understand people, I think it will be beneficial for me in the end.
On top of all that, it seems like this summer has been split into two sides regarding the two halves of my brain. I talked about this before when I was in a "transitional phase" between right and left brain. Thinking back, my right brain was in control for a while there... damn Jeff & Mike.
Again, I've been in a strange place. I feel like everything is grey and there's no black and white. I don't know if it's my job to make black and white decisions, or if I need to just deal with the grey in hopes that taking a stab somewhere will make things end up okay.
We'll see.
Twitter kind of reflects my sense of humor
So, if you're wondering... that's the kind of stuff I like and find funny.
Does anyone have any good tweets I should favorite?
Mike Rapin’s fake history of the United States of America
Given that today is Independence Day in the US, I thought I'd give my own version of the history of the United States of America. I'm going to tell this as I think it goes (and making things up to make the story work) without looking at any sources until I'm done. Expect lunacy and lies. I'm already laughing.
Enjoy.
After Christopher Columbus, after the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock, after Atlantis disappeared, after the Boston Tea Party, after the Shot Heard 'Round The World, and some other events of importance that I cannot, for the life of me remember, there were a group of men who decided that England was terrible and should be told to screw themselves.
These men were called The Masons. The year was 1776.
A rant from a non-writer on writing (mat42dr)
A picture of the Jeff & Mike Episode 3 script
I've been writing TV screen plays for almost a year now. Mind you, the caliber in which I write follows no real pattern or standard as most TV should, but I write nonetheless.
In my experience, comedy is much easier to write than drama. I've had my hand in both at this point (Jeff & Mike/Randomish--comedy--and mat42dr--drama) and it could be my inability to really develop plot and characters and kind of just hope things come together in a story, but drama is tough.
Lately, writing mat42dr has gotten tough. I've been trying to immerse myself in drama from TV lately (namely the British show, Skins) and I'd like to think it's helping, but who knows.
I feel like the thing I've been struggling against recently is making the story realistic, and this may be my issue. TV isn't supposed to be realistic. But then again, the plot I'm currently working on has some themes in it that are tough for me to write for some reason--it could be my attachments to the characters in the story. And on top of that, I feel like I'm not consistent with the way I present some of the characters.
There is a lot of worry in my creative process.
You see, when the idea for this series popped into my head, I had a simple idea: 12 episodes (8-10 pages/minutes each), 1 main story, 5 characters, a few laughs, and a happy ending. Now... well, now I'm not sure. We still have 5 characters, but a lot has changed. More laughs, more twists, more drama, more episodes (probably), more complexity, but all under that 8-10 minute veil. Believe me when I say, writing plot that fits in 10 minutes can be tough, especially when it comes to me and my mentality of "I need to make sure every detail lies correctly in the story and seems plausible."
But the issue I'm having here is the kind of challenge I wanted with this show. I knew this would get tough. I'm currently on episode 9 of the show and things are tough, as should be expected because as stories progress, things get more complex. And I guess this is an issue all writers probably face at one point. I feel like I'm balancing two or three story lines at one time here and it's overwhelming sometimes. Or maybe I'm just seeing the hundreds of ways this story could go because, unlike Jeff & Mike, the characters in mat42dr are human beings with feelings and overactive minds and emotions who live in the real world. What it comes down to in that sense, though, is that writing real life is seriously hard. It's just plain complicated--both life and writing it.
Strangely though, I think that may be my favorite part about writing this show. For the first time, I'm writing about human beings. I'm trying to describe five different people: their emotions, their beliefs, and their actions all at once. In all honesty, I don't think I've ever really felt like this about characters before while writing. I've never been so stuck on how a character would react or think or feel about something before like I have been for this show.
I don't know if I have a whole point to this rant or whatever, but I can surely say that I am trying my damn hardest with this new show, and don't even get me started on directing. Worrying about where things will be filmed, how they'll be shot, how to light the scene, how to shoot the dialog and the intro... the list goes on with worry. Like I said, there is a lot of worry in my creative process. Nevertheless, I'm sure that this new show will be the best of anything I've done. We have a kick ass cast, an editor I trust wholeheartedly, and manning the helms is my lovely girlfriend, Katherine, at producer and art director.
We'll see how this all goes next Fall when we start shooting. I plan on having at least 12 episodes written by then, with 100% finalizations done on episodes 1-6.
Here's to summer being super inspiring! </sarcasm>
Oh, did I mention I'm a computer science major at Grand Valley? Right...
Free cupcakes at work!! (I’m going to assume the little flag is a neutral statement, not politically conservative)
Free cupcakes at work!! (I’m going to assume the little flag is a neutral statement, not politically conservative)
Someone is doing some cool ass filming in kirkhof. I’m intrigued by their set up. Yes I’m creeping outside.
mat42dr – My new project
So, Jeff & Mike Write A Comic Book is done after this semester. Jeff's graduating and doesn't know where he'll be in the fall and so, I got the idea way back in November/December to start writing a new project--more specifically, a new TV show. That show is called mat42dr.
The story is about a college student named Matt. He decides to start a video blog and with this wants to break out of the shell he's put himself in over the last three years in college.
The show has five main characters: Matt, Jude, Natalie, Ryan and Simon. I have a breakdown of the characters over on the Facebook page. Really, these characters are like... five parts of my psyche. It's not 100% accurate or anything about me, but I click with each of these characters on some level.
The coolest part about this show, I'd have to say, is the "video-blog" format it's written in. I kind of ripped off the idea from, well, Dr. Horrible and The Guild, but! the story here is 100% original.
Also, the lovely Ms. Katherine Currie (the co-creator of the show) is helping me along the way editing/arguing with me about the scripts and basically making the show better and better. And lucky us, GVTV picked this show up a few weeks back and it is going into production as of next Fall--unless by some miracle we manage to shoot it this summer... we'll see.
