Category Archives: Bio

The Bad Dream Reset

Posted on by
Reply

I sometimes take these afternoon naps where sleep so hard it’s like time just skips ahead. I call them “death naps.” They’re not restful at all since I just turn off for an hour or so, but the big problem is that there’s no departure from my mental timeline. I wake up thinking about the things I was thinking about when I went to sleep. Sleep is supposed to clear things up. A mental vacation. I need that break from reality.

When I go to bed for the standard nightly sleep cycle, I dream. A lot. Sometimes my dreams are so vivid and so far removed from my daily life that I wake up in a state of amnesia. And it can last for a couple hours. I mean, it’s not like I don’t remember my name, but I have no attachment to anything. I don’t feel a sense of urgency to be anywhere or contact anyone. Any previous obligations I had no longer carry any weight. I just walk around the house. Eat something. Stare out the window. Flip through a magazine. Then something – usually the phone – will remind me that I have a job and have places to be.

But even then, it can persist. I go to the job and wave to people I know, but in this detached frame of mind. I feel like I’m inside a fishbowl and the rest of the world moves by outside. I’ll have whole conversations with other people where I’m interacting and replying to questions, but in my head it’s like I’m listening to an analog recording of something that happened years ago. I’ll think, “Weird that I said that right there.” But I won’t correct myself because it’s on the recording that way.

It’s not that I’m dwelling on the dream and think I’m still there. I’ve already forgotten it. It’s as though I’ve picked up a book and opened to the middle and started reading. Nothing around me has any context. I’m living in the middle of this book that someone else wrote and I haven’t read the pages leading up to now. The whole experience can be extremely refreshing. It’s like a reset button and I wake up without feeling any stress at all. I have no connection to any consequences after nights like these. All because I had a really strong dream.

I’ve heard dreams are the off-gassing of the sub-conscious. All the thoughts you don’t have the chance to process over a few days or even years come out in dreams. Pressure is relieved and the sub-conscious comes out cleaner. Maybe what’s happening to me is that my off-gassing goes too far and doesn’t leave enough pressure left. When morning comes, I’ve lost all my bookmarks and footnotes. I’m not waking up shouting, “You’re not my father!” But it takes me some time to remember who I am and what I do. I have to research my timeline to figure out where I need to pick it back up.

Nightmares are the best for this phenomenon. The worst of these bad dreams make me I feel like I wake up and they’ve come true. I try to discreetly go around interviewing my friends and co-workers to make sure they’re the same people. Just to make sure I haven’t skipped over to some other thread of reality where people are different… but the same! Is that crazy?

When I was really young, like around five or six, I had really intense nightmares. Wake up screaming kind of deal. They said it was common in highly intelligent children. So I went around for a couple months terrified to go to sleep, but happy that I was smart. Then my grandmother (who just passed away a year ago at 103) said I should stop eating sugar before bed. Doing that causes bad dreams, she said. So Mom cut off my bedtime snack and guess what? The nightmares stopped. Then I wandered around for a couple months wondering if I wasn’t very smart and only had nightmares because I liked ice cream.

In recent months, the stress levels at work have fluctuated wildly. Sometimes weeks go by and everything is fine, but then there will be a huge push for some number gathering or a deliverable will be pushed up a month or two. It’s these latter times that make me wish I could have some crazy dreams and have that micro amnesia on purpose. The problem is that the stress causes me to lose sleep and have more death naps. People say I should exercise more. So I do. But then that gives me energy so I don’t even have the naps anymore. Lately, I’ve taken to eating before bed in hopes of inducing my dream detachment. Maybe one night I’ll eat a whole birthday cake and wake up the next day with no memories at all.

If I don’t get back to you about this experiment, you’ll know it worked.

Getting Reacquainted

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s a quick one… I’m finally sitting down with the book after a month or more away. I’m done with chapter 9 apparently. I had forgotten that! Sad, right? Now I need to move forward and crank out the final eight chapters or so. I’m right at the unofficial half-way point so it was a good place to stop, but now as I sit here, I feel like I’m starting from scratch. It’s like I’m in the midst of a long-distance relationship and my partner is back in town for a weekend visit. We have to get to know each other again. The question is, how do you have small talk with a book?

A friend of mine – writer, animator, artist, director, renaissance man Mike Wellins – once told me the best thing to do when getting back to an idea is read through everything you have and change one thing. Force yourself to change something. Anything! Guess what? It works. I’ve used this tactic before on screenplays and even altering a line of dialog that I previously loved really helps re-connect me to the material. When I come back to a writing or editing project after a few weeks away, it’s like somebody else’s project. And that’s true… the person who last worked on this was the me from a month ago. Sometimes I think, “That guy from five weeks ago was a genius!” And other times it’s like, “What the hell was he thinking?!” Either way, making changes here and there reestablishes the immersion into the material that I really need to start thinking in the world of that story. The present-day me owns it now.

