Thursday, September 22, 2005

Student no more! (For now)

For the first time in almost two years, I'm not going to be taking any classes in the coming semester. There are a couple of reasons. First is that I've always been what one might call a "directional student." Meaning that I need a clear direction to figure out what classes I want to take. A couple of years ago, the direction was a desire to increase my marketability while I was looking for a job. So I started the "Web Design Certificate" program at Portland Community College, which led to taking classes in Flash, Dreamweaver, HTML, etc. Then the direction was an upcoming trip to Germany, so I took a couple of German classes. Currently, however, I don't really need to concentrate on a particular area, so I couldn't find anything to get excited about.

Second is that we can stand to save the dough right now.

I had considered taking a filmmaking class at the Northwest Film Center School of Film . Filmmaking is something that has interested me for years, but I'd never done anything about it, beyond some ideas for a few screenplays. But then Lisa sent me a 10-minute film school article by Robert Rodriguez. This made a bit of sense to me, because it preaches "forget about the fancy stuff. Just make a movie." Of course, one advantage of a class is that it imposes discipline...one is much more likely to get one's film done when you have to get it to your instructor by Friday. The disadvantage is, of course, classes cost money.

I've been pretty good about setting aside two hours in the afternoon for writing and writing-related tasks, so I'll just keep that up and see what happens. I suppose I could just pick an arbitrary date on a calendar and say to myself, "Your short film must be done by now." Curse the convenience of video recorders! I can't make any more excuses not to make a movie!

5 comments:

argotnaut said...

Self-imposed fake deadlines don't work. You need to do the film equivalent of booking a show without having a band yet. Amazing how quickly things move after that.

How about finding some film fests you'd like to enter?

Anonymous said...

Didn't somebody once say "You're just taking a bunch of sh**, man until you DO IT! ????

Anonymous said...

Robert Rodriguez is a good director to use as inspiration for starting out. I've read that he did "El Mariachi" on a very low budget & even now he keeps his budgets modest,(certainly by Hollywood standards). I've got the aforementioned "El Mariachi", as well as "Desperado" on DVD,& they each have his "10 Minute Film School" as a feature;very amusing & informative,(I rented his "Once Upon a Time in Mexico",which is not a very good movie,but it also has the "10 Minute Film School").
Let us all reflect on the wise words that Tavia reminds us of:
"DO IT"

Andrew said...

I'd feel a lot guiltier about sitting on my hands about this if I wasn't doing anything. But I'm making progress on my writing and I'm excited about a couple of new stories I'm working on -- suddenly, two hours a day at the library just doesn't seem long enough! So I AM "doing it." "It" just happens to not be movie-making at the moment. Plus, I must now get to work on some songs for the little electronica band in which Lisa and I are participating.

Anonymous said...

Well then quit whining about your inability to do it all at once. Jeez, you sound like one of those mothers who's working full time, raising 3 kids, and is frustrated becaused she can't build houses with Habitat for Humanity!
Life's a marathon.Pace yourself.