If we were actually writing on paper....imagine.

It's been a bit of time since I posted, though on the flip side we have made some big writing strides!

Melissa and I have met five times and every time we seem to carve something that resembles 'Lisa' a bit more clearly.

Simply our process has been thus far:

Pre-Pro: watching, reading, learning, loving Lisa Cholodenko

1- Choosing a location, character ideas, themes, and stylistic elements that a) were Lisa enduced b) were accessible for us as actors and filmmakers

2- Character descriptions, creating a world, creating a log line, crafting a title.

3- Outlining the events of our story (our poor man's version of Celtx storyboarding-- I'd like to call it snap shots )

4-  Purging a first rough draft

5- Refining our story by streamlining the style and language-- really boiling down what we need.

Melissa was far better off the bat at writing subtext than I. I know what the subtext is, however my tendency is to want to write some of it too-- sometimes my brain still defaults to think in theatre where  action is written as word.  Working on that...Melissa snaps me back out of it. She's feisty when she writes ;)

This last go-round was our fifth visit which paled in culinary comparison to our previous meet up (over pumpkin, arugula, brazil nut, and sheep's cheese pizza mind you- yummmm I love cooking for nice people who appreciate food).

Our goal this last time around was to strip as much away as we could. One of our earliest notes about Lisa's style was the idea that life is messy-- and translating that idea through language was what we needed to focus on. Our writing was not to be messy, rather our writing had to reflect the immediate P.O.V. of characters who didn't necessarily know what to say eloquently through out. Ultimately we yet again were reminded that less is more in dialogue when it comes to visual storytelling.

We got about two-thirds of the way through before Melissa had to run to see THE MASTER and I ran to see LOOPER. I'm looking forward to our next writing sesh where we'll inevitably digress about actor shop talk, the films we've seen, and forever sharing strange coincidences that only make our partnership seem like a fateful gift.

Happy creating everyone.

Truly,
Ash