The Importance of Focusing

(I took this photo in Koblenz, Germany, in 2002. This and other photos of mine can be seen in "Smalltimore". You can see more of my photos at http://www.geocities.com/moxiegallery/home.html. I thought this site had been deleted a few years ago, but it is still up!)

Ugh, my eyes are crossing. Today I dug deeper into the glorious Without A Box website, looking into the details of about 150 festivals to see if "Smalltimore" would be suited to them. That may sound like a lot, and I have been working on it for about 4 hours now, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. I have thousands to go, literally.

I did find quite a few possibilities along with some tempting long shots. I am looking through them in the order that deadlines are coming up fastest. I think when I get through the first 300, then I'll stop and sort through the ones I have picked out as "maybes" and decide if I want to submit to them or not. The average submission fee is about $35 for earlybird, $50 or more for last minute, so it adds up fast. I've already submitted to 18 festivals to the tune of about $1000, so I am about tapped out and need to start becoming very selective.

I received a congratulatory email (about the Heart of England Film Festival) from my friend John Wood who lives in Germany. He used to live in Baltimore and was one of my closest friends here. He reminded me of one of our favorite moments together, in the context of, "who woulda thought it?", me becoming a filmmaker.

I think it was in the autumn of 1999 that I for some reason became very interested in photography. I had always taken lots of photos, but never with a manually operated camera. I wanted to learn how to do that, and how to develop and print my own photos, so I signed up for a weekend class at MICA. John loaned me his trusty old Minolta, and after receiving my first homework assignment, he spent an afternoon with me down at the harbor taking photos that played around with the depth of field. I had only ever operated a point-and-shoot camera before, with automatic focus.

We were on Light Street at Baltimore, and John stopped at the McDonald's to grab a burger. A block south of there, he unwrapped the burger and used a City Paper box as his table while I took a picture of him. I quickly pointed John's own camera at him and clicked the button, snap went the shutter. John asked, "Did you focus?" I replied, "I need to focus?"

I love that story.

Once he showed me how to focus, I actually took a very cool pic of him eating that burger. My instructor liked it a lot. I spent the next few years taking thousands of snaps, setting up my own darkroom in my kitchen, organizing solo exhibits and later group exhibits with some artist friends, and have sold many of the photos I took during that time, including the one above. It is one of my favorites, and John was also with me when I took this. It is titled, "The Wheels of Fortune." I was visiting John and his wife Anja while they lived in Trier, Germany, and we took a day trip to Koblenz. We saw these three little girls whose mother let them run around naked in a fountain on this hot summer day. They were so cute, and I loved the juxtaposition of this tiny, carefree girl and her tricycle with the wrinkled, scowling old man in his wheelchair.

Last year I sold all of my darkroom equipment in order to put that money towards the movie. I had lost my passion for developing photos (it is expensive and time-consuming) awhile before that, though I still love photography itself. So now I have a much more expensive and much more time-consuming passion! But at least with filmmaking, it is not me working alone in the dark. I enjoyed the solitude of that, but I am now enjoying the camaraderie and collaboration that is filmmaking.

One of the other big differences between photography and filmmaking is that photography is much more of an instant gratification; filmmaking is somewhat the exact opposite. I have always thought of myself as an instant-gratification kind of person. But here I am. I wrote the first draft of the script more than four years ago. I took a long break inbetween, but I have been working hard and continuously now for almost two years. And still have work to do.

The point is, you never know what you are capable of, but if you truly have a passion for it, as well as patience and perseverance, you will likely succeed. Filmmaking, like photography, is not brain surgery. It is something to be learned, and something with which you have to be using several different parts of your brain at the same time. And it is definitely something that if you don't love it, you're not going to do it well. It's just too much work to plow through if you are on the fence about it.

4:00am is the New 1:00am

I haven't been writing much because I haven't been doing much, film-wise, since the holidays ended. Once I am out of the groove it is hard to get back in, and real life and its issues start taking up more and more of my time since I have allowed myself to become un-entrenched from the movie. Plus, as you know by now, I work best with a deadline. Right now, that deadline is January 31st, the late-late date to submit to the Maryland Film Festival. And if you have not picked up on this by now, I am not an 11th-hour kind of person. I am an 11:45 kind of person. Some personal things, and things at my current "real job" to take care of through this week, and next week I have to really hit the bricks.

But, a little bit more fun this weekend before I go back to marathon editing. One of my major investors, my friend Tom, and his girlfriend are coming to visit me. I can't even remember the last time I saw them! I think the last time I saw Melanie was for my birthday way back in MAY, and I think I have seen Tom once since then. They couldn't make it for the screening of the rough cut, so I am having a mini-screening for them and a couple other friends who couldn't make it that day. But first, a decadent dinner at the Prime Rib! Mmmmmmmmmmmmm... It's fun to play Grown-Ups sometimes.

Actually, I have been editing. In my head. Late at night. Which is why I probably can't sleep. I took sleep aids for two nights, thinking they would knock me right out since I have never taken sleep aids in my life. No such luck. They did nothing. So now I am not even bothering.

Maybe it is feeling guilty for not really working on things lately. I think more likely it is because my brain got used to filing through a million things a day and now is still coasting at a high velocity on its own momentum. I've also found myself to be highly emotional the last month or so. The first few weeks of feeling this way were puzzling to me, I know myself pretty well, and when I am feeling some way that makes me stop and wonder WHY I am feeling that way, I can usually pick it apart and figure it out. This time took me awhile, but I know what it is: I need to write.

The way I blow off steam is most often in the form of writing (or anything to do with words, like editing), drinking, or sex. Just being honest here, don't get squeamish on me (and no, that is not a call for volunteers; I need to FOCUS, here!). Obviously the first is the most productive method, the second the most counter-productive, the third the most fun. Writing/editing is what I have been doing non-stop for a full year now, so though I haven't had time to really get involved with anyone (nookie-wise) I was fine. Since I finished the rough cut, a week before Christmas, up until New Year's I had plenty of drinking time (a few friends may argue, too much). But even if I am blowing off steam with one of my vices, if I am not writing, the words just build up in my brain until I can find an outlet for them, they never just dissipate.

But other than this blog and email, I won't let myself write until I have the final cut of the movie finished. Once the words are out, all creativity dwindles, so sometimes I just have to let it build up like this. I have ideas for other projects, some good ones, I think, but I can't take my eye off the ball. I have to do everything I can to cut this movie into the best possible piece it can be, and then I have to do everything I can to get it off the ground. I owe that to all the people who worked so hard on it with me, to everyone who has put their faith in me from the start (or who converted along the way), and to myself. But once I'm there... man, I can't WAIT to start writing again. I know that's when I'll finally be able to sleep like a baby.