Archive for Writing
I must confess that I have been very remiss about putting up any updates about the St. Elizabeth documentary since the end of December (here). A great deal has happened, not all of it good, but things finally seem to be back on track.
On returning from Hungary with a disk drive containing all the footage our camerman Michael shot, plus the tapes from my own camcorder, I expected to be able to start editing, or at least viewing the footage, right away. But when I made my first phone call to my mother when I arrived home, she informed me of my uncle Joe’s death. I left right away, and only after I returned from the funeral and Thanksgiving holidays did I discover that the drive was unusable. I couldn’t even read it with my computer.
Long-distance consultation with Michael didn’t help; I gave the disk to my brother Nick at Christmas, and he couldn’t access it either. So it eventually went back to Michael, who discovered that though it was supposed the be cross-platform, the formatting of the files themselves (at least that’s what I think he said), made it impossible to read on anything but a Mac. So he had to re-copy every one of the some 300 gigs of footage through his computer network from a Mac to a PC and then to the portable drive - which took around 200 hours. Which would have been fine, but he had to be absent on other filming gigs a good deal of the time during the next four months. I didn’t receive the footage until the middle of April, five months after I returned home. And even then we found footage that had not been copied, which had to located.
In the meantime, a lengthy illness, five separate tax returns for the back sales tax for my business, plus regular taxes on April 15, made it nearly impossible to keep up with my regular job (freelancers don’t get paid time off), let alone other tasks like writing the script and obtaining permissions for using still images and archive footage. I also had to test out various editing programs, and started learning to use Adobe Premiere Pro.
Then at long last, when everything was all set for editing, my laptop stopped working. The motherboard had fizzled out. Back it went to the company for repairs (thank goodness it was still under warranty), Then I had a replacement computer to set up, and finally to work — though I no longer had the trial version of Adobe Premiere, which was on the other laptop (you’re only allowed one trial version). To save time, I decided to resort to using the simple Windows editing program that I already knew for the trailer. Then when everything was ready again, I discovered that the drive I had copied my own footage on had failed. There were parts I hadn’t transferred to my laptop, so they had to be captured from tape again.
In the meantime, I finally got some good news: the Presidency of the International Council of the SFO (CIOFS) would be able to reimburse me for some of the filming expenses. They are also going to put the trailer on their web site and help promote the video when it’s done.
So things really seem to be back on track now, and the trailer at least is close to completion. In spite of the frustration, seeing all the tons of disconnected footage you shot finally connect and come alive into an actual story is thrilling. We already have a trailer from 2007 that focused on our interviews in Rome; this short teaser trailer will focus more on the actual experience of the Franciscans of the various orders who attended the celebrations in Rome, Assisi, Esztergom and Budapest, as well as an outline of Elizabeth’s life. It should be much more visually exciting than the first trailer.
So keep checking back here for the trailer, which I hope will be done in a couple of days. Then on to editing the real thing!
Oh and one more thing; if you want to be put on the e-mail list to receive updates about the documentary, just write to me at editor@taucrossbooks.com.
Filed under: Film, St. Elizabeth Documentary, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Writing | |No Comments
Looking back now at my first post of over three years ago, I can see that I’ve written hardly anything of what I originally set out to write about - my screenplays, mythology, great Christian writers, and above all the writer’s pilgrimage. Lots of other things, including my three year odyssey with St. Elizabeth, got in the way (I got the first invitation to become involved in the centenary about a month after I started this blog). And then John Paul I’s anniversary. So I wrote about those things.
Now I’m wondering a bit about the future direction of my blog, which I really love writing when I have time. A little while back I changed the title a bit (it was originally Lori’s Pilgrimage) but the pilgrimage idea remains.
It wasn’t only Dante’s idea of a pilgrimage, but a passage from C. S. Lewis, perhaps only in the back of my mind, that suggested the idea for the title. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis described how the experience of an unnamed longing that frequently arose in him through poetry or nature or mythology, once loomed very large in his thoughts in his adolescence and early manhood. Eventually trying to ensure and prolong those experiences — to “have it again” — became almost the main purpose of his life. Then, after he became a Christian and realized that these longings were the desire for God, the experience of God that we can never fully have in this world, his attitude toward Joy changed. They became merely “signposts”:
When we are lost in the woods, the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries “Look!” The whole party gathers around and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. “We would be at Jerusalem. “
Not, of course, that I don’t often catch myself stopping to stare at roadside objects of even less importance.
it was the last sentence that really amused me!
At any rate, I have to wonder what importance this blog really has, to me and to my readers. I often want to write on it, but my many duties frequently keep me from doing so. Those duties are more important for many reasons — not the least, earning a living, as well as religious duties, household chores, and so on.
When I do write on here, is it always a sign of the importance of the matter? Not always. Sometimes I just write on a whim, or because I’m tired of doing everything else. Since I don’t get many comments — though I apparently am getting more readers — I don’t know what about my work interests people. My main reason for continuing is the simple desire to write and to have your work reach an audience.
Still, what better description is there of what a Christian blogger does than “stopping to look at the sights on the way to Jerusalem”? This is the reason for what I wrote at the right (in About This Blog).
I hope people will continue coming along with me.
(by the way, I just noticed that with this entry, I have hit 100 posts since I started this blog! That’s an average of 33 a year, or slightly over 2.75 a month. But I have actually been publishing much more in the last few months - it was more like 1.5 a month before).
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I love working on this blog, and wish I had time to write here more often. But I work for an hourly wage (I’m permitted a little leeway on the numer of hours I work), and have many projects on the side, the number of hours I spend on my job a week means I often can’t work on the blog that much.
This gives me less time to discuss the state of Christians in Hollywood or the history of myth in our culture, or documentary filming or issues in the Church. I would also love more time to put up new installments about the controversy over John Paul I.
Being a little extra money ahead would help me a lot.
Hence the little button on the side. You can donate through credit or debit card or your own PayPal account. Or e-mail me at immaginativa@yahoo.com to find out how you can send me a check.
Every little bit helps! (Donations made here are separate from those made to the St. Elizabeth documentary: to donate to that, go to www.stelizabethdocumentary.com).
And do check out the links to my books The Smiling Pope and The Greatest of These is Love on the bottom right button. Every book bought by clicking on the Amazon button also brings me a little money.
Thanks!
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The St. Elizabeth documentary has been moving slowly the last few months. But something wonderful has been shaping up.
On November 15-22, I will be at the Manreza Spiritual Center near Esztergom Hungary for the General Chapter of the SFO, to film the ceremonies that close the two-year centenary celebrations for St. Elizabeth.
And I have a new DP (Director of Photography). He is Michael Eaton, who has shot video for a number of productions, and who co-directed a DVD released by a major distributor, Lionsgate, called The Case for Christ. You can watch the trailer for it here. Like me, Michael is an alumni of the Act One program.
My brother Nick had originally planned to come with me again, and do the taping, but had to drop out because of business problems.
Among other things, we will attend the closing Mass of the centenary, celebrated by the former primate of Hungary, the Franciscan Cardinal Laszlo Paskai, tour Esztergom castle, the seat of the medieval royal family of Hungary, where Elizabeth would have lived as a young child, and take a day-long tour of Budapest.
And we will be filming this partly for the documentary, but also because the Order wants a record of this historic chapter, and will make their own video of it.
It should be quite an adventure. Please pray for its success. I will be posting updates here. You can find out more and also donate funds for completion of the documentary at this website.
Filed under: Writing | |2 Comments
. . . But Hollywood is still at war with itself.
“It is not all that we hoped for, and not all that we deserved,” Writer’s Guild of America West President Patric Verrone admitted in a press conference yesterday (Sunday,
February 10). But he still counts the tentative deal that the Guild has worked out with Hollywood’s producers (the AMPTP) as a victory. Why?
