Pretention FAIL!!

              So I feel like I can't seem to hit this topic enough, so I'm gonna address it....AGAIN.  In my last video where I talk about writing the script for Soliloquy, there were definitely some concerns about me coming off as an egoist.  So I did myself some favors and watched the video again, which you can watch here.



              Not I'm not gonna beat around the bush with you all. YES, I do speak with an authoritative voice when I give my advice about writing, and NO, I do not have tons of exposure, fame, money, notoriety, or awards to back me up.  So I can see the people out there, maybe even those who do have more money, fame, notoriety, or experience than me, saying "What gives this kid the right to speak about writing a script like he knows what he's doing?"  Well, first and foremost, I'm 21 friggin' years old, so I'm pretty sure I don't know jack.  And I'm even more sure that as a I get older, I'll know less and less.  BUT, the reason I can speak with such confidence about what it takes to write a story is because I've been writing for several years, and I've been through a lot of the same stuff writers go through writing once everyday for a couple years.  And as I kept doing it, I developed the writing style that works FOR ME, and allows me to come up with stories time and time again.  Now I can't give any testaments to their quality, but I personally believe that anyone who's been doing something for a long time, successful or not, or anyone who's ever done something, like making a short film when you were 8 off your mother's VHS tapes, has some honest to God real, useful advice to the people who are trying to do the same thing. We can't count those people out.
               I've been through a writer's block phase.  I've been through the phase where I thought that everything I came up with was absolute dog vomit.  And I've been through the phase of having to rewrite 30, 40, or even 50 pages of story because you just know in your mind that what you wrote the first time is not good enough.  Every time I went through a phase, I learned something new about what kind of writer I was.  When I went through writer's block, I learned that it was because I kept waiting for a sweeping mode of inspiration that I held more important than actual writing experience, when in fact the opposite is true.  Writing everyday, even about a bad idea, will make you a thousand times a better writer than waiting for the perfect spark of inspiration.  And when I went through the phase of thinking that everything I came up with was crap, I learned that it was because I wasn't trusting myself as a writer.  I kept thinking that everything I came up with was somehow never going to be as good as all the other great stories out there, that I could never compete with all the great filmmakers and writers because they're brilliant and I'm not.  It wasn't until I said "Dude, if you keep doing this, you will never make a story in your life, EVER" that I learned to trust my ideas and trust myself.  So even when an idea sounds like garbage from the beginning, I never throw it out because I trust myself to make it into a unique story, and that's the most important part to being a creative person.  Doubt chokes confidence, of that I'm 100% sure.
               So when I record future videos and I speak about my internal processes, I want people to understand a couple things.  Number 1, I'm not speaking as an expert.  I'm far from it, but I have my dreams and desires to not stop until I get there.  Number 2, when I talk, I'm usually addressing my speeches to either VERY EARLY beginners, or people who are really dying to be filmmakers but are lacking the confidence to just dive in and do it.  That used to be me.  And Number 3, I'm not talking as if I'm better than you, or competing with you.  In all honesty, I went through that phase too, and I think every writer or filmmaker will.  We tend to measure our own hopes, dreams, and experiences as more weighty than others, and it's highly nerve wracking when you sit in a film class where everyone else is your competition.  Everyone is vying for the same job, and it's even more nerve wracking when you see that everyone else has actual talent, and may be more talented than you.  But you can't take that as a measure of your success, because at the end of the day, you are 90% or your success, your film is 9%, and luck is the other 1%.  And the last and main point I want to make is Number 4, I just want there to be more creative people in the world, and I personally believe that every single person alive can be an artist if they would learn to trust themselves a little more.  That's what I'm trying to do by showing my story and my processes behind the scenes.  I want to show people that they can do the same thing regardless of the limitations.

"The Industry is dead" - Quote from PressPausePlay

So I started this blogger account as a requirement for an old film course which made us link up our posts as journal entries to be graded.  Needless to say it was utter bullpies.  Every week I would spend half my time slaving over each entry like it was a graduate thesis essay so that my TA would mark my grades high.  It was a waste of time, and when I was done with it I threw all my blogs out the window.  Well, today I'm blowing off some of the old dust and making a new beginning for this thing.  The main reason is because I've been inspired by a string of advice coming from some very successful business people at the SXSW Film and Interactive Fest.

"The Industry is dead," as it says up above is from the documentary PressPausePlay, and everywhere I went during SXSW I heard it from keynote speakers, to marketing directors, to successful media entrepreneurs, again and again and again.  What the phrase means is simple.  Film festival critiques are dead (at least for short films and even more so for student short films).  The days in which filmmakers had to wait for their films to make into festivals in order to gauge the first valid response are over.  Now I'm not saying that film festivals aren't opportunities to get noticed, nor that they don't give independent filmmakers big breaks.  But we don't have to rely on them anymore to show our work to a massive group of people and provide us with an honest critique.  Today we have a swarm of people bursting on the internet with comments about your work, YouTube and Vimeo especially.  The views, however, don't come on their own.

That's where this blog comes in.  Another big piece of advice floating around the internet was the idea of freeing up content.  Don't hold back your products, but instead let them go around the net.  Let them become popular.  Let people watch them.  Teach them something they didn't know already.  Show them that you have something to say.  The new direction of Raise the Roof Productions was modeled after that idea.  We don't just want to make films.  We want to share our experience with other people, especially other filmmakers, so that they can learn from us.  That was also the main reason why we USTREAMed Soliloquy.  Instead of just watching a plain old Vimeo clip, you got to see us, the cast and the crew, goofing off eating pizza and drinking champagne while we took questions from the viewers and provided answers on the spot.  It was like a Q & A but better.  The blog here is another method of that interaction.  First, if you're reading this, I'd love to hear any comments about my thoughts in the previous paragraph.  Second, I'll also be posting updates about our soon arriving Behind the Scenes videos for Soliloquy, future products, and any other ideas that squirm into my head.  I'll also try to encourage the other members of the crew to write blogs as well.  And third, this page also acts as marketing.  I know it looks a little bit plain in here right now, but we'll be working to revamp this page with our own trademark soon enough.  Until then peeps, have a good day.