BRAINS Part II

Alright, so I've decided on a name for my website/production company:

BURIED ALIVE PRODUCTIONS

It took quite a long time for me to choose the name of my production company.  It seemed EVERY name I could think already existed as a web domain.  But thankfully Buried Alive Productions was NOT taken yet and I am also wholly satisfied with the name.

My friend is a very talented graphic design artist and he will be designing the logo for my company. 

The purpose of the production company is to write, produce, direct, edit, and distribute short and full length videos via several different mediums.  I intend on creating webisodes, short films, full length feature films and hopefully a series of comic books as well.

For now the entire production team consists of only myself, but my friends will be helping me as well.  I also intend on enlisting my classmates' help.

If this production company every gains success or some kind of notoriety, I hope to take on other aspiring filmmaker's ideas as well and help them to produce whatever it is they want to create.

As of today, October 28th, 2009, I have two works in progress.  I am in the pre-production stages of developing my short film/webisode BRAINS, and my creative project (a mockumentary) which is due in less than two years is in the pre-pre-pre-pre-production stages as I outline my ideas and gather funding and resources.

Stay tuned for more updates in the immediate future as I am hoping to completely finish BRAINS by December 25th, 2009.  Christmas Day.

Namaste.

BRAINS

So, this is a journal post that I am excited about!  A couple of Friends and I are putting together a short, independent film titled, BRAINS.  It's a comedy about one zombie and his search for a meal.

I'm also in the process of creating a website so I can post my works on the web for anyone interested in watching them.  If BRAINS comes out good, I plan on making it into a webisode series with a new webisode premiering on my website every 3 months.  I would preferably like to release more than 4 webisodes  a year, but due to school and basically life in general, this may not be possible.

I've had a couple of ideas about what I want to name my website, but so far all of these domain names have been taken.  I want to name it something along the lines of _________ Productions, or ________ Entertainment.

I've also been playing around with Final Cut Pro 7 recently and have found a lot of neat little tricks that I could use to make my BRAINS film look that much better and cooler.  Right now I am only in the script writing stages, but I have also acquired some props and makeup that I plan on using for my BRAINS idea.

Stay tuned for more updates as they come.

So much to do in so little time!

I am so busy lately with school, work, writing, and spending time with my fiancee and our new puppy that I could just SCREAM!  Basically, the photo to the left pretty much sums up how I have been feeling lately. . . minus the blood, of course.

Every Monday and Wednesday I am at school from nine in the morning till approximately 6 or 7 depending on how long I decide to work out after class.

Tuesdays is my worst day.  I'm at school from nine in the morning till 8:20 at night.  Then I go home and do some homework and relax a little.

Thursdays I am at school from nine in the morning till approximately 6 or 7 depending once again on how long I work out for.

Fridays are finally my day to relax as I only work 9AM-11AM and I have the rest of the day to either work out, have fun, and do homework.  The weekends are completely free and is the time when I should get most of my work done . . . but who wants to do homework on the weekends?

Don't get me wrong.  I love my life right now and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but sometimes it can be a bit too much.  I really have to work on getting more done on the weekends because I just do not have that much time during the week.

American Curriculum and the Debilitating Effect on Creativity

Dr. Linda Taylor presented a very well put-together speech on creativity and how it relates to education.  She described how education (particularly American education) confines creativity and only awards thinking that is not done out of the box.  Her mentioning the fact that Americans have not been winning Nobel Prizes as an example of how education has acted as a hindrance in some cases.  If children were taught early on that out of the box thinking was a good thing, then perhaps we would have more stand out individuals coming out of the school system.

The assertion that the heads of schools and school districts are overwhelmingly administrative types and do not start out as teachers is quite alarming.  I believe that there should be an equal ratio of teachers and non-teachers in administrative positions to make sure that all of the business decisions being made are first and foremost in the best interests of the students.

Perhaps the best part of Linda's talk were the examples she provided to illuminate us on how long the idea of thinking outside of the box has been around, but still works of art and articles are being created detailing how the schools are forcing children to think one way instead of approaching education from an outside the box perspective.  First came the poem which depicted a child's creativity being held back by the school systems, then came the song, then the article, and finally the video we all had to watch prior to her presentation.  All four illustrated the creative constraints students are placed under by the school system. 

 I particularly liked the song which told the story of a boy who wanted to color a flower all the colors of the rainbow, but he was told that flowers are red and that is how he should do it.  He conformed and once again, creativity was constrained.  But the last chorus or verse of the song almost made a call to arms to stop putting these children inside these boxes and destroying their creative impulses.  This last part of the song really spoke to me because it gave a little hope that the situation in some schools may be resolved and creativity may be allowed to flow from children after all.

Mulling Over the Final Creative Project

Although I am enjoying all of my classes so far this semester, I cannot help but think about and get excited about my final creative project which I will start next year.  I am so glad that there is a choice to do a thesis or a creative project.  While I have done several papers in the past with theses, I must admit that it is one of my weakest areas.  I am just not all that interested in or very good at developing a thesis. 

While my prose definitely needs work (which is evident by the 180 page novel I have sitting on my computer's hard drive collecting metaphorical dust), I believe the ability to develop and tell a good and sometimes intricate story is one of my strengths.  For my creative project, I will be shooting and acting in a mockumentary about a divorced, middle-aged vampire hunter with a goofy New York-like accent, a beer gut, a comb over, and a penchant for foul language and crude jokes.

This idea has been rolling around in my head for almost ten years now, and I have written several screenplays about this character, Wally Swayzek.  He is also the subject of the book I am currently writing.  Now, my ultimate goal is to someday make a fairly big budgeted film about Wally, but right now that is obviously not feasible.  So instead I am taking the low budget, mockumentary approach and placing my character with a small film crew which will film and only sometimes interact with him as he goes through his daily activities and culminating in a vampire hunt that doesn't exactly go to plan.

Even though this project is a long way's away, I have already begun to plan some things out, including a script (I hope to have the first draft done by Christmas '09).  For the film, I will be purchasing my own camera to film in my home town of Orland Park, Illinois.  I have already started to save up for the film's expenses, and I am also willing to use my credit card to finance the film as well.  

Well, I think that is enough about my creative project for now, but count on reading several more updates about the pre-pre-pre-production of this film in the very near future.