Thanks for the round! It’s great that you had so much fun at your reunion. I didn’t go to my 5th or my 10th. As much as I loved my school, I couldn’t wait to leave. A girl I had a crush on found out about it and the last six months of senior year were a bit unpleasant. I don’t know what I ever saw in that girl. She wasn’t a nice person to begin with. And I ate pickled herring for her!
I’m so happy that you’re curious about the project. I don’t get to discuss it much with my friends because they’re not really into it. They don’t understand why I get so excited over something as simple as diffusion spray.
I get what you mean about process. I think that a year and a half ago, we had some “bad process”. Each of us had a specific need that wasn’t being met. But we didn’t communicate our needs. And that led to a lot of frustration. Then Alx (how he spells it) wanted to hurry up and film. I didn’t see the point in rushing, especially since the characters weren’t fully developed. And Rich was a “Silent Bob” of sorts.
Now, things are different. We have a master plan. So, when stupid shit pops up (and it has), we work through it more efficiently.
Wayfarer 1 is a full length digital film. But, we have to film it in parts because we don’t have a lot of money. We refer to each part as an episode (i.e. Wayfarer 1: The Search for Devil’s Tower). Even then, the “episode” is broken down…to a 15 min. short. We hope to put one out every 3 months, but we’ll be happy with one every six. And we’ll be even happier if we can create a little underground buzz.
That being said, our first short is almost finished. We have to re-shoot the first two scenes and the last scene. Then Alx will compose the soundtrack (he was in a band once upon a time…big in Germany and Japan). We borrowed music from The Matrix, Aliens, Sneakers, etc. for our “in house” copy. It will be a few months before we pass it out to people at the sci-fi convention. Oh, and the Renaissance fair. Then we’re going to set up a website where everyone can watch it if they want to.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote five new scenes and made up two new characters (Agent Savage and Agent Tallent. They’re the elite members of the Recovery Team. And they just so happen to be remote viewers). Now, I do believe what you said about good process, but I have to tell you that there’s nothing like a good sign to go along with it. I was on the phone with Alx, discussing my idea and explaining why I thought Nate (lead female) should refer to Savage and Tallent as “the Swanns” (after Ingo Swann) – I got a call waiting beep. Normally, I’d ignore it. But for some reason, I clicked over. It was my neighbor from across the street. “Lindsey, you have to come outside! There’s a swan in my front yard!” I had just said, “swann” to Alx and now there’s a swan. I’m not embarrassed to say that I took it as a sign.
Anyway, one of the ideas I came up with has something to do with a response you gave here in the pub. Our main characters work for Mr. Timm. He’s the head of the spy ring, but no one actually sees him. His spy ring is called, “the gameboard”. There are two kinds of spies and they are called, “players”. Then we have our tactical remotes and recoverers. And then there’s Mr. Timm’s right hand woman. She runs the show from behind the scenes. One day, I was thinking, where the hell are these people operating from? Then I came up with the idea of EXALISSE… a company that manufactures boardgames and trading cards. It’s a front, obviously. And it makes sense. That’s not stealing anything, right? I hope not because it’s so perfect.
Until July, that’s pretty much it for Wayfarer 1. In the meantime, I have to grow some hair. Right now, I have what I like to call a “feminine fade”… it’s what I have to tell the hairdresser to keep her from squaring off the back of my head. I’ll be playing Tallent. She’s going to have a “dragonballZ” kind of thing going on. Oh, Wayfarer 1 is our spaceship. I don’t think I mentioned that. And yes, it’s a really cool set. We built it ourselves.
Just one more thing… I liked your response to that question about what you hoped to accomplish in the next 25 years. I think all of it is possible. Even the U2 thing. Screenwriting, once you have a vision, is pretty easy (somebody probably wants to shoot me for that). And it’s even easier if you have Final Draft software. It’s the rules that are tricky sometimes. But we’re not sending our script to anyone (though we are getting a copyright), so I’ve broken quite a few of them. Our actors are not professionally trained, so I use more description than what is allowed, in hopes that it will get them to that place. If that makes sense.
Well, take care.
Lindsey
Oh, yeah! What was that 4th grade teacher like???
Well, this all sounds pretty cool and I hope it’s working out, although I’m trying to imagine where one builds a spaceship set without upsetting the neighbors. If you will let me know when your website is live, I’ll be happy to link to it. And if your superspies want to use a games company as a front, more power to them: it’s certainly a chaotic enough business to hide any amount of ulterior motive or general wackiness.
My 4th-grade history teacher was a mean and angry woman. She also seemed, even to my nine-year-old self, sad and lonely and confused by a world that had backwashed her into a dead-end situation. In the 1960s it was hard for suddenly-divorced or widowed women in their 40’s and 50’s to find lucrative, soul-satisfying ways of taking care of themselves. My grammar school was a place where some of them ended up. Some of my teachers were there because they loved their work, and they made a huge impact on me. But some of them were there because they lived in small windowless apartments and made daily choices between the electricity bill and the new timing belt for the car. And they’d never even heard of a timing belt before, because their men had always handled that, and maybe the car mechanic was bullshitting them about the whole thing. How to know? They didn’t have college degrees or special skills or even much practice at mapping out a life, and they understood that there weren’t many options for them. Those people had a huge impact on me too.
Anyway, long story short: my history teacher disliked me intensely. Maybe she didn’t like any of us, I’m not sure, but I’m positive about me. One day I was in the girls’ bathroom alone. I had tooth that was just loosening, but not nearly ready to come out – just at the point where it moved slightly and bled a little if I poked it with my tongue or finger, which of course I was doing all the time. This teacher came into the bathroom and found me in front of the mirror with my mouth open, poking. So she took some dental floss out of her purse, pinned me in a corner while she wrapped it around my tooth, tied the other end around the doorknob, and slammed the door. It hurt, it bled, it scared me, I cried, and she was happy. She may have been a nice person in some other areas of her life, but that day she was a pig.
Lindsey, holy smokes! Your project sounds pretty big. What became of it? Are there links we can follow? YouTube pages we can stalk? I’m glad you worked things out with your team.
Kelley, your 4th grade teacher sounds mean, even by Mexican standards. Ouch!
Oh, no… Esmeralda is now telling me that her mother pulled out all her teeth that way when she was a kid. But she says the doors were wooden and fat with moisture, so they didn’t shut properly and her mother had to close them more than once to get the job done.
My teeth wouldn’t fall off, they were firmly rooted. So one day my mom just took me to the dentist and the sadistic guy pulled eight of them without any anesthetic while he grinned and made fun of me because tears started to run down my cheeks. I remember his face very clearly. And his last name, too. It was Nakashima. But at least I was lying down when it all happened.