A Year Ago

Listening to: The Birthday Massacre "Sleepwalking" from Pins and Needles (2010)

It's been a year since I entered Vancouver Film School's "Writing for Film and Television" program. In the last year, I have written more than I possibly ever thought I was capable. I was challenged to lose my ego in it, and let others shred my work to pieces in front of, for the sake of the greater goal of perfecting the work. I made some amazing friends, and consumed more red bull than a human probably should. I had my moments of despair, and my moments of triumphs, all culminating in a little piece of paper that says "DIPLOMA" on it.

I wrote a feature, something I never had any real interest in doing at first, the subject matter had some pretty tight parameters, and I ended up with a feature about two brothers who have to haul cars across the country to save their family business. It's a family drama, WAY outside what I normally write. But I wrote it, and, while rough around the edges, I saw what I was capable of. I had finally, truly, written in a different genre from anything I'd ever written. I pulled all nighters to finish it, and now, 6 months after finishing it, I can look at it again and say how well it turned out, considering my amature status in the Drama department.

I wrote a speculative script for an existing TV show. We had pretty much choice of any show currently in production. While I had MANY ideas for shows I loved in the past, the enforcement of "Currently in production" saw me question many of the Choices I would make in the coming 2 terms, where I would write. Sons of Anarchy was a fairly new show, with only 2 seasons at that point, and heavily serialized at that, which made writing for it dangerous. I thought once I had my idea, it'd get easier. But thanks to my instructors and classmates, It was much more challenging than i originally thought it would be. Through outline to the Second draft, I was fighting with myself to push it farther and make it better. The end result was amazing, and, while the new season may have wrecked part of my episode, I know it's not the end of the world, and when I go to update the script, I can fix it. I can do this in the confidence I have thanks to how hard I worked, and how hard my classmates worked with me.

I wrote a pilot to my long standing Astra stories. I redefined the story some years ago, and made it my own, with new twists on old ideas of mine. Taking it through Pilot class was both a harrowing and amazing process. Having known, lived, and breathed these characters for over a decade, or more, I would face some interesting problems. The first my perceived notion of the story, would it work for a television series? The answer of course being yes, but would it work the way I wanted it to? Sure I want to stand out, but there is a reason many of the shows on TV are the same as the other shows on TV. Next the choice i faced was; Animated or 1 hour drama? Well. I'd never really thought about it, I'd just assumed animated in a anime sort of way. But does the story suit a 1 hour drama more? This is something I'm still struggling with today. I wrote it as a half hour animated series, catered to a younger audience than I would like. Thanks to the 3 terms spent on this, a lot of thought went into this as a series. I loved what came out of it, even if I end up not using it, it helped a lot, and the process for me is possibly one of the better I've been through for developing an already existing idea.

And last but not least, I wrote a second speculative script. This time for a show I know almost as much about as I know about my own stories. Supernatural. And starting to write it before the most recent season had begun, it afforded me again, the chance and problem of not knowing where the season was going to go. And writing it was an ongoing exploration of where in THIS season I would place it. Learning as I went, it was extremely helpful actually, and knowing the process of how to do these things, made writing it this time much easier. So what the end result was a great Supernatural story that will likely never see creation (which is fine, this script is for reading, not production) that I feel is unique, and non "fanficcy".

And all through this year, living away from home, from my best friends, but with my best friend and my girlfriend. Living with Allison has been possibly the best experience for me while in school. I would have burnt out and given up early on had it not been for the support she provided me. She puts up with my shit more than any other person I think ever has. It's been a hell of a year, and I'm glad she took the chance on me to move out here too.

So where have my Blog updates been? There are a lot of reasons my Blog lay dormant while I was in school, the most obvious being; I was spending anywhere from 3 to 12 hours in class a day, and then between 5 and 14 hours a day writing. The last thing I wanted to do was look at a keyboard; Which makes it sound like I don't want to be a writer, which is false. Just in that setting, writing a blog may have been detrimental to other things that required my attention.

Now that school is done, and I'm a VFS graduate, I'm back.

-j