Dateline 8-23-2017

In yesterday's Daily Breaker post I pointed out that I was losing my interest in yet another one of my favorite past times. In this case, I was talking about losing my obsession with Doom and Gloom videos on the internet which may actually be a positive change because maybe my morbid fascination with what seems to be a declining world shouldn't be continually fed. Even though I don't watch these documentaries as a true believer, the potential underlying evils being conveyed is enough to drive a person insane and that when you look at it through a lens of pure fiction.

Since I do feel way more positive when I don't watch this type of content and have actively trying to avoid since the start of the year, I don't really see this as that big of a loss when compared to the other interests of mine that I have lost over the years. Take music, movies, and TV for example. Those are three things that I couldn't imagine living without, only to now have to force myself to consume anything from these three forms of entertainment.

As far as music goes, I stopped discovering new bands that I like sometime in the '00s when the genre of pop punk that I was into evolved to become Emo and I just wasn't willing to follow. Ironically, I did continue to listen to the old stuff for at least a decade before giving up on music altogether because the bands that I actually liked brought up rough memories from the past that made me too emotional.

When it comes to TV and movies, these two are linked and rather simple to explain as I loved both mediums right up until I started to take my screenwriting seriously. The more and more I learned, the more and more magic was lost to my favorite form of entertainment. It got to the point where all that I saw was predictable story structure. 

Things between me, TV and film got even worse when I started to work in the industry. In my first fifteen years of screenwriting, I had zero interest in the actual making of film, not as an actor, director or any form of crew member. This all changed when I was hanging out on the set of a short film I wrote and fell in love with the collaborative atmosphere.

If you think that attempting to masters story structure can kill the magic of moving images as entertainment, learning the true monotony of what goes into making a film may be impressive at first but as soon as it becomes second nature, it's hard to detach yourself from envisioning all the people just standing around impatiently waiting for the acting to get done so they can get back work to finish the day without having to put in any extra hours.

It's also hard to really feel any sense of authenticity in a scene when you can't help but picture the setup and how that dramatic speech that brought the audience to tears was shot dozens of times at just as many angles with a stand in taking the place of the person not on the screen and a sound guy who's pissed off by airplanes.

Enough time has passed from the last time that I was on a set to where I do find that I will watch and enjoy a movie from time to time but I am far from the fanatic that I used to be who always know what movies were out in the theater and spent every spare moment watching TV instead of just having random YouTube videos play in the background while I focus on something else.

Screenwriting has to be one of my hardest of losses as I am still coping with the medium letting me down despite putting in over two decades of effort into honing a skill while having a style that will never sell especially now that the indie market is as profit obsessed as the main stream.

Don't get me wrong, I know that money is the most important thing in the world and the only reason worth doing anything but, there used to be a time where the indie market felt like it was for the artists and people were allowed to be experimental with hopes of the next film making the money where now the indie market feels more like a farm team for the mainstream where it's all the same garbage only at a smaller scale.

Personally, I'd prefer to write more experimental works to develop a small but loyal following who are willing to go along for a ride rather than some idiot who just wants to see the same thing over and over again only to still be surprised when the hero makes a comeback to win in the end.

Though I am sad about these losses, I need to start thinking about the new loves of my life that really keep me going like this blog and efforts to adapt all of my screenplay work into novels where I have much more freedom to play around, especially since the plan is to self-publish in order to keep the control of my work and commit to the story that I want to tell while picking and choosing the feedback that will fit into my big picture plan.

Chances are, even when I do get back to work on this adaptation plan, which I plan to start really soon, there is so much work to be done to get out all that is in my head that I don't think I'll ever be able to finish because this story keeps growing and until I get a taste of success it's hard to commit the time, especially when you consider that there are over two decades of content that I need to rework before I can even think about phase two.

Oh well, I'm not going to get anything done if I keep rambling on about what I want to do instead of taking the steps to do it. With that, it's time for me to wrap things up in order to move on to my work for the day which includes efforts in an attempt to free up more time in my average day.

As always, I'll talk to you tomorrow with another update.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker