002 - You Absolutely Cannot Call it a comeback.
Or: The pressure of being readable.
Hello from this part of town. As this email hits your inbox, it’s my 35th birthday and a whole year to the day since I started debasing myself online to fund a film. Then it got funded and making the damn thing took over my life, and now here we are!
Read on, send me cake.
HTWAB News In Brief
(not quite big enough for an official update)
Had some very positive responses from the folks who have seen the nearly-finished cut. We’re close to locking it down now.
First pass of the posters and graphic design elements look bloody ace and I can’t wait to share some more info about them.
The score is coming along nicely - Tom and Joe have given me and Andy so much great music to experiment with in the edit. Below is a track they put together without seeing a cut, having just read the script. Whilst it won’t appear in the final film this track launched a few conversations and ideas that helped shape the way the score ended up going. I like this track a lot and it’s too nice to have it sitting on my hard drive forever.
Adjusting the Frequency
Without realising it, I got very much in my own head about this silly little newsletter; ‘it has to be good or there’s no point posting’ quickly became a desolate, postless wasteland where nothing felt good enough or interesting enough to share.
Honestly, I hadn’t even really been able to articulate that ‘til I stumbled across this very short blog post from Rachel Smith the other day, which begins like this…
I have this story in my head, that the longer I go without writing a note here, the better that note has to be when I do eventually come back and post again.
(Thank you to Inneresting for sharing the post in the first place.)
So we’re ripping off the fucking plaster and writing any old shit here now in the name of communicating out to you, my friends and well-wishers, from this side of the void. I don’t have any socials anymore beyond Instagram, and I deleted that off my phone to avoid being on there as often ‘cause that app truly, truly sucks the moon right out of the sky.
The aim here is to be kinda brief, semi-frequent and somewhat interesting. Beyond that, it’s all jazz, baby!
(Unsubscribe buttons are available in the usual places, but I will take it personally.)
Analogue logging to log off.
As well as binning off Instagram as much as possible, I’m trying to just rely less on my phone for things in general. I dunno about you, but the idea of using the notes app to keep track of my to-do lists and ideas for various scripts and projects makes me want to puke into my own hands and rub it directly in my eyes.
So I’ve become a notebook guy. Task to do? Stick it in the White book. Thing to go to? Black book. The worst idea for a film ever seen by mankind? Brown.
Then every so often, I just sit down and go through it all to make sure I’m on top of things. (For instance, I can tick off ‘write newsletter’ any minute now.)
Keeps my head empty of a general anxiety and gives my vague snippets of writing somewhere to live between skull and script, which is nice.
Final Bits.
Watched Sinners last night and it fuckin’ rules. Watch it as big and loud as you can and have a great time. Immediately started shopping for a Resonator guitar when I got home.
The latest episode of the Hyperfixed podcast is all about films that go missing for whatever reason, and it got me thinking a lot about preserving short films beyond just putting them online and hoping for the best. If you’re a filmmaker reading this, consider it your reminder that your hard drive is only good for about 5 years and you should do something with your old work so you don’t lose it forever.
Right, that’s me for now. This was supposed to be a quickie and it’s taken me over an hour to get this far.
Have a lovely week, support your friends and keep going to spite your enemies.
Lukey xoxo