So here I am, past the 20,000 word mark and moving forward. Cheers to the me from a couple months back who did all this work. But he’s gone now. I’ll take it from here.

Collaboration or Isolation?

Posted on by
1

This past weekend, I got together with about 16 people and shot a short film. I had written the script last March with no real intention of making it, but over the summer I made the mistake of having a beer with Kyle Glenn (@kyleglenn) and he talked me into shooting it. I don’t know how. For a quiet guy with a sensitive stomach, he can be very persuasive.

One of the main reasons I’ve been cooling off on film production is that it requires so many people to make it happen. After making FORGE last year, I told myself that if I produced another film, there would have to be enough money to pay everyone properly (including myself). I’m talking $150,000 instead of $7500. Micro-budget filmmaking can be very rewarding, but even on a single day project, I can’t shake that feeling that everyone is doing me a huge favor. They put in their time and energy and I’m hopelessly aware of that every minute during production. Frankly, it’s distracting. So since October 2010, I’ve focused on generating ideas instead of actually making them. Then Kyle Glenn and his stupid beer happened.

Ok! I’m not blaming. He made a very good case, and I didn’t need much arm-twisting. In fact, I think the conversation went something like this: Kyle: “You should make another movie.” Co: “Sure! How about Robot Sentry? We can shoot on September 30th!” Nevertheless, I regretted it as soon as I got home. I had a book to finish, I was saving money for… something cool that was as-of-yet unidentified, and I was trying to learn how to relax. Most of all, when I made FORGE, I had no other obligations. This time around I had a day job to contend with. Let me tell you, the two weeks leading up to the shoot were crazy. It was like the whole world needed my immediate attention. If it weren’t for Justin Koleszar and his help with casting, and Kyle and Amber and their regular support check-ins, I would have called the whole thing off. But once the shooting started, I was in my element. I expressed ideas and made decisions for three days straight. I worked with people I liked and respected. I remembered why I loved filmmaking. When people had input, it was useful and constructive and made the project better. There’s nothing more fulfilling than true collaboration. Overall, fantastic experience.

The catch is that even when you’re done shooting, you still have a responsibility to all those people who helped you on the shoot. You finish your film. Allow me to add something to the beginning of that thought… If you’re not a thoughtless slack bastard, you finish your film. So many projects get shot and end up on a hard drive in a closet somewhere. If people are putting in their time and energy for no money, you have to at least honor their efforts with a finished project. The good news is that editing picture and sound is a lot like writing. I start with a blank timeline, frame in the general structure, then refine and refine until it makes sense. And I can work alone. I don’t have to schedule with anyone and nobody is waiting for me. (quick aside: absolutely everyone on Robo was on time every day. It was amazing.) I can get up early or stay up late. Now that I’ve been working in post for a week, I remember why I was getting out of production: working alone is way less stressful.

So I’m thinking I have it figured out and I’ve decided that I like solo work better. For now. But if that’s true, why am I always texting, emailing, im-ing and calling people? Maybe it’s because I’m a naturally social person, but I get too stressed when I have to rely on people or, as is often the case, when they have to rely on me. It’s hard to enjoy it anymore. I guess I’m talking in circles on this one. I just said I loved it, and now I’m saying I don’t love it. My point is that I’ve changed over the years. My youthful, thick-headed optimism has finally given way to that grinding tension that comes from experience. Specifically, the experience of actually experiencing all the things that can go wrong on a group film project. Each time we pull off a movie with no deaths or other serious setbacks, I feel like I’m using up my life’s supply of luck. Sure, good planning goes a long way, but so many things can go wrong that I’m always waiting for that one thing that will bring a production to its knees. Again, money can fix almost any problem. Maybe that’s at the root of the stress, this shoestring method of operation. In summary, I love it when it’s going well, but I can feel the specter of doom just around the corner.

It also begs the question, how much can go wrong when writing a book? Weather, cast, crew, equipment, money… none of that is needed if I write a book. Nobody is waiting for it. Nobody will talk smack about me later if I don’t finish it right away. Nobody got up at 6am to help me write it. But maybe it’s the Kyles and Justins of the world who push me to finish movies and nobody is pushing me to finish this book. Maybe the stress is what generates a finished product. Lots of “maybes” in this post.

If someone came forward with a couple hundred grand (or million) and asked me to make a movie, I’d totally do it. Money changes everything. Paying people what they’re worth would alleviate a lot of that stress. On the other hand, then I would have the stress of pleasing an investor instead of the cast and crew. Man. Tough one. Maybe somebody will pay big for my ideas. Then I can collaborate with people on where we’re going for happy hour and keep the stress levels a lot lower.