Wednesday, May 4, 2011

A New Approach for my Blog


Monday last week, Stacy Parks of Film Specific put a post on her blog about blogging for filmmakers.

I made a comment about some of the challenges of writing a blog and she suggested that if your film has a particular target audience, that posts about their interests would be a good idea. As I commented back, I should have thought of that myself.

However, when I started to look at the projects I have underway, I realized that it isn’t always easy to follow that advice. In part, I find it difficult to articulate who my audience is, and what kind of posts would attract them.

I started to think over how I could approach this with some of my projects.


A man’s fascination in a series of books leads him to the dangerous cult like following that has grown up around them.

There many books, TV programs and movies that develop a cult following. Many of these people could be interested in a story like this. I haven’t been involved with this sort of thing myself, so I would need to learn more about it.


A troubled police detective is targeted by a nasty villain.

This would be a problematic story to target. Not so much that there are not a lot of people who are interested in detective stories, but because there are so many other detective stories around for them to watch. I think I do have a unique perspective, but it is only revealed at the end. The initial premise isn’t distinguishable from a lot of other detective stories.


A young lawyer seeks justice for abused women, but then has to face a past she thought she left behind.

I see potential to explore aspects of the story in a series of blogs. Certainly I know that I need to know more about these issues if I want to create a good story. It would be too easy to go badly astray.


A politician threatened with blackmail struggles to save his relationship with his wife.

I don’t see anything that sets this story apart from many others of the same ilk. The story needs something more. I could develop the project to be more about how the private lives of politician affect their political careers.

The Crying Woman

A chance meeting between two people leads one of them to confide in the other.

I want this story to be about building trust and learning to listen. I am fascinated by the idea of putting one’s own interests aside and devote time to listen, and there by help, someone else. I’m sure that there are others who would find it interesting too.

I only have a preliminary outline for this story. I don’t think I am quite ready to write it. I did cannibalize parts of it for Then the Phone Rang, so I need to either scrap one of the two stories or come up with new elements of the story to replace the ones I used.

Transportation Planning Story

I spent a long career as a transportation planner, so if I “write what I know” that would be the subject. I wrote one short story, The Glencoe Project, about transportation planners. So far as I know, this is the only story about transportation planners ever written.

Most people I met over the years had strong opinions on transportation plans and planners. So I think that discussions of these issues and how I incorporate them into a story could attract a lot of interest.


This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

No comments:

Post a Comment