Project Updates: A Film, Another Film, An Article, A Story and More Stories

I made progress on several of my projects this week.

$100 Film Festival Film

I got the test roll for my new $100 Film Festival Film (HDFFF2012). I was happy with how good it looked. I had been worried that the film was too old and wouldn’t work. I need to plan out what to do next. What I’ve had in mind is something like Man with a Movie Camera.  I’ve been in touch with Howard Horwitz to collaborate on this project. He had a film in the first $100 Film Festival back in 1992.

My Most Difficult Case

Actually I haven’t made much progress on My Most Difficult Case. I’ve run into some difficulty with the sound production.

Can Taxes be Fair?

I wrote and published a new article about taxes. I had some ideas about what is fair and thought that an article on taxes would do well. The initial response was good, but then things slowed down.

The Crying Woman

I got the first draft of my story The Crying Woman done. It came in at about the length I planned, but the last section of the story was short by 200 words, while the first three sections were a little over. Right now I think I shouldn’t get all concerned about that.

Before I start to rewrite it I want to think over what I want to do with the story. Since I took so long to write it, the style I used isn’t consistent. I had followed the Lester Dent formula, but it isn’t really appropriate for this kind of story. I want to move back closer to the style I used for A Walk in the Snow, A Woman Alone in a Cruel World and Hello, My Name is Bob.

Transportation Planning Stories

I’ve written two transportation planning stories, The Glencoe Project and The Gladstone Barrier, as part of my goal of a transportation planning movie.

I posted a request on some LinkedIn groups for transportation planners to comment on my transportation planning stories. The response wasn’t as great as I had hoped, but I still had trouble responding to the comments. I want to give thoughtful responses and that takes longer. I got most of them done this week, but I think there are still a few I need to follow up on.

I started on the outline for a new transportation planning story this week. I tried to incorporate some of the suggestions I got.  I wondered if I should be doing a new story outline now with all the other projects on the go. I do enjoy doing out lines and it is a little too easy to drop what ever else I’m doing and put them together.

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

The Evolution of My Transportation Planning Story

I have embarked on a project to make a movie about transportation planning. This idea has been percolating through my mind for a long time and has a long way to go yet.

 

Early Efforts

I worked for over 30 years as a transportation planner. When I started to make films in the early 1990s, many of my co-workers encouraged me to make a film about transportation planning. I was reluctant to do that.

Progress Report on “The Crying Woman”: I Want Some Advice

I started to write The Crying Woman this week and I got about 900 words done. I first got the idea more than a year and a half ago and I spent quite a while in thought about the first part of the story, so it went quite easily.

The next part proved harder. The woman wants to tell the man about a problem she has, but she isn’t quite ready. I want to have her talk about the problem indirectly, as if it isn’t really her problem. I felt the best way to do that was to have her talk about a book. I thought it would be a good idea if the man had not read the book, but had seen the movie.

The problem is: I couldn’t think of a book/movie that would be appropriate. The woman wants to express the sense of betrayal she feels. The first movies I thought of, Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, don’t really fit. Especially since the stories have a woman who betrays a man. I need one where the man betrays a woman. I’m sure there must be some thing out there that would work.

If anyone has any suggestions please pass them along to me.

One possibility is to create a fictional book. I did that for The Doorman’s Sacrifice. An advantage of this approach is that the book can fit the needs the story exactly. It would also avoid any copyright issues. I’d need to come up with at least an outline for the book and note differences between the movie and the book.

Another problem I have is with the woman crying. As the Four Seasons said, Big Girls Don’t Cry.

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