Kevin Jonas (right) talks twitter with Ian Ziering and Johnny Damon on NBC's Celerity Apprentice
I’m not ready to check myself into a facility quite yet, but I’m showing early signs of social media addiction.
Checking my facebook and twitter are the first and last things I do with my day. Seeing new “likes” to my facebook movie page brings me more joy than reasonable. I have five twitter accounts.
I may be lapsing towards the excess, but its not like playing “Angry Birds” or “Candy Crush” there is an end game in play, even if there is no end to the social media game.
In this age, a large social media following is power. That power was a major subject line of the first episode of Celebrity Apprentice. While both project managers pushed their team to take full advantage of social media to drive attendance to their charity pie sale, the other celebrities rightly feared that even their combined energies were no match for Kevin Jonas’ 4.7 million twitter followers.
I’m a long long way from 4.7 million, but I play to employ social media to organically grow a following for my film “Pink.” Most cited example of a twitter feed being harnessed successfully launch a movie was the 2014 “Dear White People.”
Each new follow puts me one step closer.
With that in mindset, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to not let to consume too much of my creative energy.
In the near future, I hope and expect “Team Pink” to grow and much of the social media heavy lifting will fall to others but in the mean time it's important to for me as the screenwriter/creative lead to keep my focus on the big picture and creating content worthy of attention.
Its all well and good to ask people to follow you, but if you don’t know where you’re leading them, we’re all lost.
In conjunction with the New Year's Day launch "Dance Step of Death" on the free video platform Viemo, I'm reposting an August 2012 piece I wrote for The Sacramento Bee reflecting on producing my first short film. Producing a film is a magical headache. I learned a great deal from doing this zombie comedy and much more since.
The first tangible step toward my comedic short film, "Dance Step of Death," took place in February over pizza at east Sacramento's One Speed, but the idea of producing my own film was hatched a year earlier.
I'd had adolescent film stirrings, first with my dad's old 8 mm camera and later with Super 8, but I packed away those ideas in favor of more practical pursuits.
In 2011, that itch came back.
After taking a screenwriting class at Access Sacramento, I sheepishly submitted my first short script for consideration in the A Place Called Sacramento Film Festival. The festival – in which they escort selected scripts through the production process – can be a godsend for first-time producers.
In hindsight, I'm glad my short was rejected.
A year later, I was again spending Saturday mornings in the uncomfortable classroom chairs at Access Sacramento, this time enrolled in a film production class. This time, I felt was ready for Access Sacramento's A Place Called Sacramento Film Festival.
Again I was rejected by the submission jury (something about too many zombie entries).
But a funny thing happened on the way to rejection. I had already met AK Long, who enthusiastically agreed to direct the film. We'd started to craft a funding plan, and he'd started the storyboards.
So on the fateful day of rejection, we decided to press on and enter the movie elsewhere. Within a day, I had a tentative agreement with Nathan Schemel, executive director of the Sacramento Film and Music Festival, to show "Dance Step of Death" at the festival, which opens Wednesday and runs through Sunday.
The only problem: We only had 11 weeks.
Producing a film is a little like putting together a football team for one game. Thankfully, Long, a recent UC Davis graduate, brought his own connections and a team of people who were involved in his earlier projects. In the subsequent weeks, people from his network and mine joined as others dropped out.
The job of the producer is largely to rent the kitchen, buy the ingredients, then get out of the director's way until it's time to sell the soup.
In film terms, that means finding a script (easy enough – I wrote it), finding the locations, securing the talent, finding a way to pay for everything and distributing the film.
A co-worker at The Bee asked me how I found the time. I reminded him that I don't have kids. I woke up most mornings between 6 and 7 a.m. and worked for three hours or so, firing off emails and making plans. I'd meet with Long once or twice a week after work and I followed the schedule.
Producing a movie tests your networks. My network rose to the challenge. You never know what people will say "yes" to until you ask.
The process was not without stumbles, stressful evenings and the generalized anxiety that comes with having to trust that all the various team members you've assembled will perform the job they've agreed to do – for free.
Stressful, yes, but the process was magical.
It's one thing to write about three wannabe superheroes and their efforts to look into a police coverup, and quite another to see the characters take shape first in drawings, then in real costumes and finally as local actors performing the words you put to page.
Now, I'm ready for one more magical moment: seeing it on the big screen.
When I was a little kid and even into adolescence, I loved to take risks.
In those days of perfect knees, I jumped from roofs, moving trucks and once from one moving speed boat to another. I thought nothing of taking a ski jump within weeks of learning to ski.
Like most people, as the years moved along I found myself taking fewer risks.
I ski with the goal of not falling. I keep the cruise control set at 75 mph as to not get a ticket. And I’ve sought comfort in my work environment.
On one hand, comfort and safety is a beautiful thing in this troubled economic climate. But on the other hand, it can be constricting and confining when your heart wants to soar.
Illustration by Val Mina
The instability of the journalism industry pushed me to do something I should have been doing all along: taking risks.
A three years, ago I started screenwriting and performing improv. Two days before my 40th birthday I hosted a comedy show and performed stand up.
Now I’m on my way to Santa Monica for the American Film Market conference in hopes of selling my screenplay or packaging it as an independent film. Here's the logline for those new to this blog: A free-speech loving exotic dancer battles a small-town sheriff and bares it all to prove her "bottomless" dance is art worthy of protection in this sexy dramatic comedy based on a real 1969 case.
I’m characterizing it as a risk, but is it really?
Based on my submitted video pitch, I’ll already by pitching the script during the pitch session, so at worst I bomb the pitch, but salvage the weekend by taking notes at some very valuable forums and meeting a distributor interested in the film once its a completed.
But how likely is that? I’ve been a rally commissioner, scout camp leader, improv performer, television host, stand up comedian, and “the Voice” at Burning Man.
The upside: I nail the pitch, meet Jennifer Lawrence’s agent Jeremy Plager in the lobby bar, we get hammered, end up back at her place, she challenges to a beer chugging contest, loses and agrees to star in my film.
Here is to taking risks that arn’t too risky.
Like Pink Film on Facebook and follow @edfletcher on twitter for reports from the road. Hell I might even Instagram some famous people if my battery survives.
In a little over one week I’ll be heading to the desert for my sixth Burning Man.
The event, in it’s 28th year, is a week long arts, music and cultural festival in the Nevada Blackrock desert. It is characterized by three things: the harsh environment, participation and the feverishness of participants.
I’m sure my list of three will be debated. Some would say drugs or the clothes or the music. Allow me to retort: The environment dictates the dress and is the main reason most people won’t come. Unlike concert festivals, Burning Man demands that
everyone participate and be part of the show. And that participation leads me to the next point: Burners are obsessed about talking about Burning Man.
A non-burner co-worker recently compared burners to hovering parents.
Tuche.
But for good reason. There is a whole lot to prepared for: feeding yourself for a week, costumes, travel etc. However, the main reason many burners can’t stop talking about Burning Man is to a certain extent they never left. The random collection of peaceful, art, music and fun-loving tribes is easily more alluring than the work-a-day world with bits a fun sprinkled in between budget meetings.
But also many of us have been in project mode almost since we left. Here’s a sampling of some of the things my campmates have been working on:
- Tractor is the queen of playa clothes gifting. She spent 100s of hours making tutus, miniskirts and booty shorts for the people she’s never met. She enjoys nothing more than helping a new burner out of their khakis.
- Boosh in addition to other projects built the Pantzooka. We’ll playful save those afflicted with the urge to shirtcock. Yes, shirtcockers are men who rocks a t-shirt with their bit exposed. Here is the commercial I made with my non-burner engineer and artist for use on the on-site radio station. The station streams on the Internet at www.bmir.org.
-Princess Fussy Pants, with Scout and her craftsman, built the Burner Pen Pal Project. The attractive, functional setup allows burners to safely exchange off-playa addresses for letter exchanges and a website for people to share those experiences. Here is the radio spot.
- Uncle Bob is the king of camp construction. He’s built lamps, expanded the bar, built high-bar tables, redesigned our shower and has generally been working like a mad man to ensure everyone is comfortable and the camp functions.
- Captain America is racing to complete a kegerator for camp.
Ed Fletcher boombike adds a car stereo and LED lights to his mountain bike
Here's a closer look at the speakers, deck and battery.
Burning man is for builders
The most many people know about Burning Man is that there’s lots of sex and drugs. While that’s true, it barely scratches the surface on what Burning Man is about.
I used an Altolids box as the control panel
One lesser known gems of Burning Man is that is a collection of doers, dreamers and problem solvers. Given the inhospitable nature of the Black Rock desert where it’s held, concurring your environment is the first obstacle. The second and just as important challenge is to do your part add something to the community artistically or recreationally.
This year, I decided that my bike needed more illumination and a sound system.
Illumination is important because there are no streetlights and hard to keep a crew of bikes together with so many blinky dots in the night.
I saw some people cruising around Sacramento with sound systems and wanted it build my own.
I’d assembled a 12-volt camp sound system before. Mainly by assembling a second-hand car stereo setup, adding extra speakers and hooking it to car battery.
This time around I started more or less from scratch and built my own speaker boxes, wired an on/off switch control panel, and put the setup together.
The pole is made from an LED strip light
wrapped around an inner core plastic pole
within an larger plastic pole.
From doing the wiring to cutting the speaker boxes, there were many times where I wondered whether I'd bitten off more than I can chew. I took more time to home depot and my local hardware store than it should have, but I kept finding solutions and refining the project. At least once I turned to facebook to crowdsource an answer to a question that troubled me.
But I have to say it was pretty fun. When did we stop building things and just become consumers? Some where along the line someone suggested I just buy a boom box. No where is the fun in that.
I’m pretty proud of it already. On my first test ride I got my first offer to buy it. I think I’ll keep this one.
As spring approaches, I know at least one thing I'll be doing this summer. I'm going back to Burning Man. I'm convinced I can get it right.
I bought a ticket and the majority of the people I camped with last year are coming back, so that is all settled. The open question is whether I go as a journalist or just go as a mission in self discovery. (Truth: It's always a little of both).
Last year, I wrote a piece for The Root magazine on diversity at Burning Man. It's a fine piece and I'm happy I did it, but the technical issues that I had to be overcome to file without leaving the desert were pretty significant.
It basically took big chunks of two days to produce: one day interviewing, writing, shooting and editing pictures and one day trying to get a WiFi signal strong enough to send words and pictures out then having to go back to the WiFi to answer editing questions.
For the most part, Burning Man is a low tech environmental. They don't provide WiFi and phone signals are spotty at best. The WiFi that is there is provided by people just like me who do it to do it. Most take advantage of the lack of connectivity. It's one week where you can tell your boss that "no you won't be checking emails" while your away. It's amazing how much freer one's mind is when our real-world work lives, bills and pressures are told to take a vacation. We - myself included - make fun of people who walk around hoping to get one bar of phone signal so they can get a text message.
But the writer in me enjoyed trying to translate experiences into words. Burning Man is filled with so much going on it a writer's dream and nightmare. Part of me wants to explore other mediums. I'd love to get behind the mic at the Burning Man radio station. I started performing one-man improv shows with a megaphone and I've toyed with video.
Of my videos my 2011 is by far the most popular before the word "chick" is in the title.
If you have Burning Man stories ideas, I'd love to have them. Even better would be ideas for outlets that will pay me for those words.
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