Screenwriting and Movie Making Highs and Lows
Screenwriting and Movie Making Highs and Lows
There are going to be tough times in screenwriting and movie making. Fear, stress, frustration and anxiety like to come out and play when you’re at a low point feeling mentally exhausted.
It’s impossible to be upbeat and positive all the time when you’re writing a screenplay or producing a movie despite what any famous self-help guru claims.
Life seems to be a series of ups, downs and in-betweens. This is mirrored in the creative life of screenwriting and movie making.
Screenwriting and movie making stress is always there lurking and waiting, but you can beat it if you know it’s coming around the corner.
I follow lots of open and honest people pursuing their screenwriting and movie making dreams.
They love what they do and enjoy the process, but we’re all only human. I think it’s impossible to love and have fun at what you do all the time every single day. You would have to be superhuman or enlightened beyond 99% of the world.
One creative community blog that really has had a series of insightful and uncensored personal writings lately about the struggles we all face with screenwriting and movie making is called Seven Sentences (good blog for creative souls).
The road of screenwriting and movie making is filled with struggles. We often cross path with people that are not always kind or genuine.
In fact there are some downright mean and nasty folks out there who prey on screenwriters and filmmakers that are too eager and trusting to be able to tell shit from Shinola.
Other times it’s a struggle we have with ourselves. It could be we’re beating ourselves over a decision we made or action we took that didn’t get the results we had hoped.
We usually end up feeling lower and sometimes even too depressed to really make good creative decisions when dealing with screenwriting and movie making to move ahead and past our mistakes. We’re stuck in the mud digging ourselves in deeper.
Then there are other times something happens that momentarily derails your screenplay or movie that is beyond your control.
There was absolutely nothing you could have done to change the outcome. It was truly out of your hands. That happened to me once with film financing that went south.
This post on the highs and lows of screenwriting and making movies wasn’t anything I planned on writing today.
In fact I had received a couple of emails over the weekend asking me about movie distribution contracts, actor agreements and nudity riders. I was thinking about writing a post from those emails, but really didn’t feel the energy.
Today I wasn’t feeling in the greatest mood. Not depressed or sad and not happy. I guess I would call it even and going with the flow of the day.
I accepted how I felt and didn’t try to fight against it. After all everything passes in life from people to emotions. I put on some classic rock music to tune my mind out while I did some stretching.
It felt physically good to get the blood going after I finished, but my mental mood wasn’t any better. Mentally I felt flat.
There are things to work on like notes for Psoro the movie we have in post-production with U.K. based LiarDice Films and Graphic Delusions. I have copies of the raw footage I could be going through.
I could be working on a novel I’ve started or a spec screenplay I’m going to be pitching with a director of photography I respect. We’re going in as a creative team and it has a real shot at film financing.
But I wasn’t feeling much like working on much of anything. It looked like I was going to waste a day and sit listening to music until the mood passed.
I ignored a number I recognized calling two times as I sat listening to classic rock. Third time I saw the number calling I answered it even if I didn’t feel much like talking.
It wasn’t an earth shattering conversation or anything profound said. Instead it was just two friends catching up and talking about old times.
After hanging up my mood did feel lighter and I was able to think about writing today.
This blog post is nothing great or probably helpful to any visitors that read it, but just being able to get my mind stringing words together and letting my fingers work has me moving back down the creative path.
Writing a screenplay and producing a movie are going to be moments of highs and lows.
The experience is worth it because when you do finish a screenplay or make a movie there is a creative climax that explodes when you’re done.
It beats the hell out of always talking about writing a screenplay or making a movie and never doing it.
Like one person’s names that escapes said in a quote someplace, “Don’t let your highs be too high and lows too low.” This indie filmmaker Sid Kali typing FADE TO BLACK