No Expectations

I’m about a week out from shooting my next short. It’s a sad romance called “Slow River”.

This one has me pretty excited. The production is small by design, both to ease the work and add to the story’s intimate feel. The actors are two very talented friends (Jim Dougherty and Rhonda Tinch-Mize) who I’ve been wanting to work with again for a while. My partner Randy DeFord will be manning the camera, allowing me to work more closely on performances. I’ve even brought my lovely wife in to work as my script supervisor. Also, we have photographer Polina Osherov joining us for the still photography. I recommend that everyone check out her work.

But I do need to address my expectations with this one. After the problems we ran into on the feature we were doing earlier this year, I discovered that I was basing my happiness on the success of the project and when it all came to a halt, I was pretty bitter.

I do believe that we’ve taken as many precautions as we can to ensure that this one goes smoothly but I need to caution myself against getting my hopes up. Not because something could go wrong but because even with great success, I shouldn’t be any happier. There’s a big difference between being happy with your work and being happy because of your work.

And that is all today. No “what have I learned”. I’m just watching my thoughts.

Maybe that’s what I’ve learned.

New Year, New Project, New Outlook

So I’ve been working with Jim Dougherty and the gang at 3 O’Clock Productions on their first short, “Waffles For Virginia”. The first trailer for the film is up at YouTube.

Jim and I have worked on a number of projects together. He and I both acted in and directed portions of Randy DeFord’s Postpartum and Jim directed my script of Chances. So when he asked me if I would be interested in working on this project, my answer was “yes” before I even knew what it was.

I won’t give anything away about the story. You can view the trailer for that. What I will tell you is that this crew of people has, to the person, been absolutely amazing. Having just come off a “professional” shoot that was a mess in every imaginable way, dealing with people who were organized, dedicated, pleasant and fun has been such a treat. I hope to work with them all again.

Some of them I know for sure I’ll be working with again. A couple of them will be working with Randy DeFord and me on our next production this summer. More info on that once the announcements are made.

This film has been a great start to the year. As soon as it’s released, I’ll post the info here.

And I’m Doing This, Why?

So I’m involved in this film project. Someone else’s, not mine.

I should preface this by saying that, with the exception of acting, I’m not big on working on other people’s projects. They rarely provide you with enough info to really get behind the event yet they expect you to bleed, sweat and cry every drop through every agonizing moment of making their little miracle happen. If you have real anti-social tendencies, crewing someone else’s film is like being forced to listen to hordes of hand models run their fingernails down acres of chalkboards.

The reasons I agreed to go with this one are 1) it’s a fairly large scale film (read: will be seen nationwide) and 2) I would also be acting in it and 3) the other job was Art Director which would look nice on the resume.

Well, the acting part went up in smoke and the Art Director position has turned into the snafu to end all snafus. I’ve had my props department dwindled down to a completely overworked Set Dresser and myself and with days left before shooting, new items are being added to our to-do list by the hour. The scale of the audience is still intact, though. So should things go south due to the HeadUpTheAssness exhibited by the higher-ups, all of America will get to see just how big of a screw up I am according to said higher-ups.

So, lessons. Right? What are my lessons?

I see many but they seem to be the kind of lessons I always had for myself, pre-Buddhism (which doesn’t necessarily make them wrong). Things like “don’t get involved with those people again” or “stop pretending that you want to work on other people’s stuff”. But I’m having trouble seeing any lessons from a Buddhist perspective. It could be that I’m just too close to the situation right now. Perhaps once it’s over.

There is a friend of mine who was asked to be involved much like I was who turned it down flat. His main reason was that he didn’t feel he was qualified. Everyone else felt he was but he said that it seemed that a higher level of professionalism was required for that kind of work and he didn’t possess that. That could very well be part of my problem. If so, it would have been nice to have that kind of foresight and maturity to recognize my limits.

But there’s something else going on here. This situation is bad and I’m sorry I got involved. I won’t quit because I committed to it but I can’t wait until it’s over and I can go back to making my own little movies again.

 

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I was just about to post this when it clicked.

Last week, I wrote this:

Bodhi Girl made a comment about my little medical incident last week that really got me thinking. She pointed out that my predicament made it very easy to remember the First Noble Truth, that is the truth of suffering. More precisely, that life is suffering.

OK. Maybe I’m stretching here but could this week’s post be about the Second Noble Truth? That suffering is caused by craving? I took this job because it sounded like I could get what I wanted out of it and OH SNAP! Suffering.

Like I said, maybe I’m stretching but work with me here.