For starters, WGA members did at least gain some of what they wanted, that is acknowledgment that writers do deserve compensation for the use of their work in “new media” such as downloads and streamed content from the Internet. Though not as much as they had hoped — and the producers get a 17-day free “promotional” window for content. But, as Verrone says, “this strike was about the future, and this deal assures for us and for future generations of writers a share in the future…”
He is right to be happy. The Guild, by clever shows of strength — including getting most of the Hollywood acting community, represented by SAG (the Screen Actors’ Guild), to rally around their cause and boycott the Golden Globes and the Oscars — put fear into the moguls’ hearts. The separate deals the WGA made with companies such as David Letterman’s World Wide Pants, the Weinstein Company and United Artists was also a bold move – a move worthy of creative, business savvy and powerful artists – which is not what the AMPTP wants them to be. No, the AMTPT clearly would have preferred writers to be meek, submissive and obedient wage-slaves.
Which is what writers were when the Guild was first founded back in the 1930’s. In the fight to get writers a chance at better working conditions, fair contracts, and health benefits, the Guild acted as a real labor union. But somehow in the process, their creative independence went by the wayside. One important sign of this is that the writers agreed to give up copyright of their works to the studios. Yes, that’s right: all work done by writers for the WGA is work for hire, and when aspiring screenwriters finally sign that Hollywood deal, they give up ownership of their work; this means that the studio can drop the original writer at any time and have the whole script rewritten by someone else – or five or ten other people. And the writer has no legal recourse.
This is very unlike the theater, where playwrights always own their own work, can make sure that not a single line of it is changed, have the final say on when, where and how it is performed, and are in full control of the royalties they receive. Hollywood producers have long claimed, of course, that the enormous expense of motion pictures makes the studios’ ownership of content necessary – but then Broadway plays are about as expensive as most top-level independent films nowadays (I’m not an expert, but I would say that this would be those in the $1-2 million range). And if playwrights can maintain control of these all-important creative rights, why not film writers? In the many online comments by WGA writers I’ve read over the last few months, several indicated regret that writers ever gave up this and so much else to the studios.
In short, while the Guild has won a temporary victory, not much has changed. The war is still not over. And the writers are finally realizing some of their true power. And this, is no doubt causing the moguls to shake in their boots. After all, in a world where anyone with an Internet account and a URL has a potential media empire of their own at their fingertips – with their own radio station and TV network available through online podcasting and videocasting, YouTube, and hundreds of other outlets – is clearly a world where writers “don’t need no stinking moguls.” Writers can be their own producers and distributors, at the fraction of the cost of a $100 million (or even $1 million) Hollywood film. The many clever “Speechless” videos developed by Hollywood actors and writers in support of the strike over the past three months, and available to the public on the Internet, are proof enough of that.
The real question in this war is: how long can the Guild and the studios themselves keep going with the present structure, which is quickly becoming antiquated? The producers and moguls, now feeling threatened, will grab onto all the power they can. They will still want to give writers as little as possible, and still want to treat them like labor, while the writers themselves are potentially tomorrow’s powerful self-producers. This whole structure is going to have to give somehow.
Verrone hinted at this coming change when he said at yesterday’s press conference:
“The legacy of the ‘88 strike was the ability of the companies to develop content without writers and creators. The legacy of this strike will be the ability of writers and creators to develop content without the companies. We are making deals, and we will continue to make deals, with Google, Yahoo, and others beyond just the 7 conglomerates.”
It’s the wave of the future. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. For my part, as a potential film writer, it will be especially important for my own future. And somehow I feel it will be a bright one.
(You can read more on the strike news of the last few days at Deadline Hollywood Daily (a really killer blog with hundreds of comments by writers) and at screenwriter and Act One screenwriter Janet Batchler’s blog. And don’t forget the WGA blog, United Hollywood)
Filed under: Film, Writing | |No Comments
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